Editorial: The Poetry Business
We are the Weather is a mature and coherent first collection by a distinctive and compelling writer. The poems present vivid and often pungent scenes of rural life in exuberant and hardworking language, with childhood and family relationships at their heart.
John Gould Fletcher was born in Little Rock, Arkansas on the 3rd of January 1886 to a socially prominent family. He was educated at Phillips Academy, Andover before advancing to Harvard University, which he attended from 1903 to 1907, before dropping out after his father's death. As a young man Fletcher spent many years in England where he became part of the influential Imagist group of poets together with Amy Lowell and Ezra Pound. His first marriage came from a resumed relationship with the now married Florence Emily ‘Daisy’ Arbuthnot. Her adultery with Fletcher was the grounds for her divorce. They married on 5th July 1916 but later divorced. Fletcher first published in 1912, with ‘The Dominant City’ to much praise and admiration and followed this with other well-regarded volumes such as ‘Irradiations: Sand and Spray’, and ‘Goblins and Pagodas’. In the late 1920s and 1930s Fletcher became increasingly active with a group of Southern writers and poets known as the Southern Agrarians. They published the classic ‘I'll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition’. Although he was highly regarded as a poet, he was not very prolific. However, such was the undoubted quality that in 1939 he received the Pulitzer Prize for his work ‘Selected Poems’. He was the first poet from the south to receive such an accolade. Fletcher’s other passion and pursuit was as an authority on modern painting, a subject on which he also published. A second marriage followed in 1936 to the children’s author, Charlie May Simon. They built ‘Johnswood’, a residence on the bluffs of the Arkansas River and travelled frequently to New York for shots of modern culture and intellectual stimulation as well as to the American West and South for the climate after Fletcher developed chronic arthritis. In 1937 he wrote his autobiography, ‘Life is My Song’. His developing passion for his roots and background resulted in the writing of a history of his State and published in 1947; ‘Arkansas’. By now Fletcher was suffering from bouts of depression and on 10th May 1950, he committed suicide by drowning himself in a pond near his home in Little Rock, Arkansas. He was 64.Ver libro
Two sweet and saucy comedies from an award-winning Irish playwright. In SAUCE, Mella is a compulsive liar, Maura is a kleptomaniac – and neither has any friends. Recently out of controlling relationships, they are thrust into uneasy freedom. Can they overcome their flaws together to avoid dying alone? Or will their compulsions engulf them in the end? A play about death and rebirth, Ciara Elizabeth Smyth's SAUCE was first staged at Bewley's Café Theatre, Dublin, in 2019 as part of Dublin Fringe Festival, and revived there in 2022. In All honey, Ru and Luke are throwing a house-warming party. But their guests are more interested in whispering in the box room than joining the festivities. Explosive characters and unfolding secrets mean the hosts will have to clean up more than red-wine stains and glitter. Ciara Elizabeth Smyth's debut play, All honey is about sex, secrets and suspicion. It premiered at the New Theatre in 2017 as part of Dublin Fringe Festival, winning the 2017 Fishamble New Writing Award. It was revived at Bewley's in 2018 and Project Arts Centre in 2020.Ver libro
July 1889, London. A flea bites a rat. A rat spooks a horse. A horse kicks a man. As the chain reaction continues, a boy and his mother find themselves swept up in a national scandal that will reshape both their lives – and the country. James Fritz's play The Flea is a retelling of the Cleveland Street Scandal that shook England – from the streets of Bermondsey to the halls of Buckingham Palace – and features a flea, a horse, a detective, a queen, a pimp, a god, and Charlie, the telegraph boy who knelt before the Crown. This anarchic and affecting play was first performed at The Yard Theatre, London, in October 2023, directed by Artistic Director Jay Miller.Ver libro
Written after two years of artistic silence, during which the world came to a halt due to the COVID-19 pandemic and Minneapolis became the epicenter of protest following the murder of George Floyd, Bluff is Danez Smith's powerful reckoning with their role and responsibility as a poet and with their hometown of the Twin Cities. This is a book of awakening out of violence, guilt, shame, and critical pessimism to wonder and imagine how we can strive toward a new existence in a world that seems to be dissolving into desolate futures. Smith brings a startling urgency to these poems, their questions demanding a new language and a deep self-scrutiny. A series of ars poetica gives way to "anti poetica" and "ars america" to implicate poetry's collusions with unchecked capitalism. A poem makes clear the consequences of America's acceptance of mass shootings. Another offers the history of Saint Paul's vibrant Rondo neighborhood before and after officials decided to run an interstate directly through it. Bluff is a kind of manifesto about artistic resilience, even when time and will can seem fleeting, when the places we most love—those given and made—are burning. In this soaring collection, Smith turns to honesty, hope, rage, and imagination to envision futures that seem possible.Ver libro
Don Langford’s poetry is inseparable from self exploration. Here, the poet examines impermanence, patience, and interconnectedness with a seeker’s longing for equanimity and meaning. With keen observations and strands of wit and humor, In the Light of the Full Moon is a meditation on finding one’s way in the present world. A poet’s sense of wonder permeates these poems, as does a deep sense of gratitude for the special place we occupy in the long human lineage spanning thousands of generations.Ver libro
The language of Poetry is an art that most of us attempt at some point in our lives. Although its commonplace exposure has been somewhat marginalised in today’s often fast-paced lives we all recognise good verse that can empathise with our thoughts or open us up to experience new things in new ways, to better understand and to enjoy the many strands of our lives. But finding a starting point can be overwhelming, even off-putting, so in this series we offer up our Top 10 classic poets, who brim with talent and verse, on a range of subjects and themes that we can all enjoy. The poetess may have lived in the constancy and overbearing shadows of their male colleagues but their verse is the equal of each and every man, whoever they may be. Their words do not surrender to pity or lack of self-esteem, but are glowing tributes to the talents of humanity despite the shadows that often clouded their lives.Ver libro
