I got to Book 2, Line 910 in Paradise Lost today, but it’s been a really busy day at work. I’ve made a few notes, but won’t post anything about it until tomorrow morning.This evening, I was at the Scottish Poetry Library to hear Tracey Herd and Kapka Kassabova reading their poetry.
Afterwards, I went to the Waverley Bar with Kapka, Mike Stocks, Ian and Elizabeth Gold, and Andrea, whose surname I don’t know. I’m just back home. It’s ten past midnight and I can’t summon up the energy to write anything worth reading about Milton. Tomorrow morning, I’ll try to make up for it.
But I unreservedly recommend Kapka’s second collection, Geography for the Lost. There are some really brilliant poems in there, mainly centring on the search for a place to call home, the experience of rootlessness, and the tension between the reality of love/happiness and the desire for it. Exactly my kind of thing, really well written, and emotionally spot on.
Kapka will be reading at the Great Grog Bar in June. Really, don't miss it. She's a dramatic and engaging reader too.
2 comments:
I didn't know Tracey was still writing; it must be some years since she published her second collection. Dead Redhead?
Still, I had a gap of nine years between first and second, so I can't talk ...
Yes, she read from her first two collections. At the end, she held up a manuscript for a third collection and said she always carried it to readings but often "just waved it about." She read one poem from it (a very good one) and said her third collection would be out sometime in the next hundred years, although I think the current plan is 2009.
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