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bookgazing) wrote2009-08-18 10:47 am
bookgazing) wrote2009-08-18 10:47 am
The Twelve Step Poetry Program
Yesterday I revealed I was planning to set myself a personal challenge to do with poetry and hinted at reasons why fellow challenge addicts might want to join in. Here’s how my challenge idea came about:
In 2008 I was unemployed for about six months. Going to the job centre is an experience that can pretty much be summed up as ‘meh’. Any establishment which has bouncers in the daytime is not somewhere you should be going regularly. Sometimes you’d see funny things like the man who ran into the job centre and hid underneath a desk to try and escape the police (it didn’t work). But mostly meh.
The job centre I went to was right by the town library and my appointment was at an oh so inconvenient time when it came to getting buses to and from my village. I spent a lot of time waiting around in the library. I’d start out filling in application forms for jobs I didn’t really want (at companies that never seemed to want me) but after half an hour I’d usually have drifted in to the stacks. At the time I was using this library regularly the librarians were leaving eager, handwritten recommendation cards everywhere to try to encourage people to pick up poetry collections. I could read a whole poetry book before my appointment, return to it after and whatever I read it usually reminded me that most of the world wasn’t grey and crazy like the job centre.
Then I got a job, which was great but it meant less library visits (I’m not allowed to borrow from the libraries near my work, because it’s in a different borough from where I was born). Somehow poetry slipped off my reading agenda. Now it’s two years later and the world continues to have grey and crazy patches, I bet (even if you describe them a bit more coherently) some of you have those times. Over the past year I’ve begun to feel really sad about the lack of poetry in my life.
Now poetry isn’t supposed to be a plaster that makes us all feel better, yet somehow even the most bleak, condemnatory poems spark something optimistic in me. Some poems make me feel better because the poet is seeing and describing just what I see, they understand. Some poems show me all the things I’m not seeing or imagining. Some impress me with the force of their emotions. Some offer questions and confusion, which makes me feel like I’m seeing a living dialogue evolve. Sometimes the fact of a poem in front of me reminds me that there are people out there creating, believing that art still matters, which in turn puts the office world into its proper context (day to day business may be important, but it’s not the only thing that gives life meaning).
So, yes, the challenge.
At it’s simplest level the challenge requires that anyone who feels like joining reads twelve books of poetry, each by a different author, in twelve months. Each book must be the work of one poet (that means no anthologies, like ‘The 101 Best Love Poems’, are allowed). Inject your lives with poetry from 1st Sept 2009 – 30th Aug 2010.
However I know what you serious challenge addicts want. You want something that allows you to make an uber-complicated list which includes categories. I want that too, what is the point of a challenge without at least a provisional list? How much better is it if the list includes separate classifications? So for my personal challenge I’ll be reading two books from each of the six categories below:
2 female poets: There are tons of wonderful female poets I want to recommend – Wendy Cope, Dorothy Parker, Adrianne Rich are just a few.
2 translated poets: This is an area I know very little about, yay for new discoveries. Anyone have recommendations?
2 dead white male poets: I have plenty of recommendations for this category – Philip Larkin, William Blake, Robert Frost.
2 poets who have held an official poetry post: I’m British so I’m thinking of reading Poet Laureates like Carol Ann Duffy and Andrew Motion. You may want to find out about poets in other countries who have held equivalent positions.
2 black/ hispanic/ asian poets: You can read books by any poets who are not white for this category. Personal favourites of mine are Srikanth Reddy and Patricia Smith.
2 GLBT poets: I put this category in because I wanted to include all kinds of diversity, but if you find it hard to pick poets (because you’ve already read all the poets where their sexuality is publically known) then you’re free to replace it with two books of poetry where the authors write a specific type of poetry (such as comic poetry, epic poetry like Beowulf etc). Personally I’d recommend picking up something by the ‘Great War’ poets Wilfred Owen, Rupert Graves or Siegfried Sassoon to fulfil this category if you haven't already read their stuff.
