poets who don't read poetry

Here's Portmanteau Poet of the Day Bill Manhire on poets who don’t read poetry:

I have met plenty who declare that they never read other poets: their own pure, original voice might somehow be contaminated. People who talk like that aren't writers. They simply like the idea of calling themselves writers. If you read a hundred poems by Seamus Heaney and write in his influence for a month or even a year or two, that's fine. It may be part of the process of finding out what to do. I don't imagine there are many aspiring screen writers who decide not to go to films on the grounds that the experience may destroy their art. The only person who will never become a writer is the one who doesn't read. Concert pianists listen to music. Great chefs like to eat.

This is from the intro to Mutes and Earthquakes, an anthology of works by writers from Manhire's greatly respected creative writing course at Victoria University, in Wellington, which I would so so love to enrol on!

daily poem: Introduction to Poetry / Billy Collins

I love Billy Collins, one of those rare genuinely popular poets who has a real evangelistic approach to poetry, and who manages to be funny and lyrical and very accessible. His brilliant Poetry 180 project is all about getting poetry-for-pleasure into the classroom, with a hand-picked collection of 180 poems - one for every day of the school year - selected on the basis of “their willingness to deliver immediate injections of pleasure.” It's also a great introduction to contemporary poets, including many not especially famous. You can read the poems over here and there's a handy teacher's guide here.


Introduction to Poetry
Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a colour slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room
And feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.


Buy Poetry 180 here. // Buy 180 More here.

Photo by marrian.