Writing in Meter and Form
 

The Trustees of the Robert Frost Farm and the Hyla Brook Poets are pleased to announce that a poetry conference dedicated to writing in meter and form will take place June 12th to 14th at the Robert Frost Farm in Derry, NH.

In its inaugural year, Poetry at the Frost Farm: Writing in Meter and Form, will provide two days of intense instruction by award-winning poets -- A.M. Juster, Deborah Warren, Joshua Mehigan and Alfred Nicol -- who will immerse participants in the art and craft of formal poetry writing.

To ensure an intimate experience, workshop slots are extremely limited and we encourage registering soon. To learn more or to register, please visit: www.frostfarmpoetry.org

May I say that is wonderful. Fat chance of it happening here where the shapeless and gormless rule and I can't get a poem accepted for love or money except in the Spectator. God bless the Spectator. They printed a poem by Les Murray last week. And God bless him.

Then, come play with us! I am not sure how close you are to Heathrow, but Aer Lingus, Air France, KLM, Virgin, Delta, Iberia and US Airways all have flights into Logan (BOS). We would be delighted to have you! They'll be having an open mic the evening of the reading by the winner of the Frost Farm Prize. As you are probably aware, your fellow mod Rob Wright won and read last year -- I was just in awe of his reading. This year Joshua Mehigan will present the prize and read as well. We also will have other participant readings and some evening socializing at local "pubs" -- but hardly so, I'm sure, by your definition ;-)

So, pack up those poems to share and com'on over, John! Make a week of it. There's a lot to do 50 minutes North of Boston.

I shall be theer is spirit, be assured. Another example of the splendiferousness of the United States.

Who also publish my poems in their enlightened way.

John,

"Shapeless and gormless" rule in Canada, too. And yes, bless Les Murray who has published two of mine in recent years.

Catherine, were I not already attending Poetry by the Sea (and I'm in Joshua Mehigan's workshop), I'd be there for sure! Maybe next year....
Best wishes for a wonderful event.

I too have signed up for the Poetry by the Sea conference, where I will be in Dick Davis's workshop on the sonnet. I think the proliferation of conferences on form may be very good in terms of increasing the local audiences for and participation in poetry in form, so long as it does not wind up whittling down attendance at each conference to the point that none of them is financially feasible. Many people find travel to be one of the big expenses of attending these conferences, so I suppose that having them in various locations may tempt some people in the area to try them out. The East Coast does seem to have more options than elsewhere, but I think the high population concentration in the region may warrant that. Certainly, the Midwest has population centers so spread out that getting anywhere takes a long time. Anyway, I wish this conference well and hope that it succeeds, though I will not be able to attend it this year. In addition to attending the May conference in Madison, CT, I will be attending AWP in Minneapolis in April.

Susan

Congrats on your workshop with Joshua, Catherine. I have a copy of Accepting the Disaster that I just can't bring myself to lend out. He is quite amazing. We are so lucky he will be teaching at the farm. But, you are pretty impressive too! The two of you in one room, WOW! (It would be wonderful if you can find the time to visit next year!)

Susan, how great that you are going to be at Poetry by the Sea with Catherine. And my goodness, you and Dick Davis in a single class!

Kim, Anna and others have put together a truly impressive conference. I had the honor of meeting Kim when she read at the farm last summer. I was slightly in awe of her and the sheer number of projects she spoke about (but only when asked) when a few of us gathered after to chat with her. She gave a delightful reading to a full house who truly enjoyed her. I remember one high school girl approaching Kim and giving her a book of her own poems before reading at open mic. Kim graciously accepted it. The same girl had written on Twitter that she had gone to a poetry reading at the Frost Farm and it was "Hands down the best thing I have ever done." A high school kid!

Hopefully, we can all inspire/support more appreciation of poetry...and more and better writing. Can we ever really have enough?

Our offering is a little smaller in scope, but we hope to have almost as much learning and formal fun as you folks will be having down in CT!

