I've managed to sprain my ankle at work, so am laid up at home at the moment (which is actually quite nice). What to do lying on a sofa all day?
Well I've edited some poems thanks to a helpful workshop yesterday with my MA group, and found I have nearly half the pages I need for my final portfolio which is heartening, although I don't know where the next half is going to come from. I have also been reading a chapter from Willard Spiegelman's book 'How Poets See the World'. It's about the art of description in contemporary poetry, which is a stones throw from my dissertation title on James Schuyler, which means I have been taking plenty of notes.
Meanwhile I have been watching tennis on mute (bring back the football season), and carrying out important youtube research inspired by a friend who pointed me in the direction of a new Radiohead song/session. Definitely my favourite band of all time - which reminds me of one of the best remixes ever made, below (give it a chance to get into it).
Tuesday 21 June 2011
Tuesday 7 June 2011
Against the Arts Cuts
Andrew Motion delivered an impressive speech at Oxford this week damning the government's badly thought out and dangerous arts cuts. I wish I had been there to see it, but the Guardian seem to have transcribed a large amount of it. He agrees with most of us that the Tories have massively overlooked the importance of the arts within a society, and have ignorantly cut the funding to some incredibly worthy causes:
"The arts, and the humanities associated with them, provide us with the paradoxes that we depend on for the realisation and fulfilment of ourselves as human beings. Nothing less. They are the means by which we learn to live more deeply as ourselves, but they are also the echo-chambers in which we begin to understand what it means to live in history. They pay attention to events, but they make their own narrative of those events. They teach us about ourselves while they allow us to forget ourselves and – just as fulfillingly – to identify with others. They affirm the value of oblique truths as well as the usefulness of direct utterance. They honour familiar life while transfiguring it, and they give the clearest possible view of what lies beyond our seeing and saying. They help us to continue living because they keep death in view. Are these self-evident truths? I would say so. But this doesn't mean we are excused from affirming, defending, cherishing and broadcasting them. And doing more clearly and passionately than ever, now we see the barbarians are inside the gates again."
Good stuff
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/culture-cuts-blog/2011/jun/03/arts-funding-andrewmotion
"The arts, and the humanities associated with them, provide us with the paradoxes that we depend on for the realisation and fulfilment of ourselves as human beings. Nothing less. They are the means by which we learn to live more deeply as ourselves, but they are also the echo-chambers in which we begin to understand what it means to live in history. They pay attention to events, but they make their own narrative of those events. They teach us about ourselves while they allow us to forget ourselves and – just as fulfillingly – to identify with others. They affirm the value of oblique truths as well as the usefulness of direct utterance. They honour familiar life while transfiguring it, and they give the clearest possible view of what lies beyond our seeing and saying. They help us to continue living because they keep death in view. Are these self-evident truths? I would say so. But this doesn't mean we are excused from affirming, defending, cherishing and broadcasting them. And doing more clearly and passionately than ever, now we see the barbarians are inside the gates again."
Good stuff
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/culture-cuts-blog/2011/jun/03/arts-funding-andrewmotion
Let's raid the vandals homes, boys
Just found this video of the Villagers gig I went to a couple of weeks ago. Amazing opening song to a silent Shepherds Bush Empire, incredible voice and lyrics
Saturday 4 June 2011
Mark Ford Six Children Review on MouthLondon
Here is a review I have done of Mark Ford's new collection, Six Children (Faber) for the website MouthLondon.com
The title of Mark Ford‘s third collection is taken from Walt Whitman’s admission, late in life, that “Though unmarried I have had six children”. The consequent poem’s six stanzas imagine the six women Whitman “waylaid” and the resulting offspring, the father hoping “some day, all together, we will stride the open road”. It is this act of remembrance and unearthing that Ford maintains as a focus throughout the book.
read more...
The title of Mark Ford‘s third collection is taken from Walt Whitman’s admission, late in life, that “Though unmarried I have had six children”. The consequent poem’s six stanzas imagine the six women Whitman “waylaid” and the resulting offspring, the father hoping “some day, all together, we will stride the open road”. It is this act of remembrance and unearthing that Ford maintains as a focus throughout the book.
read more...
Wednesday 1 June 2011
I suppose I should publish...
a poem on here to justify my Url. This is from a sonnet series I'm working on in the voice of a 40-something academic. This occurs during a night on the road having given a guest lecture.
Stopover
Early evening, artificial light
drowns the bar of Oxford's Premier Inn.
After ten minutes opposite a forthright
blonde you're sliding your ring
to your index finger in the bathroom,
and suddenly you've another beer,
one for her, a nom de plume,
and are trying to journey the sheer
of her dress, hinting at bed
too soon - then drinking stronger stuff to assuage
the elegant swish of fabric as she fled.
Morning, you wake and find the scrawled page
of four-letter words your hand had been guided
to write in last night's crimson, whisky haze.
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