[New-Poetry] espoused poets

[David Bircumshaw]

>
> http://www.magmapoetry.com/poem.php?article_id=336
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>

Curiously enough both Anne-Marie Fyffe and Helen Ivory have read to us 
here in Leicester lately. Ms Fyffe was very likeable, very Irish, very 
'London', where she's really lives (she wore a dress which looked as if 
it had never been ironed which is apparently fashionable currently). Her 
poems were very good, very well-worked,  examples of an if you like that 
sort of thing. An abiding concern was with houses she'd lived in, and 
inarguably property is a dominant obsession of the Brit middle classes. 
She's chair of the (London = National) Poetry Society and, 
interestingly, she said that the writers who represent the kind of 
poetry that is welcomed are Billy Collins and Sharon Olds.
So I hope you guys remember this, that the present inspiration for the 
lack of adventure in Brit mainstream poetry is derived from American 
models, so next time you come across, say, Marjorie Perloff sounding off 
about the Brits, send her note please, for the literary narrowness today 
comes not from that grouchy old Larkin but consumer-friendly Billy C.
But I'd emphasise that Ms Fyffe's reading, of its kind, was worth going 
to. Not so Helen Ivory. I, and most of the audience, left with our jaws 
sagging from her reading. She was possibly the most inarticulate person 
claiming to be a poet I have ever encountered. She warned the audience 
that she was about to use a 'rare word' in a poem: 'widdershins'. She 
explained that 'villanelle' was technical term poets use. To be exact: 
'kind of, like, a technical term'. She said used google as a +research+ 
tool (!). She told that since she'd acquired a post at the National 
Poetry Archive she reads poetry more than she used to (her main job is, 
guess, teaching Creative Writing). She had a fascinating reading manner, 
in a style that was often inaudible to half the audience she'd sort of 
trail off at the end of each poem, as if a doubt had entered her mind 
about whether it existed or not. A woman friend summed Ms Ivory up as: 
'She's an airhead'. 

-- 

David Bircumshaw
Website and A Chide's Alphabet http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/
The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
Leicester Poetry Society: http://www.poetryleicester.co.uk

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/pipermail/new-poetry/attachments/20080419/335f5235/attachment.html