Year: 2012

Bring on the poems…

Sue Watling Poetry and Higher Education , ,

The Council for the Defence of British Universities  have formed a coalition to defend universities against the erosion of academic freedom and the marketisation of higher education. They are highlighting the lack of space in the curriculum for ideas.

There’s no better way to introduce creative and critical thinking than poetry.

Too many people say they don’t like poetry but this often derives from misconceptions of what poetry is. Too much early exposure to historical poets writing in different times and cultures can be off-putting. Poetry needs a new image. Song lyrics are poetry set to music as are hip hop and reggae. Advertising and marketing slogans are poetry. If education is about stretching boundaries and having different ways of looking at the world, then education needs to include poetry.

Poetry offers alternative ways of seeing, subversion with language, opportunities to try doing something differently, being brave, being creative, having fun.

Poetry is the search for original imaginative use of metaphors, similes  clichés. In poetry, every word matters; it teaches vocabulary, editing, rhythm, structure. What’s not to like?  Sites like Poetry Archive  and The Poetry Foundation offer free access to poetry. It’s the only way forward. Bring on the poems.

visual or oral, how do you prefer yours?

Sue Watling Uncategorized ,

Is poetry best read in solitude or listened to in public?  How do you prefer yours? Visual? Audio? The Guardian piece Deconstructing poetry on the radio asks if discussing poetry can make a good radio programmes.  This raises interesting questions about interpretation and resonance. Is the potential effect of a poem diluted by not having the visual structure and word pattern on the page? Do assonance and alliteration benefit most from sound or vision? Or does it all depend on the poem or poet?

Radio 4’s Poetry Workshop returned on Sunday 4th November. In it, Ruth Padel travels around the country visiting local poetry groups and inviting people to read aloud their poems for discussion.  It’s a bit like a book club but you bring your own work. The application to DIY to poetry education. ‘Fathers’ was the theme for poems in the first programme while the technical issue was ‘line breaks’. Prose rarely have to worry about line breaks but when it comes to rhyme and rhythm the line break takes on an importance of its own. Removing or adding line breaks can change not only the look but also the feel of a poem whether it’s on the page or being recited.  Poetry Workshop offers free access to auditory power of poetry and is well worth the experience.  Broadcast at 4.30pm on Sundays, it’s repeated at 11.30pm the following Saturday or available on iplayer

Maintaining ‘Thresholds’

Sue Watling Raising Poetic Awareness , ,

Thresholds is part of the University of Cambridge Festival of Ideas. Ten poets will each spend two weeks in residence at ten Cambridge museums early next year.  Here they will meet researchers and explore the collections before writing poems inspired by the experience.  The poets are and their residencies are:

  • Sean Borodale – Museum of Classical Archaeology;
  • Gillian Clarke – Museum of Zoology;
  • Imtiaz Dharker – Cambridge University Library;
  • Ann Gray – Cambridge University Botanic Garden;
  • Matthew Hollis – The Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences;
  • Jackie Kay – Kettle’s Yard;
  • Daljit Nagra – Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology;
  • Don Paterson – Whipple Museum of the History of Science;
  • Joe Shapcott – The Polar Museum;
  • Owen Sheers – The Fitzwilliam Museum.

It sounds like a useful way of raising awareness of poetry but ten poets at ten museums across the country – with some publicly available workshops – would be far more effective.

Poetry is like philosophy in that it involves bringing together fundamental ideas and viewpoints on life. It needs to shake off its cloak of academia colours so it’s a shame Thresholds restricts all that poetic excellence in one place – which happens to be archetypically  academic anyway.

Product Design meets Poetry and Prose

Sue Watling Uncategorized , ,

In a project called Out of the Woods, students on the Design Products MA at the Royal College of Arts, London, were asked to design a chair from American hardwood. The chairs were on display at the London 2012 Design Festival and then writers coordinated Tiffany Murray, an international fellow for the Telegraph Hay Festival were invited to create stories or poems about them. A free book called Out of the Woods, Adventures of Twelve Hardwood Chairs and containing the poetry and prose, has been issued by the RCA and can be accessed here  http://www.americanhardwood.org/videos-images-publications/publications/

Shortlist for T S Eliot Prize for Poetry

Sue Watling Uncategorized

Simon Armitage The Death of King Arthur (Faber)

Sean Borodale Bee Journal  (Jonathan Cape)

Gillian Clarke Ice (Carcanet)

Julia Copus The World’s Two Smallest Humans (Faber)

Paul Farley The Dark Film (Picador)

Jorie Graham P L A C E (Carcanet)

Kathleen Jamie The Overhaul (Picador)

Sharon Olds Stag’s Leap Jonathan (Cape)

Jacob Polley The Havocs (Picador)

Deryn Rees-Jones Burying the Wren (Seren)

For further information visit http://poetrybooks.co.uk/news/282/2012_t_s_eliot_prize_shortlist_announced/