dublinka

'The language of poetry and advertising' - was the title of an interdisciplinary teaching project at Hamburg University, conducted by Martin Klepper and Ingrid Pille back in 2000. The course was based on the premise that poetry is the literary genre advertising is most closely related to, both in the linguistic techniques that are employed in both genres and in the functions they serve. The report on the project, which outlines the general syllabus also, makes for interesting reading. Naturally it raises the following question: Can poets and poetry be manufactured to serve the needs of advertising in a consumer society?

Love this man? If so, you can find over 100 poems, mostly in Spanish or Italian, dedicated to Maradona here.

Maradona nostro,
che scendi in campo,
abbiamo santificato il tuo nome,
Napoli è il tuo regno,
sia fatta la tua volontà,
sia al San Paolo che in trasferta,
dacci sempre i nostri gol
e rimetti a noi le nostre vittorie
come noi le rimettiamo sulla schedina
non ci indurre in illusioni
ma conducici allo SCUDETTO.
AMEN.

It makes your heart heavy and sad, when you realise that people are still being murdered for composing poetry. One such poet, the Afghan Nadia Anjuman, has left a small body of work, which is now being whispered and sung around the internet. When you recognise a trembling line like the following you have the sense that the world is now missing someone special:
Even though I am the daughter of poem and songs
My poem was novice and broken
My autonomous twig did not recognize the hand of the gardener

Most likely, given the similar levels of 'domestic' violence suffered by other Afghan women, she will remembered for the following short lines:


I am caged in this corner
full of melancholy and sorrow ...
my wings are closed and I cannot fly ...
I am an Afghan woman and so must wail.
--Nadia Anjuman


You can find more translations of her work here.

I particularly like, Ghazal:


Ghazal by Nadia Anjuman
Translated by Khizra Aslam

It is night and these words come to me
By the call of my voice words come to me

What fire blazes in me, what water do I get?
From my body, the fragrance of my soul comes to me

I do not know from where these great words come
The fresh breeze takes loneliness away from me

That from the clouds of light comes this light
That there is no other wish that comes to me

The cry of my heart sparkles like a star
And the bird of my flight touches the sky

My madness can be found in his book
O do not say no, my master, O look once at me

It is like the day of judgment
Like doomsday my silence comes at me

I am happy that the giver gives me silk
And all night, all along these verses come to me

To me, Karen Volkman's Sonnet captures and exhibits, an ongoing process of digital reconfiguration of our world. With shades of William Gibson's neuromancer, whose novel portrayed skies of television gray, Volkman speaks of data from the skies, particles, and retinal snowfalls. By doing this, you can almost, envision, a future whose metaphors for nature are dominated by technological etymologies, and where all the old metaphors, based on animism or proto-human substrates, have been abandoned or forgotten. And yet the poem (complete with a doff of the hat to Louis Mac Neice: 'World is crazier and more of it than we think, Incorrigibly plural...), seems to suggest that this verisimilitude should be taken apart where it lies. I like it. There's a lot more going on elsewhere in the poem too - though it guards itself well against the impatient. See for yourself below:

Retinal snowfall, anything that slips,
where children kick a snowman in the dim
winter increment, the gray of 3 p.m.
Two red cars, one blue. White wing that dips

and opens softly in the eyes’ ellipse,
an n dimension furling at the rim—
a down is paling—shyer motions limn,
shyest motions adumbrate the tips—

the edges ether, falter. World will be
reconstituted as an airy scree—
white waif particles, a haze of eyes,

meticulous slippings, data from the skies.
O angry kids, the semblance you don’t see
dissembles also. Kill it where it lies.



You can also catch more of her work at ploughshares here.

This report is just fresh on Bulutlat. Looks like a Philippine poet and his friend have been tortured and beaten by state police for an alleged anti-government "destabilization plot."” For that you can read expressing an opinion.

Pinpin, 34, an Agriculture graduate of the Cavite State University, is a 1999 Fellow of the University of the Philippines (UP) Writers’ Workshop and author of a self-published poetry compilation titled Tugmaang Walang Tugma (Rhyming without Ryhmes). Friends say he had been compiling poems for a second book at the time he was arrested.


Please email the Philippine government expressing your concern for their safety. Demand a public inquiry and point out that freedom of expression is an integral part of any functioning democracy. (Note: sending abuse can endanger detainees and be counterproductive.)

This clever billboard poetry from Indonesian poet, Li-young Lee, appeared a while back in Chicago. A few more samples can be viewed over at the now possibly defunct reVerse.

It's hard to find examples online, or even in pubs now, of the old Guinness rhyming ads. But I came across a wonderful array of them in The hole in the wall, just at the side of Phoenix park, Blackhorse avenue, Dublin 7. This example is not one of the better ones, but unfortunately I can't remember what the good ones did say, for reasons staring you in the face.

It's not widely appreciated, even by poets, that the long discredited Rorschach Inkblot test, was originally inspired by Justinus Kerner (1786-1862), who used inkblots to create poetry. Kerner's work later influenced psychologists such as Herman Rorschach. The idea is simple. Put some paint/ink in the middle of a piece of paper. Fold it in half, and smudge the paint. Write poetry from what you see.

I've been thoroughly enjoying family business, a volume of letters between Allen and Louis Ginsberg. It's a fascinating insight into the minds of the two poets, and anybody who's into one or other Ginsberg will certainly love it. But even if you dislike the Ginsberg phenomenon, the level on which you'll probably enjoy this most, is watching the seemingly ineluctable, emergence from the letters of Louis, of that well intentioned, but ultimately nagging and hectoring, paternal instinct which haunts so many fathers. In a state of obliviousness, even while discussing poetry, this father seems almost pathologically unable to stop himself from giving unsolicited advice on matters which are clearly, for want of a better phrase, not part of his remit. Allen, for his part, returns the complement, in his own way, by playing the financially martyred college student/son, and doubtless would have sent his washing home by letter if he could have. Elsewhere the correspondence is about life, politics and poetry, and the divide between two polarised generations; but every son will recognise his father here, and every father his son. This is made all the more curious, because you might expect that two highly erudite poets would be able to transcend this quasi instinctual relationship. But not so. As such it's probably the most insightful father-son book in existence.

Need a poetry screen saver? Need a free poetry screen saver? Then look here.

Jeffery Conway, Lynn Crosbie & David Trinidad have composed, a stunning Dantean homage to Betty Davis's Margo in the 1950's cult classic, All About Eve. It's called That blasted party, and is available in its entirety over at the Electronic poetry review. If you like the movie you'll love it:

Margo dons her poisonous gown,
Mis-stitched with threads of ire.
She downs her first Martini and
Descends into the fire.

Jump Ball: A Basketball Season in Poems (1997) by Mel Glenn.

Interested? Then you can find a list of basketball poetry here.