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

The magic in poetry is that not only is a poem LIKE a cosmos, it can BE, maybe simply, IS a cosmos of reader, hearer, speaker, writer, words, sounds, spaces, histories, intentions, interpretations, meanings, etc. Every poem carries its shadow and illuminates third spaces. There is a lot of dark matter under and behind and dark energy throughout.

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.

It is about working in poetry

Mick Heron refers to "...anything for a sausage roll poets." A nod to (or at) the futile? Of course, he is right. But, I can make my own sausage rolls and do not need to compete with BAe or BP for a seriously-beyond-sausage-roll piece of the public purse to grift my my writing. So it … Continue reading It is about working in poetry

thelastpoet

Writing postcards in a brown bar a long time ago. Hello and welcome. I am curating back pages, working on new poetry as Peaceful here. On SoundCloud, I am thelastpoet. thelastpoet · Another story

Calibrating? Connecting? Consistently? (1)

On one level. that is what we do. All the time. We are planners, time and distance travellers. How much? Will it get us there? Every time? That is what we mean. But where is the "there" to which we want to get? And for whom do we want to get there? And who we? … Continue reading Calibrating? Connecting? Consistently? (1)

Get back on the horse

I have stumbled back over my place for writing and this is a surprise for me. I remember him! I last posted here two and a half years ago and retired from full-time paid academic work a few months later (August 2020), as the Covid lockdowns in the UK were being violated by Boris Johnson's … Continue reading Get back on the horse

Cottage weavers

In another twist to the spiral curriculum thrown up in discussions triggered by the responses to Covid-19, we learn once again that things come round again, but different. In Britain much heavy and primary industry has moved off the islands, where logistics, marketing and finance networks continue to make it uneconomic either: To engage in … Continue reading Cottage weavers