ZINE FEATURED IN AXON JOURNAL

I’m so pleased to have an e-zine published in the Axon: Creative Explorations — Text/Page/Art issue edited by Caren Florance. It’s just a 12 pager talking briefly about my creative process involving collage and found text, and responses in poetry followed by responses through small paint on canvas works. It features a series of the latter. Hope you like some of them.

Climbing Back up your Own Silk Screen is one of five downloadable zines. There are also essays, photo and visual essays, essay-poems, stories, poetry, memoir and images by about thirty writers and artists. Go there.

[Breaking in a new iPad so no images yet and some dubious editing.]

GOING DOWN - HOSPITAL POEM

GOING DOWN

Going down he jokes

You’re doing a good job as lift attendant

Cushy job standing here all day drinking takeaway coffee

Talking to people about Trump

Everyone is shaken up

I don’t have anything to add

[Posted on Project 366 on November 10, 2016]

LAUDING POET LAUREATES

City Hall Belfast

I met Sinéad Morrissey in the way I meet so many people – in passing. She was working at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry when I was visiting Belfast, attending the many poetry events that month, and hanging out afterwards over drinks - I rubbed shoulders with Belfast’s poets - I have shaken hands with the best. I did the thing I often do if I don’t have an official role and spent my time drooling on the fringes of conversations. Etched in my memory is the generosity of Medbh McGuckian who introduced me to many people (I’ve been a follower for decades and she agreed to contribute to my anthology Wee Girls back in 1996); Ciaran Carson telling in a very entertaining way the story of his first (I think) job involving concrete and a whole lot of strangely shaped (going on Ciaran’s animations) Protestant men; Edna Longley raising with me migrant guilt versus survivor guilt about the Troubles (something else to think about); the high regard Sinéad Morrissey was obviously held in (everyone made mention of her). I brought back a caseful of poetry books including Sinéad's The State of the Prisons (Carcinet Press 2005). It sits in the Irish pile on my poetry shelves and is covered in pencil scribbles.

I also see it’s time I acquired more of her books. I should start with Parallax (Carcanet 2013) which has just won the prestigious TS Eliot Poetry Prize, worth 15,000 quid (converts to over $28,000). Through this publicity I’ve become aware that she is Belfast’s first Poet Laureate. This is exciting news. Established by the Lord Mayor Mártain Ó’Miulleoir in 2013, the Poet Laureate has a public and private dual role, both engaging the city’s people with poetry and advancing the poet’s artistic career. Fantastic. For a start Sinéad Morrissey has been commissioned to produce a series of poems about Belfast and the year as the city’s poet exploring ‘My City/Mo Chathair Féin’ (Queen’s University Communications 2013) and I hope that’s instead of: Go write a specific poem about that specific over the top public event we’re having next month which seems to be often the case. In her public outreach role Sinéad will work with ethnic groups, the young, the vulnerable - the ‘Hidden Belfast’. A clear community arts or Community Cultural Development (CCD) aspect to this high profile position - as a long-time community arts advocate I think this is excellent.

A poem I read today: A Room in the Past

Looking for images and poems about rooms I came across Ted Kooser’s poem, A Room in the Past. An everyday kitchen, an everyday life, a dishrag hanging like a dry leaf from a tap. In housedresses of mist, blue aprons of rain a grandmother wipes out a sink and turns her back on the rest of us, forever.

Ted Kooser was made US Poet Laureate in 2004 and used his time to promote poetry to general reading audiences. He began the ‘American Life in Poetry’ program in partnership with the Poetry Foundation, offering a free weekly poem to newspapers across the United States to promote the visibility of poetry.

A poem I read today - on Sheer Poetry

Cold Knap Lake by Gillian Clarke is available in the General Reader section at Sheer Poetry: Resources on Poetry by the Poets Themselves. In the poem her mother is … a heroine, her red head bowed,/her wartime cotton frock soaked … It is one of a number of poems shared in Gillian Clarke’s Journal in the entry All Lost Things Lie Under Closed Water along with background to the poems, insights to her childhood and place, and Welsh myth. She talks about ‘reaching into distant memory’ and how ‘Poetry must strive to make that moment live again.’

Gillian Clarke, National Poet of Wales established the site with Carol Ann Duffy UK Poet Laureate in 2010, to provide poetry information for the general reader and teachers and students at primary, secondary and uni level. Other poets include Seamus Heaney, Simon Armitage, Daljit Nagra and Owen Sheers. Includes essays and interviews.

Poetry prize for exciting contribution

Carol Ann Duffy has founded the new Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry using her Poet Laureate annual honorarium. 5000 quid to the poet, resident in UK or of UK nationality, who has made the most exciting contribution to poetry in the past 12 months. This is what I find interesting: Eligible works include, but are not limited to, poetry collections (for adults or children), individual published poems, radio poems, verse translations, verse dramas, verse novels, libretti, film poems, and public poetry pieces.

San Francisco - I like that sound

Jack Hirschman's dream to "... promote the harmony of languages and of poetry" is reflected in the San Francisco International Poetry Festival which he instigated as San Fransisco's poet laureate in 2006. All readings are in the poets' original languages followed by English translations and projections on screen. "Poetry is the most powerful thing on earth, and everyone is a poet. Poetry is the most naked, sincere and innocent example of the power of language to harmonize people." (Hirschman in Nataraj 2009) Currently the poet-in-residence for the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library he is co-host of the festival now running. Read the article here.

Carol Ann Duffy - Favourite Women Poets

Visit the Guardian online for Carol Ann Duffy's compilation of new work by favourite women poets: Moniza Alvi - born Lahore, grew up England; Sujata Bhatt - born India, brought up India and United States; Colette Bryce - Northern Ireland; Gillian Clarke - the third national poet of Wales; Imtiaz Dharker - born Lahore, brought up in Scotland; Maura Dooley - Cornwall; Vicki Feaver – Nottingham; Jackie Kay - Scotland; Liz Lochhead - Scotland; Grace Nichols - born Guyana now lives England; Alice Oswald - Devon; Ruth Padel; Jo Shapcott. You'll find short bios there too. Published on May 2 it is part of the celebrations around the new poet laureate.

First woman poet laureate

Carol Ann Duffy is the first ever woman poet laureate in the UK and the first in 400 years. Appointed May 1, she says: ‘I look on it as recognition of the great women poets we now have writing…’ The position attracts a yearly stipend of £5,750, which Carol Ann Duffy is donating to the Poetry Society to fund a new poetry prize, and a ‘butt of sack’ (600 bottles of sherry). You can find the full story by Alison Flood at http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/may/01/carol-ann-duffy-poet-laureate  Wikipedia reminds us she is also the first Scottish poet laureate. Rapture (Picador 2005) which won the 2005 TS Eliot Prize is her latest poetry collection. She also writes poetry for children and is a playwright.