Some may go for full length collections that would sell dozens of copies. Michael Dylan Welch and Emiko Miyashita have a waka (tanka) translation appearing on the back of a U.S. postage stamp that will be released March 24. The postal service is printing 15,000,000 copies. The stamp celebrates the 100th anniversary of the cherry trees in Washington, DC.
Meanwhile in Canada we’re doing all kinds of Jubilee stamps to celebrate our Queen. Wonder how Fred Wah’s workshop on How to write a poem for the Queen went.
Support for monarchy has never been 100% anywhere.
For Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in 1887, Lord Tennyson, Poet Laureate of the day, composed a Jubilee Ode in which he praised the Queen extravagantly. The poem began ‘Fifty times the rose has flower’d and faded, Fifty times the golden harvest fallen…’ Haldane Burgess, thinking of the Shetland crofter/fisherman’s toil and poverty during those fifty years, composed his own Jubilee Ode in response.
It’s written in Sheltland’s dialect with mouseover translations and an audio link. The site also has love in a caald climate by Christine De Luca, the praise in her look that impelled her husband to make the windbreaks and so on so a rose could hold twilight.
It’s very cool to hear the language roll, almost familiar sound, some words entirely there, some out of grasp. [via Jen Hadfield]
What do you miss and catch? George Murray is doing a New York Times/Knowledge Network Introduction to Poetry workshop on: “how to write good formal and free verse. Topics include how to read a poem, form, meter, imagery, language, the relationship between form and content, and how to structure material to maximize its power and beauty.” He’s reading back in Ottawa at 5:00 pm at the Manx Pub (370 Elgin St) on Saturday, April 14th with Roo Borson. Roo Borson‘s ninth full-length solo collection, Rain; road; an open boat, will be published by McClelland & Stewart tomorrow. (Something else for the book wishlist.)
Free online at Curio Poetry are a few new poems by Anne le Dressay. Look at At this moment, won’t you?
Good day for reading outside. Tanka 55 of Akiko Yasano from a century ago, translated by Sanford Goldstein and Seishi Shinoda:
At the flute’s sound
That priest at his sutras
Stops his hand
And frowns –
Ah! still quite young!
The Poetry School (London, Uk) is starting Adventures in Form, a forthcoming anthology featuring new poetic forms – from skinny villanelles to sevenlings, text poems to break-beat sonnets. They’re planning an online course based on the anthology, to pass on these new forms to our students. Details to follow, email Rachael (online@poetryschool.com) to register your intererst meanwhile.
They have face-to-face courses too but online sells out fast. The upcoming terms with courses on Political poems, The visual narrative, and The Sonnet Studio have already sold out. Some courses are still open in songwriting. Coming in May they have an online course on editing run by Andy Ching: The Editor. (The next term starts in October.)
On twitter? Tweet @49thShelf about who belongs to the #NewGenerationCDNPoets. Tweet them your favourite CDN poets who’ve published 1st books since 2000.
P.S. Speaking of new, the 2012 Robert Kroetsch Award Winner is is Laura Broadbent for her book, Oh, there you are, I can’t see you, is it raining? [More here including judge’s notes.] The news broke at the Montreal Gazette 10 days ago in an article mentioning she’s a Concordia student doing her MA while working at an antiquarian bookstore. Kathy Mac and Nathan Dueck were among those short-listed for it again. Darn. I still want to see more from her. And curious what he was up to next.