StAnza Readings

What to read at StAnza?

Each of the three poets have 18 minutes to read. I have a lot of poems but it seems important that more than half of them are from The Clown of Natural Sorrow, as the event is a Pamphlet Poets spot. I’d also like to read a translation. I’d like to get a balance of light (or as light as I get!) and heavy, a range of subject-matter, and yet for there to be a thread holding it all together.

I ought to choose the poems the audience are likely to enjoy most, but it’s impossible to guess which ones these are. Poems that have gone down well with other audiences could bomb with this one.

I need to just not think about it too hard.

In case anyone wants to take a trip to St Andrews on Sunday 18th, I'll be reading with Lyn Moir and Diana Hendry at 11.30am in the St John's Undercroft.

At least I know what I’m reading at the 100 Poets Gathering. We were told to choose our “best known poem”. Well, I have no best known poem! So I chose In the Last Few Seconds. It isn't in my pamphlet, but possibly got read by a lot of people over the weeks following the National Poetry Competition. Not that I have any way of knowing whether that's the case or not.