An elegant variation on the ‘dawn-songs’ of Provençal troubadours introduces its themes of time and loss with great delicacy
white the moon
white the wine
Poem of the week: a small alba by Harry Gilonis
↧
↧
Ondaatje prize goes to 'mythic' poems about a mother's mental illness
Pascale Petit’s Mama Amazonica takes £10,000 prize for writing evoking the spirit of a place – here blending a hospital with the rainforest
Pascale Petit’s poetry collection Mama Amazonica, which merges the Amazon rainforest with the psychiatric ward caring for her mentally ill mother, has won the RSL Ondaatje prize for books that best “evoke the spirit of a place”.
Petit’s seventh collection tells the story of her mother, exploring the consequences of abuse as she transforms into a series of creatures – a hummingbird, a wolverine, a “jaguar girl”. Petit, who dedicated the book to her troubled parent, writes: “She’s a rainforest / in a straitjacket,” And: “My mother, trying to conceal / her lithium tremor // as she carries the Amazon / on her back, // her rosettes of rivers / and oxbow lakes, // her clouds of chattering caciques, / her flocks of archangels.”
Continue reading...↧
Enter, Fleeing review – a man going everywhere fast
It’s a challenge to keep up with Mark Ford’s restless poetic energy but well worth the effort
Nairobi, 1963; Lagos 1967; Chicago 1969; Colombo, Hong Kong, Bahrain, New York… Mark Ford’s poems could – several of them – be organised like an airport departure board. Born in Kenya, he had a peripatetic upbringing. There are sightings here of his mother – telling an unfazed Kenyan servant that President Kennedy has been shot, or chasing a thief in Lagos, unaware of how her own voice will sound, years later, in a poem: “How dare you!” she calls without irony.
There are poems about what it means to take leave of yourself – Mickey Finn describes, at entertainingly floundering length, the after-effects of having had a drink spiked, and your trainers and wallet stolen on a Spanish train. It seems fitting that Ford should, in his intelligent restlessness, turn out to be an airport fancier. In Aloft, a poem-in-transit, he writes:
Continue reading...↧
Liu Xia: Paul Auster and JM Coetzee lead renewed calls for Chinese poet's release
Liu, who has never been charged with a crime, has been under house arrest in China since her late husband Liu Xiaobo won the Nobel peace prize in 2010
Paul Auster, JM Coetzee, Alice Sebold and Khaled Hosseini are among dozens of major writers issuing an urgent call for the Chinese poet and artist Liu Xia to be freed after almost a decade under house arrest.
Liu, 50, has been under house arrest in China since her late husband, the human rights activist Liu Xiaobo, was given the Nobel peace prize in 2010. Chinese authorities insist Liu “enjoys all freedoms in accordance with the law”, but supporters say her movements have been severely restricted and she lives under constant surveillance.
Related: Chinese Nobel laureate's widow 'ready to die' in house arrest
Today, writers and artists come together for one of their own. @khaledhosseini, @PGourevitch, Siri Hustvedt, and Rita Dove read Liu Xia’s poem "June 2, 1989." They—and we—won’t stop calling for her release until she is truly free. @amnesty#FreeLiuXiahttps://t.co/yqC5MIQGiNpic.twitter.com/gNMpnWvjZX
Continue reading...↧
The Last Poets: the hip-hop forefathers who gave black America its voice
It is half a century since the Last Poets stood in Harlem, uttered their first words in public, and created the blueprint for hip-hop. At an intimate open house session, they explain why their revolutionary words are still needed
You can trace the birth of hip-hop to the summer of 1973 when Kool Herc DJ’d the first extended breakbeat, much to the thrill of the dancers at a South Bronx block party. You can trace its conception, however, to five years earlier – 19 May 1968, 50 years ago this weekend – when the founding members of the Last Poets stood together in Mount Morris park – now Marcus Garvey park – in Harlem and uttered their first poems in public. They commemorated what would have been the 43rd birthday of Malcolm X, who had been slain three years earlier. Not two months had passed since the assassination of Martin Luther King. “Growing up, I was scheduled to be a nice little coloured guy. I was liked by everybody,” says the Last Poets’ Abiodun Oyewole. He was 18 and in college when he heard the news. “But when they killed Dr King, all bets were off.”
