Poetry News Digest: March 2014

Tags

1914.org, Afaa Michael Weaver, affair, Alison Chisholm, American, Anthony Holden, Archivist, award, Ban, BBC, Ben Holden, Beowulf, Bernard and Cerinthe, biography, Black Diamonds, book, Brentwood, Brentwood Gazette, Brentwood School, British, Byssus, Carol Ann Duffy, Ceremony, Claremont Graduate University, Crystal Good, Delhi, Douglas Adams, election, English, Estate, Express, festival, First World War, George Szirtes, GoodReads, Gov.uk, Grace Pritt, Griff Rhys Jones, HarperCollins, HMP Parkhurst, Hugo Williams, Hungarian, I Knew the Bridge, Industry, Jen Hadfield, Jonathan Bate, Kevin Powers, Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, Korean, Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting, Linda France, London Evening Standard, Los Angeles, March, media, Melville House, National Poetry Competition, New Statesman, news, North Korean, NPR, Off the Book, Pentonville Prison, plagiarism, poem, Poems That Make Grown Men Cry, Poet Laureate, poetry, politics, Prison, Prisoner, prize, Raw Story, review, school, Scottish, Serhiy Zhadan, Shetland, State Media, Storyacious, Student, Ted Hughes, Teenager, Texas Observer, The Billows of Emotion and Happiness, The Daily Mail, The Government of Nature, The Guardian, The Independent, The Indian Express, The New Yorker, The Poetry Society, The Register-Herald, The Telegraph, The Wire, Times, Tolkein, translation, Ukrainian, UN, UNESCO, Veteran, video, Wales Online, war, We Break into Cheers from the Bottom of Our Heart, We Go to the Polling Station, West Virginia, World Poetry Day, World Poetry Festival, Yanukovich, YouTube

A summary of all the key headlines from the world of poetry in March.

News

• UNESCO’s World Poetry Day was celebrated on 21 March. In the UK, the public were encouraged to record themselves reading their favourite First World War poem in tribute to those who served. Read more at Gov.uk, 1914.org and The UN.

World Poetry Day
[Flickr Creative Commons © Karen Cropper]

• A ‘World Poetry Festival’ was held in Delhi from 21-24 March, featuring 50 poets from 21 countries including George Szirtes from the UK. Read more at The Indian Express and George Szirtes Blog.

• Serhiy Zhadan, Ukraine’s most famous counter-culture poet, was beaten up by pro-Russian activists for being involved in the protests that resulted in the overthrow of President Yanukovich. Read more at The New Yorker and Melville House. Here is a video of Zhadan performing:

• The North Korean state media released poems in the run-up to elections on 9 March. Titles included ‘The Billows Of Emotion And Happiness,’ ‘We Break Into Cheers From The Bottom Of Our Heart’ and ‘We Go To The Polling Station.’ Read more at BBC News, The Telegraph and The Wire.

• A prisoner in HMP Parkhurst was forced to hand back a £25 poetry prize for inmates for plagiarising the poet Alison Chisholm. Read more at The Express and The Telegraph.

• West Virginia officials tried to ban a student from reading ‘Black Diamonds,’ a poem about industrial disasters, at an awards ceremony. They were forced to back down in the face of public outrage. Read more at Raw Story, Crystal Good and The Register-Herald. Here is the student, Grace Pritt, reciting the poem:

• HarperCollins announced that they would publish JRR Tolkein’s translation of Beowulf in May this year. Read more at The Guardian, BBC News and The Independent.

• An archivist at Brentwood School discovered poems in a school cupboard written by Douglas Adams and Griff Rhys Jones when they were teenagers. Read more at The Guardian, Brentwood Gazette and Wales Online.

Douglas Adams
[Flickr Creative Commons © Michael Hughes]

• The UK Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy led a protest outside Pentonville Prison against a ban on sending books and other essentials to prisoners. Read more at The Guardian, Politics and London Evening Standard.

• The estate of Ted Hughes withdrew access to his private records from biographer Jonathan Bate after Bate uncovered new material about Hughes’s affairs. Read more at The Guardian and The Daily Mail.

