Poetry & Poets in Rags (Free subscription) | 11/25/2009
They are such delicate things, and getting them right is an art. It is all too easy to wobble. But Van Rompuy's nature poems, even the bad ones, are much better than those about politics. from Andrew Motion: The Guardian: Politics needs poetry--so hooray for Herman Van Rompuy ~~~~~~~~~~~
Bibliobibuli (Free subscription) | 11/23/2009
Really, my apologies for not being a very good blogger over the last week or two. I'm not sure what's happened to me, but I seem to be more easily distractible than usual. (I just spent 20 minutes getting distracted by this nice blog while looking to see if I had spelt the word right!). This being the case, I offer you some quick links to stories that have caught my eye over the last week or two and...
Beattie's Book Blog (Free subscription) | 11/18/2009
Andrew Motion to Chair The Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2010 Sir Andrew Motion, former Poet Laureate, (pic left by Johnny Ring), is today (Wednesday 18th November) announced as Chair of the judges for the 2010 Man Booker Prize for Fiction – the most significant literary prize in the English language. Andrew Motion comments, ‘ It’s an honour to be asked to chair the Man Booker Prize,...
peony moon (Free subscription) | 11/15/2009
Marion Ashton works part-time as an English Advisor for an international geological consultancy company, both in the United Kingdom and in Houston, Texas. She is currently doing the MA course in Creative Writing at Royal Holloway, with Andrew Motion and Jo Shapcott as tutors. She moved to Texas with her husband in 2001, and lived there [...]
Poetry & Poets in Rags (Free subscription) | 11/11/2009
Dear Poetry Aficionados, IBPC: Poetry & Poets in Rags Our first article is from the New York Times and contains poems commemorating the Berlin Wall coming down 40 years ago. This is followed by links to articles that have to do with Veterans, Remembrance, or Armistice Day, which is tomorrow. The Back Page is on Ben Shephard accusing Andrew Motion of plagiarism. This item has three links, one from...
Poetry & Poets in Rags (Free subscription) | 11/11/2009
all but 16 are taken directly from A War of Nerves. There is a word for this. It begins with 'p' and it isn't poetry. "There is a further issue. My work can be lazily ripped off like this, without any recompense--what did The Guardian pay [Andrew] Motion for copying out my research? Yet every time I quote a line of poetry in a book, I have to pay. . ." --[Ben Shephard] from The Times: So...
dumbfoundry (Free subscription) | 11/10/2009
Sir Andrew Motion has been accused of “shameless burglary” by a military historian whose research he lifted and put into a poem about shell-shock for Remembrance Sunday.And the poem in question...
ArtsJournal (Free subscription) | 11/09/2009
Ben Shephard said that Andrew Motion's poem An Equal Voice, a stitching together of the voices of several generations of shellshocked soldiers which was published in the Guardian on Saturday, draws heavily from his history of medical psychiatry A War of Nerves....
Books, Inq. (Free subscription) | 11/09/2009
... So what if I copied work says Sir Andrew Motion, Shakespeare did all the time. It does seem that one ought to spend a little time putting together words that are one's own.
The Guardian Books Blog (Free subscription) | 11/02/2009
Motion's matter-of-fact tone sums up perfectly the mixed emotions and disappointments when confronted with a psychologically demanding 'site of signficance' This week, a new poem by former poet laureate Andrew Motion takes us to Japan, with a series of snapshots centring on a visit to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park . Visits to such significant sites are psychologically demanding, especially if...
Poetry & Poets in Rags (Free subscription) | 09/30/2009
Dear Poetry Aficionados, IBPC: Poetry & Poets in Rags The Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival is back on for 2010. This is our Back Page story. It seems that metaphors are more body-based than you might think, and at the root of thought itself. This is our fourth story in News at Eleven. The Guardian ran a climate change special this Saturday, which drew poems from Carol Ann Duffy and Andrew Motion...
Poetry & Poets in Rags (Free subscription) | 09/30/2009
by Andrew Motion from Andrew Motion: The Guardian: The Sorcerer's Mirror by Andrew Motion ~~~~~~~~~~~
Lucy Ann White (Free subscription) | 09/28/2009
I’m in a very bucolic frame of mind. Yesterday was so beautiful weather wise that it was a joy to be in the great outdoors. This northern part of Kent is known as The Garden of England and for a very good reason. The land doesn’t lend itself to large fields of cereals and nor does the soil. But it is suited to orchards and nut plats. The nuts have all been harvested – those that escaped...
Londonist (Free subscription) | 09/01/2009
Continuing our amble round London's independent bookshops We're back after our summer break, and in leafy West Dulwich. Opened 27 years ago, Dulwich Books has very strong sections on fiction, art, biographies and crime, even including translations of criminal goings-on from France, Germany and Scandinavia. As you might expect in an area with a settled population, the children's area is well stocked...
The Guardian Books Blog (Free subscription) | 08/17/2009
The author's confession of attempted rape is liable to eclipse everything else we know about him In yesterday's Sunday Times John Carey described how, in the course of researching his forthcoming biography of William Golding, he came upon the novelist's own admission that he had once tried to rape a 15-year-old schoolgirl. Golding himself was just 18 at the time, down from his first year at Oxford....
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