poetry – Page 135 – don't confuse the narrator

national poetry day

Well, in the UK, at least, it’s a national day and there’s plenty about it in all the national newspapers. The Guardian, for example, reports a selection of news and associated snippets.

This year’s theme is “heroes and heroines”. I can’t think of any poems in my files that fit that theme, and I certainly can’t produce one to order. So here’s one which refers to the ex-prime minister – definitely not a hero of mine. The poem was published in the South Bank Poetry Magazine a while back.
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in the pink

I was taking photos of sweet chestnuts the other day, but having transferred the pictures to the computer, it seems I have a problem. The sky really wasn’t that colour at all, but that’s the way the camera saw it, which probably means it’s time I got a new camera.

I wanted a picture to post alongside this ‘ku which is buried somewhere in a comment from this time last year.

smooth new lifeform
peeps from the belly
of a chestnut hedgehog

The camera has paid for itself over the years, providing the material for three published foto-reportajes as well as incidental illustrations for many other articles, including most of the photos on the blog. It’d be nice to have one a bit smaller and smarter, though.

Then again, there might be an advantage to continuing to use this one: it might help me look at the world through a rose-tinted lens.

competitions, compensation and closure

I had a friend who used to say that until a poem was published, it wasn’t complete.

I’m not sure whether he felt that once the poem had been accepted and approved by an editor it was fixed and he could stop tinkering with it, or whether the purpose of a poem was to reach a readership which only publication would provide. Whatever the reason, in some way, publication of the poem gave him ‘closure’.
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terror incognita

There is a phrase in the introduction to Heaney’s Beowulf (Faber & Faber) that caught my attention when I first read it:

“Nevertheless, the dragon has a wonderful inevitability about him and a unique glamour.”

It took me about five years before I found the poem where the idea could be used.

Of course it’s possible that speed isn’t necessary when we’re dealing with mountains, dragons and poetry.
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listening and reading

As well as the poetry course at Swanwick, I was also asked to lead the two showcase events. These were essentially poetry readarounds – a rather more restrained atmosphere than a normal open mike, but along those lines.

There were other showcase sessions on at the same time, in fiction and non-fiction, but we had a good turn out and it looked as if there would be far more people reading than there was time for.
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