National Poetry Day

I'm not doing anything much on NPD this year, but if you're in or around London on Thursday October 7th, this free poetry event is going on most of the afternoon at the Southbank Centre. 

Poetry Society and Southbank Centre presents

National Poetry Day Live

Thursday 7 October 2010

2pm-6.15pm

Free event

For the second year running, the Poetry Society has organised this lively event for National Poetry Day together with the Southbank Centre. Once again the event is entirely free. All welcome, including groups.
Discover poetry in the foyers and hidden corners of the Royal Festival Hall, and make yourself at home in the Clore Ballroom for live performances by a host of poetry’s famous names and rising stars. The day’s events are hosted by Ross Sutherland & Caroline Bird, featuring:

• Simon Armitage, Jane Draycott, Ian Duhig, Luke Kennard, Daljit Nagra
• Lemn Sissay performing Coleridge’s ‘Ancient Mariner’
• Joelle Taylor & SLAMbassadors
• Former Foyle Young Poets: Jay Bernard, Swithun Cooper, Holly Hopkins, Sarah Howe & Laura Seymour
• Forward Prize Poets: Robin Robertson, Fiona Sampson & Jo Shapcott

'Getting Published’- a Poetry Review workshop ♦ Foyle Young Poets of the Year ♦ ‘Pick a Poem’ ♦
Folk in a Box presents ‘Poetry in a Box’ ♦ Screening of Postcards from Home ♦ Prescriptions & quizzes

Venue: Royal Festival Hall foyers & Clore Ballroom, Southbank Centre, London SE1.

For more information visit www.poetrysociety.org.uk

"Villains" for National Poetry Day

It's National Poetry Day, and the theme this year was "Heroes and Heroines". The problem for me is that writing a poem about a heroic character is akin to writing the straight man in a comedy; it's hard to be inspired, and the result is often a little flat and tricky to deliver with any conviction.

Now villains ... those fit the dark art of poetry far better. Look at Milton's Lucifer!

And the day begins with the news that at last night's Forward Prizes (already dubbed Backward by some wag), Don Paterson's collection Rain (Faber) won the Prize for Best Collection, Emma Jones (also, um, Faber) won the Best First Collection with her Striped World, and, as Rob MacKenzie put it this morning, The Best Poem category was 'won by the editor at Cape who is published by Picador, where the poetry editor is the winner of the Best Collection.'

So, is it time yet for a revolution?

What we need on the ground is a public symbol of such cosy interdependences, some kind of Bastille to storm. Though even if there was one, and we stormed it, there'd probably only be a few copies of past Faber collections in there to liberate.

Warwick Poet Laureate!

Tonight I was crowned - literally, with a laurel wreath! - Poet Laureate for Warwick, at the launch ceremony for the 2007 Warwick Words Festival. Much wine was consumed and a few poems were recited to a crowd of Warwick Festival Friends and local dignitaries. The two runners-up were Catherine Whittaker from Claverdon and Lucy Aphramor from Kenilworth, both of whom were there at the launch to read their poems.

To celebrate such a momentous evening, I had this 'official' photograph taken, and may even, at some point in the future, swop it for the rather sardonic one currently presiding over this blog. Though since I strongly prefer sardonic to matronly, that may never happen.



One of my duties as Warwick Poet Laureate - it's an annual post - will be to 'blog' about my activities as the year progresses. I've yet to decide whether that would happen here on Raw Light or whether a separate Laureate blog is in order. Knowing my love of 'new' blogs, I imagine it will be the latter, but I'll have to consult on that - and a suitable title for the blog! - with my new colleagues at Warwick Words before anything is finalised.

Warwick Words Festival 2007 has now started in earnest and will be running over this weekend, with places still available at a few readings and workshops etc. There are also some open mic sessions and a Slam!

For full details and to book, visit www.warwickwords.co.uk.

Happy National Poetry Day 2007, and congratulations to Sean O'Brien, Daljit Nagra and Alice Oswald for their well-deserved wins in the Forward Prizes - just announced!

Dreams: National Poetry Day 2007

Researching the 2007 National Poetry Day theme of 'Dreams' this week, I came across a rich new verse translation by Mark Leech of the Old English poem The Dream of the Rood, a translation which in 2004 won him First Prize in the The Times Stephen Spender Prize for poetry translation.

I found Leech's translation a very sensuous and enjoyable poem, but regretted the odd dip into what might be considered archaic language, feeling that words like 'wondrous', 'laden' and the repeated 'bliss' and 'blissful', whilst true to the original and perfectly good in their own right, might have been better laid aside for a more contemporary feel to what is, after all, a timeless subject: the dramatic and powerful story of the cross of Christ, in its own words, as narrated to a dreamer.

You can find Mark Leech's prize-winning translation of this ancient Christian poem, with facing text Anglo-Saxon, at the Stephen Spender Memorial Trust website.

It's an excellent poetry competition to think of entering if you go in for translating poetry, by the way. Which I know several of my readers do ...