Skip to main content

The Final Shortlisted Poet: #12 BETHAN TICHBORNE

It has been a very challenging time, attempting to finalise the shortlist, but the 12th and final poet up for the 2012 Melita Hume Poetry Prize is Bethan Tichborne. Tichborne lives in a co-op in East Oxford. She graduated from Oxford University in 2008, where she studied Philosophy and Italian. Since then she has worked as a care assistant and an anti-sweatshop campaigner. She is currently preparing for a trip to Afghanistan to write a book about young peace activists living in Kabul.  She is related to Chidiock Tichborne, whose elegy is one of the classics of English Literature.
Bethan Tichborne, the 12th and final shortlisted poet for the MHPP 2012

Comments

Poetry Pleases! said…
Dear Bethan

I studied Philosophy and Russian at University College, Oxford in the 1970s and I'm pleased to see that these courses (languages plus philosophy) are still being offered. Happy days indeed!

Best wishes from Simon
Yusuf Chowdury said…
Nice list. I think this short list of poet is best choice. I like poetry and always like to read poetry in my spare time.

vox lab
Thanks

Popular posts from this blog

CLIVE WILMER'S THOM GUNN SELECTED POEMS IS A MUST-READ

THAT HANDSOME MAN  A PERSONAL BRIEF REVIEW BY TODD SWIFT I could lie and claim Larkin, Yeats , or Dylan Thomas most excited me as a young poet, or even Pound or FT Prince - but the truth be told, it was Thom Gunn I first and most loved when I was young. Precisely, I fell in love with his first two collections, written under a formalist, Elizabethan ( Fulke Greville mainly), Yvor Winters triad of influences - uniquely fused with an interest in homerotica, pop culture ( Brando, Elvis , motorcycles). His best poem 'On The Move' is oddly presented here without the quote that began it usually - Man, you gotta go - which I loved. Gunn was - and remains - so thrilling, to me at least, because so odd. His elegance, poise, and intelligence is all about display, about surface - but the surface of a panther, who ripples with strength beneath the skin. With Gunn, you dressed to have sex. Or so I thought.  Because I was queer (I maintain the right to lay claim to that

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart?  A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional.  Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were.  For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ?  Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets.  But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ?  How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular.  John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se.  What do I mean by smart?

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and  Silence of the Lambs .  I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".