Ragbag of a week

January 28, 2012

Slowly, slowly trying to creak into gear this slow month of January. Either I’m forgetting, or it’s been worse than usual this time. Busy, in a way – I’ve been out seven nights in the past two weeks, if you count teaching (which I do; there’s the pub after, after all) – and it’s all [...]

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Sherlock in scriptwriting, shark-jumping shock: the 3 signs

January 22, 2012

Just go crazy in your own time… … Moriarty: ‘I owe you, Sherlock’. Cut to close-up of badly-cast actor’s babyface. Then, just in case we didn’t catch that: ‘I. Owe. You.’ A minute later, just in case we didn’t catch that, Sherlock picks up an apple with which Moriarty has been fiddling. Knife plunged into [...]

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More from the Week In Poetry: homework for the weekend

January 21, 2012

In the middle of everything else going on this week was Tuesday: of course, teaching night for me at the Poetry School. The course is called ‘Making Poetry’ and covers in three terms the basics of prosody – that is, poetic technique. This week we began to unpick the mysteries of rhyming ‘cat’ with ‘dog’ [...]

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Etta James: another legend passes

January 20, 2012

Happy music. And an inspiration. And, you know: not many people cooler-looking than Etta James.                   I’m just going to post this now: I keep changing the video – but it’s all good. And I won’t go into the whole sadness thing. She’s a testament to life [...]

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Whirligig poetry week, continued: this world, and the something beyond

January 19, 2012

So after the TS Eliot Prize reading on Sunday, I went along to the award ceremony on Monday, which was conducted this year live on television – possibly because of being, as the Guardian put it, ‘the most controversial TS Eliot poetry prize in decades’. But once Oswald and Kinsella had dropped out, I thought [...]

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Poetry, the works do: Eliot Prize reading 2012

January 16, 2012

Right! I’ve managed to get my content management system problem sorted out just in time for last night’s TS Eliot Prize reading, which is as any fule kno the Poetry Event of the Year. From its humble beginnings (when I started going it was in the Bloomsbury Theatre and getting rather squished in the foyer; [...]

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Life in the bookshop!

January 11, 2012

This has gone up on the Guardian now, but in case you missed it – it more or less depicts what my relationship with books has always been like. This is a ‘meaning of life’ Wednesday Special. We look everywhere for the meaning of life. Sometimes it’s right in front of our nose. This (more [...]

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The enemy is within…

January 10, 2012

… and with that, the new world comes crashing in! BANG. Can you believe what you’re looking at? On THIS blog? I had about three things I wanted to write here, and now I can’t remember ANY of them. No, I can, and I miss the days when I used to write interesting amusing things. [...]

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