THE POETRY SHOW BLOG

Where we take time to discuss anything in the poetry world that tickles our fancy!

AMBIGUITY

Should a poem be ambiguous and cryptic? Should the reader be picking apart the meaning, coming to interpretations? That, surely, is why we study poetry, why poems like The Wasteland have endured as long as they have. Cross-medium, there are several universities where you can do an entire module on just what the hell Joyce was talking about in Ulyssess. Anime fans are still talking about what Gendo says to Ritsuko in End of Evangelion. David Lynch made a career out of making mystery films where the mystery remains unsolved at the end. So art has to be ambiguous to …
Read More

DREAMS

Do you have dreams? Do you remember your dreams after you wake up? Do you analyse your dreams, mull them over, search for meaning? This episode of The Poetry Show examines dreams. For some, a dream may be a nightmare. For others, they can’t remember their dreams and so wonder if dreams are all that. Or, when you hear the word ‘Dreams’ do you think of Hopes and Plans and things in the future? Listen in on us as we discuss hopes, plans, dreams, nightmares and what it means if you don’t remember what your brain replayed as you slept …
Read More

HISTORY

Maybe it’s my naturally sunny disposition, but for me poetry always begins with a problem. There’s the problem of the blank page, of what to write, where to start, who or what to gripe at, and of course the minor issue of interacting with the entire history of the poetry that’s come before. Each new poem becomes a new entry into dialogue with that heritage in a sense. If poetry is a thorny issue, then history is a knotted, rhizomorphous, barbed wire shrubbery. It’s probably safe to assume that few of us are naïve enough to see that neat thread …
Read More

NORTHERNNESS/HUMOUR

“You Northerners are just naturally funny aren’t you?” people say, citing the rich comic heritage that comes into their heads- from Hylda Baker and George Formby, Gracie Fields to Victoria Wood, Peter Kay to Les Dawson and Johnny Vegas. I look at them in a po faced way and say “But no aspects of human life are natural. All identities are performances that become identities through being repeated according to theorists like Judith Butler”. People edge away then, suspecting that there may be something in this allegation that doing a Doctorate in comedy sucks all the joy out of it… …
Read More

PREJUDICE

It is downright easy to convince ourselves and others that we are not prejudiced but in the roots of our makeup is the basic survival mechanism of us or them. Them is easy when thinking about another skin, or sex, or gender, but is more insidious when we realise that how we dress, do our hair, cope with life, believe something different, respond differently in social settings. It is a difficult topic to discuss without being sanctimonious and poetry offers a tool for us to look at the issues without being pompous. The poems in this segment looked at the …
Read More

Loading...

FOLLOW US