dumbfoundry

Catherine Doty: Poetry changed my world, or kept me in it, at least. Anything can create change in the world, so why not this arcane and suspicious passion for words?

“It's only when a poet does something odd that they're newsworthy in any way.”

Janet Frame Literary Trust spokeswoman Pamela Gordon, Frame's niece, said poetry was always her aunt's first love but her novels and autobiographical writing had received more attention and success.

She was delighted by the prize. 'I'm really, really happy, just a little bit sad that my aunt isn't here to enjoy it too.'

Despite a prolific output, including 11 novels and a three-volume autobiography, Frame had only one collection of poetry published during her lifetime, The Pocket Mirror in 1967. She died of cancer in 2004 at the age of 79.

Updated: 46-year-old Grayson, pronounced dead at 6:16 p.m.

Darrell Grayson, poet and prisoner for 26 years now, is scheduled to be executed today at 5 PM in the state of Alabama. Please add your voice to stay his execution. The why’s are below. Quick easy info here though – please make ONE PHONE CALL that is pain-free:


THE HONORABLE GOVERNOR BOB RILEY
State Capitol
600 Dexter Avenue
Montgomery, Alabama 36130


No time left to write!!
Call: (334) 242 7100
Fax: 334-353-0004


A note about phoning the Governor's Office: If you can do this in addition to writing, that is wonderful. If you can only call and not write, * please call *. It is a very easy process. Call (334) 242-7100. Tell the person answering who you are, where you live, and say something like ** "Please count me as having called to ask the Governor to halt the execution of Darrell Grayson." ** They WILL count you and you will find them courteous. They will not engage you in argument, nor will they expect or need you to elaborate. That is best handled in writing.

FAX: 334 242 0937
Website: http://www.governor.state.al.us
Email form: http://www.governor.state.al.us/contact.htm

~~

BIO:

Darrell B. Grayson was raised in Montevallo, Alabama with eleven siblings in a single parent household. He dropped out of school in the ninth grade. At age 19, and with no prior criminal history, he was convicted and received the death penalty from an all white jury. He has been on Death Row at Holman Prison in Atmore, Alabama since 1982. After some years of severe depression, which he describes as spending flat on his back, the death of his mother brought about the decision to better himself. He began to write commentary and poetry and received his GED and Associate Science degree. In 1994 he became active in Project Hope to Abolish the Death Penalty, an organization founded and operated by Death Row inmates. In 2000 he became its chairman. He edits and assembles Wings of Hope, the Project Hope newsletter, with primitive equipment in the prison.

Darrell Grayson’s poetry, which he describes as "a contagion of insecurities,” has appeared in Axis of Logic, Right Hand Pointing, The Dead Mule, Wings of Hope, and elsewhere. He has written three chapbooks of poetry from prison.

~~

DARRELL GRAYSON'S STATEMENT
http://dalewisely.googlepages.com/darrellgraysonexecutionalert

• Affirming Life
• Amazing Grace
• Mentioned on Bookslut

Auckland woman Renee Liang is taking poetry from the bookshelves and on to the streets - literally.

The 34-year-old will be writing her poems on the footpath with chalk to celebrate the annual Montana Poetry Day on Friday.

'People have this idea that poetry just belongs on the bookshelf,' she says.

'Going out there with our poems on the streets makes it accessible.'

The qualified pediatrician is taking a year off to concentrate on writing and says poetry and medicine are a good mix.

Poets Niall McDevitt and Aidan Dun were visiting the heritage site at 8 Royal College Street in Mornington Crescent -- home to the famous 19th Century French poets Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud in 1873 -- when they saw workmen ripping up railings.

"It seems ironic to me that poetry, the most portable form of literature, is still deemed inaccessible. A poem can be read from a computer screen, tucked into a jacket pocket, read on a ten minute break. I agree with Paul that it is not due to it being too difficult for the average person, but that it is ‘constructed’ to be so."

...to include: "I Sit and Look 1932" one of one thousand, as new, DW;
"Two Rivulets" 1876, signed by author, VG, repaired;
three copies of "Democratic Vistas" first 1882-6, first British, all VG+ to fine;
"Selected Poems", 1892, G;
"Leaves of Grass", 1872, VG;
two copies "Leaves of Grass, 1882, VG;
three copies "Leaves of Grass", 1892, G-fine;
"Leaves of Grass", 1860, VG; "Poems", edited by Rosetti, first British edition;
"Goodbye My Fancy", 1891, VG+;
"November Boughs", 1888, G-;
"An American Primer", first edition, 1904, one of five hundred, Fine-;
"in Re: Walt Whitman", editor Traubel, 1893, number three hundred thirty six of one thousand, VG;
"Walt Whitman's Workshop", 1964, Fine, DW;
"Gathering of the Forces", two volumes, as new, one of twelve hundred fifty.

IT’S the house where Dylan Thomas had some of his most productive years, but the bulk of the work to be done at Sea View will be to restore the property to its former glory, its new owner said yesterday.

Architect Graham Milsom, who bought the Grade II-listed house in Laugharne, Carmarthenshire, for £232,000 at auction earlier this week, has revealed how he bought the seaside property in memory of his late daughter Justine, and now plans to restore it to the condition in which Thomas and his wife Caitlin enjoyed some of their happiest years.

Whilst it remains a somewhat marginal activity, slam has become arguably the most successful poetry movement of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Its popularity is greatest in its home country, where the annual National Poetry Slam can attract audiences in their thousands and where it has spawned shows on television and Broadway. Slam has not stayed put in the U.S. however. It has spread across the globe to countries as geographically and culturally diverse as Australia, Singapore, Japan, South Africa and Germany. Slam reached England in February 1994, when the first U.K. poetry slam was held in London by Farrago Poetry. Farrago still hold monthly poetry slams today, based in the Rada foyer bar.

