Peace Camp, Love Poetry, Fiona Shaw and Mussenden Temple

As part of the London 2012 Festival, Director Deborah Warren was commissioned to create an installation to celebrate love poetry and landscape in collaboration with actor Fiona Shaw. Eight encampments will be set up in beautiful coastal settings and will be filled with lights, visual arts and a soundscape of love poetry. The camps are designed to be visited between dusk and dawn and there will be one set up at Mussenden Temple. I'm going to be working with two schools to enable the pupils to write and record their own love poetry to go into the tent. I think it's a wonderful and ambitious project and can't wait to see the finished installation.
I met Fiona Shaw at the Verbal Arts Centre last Monday and was privileged to read some work on stage with her. She was wonderfully inspirational and her performance of a range of poetry was amazing. I particularly enjoyed listening to her perform part of A Game of Chess, from The Wasteland - it was fantastic!

If you want to learn more about the whole Peace Camp project and how you can contribute on-line, go to
http://www.peacecamp2012.com/

Love Poems Wanted

I'm going to be sharing a stage with Fiona Shaw at the Verbal Arts Centre on Monday 23rd April at 7.30 to talk about love poetry. Marie-Louise Muir will be interviewing Fiona and it promises to be a great evening. Here is a link to the event           
https://www.facebook.com/#!/events/296949313719278/

I'd really appreciate it if you would let me know which is your favourite love poem. I have a few in mind but would really like some more ideas!
Thanks

Cincinnati Review

I'm really pleased to have a couple of poems included in the next edition of the Cincinnati Review (9.1).
They have asked for an 'author commentary' - a brief comment on the inspiration behind the poems. Never been asked for this before! Here's my attempt at it ...

A few years ago, a friend gave me a beautiful Thai stone Buddha for my birthday. Straight backed and elegant, he sits on a railing outside my kitchen window where I can see him every time I glance outside. The Buddha wears all weathers with equal equanimity, a cape and cap of snow in the winter; unblinking in the summer sun. Crows regularly perch on his head. I came to think of him as ‘the patience of stone’, and around that phrase, my poem Rock gathered and grew.

New poems from Rob Hindle

I’m really pleased to be able to share a couple of poems by Sheffield poet, Rob Hindle. These two poems are from Yoke and Arrows, a poem sequence about the killing of Lorca in the early weeks of the Spanish Civil War, to be published by Smokestack Books in 2014. Luis Rosales was Lorca’s friend in whose house he hid until his arrest.

Rob’s other books include

Some Histories of the Sheffield Flood 1864 (Templar, 2006) - pamphlet
Neurosurgery in Iraq (Templar, 2008) - collection
The Purging of Spence Broughton, a Highwayman (Longbarrow, 2009) – pamphlet

And you can read more about his work and ideas on his excellent blog, http://robhindle.wordpress.com/about/

Song for Luis Rosales

When we are the old dead

we will sit in a boat on the river

at midnight, singing.

We will make a candle

with the yellow moon,

a heart with a guitar

and we will sing up a wind

to make the olives’ silver leaves

crackle and the orange flowers

fall like snow in the squares.

We will sail to the sea,

all the towns like bonfires

and in your eyes the night

of Andalucía with all its stars.

From a Window in Calle Angulo

He came out and the street was full of cops,

the black cars in Plaza de la Trinidad

with their engines running

like he was an ambassador or a king.

Everyone remembers the shirt he wore –

white, symbolic. Certainly, with his tie loose,

his jacket hanging lifeless on his arm,

there was something cinematic in his going.

But after he had gone, the cars’ noise

lost among the din of the city, I stood

in the window looking at the still street;

nothing I could tell was different.

Poet Rob Hindle's blog

Sheffield poet Rob Hindle has a blog well worth checking out. Interesting posts and most recent guest poet on there is Martin Mooney  - and to come, poems from Damian Smyth and myself.

http://robhindle.wordpress.com/about/