Tom Chivers, a young intelligent whippersnapper and imaginative London
presence hosting many an exciting night of poetry, early twenties, one of
the bright hopes for our profession, Director of Penned in the Margins,
Co-Director of London Word Festival, Editor of Litro and Associate Editor of
Tears in the Fence -has recently published a series of *imagined e mails* to
dead prisoners of Newgate prison, using this conceit as an excuse to
practice innovatively in lingo, and it was his idea which gave me the
"permission to continue", (i think it is) that Maj Perloff talks about.
~
Being a committed practitioner past the first post, so to speak, an aspiring
guild member and like the new mob of Web 2:1 wunderkids who, as Chivers who
uses the term *digital native* and saying "if you remember computers coming
into your school then you are not quite of that group."
Though computers were not in my earleist school, by the time i came to
attend the intellectual church of third level education in 2001, our year
was the first or second whereby the whole essay process went digital and so
totally understand what Chivers is all about.
So i found permission to contionue from Chivers and used this to write an
imaginary-real e mail to Ron who i have not met and know only through the
written word online and so Ron, as we all are, is an avatar inasmuch as he
is a human being, in the sense of the narrrators we create can interact and
work in exciting new ways, here, t"he discussion and news list for
practitioners and readers of current poetry and poetics, with emphasis on
recent postmodern and innovative poetries in Britain and Ireland." Perfect
~
Hi Ron (if you're reading)
Unofortunately i will not be present, but am sure all will go well, and it
will be a great night, at least thirty and probably more people will attend
and you will charm them with your clear humanity. The ian macmillan of the
L=A=N=G=A=U=G=E movement, in the most positive sense, but physically a very
startling visual whiff of Chicago undertaker and poet, Thomas Lynch.
http://www.thomaslynch.com/index.html
You might not get it from the pictures on the opening page ofhis site, but
facially, from the side, he was a dead ringer the first time I saw him last
night at the Unitarian Church in Stephen's Green, but only in that first
glimpse, and which may be unique to the time, place and experience and
unshared by every single other observer - and it was only when i had clicked
reply to this depost by Carol, after thinking to say something, to have a
free prayer in practice here, that i became conscious once more of this
first thought from last night on seeing Lynch.
It was two Irish Americans reciting, Julia O'Callaghan, both from Chicago -
O'Callaghan a native here for 30 years and Lynch with a home in West Clare,
where he is designated driver for the local when not handling the business
of death with great aplomb and a twinkling humour of a third generation
Funeral Home director, whose surety with the mob, his modest unassuming
manner masking a very serious practioner reading from his new unpublished
collection out later in the year. He said:
"Poetry seems always to be a conversation we're having with dead poets...How
very fond we are of dead poets, the whiff of begrudgery that infects us when
they're alive, is gone once they're dead and it's great, because they're dead."
His reading was sublime, as the scenes and ideas in his poems were very
evocatively spoken, and a great mind, not unlike yourself Ron and his mien
reminded me of Canadian Concord University poet Gary Geddes, who i
experienced a couple of years ago, also in Dublin, in the basement of Damar
Hall. Geddes has an easy and relaxed outlook, confident that the gravity
speaks for itself and i just wish i could be there meeting one of the Titans
(in my own mind) who i have as a companion piece in the psyche, to
Bernstein, who i have experienced in what for me was one of the highlights
of my career, even though there was only seven in the room.
His final comment from the pulpit in the high-vaulted Unitarian church, open
to all strands of that one faith, were that for him, Poetry (recital) is
like a free session at the shrinks, humorous but an element of truth in it,
methinks, on Shakespeare's birthday.
Have a great night Ron.
lots of love
A mystery admirer.
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