Tune thy music to thy heart November 24, 2008: In Berlin this week, I wandered into a dark room next to this building site and found myself not in a silent disco but a silent singalong. ‘Tune thy music to thy heart,’ Thomas Campion proposed. These people sure did. First I came across a row of Lennon fans from Newcastle singing along to Plastic Ono Band. They were wearing headphones and [...] by Lavinia Greenlaw

Further “poetic”s November 18, 2008: Now that there is renewed hope that action can bring about change, are we going to see a return to explicitly political art? I went to see the dance company DV8’s latest production, To Be Straight With You, which is described on their website as ‘a poetic but unflinching exploration of tolerance, intolerance, religion and sexuality.’ If [...] by Lavinia Greenlaw

Read the papers November 5, 2008: And the London Times today published a poem written by Derek Walcott for Barack Obama. The comments, largely positive, include the suggestion that the poet read the papers more often. Should he? Should we? by Lavinia Greenlaw

Black ice and rain October 31, 2008: The changes in the weather here have become less gradual, more brutal. Hailstones fall out of a blue sky. There is snow in October and then there isn’t. It is four years since the sudden death of Michael Donaghy, at the age of 50. Donaghy was an American of Irish descent, who went to the University of Chicago, where he edited The Chicago [...] by Lavinia Greenlaw

Yet share the same house October 28, 2008: from Self-misunderstood by Maxamed Xaashi Dhamac ‘Gaariye’ I can't understand you, curious self, nor grasp how you're both life and death,
 grabbed land and peaceful settlement,
 grudging milker that makes me full,
 sun set at evening whilst casting
 noon's shortest shadow: how can you be
 two who can't marry
 yet share the same [...] by Lavinia Greenlaw

Emily Dickinson explodes October 19, 2008: So did she or didn’t she and do we care? Travis Nichols is right to question the misguided investment made in how a poet goes about things and what they were wearing at the time, although there is sometimes something to be gained from putting the books down and going there. I lived in Amherst for five months and failed (quite unconsciously) to [...] by Lavinia Greenlaw

Silent disco October 13, 2008: Have we entered a version of silent disco in which the primary experience of the poem is as received signals rather than noise? For a poem to operate as a poem must it now be concentrated on the idea of itself, must it appear to be either the square root of poem or hardly a poem at all? What's a disco? asked my American penpal in 1974. She also [...] by Lavinia Greenlaw

How to write a bad poem October 5, 2008: 1. COSMIC BLOOM Someone told me recently that I was ‘one big metaphor’. They had a point. One of my brothers has a PhD in astrophysics. I once asked him how his research was going and he replied, ‘It’s been a good month. I got a result.’ What was it? ‘Twenty-five million light years plus or minus twenty-five million light years.’ [...] by Lavinia Greenlaw

Read the foreign and the dead September 30, 2008: I grew up in a house full of books and made my way through the shelves. There wasn’t much else to do. I didn’t have a clue who anyone was, so I read poems not poets. Those who formed me were from mythical places: Eastern Europe (lurking behind the Iron Curtain) and America (lurking behind the album cover and cinema screen). They took me [...] by Lavinia Greenlaw

Lo Fi September 23, 2008: Al night by the rosë, rosë, Al night bi the rose I lay, Dorst Ich nought the rosë stele, And yet I bar the flour away. Anon (14th century) by Lavinia Greenlaw