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John Baker's Blog

Reflections of a working writer and reader

I don't give readings, no, although I have recorded three of my collections, just to show how I should read them. Hearing a poem, as opposed to reading it on the page, means you miss so much- the shape, the punctuation, the italics, even knowing how far you are from the end. Reading it on the page means you can go your own pace, taking it in properly; hearing it means you're dragged along at the speaker's own rate, missing things, not taking it in, confusing there and their and things like that. And the speaker may interpose his own personality between you and the poem, for better or worse. For that matter, so may the audience. I don't like hearing things in public, even music. In fact, I think poetry readings grew up on a false analogy with music: the text is the 'score' that doesn't 'come to life' until it's 'performed.' It's false because people can read words, whereas they can't read music. When you write a poem, you put everything into it that's needed: the reader should 'hear' it just as clearly as if you were in the room saying it to him. And of course this fashion for poetry readings has led to a kind of poetry that you can understand first go: easy rhythms, easy emotions, easy syntax. I don't think it stands up on the page. Philip Larkin

Presque vu LXIV

Europe is a country and everyone speaks French here.

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Nikita Lalwani’s novel, Gifted, has won the inaugural Desmond Elliott prize.
The widely acclaimed debut novel about immigration and a precocious childhood, has been in contention for other literary prizes, but not won until now. The £10,000 winner’s cheque, will be donated, by the author, to human rights campaigners Liberty. Nikita Lalwani said:

“We live at a time when we can’t take personal freedoms and civil liberties for granted any more - in this country as in others - so an organisation which campaigns on these issues deserves our support.”

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Publishers Weekly reports that literary agent Barbara Bauer is suing 19 bloggers and websites, including Wikipedia, YouTube and AbsoluteWrite.com, claiming they are ruining her reputation.

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This one links to a story in the Guardian books page about a seemingly good and brave teacher and her persecution by a load of bloody fools.

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Filed under humour, politics, writing
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This was posted on Sunday, July 6th, 2008 at 11:27 am. You can follow any responses through the RSS 2.0 feed.

2 responses to “Presque vu LXIV”

  1. § Dick on July 7th, 2008 at 6:21 am

    Re. the good and brave teacher - proof positive (as if it were needed) that entire areas of the United States are under the control of autistic 13-year-olds.

    jb says: I didn’t know this, Dick. There must be a news blackout. Bring back Woodward and Bernstein; somebody needs to get to the bottom of this.

  2. § Shawn on July 7th, 2008 at 5:40 pm

    The first story serves as a nice example of the consequences of the last story, don’t you think? Actually, both stories show the general contempt for education that is sadly common among large swathes of the American public.

    As for the first story, I don’t know what’s worse: that the woman thought Europe was a country or that the host couldn’t even correctly pronounce an answer that was printed on a card in his hand (hun-ga-ry). Then again, the host is best known for his “You might be a redneck if…” stand up comedy routine, so expecting him to correctly pronounce relatively common dictionary words might be too much to ask.

    jb says: Hi Shawn. I didn’t make the connection between the two stories. I just knew that something was terribly wrong. But I like synchronicity. Thanks for pointing it out.

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