dumbfoundry

"Can there be any explanation other than this when a 17-year-old youth enters our bookshop asking for 'The Complete Works of Byron,' or when a blonde girl no older than 15 says she is searching for the poems of Shelley?

In a decade of book-selling, this has never happened before. Suddenly we are buying poetry books again to meet demand, and retrieving the slim poetry books we relegated to boxes in the basement to create a special poetry section."

...from Sheila Murphy:

"Good morning, all! K.S. (Kathy) Ernst and I have conferred about upcoming projects regarding the presentation of female visual poets. We are looking to build a database of contact information for women on several continents, so that we may look at what is possible relative to exhibitions (likely, a traveling exhibition initially) and books that would go with same..."

"Paul Muldoon performed at the Edinburgh Book festival on Saturday and was everything I expected – witty, warm and confident. He was good at delivering his poems, slow without being too slow, and able to speak clearly with just the right emphasis on each word. He gave the impression that every word mattered intimately, which should be the case in any poem."

When the author and critic A N Wilson launched his biography of John Betjeman on the centenary of the poet's birth he did so with great fanfare. [...]

One of the revelations of Wilson's book included the discovery of a passionate love letter that the poet laureate had apparently written to a mistress.

But that apparently astonishing discovery has now become a crushing embarrassment after an admission by the author that he had fallen victim to an elaborate "hoax". [...]

The capital letters at the beginning of each sentence spell the message: "A N Wilson is a shit". [...]

[...] The letter first came to light about two years ago as Wilson was researching the biography.

In a covering note, someone signing herself (or himself) “Eve de Harben”, with the address Résidence de la Mer, Avenue de la Plage, Roquebrune on the Côte D’Azur, wrote that she had received the letter from her father, a cousin of Tracy. Tracy herself died in 1989.

De Harben sent a typed copy of the letter. The original, according to the note, had been sold to an American collector of Betjemania. [...]

The attention of The Sunday Times was drawn to the hoax a few days ago when a journalist also received a letter from de Harben.

It had the same French address and the same story that she had married a Frenchman. In the letter, de Harben confessed the love letter she had sent to Wilson was “spurious”.

She had made the whole thing up — including the rude message — to avenge an attack which Wilson himself had made some years ago on Humphrey Carpenter, a “dear friend of mine”. Carpenter was himself a distinguished biographer and book reviewer for The Sunday Times.

This explanation, however, appears to be yet another spoof. Carpenter’s widow Mari said this weekend she had never heard of de Harben. She also said Wilson and Carpenter had patched up their differences not long before her husband’s death.

Despite the French address, the padded envelope containing the letter was postmarked “west London” and a tiny sticker on the back indicated it had been bought at Warren & Son, a stationer in Winchester, which happens to be Hillier’s home city.

Hillier, however, was insistent. He said: “This isn’t the sort of lark I do . . . I am not guilty. But it is very Betjemanesque.”

He may deny involvement in the hoax, but Hillier does not like Wilson. “The man is despicable,” he said. [...]

'KASUR: The 249th annual Urs of mystic poet Hazrat Baba Bulleh Shah is starting here on Saturday (today).

The Urs will conclude on Aug 28. DCO Hashim Tareen has announced a local holiday in the district.

Meanwhile, DPO Syed Ahmad Mobeen told newsmen that the district police had made arrangements to prevent any untoward incident.

He said 16 closed-circuit televisions had been installed at the shrine and 600 policemen would be deployed in two shifts.

Mysterious is the turn of time. The man who had been refused by the mullahs to be buried after his death in the community graveyard because of his unorthodox views, today enjoys worldwide reverence and recognition. [...]

Thiruvananthapuram: Malayalam poet and scholar K. Ayyappa Panicker died at a private hospital here yesterday. He was 77.

He had been under treatment in a private hospital for lung ailments for two weeks.