That day led to the Last Poets’ revelatory, self-titled 1970 debut of vitriolic black power poems spoken over the beat of a congo drum. Half a century later, the slaughter continues daily, in the form of assaults, school shootings and excessive police force. “America is a terrorist, killing the natives of the land / America is a terrorist, with a slave system in place,” Oyewole declares on the Last Poets’ new album, Understanding What Black Is, in which he and Umar Bin Hassan trade poems over reggae orchestration, horns, drums and flute. It’s their first album in 20 years, reminding a new generation of hip-hop’s roots in protest poetry.
Related: The Last Poets: Understand What Black Is review – hip-hop progenitors bounce back wiser
Continue reading...↧
↧
Carol Ann Duffy's royal wedding poem: Long Walk
↧
Salley Vickers on Stoke-on-Trent: ‘Thanks to my upbringing, my books have a tenderness for misfits'
The former therapist and novelist on her ‘committed communist’ parents, seeing Paul Robeson sing and her abiding love for the Potteries
I was born in Liverpool, my mother’s home town, which was bombed during the second world war. But my father was warden of Barlaston Hall near Stoke-on-Trent, a residential adult education college, founded by Josiah Wedgwood, and run jointly by the WEA (Workers’ Educational Association) and the TUC.
Related: Lisa O'Kelly talks to therapist turned author Salley Vickers
Continue reading...↧
Poem of the week: They (may forget (their names (if let out))) by Vahni Capildeo
A brilliantly energetic and inventive sonnet bounds into the mind of a not entirely domesticated pet dog
petcitement incitement of a pet to excitement
petcitement incitement into the excitement
of being a pet petcitement incitement to be
a pet a fed pet a fleece pet incitement to be
a floorpet a fleapit a carpet a polkadot
blanket pet blanket pet answer brass doorbell what name
tin waterbowl what name thrilled vomitfall polkadot
padded on patted on turded on welcome mat name
turns to no-one’s reminder walks wilder walks further
downriver from calling calling owner predator
who that who tagalong meaner whose canines further
from food fleece floor flea cloth car poll card dot blank bit door
no no owner owns in nomine domini pet
outruns petfetch petcome will wild default reset.
↧
Ode to whiteness: British poetry scene fails diversity test
Study shows poets of colour are underrepresented in the UK, as Forward poetry prizes announce trailblazing shortlists
The British poetry world is “failing to meet even the most basic measurements of inclusivity”, according to a new report which highlights the “systemic exclusion” of poets and critics of colour from UK and Irish poetry magazines.
Collecting data from 29 magazines and websites including PN Review, Poetry Review, the Guardian and Oxford Poetry, the study found that between 2012 and 2018, 9% of almost 20,000 published poems were by poets of colour. Of the 1,819 poems, 502 were published in a single magazine, Modern Poetry in Translation; if this is taken out of the equation, only 7% of poems were by poets of colour. The studyPDF, conducted by poetry reviewer and blogger Dave Coates for Ledbury Emerging Poetry Critics, points out that in contrast, at the 2011 census, 12.9% of the UK population identified as black and minority ethnic (BME).
There has to be the right kind of critical attention – critics knowledgeable about race, culture, identity and belonging
Continue reading...↧
↧
Unicorns, Almost review – poignant portrait of a tormented war poet
The Swan Hotel, Hay-on-Wye
Owen Sheers’ evocative one-hander paints a fascinating picture of Keith Douglas and places his breathtaking poetry centre-stage
Since playing Wilfred Owen in a 20th-anniversary revival of the 1982 fringe hit Not About Heroes, Owen Sheers– the polymath author of this resonant one-hander – has become a bit of a warrior hero himself, his poetry, fiction and plays spanning from the Somme to the war in Afghanistan. He now turns his attention to Keith Douglas, one of the few poets to emerge from the second world war, who was blown to pieces at the age of 24 when he stumbled into a tripwire in France days after surviving the 1944 Normandy landings.
