This is an interactive blog where I can chat with you about a poet I am currently reading.
It was created in the west of Ireland musing on the edge of Mannin Bay. I wanted to share poetry. After immersion in poetry books, online courses with Faber & Faber and Fish Poetry, many workshops, including with Paul Muldoon, Pascale Petit and Moya Cannon, it was time to stretch out and talk poetry with YOU.
Rich work with Robyn Rowland and Eileen P. Keane (and sometimes others) in intensive discussions on our writing has given me a fine editing eye. Reading a broad range of poetry, and interaction with Clifden Writers’ Group over many years. has given me the incentive to have a conversation about poets. As well as lovers of poetry, I would hope to encourage more people to come to the mystical place that is poetry. Here live the spirits of joy, sorrow, laughter, tragedy, that can enhance lives and provide inspiration.
The Most Beautiful Book of Poetry of 2019
Awarded to Museum a creative response to the museum that is 14 Henrietta Street, a Georgian townhouse that became a tenement.
Today the books in my hand are The Flower and the Frozen Sea and This One High Field, both the work of Michelle O’Sullivan.
If you stand outside on Mannin Bay in one of our spectacular dawns or sunsets, when the edges of two worlds seem to meet, there is a strong impulse to express this beauty in some way.
On the shoulders of Tolstoy
The grey seals have arrived in this quiet bay to have their pups and the poet I share with you today has travelled over an ocean also. He is Ilya Kaminsky.
I find it exciting to read prose written by poets exploring their own processes in poetry, the value and purpose of poetry, its meaning – what poetry is to them, and sometimes what it should be to others! Often they creatively engage with issues of craft; sometimes with the mystery of the moments of creation. Understanding their own and the work of others is part of their exploration of the poetic life. I am often struck by their sense of surety in this, a kind of fearlessness of opinion. In the established poets, there seems no anxiety about ‘fitting in’ or being in ‘fashion’. They don’t see this positioning of their opinion as something they need to be careful with. Debate is seen as important, useful and engaging. Each month I’ll select a prose quotation from a poet and ask a poet to respond.
Gina Mercer responds to Seamus Heaney
Gina Mercer’s poems are a delectable feast. Roll her words on your tongue. Savour their sound, the delicious and satisfying feel of them in your mouth.