Just a note to say it does look like Indeterminate Inflorescence is available in the UK (https://uk.bookshop.org/a/20/9780241728154) - I only checked because I was ordering myself a copy! Thanks for drawing it to my attention - sounds like something I'll really enjoy.
Great! It is very enjoyable -- and a lovely little pocket hardback (tempting to browsers...?) I sometimes suspect that books *about* poetry sell more than the actual stuff!
Hard agree with all of this. I believe poetry entrered my system via an austere but inspired primary school teacher who taught poetry by taking us out into frost or snow or flooded playgrounds and once set fire to a pile of paper in a steel drum for us. All very exciting. It was all about the senses and a direct experience of the world. My heart sank a little when my own primary-age child was given a picture of a sunset and asked to write a poem about it. That is not it at all, as Eliot sort of said.
Your post about the Iambic Pentameter was one of the first posts I read here on Substack, and it remains one of my favourites :) "Indeterminate Inflorescence" seems to be a book worth reading. Thank you!
Yes, it's a very enjoyable little book! Something I like about it is that they haven't edited out the realism of repetition i.e. when LSB has said the same thing in slightly different ways, that's included. It helps to recreate the feeling of having the same teacher for a long period of time, and getting to know their preoccupations / mannerisms...
Does the poet’s grip on pencil or pen match the needs of the poem better, at the early stages, than fingertips on keyboard? The felt connection with a resistance, balancing the momentum? But an artist sketches with pencil lightly held and mobile.
I remember Simon Armitage saying in the Nineties / Noughties that pens were for poetry, computers for prose. I wonder if this is still true among younger poets. Reading new poems aloud from phones has become common -- do they write on phones too?
Sterling Sir, I’m happy to have found your work! Be well, Geraldine
Just a note to say it does look like Indeterminate Inflorescence is available in the UK (https://uk.bookshop.org/a/20/9780241728154) - I only checked because I was ordering myself a copy! Thanks for drawing it to my attention - sounds like something I'll really enjoy.
Great! It is very enjoyable -- and a lovely little pocket hardback (tempting to browsers...?) I sometimes suspect that books *about* poetry sell more than the actual stuff!
Hard agree with all of this. I believe poetry entrered my system via an austere but inspired primary school teacher who taught poetry by taking us out into frost or snow or flooded playgrounds and once set fire to a pile of paper in a steel drum for us. All very exciting. It was all about the senses and a direct experience of the world. My heart sank a little when my own primary-age child was given a picture of a sunset and asked to write a poem about it. That is not it at all, as Eliot sort of said.
Form as the right trousers is very good!
Wow! Fire in a steel drum: this deserves a post, or even a poem, all to itself…
Wonderful!
Your post about the Iambic Pentameter was one of the first posts I read here on Substack, and it remains one of my favourites :) "Indeterminate Inflorescence" seems to be a book worth reading. Thank you!
Yes, it's a very enjoyable little book! Something I like about it is that they haven't edited out the realism of repetition i.e. when LSB has said the same thing in slightly different ways, that's included. It helps to recreate the feeling of having the same teacher for a long period of time, and getting to know their preoccupations / mannerisms...
Does the poet’s grip on pencil or pen match the needs of the poem better, at the early stages, than fingertips on keyboard? The felt connection with a resistance, balancing the momentum? But an artist sketches with pencil lightly held and mobile.
I remember Simon Armitage saying in the Nineties / Noughties that pens were for poetry, computers for prose. I wonder if this is still true among younger poets. Reading new poems aloud from phones has become common -- do they write on phones too?
And if so, how do they avoid predictive predictable text? Maybe by deliberate misspellings which at least might present potentially poetic surprises.