dumbfoundry

"I recently bought Jack Gilbert's new book, "The Dance Most of All," and on first glance it seems to be more of the same. He's one of my favorite poets and I'm certainly looking forward to reading his new poetry (it's all so comfortable), yet I can't help feeling as though he discovered one way to do something and hasn't varied since then. His poems all look the same: like a herd of horses, they're different colors and even breeds and beautiful, but still, all HORSES. I've noticed that other poets tend to do this, never changing that one style that works, that brings them recognition and awards. It's a trap.

"Both beginners and old-hands fall into this trap, in which there are two sides. On one side you write only for yourself, on the other you write only for other people. The best work of any poet straddles the sharp line in-between: where you understand how much information a reader needs to relate to your poem and you also understand that you must push the boundary of sameness and move into artistry."

The prestigious and, some would argue, anachronistic job of writing verse for the monarch has been associated with great literary names such as Alfred Lord Tennyson, Cecil Day-Lewis and John Betjeman. Today the laureate is no longer given the role 'in perpetuity'. What is more, the token annual salary of £100 and 'a butt of sack' (108 gallons of sweet wine) is no longer offered by the Crown. Instead, after the post was modernised by Tony Blair, the title is awarded once every 10 years and provides a more conventional, if still modest, annual income of less than £20,000.

Before Motion settled to the task in 1999, Duffy had been the favourite. However, her status then as the mother of a young child and as a woman in a lesbian relationship made her wary of taking up such a prominent national position.

"US stage director Robert Wilson has teamed up with pop star Rufus Wainwright to bring Shakespeare's sonnets to the stage in Berlin. Debuting on Easter Sunday, this highly stylized cross-dressing version of the archetypal love poems went down a storm with the audience."

I'm afraid we don't have many clues about The Storialist, apart from a previous posting about an aspect of the Canadian poetry scene, though we hope a fuller identity might be revealed in due course.

In the meantime, please make The Storialist welcome!

"My problem is that I am the daughter of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, but I wanted to be an individual. But we are, of course, a product of our parents. In denying them, you deny part of who you are. It's taken me years to be comfortable with that."

Mini-Podcasts featuring one poet per week. As soon as a few episodes run, the show will be available via i-Tunes and other sources, as well as the site itself.

"When I was in London recently, Todd Swift, a Canadian poet who lives there, told me he thought it was a mistake to include in my bio the fact that I had taken part in poetry slams."

We need to clear out some storage space, so we're offering free classroom sets (entire boxes) of Verse to the first 20 instructors (of literature and/or creative writing, at any level, in any setting) who request them. While we cannot guarantee specific issues, we'll try to meet any special requests. Verse will cover shipping costs, too. We just ask that you put the magazine into students' hands, gratis.

"I was amazed by how many women came up to me, as word quietly spread, and said that the same thing had happened to them. Having tangible proof that I was not alone -- that this was survivable -- helped me through."

When a poet friend, Rachel Barenblat, had a miscarriage earlier this year and worked her way through the trauma and grief by writing poetry, yet wondered how to make these poems available to others going through a similar experience, I suggested a small hand-bound edition. Ten poems, title page, table of contents, acknowledgments: this adds up to 15 pages, plus one blank at the back. The magic 16. (Bookbinders think in multiples of eight and get super excited when all the pages add up to multiples of 32…) We settled on a tall, skinny format which conveniently fit on a standard letter-size sheet, folded in half: a pamphlet.

[Luisa] Igloria said her adopted mother and biological mother were her first poetry teachers.

She said her mothers used to make her peel lima beans one by one, and then one day she realized that was not necessary in order to eat them. However, she connected peeling the beans to poetry - attention to detail is necessary.

"I don't expect that by doing this I'm going to change anybody's life," says Robinson. "But for the ten seconds people stand in front of it, I hope they just kind of wonder about poetry again."

"The books I publish are those I respond to as a reader, and what interests me most is subject matter, breadth of vision and engagement with language. I look for an original voice, assured technique and poetry showing a lively interplay of intellect and emotion."

"Even as recently as three years ago, I still would have agreed—online journals were where you sent the misfits, the work that couldn't quite make it into print."

