I read at one of the best poetry venues I've ever seen, on Thursday - Brighton's Redroaster Coffehouse. The audience was great too. The only challenge in the high-ceilinged old-fashioned coffehouse is that readers/performers face a wall-sized mirror that only the prettiest and most vain of poets will adore when trying to focus on their work and audience. But, once past that distraction, it's a must-go-to space for anyone heading that way. Sadly, Daniel Kane was ill, but happily he was replaced by British-Canadian poet Naomi Foyle, who read brilliantly from her pamphlet, Canada (Echo Room Press, £3). Her poem about the Toronto poet "Jones" (anyone recall him?) was hilarious. And finally, I was able to hear Carrie Etter read from her latest work. She was sensual, witty, and moving, in equal measure - she's a real fusion poet (able to balance the needs of the page and the stage) - and also a hybrid poet (merging the lyric and the experimental). She has a great poetry voice, one of the best. Her poems about 9/11 and her son were particularly striking. The night was co-hosted by Les Robinson, poet and publisher-editor of Tall-Lighthouse, and it's always good to see him.
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....
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My sister lives near Brighton. Had we been staying with her last week, we would have attended.
Best wishes from Simon & Rusty