Poetic Places (2): Dylan's Laugharne

Photo: Copyright David Gill

I stumbled across this article about an ice cream magnate and the Dylan Thomas Boathouse at Laugharne.

Poetic People (11): your turn to vote

As part of the BBC Poetry Season, we have the (somewhat limited) opportunity to vote for a favourite poet on the BBC site. Why not cast a vote now. You might also like to look at the television listings for the Poetry Season: there are some good programmes coming up

Poetic People (10): Ruth Padel

Ruth Padel is the new Poetry Professor for Oxford University, and the first woman to hold the chair. Professor David Morley has a good posting on the subject.

Poetry Matters (9): The Poetry Archive

We have just listened to the excellent BBC Radio 4 programme on the Poetry Archive. Andrew Motion may be handing over the Laureate torch to Carol Ann Duffy, but the Archive remains as a wonderful, accessible and lasting legacy to his tenure.

Highlights for me were hearing the very different voices of Tennyson, Yeats and Causley - perhaps especially Charles Causley. I believe the programme is due to be repeated on the radio (FM only) on Monday. You can see the site (with iPlayer etc.) here. Sound producer, Richard Carrington, told us a few 'behind the scenes' tales of the actual recordings, and the programme gave a fascinating insight into this wide-ranging and international resource.

The Archive has a good glossary of poetic terms and a description of forms (e.g. 'pantoum', as highlighted on the programme). I would hope that in the future - and where applicable - it might be possible to access the Archive's poems by form - and possibly by subject or key words.

Poetry Matters (8): Swansea Poetry Event

THE SEVENTH QUARRY Swansea Poetry Magazine,

edited by Swansea poet Peter Thabit Jones,

presents a

POETRY WORKSHOP

with America's Kristine Doll and Catalonia's August Bover

at the Dylan Thomas Centre

Saturday, 20th June, 2009

10 a.m. to 12 noon

Fee: £10 on the door.

I would like to commend this event to anyone within reach of the Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea. Check out other events organised by The Seventh Quarry at this link to MySpace.

Book Corner (1): Troy Town by Matt Merritt

Anne Hathaway's Cottage, Stratford, viewed from the Willow Cabin Arbour
(the maze is to the left, along the path and out of sight)


'Never too late to learn to trust the path
like rustics running the shepherd's race
at May Eve...'

Troy Town, Matt Merritt


'The nine men's morris is fill'd up with mud,
And the quaint mazes in the wanton green,
For lack of tread, are indistinguishable.'

A Midsummer Night's Dream, II:II, Shakespeare

Troy Town by Matt Merritt, Arrowhead Press 2008, ISBN 978-1-904852-19-3

I wonder what images dance in your mind in response to Matt's evocative title, Troy Town. I have just finished reading this sparkling new collection and felt it would be good to share a few thoughts. Matt, a fellow blogger (at Polyolbion) and fellow graduate of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, has woven his thread, Theseus fashion, through the labyrinthine paths of landscape, love and loss.

Those who know Matt will not be surprised to encounter a barn owl buoyant on his tide of silence ('Skylarking'), the blackbird wrestling a worm out of the lawn ('Paradise Tanager') or Calidris canutus, king's men all, commanding the waves to turn back ('Knots') along the way; but birdsong is only one of many tunes - or half-remembered songs - that echo through and take flight from the pages of this book.

The volume has been beautifully produced, with a hard cover sporting a glossy photograph of the turf maze at Wing in Rutland on the dust jacket. Troy Town is prefaced with a quotation from A Midsummer Night's Dream (see above); and Matt's poem that lends its title to the whole collection suggests to this reader at least, that the essence of the work revolves, maze-fashion, around a movement from one place to another. This progression - in accordance with the nature of propulsion through a maze - is seldom linear. The quest takes the poet and his fellow travellers on what seems, perhaps, to be more of a metaphysical than a metaphorical journey, since all mental maps are redundant and all thoughts are put aside. We do not usually associate mazes with unfolding vistas of revelation, but Alison Brackenbury made the astute observation that somehow this work 'opens new horizons'.

This reader views the essence of Matt's poetry against the backcloth of his association with Poly-Olbion, the meandering epic of the landscape by Michael Drayton (1563-1631). Drayton's lines lead us along the highways and byways of a very different England. Drayton is long dead, but poetry - Matt's poetry - refuses to be moulded into dark places or squeezed into the cul-de-sacs of a maze.

Buy a copy to experience for yourself that canvas where moments fray to a fine thread, that place where the past is startled into a sudden eloquence so that nothing need follow.

Suggested reading:
Making the Most of the Light by Matt Merritt, HappenStance 2005

Poetic People (9): Doreen Hinchliffe

Doreen Hinchliffe (left)
2008 Winner of the General Section of the Petra Kenney Poetry Competition, Friday 8 May 2009
Canada House, Trafalgar Square, London
Photo: David Gill 2009

We attended the final Awards Day for the Petra Kenney Poetry Competition last Friday 8 May. It was good to renew acquaintance with Doreen (winner of the 2007 Comic Poem category), and to congratulate her on her winning poem, 'Eternal Triangle'. I see from the web that Doreen had already come 1st and 3rd in the 2008 Grace Dieu Poetry Competition.

Molly Yeomans, who has organised the Canadian side of the competition, paid tribute to Morgan Kenney in a wonderful speech. It was a marvellous occasion, with poems written in Morgan's honour by Alison Chisholm, Alan Brownjohn, Ian Blake, John Whitworth and Leah Fritz.

Dannie Abse read from his brand new collection, New Selected Poems 1949-2009 (Hutchinson, published 7 May 2009). I enjoyed meeting up with Martin Holroyd (editor of Poetry Monthly) and Geoff Stevens (editor of Purple Patch) again.