{"id":3253,"date":"2012-01-19T13:10:41","date_gmt":"2012-01-19T13:10:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.peakepro.com\/?p=3253"},"modified":"2016-01-19T16:03:24","modified_gmt":"2016-01-19T16:03:24","slug":"long-poem-magazine-launch-reading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.robertpeake.com\/archives\/3253-long-poem-magazine-launch-reading.html","title":{"rendered":"Long Poem Magazine Launch Reading"},"content":{"rendered":"
Readers will know I don’t generally consider myself a long poem poet<\/a>. At the T.S. Eliot Shortlist Reading last weekend, Sean O’Brien remarked that one of the most dreaded phrases in a poetry reading is (said darkly), “and now for something longer<\/em>.” Recalling this, I descended the stairs of the brutalist Barbican Theater into the music library, recalling the Vogon dungeon from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy<\/em> in which the protagonist is forced to listen to the “third worst poetry in the universe<\/a>” as torture.<\/p>\n Fortunately, owing to great variety, imagination, and craft, the evening was anything but a Vogon experience. I was pleased to read my own poem, “In Pieces”, after The Lewis Chessmen<\/a>, alongside nearly a dozen others. Paul Bentley read a poem about the river Don; Lucy Sixsmith recalled her gap-year missionary work in a rehab clinic in Russia; Alastair McGlashan gave us a prayer translated from the Tamil; Joe Dresner wrestled with philosophy and Ashbery; Janet Sutherland introduced the disturbing and enigmatic Bone Monkey; Robert Chandler translated a Russian folk tale via Pushkin; Abi Curtis revisited Mrs. Beeton in light of her historical anxieties; Jacqueline Smith produced a ballad in Scots about an unlikely witch-hunter; David Punter introduced us to various founding characters of the city of Bristol; Jemma Borg read an insightful and associative prose-poem-come-essay on sleep, and Robert Vas Dias touched on the delights of the quotidian through the Korean Sijo form.<\/p>\n Long Poem Magazine<\/em> creates an important opportunity, in a time of increasingly compressed information, for that “something longer” to thrive. Issue 7 is now available to order online<\/a>.<\/p>\n Note<\/strong>: “In Pieces”, along with several other poems, has been made into an eponymous e-book that is now available for instant download<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Readers will know I don’t generally consider myself a long poem poet. At the T.S. Eliot Shortlist Reading last weekend, Sean O’Brien remarked that one of the most dreaded phrases in a poetry reading is (said darkly), “and now for something longer.” Recalling this, I descended the stairs of the brutalist Barbican Theater into the …<\/p>\n