Graham's blog

Lyrical terrorism comes to the City

Those of you who are attentive watchers of Poet in the City will know that the charity was involved last year in Trees in the City, an exciting collaboration with Lloyd’s of London, the insurance market. This collaboration involved, amongst other things, the commissioning of new poetry about climate change written by three distinguished contemporary poets: Patience Agbabi, Matthew Hollis and John Burnside.

I can honestly say that nothing has given me greater satisfaction over the last year than to be in a position to commission new poetry, and add new and important work to the cultural life of the nation. The poets rose to the challenge magnificently, producing suites of poems of an exceptional range and quality. This poetry rapidly acquired a life of its own, being made into podcasts for the Lloyd’s website, streamed by the Times Online, reproduced in ‘Earth Shattering’ a Bloodaxe anthology of climate change poems, and even translated into Chinese!

The collaboration with Lloyd’s was such a success that Poet in the City has now been asked to commission more new poetry, this time about terrorism and conflict, another of the most important issues of our time. The charity will shortly be instructing three contemporary poets to create suites of new work on this subject, a great opportunity for poets to influence and reflect upon the so-called ‘War on Terror’ and the great social and political changes that have come in its wake.

Poetry is exactly the right medium in which to address these vexing and terrifying symptoms of our time. As Walt Whitman puts it ‘The poet judges not as a judge judges but as the sun falling around a helpless thing’. Poetry is not dogmatic or simplistic but is able to capture feelings of ambivalence, despair, and even hope for the future. It is able to take the temperature of the age and assess its state of health and well-being, and to raise awareness of the nature of other realities, even of the horrifying ‘collateral damage’ of war, or of violent actions and philosophies which may be repugnant to decent people everywhere.

This sort of commission is what Poet in the City exists to encourage. As readers of my blog will know I have long been an advocate of taking poetry to new audiences, and using it to address all of the most important and controversial issues of our time. It is not often that one gets to speak about terrorism and the city in one breath outside of the pages of newspapers or police reports. But poetry has all of the tools it needs to bring the reality of terrorism into the heart of the City in the form of words, emotions and ideas, which will move and uplift us, and also make us think.

Many thanks to Lloyd’s for continuing to support the creation of exciting and ground-breaking poetry through Poet in the City!

Hear this, see this!

Just before Christmas we held the inaugural meeting of Poet in the City’s new Audio-Visual group. This has come together more or less spontaneously and already includes several individuals who have experience of radio and film work.

The British Library Sound Archive already record most Poet in the City events and this is gradually building into a fabulous collection of poetry reading and performance, available for anyone to listen to as part of the Library’s resources. I did so myself just recently, spending a couple of fascinating days in my own personal listening room, with headphones on my head!

The Audio-Visual group, chaired by Melanie Roberts, is not intended to replace this invaluable service but to develop the recorded aspect of the charity’s work by capturing interesting magazine-style items, interviews, snatches of poetry and feedback arising from the charity’s many activities.

Thanks to the involvement of the distinguished film-maker Colin Still we also hope that Poet in the City will shortly be creating video podcasts to enrich and enliven the website with clips of poets reading and of live events. With talented individuals like this involved I think that, in the long run, the sky is the limit!

Hopefully audio files created by the group will shortly be providing mesmerising extracts of poetry and comment on the Poet in the City website, tempting new audiences to enjoy poetry, and building on the great success of the live events. Soon visitors to the website will be able to listen to recordings of poet’s reading their own work, discuss poetry with acclaimed poets in the forum discussion rooms, and buy poetry books from the online bookshop.

When this all starts happening, hopefully during the course of 2008, Poet in the City will really start to feel like an online community.

Books 'R' Us

Do you remember all that stuff back in the year 2000 about internet portals and vortals and the creation of the ‘one-stop shop’ online? Much of this euphoria was blown away when the dot.com boom turned to bust, but many of the ideas promulgated then are slowly finding their way into our lives.

It is clear that the internet is a great way of buying some things, like flight tickets and last minute travel. Buying these online has now become a commonplace. One of the things that does work well on the internet is the sale of books. People are happy to go to a site where they feel that they can get the information and the titles they are interested in.

Which is why it is such a great delight to announce the launch of the Poet in the City online bookshop, which will be opening for business shortly. I think that a lot of people will welcome a place online where they can receive poetry recommendations and can buy collections by amazing contemporary poets, many of whom they might not otherwise have heard of. Already Poet in the City is regularly approached for recommendations of poets. Add this to the fact that people can hear such poets read at Poet in the City’s live poetry events, or on an audio podcast, and it becomes a really useful service.

One of the other lessons of the dot.com revolution is that people want to deal online with trusted brands, brands which also have a terrestrial existence. That’s why the Poet in the City online bookshop is being hosted by Langton’s, a very real bricks and mortar bookshop, situated in Twickenham. Those who visit the shop in person will find a friendly and efficient independent bookseller situated in an attractive 15th Century building, complete with an organic café serving home made cakes and delicious cappucchino.

Not only that, visitors will find a well-stocked Poet in the City poetry section, containing the best contemporary poetry published by the leading poetry publishers including Faber, Picador, Bloodaxe, and Enitharmon, not to mention the series of Poet in the City poetry books being published by Axon Publishers.

What better way to could there be to get into poetry and to know how and where to indulge your new enthusiasm?