I am pleased to note that I'm reading at several excellent reading venues in October. Thursday, October 13th, I will be at Lauderdale House at 8 pm, reading with poets including Susan Wicks. Then, on Monday, October 17th, I'll be joining a large cast of Irish poets for the 30th birthday party of Salmon Press, 8 pm at the Troubadour. Poets reading there will include the wonderful Nessa O'Mahony. At the end of the month, I'll be reading for Rhythm & Muse, a Kingston Writing School event, out in Kingston, on Friday, October 28th, again at 8 pm, at The Space, Penrhyn Road campus, with fellow KU poets such as Liz Berry. Finally, for this year 9I think), November 9th, I read with Denise Riley and David Lehman at Oxfam Books & Music.
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?
Comments
I hope that everything goes well for you. Please give my regards to Susan Wicks whose books I have always enjoyed.
Best wishes from Simon