poetry
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Here’s a quick round-up of several recommendations from comments on my Facebook note and Ingrid van der Voort’s repost of the same: Ruth Murphy: Alice Walker — Horses Make a Landscape Look More Beautiful. Robert Peake: Marvin Bell’s Wednesday is both portable and rewards re-reading. I like to take multiple passes through slim volumes when…
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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…
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Edinburgh’s Shore Poets is turning 20 this year, and the current committee has decided to record a CD with all the present and former Shore poets they can get a hold of. Hopefully, it will also include recordings of the late Gael Turnbull reading his work — they do exist; I heard some at the…
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A quick reminder about the Chinese Whispers event at the Scottish Poetry Library on Wednesday this week. It’s part of the Poetry Beyond Text season, which I blogged about here. It’s free and it starts at 6 pm. E-mail reception@spl.org.uk if you’re planning on going. Various artists and poets involved will discuss the process of…
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Just read on Todd Swift’s Eyewear blog that James McGonigal won the Michael Marks pamphlet award for his new chapbook Cloud Pibroch. Huge congratulations to him and to Hamish Whyte of Mariscat Press — himself a poet. I confess I haven’t read Jim’s pamphlet yet, but to judge from the last time I heard him…
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While song may share 99% of poetry’s DNA, it isn’t poetry, any more than, say, a chimpanzee is a bonobo. This, from Adam Newey reviewing Hard Ground, poems by Tom Waits, photographs by Michael O’Brien, in yesterday’s Guardian Review, strikes me as a shrewd snippet on the difference between song and poetry. (Newey has a…
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… to the person who came here searching for “Scottish poet + labyrinth” and variations thereon, the poet you’re looking for is most probably Edwin Muir.
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I’ve been thinking today about whether my experiences at Cove Park just before Easter have had an effect not only on the way I present my poetry but directly on my writing, and I believe the answer is yes. On my Facebook page , I commented recently that, at the moment, I seem to be…
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It really is time I blogged about the Reel Festivals reading at the Scottish Poetry Library on Friday 20 May. But how to sum it up? As I said on Twitter, http://twitter.com/#!/ambulancebox/status/71809397503967232 and I can think of no more apposite description. Among all the anxiety about why poetry is marginalised in our culture, against all…
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So, while everyone — well, everyone in the media more or less — goes on about how the Arab Spring has been brought about by Facebook and Twitter, Sinan Antoon corrects the perspective somewhat in this very short interview from the Kenyon Review. Here are a couple of exerpts. First, on the role of poetry…
Amy Jo Philip 