Awards

• Afaa Michael Weaver won the $100,000 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award for his collection The Government of Nature. Read more at Los Angeles Times and Claremont Graduate University.

• Linda France won the National Poetry Competition for her poem ‘Bernard and Cerinthe.’ Read more at The Poetry Society and The Guardian.

Book Releases

• Byssus, the third collection from Shetland-based Jen Hadfield (rated 4.8/5 based on 5 ratings at GoodReads). Read a review at New Statesman.

• I Knew the Bride, the eleventh collection from Hugo Williams (rated 3/5 based on 1 rating at GoodReads). Read a review at The Guardian.

• Poems That Make Grown Men Cry, an anthology of moving poems edited by Anthony Holden and Ben Holden (rated 3.7/5 based on 10 ratings at GoodReads). Read reviews at The Guardian, Storyacious and Off the Book.

• Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting, the second collection from the Iraq war veteran Kevin Powers (rated 3.77/5 based on 22 ratings at GoodReads). Read reviews at The Guardian, NPR and Texas Observer.

All ratings are from GoodReads as at 10/04/2014.

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Poetry News Digest: December 2013

Tags

2013, Ahmed Fouad Negm, Ahram Online, Anne Michaels, anniversary, Anvil Press Poetry, Arabic, Arsene Wenger, assassination, BBC, Bernice Eisenstein, British, celebrity, Chilean, Christopher Reid, colloquial, Correspondances: A Poem and Portraits, Daniel Weissbort, Danish, death, death threat, December, Douglas Dunn, eastern Europe, Egyptian, Euronews, football, GoodReads, Herald Scotland, interview, Islam, Modern Poetry in Translation, Mubarak, Musa Okwonga, Muslims, National Post, news, Pablo Neruda, patriotic, poet, poetry, Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry, racism, rap, RAPSI, reading, review, revolutionary, Scottish, Six Bad Poets, sport, Steven Gerrard, The Boston Globe, The Copenhagen Post, The FA, The Football Association, The Guardian, The Houston Chronicle, The Jewish Press, The Poetry Archive, The Spectator, The Telegraph, Theo Walcott, translation, tribute, uprising, video, Who Ate All the Pies, Write Out Loud, Yahya Hassan

All the essential poetry news from the month of December.

News

Yahya Hassan, the Danish rap poet, was charged with racism over poems fiercely criticising the actions of fellow Muslims in Denmark. Hassan has also faced 27 death threats and was recently assaulted. Read more at The Copenhagen Post, The Guardian and The Jewish Press.

Yahya Hassan Performing
[Source: Flickr Creative Commons © Radikale Venstre]

Poet and sports writer Musa Okwonga produced a tribute to football to celebrate 150 years of the FA. He was joined by Steven Gerrard, Arsène Wenger, Theo Walcott and a number of celebrity guests. Read more and watch the video at The Football Association, Who Ate All the Pies and The Guardian.

Members of the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda’s family contested toxicology reports that appeared to conclusively prove that he died of natural causes rather than being assassinated. Read more at The Guardian, RAPSI and The Houston Chronicle.

Deaths

Ahmed Fouad Negm, Egypt’s ‘poet of the people’ who used colloquial Egyptian Arabic to write patriotic and revolutionary poetry and supported the 2011 uprising that toppled Mubarak, died aged 84. Read more at The Telegraph, Euronews and Ahram Online.

Ahmed Fouad Negm
[Source: Wikimedia Commons © Michael Nabil]

Daniel Weissbort, the translator and poet who founded Modern Poetry in Translation and brought the work of eastern European poets to the West, died aged 78. Read more at The Guardian, Modern Poetry in Translation and Anvil Press Poetry.

Awards

Douglas Dunn won the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry 2013 in recognition of his lifetime contribution to literature. Read more at BBC News, Herald Scotland and Write Out Loud. Listen to Dunn reading some of his poems at The Poetry Archive.

Book Releases

Six Bad Poets by Christopher Reid (4/5 based on 2 ratings at GoodReads). Reviewed at The Spectator and The Guardian. Author interviewed at The Telegraph.

