Spending time among firs and mountains in sub-zero Nordic conditions puts poetry competitions blessedly out of mind, and in touch with what makes poetry sing originally - the elements confronted by the human body. Returning to London, I attended the TS Eliot awards tonight, and was pleased to hear that my favourite poetry collection of 2010, White Egrets, won. It is to be hoped The Guardian fixes its link soon, as there was no poet Brian Roberston up for an award, but rather Robin Robertson.
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....
Comments
good to hear from you.
I have tried to send a couple of emails, but they all returned to me. I don't know what the problem is.
Anyaway... now I find your blog and it is among my favorite ones.
Unfortunatelly, I had to stop my research for a while because of some private problems.
But I am ready to go over it again now.
I was thinking of spending some time up there, in Canada. It will facilitate my research, since it is hard to get the bibliographical material here in Brazil, but I don't have enough financial support for that.
Do you think I could get any scholarship for that?
Also, it will be a great pleasure to meet you in person.
Let's stay in touch. If you feel like, you can answer to my new email address:
maysa.dourado@uol.com.br
or
maysacristina@hotmail.com
Best regards, Maysa.
This is a decision that no one can possibly argue with. Derek Walcott had his 81st birthday a couple of days ago and is still writing poetry at the very summit of his powers. What a wonderful birthday present for him!
Best wishes from Simon