news and events
GLASGOW
Poetry Reading Group third Thursday of each month 5.30pm Meeting Room, St Mary's Episcopal Cathedral, Great Western Road Glasgow.
LONDON
POETRY AND GEOLOGY: A CELEBRATION. At The Geological Society, Burlington House, Picadilly. 10th October.
From Shakespeare to Seamus Heaney, Coleridge to Carol Ann Duffy, poets have long been inspired by geology and landforms to create some of their most memorable work. Likewise, geologists, stretching back to the ‘Founding Fathers’, have been keen readers and writers of poetry.
Bryan Lovell, President of the Geological Society, invites you to join us on 10 October to celebrate these strong links between geology and poetry at a special event to mark National Poetry Day and Earth Science Week. Come along to hear Alyson Hallett discuss her projects with stone sculptures around the world, award-winning poet Helen Mort talk about her residency at Wordsworth Cottage, Grasmere, and how Jan Zalasiewicz FGS explores the connections between poetry and the Anthropocene.
Best-selling author Francis Gilbert, a regular contributor to The Times, The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian, will give the opening talk on Wallace Steven’s ‘The Rock’, while Gordon Peters will enlighten us on the work of the Scottish Centre for Geopoetics.
The day will close with the opportunity to read your favourite geological poem alongside four award-winning poets. Have you always had a soft spot for Hardy? Do you love your Tennyson? Or perhaps you have written a geological poem yourself? We would love to hear from you! If you would like to take part, visitwww.geolsoc.org.uk/geopoetry for further details. This event is free to attend and includes lunch and a wine reception.
THE BROWSER INTERVIEWS
Interviews with poets Gillian Clarke, Jackie Kay, Roger McGough, Sinead Morrissey, Frieda Hughes and John Deane http://thebrowser.com/
FOURTH SEASON OF POETRY EVERYWHERE SHORT POETRY FILMS
Available on YouTube and iTunes U.
Public television brings poetry into homes nationwide with a collection of 40 short poetry films
The Poetry Foundation is pleased to announce the debut of a new season of Poetry Everywhere with Garrison Keillor. This April, the short poetry film series returns to public television and the Web with a broad spectrum of poetic voices. Produced by WGBH Boston and David Grubin Productions, in association with the Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine, the project offers 40 short poetry films during unexpected moments in the public television broadcast schedule.
“Poetry Everywhere brings great poems, in gemlike productions, to the eyes, ears, and hearts of its viewers,” says Poetry Foundation president John Barr. “A poem at a time, it enriches our lives.”
Building on Poetry Everywhere’s existing collection of 32 short poetry films, the project’s fourth season on public television adds eight new poets reading their own works: Galway Kinnell, “After Making Love We Hear Footsteps”; Dorianne Laux, “Dust”; Joseph Millar, “American Wedding”; Kwame Dawes, “Tornado Child”; Matthew Dickman, “Slow Dance”; Kay Ryan, “Turtle”; Rita Dove, “American Smooth”; and Bob Hicok, “Calling him back from layoff.”
Once again, Garrison Keillor serves as series narrator. Keillor’s introductions to the poems and poets provide audiences with wonderful insights into each poet’s background. An enthusiastic supporter of poetry, he regularly features it on his public radio programs A Prairie Home Companion and The Writer’s Almanac, and in his poetry anthologies, Good Poems; Good Poems for Hard Times; and the forthcoming Good Poems, American Places (to be released in April).
“With Poetry Everywhere, our goal is to provide new platforms for poetry,” says WGBH’s Brigid Sullivan, series executive producer. “Whether our viewers seek out poems online, on public television, or through new classroom tools on Teachers’ Domain, our mission is to present these great works across a range of mediums and increase the overall accessibility of poetry to new audiences.”
