Poetry writing

Good to see how the process of writing poetry can be: Liz Berry

Like many of the poems in Black Country, it took a long time for ‘Sow’ to travel from its first notes to its final form.  It began as a scribbled note in my diary in May 2010. I was walking along Highgate Tube platform in a new pair of black boots and, hearing them trip-trapping, I looked down and imagined them as little hooves and myself as some kind of animal. On the tube I made this note in my diary....

My discovery today Carole Satyamurti

Carole Satyamurti wrote the poem: I shall paint my nails red. 

I Shall Paint My Nails Red

Because of a bit of color is a public service.

Because I am proud of my hands.

Because it will remind me I’m a woman.

Because I will look like a survivor.

Because I can admire them in the mirror.

Because my daughter will say ugh.

Because my lover will be surprisesd.

Because it is quickyer than dyeing my hair.

Because it is a ten-minute moratorium.

Because it is reversible.

Definitely my maxim

A poem is "a momentary stay against confusion", declared Robert Frost, who "carved grace out of tragedy". Art can help us to "enjoy or endure", believed Larkin. Poets are, asserted Shelley, "the unacknowledged legislators of the world" Says Josephine Hart.

I say poetry brings us back to the human.

Poem Perdedores of Jacobo Valcárcel in El Alambique

Llega hasta lo más profundo, la poesía de Jacobo.

Eye kicking  poetry of  Jacobo Valcárcel.

De perdedores de Jacobo Valcárcel

Se jugaba con el gatillo cada día, cada noche,

y mis cartas estaban sobre el tapete del sufrimiento, de la indignación,

de intentar perder y era la vida una copa desnuda de alcohol de espeso árbol

de vómito muchas, tantísimas veces,

que perdedor, soñador era ser lo mejor a veces,

brindar con la copa calva de ausencia

invitar a la mesa al último perdedor ausente.

Jacobo Valcárcel

Review in goodreads of Money by Martin Amis

Readable substitute to caffeine

Money by Martin Amis
My rating: 3 of 5 stars


What I truly enjoyed is the language Martin Amis uses, or more precisely his use of language. It is so dynamic and energizing that I found myself re-reading some words to test their effect again and again.

Also the feeling it constructs, of tasting, hearing, living in a dazzling city like New York.

Martin Amis will always be a favourite because he is so different and new.

View all my reviews

Valentina Cano in Boston Poetry

Hollow Woman by Valentina Cano

While the woman watched TV,

the room around her decided to leave.

To take itself away from someone

who chewed air,

who thought of nothing

but of the empty spaces between words.

The room could not stand another

minute of her breathing,

silent, strong, and tasting of the endless

cups of cheap tea cooling like bathwater in her stomach.

The room left

and the woman never noticed.

Anselm Kiefer at the Royal Academy

Today´s the last day to see Anselm Kiefer at the Royal Academy 
Royal Academy, London

Anselm Kiefer’s monumental work in ash, straw, diamonds and sunflowers dazzles in a superb retrospective.

Here I quote from Rachel Cooke-

• ......he works on a grand scale in lead, sand, gold leaf, copper wire, broken ceramics, straw, wood and even diamonds, his ideas informed by, among many other subjects, the Holocaust, Egyptian mythology, the architecture of Albert Speer, German Romanticism and the poems of Paul Celan. He is the kind of artist whose physical presence – in his black T-shirts and rimless spectacles, he puts one in mind just lately of an executive from Apple – always comes as a surprise. How, you wonder, can a man who deals with so much weighty stuff have such regular-looking shoulders, such ordinary biceps? And why is he smiling? Doesn’t the darkness ever threaten to engulf him? Doesn’t his project – now more than 40 years old – sometimes pinch at his sanity?

A poem by Paul Celan, To Stand in The Shadow

To stand in the Shadow
of the Wound’s-Mark in the Air.

For no-one and nothing to Stand.
Unknown,
for you
alone.

With all, that within finds Room,
even without
Speech.