So here we are. Mid-Summer. If you dodge between the raindrops, it's pleasant. Most days it's not too hot to sit in the conservatory, which is where I do a lot of reading and sorting out of poems in my head (not my poems, other people's). We have even got new basketty chairs...
Tim Love sent me a link to a Poets&Writers article by Sandra Beasley - more about the online debate. Fascinating.
Oh dear. I like the online thing. I really do. However, I love paper. My brain formed its familiar circuits in decades before this onlinery happened. I don't feel the same about reading on-screen: I flit quickly, less concentration, less connection between word and sound (unless there's a sound file with the poem, which I like).
The first glorious weekend of summer! Unfortunately the weather goes to the heads of some people. Our neighbours insisted on sharing the insistent heavy-bass beat of their summer-weather music all day yesterday from midday to ten pm. Poets, migraine sufferers and naturally quiet people are reduced to blobs of misery in these circumstances. I have to keep reminding myself that curses are like boomerangs: when well-thrown...
I have been about to blog about two new poetry books for some time. They are Andy Philip's The Ambulance Box and Rob Mackenzie's The Opposite of Cabbage. They have been all over the place with me. Downstairs on the table beside the settee where I read stuff. In the conservatory, where I read stuff. Beside my bed, where I mean to read stuff but usually fall asleep first. In my work bag. In my overnight bag. And in fact, I have read both with great pleasure. With greater pleasure even than usual, since both poets were HappenStance poets first. Andy was the very first HappenStance pamphlet ever! He has been out of print for years now and his little pamphlet, with the picture of the man with a dove on his head, must be a collector's item, I think.
Last night I was listening to Andrew Motion on the radio, talking about the National Poetry Archive. How amazing, that recording by Tennyson! I knew Browning had been captured, but not Tennyson.
The premise is that you believe what the man on the phone promises, even though you know that the printed information says something different. So no -- the promised PowerBook didn't arrive yesterday, although the man on the phone said it would. The printed confirmation stated the 15th, and this is almost certainly closer to being accurate. The shipping email said it had been sent on the 5th, and one does wonder how long it takes to get a box to Scotland from Ireland... However, it's not here and the payment has not been deducted from my bank account, although I do have a receipt.