fourth edition

Among the smoke and fog of a December afternoon
You have the scene arrange itself—as it will seem todo—
With “I have saved this afternoon for you”;
And four wax candles in the darkened room
Four rings of light upon the ceiling overhead,
An atmosphere of Juliet’s tomb
Prepared for all the things to be said, or left unsaid.
We have been, [...]

I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river
Is a strong brown god—sullen, untamed and intractable,
Patient to some degree, at first recognised as a frontier;
Useful, untrustworthy, as a conveyor of commerce;
Then only a problem confronting the builder of bridges.
The problem once solved, the brown god is almost forgotten
By the dwellers in [...]

Knitting and poetry are more similar than they might first appear, she added, with poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy partial to an occasional knit, and the Society’s president Jo Shapcott, Seamus Heaney and Emily Dickinson all authors of poems featuring knitting. “With poetry and with knitting, you work line by line, and if something goes [...]

Channel4 executive: “OMG, OMG! BBC just had their poetry season and it was so supercool! What do we do?!”
Other Channel4 executive: “Is there anyway we can make poetry really sensationalist and entertaining? I mean, I am not not opposed to clever things but poetry is really stuffy, y’know?”
Channel4 Executive: “Uhm…. how about Lord Byron? He [...]

I saw this* and then I started missing academia once more and also really, really wanted to move to London. But, you know, life isn’t so bad. Thursday I’ll be baby-sitting the Old Maiden Aunt studio as Lilith’s away, so do pop by West Kilbride if you fancy buying some lovely handpainted yarn and a [...]

I have read poetry most of my life, it seems. I was a quiet Danish teenage girl who read Lord Byron and Rupert Brooke in the school library, swooning over the bold romanticism of the poets’ words and lives. When I was sixteen or seventeen, I bought a slim volume of poetry. Away from school, [...]

BBC has a Poetry Season which means I am watching far more TV than I usually do. So far Gryff Rhys Jones has explored why poetry matters, the Orkney poet George Mackay Brown has had his own programme, and last night I got a full hour of Simon Schama and Fiona Shaw reading John Donne [...]

Yes, I know I said stuff about knitting with grey wool. The phrases “never again”, “not in the winter months” and “I need colour!!!!!” may have passed my lips.
But I’ve changed my mind.
The pattern is Norwegian Woods by Sivia Harding. Earlier this year I knitted a few repeats of it in the gawjuss Old [...]

Unsurprisingly the poetry reading was one of my favourite parts of the Obama inauguration ceremony (another being Aretha Franklin’s awesome hat). You can read the entire poem by Elizabeth Alexander on the New York Times website right here.
Some live by “Love thy neighbor as thy self.”
Others by first do no harm, or take no more [...]

This is both very cool and just a bit creepy. Jim Clark, a “videographer” based in London, has animated photos or paintings of long-gone poets, paired the animations with poetry and you get things like Lord Alfred Tennyson “reading” his Ulysses:

While I’m sure some of the animations will be removed due to copyright violations (Sylvia [...]