Poetry News Digest: January 2014

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2014, ABC, activist, advert, affair, American, Amiri Baraka, ancient, Apple, Argentinian, artsHub, August Kleinzahler, Australian, award, Bakery and Snacks, BBC, Black Arts Movement, book, BookReviewBlogger, Boston Music Spotlight, British, Cambrian News, Camden Review, Chinese, commercial, Dalit Panthers, Dannie Abse, death, DNA India, Dylan Thomas, English, Examiner, Express, Global Post, GoodReads, Gottfried Benn, Greek, guerrilla, Harvard University, heart attack, Herbie Hancock, HK Standard, Impromptus: Selected Poems and Some Prose, Indian, iPad, iPad Air, January, jazz, Jennifer Maiden, Jose Emilio Pacheco, journalist, Juan Gelman, lecture, Liquid Nitrogen, Literature Works, Liu Xia, Liu Xiaobo, Live Science, Marathi, mayor, Mexican, Minneapolis, music, Namdeo Dhasal, New Republic, New Statesman, New Welsh Review, New York Times, news, News 24, News International, Nobel Laureate, Norton Professor of Poetry, Oh Me! Oh Life!, papyrus, Parallax, PC Mag, Pearl Kazin, photo, Pilgrim's Flower, poet, poetry, prize, prose, Publishers Weekly, Pune Mirror, Rachael Boast, review, RS Thomas, RT Ryback, Russian, Sappho, sex, Sinead Morrissey, Sophie Hannah, Speak Old Parrot, Sydney Morning Herald, The Arts Fuse, The Daily Mail, The Guardian, The Hindu, The Hotel Oneira, The Independent, The Poetry of Sex, The Root, The Skinny, The Sunday Times, The Telegraph, The Washington Post, TS Eliot Prize, TV, TwinCities, twitter, Tyrrell's Crisps, University of Oxford, Victorian Prize for Literature, video, Wales Online, Wall Street Journal, Walt Whitman, Welsh, Yahoo!, Yahoo! Tech, YouTube

All the essential poetry news from the first month of 2014.

News

• A Russian poetry lover stabbed a champion of prose to death in drunken row over the merits of the two literary forms. Read more at BBC News, The Guardian and Global Post.

• A video of Liu Xia, the wife of imprisoned Chinese Nobel Laureate Liu Xiaobo, reading two self-written poems while under house arrest, was posted online. Read more at The HK Standard, The Guardian and News 24. Here is the video:

• The mayor of Minneapolis RT Ryback suffered a heart attack and posted a short poem about it on Twitter, which read: “My cardiac surprise/ Gave me quite a start/ But it proves this politician/ Has a great big heart.” Read more at TwinCities.

• A University of Oxford papyrologist said that a poem found on ancient papyrus is indubitably the work of the sixth-century Greek poet Sappho. Read more at The Guardian, Mail Online and Live Science. Read a translation of the poem at The Guardian.

• Apple released a iPad Air commercial that features quotes from Walt Whitman’s ‘Oh Me! Oh Life!’ Read more at Yahoo! Tech, New Republic and PC Mag. Here is the ad:

• It was announced that a forthcoming book will reveal a year-long love affair between Dylan Thomas and the American journalist Pearl Kazin. Read more at Wales Online, Express and Mail Online.

• An image of the Welsh poet RS Thomas appeared on packs of Tyrrell’s Sweet Chilli & Red Pepper crisps as pack of a promotion they were running which featured the tagline “Win a fleeting look of contempt… or £25,000.” Read more at The Telegraph, Cambrian News and Bakery and Snacks.

• Jazz musician Herbie Hancock was appointed the Harvard University 2014 Norton Professor of Poetry. He will deliver six lectures on a variety of topics. Read more at The Root, Boston Music Spotlight and Examiner.

Herbie Hancock
[Flickr Creative Commons © Evert-Jan]

Deaths

• Amiri Baraka, the provocative writer and leader of the 1960s Black Arts movement, died aged 79. Read more at The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The Guardian.

• Juan Gelman, the renowned Argentinian poet who was a left-wing activist and guerrilla in the 1960s and 1970s, died aged 83. Read more at BBC News, The Guardian and The New York Times.

• Namdeo Dhasal, noted Marathi poet and one of the founders of the radical organisation The Dalit Panthers, died aged 64. Read more at The Hindu, DNA India and Pune Mirror.

• José Emilio Pacheco, one of Mexico’s foremost poets, died aged 74. Read more at BBC News, The New York Times and News International.

Awards

• Sinéad Morrissey won the 2013 TS Eliot Award for her fifth collection, Parallax. Read more at The Guardian, The Independent and The Telegraph. Watch her read from the collection here:

• Jennifer Maiden won Australia’s Victorian Prize for Literature for her most recent collection, Liquid Nitrogen. Read more at The Sydney Morning Herald, ABC and artsHub.

Book Releases

• The Poetry of Sex, ed. Sophie Hannah (not yet rated on GoodReads). Read reviews at The Sunday Times, The Guardian and The Independent.

• The Hotel Oneira by August Kleinzahler (3.8/5 based on 11 ratings at GoodReads). Read reviews at The Washington Post, Publishers Weekly and New Statesman.

