October 2011
3 posts
2 tags
3 tags
ON BAKER AND BANTICK / PETRA WHITE
There seems to be an idea afoot that ‘slam’ can make all poetry popular. In The Age, slam poet Emilie Zoey Baker wistfully imagines poetry having its own reality tv show – MasterPoet perhaps – promising viewers the ecstasy of having ‘your soul unravelled like a ribbon’. This is the kind of hype that is often used by promoters of poetry; we don’t just want it on peoples’ bookshelves, we want it...
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YOUNG POETS: A PREFACE / JOHN LEONARD
Readers of poetry have a weather eye for the new, young talents whose work ensures the serious continuance of an art that is possibly vulnerable from being too little read. Slightly surprisingly, it always arrives, robust with the strange fusion of ambitious intent and self-effacement that serious artistry requires. It is true that, occasionally, there is premature praise from critics and...
