International Echoes (13): 俳句 in Response to the Earthquake

Cherry Trees in Cwmdonkin Park, Swansea, Wales, UK (where the young Dylan Thomas played)

We continue to reel at the events of the past few days and at the prospect of what is still to come. Our hearts go out to those who have been affected.

You might like to read some Haiku (俳句), written by members of our global community in solidarity with our friends in Japan, New Zealand and elsewhere.

Ban'ya Natsuishi has been preparing a blog post of these sentiments. If you click the link and scroll down far enough, you will see that I have sent a Haiku from Wales.

News Stories (2): a place for poetry?

I felt that this article by Harry Eyres from (of all unusual sources) the Financial Times raised some thought-provoking issues. Is there a place for poetry? What is poetry for? What does poetry do? ... questions that confront us all the time in our writing life.

Culture Corner (4): Newcastle writers - swings and roundabouts

The Tyne Bridge by Night
Photo: David Gill 2009

I notice that the economic situation is now affecting plans for the proposed Northern Writers Centre on Tyneside. Plans for the centre may come to nothing, but the upside is that there is some funding available for writing projects.

Poetry Matters (4)

• The Irish Times Poetry Now shortlist has been announced.
• American Life: Extinction - powerful poetry on the naming of things by Charles Harper Webb, introduced by Ted Kooser
• Poetry inspires jewellery maker
  

Poetry Matters (1)

Here is a short round-up of things poetical.

• Poetry pamphlets and their rising status, The Guardian
• The Stephen Spender Prize, Times Online
• 2009 Cat Protection Writing Competition, The Cat Magazine
• One (poem) for the road, trucking odes, The Sydney Morning Herald
• The Scottish Natural Heritage site has a new database for Gaelic 'nature' words.
  
• Poets have been preparing for the seventh National Poetry Day in Vietnam.
• Digital poetry explained by Christopher Funkhouser.
• Digital Poetry and Art Links
• Swansea Learning Lab: podcasting and visual poetry
• Oxford seeks to appoint new Professor of Poetry
  

A-Z: US National Museum of Poets

I read on the USA Poetry Foundation blog that there is talk of a National Museum of Poets. One of my favourite holiday activities (when I am not out on a headland with binoculars) is visiting places associated with poets. Wordsworth's home, Rydal Mount in the Lake District, and the Cornish china clay pits of Jack Clemo are two locations that come to mind. If you were asked to select an alphabet of favourite UK poets from any era for a similar enterprise (one poet per letter in our case, if you can manage to restrict yourself), who would you include in your list? It is quite a tough exercise: I know - I tried it. My thanks to Matt of Polyolbion for trying it, too. You will find Matt's facinating list in the comments section: do take a look.

A round of poetry news

• Prince Charles reads the poetry of Robert Burns
• New poetry professor for Oxford University (The Guardian)
• Simon Armitage: Pieces of me - in 16 pictures (The Guardian)
• Scotland's young eco-poets: The Big Green Poetry Machine
• The Robert Frost International Poetry and Haiku Competitions
• ReadMe Publishing ask for your best poem on daily life.
• Silicon Valley seeks Laureate
  

Life in 16 pictures (see Simon Armitage above) has set me thinking ...

Postscript: please vote in my poll (right). Thank you!

The President, the Poet and the Performers

Poet, Elizabeth Alexander is to read at the inauguration ceremony of President Obama, who was seen recently with a copy of Walcott's Collected Poems.

P.S. Just for those who can't resist a catchy tune: There's no one as Irish as Barack Obama. The Corrigan Brothers (aka Hardy Drew and the Nancy Boys) starred on the Late Late Show on Irish TV on 7 November 2008. Irish American Democrats have invited the band to play at the inauguration party on 19 January 2009. The Guardian ran a feature on Obama's Irish lineage back in 2007.

• Trees for the President (Terry Allen)
  

I remember, I remember ...

Left: 'Brek-ke-ke-kex-koax-koax' (the frog chorus in The Frogs, Book X, Aristophanes - in translation).

