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redefining words
May has been mad and beautiful so far. It's only half gone and I feel like I've used enough energy for a whole month. I'm out of touch with the NY scene but I'm just about to e-mail my people Jive Poetic, Mahogany Browne and Ainsley Burrows for an update... Around here, Skorpio just returned from exile in India and I'm hoping to get him rocking mics again soon...
My month started with a Saul Williams gig at SCALA in London (May 3), which was really amazing, although I went to see this really cool poet, Roger Robinson, whose work I edit and publish. Then I went on the BBC Verb programme to record a taster for the series on African Writers that I'm doing for them. Over there I met the fine poets Wendy Cope and Hugo Williams who were debating the merits and demerits of the Villanelle with odd comments from myself, the host, Ian McMillan, and Thai writer Rattawut Lapcharoensap who read a golden extract from his book of short stories "Sightseeing".
Since then it's been all teaching and being taught. I'm behind on my MA work, but I'm loving The Maverick Room by Thomas Sayers Ellis and Dougie Goetsch's The Job of Being Everybody, which I borrwoed from another cool London poet Jacob Sam-La Rose. My students at Bishop Douglass school in North London broke down the glowing screen image in TSE's Slow Fade to Black for me so beautifully I felt like a kid again and I've been buzzing off their energy since. They are going to be a great group of poets soon!
I've done two other gigs, Poetry Shack and Farrago since the weekly school workshop, and I've been asked to get with the programme as far as this site goes so I've started a blog supplement (click here) and an archive. No promises about how regularly I will blog since, unlike Prince, I AM doing this just for kicks!
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