Five Felicitous Finches

New post on P on the B after two month hiatus is sad. Or not simply sad but valedictorian, the end of an era really. The huge amount of knowledge processing it represents is always there for you to delve into and add your thoughts to. Mort also responds to her inclusion on the Next Generation 2014:

I think it's just possible that many of the poets who receive accolades for their work suffer from an acute sense of inadequacy, a feeling of never quite being good enough. They don't feel like they're part of a 'trendy' literary elite, they feel a mixture of gratitude and fear.

http://poetryonthebrain.blogspot.com/2014/09/kidnapped-by-world-accolades-alvarez.html

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The Chinese can't encourage Scotland in its bid for independence because, well—like a trusty pooch—they just like everyone to stick together. Pretty comprehensive article on devolution here with some good leads to follow up. Oh, and this:

The poet Ian McMillan, the “Barnsley Bard”, has started to think about who should serve in Yorkshire’s cabinet, suggesting Geoffrey Boycott as head of the diplomatic service and Dickie Bird as prime minister – because “he would ensure that nothing was spent."

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/sep/11/-sp-independence-referendum-devolution-around-uk

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Few posts by the judges on the Next Generation website. I read Clare Pollard's and was persuaded by it. If there are any trolls out there still disgruntled about Daljit Nagra's happy face you could do worse than read this.

I’m not sure I could have spent more than twenty minutes reading it. But had I picked up any other issue, I might just have read a few random poems and moved on. Instead, here was something to grasp and excite me – a whole NEW GENERATION! Of poets!

http://nextgenerationpoets.com/?p=624

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Two new reviews on Dave Poems: Kevin Powerserses' Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting and Liz Berry's Black Country. The man's a machine!

http://davepoems.wordpress.com/

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Read what George Szirtes has written and said to people:

It is language that is compelling in its own way however simple or difficult, or hot or cold, or direct or ironic it might be. It is the world and our experience of it in language. It is complexity coming to a shape, becoming a process that reads as meaning. It is all the terrible and beautiful things we fear, know, hope, and imagine assuming a comprehensible shape in words.

http://georgeszirtes.blogspot.com/2014/09/why-poetry-text-of-speech-at-goldsmiths.html

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So, yes.

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=yea&allowed_in_frame=0

Five Green Botts.

Five things. First is Steve Ely talking to Maurice Riordan about poetry stuff, and lamping on Poetry Review's latest podcast. Found it shed good light on Ely’s work and thought he came across well, modest, aware of his position but respectful. Some great descriptions in there, Ely describing lamping for one, and a powerful reading of a new poem at the end. 

Next up is the ‘Fugue #3: Crossgates’ podcast by Matthew Clegg. Came across this through Helen Mort’s reweet (so thanks Helen). Grand. Even though calling it a ‘fugue’ seems extraordinarily pretentious, I thought the format worked really well. Poems embedded in a bit of narrative and all of it recorded on loc. Makes for good listening. ‘Blood and Icecream,’ especially powerfully read, I thought. 

Thought the Dave (if he is an actual Dave) of Davepoems, when I first came across the site, might be one of those anonymous knob-bloggers. Bit too vitriolic if occasionally irreverently brilliant. But Dave seems to have shelved his more extreme iconoclastic tendencies for the time being, and has started writing very readable and informative reviews. Nice. A review of Niall Campbell's Moontide is up there now, go read it!

“Is this idea of treating every poem as a passage from havoc to identity some kind of liberation theory of poetry? Yes.” David Biespiel on The Rumpus does it again. And getting Roethke and Rich in on it clinches his argument. Used to have ‘Diving into the wreck,’ on a CD I listened to daily on the way to work in Poland. Reading it again’s like having a circuit come live. Very inspiring third instalment. 

One last bott — I’m hoping to write a post about Mona Arshi’s poem ‘Different Principles of Enclosure’ for Friday and the website I found it on is Toe Good Poetry. I love to listen and read me poems so I think it’s brilliant.