Oxfam's Back To School Poetry Event October 12!

BACK TO SCHOOL – FIVE POETS FOR OXFAM!

SPONSORED BY THE KINGSTON WRITING SCHOOL

HOSTED BY TODD SWIFT

OXFAM BOOKS AND MUSIC

91 MARYLEBONE HIGH STREET

LONDON W1

CLOSEST TUBES BAKER STREET, BOND STREET

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 12^th, 2011

7PM START TIME

ADMISSION £5/ £3 CONCESSION

ALL PROCEEDS TO OXFAM, REGISTERED CHARITY

KHIN AUNG AYE – BURMA (Translated by JAMES BYRNE)

TODD COLBY – USA

ANNIE FREUD - UK

ILYA KAMINSKY – USA

MIKE LOVEDAY – UK (Launching his debut pamphlet)

Khin Aung Aye is one of the leading Burmese poets of his generation. His work is translated into English by poet and editor James Byrne.

Todd Colby has published four books of poetry: Ripsnort, Cush, Riot in the Charm Factory: New and Selected Writings, and Tremble & Shine, all published by Soft Skull Press. He was also the editor of the poetry anthology Heights of the Marvelous: A New York Anthology (St. Martin’s Press). He was the lead singer for the critically-acclaimed band Drunken Boat. Colby serves on the Board of Directors for The Poetry Project, where he teaches poetry workshops.

Annie Freud is the daughter of painter Lucian Freud, and the great granddaughter of Sigmund Freud. She saw her father regularly throughout her childhood and he painted many portraits of her. Since 1975, she has worked intermittently as a tapestry artist and embroiderer. Her first full collection from Picador ,The Best Man Who Ever Was was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation in 2007. Her second collection, The Mirabelles, was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize earlier this year.

Ilya Kaminsky was born in Odessa, former USSR and arrived in the United States in 1993 when his family was granted asylum by the American Government. He is the author of Dancing in Odessa, which won the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Metcalf Award. He has received a Lannan Fellowship, Whiting Writers Award, and a Ruth Lilly Fellowship from Poetry Foundation. Kaminsky lives in San Diego where he teaches at SDSU.

Mike Loveday studied English Literature at Merton College, Oxford. He is completing an MA in Creative Writing at Kingston University. Loveday is editor-publisher of 14, an illustrated magazine devoted to sonnets, ghost-sonnets and stranger fourteen-line poems. His poetry and prose appears in many publications. His debut pamphlet, He Said / She Said was published by HappenStance in July, 2011.

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

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

E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

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