Panicker has influenced the literary and cultural tastes of the people of Kerala for over six decades, since he published his first poem when he was 15. He also made his mark as a literary critic and was a visiting professor to nearly 20 Indian and foreign universities. [...]

'Don't Try."

So reads Charles Bukowski's gravestone - a last absurdist, deadpan joke from the prolific American author who had 50 books in print when he died in 1994 at age 74. [...]

Bukowski is often incorrectly associated with the Beats, a group of great American writers of the 1950s and 1960s. But he has far better been dubbed a deadbeat poet, a gruff, wisecracking, fast-talking working-class Los Angeleno whose stories captured life at the corner of Skid Row and Despair.

That sour smell - lifelong failure spiced with artistic ambition - is perfectly captured by Norwegian director Bent Hamer's felicitous adaptation of the German-born author's semiautobiographical film, Factotum. [...]

TOMORROW is the centenary of the birth of Sir John Betjeman, Poet Laureate and celebrant of suburbia. The occasion has provoked a blizzard of Betjemania in the media...

Monday sees the 100th anniversary of the birth of a poet who above all represents a certain kind of harmonious Englishness. In the world of John Betjeman, electric trains are lighted after tea; trifle is sufficient for sweet (but only among the lower-middle classes); and Miss J Hunter Dunn combines the speed of a swallow with the grace of a boy on the tennis court.

No such harmony exists between John Betjeman's biographers, however. AN Wilson, novelist, journalist and author of the highly rated book The Victorians, has written a new life of the poet, simply called Betjeman. But Bevis Hillier, who worked for 25 years on his three-volume authorised version, seems unhappy about Wilson's encroachment on to his "patch". [...]

MEDICINE SHOW IS SOLICITING

SHORT VERSE PLAYS

(METERED OR FREE, RHYMED OR NOT)
for
Houseful of Poets [...]

...A real-life gun-toting poet may be a rarity, but [the United Liberation Front of Asom] can boast of having one on its rolls.

A heady mix of finesse of thought and hardness of work is found in ULFA's 'central publicity secretary' Mithinga Daimary, whose collection of poetry would feature in this year's Frankfurt Book Fair, where India is the 'guest of honour'.

"we are seeking innovative, tradition-defying work in multiple genres: poetry, microfiction, and essays on topics poetical, cultural and political. work of uncategorized form is also of interest -- please query."

Calling all Internet-only journals! Sundress Publications is putting together a yearly anthology of the "Best of the Net". This project will work to promote the diverse and growing collection of voices that are choosing to publish their work online, a venue that still sees little respect from such yearly anthologies as the Pushcart and "Best American" series. This collection will hopefully help to bring more respect to an innovative and continually expanding medium.

Dear Bin Ramke,

If Martin Arnold on page 2 of your current issue (Vol.37, No.3) ended his poem ('The Thank You Amputations') by saying something like "April ain't the cruelest month," I imagine that neither he nor you would presumably feel it necessary to mention Eliot/Wasteland/etc.——

But since his last line there on page 2 ("But it matters what your thank you's amputate") seems to be refuting an obscure line ("And it doesn't matter what the thankyou amputates") from an obscure poem in an obscure book ('Poem,' p. 23, "Auto-Necrophilia," 1971) by an obscure poet (me), shouldn't he, in your editorial judgement, somehow indicate that arcane/recondite source?

We're looking for chapbooks to offer as prizes in monthly challenges on The Waters.

For a mini-anthology of poems inspired by/responding to/related to Allen Ginsberg's poem 'Death on All Fronts' and/or the various wars/insurgencies/etc. going on in the world today [...]

The poems submitted may be either previously published or unpublished and brand-new. We cannot, though, seek or pay for reprint permissions from publishers.

There’s even a saying: the sex is better at Yaddo but the work is better at MacDowell. But attendees report plenty of intrigue at both.

