writing and writers – Page 178 – don't confuse the narrator

poems and pints

One of the things that struck me – and some of the other participants – at the poetry conference last week, was that one of the readings and the Q&A session were held in a coffee bar.

I had the temerity to question this, and was told that it was an American poetry conference and that that was the way they do things; I wasn’t to worry, though, as there would be drink available on the final night.
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prose poetry II

I said yesterday that I might post something I’d written at the American Poetry workshops in Nottingham, and then it seemed presumptuous to include what is no more than an initial workshop draft in a post where I mention so many recognised and respected poets, so I didn’t.

Here, though, is a piece from the prose poetry workshop that I may come back to and try and see where it leads. The words in italics are from a piece by Charles Simic.
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prose poetry

I’ve just been in Nottingham, at the university, attending a series of poetry workshops and trying to re-connect to poetry. I’m not sure I’ve achieved that, but since the blog hasn’t been updated for a week, it seems appropriate to post something about the weekend, and, maybe, something I wrote while there.
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Sound reasoning

A couple of weeks ago, on the Tantamount Words blog, I wrote about the USA Spelling Bee and commented about how a knowledge of the etymology of a word can help with spelling, particularly in a language like English where many different languages have contributed to the vocabulary.

Often, knowing how a word is pronounced is little help when it comes to writing it, but I personally don’t favour spelling reform as the written form can give us all sorts of clues about word families and relationships.
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old chestnuts

Horse chestnuts hold pale torches high
in green spread fingers and old wisteria
writhes around wrought iron
in a blue-teared cascade.
Throughout the city,
elm trees sway, scattering
indifferent confetti.

These lines have been retrieved and re-vamped from a poem called Flowers for an Easter wedding.

It was written some years ago – in Spain, which accounts for the elms, and for why it’s so out of synch with the English flowering season – and I think it was published as a three stanza piece with 15 lines.
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