Jo Shapcott

[Des]

Congratulations to Jo for winning the Costa prize for On Mutability. Here's a wonderful poem for tree-huggers everywhere.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PQsAG6l2iw

[NormanD]

Thanks for posting, Des.

Charlie G once commented - either here or on the radio - that poets always seem to read their work, from a book, rather than recite from memory. Singers, he noted, manage without crib sheets (often playing music too) - so why not poets?

[David Flower]

Because poets are writers whereas singers are performers

[NormanD]

Yes, I see. Smoke and mirrors, aka 'gravitas".

(Sorry, the last sentence sounds like a cryptic clue).

[Rob Hall]

Because poets are writers whereas singers are performers

So why don't more poets write songs for singers to sing?

Edit: This is the project that I had in mind when I posted the above question -

http://www.chemikal.co.uk/ballads/

I meant to post something about it at the time but I never got around to it. It struck me as something that was well worth following through, but nothing seems to have come of it.

(Apologies for hi-jacking the thread.)

[Des]

I'm a little bothered that poems do not often appear in written form on t'internet. If you google any living poet you are likely to be guided to websites which have sound recordings rather than the poem 'on the page'.

I'm an old-fashioned poetry-lover who believes that the appearance of the poem - its pattern, shape, how it inhabits the page etc - is more important than the spoken poem.

But that's all rather un-SOTW and I should take my complaints elsewhere.

[Ted]

I have loved Jo Shapcott for a long time. This are two early favourites:

Phrase Book

http://more.poetrysociety.org.uk/npcvot ... php?pid=18

and

The Surrealists' Summer Convention Came to Our City

http://more.poetrysociety.org.uk/npcvot ... php?pid=23