dumbfoundry

"You have such vision (and such balls!) for withdrawing your manuscript because you felt another was a stronger and more appropriate representation of you and your current work. So many poets, given the pressure to publish and the fear that each book might be their last, would have slogged ahead with those two manuscripts, one in their left hand, the other in their right, hoping to get both published even if it meant each was not quite the "right" single manuscript.

"What I am saying is: What the hell possessed you, man?"

"Can you believe this: both poets on the same bill, in the same place only 45 min from my front door. Last night I went to see them; one a former US Poet Laureate, the other a Nobel Literature Prize winner, and both at the Marketplace Theatre in Armagh city. They're appearing there as part of the John Hewitt Summer School, which is now in its twenty-first year.

"This year's theme is 'Let There be no Wall,' and this theme was amply demonstrated in bringing together two poets, from such variant backgrounds and placing them on a stage in a beautiful new theatre, on a hot muggy night in Northern Ireland."

I don't know about other judges or other more salubrious comps (what they find or what they do), but in this one (so far as I can comment from my own experience of reading the entries) not enough poems come in that are competent in form, voice, experiment, content, ideas, artistry (or any number of other aspects of the best literature) as well as being challenging and aware of the moment 'now' we are in. I image that those poems are only written (here I'm taking an educated guess) by a poet who reads widely, navigates their art risking something, striving for something more than a well-crafted or merely competent style.

I call this rare poetry 'fresh' because it shouldn't be so hard to find in the entries sent to a competition, but it always is. And that's why when it's read, it's such a big surprise, it's always going to impress a reader.

"When Joanna Lumley agreed to pen an introduction to a collection of poems, she probably thought she was simply doing a favour for an unknown poet in need of a publicity boost. Instead, the Absolutely Fabulous star has caused controversy by publishing views on modern poetry that have offended some of Britain's best-known writers."

Is your definition of a good poem, when you're applying it to your work, different from that which you apply to the work of your students or any other writers?

Marjorie Evasco: I would use the same standards. I'm very demanding. That's why the ones who need to have their poems read by me, they have to be my good friends first. I mean, we should be friends enough for me to tell them the truth. Kasi if I'm just going to flatter, that's not going to be good for the person or for me. The workshop environment has that structure where the student can present the work and say, "You've been in the writing business for 15 years ahead of me, maybe you know more, can you please see if this is good enough?" The young writer is giving me the opportunity to read and say something about it. But if I'm not asked, I will not touch it. And then when I read poems that are published in the periodicals, my reading is going to be as stringent, as demanding, as I would be with my own poems. I would say that there's a lot of drivel being published.

The Love Poetry Hate Racism anthology is calling for submissions of poetry, photographs and visual art from all over the globe!

LPHR is an annual international poetry event, founded by the Belfast Poets.

Every year, poetry groups in cities all over the world hold a poetry event on the same weekend to celebrate multiculturalism and acceptance, and to defy discrimination of all forms. For more information about these events, visit http://www.myspace.com/lovepoetryhateracism

The LPHR anthology will be distributed as a printed zine and made available in PDF form online.

To submit your work, please email up to three poems in the body of an email or images in JPEG form to walaa003 @ students.unisa.edu.au by Nov 21st 2008.

Award-winning poet and former University of Queensland student Jaya Savige has been awarded a 2008 Gates Cambridge Scholarship for his leadership potential and sustained academic achievement in the literary arts.

Having touched the lives of countless persons within Connecticut and without, West Hartford resident and poet Bob Jacob's latest book of poetry, 'Perspective,' was nominated recently for two highly prestigious literary awards, the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.

Published earlier this year, the book details Jacob's nine-years experience as a hospice volunteer. A lover and writer of poetry for decades, Jacob, 76, said he started writing the book's 62 poems, which he prefers to call 'loving words' instead of poems, while doing volunteer work at the Connecticut Hospice in Branford. There, Jacob reads poetry to the dying and their loved ones every other week and said the work is draining, but rewarding.

They say Australians will put their money on anything -- but what about a poem? "Pigeon Poetry" brings poetry and sport side by side!

An edition of Shakespeare’s first folio stolen ten years ago has been recovered after a British man took it into an American library to be authenticated.

"Artists communities, colonies, residencies, workspaces… they go by many names but share a common purpose: to provide artists with dedicated time and space to create new work."

Poetry in a time of fire is the unofficial motto of PressPress. Poetry is what people are interested in. If you're startled by this, you haven't been paying attention. Most people, at some time in their lives, have written a poem or two (usually more). This is something you can't say of novels, or tv scripts or even cartoons. Poetry is a universal thing, like music. We're not quite clear on why we do it but it seems to be one of things human creatures do. So I'm not going to defend poetry. It needs no defence.

"Consequently, out of the one hundred independent publishers of poetry in the United States I researched, I can only say for certain that two of them offer no-fee year-round readings of unsolicited full manuscripts."

Salman Rushdie has amassed for himself a fair number of distinctions over the years, among them the Booker of Bookers prize, the Whitbread novel award (twice), the James Tait Black memorial prize, and a fatwa from the Ayatollah Khomeini calling for his immediate assassination.

Yesterday, however, came the big one: a knighthood recognising the services to literature of one of the world's most lauded - and most divisive - literary grandees. 'I am thrilled and humbled to receive this great honour, and am very grateful that my work has been recognised in this way,' the newly-minted Sir Salman said in a statement.

Qualia Theatre is looking for writing collaborators to work on their project, Performance Experiments. Performance Experiments is a programme of six creative workshops that will investigate the process of making theatre about science. Each one will be a creative exploration of a chosen scientific topic, facilitated by the artistic director of Qualia Theatre, in collaboration with one scientist and one artist per workshop. The project participants will be a group of performers who will deliver a public sharing as the culmination of each workshop.

A DIARY written by one of Wales’ leading poets, chronicling life after his wife’s death in a car crash, was last night named Wales Book of the Year 2008.

Dannie Abse’s The Presence, which has garnered critical acclaim, records his grief and a portrait of a marriage that lasted more than 50 years.

On his passport, Nick Flynn lists his profession as 'poet,' but there is nothing anemic or brooding about his appearance. On a recent afternoon in New York's West Village, he dismounted the bike he rides every day from Brooklyn to Manhattan looking like a man ready to ride another 50 miles. In person, as in his prose and poetry, Flynn is exuberant and present, a friendly force to be reckoned with.