Poetry Parnassus

Apologies for the lack of posts over recent months.

This summer I am a volunteer welcomer at the Southbank Centre. This week was Poetry Parnassus, a festival where poets from around the world met at the Southbank to meet, share, debate and learn. It was FANTASTIC and I just wish that it was an annual thing: surely we don't need the excuse of the Olympics to enjoy such an event!

Being a welcomer is really cool, because I get to go in the Festival Village, a kind of green room for staff and the artists who will be at the Southbank throughout the summer as part of the Festival of the World (until 9th September). I've been lucky enough to meet Russian poet Ilya Kaminsky as I was showing him to the Village, as well as standing next to Simon Armitage in the queue for the cheaptest coffee for miles around! I was also in a singing lift with him (must-see, the Southbank's singing lift; puts a smile on my face every time!), but didn't say hello or introduce myself, because in the world of poetry I remain a nobody. Hopefully one day this will change though, and there'll be another Parnassus where I can mingle more! The village was absolutely teeming with poets, their buddies and translators, and it was just lovely to soak up the atmosphere.

Other highlights of Parnassus include Continental Shift, a reading that I was lucky enough to get complimentary tickets to, on Friday evening. Simon Armitage hosted readings by Jo Shapcott (the bee poems which I have heard her read before; the poet in me appreciates them, the beekeeper in me shakes her head woefully), Wole Soyinka (whose mobile went off while he was on stage! and whose optician poem I loved), Kim Hyesoon (whom I hadn't heard of before but whom I absolutely LOVED), Togara Muzanenhamo, Seamus Heaney (who read in English and Irish!), Bill Manhire from NZ (absolutely touching poetry with wonderful quiet humour) and finally Kay Ryan, an American poet whom I had never heard of but whose short poems were marvellous and really touched me, as well as her wonderful voice. It was a fantastic evening, and even my poetry-sceptical boyfriend enjoyed it!

Earlier on Friday I went to a writing workshop with Canadian poet Karen Solie, with whom we (the group included Jacqueline Saphra and Icelandic poet Gerður Kristný!) discussed and explored how to bring an element of surprise into our poems. It was a lovely workshop, very welcoming, and opened my eyes to a new method that I will experiment with...I'm thinking sestinas. Lots of sestinas. (Sestinae?)

It was lovely to see my fellow Norwichians the Poetry Takeaway getting so much attention, and the Poetry Ambulance - what a fantastic idea! Wish them all the best!

I entered a competition with Young Poets' Network (part of the Poetry Society) to win free tickets to the Poetry Society's Annual Lecture, this year given by Paul Muldoon. My analysis of Muldoon's 'The Birth' from his collection 'The Annals of Chile' won me two free tickets...cannot thank YPN/The Poetry Society enough for such a wonderful opportunity. My oldest friend and I sat only a row back from the stage, and were lucky enough to hear Muldoon speak about the meeting and divergence between poetry and lyrics, both of which he writes, and collections of which are to be published at the end of this year/earlier 2013. Muldoon was a wonderful speaker, absolutely compelling listening, and I loved the new works he read to us. I also write both poetry and lyrics (although not anywhere near Muldoon's level, don't get me wrong!) and it was really illuminating to hear someone whose poetry I admire discuss them both, and lovely that broader poetic interests, such as lyrics and their place in pop culture, were explored at an event of such calibre. On the way out I almost (literally) bumped into Ruth Padel, something of a poetic hero of mine, and it really hit home what a wonderful opportunity it was to be part of an audience that included people whose work I have read (or drooled over in a bookshop). I'm currently mulling over the lecture and experience and tomorrow will begin drafting a review that will appear on the YPN website.

I wish I'd been able to attend more events, especially some of those on the subject of translation, but my volunteering shifts and problems at Waterloo precluded this. Parnassus, please come back!

Poetry Parnassus has been absolutely wonderful, and I hope that there will be another one soon. I cannot wait to take part, and hope one day to be sharing my own work with a new generation of poets. I was really struck by a blog by Clare Pollard, who tells of her encounter with Congolese poet Kama Sywor Kamanda's Ouevres Poetiques Completes, which is over 1000 pages long! Clare Pollard's blog is at http://clarepollard.com/ and her reflections on Parnassus are well worth a read.

Perhaps the best thing about the whole week has been the farmer's market out the back of Royal Festival Hall, and my discovery of the best hog roast ever in the history of the world :)