Back then and in the decades and centuries that came after, the great Czech poets could not have foreseen quite how high the works of modern poets would go. That is, into space! The likes of Hynek z Poděbrad, Karel Hynek Mácha, Jan Neruda and Jaroslav Seifert would be astonished by plans to put a Czech flag and book of poetry into outer space.

U.S. astronaut Andrew Feustel will be doing just this in May 2009 when NASA will make repairs on the Hubble telescope orbiting the Earth. This action has been labelled the STS 125 mission. It’s hoped the astronauts can prolong the telescope’s life until the year 2013.

Feustel, who has Czech ancestry hopes his actions will be a nice gesture to the Czech people and nation as well as the Czech Astronomical Institute. This isn’t however the first time that the nation’s national flag has been in orbit. In 1972 an American astronaut by the name of Eugene Cernan took the Czech flag to the moon. He had Czech-Slovak ancestry.

The volume of poems Andrew Feustel will take on-board with him will be ‘Cosmic Songs’ by Jan Neruda. This poet lived in the 19th Century and looked fondly upon the growth of science and technology. His works often incorporate praise for the human desire to progress in all ways possible.

It’s interesting to note that the famous and most loved Chilean poet Pablo Neruda took the surname of Jan Neruda as his own, so inspired and full of admiration for the Czech poet was he.

You can read more poetry by this great Czech poet in this book available at Amazon:

Prague Tales by Jan Neruda

The 53-year-old openly lesbian poet will join the ranks of great literary masters including John Dryden (the first to hold the post), William Wordsworth, Alfred Lord Tennyson and John Betjeman. Her work will include penning poems for major state occasions and events involving the Royal Family.

An official announcement will be made by the Culture Secretary Andy Burnham in the coming hours or days informing the public of the new Poet Laureate. Having missed out on the position before due to Tony Blair’s concern over Middle England’s views of a lesbian holding the post, the news will be greeted warmly by gay rights groups.

She succeeds Andrew Motion who stated earlier in the week that he was “relieved” to be leaving the job. The announcement will be made at Manchester University’s John Rylands Library.

You can read an earlier post of mine on this subject here: Carol Ann Duffy to be First Female Poet Laureate.

One of her most well known poetry books is Rapture which is a T.S. Eliot Prize winning collection. It’s a book-length love-poem and a moving act of personal testimony through the human emotions of infatuation, longing, passion, commitment, rancour, separation, and grief. With poems that will find deep resonance in the experience of most readers, it is a collection that can and does speak for us all.

This is not the first time she has been put forward for the position. In 1999, after the death of the then incumbent Poet Laureate Ted Hughes, she narrowly lost out to Andrew Motion. Many critics claim her loss was because of Prime Minister Tony Blair’s concern with how her homosexuality would fare with Middle England.

A rather bitter Duffy said retorted: “I will not write a poem for Edward and Sophie (Earl and Countess of Wessex). No self-respecting poet should have to.”

Carol Ann Duffy was born in the Scottish city of Glasgow in 1955. At the age of 4, she and her family moved to Staffordshire in England. She went on to be educated at Saint Austin Roman Catholic Primary School, St. Joseph’s Convent School and Stafford Girls’ High School before studying philosophy from Liverpool University in 1977.

Her first collection of poetry Standing Female Nude was published in 1985. Ten years later, in 1995 she was awarded an OBE and then in 2001, a CBE. Duffy’s popularity has soared over the last couple of decades and she has even become part of the school syllabus in England and Wales.

Journalist Katharine Viner said of Ms Duffy:

“Her poems are accessible and entertaining, yet her form is classical, her technique razor-sharp. She is read by people who don’t really read poetry, yet she maintains the respect of her peers. Reviewers praise her touching, sensitive, witty evocations of love, loss, dislocation, nostalgia; fans talk of greeting her at readings ‘with claps and cheers that would not sound out of place at a pop concert’”.

An announcement on whether she will become Britain’s next Poet Laureate is expected in the coming week after the Queen’s approval. If she is promoted to the position she can expect to earn an annual salary of £5,000 in place of the ancient stipend of a “butt of sack”. She’s also be expected to write poems for the Royal Family and attend major literary events.

See: Carol Ann Duffy is the New British Poet Laureate.

A curator by the name of Martin Myrone said of the experience:

“The 1809 exhibition was Blake’s most significant attempt to present himself as a public artist. But he was damned as an idiot, as a madman, a fool.”

This was highlighted by a newspaper review from shortly after the art show by Robert Hunt of The Examiner:

“The poor man fancies himself a great master and has painted a few wretched pictures, some of which are unintelligible allegory, others an attempt at sober character by caricature representation and the whole blotted and blurred and very badly drawn. These he calls an Exhibition of which he has published a Catalogue, or rather a farrago of nonsense, unintelligibleness and egregious vanity, the wild effusions of a distempered brain.”

