An occasional series looking in detail at how a poem achieves its effects. This time, Ben Parker‘s “One Place” from 2012’s The Escape Artists, quoted below by kind permission of the author. Continue reading
Monthly Archives: June 2014
Visions and Revisions
Last week an editor I like and respect asked for edits to two of my poems to correct for a couple of minor blemishes. In both cases the eventual changes were small, but for one of them it transformed the poem. A few comfortable words got excised and I found some less comfortable ones to replace them. In the process, the tone of the whole thing shifted (for the better). Objectively this is unsurprising, but I still found it odd how a small tweak at the end projected back into the rest of the poem and altered the extant rest-of-it.
By chance I then stumbled across a more profound example of the same thing in Geoffrey Hill’s early poem “In Memory of Jane Fraser”. Continue reading
Close Reading: The Revenant
An occasional series looking in detail at how a poem achieves its effects. This time, Fiona Sampson’s haunting “Sonnet Seven – The Revenant” from Coleshill, quoted below by kind permission of the author. Continue reading
Andrew McNeillie and Peter McDonald at the Albion Beatnik
The Albion Beatnik bookshop on Walton Street has become one of the most prolific live poetry venues in Oxford, with owner Dennis Harrison serving up so many high-quality poetry evenings that it’s getting easier to count the good poets who haven’t yet read there. Without exception I’ve enjoyed every Albion Beatnik event I’ve been to and am looking forward to a lot more in the future.
On Friday a group of us went to hear Andrew McNeillie and Peter McDonald in a well-matched double-act. Continue reading
The Saboteur Awards 2014
Having ineptly triple-booked myself I was only able to make the first 90 mins of yesterday’s Saboteur awards. This meant I missed a great line-up of printed poets that I really wanted to hear (not to mention the evening awards ceremony), but did at least catch the afternoon Spoken Word session. Continue reading