William Butler Yeats, the Irish versifier, called Brooke 'the handsomest man in England'. Accounts of him describe his sky-blue eyes, athletic build and easeful gait. He certainly had his female admirers, among them Virginia Woolf, but he was open to persuasion from members of both sexes. The thought gives a certain piquancy to Shelley's line: 'On a poet's lips I slept'.

Walking the London Scene by Sydney R. Davies offers "five walks in the footsteps of the Beat Generation". As if fearful at the last minute that the Beats’ footsteps in London might be difficult to decipher, Mr Davies adds a cover line: "Including links to the Beatles". The links include the information that Paul McCartney once played the acetate of Rubber Soul to William Burroughs (response not known), and that John Lennon arrived at a party, saw Allen Ginsberg with underpants on his head, and left (this was pre-Yoko). [...]

[...] The actual exhumation of the grave, in October 1869, only gave that restlessness a wider and more complicated circulation. Rossetti did not attend the event, but followed its progress closely. The recovery of his poems, poems which are "as I may say, dead stock", set loose a mix of morbid fear and guilt which would run for years. A briefly mooted, then suppressed, suggestion that he might dedicate the volume to Janey Morris reinforces the undercurrent of plunder and betrayal. These grave-goods, Rossetti knew at some level, were a way of stealing from one woman to give to another.

Little of this inner turmoil, however, is verbally apparent. Even during the event, the letters appear all sense and practicalities. The "rough grey calf" cover of the manuscript – not, Rossetti explained, to be confused with the copy of the Bible also in the grave – had to be recovered, disinfected and then carefully transcribed, in spite of, as he puts it, "a great worm-hole right through every page" of "Jenny". He sends a vivid drawing of that hole to William Michael, showing the precise proportions. "It has a dreadful smell", he warns him of the whole. The few friends in the know were sworn to secrecy, although, Dante Gabriel guessed, in a word which touches a bit too closely on the physics of the event, "the truth must ooze out in time". [...]

Good news, everyone! No more fretting over how to spend the next month! It’s the Illustrated Poem Marathon, coming to you courtesy of Laurelines, and here’s the idea: you create a piece of visual art inspired by poetry. It could be a whole poem, a few lines, or just a few words. It could be written by you or by someone else. It could be written by someone who wasn’t even aware they were writing poetry.

Your work could be a literal illustration of the words of the poem, or could be simply inspired by them. You could be a skilled artist or a total novice. Here’s the important part: this isn’t a contest. There is no judging. The point isn’t to see who’s better than whom. The point is to experience this particular activity. To think about how you would express yourself visually in response to words. And to see all the different ways other people respond, too. And having experienced this, you will go out into the world a better person, performing good works and improving the condition of humanity. Hey, it could happen. (Plus, you’ll have to pay more attention to poetry, never a bad thing.)

Okay, what you do is this. Make your picture. Either make it digitally or scan it or photograph it or whatever, just get it on your computer. Then post it to your blog or website or MySpace page or Flickr account, along with the relevant bit of poetry, and send me an email telling me where it is. It’s just that simple. And, as always, if you have no place to post it to, attach it to an email to me (wally at wallytorta dot com) and I’ll post it here (although there are any number of places out there, such as MySpace and Flickr, where you can have your own place to post stuff, for FREE! This is what Web 2.0 is all about.) Do this as many or as few times as you like–unlike the Self-P Marathon, it’s not part of the process to do it over and over again.

So put on your thinking caps or your thinking underpants or whatever it takes, and get cracking. And people . . . be careful out there.

"I didn't want to set a particular myth, but I wanted a mythic flavour, and I knew for that I needed a poet."

To find one, MacRae resorted to a technique common among composers unfamiliar with the literary scene: he dipped into poetry books in his local bookshop. There he discovered Simon Armitage, the earthy, streetwise chronicler of Northern urban life.

