NaPoMo

National Poetry Month - here, not just over there and everywhere! Get a daily poem from Daily Lit, today's poem being Eliot and an extract from The Wasteland.

In other places, PFFA set their usual challenge of writing a poem a day for all 30 days of this month. I tried last year (lasted 17 days?) and the year before (lasted 3 days, I think). You do need strategies to get through this and the threads over at PFFA show how good the competition are ;)

Anyhoo - what am I doing? I'm thinking about using the Daily Lit poems as a daily bounce to get me going on some poems, since I've not been writing much of my own stuff for the last three months.

Instead, I was engaged in editing other people's writing - an art for which you need endless patience and a good computer programme (which hasn't been invented yet). The anthology runs to 136 pages (I hope) and will be published in May (I hope), to huge applause and interest (again, I hope!). What else - oh yes, it will be called, Drogheda Writes 2. Just hope I don't get into trouble with anyone here in Dundalk ;) Apparently these two towns, based in the same county aren't terribly fond of each other. Since I belong to neither town fully, I can mention this (I hope...)...

The Scottish Poetry Library

Rob and Colin have put me on to this excellent resource site, The Scottish Poetry Library. In its own words it is "the place for poetry in Scotland, for the regular reader, the serious student or the casual browser.Since its foundation in 1984 it has amassed a remarkable collection of written works, as well as tapes and videos. The emphasis is on contemporary poetry written in Scotland, in Scots, Gaelic and English, but historic Scottish poetry and contemporary works from almost every part of the world feature too."

In amongst the exciting goodies that it offers, there's a Reading Room, where they ask different poets to name their 'classic' poems along with reasons why.
Rob talks about Milton's "Paradise Lost", where "Satan gets the best lines;" Claire Askew recalls her childhood amazement at Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky," with its "weird, wonderful, onomatopoeic words;" and Colin Will reveals the "underlying subtleties" of Robbie Burn's "A Red, Red Rose. These are just three of many poets that have taken up the challenge of the 'classic' poem: Vicki Feaver, Billy Liar and many other well-known poets are there.

There's also a feature called the Favourite Poems, where you will find poets like Simon Armitage, Jackie Kay, Michael Hofmann and Michael Longley talking about selections of poetry that they admire. Happy days for anyone wanting to while away a few hours reading and learning about poetry.