Hooray hooray for the month of May! Another first – Oxford University have finally elected a woman as Professor of Poetry! Ruth Padel, great-great-grandaughter of Charles Darwin (and cousin of my fellow Glamorganite, Emma Darwin). Her election comes somewhat soured by the late withdrawal of Nobel laureate, Derek Walcott, but you can read about that …
poem seed – The Accident
By a convoluted process of link-surfing, I recently ran into a Les Murray poem – The Mare Out on the Road – that I first came across a couple of years ago in The Biplane Houses (Black Ink, 2006). It's an interesting poem for a lot of reasons. Structure for one – sort of "pantoum meets fugue, …
Some favourite Poetry How-To books
At the request of some of my CPIT students, I thought I'd post a brief listing of some of my favourite poetry How-To books. If you have a favourite that's not on my list, please tell me about it in the comments! (There is no such thing as too many books.) One of my absolute favourites is …
Other people’s revisions
Revision seems to be the area that most clearly sorts the poets from the play-poets. It's hard work (oh god, isn't it just!), and requires you to be able to divorce the editor-self from the poet-self (or "creative-self", if you prefer). Some days (and some poems) are easier than others. The comforting thing is that this …
NaPoWriMo 09 recap meme
I've sort-of answered these already, but since January has set it up as a meme (and because I'm finding it hard to let the whole thing go) here's my contribution. Thanks to Catherine for the original link. 1. Number of poems written in April. If we're allowing posted rough drafts to count, thirty. (Woohoo!) No, …
A Dark Feathered Art 