Poetry Parnassus: how the poems rained down on London
It’s been billed as the largest poetry festival in the UK – Poetry Parnassus at London's Southbank Centre and then on tour is part of the London 2012 Olympics celebrations and brings together poets and spoken-word artists from all over the world, with all competing Olympic nations represented. Events have included a rain of poems from a helicopter as the sun sets, an inflatable tube carriage where you can write your own poems, and a translation laboratory where you can drop in and have a go at making a poem from a literal translation. Those were just three of 110 events billed. Full details of London events It goes on until 1 July, each day from 9.30am to 10pm. Then the Parnassus poets head off on a nationwide tour, visiting Brighton, Cambridge, Stratford, Much Wenlock, Derry, Bristol, Ledbury, Hebden Bridge, Liverpool, Manchester, Dartington, Ludlow, Worthing, Birmingham, Kendal, Porsmouth, Nottingham, and Wirksworth, Derbyshire. The Guardian has published an interactive map of poems from every Olympic nation on its website - just click on a country and read a poem. And there's a review of Poetry Parnassus in the New Statesman.
Greg Freeman
Fri 29th Jun 2012 00:28
When picking one out of 110 events to go to at Poetry Parnassus, you’ve got to trust to luck as well as judgment. David Andrew and I opted, almost at random, for an evening on Thursday night of poetry from seven of the 30,000 Pacific islands, and a group of poets who were there, as one put it, to “create the Pacific in old Blighty” – or to be more specific, in a hot, crowded room in the bowels of the Southbank Centre, with people walking over your head. This wasn’t anything like your average poetry reading. There were poems about anthropological stereotyping, flying fish racing speedboats, police raids in New Zealand, the damage caused by nuclear tests and climate change in the Marshall islands, and the astonishing appeal of Spam among those living in Guam, and how it may have helped to win the second world war. The work was at times finger-clicking, romantic, hilarious, moving, and participatory, and delivered with panache and conviction. Tusiata Avia, Audrey Brown-Pereira, Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner, Selina Tusitala Marsh, Karlo Mila, Craig Santos Perez, and Teresia Teaiwa had travelled many thousands of miles to be here, a number of them in London for the first time in their lives. Poetry Parnassus is some enterprise. Get along to the Southbank Centre if you can – the whole extravaganza finishes on Sunday – and don’t despair if you live too far away and haven’t a hope of attending. Groups of Parnassus poets then head off on a nationwide tour http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/tour. You may be able to catch up with them somewhere.