Poetry Blog: Mark McGuinness|poetry

The Smiths — ‘I Want the One I Can’t Have’

August 28, 2009

And if you ever need self-validation just meet me in the alley by the railway station The greatest rhyme in English — surely?

T.S. Eliot Wins the Nobel Prize for Literature

August 24, 2009

Reporter: Mr Eliot, for which of your works were you awarded the Nobel Prize? Eliot: I assume it was for the entire corpus. Reporter: When did you publish that? Priceless. (Via the wonderful Ackroyd biography.)

T.S. Eliot and the Business of Poetry

August 24, 2009

I’ve just written a piece for Lateral Action, one of my other blogs, about T.S. Eliot’s route to fame, inspired by the excellent Ackroyd biography. The T.S. Eliot Guide to Success If you like that, you might like this piece about the other great poet-businessman of the English language: The Shakespearean Guide to Entrepreneurship

Philip Larkin — ‘A Study of Reading Habits’

July 19, 2009

Following on from Auden’s American accent, I’ve discovered the reverse phenomenon in Larkin’s Sunday Sessions. In ‘A Study of Reading Habits’ he uses the American word ‘dude’ — which, in the recorded version, he pronounces ‘dyood’ (instead of the usual ‘dood’) in a very arch Received Pronunciation. It’s very funny. And I’m guessing deliberately conservative, [...]

Philip Larkin — The Sunday Sessions

July 18, 2009

Required listening for Larkin fans — The Sunday Sessions — a recently rediscovered recording of the poet reading some of his best poems: The Sunday Sessions consists of twenty-six poems, the contents of two tapes recorded by Philip Larkin in Hull in February 1980 — reportedly each on a Sunday after lunch with John weeks, [...]

Geoffrey Hill Interview in the Oxonian Review

May 25, 2009

Thanks to Baroque in Hackney for finding this Interview with Geoffrey Hill in the Oxonian Review. For someone with a reputation for forbiddingly serious poetry, its nice to see he doesn’t take himself too seriously: How do you envisage your own poetry

Seamus Heaney — ‘Casualty’

May 10, 2009

I‘m two thirds of the way through Stepping Stones, Dennis O’Driscoll’s interviews with Seamus Heaney, which effectively constitute an autobiography. (So expect the Heaney tag in the sidebar to keep getting bigger.) It’s like reading in High Definition. There are some spectacular moments, like Heaney’s description of a visionary experience among the skyscrapers of Manhattan, [...]

Ted Hughes on the Poet’s Gift

April 26, 2009

The poet’s only hope is to be infinitely sensitive to what his gift is, and this in itself seems to be another gift that few poets possess. ‘Context’, Winter Pollen Apart from self-knowledge, this is a good argument for feedback – provided you can find an infinitely sensitive critic (who doesn’t mince their words).

Seamus Heaney on R.S. Thomas

April 25, 2009

Heaney nails R.S. Thomas in on of the Stepping Stones interviews with Dennis O’Driscoll: He got very far as a poet, a loner taking on the universe, a kind of Clint Eastwood of the spirit. Hilarious. As well as accurate and affectionate. If there isn’t an R.S.Thomas collection called Unforgiven, there should be.

Sticks and Stones — Dryden and Rochester

April 23, 2009

Dryden had virulent enemies in his time. His satires and the king’s favour enraged John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, who legend says had him mugged one night in a dark passageway off Garrick Street, near Covent Garden. (Michael Schmidt, Lives of the Poets, p.300) I’m not a big fan of Dryden’s poetry, and there’s nothing [...]

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