All Blogposts

  • ModPo in the kitchen

    Finally caught up with ModPo by plugging in my netbook in the kitchen. Quite difficult to hear Al, Amarise, Emily, Molly, and the gang – they feel like old friends now – over the sizzling, splashing sounds of cooking dinner and washing up. Admittedly this isn’t model student behaviour but at least I’m up to… Read more

  • The Poetics of Things workshop with Robert Vas Dias

    The Poetics of Things workshop with Robert Vas Dias

    A solo parent Monday to Friday, this all-day, Saturday workshop, part of the 2012 Swindon Festival of Poetry, fitted in with my plans perfectly. As with other workshops I’ve been to recently, The Poetics of Things was organised by the wonderful, Swindon-based poet, Hilda Sheehan, who does so much to bring poetry to Swindon and… Read more

  • Publishing Your Poetry Seminar with Carrie Etter

    Publishing Your Poetry Seminar with Carrie Etter

    A few weeks ago I took part in this practical and informative seminar and workshop run by Carrie Etter. This was a really useful and productive morning crammed with advice about how, where and when to submit my work.  One particularly helpful exercise was for each participant to analyse a poetry magazine, answering set questions… Read more

  • ModPo: Seven chapters in and flagging a bit

    Speeding through ModPo and I could do with a few 36 hour days and/or a better brain.  I seem to be spending more time watching discussions about poetry rather than reading poetry and I am starting to feel like a child at the fairground trying to catch up with the merry-go-round.  One of the disadvantages… Read more

  • The music of Gertrude Stein

    The music of Gertrude Stein

    ModPo is racing on; we are now starting Week Five of this ten week course.  My highlights last week were listening to a Penn Sound recording of Gertrude Stein reading her poem If I Told Him: A Completed Portrait of Picasso (1912) and watching an extract from Shutters Shut, a dance choreographed by Paul Lightfoot… Read more

  • Modern and Contemporary American Poetry: Catching Up at 3AM

    Modern and Contemporary American Poetry: Catching Up at 3AM

    Waking at 3am on Saturday and finding myself unable to get back to sleep, I came downstairs in my pyjamas, made a cup of tea and plugged into the final readings for Week 3 of ModPo.  I love this course! Hilda Doolittle (known as H.D.), Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams were the poets we… Read more