Archive | Poetry RSS feed for this section

Bardwell O’Neil are Game – Swindon Festival of Poetry

9 Oct

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Bardwell O’Neil are Game turned out to be the perfect format for a seven year old to write poetry. Basically: a running around game, followed by writing down words about it, followed by another running around game, followed by more words, then poetic genius, followed by more running around games followed by more poetic genius. Wears me out just remembering it.

Yes, I’m probably biased because it’s my seven year old writing the genius poetry. But here’s the evidence: he’s had a story blog since he was four, loves to recount tales (and is addicted to Doctor Who and most other things that happen to be on TV), and going without his bedtime story is the ultimate punishment. However, by the time he’s sat down (what seems like the whole day) at school, and has done his homework (still getting my head around homework at his age) he doesn’t want to concentrate on any more writing.

So Sue Bardwell and Heather O’Neil, both with young sons, embarked on this experiment on Sunday (Broadgreen Community Centre at the Swindon Festival of Poetry) to get kids, boys in particular, writing poetry. So – by way of playground games such as Fruit Salad, Chains, Bulldog and What’s the Time Mr Wolf? – they get kids energised, then thinking about words associated with their actions and emotions, then writing them down into verse and stanzas. Continue reading →

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Roger McGough – Swindon Festival of Poetry

6 Oct
Roger McGough

Roger McGough

Roger McGough’s Friday event at the Swindon Festival of Poetry, As Far As I Know, was a masterclass in brilliant delivery.

Much of the time I was laughing out loud, which made his more thoughtful pieces hit even harder. What I really like about Roger’s work is that his poems at first seem really straight forward and easily understood, but then Roger plays around with the words like a Wimbledon champion, slicing and top-spinning until they flick a winner over the net when I was expecting a passing shot.

Such as A Fine Romance which is about dementia, Alzheimers and, er, love.

Or in As Far As I Know, where he lists the awful things he hasn’t done, before comically mixing them up: ‘molested a bomb soaked in voicemail.’

Poet Laureate Carol Anne Duffy called Roger the patron saint of poetry, so he wrote a response to her best known anthology, The World’s Wife (see post), by way of, for example, Mr Nightingale (spouse of Florence Nightingale) and Enid Blyton’s husband. Mr Blyton is fed up with his wife’s fictional characters supplanting him in their marriage, so he wishes that a haunted cave would collapse on the Famous Five or ‘five famous skeletons wash up on some distant shore’.

And I think I’m with him on that.

Tags: , , , , ,

Sliproad Poetry – Up the Junction! at Swindon Festival of Poetry

6 Oct

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Yesterday I went down the M4. Well, physically I crossed the great divide of the M4 from the Marlborough side to the Swindon side. But poetically I travelled from Bristol to London, being a bit late for Swansea and Cardiff.

Up the Junction!, part of the Swindon Festival of Poetry, was the loose theme for sticking a bunch of poets together in a room (at the impressive youth centre The Platform) for a large chunk of the day. And it worked in the same way cabaret works – some you like, some you don’t and some passes you by.

At this point I must share that I took my (almost) six month old along and, as any parent will tell you, things tend to revolve around them. Sometimes because I have to tend to her needs, sometimes because I realise I’ve been stroking her head and not paid much attention to anything else.

Heather, who had her third child a couple of weeks after mine, was there with baby in tow. We are both pretty tired. ‘Are you getting much of this?’ I think she asked me, or I asked her. ‘Sometimes I catch a line I like, or one I don’t. Both good,’ she said. Continue reading →

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Poetry, prose and Swindon celebrities on vintage bus tour

5 Oct

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

You know those coach tours of celebrities houses you can do in L.A.? Today we did the Swindon version.

It was all aboard the vintage Daimler double decker bus for a journey around Swindon’s hidden gems.

Our hosts were “community poet emeritus” Tony Hillier, who promised us “a day of heritage and word juggling,” and Graham Carter, editor of Swindon Heritage magazine and, if not a font of all knowledge, then certainly a bucketful of quite a lot of it.

Our magical mystery tour  – The Beatles only managed one, Swindon Poetry Festival is already on its second – started and ended at the childhood home of Richard Jefferies, now a museum.

For the uninitiated, Jefferies was one of England’s greatest late Victorian writers. Continue reading →

Carol Ann Duffy, Marlborough Literature festival

30 Sep
Carol Ann Duffy by Ben Phillips

Carol Ann Duffy by Ben Phillips

So, that Carol Ann Duffy.

