Well, for anyone who's curious to hear four weird old geeks reading out love poetry of their own composition, fear not & say no more: here's the event for you!
When Love Comes to Town:
Poetry Reading by David Howard, Michele Leggott,
Jack Ross & Fredrika van Elburg
14 February 2015, 1.30pm, Drawing Room
Michele Leggott (Poet Laureate 2008/2009), Jack Ross (editor Poetry New Zealand), and Fredrika van Elburg (Dutch poet) will join the current Otago Wallace Resident David Howard to celebrate St Valentine's Day by reading love poetry.
This event is free to attend however seats are limited, please RSVP to enquiries@wallaceartstrust.org.nz.
For more, and for bios of all the participants, please visit the webpage here.
And if you don't know where the Pah Homestead is, here's the address:
The Pah Homestead, TSB Wallace Arts Centre
72 Hillsborough Rd, Hillsborough, Auckland
Open Tues to Fri, 10am – 3pm
Sat & Sun 10am – 5pm
T 09 639 2010
Looks like the kind of place you could film The Shining, doesn't it? It's certainly a beautiful old building: a great place to give a reading, in fact.
I don't think I have really written one love poem. I think my poem called 'Love' was just one of my "exercises". I read it out once at a reading for my daughter who wanted a love poem, or a poem about love. I suppose though that love (perhaps not only of a "lover" as a man and woman's love or passion, but also love in general) is really quite central to every thing. Even in such a strange but powerful book as 'Jealousy' it could be argued it was about love or its effects. Perhaps not all the LANGUAGE poetry or all of Stein (although it could be argued a hell of a lot of Stein is, or might be...) for example but it is that which ultimately drives us. Or are these just cliches?
ReplyDelete'The Shining' was good for sure. I wanted to see that movie and saw it for the first time last year on video I think. I've been to that Art gallery.
It is a rather strange place...
[I just started to click the CAPTCHA thing and i thought it said for a second "I am a robot" my eye-mind skipped the "not". These robots are everywhere!]
Is it true that (mostly) older people go to poetry readings while younger people (in general) prefer anything but? [Poetry - literature, any leisure - as way to escape or defer death?] I think they either write alone or - it they aren't such a dedicated writer, who can do that, many cant (I'm probably in that latter category) - they don't find such events 'sexy' or whatever or 'cool'. Some do of course.
ReplyDeleteBut people, young and old, continue to write poetry. It is a given, whether good or bad, it is something (one writer says) everyone who wants to write seriously or for the hell of it, should have a go at.
Can we all be too serious about poetry and writing?
I would go but I had something on that day, I forget what it was, it was something I had to pay or organise, it knocked that day for a six. [It may have been something I had to do the next day]
Reading less poetry these days, but it is still an enriching thing. I put aside a student edition of Browning's Dramatis Personae' and started reading it: it is certainly worth reading and even reading aloud, as are many of Browning's poems. One doesn't have to read his vast tome 'The Ring and the Book' but if one wanted to avoid being too cool one could specialise in Browning etc (and matters relating).
One of the best for me is his poem about the old book he throws into the hole of a tree, then retrieves it. I also like his 'The Englishman in Italy' which I recall Alan Curnow reading (some of) and enthusing to us in 1968. [Tennyson is another Victorian poet worth studying.] But for love poems there is, along side Elizabeth Barrett Browning's 'To the Portuguese', Browning's 'Men and Women': I read that poem to my son who mostly finds poetry too difficult or not so good (essentially a love poem, it is short from that, and he liked it). Those were essentially love poems but the 'Dramatis Personae' were written after Browning's love (of his life?) died, sadly.
Pound invokes Browning (in the Cantos) if people thinks he is too old fashiony.
[Mind you, he invokes just about everyone else who he thought wrote anything good or bad!]