Robert Vas Dias in the Cow Shed at Lower Shaw Farm
A lesson in perky reading, I had to remind myself that although he sounds American, he’s lived in England for a long time. So it’s not weird that he writes about teapots and their murky colour: ‘A brown that insults taste but forestalls criticism.’ Continue reading
This morning at a workshop at Poetry Swindon Festival, poet, publisher and teacher Robert Vas Dias had us creating a poem through the powerful blending of a Nigel Slater recipe and a Guardian news report.
Some lines were picked by pre-randomly generated numbers (each line on report and recipe were numbered), some – like the one below – were picked by way of a roulette wheel. Continue reading
Double Bill, probably the most confusing title ever. But still an awesome night.
On the surface it was a double bill of two poets, Andy Jackson and Kei Miller. Except Double Bill was the name of Andy’s bit; Kei’s was completely different. And Andy’s Double Bill had about ten poets reading which makes it, what, Tenfold Bill? Sounds like a bank note.
I know, I’m being facetious. Don’t shout at the screen. Double Bill is an old filmic reference. Double Bill was a roll call of aging popular culture, not necessarily loving tributes – this is a poetry night after all. Anyone under the age of thirty without a proper grounding in TV may well have been lost. But, for me, it worked like a top class open mic, the ‘rat pack of the poetry world’ as Andy Jackson described it.
Continue reading
Isabel Palmer
Sometimes, listening to poetry reminds me of church-going as a child – I know it’s good for my soul but I just want to sleep. I read some terrible advice back then for lay people reading out the Bible readings: don’t detract from the words by being too animated, it’s not about the reader.
But Isabel Palmer today (Friday) at Poetry Swindon Festival caught me in the tear ducts like Robert Peake last year. Her collection, Ground Signs, was written, I think, as a way of keeping her sanity while her son became a soldier ‘coming of age doing the probably the most dangerous job an infantryman in Afghanistan can do’. Continue reading
I’m sure the Poetry Party is Sunday. But it sounds like it’s started early.
Nope, it’s the 52ers, having reunion fun on the hammocks and mattresses of the Lower Shaw Farm play area, on day two (Friday) of Poetry Swindon Festival. Continue reading
Dribbles and drabbles, flash*. Spot the difference between concise prose and sticking ‘poem’ on the end.
Yesterday (Thursday), Poetry Swindon Festival’s potentially hot debate – is prose poetry a thing? – was apparently thwarted by a squishy warm sofa with Jo ‘no’ Bell dividing and ruling, sat between Tania ‘yes’ Hershman and Luke ‘for sure’ Kennard. Next time: hard chairs. Continue reading
That sounds fun, I thought, about being a man for a day. But I didn’t expect it to be such a challenge.
I don’t mean keeping the boobs flat (damn bandages kept rolling up), or keeping my ‘penis’ in place, or even perfecting the man’s walk when, essentially, a woman’s hips are different to a man’s.
Yes, these were annoying but all the women poets taking part in Diane Torr’s Man for a Day (Swindon Festival of Poetry) had these problems and it created a certain comradeship between us.
No, what was hard was knowing what kind of man I wanted to be. And this journey – for a while at least – was a lonely one. Did I want to be myself, but male? Did I want to be a man I admired? Or a man I didn’t?
This year’s poetry competition didn’t quite go to the moon and back but they certainly made it to the other side of the world.
Judges David Morley and Cristina Navazo-Eguia Newton both took the entries on their travels. On the plane to Australia, David shared the poems around the passengers and asked them to read the poems aloud. Cristina took hers to her native Spain.
A good proportion of the winning pieces were about birds. “I’ve got a feeling some of the entrants researched my interests,” remarked David who’s into ornithology. Continue reading
As an English white woman, I wouldn’t describe Saturday’s event – The Evening News and The Roof of the World – as a culture shock (far too gentle for that) but it was a beautifully different experience.
The spoken poetry on Saturday was in Hindi by Mohan Rana. There were no English subtitles, but this didn’t matter. I opened my mind to it like I would music or dance; a different way of understanding, enjoying the musicality of the language.
To emphasis this and compliment the poetry, Mohan had invited his friend, ‘cellist Jo Quail, to perform alongside him. Jo had previously interpreted his poem The Colour of Water (From the Sea).
Carrie Etter
Quite an emotional day yesterday, beginning with Robert Peake and then Carrie Etter. Not to mention the film There is Nothing in the Garden with its toy babies in toilets on day one of the Swindon Festival of Poetry.
Carrie read from her third collection, Imagined Sons. It’s a surreal package of work about ongoing life trauma / serious stuff to work through about giving her son up for adoption at the age of seventeen.
Poetry might be wonderfully cathartic to write but it’s also an invitation to talk openly about traumatic subjects. I had no compunction in talking afterwards to both Carrie and Robert about both their losses knowing that it was almost certainly okay. There isn’t the embarrassment of the unknown, of how they would like me to act, the worry of causing emotional upset – I already had a heads up on where their heads are at. Continue reading
Festival Chronicle 