Poetry Season
BBC has launched a new series on poetry. Poetry is often overlooked, so it is a welcome diversion and a good reminder that poetry should be more central to our lives. I like the tag line--let more poetry into your life or is it make room for more poetry? Either way I like the idea of scooting over on the sofa to make room for someone close and comfortable or taking the cat that has found its way to your back door. Poetry, I think, is like that.
My daughter told me that a similar event had occurred in the States and some band of poet-advocates had commandeered the signs in the subway. It was a welcome relief, she said, from the ads and the comments.
Poetry, more broadly, art, has the purpose of putting together things that we might otherwise overlook. To do that it makes odd unions or comparisons. I like the idea of a poem where a subway map might be expected. The poem might not help you get to the right stop, but it would certainly help get you to a different place.
posted by landgirl @ 12:01 PM
4 comments
4 Comments:
Hi Sharon,
poetry on the underground has been running for over 20 years in london, I spent many happy trips memorising the poems around me, even changing carrages to see new ones if my trip was long even if I lost my seat! I still love osip mandelstrum because of it, his poems are very spare, as he was in a siberian work camp when he wrote them. but so full of life, I have poems up at work and often quote bits to my kids to make them think.
lol Ruan (who doesn't make room on her sofa so much as ask if she can sit down please next to her poerty habit :-) )
What a great slogan. In Indy 20-plus years ago there was Poetry on the Buses contest. Local people submitted entries and twelve were chosen. Each month a different poem was posted on all the city buses. Thad won for one month. We framed one of the posters and it is up in our sunroom, AKA TV room. I attended the Grand Opening of the event, when each poet read his or her poem, and I still remember part of one of the poems another winner wrote. It was about the reason for her divorce and contained the line, "Color her scarlet."
I will look up osip mandelstrum's poems.
I love the image of poetry runnin g through the underground like coursing through the veins of the city. I have no idea who osip mandelstrum is, so I'll have a good google in a sec. I like your take on the sofa image--poetry make room for me. Hee hee. Didja know Meg is a poet? She writes poetry in the same way she paints and does socks, if that makes sense. Careful attention to detail and infinite patience to catch the essence of a thing.
Oh ampiggy, I dinna mind that Thad was a poet, among his many other talents. I think you might have told me that story before but it was lost until you brought it back. I like thinking about a published, celebrated poem --yet personal, too (aren't all poems, after all?) in your sun room.
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