Friday 23 November 2007
A poetic language to describe the universe
Browsing around, I've just come across an interesting article in Interactions, the Journal of the Institute of Physics. Trust me! It's on page 8.
Wednesday 21 November 2007
You are always an electron away from a proper snog
Just listened to Gwyneth Lewis's Stardust for the second time. Entrancing.
I'd be interested to know how people with no background in fundamental particles found it, but from the writer's viewpoint I loved the interweaving of the narrative and the play itself. Maybe there is a technical term for that - question for Briony next time!
Half way through the second hearing, I realised that it is a similar technique to that Dylan Thomas used in Under Milk Wood. But sorry, Dylan, I preferred Gwyneth's!
I'd be interested to know how people with no background in fundamental particles found it, but from the writer's viewpoint I loved the interweaving of the narrative and the play itself. Maybe there is a technical term for that - question for Briony next time!
Half way through the second hearing, I realised that it is a similar technique to that Dylan Thomas used in Under Milk Wood. But sorry, Dylan, I preferred Gwyneth's!
You are always an electron away from a proper snog
Just listened to Gwyneth Lewis's Stardust for the second time. Entrancing.
I'd be interested to know how people with no background in fundamental particles found it, but from the writer's viewpoint I loved the interweaving of the narrative and the play itself. Maybe there is a technical term for that - question for Briony next time!
Half way through the second hearing, I realised that it is a similar technique to that Dylan Thomas used in Under Milk Wood. But sorry, Dylan, I preferred Gwyneth's!
I'd be interested to know how people with no background in fundamental particles found it, but from the writer's viewpoint I loved the interweaving of the narrative and the play itself. Maybe there is a technical term for that - question for Briony next time!
Half way through the second hearing, I realised that it is a similar technique to that Dylan Thomas used in Under Milk Wood. But sorry, Dylan, I preferred Gwyneth's!
Thursday 15 November 2007
Wednesday 7 November 2007
Shell
Inside
I can reside
Quiet
Me
Effervescent yet free
Let others
In
Barriers slip
Wash away
Like sea
Juliette Llewellyn
06.11.07
This came to me as i was in a Cafe having a cup of tea after the class. Arose from the shell stimulus yesterday. Perhaps what i may have written if i had been unhindered by associations of polished shells!
I can reside
Quiet
Me
Effervescent yet free
Let others
In
Barriers slip
Wash away
Like sea
Juliette Llewellyn
06.11.07
This came to me as i was in a Cafe having a cup of tea after the class. Arose from the shell stimulus yesterday. Perhaps what i may have written if i had been unhindered by associations of polished shells!
Vocation, Vocation, Vocation
'Shortly before the recent Forward prizes for poetry were awarded, I was rung up by a journalist who was trying to talk to all the poets on the shortlist for best collection. She asked me why so few young people considered poetry as a career, and whether I had anything to say to those who might have it in mind. This struck me as a strange and original approach, and I replied with a laugh that poetry was more like an affliction than a career. As luck would have it, I was among the prizewinners, and the next day the Independent ran a piece headlined: "This is no way to earn a living, says prize-winning poet." '
'Poetry is an imaginative necessity for the poet, for good or ill. It provides many of the writer's greatest joys, but writing poetry is often very difficult and frustrating, while not writing it can be intolerable, and not only for the poet. Whether a poet is writing or not, a good deal of his or her time is likely to be taken up with thinking about it, remembering poems, examining rhythms, finding a way in to the next poem. In blank patches nothing you have learned seems of any help: it's as though you have woken up in a world that no longer speaks your language. Something comparable, I imagine, holds true for those working in any art form. Hence my use of the word "affliction": you have to laugh at a situation in which your work is involuntary but where, equally, you have no grounds for complaint. It's a bind of almost theological neatness.'
'Poetry is a vocation: it possesses you. So the choices are either: write poetry or go mad, or: write poetry and go mad. The attrition rate among poets is high, and even given the vocation there is no guarantee that any of what you write will prove to be good or durable. As TS Eliot said, you may have messed up your life for nothing.'
'Isn't there a danger, some might ask, of taking yourself too seriously? Fortunately, a system of checks and balances operates, guided as though by an invisible hand. For example, only last week this very newspaper represented my collection The Drowned Book, which the Forward judges described as "heart-wrenching", by reprinting a comic poem called "Drains". No danger at all, thank heaven.'
Excerpts taken from Sean O Brien's article in Review: Saturday Guardian 13.10.07
http://books.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2189790,00.html
'Poetry is an imaginative necessity for the poet, for good or ill. It provides many of the writer's greatest joys, but writing poetry is often very difficult and frustrating, while not writing it can be intolerable, and not only for the poet. Whether a poet is writing or not, a good deal of his or her time is likely to be taken up with thinking about it, remembering poems, examining rhythms, finding a way in to the next poem. In blank patches nothing you have learned seems of any help: it's as though you have woken up in a world that no longer speaks your language. Something comparable, I imagine, holds true for those working in any art form. Hence my use of the word "affliction": you have to laugh at a situation in which your work is involuntary but where, equally, you have no grounds for complaint. It's a bind of almost theological neatness.'
'Poetry is a vocation: it possesses you. So the choices are either: write poetry or go mad, or: write poetry and go mad. The attrition rate among poets is high, and even given the vocation there is no guarantee that any of what you write will prove to be good or durable. As TS Eliot said, you may have messed up your life for nothing.'
'Isn't there a danger, some might ask, of taking yourself too seriously? Fortunately, a system of checks and balances operates, guided as though by an invisible hand. For example, only last week this very newspaper represented my collection The Drowned Book, which the Forward judges described as "heart-wrenching", by reprinting a comic poem called "Drains". No danger at all, thank heaven.'
Excerpts taken from Sean O Brien's article in Review: Saturday Guardian 13.10.07
http://books.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2189790,00.html
Tuesday 6 November 2007
Keeping things simple
Quote from Sean Penn on the Today programme this morning:
"This is a one-issue world, quality of life."
Wonder if Gordon and David were listening? Probably wouldn't get it if they were...
"This is a one-issue world, quality of life."
Wonder if Gordon and David were listening? Probably wouldn't get it if they were...
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