To celebrate the Poetry Society's Centenary, there will be an exhibition at Forest Arts in the Autumn of 2009. One hundred poems will be exhibited - we are currently searching for those poems. The closing date for submissions is 30th June 2009.

The exhibition will be curated by Keith Bennett and this is the search for those poems. "What I am looking for are poems which have one of the following..."

Video interpretations of poems are the main focus, but poetry readings, spoken word performances, and interviews with poets are also eligible for inclusion.

"...how do you make poetry more commonplace? I don't think it is necessarily in the topics you choose to write 'about' but how you incorporate it in your life."

Aphasia is a neurological disorder that affects speech comprehension and speech production. It has been suggested that aphasic speech and poetry bear some resemblance.

In a recent study, Albert-Jan. Roskam found that poems of mediocre quality and aphasic transcripts may be indistinguishable, especially for men.

Artistically, yes. Commercially, no. As with all things in British life at the moment, I think there is far too much concentration (by publishers and the media) on a small number of often not very good poets. Our school curriculum favours poor poets with 'social messages'. Plain fare poetry often gets rewarded by plain fare judges. I'm a big admirer of 'elliptical / associative' poetry from the US, though it has been suggested that this strain of poetry had peaked.

Australia Council has collaborated with Lismore Regional Gallery and the Splendour in the Grass music festival to launch SPLENDID, a groundbreaking initiative to workshop and showcase young and emerging Australian artists.

Ten young and emerging artists who work across the visual arts, theatre, dance, design, installation, architecture, digital art, text, sound and other creative areas will be chosen to undertake a three-week Arts Lab residency in Lismore in July 2009.

During the residency, the ten SPLENDID participants will not only be mentored in their own art form by some of the most recognised artists in the world, they will be encouraged to explore the concept of ‘’cross artform’’, working collaboratively within a dynamic environment that encourages critical thinking and experimentation.

The concepts workshopped during the residency will be further developed over a six month period and several will be commissioned to premiere at Splendour in the Grass 2010. This process will occur three times, with artworks commissioned for Splendour in the Grass 2010, 2011 and 2012.

Applications close 4 May 2009.

"The poem underwent very few revisions after its initial composition. My revision process may be a little unorthodox. I tend to revise as I’m composing, so it winds up taking me a bit longer to compose a poem, but once it's "done", it's "done." So basically, very little time elapsed from the point of initial composition to the poem's "final" state."

Includes Astrid Lindgren, Dans Andersson, Nils Ferlin, Karin Boye and August Strindberg.

A Celebration of the Chapbook festival calls attention to the rich history of the chapbook and highlights its essential place in poetry publishing today as a vehicle for alternative poetry projects and for emerging authors and editors to gain entry into the literary marketplace. The festival will forge a new platform for the study of the chapbook inside and outside the academy and celebrate the importance of chapbooks to America’s cultural heritage and future.

Journeys – real, imagined, your own life. Plot significant points, devise signs, triangulate and locate the arrow that says, ‘You are here!’ in a workshop led by Meredith Andrea and Jacqui Rowe where you might discover unexpected patterns in time and place.

1.30 - 4.30 pm, 18th April. Shakespeare Memorial Room, Birmingham Central Library
£17/£14 (concs)

To book contact Jacqui Rowe:
jacquirowe @ hotmail.co.uk
07971018825
PO Box 14779, Birmingham B13 3GU

For further details, see www.makingpoetry.co.uk

"...in 2008, just 8.3 percent of adults had read any poetry in the preceding 12 months. That figure was 12.1 percent in 2002, and in 1992, it was 17.1 percent, meaning the number of people reading poetry has decreased by approximately half over the past 16 years."

Queens of Poetry: A Tribute to Bosselaar, Duhamel, Laux, and Wier is an anthology under production by poet and editor Dustin Brookshire.

In his article on poetry in health care education, Neil Pickering puts forward an argument of radical unpredictability: as we can never know in advance how a poem will be interpreted, it can be of no external use. It is, however, exactly this potential to give rise to multiple interpretations that makes the poem valuable.