Here is a brief audio-visual intro to the American poet, WilliamsCarlos Williams. Just be aware that the beginning and end of this video have a few flashes of white light and black screen. Advertisements Continue reading William Carlos Williams – in 5 minutes
I’ve just watched “Paterson” – a Jim Jarmusch film about a bus driver who secretly writes poetry and delights in overheard conversation. It’s a really gentle, observant film with not much action, but a lot of listening. Here’s a really good summary of it by reviewer Mark Kermode, who sums it up as a ‘mood poem”
Getting the story on a practising poet and how he works with publisher and editor – and what a book launch is like. Continue reading Dobby Gibson: A poet, a press, an editor
This particular BBC documentary by Adam Low on W H Auden shows how well his poetry is written, how current and up-to-date it sounds. His “Funeral Blues” (“Stop all the clocks….”) became the go-to poem for funerals after it featured in the film “Four Weddings and a Funeral”. And after the calamitous World Trade Centre bombing of 11 Sept – THE public poem which the New York Times and others turned to, to sum up the times was Auden’s poem “September 1st, 1939”, just before England announced its entry into world war 2.
If you’ve ever wanted advice on “How to be a Poet”, there’s a book with precisely that title, by key UK poetry publisher Nine Arches press, published in a few days’ time (20th December 2017.) It’s written by Jo Bell and Jane Commane – who are poets and editors in their own write (right).
The book is a sizeable 200 pages long, on sale for about £15 (depending whether you’ve buying in a real bookshop or an online retailer) and as well as Jo and Jane’s insights, includes articles by “special guests”.
Happy Birthday, poet Lucille Clifton. We celebrate you; your arrival and what you made, in the time that you had.
“The mistake teachers sometimes make is that they think art and poetry – they think that’s about answers and it’s not about that, it’s about questions. So you come to poetry not out of what you know – but out of what you wonder.”
Continue reading “Poetry/wonder (Lucille Clifton 1936-2010)”
So – you like writing poetry – but how can you make it into more like a paying job?
Here’s a short article by Anthony Anaxagorou. It describes how he gradually moved from a shy 27 year old writer who printed his poems and made Youtube clips of himself reading his poems….. gradual interest led to poetry teaching work in 3 London schools….