Poet Laureate for a few years (no it’s not Andrew Motion anymore. Or John Betjemen). Looks like a Serious Proper poet in the photos. In real life (and in her poetry) a wry humour and, although her words can be ‘deep’, she quite enjoys a frivolous heckle.

Her event was the finale of the fourth Marlborough Lit Fest last night, as she performed with John A Sampson – a musician who shares that wry humour with a huge streak of silliness. Continue reading →

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Exciting poetry coming down a slip road – Swindon Festival of Poetry launch

5 Sep

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

The great thing about being a chronicler is that on the one hand I can write whatever I like (as long as it isn’t defamatory and all the words are wrote proper) but on the other I feel part of the team.

So going to the Swindon Festival of Poetry launch today at Swindon Arts Centre was a chance to catch up with wordsmithing friends. Continue reading →

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Picture Hooks – Tamar Yoseloff workshop

12 May
Word & Image with Tamar Yoseloff and BlueGate Poets

Word & Image with Tamar Yoseloff and BlueGate Poets

Surrounded by one of the best collections of 20th century British art outside London and in the company of Tamar Yoseloff one of the most critically acclaimed poetry tutors in the country, twenty poets responded to art at the Swindon Museum and Art Gallery in Bath Road. Continue reading →

Tags: , , , , , , ,

You’ve been framed – Domestic Cherry exhibition

11 May
Domestic Cherry at Artsite

Domestic Cherry at Artsite

Domestic Cherry Private View, a secret lifting of the cherry pinny or an exhibition of the brilliant art contributed to Domestic Cherry 3? Thankfully it was the latter, with Artsite Post Modern playing host to some of the artists whose work features in the annual. Poet Mira Borghs came all the way from Belgium to show her atmospheric ‘Raven’. Images were introduced as the inscrutable DC dog looked on like a particularly surly gallery assistant. Pei-Pei Lim described her process in creating ‘The Hairdresser’ with scorpion imagery and a blue tint to the subject’s skin and Declan Kelly liked letting his work speak for itself. Visual artist Jill Carter presented her two pieces, including one written in response to a poem written by Hilda Sheehan – editor of Domestic Cherry and host of the evening. Domestic Cherry goes from strength to strength each year and plans are afoot to make it even more beautiful, either by adding ermine piping to the pinny or featuring colour artwork in the next issue. Watch this space!

Tags: , , , , , ,

Red Caviar Is Not A Pose – Life Drawing and Poetry Readings

11 May
Suki - Life Drawing and Poetry Reading

Suki – Life Drawing and Poetry Reading

Swindon experienced a coming together of creativity as life model Suki posed for artists, poets and interested thinkers at Artsite’s Post Modern gallery. A drawing session preceded a poetry reading by Suki’s manager Sue Vickerman and a fascinating discussion about life modelling, being an artist and the creative process in general. I tried to think of drawing but got poetry, I looked at Suki’s stretching, kneeling and leaning and found myself in extreme close-up, microscoping ankles, elbows and knuckles while trying to capture what I could with my 2B pencil (purchased this morning). As Helen Peyton, artist and Suki collaborator says, ‘there’s an intimacy but it’s not sexual’, I certainly felt close and connected to Suki and her naked form but much closer to me and my way of expressing things. The discussion between the Suki team and us participants was enthralling. Suki also finds that a life class is never an uncomfortable experience, just that the inside of derelict Yorkshire woolen mills can make things a bit chilly. Suki eats red caviar sandwiches on five hour car journeys and travels to her modelling assignments on a fold up bicycle. Swindon loves the way Suki does things! Sue Vickerman says that what she hears about ‘the practice’ of life drawing ‘completely parallels the process of poetry – the constant striving but you never get there’, personally I’m not sure where ‘there’ is but I feel a bit closer after this unique and bold event.

Tags: , , , , , ,

Swindon Festival of Poetry – Being Human

11 Oct

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Having the same title as one of my favourite TV shows was a big point in favour of Tuesday night’s Swindon Festival of Poetry Finale.

Okay so Being Human didn’t have werewolves, ghosts and vampires in it, but both are about the stuff of life – life stages, its ordinariness, the rubbish things that can happen, the amazing things and how we each deal with all of it.

Taken from the Bloodaxe Books anthology of the same name, Being Human is a dramatisation of thirty-four poems from different writers performed by three fantastic actors, Benedict Hastings, Elinore Middleton and Barrett Robertson. Continue reading →

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →