More tweaks and work on Burn of God over the weekend. My idea for the 8-page booklet is to represent the ideas and tracks visually, so I've removed lots of text. Here's an image, that is connected to The Tree, a track about the connections of energy between things:
Deb and I also went to Manchester yesterday to join a few poets for the launch of the Peterloo poetry book. Nice to meet a few friends and fellow poets there. Performers included Bridie Breen, Janey Colbourne, Margaret Holbrook, Randy Horton, Nicole Hulme, Jess Hulme, Judy Morris, Peter Branson, Greg Nowell, Gordon Zola, Andy N, Anthony J. Parker, as well as host Paul Morris. Deb performed Janus Never Blinks, which is part of Fall in Green's War is Over set. Here's a photo by playwright and arts journalist Claire Faulkner:
The publisher spent some time announcing two forthcoming collections of similar, protest-centered poetry; one on the theme of the Newport Massacre, one on Women's Suffrage. I'm unsure how entertaining poems about such dour and sad subjects are to read. Political poems often remind me, in a bad way, of the mock student-poems of Rick from The Young Ones. I have read and heard a few moving poems about tragic events, John Lindley's poem about the Grenfell fire is excellent, but protest poems often make me feel uncomfortable, as though hearing the rant of a bully, or helplessly witnessing a beating; perhaps because the words are telling rather than showing, simply bad writing because there is no dialogue. Good art is half talk, half listen.
I will write something for these two collections, and perhaps try a drawing or two as before.
