memorable holiday poetry reads
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I rarely approve of taking poetry on holiday. I’m far too shallow, skittish and lazy to deal with the potential after-effects: really fantastic poems have the unpredictable ability to sneak out of nowhere and stun, or give me a dizzyingly vertiginous glimpse of what’s missing from my soul (most of it), or at the other
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I haven’t been “on holiday” for years, but I’ve lived by the sea for almost two years now, so the poetry which springs to mind is the stuff which has accompanied me to the beach. My criteria for good holiday poetry: something which grabs and keeps hold (because it’s rip-roaringly funny, maybe, or emotionally gripping);
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Although it’s not directly a response to my call for memorable holiday poetry reads, Andrew J Shields has offered this brief post on reading the Aeneid, which fits the bill quite nicely. Andrew Shields’ poems have appeared in many journals, as well as in the chapbook Cabinet d’Amateur (Cologne: Darling Publications, 2005). His translations from
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It must have been the summer of 1995, the summer following my first year at university. The book was Edwin Morgan’s Themes on a Variation, borrowed from the Scottish Poetry Library, which was still crammed into Tweeddale Court at the time. The beach was Cocklawburn near Berwick-upon-Tweed — a favourite of my family’s for heaven
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Holidays? What are they? But if you want an excellent book of poems, one that’s so good you can actually read it in the airport because it makes the outside world disappear, be silenced, my punt is Letters to the Tremulous Hand by Elizabeth Campbell, published by John Leonard Press in Australia. Her second book,
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Not much poetry in the Guardian Review’s article where “writers recall their most memorable summer reads”, which is kind of disappointing for “news that stays news”, if typical of these lists. However, I suppose it’s not bad to have two poets recommended — Housman and Homer — given that there was a single poet among
Amy Jo Philip 