Skip to main content

BBC Notices Poetry

The T.S. Review is happy to note that the BBC reviewed the recent Citizen 32 reading in Manchester, earlier posted here.

They kindly state:

"2004’s Oxfam Poet in Residence Todd Swift was entertaining as he was controversial".

See the link below.

This photo of me is by the Welsh writer Jo Hughes, and was taken in London in 2003.

One of the poems I read was:

The Shape of Things to Come

Resembles a triumphant trump of doom;
Is like a hollow room; a horn of plenty;
A ballerina’s shoe; a house in Hooville,
Like a devil’s mouse; a bang-
Drum, a pirate drunk on deadman’s

Rum; like a broken broom used to brush
Away the webs from day-dreaming boys
In a math exam; like a rack of lamb;
A donut convention; a depleted pension;
Like the sort of position churchmen don’t

Like to mention; is shaped like a poem,
Mute and dumb; like a big bronze bell
Held by a handlebar-moustachioed strongman
Working for Barnum; like a circus tent;
Like the hole rent in just such an umbrella;

Like a sausage and some French mustard;
Seems to be hoist on its own petard; looks
Like rain; is infinite, so will and won’t come again.
Is shaped like love; is shaped like a question
Mark and also an exclamation mark and also

A period. The shape of the terrible future
Is a sonnet and a no, looks like a Chinese box and
A door without locks, a hairless fox,
A vortex, a matrix, a nexus, a government rope.
Dystopia up around that there bend

Appears to be green soap abandoned
Under an infernal never-ending tap. The future,
According to the latest discovery, is a bit
Like a U-boat captain, or a tortoise neck.
The bad things ahead look like a two-mile wreck.

poem by Todd Swift

http://www.bbc.co.uk/manchester/content/articles/2005/10/05/041005_citizen_32_poetry_feature.shtml

Comments

Adam Fieled said…
Like that poem a lot, Todd. Actually found myself thinking of Shelley's "To a Skylark", which led me to realize that, I'm not sure why, we never touched on the Romantics-- are they relevant or not. I feel like a freak in Philly walking around with my "I am as wayward as Shelley" shirt, but I have fantasies that in the UK people walk the streets reciting "Ode/ West Wind"...am I deluded? (Even Amis slips Keats into his books...)
Mon Oct 17, 03:05:00 am 2005
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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?
3 comments
Read more

"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...".
1 comment
Read more

THE SWIFT REPORT 2023

I am writing this post without much enthusiasm, but with a sense of duty. This blog will be 20 years old soon, and though I rarely post here anymore, I owe it some attention. Of course in 2023, "Swift" now means one thing only, Taylor Swift, the billionaire musician. Gone are the days when I was asked if I was related to Jonathan Swift. The pre-eminent cultural Swift is now alive and TIME PERSON OF THE YEAR. There is no point in belabouring the obvious with delay: 2023 was a low-point in the low annals of human history - war, invasion, murder, in too many nations. Hate, division, the collapse of what truth is, exacerbated by advances in AI that may or may not prove apocalyptic, while global warming still seems to threaten the near-future safety of humanity. It's been deeply depressing. The world lost some wonderful poets, actors, musicians, and writers this year, as it often does. Two people I knew and admired greatly, Ian Ferrier and Kevin Higgins, poets and organise
1 comment
Read more