I’ve just received my copy of Tears in the Fence 47, which I think is one of the strongest issues yet. Of course I would say that, as I’m Associate Editor. I’m particularly glad to see strong new work by younger British poets such as Chris McCabe, James Wilkes, Hannah Silva, Simon Turner and Joe Dunthorne.Continue reading “Tears in the Fence 47”
Tag Archives: poetry
April is the cruellest month
Work off the intellectual lethargy of the Easter holiday with three forthcoming readings wot I am giving. All in Londinium. All very different. I’ll be reading from ‘How To Build A City’, a kind of hybrid diary/travelogue/guidebook set around Liverpool Street Station (and to be published in the next issue of The Edgeless Shape). AndContinue reading “April is the cruellest month”
Residency at The Bishopsgate Institute
Good news. I have been appointed Poet in Residence at one of my favourite local places, The Bishopsgate Institute. This is a first for me and them. Very exciting. I’ll be spending time there in April researching in their archives, talking to staff and visitors and finding material in the nooks and crannies of their historicContinue reading “Residency at The Bishopsgate Institute”
Canon law
Sean O’Brien defends the canon in yesterday’s Guardian. I don’t quite know what to make of it. On the one hand his call to read serious poetry is right; and I agree that it’s important to see oneself as ‘part of a continuum, a community extending across history’. On the other hand, I can’t help but thinkContinue reading “Canon law”
The Hill Fort
Its only defences now, a ring of gorse, cat snake in strange fruit tangling the land with vine, its lights diminished like clothes sewn onto the body. Beyond, the mossy gums and their barrackyard laughter; Augustus, chasing gateways that open to the view and a stone pile. High pitched calypso exfoliates my horse, grinning stillContinue reading “The Hill Fort”
Landless space
In a discussion event I organised as part of London Word Festival, Melanie Challenger advocated a poetry that is intimately tied to landscape. We need to anchor everything back to the real, to the physical world, to the landscape […] The urgent task of everybody is to tie together land and word and worldContinue reading “Landless space”
A Tourist’s Guide to the East End
Wood becomes hammered after the public type: medium. London’s truth fingers it. London is the foot of one, differentiated towards the east; for the city punishes the outside, the manufactured. Question the person who causes the stone, voluntarily, to move. It may prohibit you from reaching out, to be with him. Compare him to theContinue reading “A Tourist’s Guide to the East End”
Various Poetastings
I’ve been out and about a fair bit this last week, handing out flyers for London Word Festival of course. A promoter’s job is never done. Firstly, The Poetry Society’s annual lecture at The Bishopsgate Institute on 31st January. This is where I organised London Lip with Iain Sinclair et al. and I’ll be seeingContinue reading “Various Poetastings”
Brahmodya
Whole books are written in the quest to define the art of poetry. Not a definition as such, but I rather like this, which I came across in Karen Armstrong’s The Great Transformation. She’s talking about the rituals of the Aryan people of the late Vedic period (c. 500 BCE). When the king arrived back safelyContinue reading “Brahmodya”
Lyrical terrorism
The trial of Samina Malik has come to a conclusion at the Old Bailey. The self-proclaimed ‘Lyrical Terrorist’ was found not guilty of possessing articles for a terrorist purpose, but guilty of collecting articles ‘likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism’. Amongst the evidence levelled against Malik were two ofContinue reading “Lyrical terrorism”
Tom Chivers 