Open mic and music at the Bowery - and a Seamus Heaney poem on the subway
One of the great strengths of the Write Out Loud poetry gig guide is the possibility of organisers using it to “claim a date”, to avoid the sort of frustrating duplication that occurred last and, it seems, every Monday in New York, New York. The Bowery is one of the two go-to poetry open mics in that city; the Nuyorican Poetry Cafe being the much older of the two; both have open mic on a Monday, f...
25th March 2015
Tantalising language, but finger-clicking, too: interpreting Rae Armantrout
I didn’t previously know Pulitzer prize-winning, West Coast Language poet Rae Armantrout or her work, though we had conversed. She asked if I would mind her seat. Of all the possible choices of text available to me to respond, I chose “of course”, which now seems somewhat prosaic.
If I have unde...
23rd March 2015
Philip Levine, America's 'blue collar' poet laureate of the industrial heartland, dies aged 87
American poet Philip Levine has died aged 87. He was widely known here as a poet of the working class. He was a "large, ironic Whitman of the industrial heartland”, according to Edward Hirsch, largely...
23rd February 2015
How does US open mic measure up?
This was my first time at a US open mic. What to expect? Would I make some horrendous cultural gaffe, a poetic equivalent of, say, not understanding the infield fly rule [a rule in baseball] ? Or my a...
20th February 2015
