Poetry Monday: World Poetry Day + Eileen Myles Live

Happy world poetry day.  The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) made the decision to proclaim today as World Poetry during UNESCO’s 30th session held in Paris in 1999.  One of the main objectives of the Day is to support linguistic diversity through poetic expression and to offer endangered languages the opportunity to be heard within their communities.

Photo by Catherine Opie

From UNESCO’s website: "Poetry reaffirms our common humanity by revealing to us that individuals, everywhere in the world, share the same questions and feelings.”  I couldn’t agree more.  So why not take the opportunity to celebrate?  The Academy of American Poets has put together a list of links to poetry organisations and festivals around the world, that you can explore - each has lots of resources.  You could take one of your poems and trade it for a cup of coffee or tea courtesy of Julius Meinl coffee: http://www.meinlcoffee.com/paywithapoem.  You could spend far too long perusing the many quotes, images and events on Twitter.  You could drop by UNESCO’s page which has lots of background material and some featured poets.  You could buy someone (yourself, perhaps) a book of poetry from a local bookstore (or order one up from the library - bonus points if it’s a poet who lives in your city).  You could read one of your favourite poems, aloud, to the delight of all your family (mine certainly enjoys it when I do that, not, but it generally doesn’t stop me :-).  Or, you could enjoy two "Writers House Fellows" events featuring none other than Eileen Myles.  These will be streamed live through KWH-TV at http://writing.upenn.edu/wh/multimedia/tv/.  The first is on the 21st of March (probably today for most of you) at 6:30 PM US eastern time (9:30 AM AU EST if you happen to be on my timezone) and will feature Eileen reading her work.  The second is an interview/conversation on Tuesday, March 22, starting at 10:30 AM US eastern time. Apparently you’re invited!

Poetry Monday: Eileen Myles' School of Fish

I’ve been participating in an Eileen Myles poetry discussion group (kind of an offshoot from the marvellous ModPo course which I, um, might have mentioned a few times) in which we read and discuss one poem every few days (sometimes every day).  I’ve enjoyed every poem we’ve discussed, and if you haven’t heard of Eileen Myles, who has suddenly become something of a poetic superstar, I have to recommend her to you.  So far my favourite is the title poem from Myles’ School of Fish (Black Sparrow Books, 1997), a poem which was recently featured in the series Transparent, in which Cherry Jones plays a character loosely based on Myles. There’s something so liquid and rich about this poem - the way it explores homelessness in such a personal and even subtle way, while also going deep into notions of the self and belonging (without leaving out her dog).  Here’s the last part of it:

the deeper and deeper we go and the harder
it is to turn the key and eventually we
go and it is very very dark
we just get used to the light
but the blues and the greys and the feelings
of lostness, it's like home, it's like family.

The entire poem can be found here: http://awp.diaart.org/poetry/96_97/myles.html
or you can listen to Myles’ own rather intimate reading here: http://www.eileenmyles.com/mp3s/Myles-Eileen_07_School-of-Fish_Close-Listening_3-24-09.mp3

(and yes I know it’s Tuesday, but it might still be Monday where you are...or when you get here)