Correspondances: A Poem and Portraits by Anne Michaels and Bernice Eisenstein (4.4/5 based on 8 ratings at GoodReads). Reviewed at The Guardian, National Post and The Boston Globe.

(all ratings are from GoodReads as at 31/12/13).

Poems I Like (4)

Tags

Anam Mhadra, beat, bloom, breath, British, chaff, Charlotte Bronte, Chinese, clouds, couplet, dactylic, English, gloom, grain, iambic, internet, Ireland, Irish, life, Mù Dàn, meaning of life, meter, motivational, poem, Poems by Currer Elllis and Action Bell, poetry, roses, sensual, short poem, shower, Simon Ó Faoláin, stanza, step, surreal, tetrameter, translation, trials of life, trimeter, Wanderer, wind, Winnowing

Here’s three more poems I’ve enjoyed reading recently. The theme that links these poems is, simply… “life!”

Click on each poem’s title to read it in full. Let me know what you think of them by adding a comment at the bottom!

1) ‘Winnowing‘ by Simon Ó Faoláin (from Anam Mhadra, 2008)

This is a very short poem. One of those poems that expresses a single, simple idea, yet expresses it beautifully. Here is the second of the two wonderful stanzas:

At the last breath
none of us know
whether it was
the chaff
or the grain
that flew off in the wind.

Is this a cry against the impossibility of ever finding for certain the meaning of life? Possibly, but I read it as a celebration of life – we all give it our best shot, and if you lose some of the ‘grain’ with the ‘chaff’ well don’t worry! Everyone else does too!

Winnowing the Grain, Ethiopia
[Source: Flickr Creative Commons © Ryan Kilpatrick]

2) ‘Life‘ by Charlotte Brontë (from Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, 1848)

A motivational poem. You can overcome the trials of life! The bad times will pass!

“Sometimes there are clouds of gloom,
But these are transient all;
If the shower will make the roses bloom,
O why lament its fall?”

(Poetry geek warning…) I like this poem because of Brontë’s creative use of poetic meter. She uses couplets, like those above, with one line in iambic tetrameter (4 beats) followed by a line of trimeter (3 beats) meaning you pause on the missing fourth beat, giving each couplet extra weight.

She then switches to a different pattern for her fast-paced motivational stanzas, swapping the 4-beat tetrameter lines for trippy dactyls:

“Rapidly, merrily,
Life’s sunny hours flit by,
Gratefully, cheerily,
Enjoy them as they fly.”

Clever, very clever…

3) ‘Wanderer‘ by Mù Dàn trans. K Maynard

This is by the twentieth century Chinese poet Mù Dàn.

It has a curious surreal sensuality to it, but sums up somehow the experience of life: “step, after step, after step……”

Read it and see what you think!

A Wanderer…
[Source: Flickr Creative Commons © Cornelia Kopp]

Poetry News Round Up: February 2013

Tags

A E Housman, African, African-American, ambassador, American, animation, Archangel, auction, award, BBC, Black History Month, Black Panthers, book, British, bullying, Charlotte Bronte, childhood, Chris Beckett, civil rights, Dear Boy, Democrat, East Sussex, Emily Berry, English, Ethiopian, Ethiopian Boy, European, expressive men, February, Frost Medal, graffiti, Guardian, handwritten, He Wonders Whether to Praise or Blame Her, Henry Shukman, Herald Scotland, Japanese, Jewish, John Boehner, John Clare, Jupiter Hammon, king, Latin American, Leicester, Les Ballons, London, Manhattan, manuscript, medieval, Mohammed al-Ajami, New Mexico, obscene, Oscar Wilde, Patty Murray, poetry, Poetry Society of America, politics, Qatari, radio, Radio 4, Republican, Richard III, Robert Bly, Romanian, Rudyard Kipling, Rupert Brooke, Russian, Saudi, school, Senate, Shane Koyczan, Telegraph, To This Day, Tony Harrison, translation, treasure, twitter, unpublished, v, Valentine, Valentine's Day, VAWA, video, Welsh

Your summary of all the essential poetry news from the month of February, painstakingly distilled by yours truly…

Be My Valentine

A study in the UK for Valentine’s Day showed that a quarter of women would like their partner to write them a handwritten poem on February 14^th, compared to just 1% of women who said they wanted lingerie.