...the world of poetry seems like a secret place. Gwyn Thomas, the National Poet of Wales, offers some tips on how to get in

Dear Friend of Octopus,

We are excited to announce the contents of our upcoming chapbook issue, Octopus #8. As you might already know this issue will consist of eight separately printed & bound chapbooks presented as a single issue. We received over three hundred submissions among which were so many exciting manuscripts. After a blind reading process the editorial board and we chose these eight amazing chapbooks...

SOME of the earliest poems written by the poet Ted Hughes have come to light – 50 years after he copied them into the exercise books of a Yorkshire schoolgirl.

The two love poems were written by the former Poet Laureate in a book kept by Enid Wilkin when he used to visit her home in the village of Patrington, East Yorkshire, where he was on national service with the RAF in the early 1950s.

Enid, now Mrs Enid Bates, thought they were marvellously romantic, but when she showed them to her teacher at Malet Lambert School, in Hull, he was less than impressed: "He said that it was rubbish — that it was someone trying to emulate Shakespeare."

The retired social worker decided to sell them through antiquarian bookseller Alex Alec-Smith, from Winestead, and accepted an offer of £2,000 from Emory University, in Atlanta, Georgia, which already holds his archive. [...]

The published poetry scene actually needs an injection of alternative histories, cultures and stories. Haven't we had enough of the same old same old: my childhood memories; my mildly dysfunctional parents; my repressed grandparents; Greek myths; my last lover; my new lover; my love of nature; more Greek myths; my holidays in foreign lands.

Australia's poets are at it again
Fighting when they should be friends
Sending each other wild emails
Swearing death with fierce details.

...

The idea of John Betjeman as the lyricist of Middle England - celebrating old churches, evensong and country tea rooms - suffered a considerable jolt yesterday when an extract from a forthcoming biography of the poet claimed he was "a compulsive philanderer who had a secret 'second wife' and boasted of a gay fling with a top Labour politician". [...]

The celebrated African poet Professor Mazizi Kunene has died, the SABC reported on Saturday.

Kunene died in Durban after a long illness. He was 76. In 2005 Kunene was awarded the inaugural SA National Poet Laureate Prize, the M-Net Literary Awards Lifetime Achievement Award and recognised as a National Living Treasure by the Indigenous Knowledge Systems of SA.

He is widely viewed as a prominent exponent of the written Zulu word. [...]

The National Cowboy Poetry Gathering is a week-long celebration of life in the rural West, featuring the contemporary and traditional arts that arise from lives lived close to the land. Poetry, music, stories, gear, film, photography, food – all contribute to the texture of an event that has become an annual ritual for thousands of people who value the people and cultures that live and work in the American West.

JOHN Tranter has never been persecuted by feminists, Marxists or arts bureaucrats, though he was once told off by a policeman for driving under the influence. In a letter spruiking Tranter's new poetry collection, Urban Myths (University of Queensland Press, $26.95), his agent and wife, Lyn, cannot resist a sly dig at Australia's most successful poet, Les Murray.

Murray has long maintained he is hounded by the Left, including arts funding body the Australia Council, despite having been (until the early 1990s) generously subsidised. "No one persecutes Les, no one ever has, he has this fantasy view," says John Tranter, mildly.

One of the most original poets of his generation, Tranter was an aesthetic foe of Murray in the fierce poetry wars that pitted traditional, nationalist poets against the internationalist avant-garde. [...]

A career burglar known as the "Pentonville Poet" has been given a reduced jail sentence after he impressed a judge with his prison verse.

Itsham Akhtar, 33, helped to steal £70,000-worth of designer clothes from a shop and was due a sentence of several years.

But the judge, Miss Recorder Christine Laing, gave him just 15 months after reading a copy of his latest work, which she praised as "articulate and well-written".

Sentencing Akhtar at Snaresbrook Crown Court she said: "You are clearly a man of considerable talent."

She said Akhtar's poems showed there was hope for his future and added: "I have no doubt at all that you could have a very useful life.' [...]

