Inherent Virtue

"Carol Ann Duffy might have won numerous literary awards and become the country's first female poet laureate, but Oxford professor of poetry Geoffrey Hill has nevertheless compared her writing to that of a Mills & Boon author.

Speaking in Oxford, he said that he "would not agree that texting is a saying of more with less, and that it in this respect works as a poem". "As the laureate says, poetry is condensed. Text is not condensed, it is truncated," said Hill. "What is more it is normally an affectation of brevity; to express to as 2 and you as u intensifies nothing. Texting is like the old ticker tape: highly dramatic and intense if it's reporting the Wall Street Crash or the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, not through any inherent virtue of the machine. Is the breaking news which runs at the foot of the screen on the BBC news channel condensed and consequently poetic?"

(Alison Flood reports on Geoffrey Hill's recent take down of Carol Ann Duffy, via the Guardian)


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"The American poet Ezra Pound might seem a strange sort of inspiration for a group of Italian neo-fascists. That is, until one remembers that Pound was an admirer of Benito Mussolini, a defender of Adolf Hitler and, that while living in Italy during World War II, he broadcast a series of anti-Semitic radio addresses calling for American neutrality. Indeed, so stirring has the poet's memory proved in right-wing circles that Italy's most prominent neo-fascist organization has named itself in his memory: CasaPound, or Pound's House."

(Stephan Faris, via TIME)




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"News that the Costa is to add a new short story category to its roster of awards this year has left the book industry hoping that this will prove a "breakthrough moment" for the genre.

The prize, which will be awarded to a single short story, was announced at the Costa book awards last night. Although the Costa short story award will run in association with the novel, first novel, biography, poetry and children's book prizes, the winner will not be competing for the overall Costa book of the year prize[...]"

(via the Guardian)


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Sometimes, sometimes, it isn't so easy to spend your time on other people's writing instead of using that time for your own writing.  I rarely feel that way, but I felt it quite strongly this past weekend.


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Clue:  Quarterly


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