David Grubin, the producer of the series, concurs. “Television, and now the Internet—pervasive mass cultural mediums—can make the voice of a single human being especially vivid,” Grubin says. “We are hoping that these poems will be a reason to pause in our busy lives, providing a moment for introspection, inspiration, even revelation.”
New online resources help bring Poetry Everywhere into the classroom
New to the project this season is the Poetry Everywhere collection on Teachers’ Domain (WGBH’s library of free media resources, available online at www.teachersdomain.org ). Here, educators will find resources—such as short introductions and discussion questions—to bring the films into the classroom. The updated collection at Teachers’ Domain comprises 35 poets, including Adrienne Rich, Naomi Shihab Nye, Mark Doty, Martin Espada, Kwame Dawes, and Marilyn Chin. These resources can be found online at www.teachersdomain.org/special/pe08-wx/.
Selections from Poetry Everywhere also are offered on iTunes U and YouTube.
About Poetry Everywhere
The short films in the Poetry Everywhere series employ a variety of dynamic production approaches, including poets reading their own work to the camera, animated interpretations of much-loved poems, and celebrities reading favorite poems. The Poetry Everywhere collection of poems also is available for streaming at www.pbs.org/poetry.
The films include Robert Frost reading his classic “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” in an archival clip; former US poet laureate Billy Collins reading “The Lanyard”; Mary-Louise Parker, Tony Kushner, and Wynton Marsalis sharing their favorite poems; and an Emily Dickinson poem rendered in an animation. There are poems by Pulitzer Prize winner Yusef Komunyakaa, National Book Award winner Adrienne Rich, former US poet laureate Stanley Kunitz, the great 13th-century Persian poet Rumi, Nobel Prize winner W.B. Yeats, and many more, including a number of contemporary poets filmed at the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival, North America’s largest poetry festival.
The Poetry Everywhere website (www.pbs.org/poetry) also features a collection of original animated interpretations of contemporary poems created by undergraduate students of the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Visitors to Poetry Everywhere on the Web can visit the Poetry Foundation archive (www.poetryfoundation.org) to read the full text of featured poems and biographies of the poets, as well as further explore the Foundation’s extensive poetry archive. The full collection of poems will be available for online streaming beginning April 1 at www.pbs.org/poetry.
THE MAINTENANT SERIES
The Maintenant interview series aims to evidence the continued pertinence of poetry for a new generation of talent from a diverse selection of European poetic traditions. The Maintenant dictum is to introduce poets that might lie outside of the Anglo-American scene, or be overlooked until they have reached the prominence of middle age. Though not an orthodoxy, we also aim to introduce poets who might be considered experimental or seminal, and we welcome all forms of poetic. The series is published each Sunday at www.maintenant.co.uk or www.3ammagazine.com and features an extensive interview coupled with a selection of poetry of the poet’s choosing in English translation.
LONDON
Poetry at King's: Tom Raworth and Hugo Williams Address:Anatomy Theatre and Museum
Strand Campus, King's College London
London
WC2R 2LS (see website for map and directions)
Contact:Poetry@kcl.ac.uk
Publicity material for this event says: Supported by the King's Annual Fund, the aim of the series is to establish King's as a significant hub for poetry performance, and to act as a creative resource for current students and academics in the College.
The Department teaches poetry at all levels of the curriculum, and also hosts activities such as the recently-convened English Department Poetry Reading Group. Other events, such as a successful translation workshop held in February by the poet Maureen Duffy and the Cosmo Davenport-Hines Poetry Prize indicate the considerable enthusiasm for poetry in performance that exists at King's. The Cosmo Davenport-Hines Prize commemorates one of our students and in 2010 received a record 116 entries, with poems being submitted from all of the Schools of Study in the College. It is hoped that the experience of hearing and meeting contemporary poets that 'Poetry at King's' offers will build on this enthusia
WHAT POETRY BRINGS TO BUSINESS.
Clare Morgan ; with Kirsten Lange & Ted Buswick. -- Ann Arbor, Michigan : University of Michigan Press, 2010.