NEW DELHI: President APJ Abdul Kalam conferred the 39th Jnanpith Award on renowned Marathi poet Govind Vinayak Karandikar on Thursday. The award was in recognition of Karandikar's outstanding contribution to Indian literature. [...]

William Shakespeare remains Britain’s best-selling author. One online bookseller offers nearly 20,000 titles bearing his name, and although they include much ephemera, probably more than a thousand separate editions are currently on offer. Several established series compete for those wanting individual plays. The Arden Shakespeare is over halfway through its third series, while the Penguin and the New Cambridge are already issuing updated versions of editions published not long ago. In an age when less Shakespeare is taught at school, those who discover him later in life will need more help. It is timely to ask, what do the punters get for their money, and which edition should they choose? [...]

The most notorious of the “conspicuous innovations” by the Oxford–Norton editors was a poem of seventy-two lines beginning “Shall I dye”, which Taylor ascribed to Shakespeare amid much publicity. [...] When I surveyed the response to Taylor’s ascription in a book called “Counterfeiting” Shakespeare (2002) – one title notably absent from Susan Brock’s “Further Reading” – I found that none of the many scholars who had commented on the poem supported Taylor’s attribution. To reprint it in the second edition of Shakespeare’s Complete Works is a strange rebuff to the notion of scholarly consensus. [...]

[...] In his somewhat limp autobiography, For the Islands I Sing, published posthumously in 1997, Mackay Brown writes tenderly of how he hovered on the margins of the bar until he was noticed by Sydney Goodsir Smith and invited to join the big hitters of the Edinburgh 1950s – who would often include among their number Norman MacCaig, Robert Garioch (though he reputedly was a half-pint exponent), MacDiarmid, Goodsir Smith himself, Sorley MacLean (but only occasionally) and a crowd of others, some noted not for their poetry but willingness to buy a round. It was an exclusive, and excluding, group of poets and their hangers-on. Some contemporary Scottish poets – that is, those still alive – tend to look on the “Rose Street Days” as an Arcadia they wish they’d been part of. This reviewer knows better. I witnessed it in 1961, for one night, in Milne’s Bar. Mackay Brown wasn’t there (or I don’t think he was). Others were, though. Overheard conversations were not literary. It all sounded and looked to me like over-vigorous R & R or self-destruction. Accordingly, I self-destructed. [...]

Poet harasses servicemen: Police have detained an unidentified poet for customary interrogation for causing disturbance to two servicemen and accusing them of causing injury to his finger, reports Al-Rai Al-Aam daily. A security source said the man was driving under the influence of alcohol on the Fifth Ring Road when he saw a military Jeep being driven by two servicemen with a flasher on. The man requested the servicemen to pull over and asked them the reason for using the flasher. When the servicemen noticed the man was under the influence of alcohol, they left him alone and were on their way to the Jeep when the man attacked one of the servicemen with a broken bottle and in the ensuing scuffle he got a cut on his finger. The daily did not give more details.

A LITERARY stoush involving fist fights, drug abuse, prostitutes and apprehended violence orders has revealed Australian poets are more Rambo than Rimbaud.

However, there were claims yesterday that the controversy was a publicity stunt to sell books.

West Australian poet John Kinsella took out an apprehended violence order last week against two of his colleagues over a series of allegedly threatening emails.

The poet claims he has been harassed by more than 40 messages a day from former friends Anthony Lawrence and Robert Adamson.

The pair told The Australian the emails were part of a literary joke and denied they wanted to threaten Kinsella. Lawrence suggested the episode was a "publicity stunt" by the "self-promoting" Kinsella.

THE HAY(NA)KU ANTHOLOGY, NO. 2
Submissions Deadline: September 31, 2006.

and

“The Filamore Tabios, Sr. Memorial Poetry Prize”
open to poets around the world of full or partial Filipino descent
Submissions Deadline: November 30, 2006

The condition of ailing poet Shamsur Rahman has remained unchanged.

