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weirdelf's blog

Do you ever hate being a poet?

Sometimes my poems come fully formed into my mind and I just have to perform the brainless task of typing them out.
They are the second best ones.

The third best ones are where I get an idea and construct a poem around it. They're not always very bad.

The best ones start as something niggling at the back of my head and gestate like that thing from "Alien" and burst out of my head instead of my chest, leaving a unfillable hole of despair and depression. I sometimes fucking hate being a poet but there are few other choices for a lazy bastard like myself.

Cellar Door- an intriguing and quick workshop

Description: The phrase 'cellar door' is purportedly the most euphonious phrase in the English language. This will be a super quicky workshop starting immediately. Just write a short poem including that phrase or variations thereof with the emphasis on pleasing sounding English.

Leaders: Jess (weirdelf) and Guy (Geezer)

Attention new members!

We've had quite a lot of new members lately and I address this mostly to you. I've been going through the 'Undiscovered Poems' list, poems that have received no feedback. I've also been checking the statistics on people who post a few poems and don't return. We care a lot about Neopoet and want it to be a friendly and helpful place.

Neopoet Referendum #7 - The Lab Vote yes

Unlike most elections where Americans and most Western democracies you have a choice between arseholes who want to exploit you ruthlessly or those who want to exploit you pretending not to be ruthless at Neopoet you have a choice to make things better.

Vote no, nothing changes.

Chris (vandiemenspeak) Hall and myself are happy to do them for you or teach you how to do it yourself.
Many people have found it invaluable in hearing their voice in another's voice purely to improve their work.

Yet we have got very little feedback. There is quite a lot of work involved which we are happy to do if you get value from it,

We would love some feedback on this, please.

"The Birthday Present", my first film

on 3/4" U-matic tape, c. 1977
Yes I was into the works of John Waters at the time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pa5finTcBLI

Poetry is a chore.

Well it can be and sort of always is.
Marshall McLuhan described various media in terms of temperature. It seems counter-intuitive at first because he calls TV cold and literature hot. What he is referring to is individual engagement.

TV is cold because the viewer is passive, a victim, images streamed straight to a barely active brain. Literature is hot because one has to actively read it, use ones imagination.

Admittedly there was sadness too, for the dearly departed Terry Pratchett, and that wistful feeling that comes from reading joyful genius one could only aspire to.

Many thanks to the extraordinary generosity of Ian Thomas Howard who gave me the book, "A Blink of the Screen", a collection of Pratchett's shorter fiction, some previously unpublished. For my non-British friends Glastonbury was a bit like Woodstock.

The New Criticism

The New Criticism by I.A. Richards and T.S. Eliot

a really interesting essay, check it out at-
http://www.phaguniya.com/the-new-criticism-by-i-a-richards-literary-theo...

SoundCloud playlist

https://soundcloud.com/neopoet/sets

eeek! They're all different poets but in my voice, which pretty much sucks.

Please, record your own poems, email the mp3 to me at [email protected] if it's under 5mg or we'll arrange some file transfer to our SoundCloud page if it's over.

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