I don’t know why I’m posting these really. Certainly not because I claim any merit for them. Still, as with NaPoWriMo, the exercise of writing to a time limit is quite interesting, I think. The need to get something written makes you work with material that, rightly or not, you would normally have rejected out [...]
Posts tagged with ‘poetry’
Related tags:
Another quick sonnet
5 August 2006 – 8:38 pm
Down to 12 minutes, this time.
They sing of eels;
the fishmongers trill their local songs
and try to drown the spiels
of sellers of deceptive pongs.
The three-card trickers
hope to draw the punters from
the stall that sells the polyester knickers;
and little acned Tom
with his knock-off Louis Vuitton
hopes to get the cash
of those who know it is a con
but are [...]
Quick (ish) sonnet
5 August 2006 – 1:00 pm
This was my go at Rob’s quick sonnet challenge. In the event it took me about 26 minutes, which isn’t very good considering that the the classic challenge is 15 minutes.
The hiss of pebbles on a shingled beach,
the stranded bladderwrack, the grey
sea-holly, hard against the spray,
the oystercatchers calling each to each.
Where men are afterthoughts,
where cows [...]
Dada, modernism and suchlike
1 August 2006 – 12:50 pm
I seem to have gone a bit link-happy over the past 24 hours, producing a daily links post which is far too long. So I’ll single out one of them in case you miss it: Charles Simic on Dada.
I always think of continental Europe as being the natural home of modernism. The Great War, the [...]
9rules Writing Community
29 July 2006 – 10:17 pm
9rules strikes me as potentially a great idea. It’s basically a conglomeration of blogs, each of which has been approved as reaching a certain standard of quality.
The 9rules Network is a community of the best weblogs in the world on a variety of topics. We started 9rules to give passionate writers more exposure [...]
God’s cock and hen
25 July 2006 – 9:40 am
I woke up this morning to see something fluttering against the inside of the window-panes. Without my glasses, I couldn’t think what it was - it seemed too big for a moth and too small and whirring for a bird. It turned out to be a wren. They’re such nice things, but they are slightly [...]
Anglo-Saxon literature
20 July 2006 – 12:24 pm
I was lying awake last night, unable to sleep because of the heat, and wondering whether translating a bit of Anglo-Saxon poetry would get me out of my lengthening barren spell. I think the majority of people who did my degree resented having to spend such a lot of time on Anglo-Saxon, but I always [...]
shook foil
8 July 2006 – 10:02 am
I know why the phrase ‘like shining from shook foil’ is in my head — because I was putting some foil over a dish of coronation chicken. More peculiar is the other thing that’s been going around my head this morning:
“Bush and Saddam sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G”.
I think it’s unlikely that either of [...]
In Praise of Shadows
6 July 2006 – 8:47 am
‘Modern man, in his well-lit house, knows nothing of the beauty of gold…’
From Junichirō Tanizaki’s In Praise of Shadows, an essay from 1933 discussing the importance of lighting in traditional Japanese aesthetics. The gold, the lacquer, Nō theatre, even Japanese make-up are all, he suggests, dependent for their effect on low, indirect lighting; bright light [...]
Big Chief Elizabeth
28 May 2006 – 12:48 am
I just read Big Chief Elizabeth – How England’s Adventurers Gambled and Won the New World, by Giles Milton. As the title suggests, it’s an account of the earliest attempts to set up an English settlement in America. As the title also suggests, the general tone of the thing is ‘rollicking yarn’ rather than ‘nuanced [...]
Intellectuals, science, and the English Channel
7 May 2006 – 9:59 am
Something Todd Swift said pointed me to an article in the Guardian about the lack of public intellectuals in Britain, written by Agnès Poirier, a French journalist working in London. It’s worth reading just for the culture-clash exhibited in the comments.
I noticed that the unspoken assumption, from both sides of the argument, was inevitably that [...]
poetry madness
27 April 2006 – 6:32 pm
Taking out a copy of his grandfather’s Varsity Rag album, he mixed Death in Leamington into the Josh Wink dance hit Higher State of Consciousness.
You couldn’t make it up. A mind-boggling article about John Betjemen in the Guardian.
MAKE, folk art, and postpoems.com
16 March 2006 – 1:46 am
I love MAKE: Blog. Not because I actually want to make my own automated cocktail dispenser or LED tank-top that plays Conway’s Game of Life, or even an iPod Nano arcade cabinet. But I love the fact that there are people who do these things. A while ago, I went to the Folk Archive exhibition [...]
Hummingbird names
15 March 2006 – 12:23 am
Roddy has a list of some interesting names of birds found in India over at Vitamin Q. I can’t resist adding some of the species of hummingbird found in Venezuela:
Glowing Puffleg
Mountain Velvetbreast
Lazuline Sabrewing
Golden-bellied Starfrontlet
Spangled Coquette
Gorgetted Woodstar
Forktailed Woodnymph
White-necked Jacobin
Fiery Topaz
White-vented Plumeleteer
Black-eared Fairy
White-bearded Hermit
Pale-tailed Barbthroat
Booted Racket-tail
Sapphire-spangled Emerald
Merida Sunangel
Green-breated Mango
And that’s without even getting into all the non-hummingbird [...]
Well done Rob
12 March 2006 – 11:34 am
The reason I was up at City Hall on Friday was to see Rob Mackenzie pick up his cheque for being commended in the National Poetry Competition. I believe the winners are due to be announced today in the Independent, but I can’t find them on the website. The Poetry Society are putting them up [...]
The Lipstick of Noise
9 March 2006 – 3:09 pm
Poetry MP3 blog The Lipstick of Noise is back up and running.
web design stuff
6 February 2006 – 4:37 pm
The more time I spend thinking about web design, the more easily irritated I am. Take Spork. Look at that lovely, stylish, front cover: it manages to have something of a print aesthetic without being heavy-handed, and it’s clear, simple and eye-catching. Classy.
But then you click on the names, and the links open as new [...]
Hypergraphia for Poetry in an Epileptic Patient
26 January 2006 – 9:27 pm
I got this link from somewhere - Bookslut, maybe? - but anyway, it’s a letter to The Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences.
An epileptic patient “complained of being driven to write poetry. For 5 years, he experienced words as ‘continuously rhyming in his head’ and felt the need to write them down and show [...]