William Blake didn’t take kindly to such bitter criticism and increasingly withdrew into himself. His disgust at the state of British Art at the beginning of the 19th Century grew further.

A key figure of the romantic movement, in both the poetry and art, Blake died in 1827. Now 200 years after that one-off attempt to gain recognition for his art work, the Tate Britain gallery in London has recreated the solo exhibition. This time it’s hoped and expected many thousands more people will attend and admire the exhibition of one of England’s greatest cultural figures.

See also: The Stranger from Paradise: A Biography of William Blake (Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art)

Robert Burns

Yesterday (25th) marked 250 years since the birth of the Scottish poet Robert Burns. Celebrations took place across Scotland in honour of the bard most famous for the song “Auld Lang Syne”. Scots enjoyed the feast of Haggis which consists of a sheep’s heart and lungs chopped up with spices and oatmeal and stuffed into a sheep’s stomach which is joined with “neeps” (turnips) and “tatties” (potatoes). Before and after the appetising meal they took part in poetry readings, reciting some of Burns’ poems including ‘Coming Through The Rye’ and ‘A Red, Red Rose’. In Alloway, near Ayr, where Burns was born, thousands of people joined celebrations including a lantern procession and church service.

It wasn’t just in Scotland that celebrations took place. Across the globe, people came together to commemorate the much loved poet. Events took place south of the border as well as in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, China and Japan. The Scottish tourism board, which has recently invested in a celebrity fronted advertising campaign to draw expatriates back to their homeland and attract tourists and business, highlighted the excellence of Burns’ work and praised the literary gifts he had given to Scottish culture.

First Minister Alex Salmond, leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP), described Burns as “Scotland’s human being of the millennium”.

Robert Burns was born on the 25th of January in the year 1759. Born into a poor family, it was his first love, Nelly Kirkpatrick, who first inspired him to write poetry. His work is noted for the heavy Scottish dialect which was in fact part of the title for the first of his published works, “Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect” in 1786. This collection included some of his most impressive poems including “To a Mouse” and “The Holy Fair”.

Like many poets in the past, Burns work gained fame after his premature death at the age of 37, of rheumatic fever. He was buried in the churchyard of St. Michael’s in Dumfries. It has been said he fathered up to 8 illegitimate children born from 5 different women. His wife Jean Burns gave birth to their 9th child together on the very day of his burial.

See also: Worldwide Toast to Robert Burns.

Clayton Lowe

When did you start writing poetry?

I stated writing poetry when I was 16. My mom and pop decided to end
their marriage. My mom wanted to start a new life, so being the brave
soul that she is, she packed up everything and moved us all down south
to Augusta, Georgia. We left New Jersey in a old beat up Pontiac (me,
my mother, my sister, my brother, and two dogs) to start over again in
a city we’d never been to before and where we knew no one apart from
one elderly lady my mom hadn’t seen for 5 or 6 years.

You can image at 16 having to leave all of my high school friends
behind was pretty traumatic to say the least. I retreated to my own
inner world and pretty much became a social recluse. I’d always had
a love affair with books from since I could hold them in my hands. I
read loads and loads of books – fiction, history, and science were my
favorite subjects. As a teenager, the library was my Fortress of
Solitude. Anyway, I enrolled in my new high school half-way through
the semester. I refused to speak to anyone unless they spoke to me
directly. I kept to myself and my books. I did, however, connect
really well with my new English teacher, a guy named Richard Parsons.
From my work, he new that I loved literature and writing and so he
encourage me to develop my interest and my talent. He introduced me
to poetry. In fact, he was very passionate about poetry and that
caught on with me and I became very passionate about poetry.

He fixed it so that I could do an independent study class in poetry,
which meant we could explore poetry beyond the normal high school
curriculum stuff they were spoon feeding to the normal students. I
studied all the great poets and poetic movements starting from Beowulf
and up through to the 20th century greats. In studying poetry, I felt
compelled to write poetry. I found poetry to be a medium through
which I could explore life and the big themes that life has a habit of
throwing at us.

Who have been the greatest literary influences in your life?

This list could gone on forever. But there are two very distinct
influences that changed the course of my life, my thinking, and my
world view as a young man and they were the Romantic poets – Byron,
Shelly, and Keats specifically. I was enamored with their zest for
life, that they could be poets and adventurers, and socialites. Byron
especially did it for me. Being “mad, bad, and dangerous to know,”
was something a teenage boy could latch on to and not be considered a
wussy. I didn’t fit the stereotype of a bookworm or poetry lover. I
was very athletic and athletically built. I played high school
football. I wrestled. I was also an amateur bodybuilder (I placed
second in the teenage MR Georgia bodybuilding comp). On the cerebral
side, I was my high school chess champion and was the salutatorian of
my class.