Daisy Goodwin and Jeremy Paxman are joining forces with fellow poetry aficionados, under the aegis of the BBC, to encourage teachers in schools to breathe new life into the practice (N.B. I avoid the word 'discipline') of learning favourite poems by heart (N.B. I prefer to avoid the word 'rote').

The feature (livelink above, The Daily Telegraph, 16 Nov 2008) set me thinking about my early - and later - school experiences. Alas, I am not renowned for my memory in an 'examination' kind of way; but I have tried to think of a mixed bag of poetic pieces that I learned (often only in part) at school. All these have travelled with me over the years, bringing a great sense of pleasure and satisfaction.

After 'Incey Wincey Spider', the first poem (or song) that I remember learning in its - albeit short - entirety at school was 'Four ducks on a pond' by William Allingham. Sections, and sometimes quite small sections, from the following literary pieces followed. They have been treasures in 'my memory bag' ever since. They are presented in a rough chronological order of learning, rather than in order of preference.

1. The Lady of Shalott
2. Flannan Isle
3. The Frogs Aristophanes (in translation ...)
4. Macbeth
5. Antigone by Sophocles (in translation ...)
   

I have two questions in mind:

1. What poetic pieces will our school leavers of today - or tomorrow - take with them?
2. What poetic pieces travel with you from your school days?

A final thought: it must be quite hard (I would imagine) for today's youngsters to commit pieces of contemporary literature to memory, since we now inhabit a world in which rhyme, alliteration and 'even scansion' are not as popular in poetry as they once were.

Costa competitors

It seems that we live in a world in which characters like Noddy triumph over Othello and Hamlet. The poll at the Costa Book Awards has raised some eyebrows, but one is left wondering whether the results for the nation's favourite authors would have been totally different if a larger section of the population had been asked to cast a vote.

Lark Rise to ... Carnglas

Local residents in Swansea have been living through their own Lark Rise to Candleford experience since the announcement some months ago that the Carnglas Road Post Office was on the list of local branches that could be closed.

There is a spirit of great rejoicing today, as news has filtered through on the BBC that - thanks to the representations of local people - the Carnglas Road Post Office has been saved.

The tragedy is that 44 other branches in South and West Wales have not been spared.

• The real 'Lark Rise to Candleford': about the author, Flora Thompson
• 'On the Trail of Flora Thompson' by John Owen Smith
• Flora Thompson's plaque
• Flora Thompson's poetry
  

Olympian Poetry?

Olympia, Greece: a Judas tree in the Palaestra, 1978
(I remember what fun it was, all those years ago on my school trip,
crouching on the starting line in the stadium)

The Times investigates whether there would be a place for poetry in the modern Olympic Games. The Greeks included poetry and rhetoric: how could we (& should we) find a modern blend of word and action?

Going for Green

It is some days since I put up my last green posting, and high time I put up a patch of green on the blog. I hope you like the oystercatcher on the grassy foreshore at Loch Lomond.

I have just been reading the Times Online about the 2008 Green Space Travel Awards, and thinking that it is time to get involved! I have 250 green words to juggle ...

The Sonnet in South Wales

I was delighted to attend a very popular course this morning on the Sonnet. We considered Shakespearian sonnets, Petrarchan sonnets and modern day sonnets. We looked at sonnets that corresponded exactly to a prescribed form, and sonnets that had developed out of a traditional scheme of rhyme and metre.

I knew that sooner or later I would feel obliged to mention the current debate over the age-old question of what constitutes a poem, sparked most recently by The Queen's English Society. This seems as good a prompt as any! Poets the world over have read the article in The Observer (13 April 2008), and many of the editors of poetry magazines have made a response. I was particularly keen to read the editorial by Fiona Sampson in the current edition of Poetry Review (Volume 98, No 2, Summer 2008), the flagship journal of The Poetry Society.

I wonder where Haiku and other international forms of 'traditional poetry' fit in!