Smart Devices: 52 Poems from The Guardian 'Poem of the Week'

by Carol Rumens (Editor)

Overview

A year of hand-picked poems and commentaries from the Guardian's 'Poem of the Week' blog.

Carol Rumens has been contributing 'Poem of the Week' to the Guardian for more than a dozen years. Do the maths: that's more than 624 blogs! No wonder she has a large and devoted following. She's a poet-reader, not an academic. She is fascinated by the new, but her interest is instructed by the classic poems she has read. They make her ear demanding: when it hears that something, it perks up. She perks up.

'A poem is a small (or large) machine made of words.' Rumens partly agrees with Williams but she develops the conceit, seeing each poem 'as a more flexible instrument, a miniature neo-cortex, that super-connective, super-layered smartest device of the mammalian brain'.

She tries to avoid poems built from kits with instruction manuals. She looks for surprises, and she surprises us.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781784107802
Publisher:	Carcanet Press, Limited
Publication date:	12/21/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
File size:	566 KB

About the Author

Carol Rumens was born in Forest Hill, South London, in 1944. She began writing music reviews for the local press when she was sixteen. She has held various literary posts, including the Northern Art Fellowship, and poetry residencies located at Queen's University Belfast, University College Cork, Stockholm University and the Harvard Centre for Hellenic Studies, Nafplio. Rumens has published twenty poetry collections, the latest of which is The Mixed Urn (Sheep Meadow Press, 2019). She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Bangor, Gwynedd.

Table of Contents

Introduction xi

The Lake of Memories Howard Altmann 11

A Fire Shared Peter Didsbury 15

Outside Karen McCarthy Woolf 19

Boy Soldier Fred D'Aguiar 23

The Coloration of Feathers Ruth Fainlight 27

A Bone Flute Judith Wilson 31

Death makes dead metaphor revive Denise Riley 35

The Oy of the Poyem Zohar Atkins 39

Breezeaway John Ashbery 43

April Fools' Day Elaine Feinstein 47

Microbial Museum Maya Chowdhry 51

To a Nightingale R.F. Langley 55

Tweet Tweet Jean 'Binta' Breeze 61

Jasper Tony Conran 65

Lavernock translated by Harry Gilonis Saunders Lewis 71

The Walking Father Blues Miriam Nash 75

Poem for Professor Frye Nausheen Eusuf 79

But Those Unheard Mules Burrows 83

Someone Else's Song Kamela Das 87

Us Zaffar Kunial 91

Lapstrake Ross Cogan 95

They (may forget (their names (if let out))) Vahni Capildeo 99

The Colour of 'Stones Syl Cheney-Coker 103

Prison Camp Violin, Riga Robert Sheppard 107

Sin Visits Me Malika Booker 111

Squaks and Speech Ian Gregson 115

Origin of the Mimeo Siobhan Campbell 121

Everywhere you see her… Mimi Khalvati 125

Your Summer Arm Naomi Foyle 129

How Are the Children Robin W.S. Graham 133

Musk-Ox Jane Yeh 137

The Barber Shop translated by Jackie Wilcox and the poet Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke 141

The Black Guitar Paul Henry 145

Loop Cliff Forshaw 149

Tiny Pieces Billy Mills 153

Why the swan Andrew Lambeth 159

Yoga for Leaders and Others Philip Fried 163

Moving On Robyn Bolam 169

A Braid of Garlic Marilyn Hacker 173

Chainsaw John Kinsella 177

World Trade Center / Mail Runner /'73 Peter Balakian 181

The Light, Changed translated by John Nanghton Yves Bonnefoy 185

The Miracle of the Bees and the Foxgloves Anne Stevenson 189

The Autumn Outings Maurice Rutherford 193

Ay, But Can Ye? translated by Edwin Morgan Vladimir Mayakovsky 199

Going, Going… Leah Fritz 203

The Words Collide Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin 207

In His Other House Jee Leong Koh 211

Political Asylum Dick Davis 215

Poem translated by Lesley Saunders Maria Teresa Horta 219

Visiting Star Stanley Moss 225

Fireflies Frank Ormsby 231

Acknowledgements 235

Index of Poem Titles 241