If the Romantic poets taught me that a poet could be ‘mad, bad, and
dangerous to know,’ T.S. Eliot taught me that a poet could be a
social, cultural, and spiritual critic of the state of mankind. When
I first read the Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, the Hollow Men, and
the Wasteland, they blew me away. I think hands down, Eliot has had
the greatest impact on me as a writer and thinker.

I said there were two big influences, actually there is a third –
Robert E. Howard who is most famous for the Conan the Barbarian
stories. Howard really inflamed my passion for adventure. As crazy
as it might sound, one of my reasons for becoming a U.S. Army Airborne
Infantry Officer was so that I could go off and have great adventures
as a warrior and a soldier.

I some times describe myself as a warrior-poet, which as you can see
is directly related to my literary influences.

Have you been published? If not, do you intend to?

I haven’t devoted a whole lot of time to submitting poems to
publications. I once read somewhere that a writer is someone who has
something to say. I have something to say, so I write. I have had a
few poems published in small journals. These came about because the
editors heard me performing my poems at an open mic night. I do a lot
of open mic poetry readings. I love the immediate intimacy between
poet and audience and of course you get immediate feedback as to
whether the crowd liked the piece or not.

I do have a poetry collection due to be published by fifty-eight kings
press in March. The book is called A Thousand Bullets Gone Astray.
It’s about the promises we break to ourselves and to others,
especially those closest to us.

Tell us more about your family and how they have influenced your
writing.

I love to hear my children call out to me: “Dad what does this
mean?” “Dad can I…” “Dad you’re weird.” I love being a
dad and interacting with my kids and watching them grow up. I am
proud to be their dad and not just the person who provided the sperm
for their conception. Growing up, I had a father, not a dad.

I am not the perfect husband, but I have the perfect wife. I am
selfish, inconsiderate, and lazy when it comes to domestic chores.
She is generous, kind, and forgiving. We have been married for 15
years. It has not been all bliss, but what marriage is? I confess, I
have loved every day we have been together, even the parts that people
don’t like to talk about in public. Our love truly runs deep and has
helped us enjoy the bliss and weather the storms.

In terms of influence, my family inspire me – all the madness, the
drama, and comfort – inspires me.

What are the main themes you like to write about?

My work explores the marvellous complexity and simplicity of being
human. My poems range from the darker side of love to the joy of
being above ground chasing magic and moonbeams and the realism in
between.

From your blog posts, it seems you often like to go walking in the
countryside. Where would you recommend foreign poets go when visiting
the British Isles?

My favorite place to go walking has to be North Wales in Snowdonia.
The splendor, the beauty and the variety of natural surroundings are
truly inspirational. If any of your readers are thinking about
becoming a poet, there is a Welsh legend that says if you spend the
night on Cader Idris (mid Wales), you’ll come back either a madman or
a poet. I’ll let you decide which happened to me.

What poetry related social events do you attend and why?

I like the open mic scene in Britain. It’s amazing how many urban
hip, young and old, traditionalists and underground rebels who are
into poetry in all it’s various forms. Over the last several years,
I think poetry for the people has made a strong comeback. Poetry
slams and open mic poetry nights have lead the way to poetry’s
revival.

Can you share one of your poems with us and explain a little bit about
it?

This poem was inspired by many of my female friends who
are desperate to find true love, but mostly find themselves
compromising love so that they don’t have to be alone.

Her dreams have all gone to bed

The wind whispers between
raindrops of yesterday’s past
the memory of her last kiss
fades to black

She can see her happiness
stagger out the front door
into the arms of another
perfumed night

Her broken dreams have
all gone to bed haunted by
ghosts of lines left unsaid

In the morning she can see
the sun hanging wearily on the
horizon, casting empty shadows
on the pillow by her head

She can feel the emptiness
swim around inside her as
she drags herself out of bed

In the mirror she catches
her reflection, smeared mascara
underneath her brown eyes

She can spend another day
holding hands with the past
pretending everything is ok

She can hear the wind between
the raindrops and she wonders
how long can it last?

Ⓒ Clay Lowe

Thank you Clay for this fascinating insight into your life and poetry.

Clay’s website

The German licence-collecting agency, GEZ, threatened legal action if he did not promptly pay the fee of €17 (£14). The nation notorious for its red tape did not relent when the headmaster of the primary school bearing Schiller’s name in Weigsdorf-Köblitz in Saxony, to which the bill was sent, had relayed the simple fact that “the addressee is no longer in a position to listen to the radio or watch television”.

GEZ replied that unless Herr Schiller could prove he was not in possession of a television set or radio, then the bill had to be paid.

Michael Binder, the headmaster, finally settled the confusion. He said: “I told the GEZ that Herr Schiller has not been with us for quite some time, and included his curriculum vitae with my letter.”