John are you talking about the poet Les Murray, from Catherine's remark it seems it is someone else because I don't think the poet Les Murray has been a publisher although I maybe wrong. Here's one of his poems if anyone doesn't know who I mean, he is generally regarded as Australia's greatest living poet.


Performance

I starred that night, I shone:
I was footwork and firework in one,

a rocket that wriggled up and shot
darkness with a parasol of brilliants
and a peewee descant on a flung bit;
I was busters of glitter-bombs expanding
to mantle and aurora from a crown,
I was fouettés, falls of blazing paint,
para-flares spot-welding cloudy heaven,
loose gold off fierce toeholds of white,
a finale red-tongued as a haka leap:
that too was a butt of all right!

As usual after any triumph, I was
of course, inconsolable.


Les Murray
from
Subhuman Redneck Poems, 1996

Ross, I believe he's one and the same. He accepted two of mine for Quadrant.

Catherine I see Quadrant's online, It's a leading intellectual magazine in Aussieland, used to be very right wing, but I don't know about now.
Les is great, he's a genius poet and a rough diamond, prone to wearing thongs with socks and stealing all the camembert while nobody's looking. I remember once an interviewer asked him what he'd been doing lately and he replied 'Going through the murk.' gotta love him.
Wonderful that he accepted your poems.

Important to note that Australian thongs are not the same as European thongs.

it was financed by the CIA, as was the Excellent Encounter. It's nice to know the CIA hs some use in the world.

The Staggers was financed by Russian cash when Michael Foot was editor. The Ambassador used to stuff tenners into his pocket.Or was that the other thing Foot edited, Tribune.

The question is, did any of this influence the content? I rather think not.

If the CIA want to finance me directly I don't mind. And I will take Vladimir Putin's money too.

What is the difference re thongs? And what are budgie-smugglers while we are about it?

Les is the poetry editor of Quadrant and his word is law. In that sense he publishes me. And the Quadrant Book of Poetry is also his. Buy it while stocks last. It is the best anthology of modern poetry. And by no means all formal.

Back to the original subject. (I do wish people could keep to the topic instead of making every thread sound like a gaggle of absent-minded geese.)

Catherine McDonald, I was quite interested in this when I read it, as I will be in the US at that time. But the organizers only take cheques in payment, and cheques are no longer used where I live--payments are all electronic, via Paypal or similar or credit cards.

Sorry, Janice. I'll get me coat.

I knew some innocent lamb would think I was pointing at them. That is what I get for being mealy-mouthed. When will I ever learn?

Forget I ever opened my big mouth.

The CIA's problem with Quadrant was that they found it too right-wing and warmongering. I'm not making that up.

Wow, I was just catching up on the thread. So much learning. How wonderful Catherine that, as Ross points out, you were published by one of, "Australia's Greatest Living Poets." (I've been a fan of yours since reading Coming to Terms a couple of years ago and love what you did on Wattpad with Margaret Atwood.) Dan Chiasson, who read at the farm two summers ago, wrote an intriguing piece on Murray in The New Yorker, http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...printable=true, Ross, Chaisson says, Murray is "now routinely mentioned among the three or four leading English-language poets." And, Chaisson claims Murray's politics are leftist? Well, then, now, from I've read of Chiasson's piece and what John, Quincy and Ross said here, I really, really want to read him!

Ann, don't leave. I want to know the difference! Right now thongs on feet or elsewhere might be a little chilly here as Frost's Farm is getting buried again in snow as I type. I've lost track of the snowy evenings here in Derry. But it might indeed be warm enough for thongs of all sorts in June as we will be days from *the lightest evening of the year.* And we are a short distance away from some nice beaches and ocean-side towns...so pack thongs, Australian or European versions, whatever you have on hand, foot or otherwise.

Janice, OMG, we'd love, love to have you! The powers that be have a solution. You, and anyone who can't pay by check, can email Robert Crawford, Conference Director, at Hylabrookpoets@gmail.com. Next year we are scheduled to go electronic.

Oh, and feel free to keep chatting about anything. I'll throw in tidbits about the conference or farm doings when they apply. I'm fascinated by the wealth of information and perspectives here. I'd love to just sit and listen to as many of you talk poetry as possible over beverages in June.

