Thursday 23 April 2009

Free Poetry

A great online edition called Poets on Poets with audio of modern poets reading various Romantic works. From the site Romantic Circles who have a number of fantastic resources. Interesting to see the Romantics that these poets have chosen to read and the ways they adapt them to their style of performance.

Wednesday 22 April 2009

The Wordsworth Effect

Either I'm becoming increasingly sensitive to a real conspiracy or I'm going mad. Wordsworth is everywhere. Places you'd expect to find him, of course. My place of work obviously. And many pieces of writing about poetry. But recently it's been becoming a worrying trend that I can't get past the first paragraph of something without finding him there. The editorial of the latest Poetry Review isn't that much of a shocker, but escaping the confines of Town End for a stand up gig in Warrington with a few work mates, I opened the program to find a reference there again. First paragraph. Mixed feelings of validation and of being stalked by my day job on a night out. Then there was a reference to Keats and Shelley within the first fifteen minutes of the act.

Now, I'm well aware the above proves little more than that I am attracted to comedy with literary appeal and spend far too much time reading. I also know that we're liable to see what we want to or are trained to in things, or to pluck at them when they are only a thread of the whole fabric. But Wordsworth and his contemporaries are woven into a good deal of things so that we quote them without realising or date ideas back to their time. Then there's the relatives. The literary relatives. The things, the places, and the words words words.

It's wonderful. It makes me very happy. It gives me a job to do. It means I never leave work.

Sunday 19 April 2009

Success

The system works guys. A nice person from Cambridge University Press sent me a copy of Bronk's 'The Romantic Economist'. So, if anyone wants a review of this book I'll be happy to do one for you.

Wednesday 8 April 2009

Wordsworth's Birthday (was yesterday)

Wordsworth was born on April 7th, 1770. He died on April 23rd 1850, but this did not stop us from celebrating his 239th birthday yesterday. (1770-1850 is a marvellous date for remembering and making calculations from.)

In honour of this day we did all the typically Wordsworthian things such as eating pizza and drinking large amounts of wine. We also had some entertainment: a song, a few readings and a Wordsworth vs. Coleridge rap battle with hand puppets...