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"We have Art in order that we may not perish from Truth" —Nietzsche |
The Arvon Foundation The Poetry School (UK) This website was designed by |
Postcard From the Bottom of the Sea, my new chapbook, released January 2008. I have joined the faculty of the low residency MFA program in Creative Writing at the University of Alaska Anchorage. The first residency will begin July 13, 2008. For more information, contact Kathleen Tarr at (907) 786-4394 or afkt1@uaa.alaska.edu.
WHAT I'VE BEEN READING Mother Tongues I recently led a workshop on memoir for the Arvon Foundation at their Totleigh Barton writers’ center in Devonshire, England. It is customary for a guest writer to come and give a reading mid-week at these workshops, and ours was Helena Drysdale. She is one of those writers who weave passages of memoir through their chosen nonfiction subjects, and she does it very well. Mother Tongues recounts a year-long journey in a camper van the author made with her husband, three year old daughter and baby. Ranging from Catalunya to Alsace, Samiland, she went in search of endangered or still-thriving minority languages – languages which are not the “official” tongue of the nation or nations in which they reside. It’s a fascinating, information-rich, book, in which the reader shares the challenges of living with family in a tiny space, and the joys of encountering people for whom a language is the link to their cultural history. The Meanest Flower This is the loveliest book of poems I’ve read in a long time. Mimi is a friend of mine, though I adamantly believe I am not swayed by that fact in thinking her a brilliant poet. Indeed, the UK, where she lives, agrees with me. This book received a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, which is truly deserved. Always attentive to form whether free verse or received forms, this collection has echoes of Wordsworth (the title) and the romantic poets, in a thoroughly modern manifestation. The long sequence, “The Mediterranean of the Mind” is a beautiful tribute to the late poet, Michael Donaghy, as well as to the Old Olive Press—the Almassera—where so many writers and painters sink into the olive-studded hillsides with their old Roman walls. “Motherhood” is a stunningly successful sestina, where the form seems effortless in service to heartfelt personal truth, and there is, too, a very fine pantoum, “On Lines from Paul Gaugin,” as well as several ghazals. It’s unusual these days to find a book where the first adjective that comes to mind, on reading it, is simply beautiful. Robert Graves: Life on the Edge A well-written, large biography, is one of my favorite reads (except that it tends to fall on my nose in bed at night). This one is beautifully written by Seymour, who is also a novelist; it has all the requisite thoroughness, including the batch of photographs in which I always delight. I was propelled into Graves’ life by the fact that Ruth and I are planning a vacation on Mallorca before my class in Spain at the Almassera, April, 2008. Graves lived much of his life on that island, including the strange years he shared with both his wife and the poet, Laura Riding. Like many people, I was both puzzled and fascinated by his need for a living, female “muse,” who was never either of his wives. Riding was even more than muse; she became a self-proclaimed goddess, who believed she had enormous powers. The breakup between her and Graves was particularly messy, and is described, with thinly disguised characters and locations, in the novel, “The Telling,” also by Miranda Seymour.
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