Oxford Poetry Library

A crowded evening at This Is Just To Say: spoken word open mic: about 50 people all told: 16 readers + a guest poet, Em Pritchard. Em was great: finely observed, personal and well tuned pieces about life in between. I read last in the first half. In the audience were two of the poets … Continue reading Oxford Poetry Library

Feral Angels: wild

Tom Hirons runs the regular on-line Feral Angels Poetry Cafe. (https://tomhirons.com/events/feral-angels/feral-angels-poetry-cafe-february-26th-2023) This week the theme was: How does wildness exhibit itself in form and use of language - in how we put words on a page? That wildness we are pointing to, we are trying to bring that wildness into our poetry. What wildness? To find it, first ask, where can you be wild in your life?

Small cosmos: virtual hypertext

Sometimes poems are not ABOUT one thing. But, I cannot say they simply ARE; the mere fact of their existence counts for little. It is not enough that a collection of words gets splattered on a page. I think of a poem as a small cosmos. Poems are both LIKE a small cosmos as well … Continue reading Small cosmos: virtual hypertext

FloPk Open Mic 19 Feb ’23

I had an opportunity to read four poems this afternoon. Alan, who hosted and featured in one of the acts playing Hendrix tunes with his son on drums, said there had been 13 acts. I was the only spoken word.

Back at the Catweazle Club 09 Feb 2023 – the beat rolls on

Catweazle is important to my development as a poet.

The poet: A wilfully unmediating existential context?

Contemporary poetry often runs the risk of being too academic and not enough of the world. The poet needs to be a wilfully unmediating place for poetry to be drawn from a globally local collective conscious. Either the force exerted by poems must be immediate, direct and great or, like the butterfly wings of chaos, … Continue reading The poet: A wilfully unmediating existential context?