If In Dublin This Thursday....

The Burning Bush 2 presents Patrick Chapman, Christodoulos Makris and
Kevin Graham at the Irish Writers Centre, on Thursday 27th September.
Admission is free and doors open at 7:30pm.

Our featured poets will be preceded by an open mic: the first six
people to sign up on the night get a slot.

Patrick, Christodoulos and Kevin have all featured in The Burning Bush
2 magazine. Check out issues our first three issues on
www.burningbush2.com

Patrick Chapman is an Irish poet, writer and screenwriter, born in
1968. His poetry collections include Jazztown, (Raven Arts Press,
1991), The New Pornography (Salmon Poetry, 1996), Breaking Hearts And
Traffic Lights (Salmon Poetry, 2007), A Shopping Mall on Mars,
(BlazeVOX, 2008) & The Darwin Vampires, (Salmon Poetry, 2010). His
story collection, The Wow Signal (Bluechrome) was published in 2007.
His new and selected poems will be published by Salmon later this
year. You can find him at www.patrickchapman.net

Christodoulos Makris is the author of the collection Spitting Out the
Mother Tongue (Wurm Press, 2011), the chapbook Round the Clock (Wurm
Press, 2009) and the chapbook / artist’s book, Muses Walk (yes, but is
it poetry, 2012). He lives in Dublin.

Kevin Graham lives and works in Dublin. His poetry has appeared in
Poetry Ireland Review, Crannóg, The Shop, Southword, The Moth and
others. He was chosen to participate in this year’s Poetry Ireland
Introduction Series

Comments

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....

Poetry vs. Literature

Poetry is, of course, a part of literature. But, increasingly, over the 20th century, it has become marginalised - and, famously, has less of an audience than "before". I think that, when one considers the sort of criticism levelled against Seamus Heaney and "mainstream poetry", by poet-critics like Jeffrey Side , one ought to see the wider context for poetry in the "Anglo-Saxon" world. This phrase was used by one of the UK's leading literary cultural figures, in a private conversation recently, when they spoke eloquently about the supremacy of "Anglo-Saxon novels" and their impressive command of narrative. My heart sank as I listened, for what became clear to me, in a flash, is that nothing has changed since Victorian England (for some in the literary establishment). Britain (now allied to America) and the English language with its marvellous fiction machine, still rule the waves. I personally find this an uncomfortable position - but when ...

"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...".

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