World Poetry Day

Today is World Poetry Day but if you’re involved in poetry in any way, every day is a poetry day, isn’t it? My social media feeds are mostly jammed with posts about Brexit but some poetry has seeped through, sometimes about Brexit. I like this poem by Laxinx actor and writer Guido Garcia Luechas which I found on Twitter –

Until you kick me out:
my #brexit poem for #internationalpoetryday pic.twitter.com/96kkTICd6n

— Guido García Lueches (@ElGuidoGarcia) March 21, 2019

and I really enjoyed listening to the Radio 4 programme In Our Time this morning – an episode about Gerard Manley Hopkins. Also on the radio, I haven’t listened to it yet but there is an episode of Ramblings, presented by Clare Balding, called ‘Walking a Poem on the Malverns’ which is about “Clare Balding and the newly appointed Troubadour of the Hills (the excellent poet Jean Atkin) taking a poem for a walk on The Malverns.”

Something else I found on Twitter, from MPT (Modern Poetry in Translation) magazine, this wonderful BSL poem, ‘Into the Weeds’, by Bebe Ashley. More details about this poem which will appear in the next issue of MPT here.

What else? I’ve just finished reviewing Filigree: Contemporary Black British Poetry (Peepal Tree Press, 2018) for Under the Radar magazine. There are seventy poems by approximately 45 Black and Asian British poets, a good range of backgrounds, ages, ethnicity, fame in the poetry world. Many very strong poems and a delicious variety of subject matter and poetic styles – this book would be brilliant for a writing/reading group and would also be good to take into schools and universities to teach writing from. There is a comprehensive, meticulously evidenced preface by Professor Dorothy Wang about colonialism and the English language and English poetry. And at £8.99 for 70 poems (plus a substantial preface) this book is my recommendation for World Poetry Day.