A spokesman for the agency later apologised saying “We have to deal with such a huge amount of data, that something like this can happen, and the name Friedrich Schiller is not so unusual that it stood out as strange. We will now alter his status in our computer system.”

Friedrich Schiller is famous for his poem ‘Ode to Joy‘ which was later adapted by Ludwig van Beethoven into the fourth and final movement of his Ninth Symphony. It is now also the anthem of the European Union.

“One year is enough,” said Simic. “Washington is too far, and the travel these days is no fun.”

Simic lives with his wife on the shores of Bow Lake in Strafford, New Hampshire, where he is professor emeritus of American literature and creative writing at the University of New Hampshire. Within the space of a few months, he had travelled back and forth between Washington a total of nine times and made numerous trips to give readings as far afield as the Mid West and California.

The Serbian-American poet who was born in Belgrade in 1938, moved to the States at the age of 16 with his family and settled in Chicago. He was later to earn a B.A. from New York University. His war-torn beginnings have influenced much of his poetry and indeed his political views.

“I got invitations to the White House, but I didn’t go,”

The poet laureate has an office with a parlour overlooking the Capitol and from there he formed numerous opinions of the national political culture. “Washington is the capital of a corrupt empire fighting two hopeless wars and yearning to have more,” he said. “Every powerful figure in Washington is surrounded by a flock of beautiful, well-educated, highly competent women who run after them all day carrying documents, reminding them of appointments and flattering them how good they look. No wonder these men think they are geniuses.”

The transition from ‘travelling salesman’ back to full-time poet was not a hard one. However whilst relieved he is also aware of the great importance of the position of poet laureate to be vital. “It reminds Americans that there’s such a thing as poetry and that poets are people like them,” he said. “They may believe poets have their heads in the clouds, and then they meet or hear one and are delighted that it isn’t so.”

One thing that has shocked Simic, especially over the last couple of years, is the amount of poetry being written and read in America. He said: “People who do not think so ought to go on the internet and type in ‘poetry’ and be prepared to fall off their chairs. This is a country of loners, and poetry, it seems, is the only place one can speak about that solitude and read the work of others who are in the same boat.”

As well as being a world renowned poet, Charles Simic is also a philosopher, essayist, translator and commentator on various subjects including Jazz and Art. He is currently the poetry editor, along with Meghan O’Rourke, for The Paris Review and was one of the judges for the 2007 Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize. His latest book of poems, That Little Something, was published in early 2008.

Set in a very attractive private estate on the north eastern shores of Ullswater, the location is where William Wordsworth was said to have penned his renowned poem ‘Daffodils’, in the year 1804.

“William Wordsworth used to sleep in a particular bedroom there and I still have a piece of the original wallpaper framed as a picture.” – Lady Kagan was noted as saying in a local Yorkshire newspaper in 2008.

The Kagans, once friends of former Labour Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, had first come across the house in the early 1970s when flying their little Auster one-engined plane across the region.

“We all fell in love with Eusemere immediately, it has such a wonderful atmosphere and character but I’m afraid it needs a poet’s imagination to do justice to it. It is light and airy and somehow uplifting, I don’t know why” Lady Kagan, mother of three, now aged 84 also remarked.

The 16-acre site was originally built as a countryside retreat for the slavery abolitionist Thomas Clarkson in the latter part of the 18th century. His tireless work, with fellow abolitionist William Wilberforce, often led to the need for breaks in the rural wilds of the English countryside amongst the beautiful and tranquil surroundings of the Eusemere Estate.

Below is Wordworth’s famous poem.

Daffodils

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

by William Wordsworth

Ryan was born in 1945 in California and grew up in the small towns of the San Joaquin Valley and the Mojave Desert. She would go on to receive a bachelor’s and master’s degree from UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles).

She was said to have been ‘delighted and surprised’ when the Library of Congress had contacted her and thought at first she had forgotten to return some overdue books.

Her favourite poets include the modernist poet William Carlos Williams, the English novelist Philip Larkin and John Donne the Jacobean who is catagorised as being part of the 17th century metaphysical poetic movement.

Kay Ryan’s poetry style is of a reflectively short but profound and seriocomical nature which focuses on both the confines of our lives and the illimitable vastness of the universe and existence. She has published a number of works including The Niagara River (Grove Press, 2005); Say Uncle (2000); Elephant Rocks (1996); Flamingo Watching (1994), which incidentally was a finalist for both the Lamont Poetry Selection and the Lenore Marshall Prize; Strangely Marked Metal (1985); and Dragon Acts to Dragon Ends (1983).

Her poems have also been printed in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Poetry, The Yale Review, Paris Review, The American Scholar, The Threepenny Review and Parnassus, to name but a few.

Today she lives with her partner Carol Adair in Fairfax, California.
For an example of her work visit Poetry Magazine.