The Poetry Library writes " The words poetry and business are not often used in conjunction with each other but in this new book published in the US, Clare Morgan and her co-authors argue that poetry can bring flexibility of thinking as well as an ability to empathise and better understand the thoughts and feelings of colleagues and clients.
With full-text poems throughout, including work by W. H. Auden, Connie Bensley, John Burnside and Robert Frost, the book encourages close reading of poems to provide business people with new strategies for reflection on their companies, their daily tasks and their work environments. A recent study has stated that the number one leadership quality essential to today's CEO is creativity, so perhaps in these straightened times now is the time for poets and poetry to take a seat in the boardroom."
POETRY FOUNDATION
Free poetry app updated. www.poetryfoundation.org/iphone
App adds almost 400 contemporary poems, “Browse by Poet” feature
CHICAGO — The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine, is pleased to announce an update to its award-winning POETRY iPhone app. The update has three main components, the first—and most exciting—of which is the addition of nearly 400 contemporary poems. Over one hundred of these poems come from the pages of Poetry magazine.
Called “essential” by New York Times reviewer Bob Tedeschi, the free POETRY iPhone app now offers more than 1,700 poems. With work by David Bottoms, Martín Espada, Tess Gallagher, Cathy Park Hong, Edwin Torres, Natasha Trethewey, Rachel Wetzsteon, and more just added, poetry fans can now experience even more contemporary poetry.
Better yet, this addition to the POETRY app archive will be far from the last. Poetry fans will discover new favorites every time they use the app as regular updates of new poets and poems are added several times over the next year.
There’s also a new way to search the consistently expanding archive. The new “Browse by Poet” feature allows users to seek out favorite poets and learn which of their poems are available on the app. The app’s original search functions remain: search by keyword, subject or title by choosing the “Find Poetry” interface, or select the “Discover Poetry” interface to reveal poems delivered through a virtual slot machine.
In addition, the improved POETRY app now ensures that results from the “Discover Poetry” interface are always fresh. Presented in a randomized order, findings from commonly searched category pairings—“Love” and “Frustration,” for instance—always look different.
“The updated POETRY app builds on the best parts of the original while introducing exciting new features, such as additional poems and further ways to discover poetry and poets," said Catherine Halley, editor of poetryfoundation.org. “With the popularity of the first edition—100,000 downloads in five months—we’re successfully bringing poetry to people in a unique and revolutionary way. Now, even more users will share poems on Facebook and Twitter, and even more people will have the opportunity to experience poetry at unexpected moments."
Though the update to the Poetry Foundation’s POETRY app enriches the user experience by offering more poetry and more ways to find poetry, original user-friendly features remain intact. Poetry fans can still maintain a folder of favorite poems; share poems with friends through social media or e-mail; and enjoy an engaging interface designed specifically for the iPhone. As always, the app is free to download and use.
The POETRY app is available in the Apple iTunes Store. For more information or to download the app, visit poetryfoundation.org/iphone.
A LITTLE, ALOUD - NEW ANTHOLOGY
"Listening to the spoken word is one of the most profound sources of comfort. The sense of being looked after, nourished and replenished, is like being fed. The listener can relax and place their trust in the reader. The experience is quite unlike reading to oneself. Part of this, claims Davis, comes from "the slowness of the human voice". When we are engaged at the pace of ordinary speech, we don't skip on, we engage with the many levels of meaning in the story. It grows deeper and more real. From this, people start to talk freely about what a text has meant to them – and become liberated in their personal lives.
To promote this programme, the Reader Organisation is about to launch an anthology of prose and poetry, A Little, Aloud, for reading out in one of the hundreds of "read aloud" groups that have been springing up across the UK. It's an eclectic volume, with well-chosen gobbets from Tennyson, Dickens, Saki and Yeats as well as Elizabeth Jennings, Anna Sewell, the Brontes, Louisa M Alcott and Joanne Harris.
