Performance Poetry
Burning Books – hiding in plain view?
Last year I did a reading for Nottingham Poetry Festival in which I produced a small ‘polemical’ pamphlet called ‘Burning Books’. The pamphlet was a one off and most of the poems after ‘outing’ in paper form were then hidden away as ‘too political’ for my readers by myself! I censored myself which crazy but…
Man With No Name – poetry V song
An authentic?( Adrian Slatcher)song that is a poem in disguise written in mid 1980s when I harboured ambitions to be the English Nick Cave 🙂 The song ok the ambition a little over ambitious:-) The war in question is the Falklands and the story true my step-grandad died of a heart attack in his pantry…
Songs as Poems – Poems as Songs – Substitute already written?
Poem or Song or poetry by other means….???? ‘Un-American Way’ 1999… UN-AMERICAN WAY Did you hear the guns a rattling out on the Kentucky hills As mud spattered up from your prison truck’s wheels Did you smile every day as you washed the days away Imprisoned for having nothing to say?* Did you dream in…
Substitute : New volume of poems 2018
Sometimes all it needs is a trigger and Kit de Waal’s excellent piece in the Guardian yesterday brought together a lot of things for me that been bubbling under the surface. Her article ‘Make room for working-class writers‘ touched a nerve….. read it here https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/feb/10/kit-de-waal-where-are-all-the-working-class-writers- Also she made a comment about how the Proper v Performance…
Sexism, Elitism or old fashioned Class War? : How poetry builds barriers to protect middle class dominance.
Sisters are doing it for themselves? A recent piece of ‘criticism’ in PN Review by Rebecca Watts has caused a storm of controversy apparently. PNR is an adjunct to the long established and firmly modernist Carcanet Press which has long been one of the jewels in Arts Council funded poetry publishing in the UK alongside…