John, one of our evening spots has Wi-Fi...maybe we can Skype you in? Ross, Quincy, Ann, Susan, Catherine? That might be a blast.

I have so, so much to learn from all of you!

I heard that rumour too John and Quincy, I wrote for Nation, a communist funded magazine, was rejected several times by Quadrant. This was back when the cold war was raging. Quadrant is a current affairs/politcal magazine, it's not a literary magazine, but publishers poetry as part of the mix. It was very obviously right wing back then (when Australia became very socialist).

Les Murray accepted many writing grants from the socialist Labor party when they were in power, then he changed his tune and said literary grants were pernicious and poets should 'get off the government teat'.

We also now use the term thong to refer to ladies underwear, but we still call the rubber Asian sandals thongs, we also call them flip-flops. We also refer to someone who can't make up his mind as a flip-flop.

'budgie smugglers' a great term, are 'Speedos', a brand of swimming costume, the male ones are brief and light, people have used them to smuggle budgerigars out of Australia, the inference is they show off the male genitalia. The current prime minister is very sporty, he used to swim marathons in 'budgie smugglers', but his wife got a bit worried that he was revealing too much and banned him from appearing in them (that was the story).

I saw Les Murray at a poetry reading, I thought he was terrible at reading his poetry, I walked out, alone in the foyer of this big theatre, by then another equally boring poet was reciting, I saw Les take a huge, and I mean huge slice out of the large camembert that was part of the buffet, in wait for after the readings, he walked towards me and smiled, rolling back his eyes, I'd like to say I made some witty remark, but I didn't.

He mostly writes in free verse but does, very rarely, write formal poetry. He writes a lot of what I think is flawed work but when he gets it right it's as good as poetry ever gets.

Hey, Ross - John - and Anne - this thread was set up to generate some publicity and information for the Frost Farm Poetry Conference - the kind of thing we should be interested in. John Whitworth jumped on it immediately to talk about his favorite subject - himself - and off we went with all the geese jabbering at each other about everything but the conference, and Catherine politely trying to herd the poets.

If you're not interested in the conference, why don't you simply buzz off. Or start another Les Murray or Quadrant or aren't England and Australia Grand thread. It's been months since we've had one. But, for Chrissakes, if somebody's trying to announce a Poetry Conference, don't start gossiping about your own totally different interests.

Michael, Catherine encouraged us to babble on.
But I do agree with you, chattiness has also spread into the poetry sections.

Actually, I do find the conversation quite fascinating. I really enjoyed reading Chaisson's piece on said poet. And, don't worry, I will find a way to tie in the conference. Ross, will you be attending? See ;)

And Michael, talking of all things conference-related, I really enjoyed the poem you read during Joshua Mehigan's last reading at the farm. Are you enrolling in his advanced class on versification? http://www.frostfarmpoetry.org/versification/

No Catherine, I'd love to see New Haven but my daughter is in London and may live there permanently if I travel overseas it will be to see her.

This won't make the quotee "like" me any better (as if that mattered - I gave up on him about five years ago), but it's crystalline from the evidence posted above that here the quotee is essentially correct, so (noting but not now condemning any of the varied windful filibusters involved) I quote the quotable quotee :

Actually (if I may) there is a practical reason for sticking to the topic. Quite apart from the generally recognized etiquette to respect another's reason for starting the thread, newcomers shouldn't have to read through several pages of inane look-at-me-again-posts to collect the pertinent information. Even when the thread starter is magnanimous and says "it's all right if you put your muddy boots up on my maghogany coffee table", we all know it isn't the polite thing to do when we come for a visit.

Also, though I am not going to go looking for verse and chapter there is somewhere in the FAQs and/or guidelines (probably under an "Etiquette" heading or "staying civil" or suchlike) an admonition to stick to the topic.

Catherine, thank you for your welcoming words. I am looking into it more closely.

I apologise to Michael, too. And to Catherine. I'm sorry about the goose-shit on your coffee-table.