"Bibliotherapy" is not yet in the dictionary, but if this campaign takes wing, it might turn out to be a really important breakthrough in the practice of mental health. Words becoming deeds: it's a winning formula."
Robert McCrum The Observer 4th July 2010
A Little, Aloud. RRP: £9.99. Publisher: CHATTO & WINDUS. Publication Date : 30 September 2010.
THE ALZHEIMER'S POETRY PROJECT
GLASGOW
St Mungo's Mirrorball. This is a Glasgow based network for poets and poetry lovers that organises regular readings from the best local, national and international poets.. For more information on becoming a member or on upcoming events contact Jim Carruth. email : jim@carruth.freeserve.co.uk. Free
NEW IPHONE APP brings multimedia poetry project to a new platform:
This April, Poetry Everywhere with Garrison Keillor (www.poetryfoundation.org/poetryeverywhere and www.pbs.org/poetry) returns to public television and the Web with new poems and unique voices.
Produced by WGBH Boston and David Grubin Productions, in association with the Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine, the project offers 32 short poetry films during unannounced moments in the public television broadcast schedule. Through television and the Internet, viewers are granted an exclusive, front-row seat to the world’s greatest poetry festival.
The poetry films are freely available to all local public television stations and interweave with regular programming, airing unexpectedly. The Poetry Everywhere series employs a variety of dynamic production approaches, including poets reading their own work to the camera, animated interpretations of much-loved poems, and celebrities reading favorite poems. The project aims to reach a broad audience with the power of great poetry, and to increase poetry’s presence on television and the Web.
New this season is the Poetry Everywhere iPhone application. The app continues to serve the series’ objectives by expanding the audience for the art form and introducing a new way of experiencing great poetry. Through an easy-to-navigate media player, the app will offer selected videos from the project and provide moments of excitement and even revelation throughout the day.
According to WGBH executive producer Brigid Sullivan, “With Poetry Everywhere, our goal is to provide a new destination for poetry. It’s a wonderful gift if we can give television viewers a moment to slow down and think about a poem.”
David Grubin, the producer of the series, has always believed that “if poems became a part of our media landscape, as easily available as an e-mail or a text message or a television program, we would turn to them more often, and find the solace and wisdom, beauty, and delight for which we long.”
Building on Poetry Everywhere’s existing collection of 24 short poetry films, the project’s third year adds eight new poets reading their own works: Marilyn Chin, “The Floral Apron”; Toi Derricotte, “Blackbottom”; Martín Espada, “Who Burns for the Perfection of Paper”; Seamus Heaney, “Blackberry Picking”; Maxine Kumin, “After Love”; W.S. Merwin, “Yesterday”; C.D. Wright, “Lake Echo, Dear”; and Daisy Zamora, “Mother’s Day.”
Anne Halsey, media director at the Poetry Foundation, notes, “One of the Poetry Foundation’s intentions is to encourage new readers of poetry by finding new avenues of delivering poetry to people. Through this emerging platform, we hope to reach a new audience with the works of some of our greatest living poets.”
Selections from Poetry Everywhere are also offered on iTunes U and YouTube for free downloading. The video content can be shared among individuals, colleges, educators, book groups, and poetry clubs.
Garrison Keillor returns to Poetry Everywhere as series narrator. Keillor’s enthusiasm for poetry is well documented, both as a regular feature on his public radio programs, A Prairie Home Companion and The Writer’s Almanac, and in his poetry anthologies, Good Poems and Good Poems for Hard Times. Keillor’s introductions to each of the poems and poets provide audiences with wonderful insights into each poet’s perspective.
Poetry Everywhere is a co-production of WGBH and David Grubin Productions, in association with the Poetry Foundation. David Grubin is the producer. WGBH’s Brigid Sullivan is executive producer. The poetry films of Philip Levine, Charles Simic, and Seamus Heaney were created by Leita Luchetti for the WGBH series Poetry Breaks. The series is distributed nationally by Boston-based American Public Television (APT).