Douglas’s first and only collection was published six years after his death, by which time nobody wanted war poetry. It took the championship of Ted Hughes to bring him back to life a decade later with a slim selection, followed in the late 1980s by the reissue of the Collected Works.
Related: Owen Sheers: an interview with contemporary literature’s renaissance man
Continue reading...↧
Poem of the week: The Straight and Narrow by Simon Armitage
A school visit by a careers adviser is the occasion for an unexpected epiphany and some ‘West Yorkshire magic realism’
The Straight and Narrow
When the tall and bearded careers advisor
set up his stall and his slide projector
↧
Kayo Chingonyi: ‘The most formalist poetry I have been exposed to is rap lyrics’
The winner of the Dylan Thomas prize explains how his poems are infused with the rhythms and rhymes of garage, grime and hip-hop
When Kayo Chingonyi was awarded the £30,000 Dylan Thomas prize for his debut poetry collection, Kumukanda, he used his acceptance speech to thank some of his former school teachers, including one who had given him a copy of Thomas’s play for voices Under Milk Wood. “I was very grateful for that, it led me to Thomas’s poetry,” Chingonyi says; he was delighted and surprised to have come out ahead of fellow shortlisted authors including Sally Rooney and Gwendoline Riley for the prize awarded to writers aged 39 or under, the age Thomas was when he died. “I was also grateful that these teachers shared their enthusiasms with me. A lot of what I write is embedded in my wanting to share enthusiasms.”
Related: Kayo Chingonyi wins Dylan Thomas prize with poems of 'vexed celebration'
As a kid I was never in trouble with the police, but certain interactions with them were fraught
Related: Kumukanda by Kayo Chingonyi review – a striking initiation
Continue reading...↧
Hay festival 2018: the Golden Booker, Akala, Tishani Doshi and more
In this special festival podcast, we take a tour of some of the events that have got people talking this week in Hay.
We discover the novel that has knocked Midnight’s Children out of the running for the Golden Booker, which is marking 50 years of the UK’s top literary award. Rapper Akala explains why he has turned his attention to literature, with a new book about race and class. Poet Tishani Doshi gives an impassioned response to the problem of violence against women in India. Neurologist Sarah-Jayne Blakemore explains why we should take teenagers more seriously, and Francesca Simon and Kevin Crossley-Holland explore the treasure house of Norse myths.
Continue reading...↧
↧
Simon Armitage on Marsden: ‘The hills stand far taller than the architecture’
The poet on growing up in Yorkshire and watching the world from his bedroom window
I grew up in the West Yorkshire village of Marsden at the head of the Colne Valley, a close-knit community of about four thousand people high in the Pennines, last stop before Lancashire. It was an uninterrupted and in some ways uneventful childhood.
As a consequence there was always a tendency to magnify the smaller details and on those rare occasions when something truly dramatic happened – a suspicious death, a sexual scandal, a mill burning down – those incidents became the stuff of fantasy and mythology. My first poems were about Marsden, and my latest collection contains pieces that reference the village, either directly or indirectly.
Related: The Unaccompanied by Simon Armitage review – luminous and unsettling
Continue reading...↧
Poem of the week: Husk by Margot Armbruster
A strikingly accomplished work from a 16-year-old poet reflects on the resonances of anorexia with religious fasting
Husk
How did we ever get here? I have been measuring
my worth in etched wrists for so long I think my bones
are made of aspartame. Or plum blossom. Can I
gain solubility, dissolve? Can I become entirely blood?
Viscera. Cold palms pressed against
my back. Ribs. Ankles, spine. This resembles a checklist
but is more truly a prayer. A prayer offered
in the rain with a headache behind my eyes.
