The Young British Poets Are Coming!

The Manhattan Review Launch in London
Hosted by Todd Swift
Thursday, 5 March, 2009 - 7 pm start time; ends at 10 pm
Oxfam Books and Music shop, 91 Marylebone High Street
London W1 (5 minutes from Baker Street tube station)

With special guests
Philip Fried, poet and editor, in from New York and Penelope Shuttle

And with short readings by many of "The Young British Poets":

Joe Dunthorne
Emily Berry
Zoe Brigley
James Byrne
Isobel Dixon
Nathan Hamilton
Luke Kennard
Chris McCabe
Alex McRae
Helen Mort
Daljit Nagra
Sally Read
Kathryn Simmonds
Jack Underwood

Admission free

Comments

Mark Granier said…

"The Young British Poets Are Coming!"

Aren't they always!

Wed Mar 04, 11:51:00 pm 2009

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...".

THE SWIFT REPORT 2023

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