Three Thankful Thrushes

Steve Ely — Poetry of Public and Social Engagement

Ely has anti-Lyric ranted before but the article disappeared. Well, now he's tapping into fashionable Lyric-bashing in support of a new course of his at The Poetry School. Still, it's amusing stuff. Painting them as glorified postcard writers is a stroke a genius. Wish he'd come out with some names too mind. 

“The concept is of poet-as-gadabout-tourist-of-his-own-experience and, extending the metaphor, his poems might be characterised as postcards home or even holiday snaps in verse — lovely sunset this evening, really missing you, gorgeous-paella-evoked-in-vivid-sensory-detail, horrific oppression of donkeys, wish you were here — and so on.”

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Kei Miller — The Anxieties of Being a Black Poet in Britain 

Kei Miller’s a bloody good poet and I didn’t know he wrote a blog so here’s his latest post, a meditation on being a black poet in Britain. Bit annoying that he’s so coy about who the ‘major poet’ is but still, discretion is the better part of valour, etc. Anyone care to guess which grandee got the monk on about the race card being played?

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David Orr — James Franco, Poet

“I’m obliged here to note that this actor is well acquainted with the educational system, having apparently attended graduate programs at Yale, Columbia, New York University, Brooklyn College, Warren Wilson College, the Rhode Island School of Design, Le Cordon Bleu, Quantico, Hogwarts (Ravenclaw), the Vaganova School of Russian Ballet and the Jedi Academy.” 

Four Flatulent Forsythias

So the Poetry Archive has been updated and this is good news, right? Well, the website looks very different and they seem to have gone for more of an interactive blog style with Andrew Motion's puppy-dog face featuring heavily rather than a straight-forward website. Suppose it's fairly inevitable but I can't help but miss the old site to some extent. I liked its old-skool quote then text, with a diddy little player at the side. Still, the site's in Beta so it might get better.

Think it was about time they added a download feature, and it's great that they've made individual poems downloadable as it can be a frustrating feature of sites like the Poetry Business that you don't get separate tracks per poem. I still think they're outrageously over-priced though, I can almost hear my dad on loop, "how much?" But what is a reasonable price per album? Or per poem, for that matter? Surely lower prices would mean more sales? But that's for another time.

Really recommend the recently added Kei Miller recordings. He's a fantastic reader and 16 tracks is ok for £9.99, I guess.

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Interesting interview with Niall Campbell from the brilliant Scottish Poetry Library. Apparently they'll be alternating their interviews to be with one established and one less known poet every week, which is great.

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Jan had listened to 'Why Walking Matters' on NPR on the walk to work this week and told me about it when she got back. It certainly ties into the Mort-Wilkinson-Oswald-Long-thang. So exercise is apparently good for your creativity, not news to everyone, certainly, but well worth a listen. For anyone who caught the episode of The Echo Chamber you'll have heard of Richard Long, but why not take a gander at his 'textworks' on his website if you haven't already, ideally after a long wander?

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I subscribed to 'Dark Horse Magazine' last week on the merit of its description of itself on the website: "We like to think that the journal is characterised by a clear-sighted scepticism and an eye for the genuine. We understand that hype, in its presumption of consensus, is irrelevant to readers of any individuality." Really looking forward to reading John Lucas on Waterman, Mort, and Campbell in the next issue. 

Originally came across it thanks to Niall Campbell's retweet of Ian Duhig's 'Ground gives' elegy for Heaney.