Visitors to Poetry Everywhere on the Poetry Foundation’s website, www.poetryfoundation.org, will find the text of the featured poems as well as biographies and more work by the poets. In addition, selected poems are featured in a special educational collection on the Poetry Foundation website, which includes video, background essays, strategies for teaching the poems, and sample lesson plans.
The Poetry Everywhere website at www.pbs.org/poetry and the Poetry Foundation’s website also feature a collection of original animated interpretations of contemporary poems created by undergraduate students at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.
For a full list of poems included in the Poetry Everywhere series or additional information on the program and partners, please visit www.poetryfoundation.org/poetryeverywhere.
T.S.ELIOT PRIZE WINNER: PHILIP GROSS
The Poetry Book Society is delighted to announce that Philip Gross has won the 2009 T S Eliot Prize for Poetry with The Water Table, published by Bloodaxe.
The judges of this year's Prize, Chair Simon Armitage, and fellow-poets Penelope Shuttle and Colette Bryce, reached their decision after months of deliberation and debate. The winner was chosen from a field of ten highly-regarded poets.
Simon Armitage said:
'A book of great clarity and concentration, continually themed but always lively and alert in its use of language. Gross takes us from Great Flood to subtly invoked concerns for our watery planet; this is a mature and determined book, dream-like in places, but dealing ultimately with real questions of human existence.'
Born in Cornwall in 1952, Philip Gross lived in Bristol and Bath for many years, and now lives in Penarth in South Wales. His previous collections include The Egg of Zero (2006), Mappa Mundi (2003), Changes of Address: Poems 1980-1998 (2001), The Wasting Game (1998) and several collections for children, including Scratch City (1995) and The All-Nite Café (1993). He has recently published I Spy Pinhole Eye, a collaboration with photographer Simon Denison, published by Cinnamon Press. He is also the author of ten highly-praised novels for young people. He is currently Professor of Creative Writing at Glamorgan University. The Water Table is published by Bloodaxe.
Simon Armitage formally announced the winner on January 18 at the T S Eliot Prize award ceremony at the Wallace Collection, where Mrs Valerie Eliot presented the winner with a cheque for £15,000. Each shortlisted poet receives a cheque for £1,000, in recognition of their achievement in winning a place on the most prestigious shortlist in UK poetry. The Poetry Book Society would like to thank Mrs Eliot for her generosity in providing the prize money.
In the second year of a three-year sponsorship the John S Cohen Foundation is sponsoring the 2009 T S Eliot Prize for Poetry. The Foundation includes the David Cohen Prize for Literature amongst its portfolio, which covers the arts, education, culture, environment, conservation and heritage.
The T S Eliot Prize is supported by the T S Eliot Foundation.
The Water Table by Philip Gross and all the shortlisted titles can be ordered online from www.poetrybookshoponline.com or by phone from the PBS on 020 7833 9247. Poets shortlisted: Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Fred D'Aguiar, Jane Draycott, Sinéad Morrissey, Sharon Olds, Alice Oswald, Christopher Reid, George Szirtes and Hugo Williams.
NEW ONLINE MAGAZINE
The Poetry Society has launched a new online magazine showcasing work by young people.
You can read poems by young poets, articles about poetry by established poets, and get information about competitions and other outlets for your work.
Read the first issue here: www.ympoetry.org
LONDON
8pm, Monday, 8th March 2010
Venue: Troubadour Coffee House, 263-267 Old Brompton Road, London SW5, nr. junct. Earls Court Rd & Old Brompton Rd
Entry: £6 (concs £5)
Coffee House Poetry at the Troubadour
Publicity material for this event states: A major moment in the poetry season when the latest Magma rolls off the presses. Magma 46 editors, Jacqueline Saphra and Norbert Hirschhorn, the regular Magma team, a wide selection of Magma 46 contributors and two guest poets, Anne-Marie Fyfe and Penelope Shuttle.
