Graeme Richardson
@ravoon.bsky.social
Poetry Critic for the Sunday Times. Anglican Priest. Poetry Collection, "Dirt Rich", out from Carcanet. TLS contributor since 2010. All views very much my own.
Marvellous "reverse" sonnet by John Ashbery. I love this poem so much.
a charming map of Cambridge, drawn by Gerard Manley Hopkins for a visit - I guess he'd forgotten his phone @ransomcenter.bsky.social
Kind of charmed by this statue of Thomas Mann with his dog by the Tegernsee - not charmed enough to finish one of his books, mind...
I really admire Emily Wilson, but I find this (and much of the LRB review around it) just silly. And weirdly immature. If you would genuinely "be ashamed" to have written "any part" of a script in a successul much-seen film, your privilege is showing.
When I first read this Larkin poem (a long time ago) it seemed a triumph of concision. But now I think it's vast and sprawling and mysterious.
Norman MacCaig. There is something in the vowel sounds set against the showman rhythms, that feels like deadpan delivery by someone holding back a belly laugh: a sort of Les Dawson affect.
On Mary Oliver - I respect her achievement, but I'm not sure about the Selected Poems being a Modern Classic: www.thetimes.com/article/bea0...
‘Put on your coat, leave your desk!’ Mary Oliver, the nature poet
Mary Oliver’s gentle exhortations to frolic in the fields made her one of America’s most popular poets. Now, her collected poems have become Penguin Modern Classics
thetimes.com
The title poem of Frank Ormsby's book captures the rhythm of the Tumbling Paddy so well. Frank's book is a thing of beauty. Among all the noise and hoopla surrounding books of much inferior quality I hope it isn't overlooked.
Not the biggest Mary Oliver fan, but I love Schumann, and I was surprised by this lovely poem in her new Penguin Selected:
Auden: "Private faces in public places / Are wiser and nicer / Than public faces in private places." One of his great pieces of wisdom.
Dorian Lynskey@dorianlynskey.bsky.social · 4w agoMy take is that it doesn’t matter that you’re personally kind if you’re publicly cruel. And having strong principles is not in itself a virtue. So I’m not criticising the obit - the format requires balance - but personally I feel less sad
calling all yorkshire folk - i’ll be running a free poetry workshop this weekend at Goole Museum on finding yourself in the archive. we’ll be going through the collection and writing poems that explore our place alongside pier portraiture and local artefacts. come keep me company!
Reading a review of a book of poems. Never a good idea for friends to review one another. It leads everyone astray.
I kind of admire the horrible honesty of think-pieces like this, but I’d personally give either of my sons both kidneys, survive as a brain in a jar and not care if they only sent a Christmas card every third year
From my review of Henry Power's super "Homer Haunted" in The Times:
Australian poet Francis Webb, born Francis Charles Webb-Wagg, spent long periods in psychiatric hospitals in Norfolk in the 1950s and 60s, but his poems from these years seem never to have entered British poetic consciousness, which is a terrible shame.
Celebrating the Eucharist later today when it's 38 degrees - so basically toast and mulled wine
Naush Sabah in the latest TLS! One of the best new voices of recent years: "rare permanence in the chameleon city; / a chance to be the same in the same place." www.the-tls.com/literature/o...
To Poets Corner
Small Heath, Birmingham Biting point pause at the junctionindicating I want to return home,and a Damascene breeze holds me herebetween the raising dirt
the-tls.com
Alice Oswald's Rhapsody: 'a resounding manifesto for the oral tradition.' www.penguin.co.uk/books/440777...
Rhapsody
A daring, genre-defying work of non-fiction from one of our greatest poets Alice Oswald goes in search of poetry in its original, wildest form – before it was written down, before it belonged to a si...
penguin.co.uk
OUT NOW: Issue twenty-four: 'Hopes Unspool' badlilies.uk/issue-twenty-four
Issue twenty-four — Bad Lilies
Issue twenty-four of Bad Lilies
badlilies.uk