Thursday, June 07, 2007

Forgetfulness



I found this poking around youtube last night, looking for poetry. More here and here
Actually there's a few, either follow the links on You Tube or search for Billy Collins.

Billy Collins was the U.S Poet Laureate. You can download audio or Ipod Note versions of his poems here. I'm not very up-to-date with who's who in the poetry world so I had a look for the current U.S. Laureate, turns out it's Donald Hall. Canada's Laureate is John Steffler. In the UK it is Andrew Motion, has been for ages.

Australia has never had one. Here's John Kinsella's reason why we don't need one. We did have an Olympic Poet. Crashing success clearly, since I never heard about it. Maybe that's because I don't watch television...but I doubt it.

2 comments:

  1. I loved 'Forgetfulness.' The opening hooked me - it reminds me of an essay by Helen Garner on her futile attempts to retain the details of particular books.

    The film clip was well-conceived; it nicely illustrated some of the fantastic lines:'on your own way to oblivion....'

    Wow, we had an Olympic poet? I've never head of him either.

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  2. Anonymous4:28 PM

    I loved 'Some Days'. Thank you for these links!

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