experimental poetry
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As many poets gear up for NaPoWriMo, in which they attempt to spend every day in April writing a poem*, I’ve signed up for InterNaPwoWriMo, in which poets from throughout the world post a pwoermd** a day during April. Much more manageable; simultaneously far zanier and far saner. A pwoermd is, as the name suggests,
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The shortlist for this year’s Crashaw prize was announced this week, and I was delighted to see that my friend Stephen Nelson is among their number. I was almost equally pleased to see that he’s the first of the shortlisted authors to be profiled on the Salt blog. All digits are disecting for him. Stephen
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Somehow, I had missed until the middle of this week the news that Edwin Morgan has won this year’s Sundial Scottish Arts Council book of the year award for A Book of Lives. Shame on me! Not having read the collection–or any of the other finalists, for that matter–I can’t comment on its merits, but
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I know this is a bit behind the times, but there’s an interesting post on “official verse culture” over at Eyewear, on the back of the result of the TS Eliot Prize. One wonders whether Edwin Morgan–one of those whom Todd Swift and other bloggers (well, Rob Mackenzie at least) hoped would win those laurels–didn’t
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Went to the Big Word Slam for the first time in my life last night. Does it surprise you that I was a slam virgin? Well, in the general run of things, Thursdays are not convenient evenings for me. And although I love poetry readings, I’ve never been convinced by performance poetry as a genre*.
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I’ve been musing a little about the usefulness or otherwise of the term “mainstream” in relation to Scottish poetry. I think it’s fair to say that, in UK terms, Hugh MacDiarmid would not be regarded as mainstream. His non-mainstream status is emphasised by the fact that he turns up in the marvellous PENNsound archive, which
Amy Jo Philip 