Tonight at the Shore Poets (7.45pm at the Mai Thai, Crichton’s Close, Edinburgh), there’s Stephanie Green, Ken Cockburn, and the incomparable Alan Gillis. I’ll be there!
Tomorrow night, I’ll be lining up with my HappenStance colleagues to read at the Troubadour in London from 8pm. I’m looking forward to that immensely. Should be a terrific evening.
Tony Williams is telling us to Read Gottfried Benn!. I’d certainly like to have a shot. I’ve come across his poetry only in Michael Hamburger’s The Truth of Poetry. As Tony says:
“Benn makes uncomfortable reading in the professionalised world of contemporary letters: his style is idiosyncratic, histrionic, extreme, and rhetorical, in opposition to the dominant style, which is moderate, sober, and uses a regulated jargon.”
It’s like that with most of the poets who truly matter. What they do comes from a personal, idiosyncratic vision that leaves the rest of the world trying to catch up with them – often unwillingly at first.