A prayer offered propped against the car with trembling
hands. Some Magnificat for vivisection. He hath filled
the hungry with good things. Communion wine burns
on an empty stomach. Lord, have I already martyred
myself for skinny jeans? What if I wake up a husk,
made clean and dry by sunlight? What if I wake up
as sunlight itself, yellow and sharp and hard?
↧
Mary Wilson: Corbyn leads tributes after death of Harold Wilson's widow
Labour leader says 102-year-old was a ‘wonderful poet and huge support’ to her husband
Jeremy Corbyn and Gordon Brown have led tributes to Mary Wilson, a poet and wife of the former Labour prime minister Harold Wilson, who has died aged 102.
Wilson published three volumes of verse and was once touted as a possible poet laureate. In a tweet Corbyn praised her poetry and support for Labour’s election victories in the 60s and 70s.
In '97 I escorted Mary Wilson to open Merton @mencap_charity 1st dementia centre. She had cared for Harold for years & was a great fighter for carers everywhere. #RIPhttps://t.co/y9mbDUlCZU
Related: Mary Wilson obituary
Continue reading...↧
Mary Wilson obituary
An accomplished poet who brushed off the caricatures attracted by her life as the wife of prime minister Harold Wilson
In the widely recorded history of Harold Wilson’s years in British politics, his wife, Mary, appears as a rather shadowy figure, a fleeting form in the background of the latest crisis at No 10, seemingly intent on hastening back to the domestic obscurity she craved and for which she was mercilessly mocked by the satirists of that era. The reality was quite otherwise. Mary Wilson, who has died aged 102, was indeed a profoundly private person, but she was an independent-minded woman with sufficient personal strength to withstand the cruelty of the caricatures to which she was subjected without ever bothering to correct the inaccuracy of her supposed public portrait.
Her problem was that she married Harold, as she complained, “under false pretences”. She did not sign up to be the wife of an ambitious politician but, rather, the wife of the clever Oxford don she married, a choice that would have given her the quiet, cloistered academic life she sought for herself, as much as for her family. She regretted all her life that she had been unable to go to university because her family could not afford it, and as an aspirant poet she longed for a lifestyle that would allow her to develop her talent in an atmosphere, as she said, imbued with the presence of old buildings and young people. “Oxford was my idea of heaven,” she lamented.
Related: Mary Wilson: Corbyn leads tributes after death of Harold Wilson's widow
Continue reading...↧
↧
Lawrence Ferlinghetti's 'experimental' new book due in time for 100th birthday
Blending autobiography, literary criticism poetry and philosophy, Little Boy will be published in March 2019, the author’s centenary
The 99-year-old poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, one of the last surviving members of the Beat generation, has sold an “experimental” new novel to a major American publisher, and it is due out in time for his 100th birthday.
Ferlinghetti, one of the US’s best-loved poets and a veteran of the second world war, told the New York Times that the book, Little Boy, was “not a memoir, it’s an imaginary me”. He added: “It’s an experimental novel, let’s put it that way … It’s the kind of book that I’ve been writing all my life.”
Continue reading...↧
Carol Ann Duffy: ‘I wish I’d written Harry Potter, obvs’
The poet laureate on her deep shame at not having read Don Quixote and always laughing at Cold Comfort Farm
The book I am currently reading
The Poem: Lyric, Sign, Metre by Don Paterson. Reading it, your estimation of your own IQ incrementally diminishes. There are diagrams. Also Jay Bernard’s Ted Hughes award-winning collection Surge: Side A.
The book that changed my life
Allen Carr’s Easy Way to Stop Smoking– about 30 years ago. Hurrah!
↧
Poem of the week: Leaving home at 10 by Harry Garuba
In this story of a boy’s departure to boarding school, the author remembers leaving behind not only his family but a whole linguistic world
Leaving home at 10
It was an old Peugeot 403
They don’t make them anymore
↧