Despite the prevalence of slam and the number of intriguing research avenues which this phenomenon presents however, it has received very little attention from academic researchers and practically none at all within the social sciences. It was this neglect which helped to convince me that it would be worth spending four years of my life researching poetry slam.

A MAJOR Urdu poetry (Mehfil-e-Mushaira) event will take place on Friday at the Golden Tulip's Gilgamesh Ballroom.

Leading poets from Pakistan and India will participate in the event, including Himayat Ali Shaer from Pakistan and Anwar Jalalpuri, Mohammed Akhlaq Shaharyar and Naeem Akhtar from India. [...]

Palestinian national poet and writer Mahmoud Darwish is expected to take part in a literary event in Haifa, for the first time since leaving Israel more than 35 years ago. [...]

"In earlier days, our mothers and grandmothers taught us how to cry when we were to leave for our in-laws’ homes after marriage. That tradition does not exist now. So, to remember this tradition, we are participating in this crying competition,' said Arnapurna Nayak, a competitor.

However, residents say the ancient custom is dying out as brides nowadays don't even want to cry, leave alone sing poetry. 'I've known the art of crying since my childhood days. I got married at an early age. My mother and aunt taught me this art,” said Taramani Pradhan, another competitor.

As the mainly women audience cheered the crying ladies, there were mixed emotions. While some could not hold back their laughter at some amateurish attempts at sorrowful poetry, still others shed a tear when the performance touched a raw nerve.

"Can you write a poem celebrating any aspect of Liverpool's 800 years history? Help us collect together 800 poems by August 28th, the day that celebrates King John's founding of Liverpool in 1207 and his offer of land for rent at one and sixpence a year!

You've got plenty to go at, 800 years is one heck of a time span... so can you write a poem about any aspect of that period; the beginning, medieval times, the mercantile boom, the first big explosion of culture, the slave trade, war, rock and roll, teddy boys, personalities or something bang up to date i.e. 2008?"

Kurdish poet Lukman Derky has long yearned to see Kurdish singers perform at a major Syrian venue. That day, he says, may not be far off.

The Arab state seems to be opening up to its biggest minority, said Derky, one of Syria's most prominent Kurdish writers. 'There is a clear and noticeable change,' he said. [...]

Zeinab Yazdani’s book “Woman and Poetry”, published by Tirgan publications, discusses the status of women as depicted in modern and classical poetry.

Her work concentrates on the social and cultural aspects of women in Iran as depicted in different eras in the works of renowned Iranian poets. [...]

Death and the Maidens: Fanny Wollstonecraft and the Shelley Circle
Janet Todd
Profile £17.99, pp304

Being Shelley: The Poet's Search for Himself
Ann Wroe Cape
£25, pp464

Ayyappa Paniker — pioneer poet, cherished teacher, earnest critic and essayist. The name that heralded the arrival of modernist Malayalam poetry in a largely romanticised literary world. This rare intellectual with amazing grace remains one of the most respected literary figures in India and abroad. [...]

BORN NEAR Windsor on Jan. 25, 1933, and dying in Fredericton on June 27, 1983, at the young age of 50, Alden Nowlan remains one of Atlantic Canada’s most cherished voices, and, says U.S. poet Robert Bly, "the greatest Canadian poet of the 20th century." [...]

If the name Li Bai means little in the West, the Tang Dynasty poet stands as tall in the Chinese cultural consciousness as William Shakespeare does in the English- speaking world.

Long a fan of his expressive, sometimes playful writings, Diana Liao conceived the idea of an opera based on his life in 2000 and set about writing a libretto in conjunction with playwright Xu Ying.

Seven years later, the fruits of her labor and those of dozens of other Chinese and American participants in the cross-cultural project will be unveiled when Central City Opera's world premiere of Guo Wenjing's "Poet Li Bai" opens Saturday. [...]

Today I have so much to do
I must kill memory once and for all
I must turn soul to stone
I must learn to live again
Unless...Summer's ardent rustling
Is like a festival outside my window.
For a long time I've foreseen this
Brilliant day, deserted house.

These words are from Anna Akhmatova's poem "The Sentence," translated from the Russian by Judith Hemschemeyer. Akhmatova was a remarkable woman whose deeply felt poems chronicled Stalin's Terror, World War II, and what is called the Thaw in Russia after Stalin's death. She also explored her own local fame, her fall from grace, and her international renown shortly before her death. [...]

A veteran of several World Social Forums, the South African poet and anti-apartheid activist Dennis Brutus talks about why he's come to Atlanta and addresses growing upheaval in South Africa where the ruling ANC government is being criticized for continuing apartheid’s economic legacy. [...]

Today (Thursday) is the crowning moment for movie star and spoken word poet Lebo Mashile of South Africa as author of anthology In a ribbon of Rhythm, is crowned best African writer in Gaborone. [...]

He removed WB Yeats' tonsils, and was made infamous by Ulysses, but Oliver St John Gogarty was a noteworthy poet and novelist in his own right. Go on, give him a read, says Dr Micheál Fanning. [...]

A collection of poetry by the Spanish poet Juan Ramon Jimenez (1881–1958) has recently been translated by Saeid Azin. [...]

Taban Lo Liyong's words, that "East Africa is a literary desert" seem to be from a long ago era, and have the ring of a false prophet. [...]

Poet Mong Tuyet, the last of the famous “splendid Ha Tien quartet” of old times that included poets Dong Ho, Lu Khe and Truc Ha, died yesterday, July 1 at the age of 93. [...]