Daughter of the poet Tia Rahman told BDNEWS that symptom of jaundice had been detected along with other complications. He was being provided saline and oxygen, she added.

Besides, catheter and bedpan have also been arranged for him. The poet can speak and understand but his physicians asked him not to speak, she said.

The poet was admitted to the Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University Hospital on Sunday due to his breathing problem, heart disease and a little kidney complication.

At the 2006 Krakow Poetry Seminar in the heart of southern Poland, poet and Guggenheim Foundation president Edward Hirsch didn’t mince his words. “The time has come for American poets to sharpen their political attentions,” the gray-haired, broad-shouldered MacArthur Fellow proclaimed. [...]

It contains work by Karl Young, Juhana Vähänen (translated by Karri Kokko), Martin Edmond, Rochelle Ratner, Louise Landes Levi, Cath Vidler, Michael Farrell, Christian Jensen, Ira Joel Haber, Bruce Covey, Jill Jones, Allen Bramhall, Derek Motion, Caleb Puckett, Sandra Simonds (a mini-chap — The Tar Pit Diatoms), Vernon Frazer, Pat Nolan, Donald Illich, J.D. Nelson, harry k stammer, Steve Tills, David Meltzer, Tom Beckett, Thomas Fink, Crag Hill, Ira Cohen, Carol Jenkins, Miia Toivio, John M. Bennett, Michael Rothenberg, Geof Huth, David-Baptiste Chirot, Aki Salmela, Sandy McIntosh, Michelle Greenblatt, Janne Nummela, Tom Hibbard, Marko J. Niemi, Phil Primeau, Kevin Opstedal, Olli Sinivaara, Nico Vassilakis & John M. Bennett, Michael McClure, Pam Brown, Leevi Lehto & Eileen Tabios.

Rejection letters are always a drag; whether they are negative responses from job opportunities, university admissions boards or literary journals. However, there is nothing quite as spirit-crushing as a rejection letter received after submitting a poem.

The prize’s importance goes beyond money, for a couple of reasons. First, placing Canadian poetry alongside work from around the world has raised the international profile of our writers. There’s a worldly feel to the jury, too, since it always consists of a Canadian and two international poets. (Total impartiality is impossible to achieve, but as far as the domestic short list is concerned, this set-up seems less clubby than just drawing from our own talent pool. Besides, we’re always curious about how others see us.)

Second, by staging a gala reading and lavish awards ceremony, the Griffin Prize generates a sense of occasion around an art form that doesn’t often bask in the spotlight. The underlying message is not only that poetry matters to the cultural life of this country — it can also be glamorous. It’s a bit like Cinderella, a drudge no longer, stepping out to the ball.

The rules are:

1. You must write a sonnet within 20 minutes. 15 minutes gets you a bonus point.
2. You can’t think out anything beforehand, no choosing rhyming words, no gathering ideas or images – nothing.
3. No cheating.

A 30-year-old Frenchman has put on display what he says is the longest poem in world - nearly 7,600 verses written on a roll of fabric that stretches to almost one kilometre on a car-race track in south-east France.

This winter's issue of RATTLE will feature a tribute to the Greatest Generation -- living poets born between 1911 and 1924.

If you or poets you know fall into this group please follow the regular submission guidelines and mention this in your cover letter.

Stopping in 49 cities in 50 days, the Wave Books Poetry Bus Tour is the biggest literary event of 2006. Throughout September and October, over one hundred poets, along with musicians, filmmakers and journalists, will participate as the bus traverses North America, bringing innovative poetry to big cities and small towns across the U.S. and Canada. Sponsored by Wave Books, the poetry bus will go more places with more poets reading more poems than was ever previously believed possible.