Here’s the especially challenging part, you can’t overlap categories and use one poet to fill many categories (for example Carol Ann Duffy is gay, female and England’s current poet Laureate but you can only use her in one of those categories - you can pick which category you use her book to fulfil but she can only count for one). You can also only read one book by each poet. That means you’ll read twelve books by twelve poets in twelve months.
But wait there’s a third level of challenge! You can join me in making poetry an even bigger part of life. In my house sits Poetry Daily’s 2003 anthology, which has a poem from each day of the year. I plan to read a poem from this anthology every day from 1st Sept 2009 until the end of the challenge on 30th Aug 2010. If you want to go the extra mile and let poetry flood into your everyday life you can either read that anthology with me or read a poem daily at heir website.
Reviews
Book bloggers don’t tend to review poetry, maybe because they don’t feel like they have the expertise to judge poetry, or because they’re not sure how to make their review format work for poetry. So, while you can fully review the books you read for this challenge if you like, you can also take the option of just sharing some of your favourite lines from the book (remember please don’t post full poems, there are copyright issues with that, instead link to full versions somewhere else). If you want to include anything else (poets biography, how particular poems made you feel etc) please do! I’d love to see all kinds of poetry related stuff popping up. I’ll sort out a way of organising the links to these posts later so people can find them.
Also there’s no need to post daily reviews of your daily poems, we’d all quickly be swamped!
So after the blather, the recap:
Challenge runs: 1st Sept 2009 – 30th Aug 2010
Challenge name: The Twelve Step Poetry Program
Option 1: 12 books of poetry, each by a different author
Option 2: 12 books of poetry, each by a different author, with two books chosen from each category mentioned above
Option 3: Option 2 + a poem a day from Poetry Daily until the end of the challenge
Sign up: In the comments below by leaving a link to a post you make about the challenge (including lists if you want). I hope loads to see a few challengers join me in September.
Other Participants
Kathleen
Peta
Katrina
ascian
Reviews and Musings
'The Dumbfounding - Margaret Avison ascian
'Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis' - Wendy Cope katrina
'The Migraine Hotel' - Luke Kennard katrina
'Selected Poems' - Sharon Olds kathleen
Skirrid Hill - Owen Sheers kathleen
In 2008 I was unemployed for about six months. Going to the job centre is an experience that can pretty much be summed up as ‘meh’. Any establishment which has bouncers in the daytime is not somewhere you should be going regularly. Sometimes you’d see funny things like the man who ran into the job centre and hid underneath a desk to try and escape the police (it didn’t work). But mostly meh.
The job centre I went to was right by the town library and my appointment was at an oh so inconvenient time when it came to getting buses to and from my village. I spent a lot of time waiting around in the library. I’d start out filling in application forms for jobs I didn’t really want (at companies that never seemed to want me) but after half an hour I’d usually have drifted in to the stacks. At the time I was using this library regularly the librarians were leaving eager, handwritten recommendation cards everywhere to try to encourage people to pick up poetry collections. I could read a whole poetry book before my appointment, return to it after and whatever I read it usually reminded me that most of the world wasn’t grey and crazy like the job centre.
Then I got a job, which was great but it meant less library visits (I’m not allowed to borrow from the libraries near my work, because it’s in a different borough from where I was born). Somehow poetry slipped off my reading agenda. Now it’s two years later and the world continues to have grey and crazy patches, I bet (even if you describe them a bit more coherently) some of you have those times. Over the past year I’ve begun to feel really sad about the lack of poetry in my life.
Now poetry isn’t supposed to be a plaster that makes us all feel better, yet somehow even the most bleak, condemnatory poems spark something optimistic in me. Some poems make me feel better because the poet is seeing and describing just what I see, they understand. Some poems show me all the things I’m not seeing or imagining. Some impress me with the force of their emotions. Some offer questions and confusion, which makes me feel like I’m seeing a living dialogue evolve. Sometimes the fact of a poem in front of me reminds me that there are people out there creating, believing that art still matters, which in turn puts the office world into its proper context (day to day business may be important, but it’s not the only thing that gives life meaning).
