MARIA DUARTE recommends a remarkable study of the friendship between a Palestinian and a Pakistani, broken by a hostile state
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Poets are not born but made
ALISTAIR FINDLAY recommends a collection of interviews with 15 award-winning poets discussing how their initial drafts became the finished poem
EZRA POUND: ‘Less rhetorical din’ and ‘fewer painted adjectives,’ (pictured in Venice, 1963)
[Walter Mori/Mondadori Publishers/CC]
MATTHEW HAWKINS rakes through un-fancy words and flair-free summaries to find who and what might be flamboyant
PETER MASON is exhilarated by an exciting, well-considered and historically minded tribute to the great Trinidadian instrument
Reducing historical lives to ‘male’ and ‘female’ roles, we lose the nuance of those lives and a clearer understanding of past societies, suggests CLAIRE ISABELLA GILMOUR
CHRIS SEARLE relishes the genius of pianist Alexander Hawkins, his many ensembles, and his new album
Voice of the Hoover: Review of The Process of Poetry
ed Rosanne McGlone
Fly on the Wall Press, £10.99
FOR budding left poets and interested readers, I recommend The Process of Poetry, a rare and relatively cheap book (£10.99). It comprises interviews with 15 award-winning poets discussing how their initial drafts became the finished poem. Both draft and final version are given, thus allowing the reader to look virtually over the shoulder of the poet through the whole process of composition.
This returned me to the 1990s and the half-dozen Arvon week-long residential writing courses I attended myself tutored by the likes of Liz Lochhead, Tom Leonard, Kathleen Jamie, Jackie Kay, Fred D’Aguiar, Brendan Kennelly, Mimi Khalvati, Brian McCabe — poet laureates, gold medal-winners et al.
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