Yes, this kind of technique is used by poets in the learning process. We often "copy" the work of the masters by mimicking structure, form, words, lines, and even entire sections. However, it is expected that most of these "copies" will remain in our own filing cabinet drawers as experiments. What is unacceptable is to take these experiments, pass them off as our own, and post them in public or send them in as submissions. When a poet does post or submit these works, it is with the understanding that the original poet and work will be credited by the new author. It is also standard practice, when the work is this closely tied to the original, for the mimicking poet to contact the original poet (if still alive) to inform him/her of this new work and the borrowing that has taken place. [...]

Today she might enjoy a far greater profile among the poetry-reading public were it not for her indifference to self-promotion on the literary circuit. 'I've cancelled all my subscriptions to poetry magazines,' she says. 'I prefer to read the New Scientist. My trouble is that I don't relate very well to today's popular idea of what a poet should be. I never wanted to be a pop star.' She has agreed to take part in a round-table event in Newcastle on National Poetry Day next Thursday ('it would seem curmudgeonly not to'), but says: 'I truly hate marketing promotions, and I don't at all approve of encouraging wannabe poets to write bad poetry.'

POEATERY = a place where you eat good food while listening to great poetry (slam and otherwise). Fun environment. Intelligent conversations. Bad hair. Funky glasses. Your Daily Specials would be performed at your table. Broadsides and and work from local artists would decorate the walls. Menus feature excerpts from poems and items would be named after famous poets (actually saw this at Fred 62 in Hollywood — the Bukowski Ham & Cheese).

The post of British Poet Laureate goes back to 1616 when King James the First gave poet Ben Jonson a pension. When Jonson died in 1637 his pension transferred to William Davenant. The post was made an official royal appointment in 1668 when John Dryden got the job. His task was to compose birthday poems for members of the royal family. This was later enlarged to include poems for national occasions. The job was for life with the prime minister nominating a range of successors and the reigning sovereign doing the choosing.

The Annual Cider Press Review Book Award offers $1000* and publication for a full-length book of poetry. Manuscripts will be accepted between September 1 and November 30, 2006.

Judge for the 2006 award is Dorianne Laux.

Guidelines:

Submit 48-80 pages of original poetry in English not previously published in book form (individual poems may have been previously published in journals, anthologies, and chapbooks).

Manuscripts may be submitted either electronically or by mail.

The Festival begins on Friday 4th August, with opening night celebrations culminating in ‘Takin’ It To The Streets’ – a poetry pub crawl through inner-city Fitzroy & Collingwood. And that’s followed by 15 days and nights of poetry festival action that only Melbourne can give you – Slams, launches, competitions, workshops, multi-arts performances, hip hop, rock and roll poetry, experimental poetry, bush poetry, sung poetry, kids poetry, love, drama, politics. You want it? We’ve got it covered.

"We are appalled by the closure of Woeser’s blogs and we call for them to be reopened," the press freedom organisation said. "As her poetry is banned in China, these blogs were the only way she had left to express herself. Their disappearance shows how the Chinese authorities go out of their way to limit Tibetan culture to folklore for tourists."

Led by poet and creative writing tutor Aeronwy Thomas (Dylan Thomas's daughter), with poet, artist and editor of POETRY MONTHLY magazine Martin Holroyd and poet and University of Wales tutor Peter Thabit Jones. The Poetry Workshops will give students the opportunity to share and enjoy writing poetry, develop their skills, confidence and potential and to perform their work at the Arts Festival's popular Poems and Pints Night in Dylan Thomas's favourite pub, Brown's Hotel, Laugharne.

A poetry chapbook anthology inspired by David Lynch's Twin Peaks series, edited by Ivy Alvarez

This year marks twenty-five years of the Arvon International Poetry Competition...

The competition runs from May to September 2006; all poems are read by the judges and are anonymous, previously unpublished and written in English.

The competition is now open and was launched in the Times Books section on 29 April 2006. The competition runs from 1st May to 15th September 2006. The prizes are:

Farrer&Co Prize £5000
Second Prize £2500
Third Prize £1000
Three prizes £500 each