So, yes, the challenge.
At it’s simplest level the challenge requires that anyone who feels like joining reads twelve books of poetry, each by a different author, in twelve months. Each book must be the work of one poet (that means no anthologies, like ‘The 101 Best Love Poems’, are allowed). Inject your lives with poetry from 1st Sept 2009 – 30th Aug 2010.
However I know what you serious challenge addicts want. You want something that allows you to make an uber-complicated list which includes categories. I want that too, what is the point of a challenge without at least a provisional list? How much better is it if the list includes separate classifications? So for my personal challenge I’ll be reading two books from each of the six categories below:
2 female poets: There are tons of wonderful female poets I want to recommend – Wendy Cope, Dorothy Parker, Adrianne Rich are just a few.
2 translated poets: This is an area I know very little about, yay for new discoveries. Anyone have recommendations?
2 dead white male poets: I have plenty of recommendations for this category – Philip Larkin, William Blake, Robert Frost.
2 poets who have held an official poetry post: I’m British so I’m thinking of reading Poet Laureates like Carol Ann Duffy and Andrew Motion. You may want to find out about poets in other countries who have held equivalent positions.
2 black/ hispanic/ asian poets: You can read books by any poets who are not white for this category. Personal favourites of mine are Srikanth Reddy and Patricia Smith.
2 GLBT poets: I put this category in because I wanted to include all kinds of diversity, but if you find it hard to pick poets (because you’ve already read all the poets where their sexuality is publically known) then you’re free to replace it with two books of poetry where the authors write a specific type of poetry (such as comic poetry, epic poetry like Beowulf etc). Personally I’d recommend picking up something by the ‘Great War’ poets Wilfred Owen, Rupert Graves or Siegfried Sassoon to fulfil this category if you haven't already read their stuff.
Here’s the especially challenging part, you can’t overlap categories and use one poet to fill many categories (for example Carol Ann Duffy is gay, female and England’s current poet Laureate but you can only use her in one of those categories - you can pick which category you use her book to fulfil but she can only count for one). You can also only read one book by each poet. That means you’ll read twelve books by twelve poets in twelve months.
But wait there’s a third level of challenge! You can join me in making poetry an even bigger part of life. In my house sits Poetry Daily’s 2003 anthology, which has a poem from each day of the year. I plan to read a poem from this anthology every day from 1st Sept 2009 until the end of the challenge on 30th Aug 2010. If you want to go the extra mile and let poetry flood into your everyday life you can either read that anthology with me or read a poem daily at heir website.
Reviews
Book bloggers don’t tend to review poetry, maybe because they don’t feel like they have the expertise to judge poetry, or because they’re not sure how to make their review format work for poetry. So, while you can fully review the books you read for this challenge if you like, you can also take the option of just sharing some of your favourite lines from the book (remember please don’t post full poems, there are copyright issues with that, instead link to full versions somewhere else). If you want to include anything else (poets biography, how particular poems made you feel etc) please do! I’d love to see all kinds of poetry related stuff popping up. I’ll sort out a way of organising the links to these posts later so people can find them.
Also there’s no need to post daily reviews of your daily poems, we’d all quickly be swamped!
So after the blather, the recap:
Challenge runs: 1st Sept 2009 – 30th Aug 2010
Challenge name: The Twelve Step Poetry Program
Option 1: 12 books of poetry, each by a different author
Option 2: 12 books of poetry, each by a different author, with two books chosen from each category mentioned above
Option 3: Option 2 + a poem a day from Poetry Daily until the end of the challenge
Sign up: In the comments below by leaving a link to a post you make about the challenge (including lists if you want). I hope loads to see a few challengers join me in September.
Other Participants
Kathleen
Peta
Katrina
ascian
Reviews and Musings
'The Dumbfounding - Margaret Avison ascian
'Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis' - Wendy Cope katrina
'The Migraine Hotel' - Luke Kennard katrina
'Selected Poems' - Sharon Olds kathleen
Skirrid Hill - Owen Sheers kathleen