• Pilgrim’s Flower by Rachael Boast (not yet rated on GoodReads). Read reviews at The Skinny, The Guardian and BookReviewBlogger. Author interviewed at Literature Works.

• Speak, Old Parrot by Dannie Abse (4/5 based on 2 ratings at GoodReads). Read reviews at The Guardian, New Welsh Review and Camden Review.

• Impromptus: Selected Poems and Some Prose by Gottfried Benn (4.4/5 based on 5 ratings at GoodReads). Read reviews at The Arts Fuse and The Guardian.

All ratings are from GoodReads as at 10/02/2014.

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Poetry News Round Up: August 2013

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Amazon, American, Azerbaijani, Blake Morrison, book, Chairing of the Bard, childhood, Chris Siegfried, Coleshill, competition, corporate, Dear Straight People, death, Denice Frohman, Derry, Desiree Hartsock, Diamonds and Hearts, Digging, Edinburgh, Edinburgh International Festival, Eisteddfod, English, Fiona Sampson, Ian Hamilton, Imagining Alexandria: Poems in Memory of CP Cavafy, Irish, Jeremy Noel-Tod, Latin, LGBT, Louis de Bernieres, Mererid Hopwood, National Eisteddfod, New Welsh Review, news, Nobel Laureate, Patti Smith, performance poetry, poet, poetry, poetry slam, Robert Louis Stevenson, Seamus Heaney, State Oil Fund of Azerbaijan, text message, The Bachelorette, The Guardian, The Oxford Companion to Modern Poetry, The Sunday Times, TV, video, viral, Welsh, Women of the World Poetry Slam, Yeats

Here is your regular round up of the last month’s news in poetry, lovingly stitched into a glorious tapestry of, erm, well, poetry news…

Seamus Heaney, the Nobel Laureate and celebrated Irish poet, has died aged 74.

Sad news this month as one of the giants of today’s poetry world has passed away.

Seamus Heaney was often described as the greatest Irish poet since Yeats or, as Blake Morrison put it in The Guardian, perhaps “Yeats was the greatest Irish poet till Heaney.”

Seamus Heaney in 1970
[Source: Flickr Creative Commons © SiGarb]

At his funeral, his son Michael revealed that Heaney sent a text message to his wife minutes before he passed away that read “noli timere” (Latin for “don’t be afraid”).

Heaney was laid to rest in the same Derry soil that inspired his most famous poem, ‘Digging.’

The “Bachelorette” has released a poetry book.

The biggest story in US poetry in August (measured purely by the amount of coverage it got from the media) was the news that Desiree Hartsock and Chris Siegfried, the stars of the TV programme “The Bachelorette” 2013, have released a book of poetry together.

The book is called Diamonds and Hearts. The description on Amazon says that in it Desiree “expresses her feelings for Chris in a way no one has ever seen before!”

The standard of submissions to the National Eisteddfod “Chairing of the Bard” poetry prize was so poor that the judges withheld the award.

The “Chairing of the Bard” is a highlight of the Welsh cultural festival, the National Eisteddfod. However, on this occasion, the Eisteddfod released a statement saying:

“The disappointment this year is that the entries – for whatever reason – have been sent without adequate care being taken to iron out the last few glitches.”

As a result, they decided not to award the chair to any of this year’s 12 entrants. As shocking as this may sound, it’s actually not that unusual. It’s the 15th time in the history of the competition (since 1880) that there has been no winner of the chair.

Mererid Hopwood, the first female winner of the Chair, in 2001
[Source: Flickr Creative Commons © Polo]

An Azerbaijani oil fund has published several pages of poetry in its annual report.

You might expect a corporate report to be the last place to find poetry, but that hasn’t put off the State Oil Fund of Azerbaijan.

The fund has been using its annual report to raise the profile of Azerbaijani poets since 2010, and it continued the practice this month with the release of its 2012 report. You can read the report itself here.

Patti Smith has revealed her passion for the poems of Robert Louis Stevenson.

At the Edinburgh International Festival, Patti Smith said: “I can’t imagine my childhood without him. His poems were my companions, my friends.”

Smith spoke of how Stevenson‘s poems helped her through her childhood illnesses.

Patti Smith in Concert
[Source: Flickr Creative Commons © Man Alive!]

A performance of a poem called ‘Dear Straight People’ has taken the internet by storm.

Denice Frohman won the 2013 Women of the World Poetry Slam in March this year with her performance of ‘Dear Straight People,’ a poem which captures the swirl of emotions many members of the LGBT community have felt in public.

Her emotional performance has now gone viral on the internet after a video of it was recently posted online.

Book Releases

Finally, here is a small selection of the poetry books published during the month of August.

• The Oxford Companion to Modern Poetry edited by Ian Hamilton and Jeremy Noel-Tod. The Sunday Times describes it as an “invaluable guide to poets writing in English since the turn of the 20th century.”
• Coleshill by Fiona Sampson. The New Welsh Review says “the collection represents a departure from Sampson’s earlier work” and complains that “the very power and intensity of her voice through the collection can feel oppressive and absolute.”
• Imagining Alexandria: Poems in Memory of CP Cavafy by Louis de Bernières, his first collection of poetry. The Guardian describes the book as “clunkily prosaic” but says “the rum enthusiasm fuelling this collection endears it to the reader.”