For information, advance booking, season ticket & mailing list enquiries, phone 020-8354 0660 or visit www.coffeehousepoetry.org.
HULL
City of Hull announces Larkin festival and trail
Hull, the city where Philip Larkin worked as the university librarian, has announced that it is to honour the poet's memory with a five-month festival and an interactive poetry trail.
Full article here: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/25-years-on-hull-honours-larkin-with-tourist-trail-1864708.htm
OXFAM Oxfam launch poetry CD - live recordings of 69 leading British and Irish contemporary poets
JOSEPHINE HART Catching Life by the Throat . How To Read Poetry and Why. Poems from Eight Great Poets is the new book and 4 hour CD from Josephine Hart. The poets featured are Auden, Dickinson,T.S.Eliot, Kipling, Larkin, Moore, Plath andYeats, read by celebrated actors and writers.Josephine Hart's Poetry Hour
BALLOCH
A poetry reading group now meets in Balloch Library, Balloch, West Dunbartonshire approximately six-weekly. Details can be obtained from Ian Baillie or Alistair Paterson, at 01389 830739 or by e-mail at prism.atic@virgin.net.Free.
NEW PUBLICATIONS
J.O.MORGAN Natural Mechanical
ROBERT PINSKY Essential Pleasures: A New Anthology of Poems To Read Aloud +accompanying CD
JEAN VALENTINE Lucy
BASIL BUNTING Briggflatts. New Edition with DVD and CD
W.S.MERWIN The Shadow of Sirius
KEVIN HART Young Rain
JOHN BURNSIDE The Hunt In The Forest
DON PATERSON Rain
CHRISTOPHER REID A Scattering
GLYN MAXWELL Hide Now
PETER PORTER Better Than God
EMMA JONES The Striped World
MEIRION JORDAN Moonrise
HUGO WILLIAMS West End Final
ALICE OSWALD and JESSICA GREENMAN Weeds and Wildflowers
FRED D'AGUIAR Continental Shelf
CHARLES WRIGHT Sestets : Poems
PAULA MEEHAN Painting Rain
GILLIAN CLARKE A Recipe For Water
JANE DRAYCOTT Over
JEN HADFIELD Nigh-No-Place
RUTH PADEL Darwin:A Life In Poems
NICK LAIRD On PurposMARTHA KAPOS Supreme Being
GEORGE SZIRTES Collected Poems
MICHAEL DONAGHY Collected Poems
DAVID CONSTANTINE Nine Fathom Deep
SHARON OLDS One Secret thing
DAVID MORLEY Invisible Kings
NUALA NI DHOMHNAIL The Fifty Minute
FIONA SAMPSON Common Prayer
MARY OLIVER Thirst
SARAH MAGUIRE.The Pomegranates of Kandahar
LAURIE SHECK Captivity
SEAN O'BRIEN The Drowned Book
FRANCES LEVISTON Public Dream
CAROL ANN DUFFY The Hat. Her new anthology for children of poetry from Chaucer to Ted Hughes
ed. KEI MILLER New Caribbean Poetry: An Anthology
EILEAN NI CHUILLEANAIN The Sun-fish (Gallery)
FRED D'AGUIAR Continental Shelf (Carcanet)
JANE DRAYCOTT Over (Carcanet)
PHILIP GROSS The Water Table (Bloodaxe)
SINEAD MORRISEY Through the Square Window (Carcanet)
SHARON OLDS One Secret Thing (Cape)
CHRISTOPHER REID A Scattering (Areté)
GEORGE SZIRTES The Burning of the Books and Other Poems (Bloodaxe)
LES MURRAY The Biplane Houses. Carcanet
ROBERT CREELEY The Collected Poems 1975-2005
ROBIN ROBERTSON Swithering. Picador