Poetry News Digest: April 2014

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2014, 3 Sections, A Poet's Glossary, actor, album, American, April, award, BBC, book, Border, Boy Meets World, British, Ceausescu, centenary, Claudia Rankine, death, Desert Island Discs, dramatist, Economic Times, Edward Hirsch, English, exile, First World War, folk, GoodReads, Imelda Staunton, Indian, interview, Jackson Poetry Prize, Jim Carter, John Drury, music, Music at Midnight: The Life and Poetry of George Herbert, New York Times, news, Nina Cassian, NPR, NY Daily News, Overdrive, performance poetry, Peter Bennet, philosophy, photo, poetry, Polish, prize, Publishers Weekly, Pulitzer Prize, Radio Times, reference, review, Rolling Stone, Romanian, Samuel L Jackson, satire, secret police, Show of Hands, Sitcom, slam poem, Tadeusz Różewicz, The Belfast Telegraph, The Courier, The Daily Mail, The Guardian, The LA Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Write Web, The Yorkshire Post, TheNews.pl, Time, Tonight Show, TV, video, Vijay Seshadri, war, Warsaw Business Journal, witty, YouTube

The main stories about poetry from the month of April – a fairly quiet month by recent standards.

News

• The actor Samuel L. Jackson performed a slam poem about the 1990s sitcom Boy Meets World on the Tonight Show. Read more at Time, Rolling Stone and The Daily Mail. Watch this video of the performance:

• The USA celebrated its annual National Poetry Month, first introduced in 1996 by the Academy of American Poets. Read more at Poets.org, Chicago Now and ReadWriteThink.

• The British actors Jim Carter and Imelda Staunton teamed up with folk band Show of Hands to record a musical album of war poetry, that will be released later this year to mark the centenary of the First World War. Read more at Radio Times, The Yorkshire Post and The Belfast Telegraph.

Show of Hands in Performance
[Flickr Creative Commons © Martin Gibson]

Deaths

• The exiled Romanian poet Nina Cassian, who sought refuge in the US after her poems satirising Ceausescu fell into the hands of secret police, died aged 89. Read more at The New York Times, The Guardian and The LA Times. Listen to Cassian appearing on the BBC’s Desert Island Discs.

• The Polish poet, dramatist and writer Tadeusz Różewicz, who belonged to the first generation of poets born after Poland regained independence in 1918, died aged 92. Read more at The Guardian, TheNews.pl and Warsaw Business Journal.

Awards

• Vijay Seshadri won the 2014 Pultizer Prize for Poetry for his witty and philosophical collection of poems 3 Sections. Read more at NY Daily News, Economic Times and The Wall Street Journal. Read an interview with Seshadri at NPR. Watch Seshadri reading one of his poems:

• Claudia Rankine won the $50,000 2014 Jackson Poetry Prize for her body of work that “pushes the boundaries of the contemporary lyric.” Read more at Publishers Weekly and The New York Times.

Book Releases

• Border, a selection of poems by Peter Bennet (not yet rated at GoodReads). Read reviews at The Guardian and The Courier.

• A Poet’s Glossary, an exhaustive resource on the tools of poetry by Edward Hirsch (rated 5/5 based on 5 ratings at GoodReads). Read reviews at Washington Post, Overdrive and The Write Web.

All ratings are from GoodReads as at 13/05/2014.

Poetry News Round Up: October 2013

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#NationalPoetryDay, 2013, 22 Reasons for the Bedroom Tax, Adam Zeman, Allen Ginsberg, badger, badger cull, book, brain, British, Carol Ann Duffy, cortex, Daniel Radcliffe, Drysalter, Dylan Thomas, Environment Secretary, Fern Hill, film, For the Greek Spring, Forward Prize, Gregory Orr, interview, Kelvin Corcoran, Kill Your Darlings, Michael Symmons Roberst, National Poetry Day, neurology, news, October, Poet Laureate, poetry, politics, Prince Charles, Prince George, prose, reading, review, River Inside the River, satire, science, social media, temporal lobes, The Cordland Review, The Guardian, twitter, University of Exeter, video, water

One twelfth of a year’s worth of poetry news, no more, no less.

A study has revealed the neurological difference between poetry and prose.

So it’s true! Finally there is hard evidence that poetry really is, scientifically speaking, completely different to (better than) prose.

How so? Well, according to a University of Exeter study by Professor Adam Zeman, reading poetry activates the posterior cingulated cortex – a part of the brain associated with introspection – and the medial temporal lobes, which are used for memory storage. Poetry lights up your brain!

The Brain!
[Source: Flickr Creative Commons © Image Editor]

And the effect is the same regardless of what poem you read. We know this for a fact because Zeman gave his subjects both “easy and difficult sonnets.”

Daniel Radcliffe “understands” poetry.

The headline says it all really.  In a recent interview about his portrayal of the poet Allen Ginsberg in the film Kill Your Darlings, Radcliffe said, and I quote:

“I don’t understand it as well as [Ginsberg], but I do understand poetry.”

Anyhow, the film is supposed to be ok. It’s out in the UK soon.

Filming Kill Your Darlings
[Source: Flickr Creative Commons © ZhaoAngela]

The UK poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy has written a poem in response to the badger cull.

She wasn’t around earlier this year to do typical poet laureate tasks like celebrating the birth of Prince George in verse (she was on holiday), but now Carol Ann Duffy has found an even better reason to put pen to paper – to satirise the government’s response to the failure of the recent badger cull.

The Environment Secretary infamously blamed the badgers themselves for the failed cull, saying “the badgers moved the goalposts.”

It’s all the badgers’ fault!
[Source: Flickr Creative Commons © hehaden]

Carol Ann Duffy used this quote as the basis for a 22 line poem about the coalition’s politics, called ’22 Reasons for the Bedroom Tax.’ She emailed the poem to The Guardian who promptly published it. Here’s an excerpt:

“Because the Badgers are moving the goalposts.
The Ferrets are bending the rules.
The Weasels are taking the hindmost.
The Otters are downing tools.”

It was National Poetry Day in the UK.

October 3 was that day of the year where poetry gets a teeny weeny bit more media coverage here in the UK.  The theme of the day was “water, water everywhere.”

A highlight this year was Prince Charles reciting Fern Hill by Dylan Thomas, which you can listen to here.

It was also a year in which the occasion was picked up quite a bit in social media, especially on Twitter where you can still catch up on users’ own poems and even videos using #NationalPoetryDay, such as this one.

October Awards

• The Forward Prize for Poetry 2013 was won by Michael Symmons Roberts for Drysalter, a book of 150 poems, each just 15 lines long.

October Book Releases

And finally, a small selection from the poetry books published during October:

• For the Greek Spring by Kelvin Corcoran. The Guardian says Corcoran “is a superbly skilled lyricist” who writes poetry in which “classical mythology meets modern ideals.”
• River Inside the River by Gregory Orr. The Cortland Review warns that “poems that are this charged with the cadences of mystical contemplation may not be everyone’s cup of tea.”