(Avoiding) Poetic Ecological Collapse
The concept of poetic ecological collapse has been widely discussed, and so I add here only a few additional notes of personal reflection. Readers will know that an intensive use of the land for cultivation and a constant extraction by way of yields can lead to a collapse in fertility. Can this concern be transposed…
‘Holding the moment steady’ – a Poetry Short-Course with Jonathan Davidson (January 2023)
Latest News: Inexplicably, all the places for the above Short-Course have now been reserved. I am happy to add names to a waiting list in case anyone drops out, and I can also share details of other courses (with raffles, naturally) later in the year. Do e-mail me on jonathan@midlandcreative.co.uk, if you wish. Up to…
The Ploughed Field – New Nature Poetry
It is the nature of poets that we write about ourselves. And having done that for a number of minutes, hours, months, years, we look beyond ourselves. Many are drawn to that which has been made by mankind. Many are not. And of those who are not, many are drawn to what we oddly enough…
The Slow Poetry Movement
The Slow Poetry Movement has taken some time to get going. From its inception amongst a group of itinerant verse-mongers making their way through the forests of Upper Silesia in the early 19th Century, the movement has grown to have virtually no presence at all. Adherents, amongst whose number I count myself, are planning to…
Total Poetry
The concept of ‘total poetry’ is based, so I am told, on that of totaalvoetbal, as developed to such effect by the the Dutch football club Ajax in the 1970s, and also the Dutch national football team. Surprised though I was by the use of a tactical system from the game of association football in…
‘Begin with good nerve and decision’ – A Poetry Short-Course led by Jonathan Davidson, January 2022
‘Begin with good nerve and decision’ – A Poetry Short-Course led by Jonathan Davidson, January 2022
For a while now, I’ve been telling myself that writing poems should be more than just satisfying the poetry sector’s insatiable hunger for content. We can be surprised by creativity when we approach the act of composing poetry confident…
Honk If You Write Sestinas
The craze of poetry ‘bumper stickers’ (or similar items displayed in car rear windows) has surely reached its peak. On Friday last, the reverie I normally allow myself during the short car journey to a well-known purveyor of croissants (and much else besides) was spoilt by a cacophony of honking horns as fellow drivers sought…
Coningsby returns…
In 2015 I published the equivalent of a poetry novella – more than a pamphlet, less than a collection – called Humfrey Coningsby: Poems, Complaints, Explanations and Demands for Satisfaction. I believe it is still available from the publisher (the lovely Valley Press) and the more thoughtful bookmongers. By chance, the poet and writer Jeremy…
The Privileging of Print
When I first came across the phrase, ‘the privileging of print’ I misread it and thought it was the ‘privilege of print’. Yes, I thought, it is a privilege for anyone to have the earth’s scarce resources used to make (semi-)permanent their words or other two dimensional signs. Those who are the recipients of such…
Listening, again
I know of no better book to calm the shattered nerves of the contemporary poet than How To Be A Poet (Nine Arches Press, 2017), edited and largely written by my friends Jo Bell and Jane Commane. It covers a great deal of ground, from how to read (widely and with hope) to the fine…
Old Iron
As the many thousands of you who I claim as my ‘closest and dearest friends’ will know, I am a keen functional and recreational cyclist. In a secret location not far from my back door I have two bicycles which are what we call ‘fit for purpose’. Swinging open the door to my high-security storage…
What we are about when we are about poetry
I have just finished running a five-session course on the writing and publishing (in various forms) of poetry. I have on a very few occasions over the last thirty years run short poetry workshops, but never anything approaching a course. I have learned a lot, but it has thrown me into one of my existential…
The Poetry-Industrial Complex
I like looking at bricks and eating apples. I also enjoy considering the political economy of poetry. Like apples, poetry just happens, but like bricks, its form and use have been industrialised over thousands of years. And come to think of it, apples have come a long way from the fruit forest of Tian Shan…
The Croft craft – Review of ‘The Sailors of Ulm’
Andy Croft, The Sailors of Ulm, 90pp, 2019, Shoestring Press, Nottingham The Sailors of Ulm is an unusual book in an age that drifts relentlessly towards conformity. Most strikingly, many of the poems are tightly rhymed. Is this helpful? You bet it is. Chaucer, Pope, Byron and Harrison (not to mention Cope and Ayres) all…
Sorting out my angle…
Image: Brian Robert Marshall …the worst national shortage of papyrus in the history of small-press publishing… My book, A Commonplace – Apples, Bricks and Other People’s Poems (Smith|Doorstop, 2020) was published today, although you’ll not be seeing it immediately as all the physical copies have been impounded by the authorities and are languishing on pallets…
Universal Place-Makers: Mick North & Catherine Byron
These reviews first appeared in The North (No. 63, Winter 2019), a subscription to which is recommended. Observant readers will note that the books reviewed below were originally published several decades ago. Do not be afraid, for these are books that have ‘come through’. And although they are currently (inexplicably) unavailable, the hunt for second-hand…
Putting the kettle on…
What should we tell people about our poems? Faced with a poetry reading the poet typically settles for a bit of ‘intel’, a gag or two if they are that way inclined, and the usual abject apology. This much is expected and it works well enough. The poet slips the knife into the poetic bivalve…
Linking Arms
I have been thinking about how poetry is presented, and in particular how books are composed and assembled. I have a new collection coming out (A Commonplace, Smith|Doorstop, August 2020), and I’ve spent the last two years putting it together. But I’ve done things differently this time. One of the major changes from previous books…
Hearing Voices
I don’t usually ask friends and neighbours – and even my daughter – to make audio recordings of my poems, but I was sick of the sound of my own voice. I thought it would be fun to hear what other people made of my work and I would at least have proof that someone…
Jonathan Davidson 