Love Poem
[Source: Flickr Creative Commons © paloetic]

The Republican House Speaker, John Boehner, on the other hand, probably didn’t want or expect the poem he received on Twitter from Democrat senator Patty Murray, which read: “Roses are red. Violets are blue. The #Senate passed #VAWA. Now it’s up to you.” VAWA is the Violence Against Women Act.

Bullying

An animated video about bullying went viral this month. The video is an animated version of Shane Koyczan’s excellent and harrowing poem ‘To this Day’ about the impacts of bullying and it’s a must see.

v

On the 18^th February BBC Radio 4 read out Tony Harrison’s landmark but controversial poem v. The poem was inspired by an incident when Harrison visited his parent’s grave and discovered it has been desecrated by obscene graffiti.

The Guardian published an excellent article about v examining its links to social changes in the north of England.

 “A horse, a horse! My kingdom for a horse!”

The recent news that the body of the medieval English king Richard III has been found in a Leicester car park has attracted a lot of attention.

Richard III’s Remains
[Source: Flickr Creative Commons © fotemas]

One interesting story reported that a Welsh poem was being used to work out exactly how Richard died. The poem describes how Richard’s head was scalped or “shaved” and this is being compared to forensic evidence from the remains.

Black History Month

It was Black History month in the USA and this threw up a few stories. A student at the University of Texas at Arlington discovered a poem written by the USA’s first published black writer, Jupiter Hammon. The poem dates from 1786 and is an important addition to the history of African-American literature.

Meanwhile, a poem read out over the intercom at a high school as part of Black History month caused controversy when it was discovered that it was written by a Black Panther. The Black Panthers were a controversial 1960s civil rights movement that supported militant action.

News from the Gulf

The life imprisonment of the Qatari poet Mohammed al-Ajami, which I reported in November, has been reduced to 15 years on appeal.

Poetry in Translation

A Saudi university student attracted plenty of attention in local media by skillfully writing and delivering a poem in perfect Japanese to government officials.

Equally impressively, the British ambassador to Romania wowed local senators this month by reciting an iconic Romanian poem.

Treasure Troves

50 unpublished Rudyard Kipling poems have been found during renovations at a house in Manhattan. The hoard has been described as a “treasure trove.” There are hopes the poems could be displayed at the family home in East Sussex.

Rudyard Kipling’s House in Sussex
[Source: Flickr Creative Commons © florriebassingbourn]

Meanwhile a real treasure trove of millions of dollars has been hidden by a New Mexico multimillionaire who has sensationally published a poem revealing clues to its whereabouts.

Up for Auction

There was an unusually steady stream in February of rare poetry manuscripts going up for auction. These included:

• A rare handwritten A E Housman draft of a poem about unrequited love.
• The manuscript of Oscar Wilde’s poem ‘Les Ballons.’
• An extremely rare handwritten poem by Charlotte Bronte.
• A Rupert Brooke poem, ‘He Wonders Whether to Praise or Blame Her,’ which contains multiple revisions in his own hand.
• An unpublished John Clare verse of 12 lines.

Awards

The American poet Robert Bly received the Poetry Society of America’s Frost Medal for a “distinguished lifetime achievement in poetry.” Bly is known for being part of “the expressive men’s movement” that sought to reconnect men with their masculinity, and for his translations of European and Latin American poetry.

Book Releases

Notable poetry book releases in February included:

• Archangel by Henry Shukman, which tells the story of several thousand Jewish tailors who were forcibly repatriated from London to Russia in 1917. Herald Scotland describes the poems as “moving and narrative-led.”
• Dear Boy, a debut collection from Emily Berry. The Guardian says that Berry’s voice is “new yet anything but hesitant” and that “she approaches poetry as a flexible, permissive, dynamic ally.”
• Ethiopian Boy by Chris Beckett, inspired by the author’s childhood in Ethiopia. The Telegraph says that his “colourful incantations evoke the sights and sounds and above all the food of the East African nation.”

Archive: Poetry News from January 2013 can be viewed here.