Poetry Forum

'I know the embrowning ferns, the last blooms of heather'. The eroticism is lost at this point, I think. The reason is that when I got to this line i visualised old misery-guts, TS Elliot. Maybe if you changed 'I know'

I don’t catch the 21 into Town, passing the shops on London Road, selling value for money and crying out to me like the homeless woman cadging the price of her next can of Special Brew. I no longer take the short clamber up Hardman Street, that drains and claims a little more of the energy that I fi...

You're right Brian. I guess that 'recognised' is a stupid word to use as people never 'recognise' their engagement with the arts as anything more than an involvement. I guess that the dialogue that I mention takes place with an abstraction that is mankind as a whole. That doesn't mean that all the w...

What exactly does "spiritual awareness" mean? Spirituality is that which defines the individual's relationship to the rest of humankind. Some find the awareness through arts or science or religion of even sports. Some may well find it in the banality of the everyday. The awareness is simp...

I discovered Catullus when I was a school kid. A few of us were aware that this Roman poet wrote a lot of racey stuff that had swearing in it. So off we went to find the evidence and thus began a love for the work but also a love for Latin, which was considered a dead language that only toffs learne...

E, Thanks for responding. You raise some interesting points . I’m not all that familiar with the work of Eluard but I do know of Locra and Neradu. Both showed some support for political causes and that would find its way into their works and there is nothing strange in that; life experience provides...

Is this one you've performed in and around the city? It would be difficult to do it justice off the written page, I'd have thought, but it must strike a chord. I havn't read it out yet though that was a consideration when i was putting it together. I'll find out pretty soon. A couple of people have...

ray miller wrote:The astonishing thing, for me, is that a judge actually made that remark.

Sadly, I no longer find it suprising. I think the same contemptuous sentiment has become common coinage in Britain these days, even in the so-called liberal press like the Guardian.

PS...you may have intended them, but to me the dots are a distraction. Do you realise you can (sort of) supress them by colouring them as the background? It helps the reader. Thanks Mate! I would never have thought of that. This is how it should look. I call the form dunmono which translates as 'st...

No different than the Zhdanov years or the Blair years? Or are you claiming equivalence? Whilst Blair did not threaten Duffy with the gulag there was an expectation that the she should toe the line. Duffy, in essence, did a Gorky (though Duffy could never attain a fraction of that man's greatness)....

Thanks for the feedback. Brian you are spot on. That said, I hummed and haahed over this because the lines of this poem are taken from witness statements given to the enquiry into the Hillborough Disater. I've never attempted a 'found poem' before though I've loved Charles Reznikoff's 'found poems' ...

Well, this is excellent. i don't care for hip-hop and rap that's produced these day. I disagree with Raincoat, this does captures both the style of that approach as well as the indignation of the original. I don't know if you are familiar with Zukofsky's transliterations, but this seems to be in the...

Fascinating stuff, eh? You'll have to forgive me, I'm just a foreign language nerd. David We have that in common David. No, I wasn't upset just a bit bemused. The lines that you quote strike me as the best lines in the translation (I stupidily started out using a dictionary and then went on-line to...

I'm not sure about what David means the two lines he quoted make perfect sense to me (and I don't know what he means by 'slim volume'. Anyhow I don't speak Italian and really only am aware of the sound of the language. I'm not not sure that a fluency with the language is that important. Don Patterso...

“Have you got a few of your people or are they like the Liverpool fans, turn up at the last minute?” [tab][/tab][Lord Justice Stuart-Smith to a bereaved father] [tab] .......... [/tab]the cheap branding of [tab] ..... [/tab]to know that so many lives were [tab][/tab]a nightmare from which there cou...

" Poetry can bring to the fore conditions in need of change. This is not about being American or Middle Eastern or any other ethnic. It's about the brutalization of women where justice can depend on the intuition of a judge. I write about what moves me. Don't we all? Cheers and thanks! E E, Wh...

There was a group called Hothouse Flowers back in the 80s. They had a song called 'I'm Sorry'. This reminded me of them. The song was a lot shorter than this and a lot less musical as well.

This cries out to be put on the i player Brian.

I think the rhyme and metre in the 7th couplet is too far out. I thought that stanza is a bit of humour (not that the rest of the poem is dour, mind you). I like that you have used this structure to create that 'heroic' feel about visiting the dentist. Great poem Ben. By the way it is ev-er-y. Thre...

It’s a big issue about translations. I really think that the ‘translator’ should see their version as their own poem. I have a bilingual collection of Eugenio Montales poems and your translation is nothing like the translation I have (which maintains the structure of the original). This is a word-fo...

Ros, I really fell for this one. It's a poem that uses its subject as a metaphor really well and I found that I was thinking of poetry writing/reading rather than music playing. I love the title. The use of 'strange' as the opening line is great, it acts as a beckoning gesture really well. trhe enja...

Brenden, This isn’t the sort of narrative that fits well with poetry. That may account for Clara saying that it reads like prose. Unlike Clara I can’t see much poetical in the second poem. And I think Easter 1916 is the worst thing that Yeats ever wrote. Whilst I appreciate the amount of work that w...

The Echo poetry is a parochial expression but I think that I have alluded to the fact that the 'Echo' refers to the local newspaper, The Liverpool Echo. The poems that they print are emotional or humorous or both and intend to on the empathy of the reader. In my work with North End Writers I have me...

JR I've come back to this poem a couple of times today, and I think it is perfect. It reminds me of painting, especially a mural with so many images. It is a poem that shouldn't be experienced to find meaning, I think that the different approaches (wordplay, alliteration, etc.) are the important thi...

This is an article that is being put forward for publishing to promote National Poetry Day in the UK on 7th October. It ties in, somewhat, with the poet as polemicist issue that arose out of emuse's The Art Of Stonin g on the experience poetry thread: Once again National Poetry Day is upon us and po...

Ray I like this very much but I think it could do without the sestets. I don't they balance the poem because of the first person use in the first and the second person use in the latter. But more than that, I think that they give too much away. trust in the reader/listener to make sense of the poem....