Poetry Reviews

Feeling so angry!!! For weeks the Saturday Guardian has only given reviews of male poets, Paul Farley last week, yesterday Tom Paulin and so on and so on. Once there was a review of Mimi Khalvati's beautiful book "The Meanest Flower" but, as if influenced by the book's title the Guardian gave it only a mere, and mean, paragraph, whereas all these men Get HALF A PAGE. Come on Guardian, wake up to the fact that there are dozens of brilliant women poets out there. Let's see some of them reviewed...in half a page.

Much Wenlock

And a wonderful festival it was, too!
I went to hear Paul Henry who was excellent, just the right touch of warmth and personal anecdote; attended Ian Duhig's Ms. workshop and was impressed by Ian's tact, patience and dedication to his work.

Then Polly Bolton, Larks choir and I all burst variously into song and poetry readings on the Sunday, after which performance I have never in my life felt so hungry! The expression "I could eat a horse" wasn't far from it though I can't imagine ever eating a horse- I admire horses far too much.

My weekend ended with listening to Mario Petrucci's absorbing reading - I bought his book The Waltz in my Blood to study his new technique that he said was revealed to him in a dream (it's not an easy technique either! -taking already published earlier poems and rejigging them into a fractured kind of stream-of-consciousness is only a very small hint of what he is doing).

And finished the weekend in style by running off a high kerb in my car.There was a terrible bang and I thought 'Oh no, this is it, Goodbye to my venerable old Golf', but no, it was fine. As they say - "they're not made like that anymore".

The journey home was smooth and uneventful, made beautiful by the intense greens of April, and a view of distant hills. (They were not blue - the light was too sharp, so no Houseman experience)

This festival is pure delight, so much packed into a weekend, and the festival team is made up of incredibly helpful and pleasant people. How Anna, Liz, and Linda and all the rest kept smiling through such an exhausting weekend I don't know. Hats off to every one of them!