Poetry Book of the Year

Again, like the ebb and flow of the tide or the fatal fall of the watchmaker's timepiece, Alice Oswald mesmerises me once more with her recently published book of poetry. I am like a rabbit captured in her headlights unable to fully understand the words that cascade and fall off the page and yet remain smitten.  Is it any wonder she is now the Professor of Poetry at Oxford? I don't have the ability or talent to do justice to her most recent collection, "Nobody". All the same, it captivates me, it turns my head and like another Alice, she leads me by the hand down the hole where she reveals to me a world, my world, our world, the world of nature, the natural world and our relationship to it.

Yet another wonderful, wonderful collection of poems. As with Bowie, The Beatles, Captain Beefheart, The Fall and Kate Bush, I so want the magic to continue beyond this moment. But what do I know? I am "Nobody."

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All poems are copyright of the poet. Permission for this poet to post their work here has been granted by blog owner. All rights remain with the individual poet and their respective publisher.

Jennifer K Dick

My new book LILITH: A Novel in Fragments will be out later this month with CORRUPT PRESS. I hope you will all keep an eye on the webpage for sales, and will help me set up readings in Europe and in the states in 2019-2020! Very excited about this book, and my forthcoming poetry collection THAT WHICH I TOUCH HAS NO NAME which should be out from Eyewear, London in 2020 (a year behind schedule, but therefore VERY much looked forward to, too!)

https://www.corruptpress.com/books/lilith.shtml

Joni Mitchell

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Johnny Cash

With grateful thanks to Barbara Pellegatta and YouTube

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Laurie Anderson

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Joan Baez

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Bjork

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Kate Bush

Peter Gabriel

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Peter Hammill

Robert Wyatt

Stones for the River: Back Yard, July

Stones for the River: Back Yard, July: Winter sunshine brings orange trumpet vines curling and waterfalling over my fence, their tubular blooms upthrusting, point...



This is the first time I've contributed to this blog!

What I'm contributing is a link to work by a poet whom I've followed for a long time. I think you will enjoy her work.

The Future. The Past. Embracing Change. 'Scar Tissue' by The Red Hot Chilli Peppers.

May is going and April has fled. Time waits for no one. When this site first started it was as a team blog. There was me, Michael Leigh and Roger Stevens. Its central concept was one of nostalgia. Three old farts recalling the things that made their lives sparkle a little. Without consulting my teammates, a thing I wish I hadn't done, I changed this site into a spoken word platform. Letting go of regret is one of the Buddhist's tenants. It is mine too. What's done is done. The past is like the wake behind a boat. You can see it for a while before it fades. As a team blog Something for the Weekend, Sir was a success. How I judge that ephemeral noun is we all had fun.

Something For The Weekend, Sir as a spoken word poetry site was also a team blog featuring a great many people but more lately poets and their work stolen from YouTube. It was also great fun especially for me. One day it may return as an oral form of poetry, of performance art.

Another far eastern tenant is embracing change. This now seems key to this site for yet again it is following another path. I hope it will again turn into a team site but for now, it is just me. This time it is music. Not anyone given genre but music in general. Here then is The Red Hot Chilli Peppers.

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Sarah Kay on Spoken Word Poetry

"I also think you certainly can perform any poem. But what I believe is that the best examples of spoken word poetry I’ve ever seen, are spoken word poems that, when you see them, you’re aware of the fact they need to be performed. That there’s something about that poem that you would not be able to understand if you were just reading it on a piece of paper. Some element of the performance that brings more meaning to the words. And sometimes it’s just one tiny moment, and sometimes it’s the entire poem."

with grateful thanks to The Eye - https://saseye.com/

And also Wikipedia

. . All poems are copyright of the poet. Permission for this poet to post their work here has been granted by blog owner. All rights remain with the individual poet and their respective publisher.

Jack Kerouac

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All poems are copyright of the poet. Permission for this poet to post their work here has been granted by blog owner. All rights remain with the individual poet and their respective publisher.

Rachael Allen and Sophie Collins

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All poems are copyright of the poet. Permission for this poet to post their work here has been granted by blog owner. All rights remain with the individual poet and their respective publisher.

Richard Scott

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All poems are copyright of the poet. Permission for this poet to post their work here has been granted by blog owner. All rights remain with the individual poet and their respective publisher.

Meena Kandasamy

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All poems are copyright of the poet. Permission for this poet to post their work here has been granted by blog owner. All rights remain with the individual poet and their respective publisher.

John Dorsey

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All poems are copyright of the poet. Permission for this poet to post their work here has been granted by blog owner. All rights remain with the individual poet and their respective publisher.

Sascha Aurora Akhtar

. . All poems are copyright of the poet. Permission for this poet to post their work here has been granted by blog owner. All rights remain with the individual poet and their respective publisher.

Alec Finlay

. . All poems are copyright of the poet. Permission for this poet to post their work here has been granted by blog owner. All rights remain with the individual poet and their respective publisher.

Luke Allan and Graeme Smith

. . All poems are copyright of the poet. Permission for this poet to post their work here has been granted by blog owner. All rights remain with the individual poet and their respective publisher.

Jerome Rothenberg

. . All poems are copyright of the poet. Permission for this poet to post their work here has been granted by blog owner. All rights remain with the individual poet and their respective publisher.

Hannah Lowe

. . All poems are copyright of the poet. Permission for this poet to post their work here has been granted by blog owner. All rights remain with the individual poet and their respective publisher.

Aram Saroyan

. . All poems are copyright of the poet. Permission for this poet to post their work here has been granted by blog owner. All rights remain with the individual poet and their respective publisher.

Neil Davidson & Thomas Betteridge

. . All poems are copyright of the poet. Permission for this poet to post their work here has been granted by blog owner. All rights remain with the individual poet and their respective publisher.

2018 - Done and Dusted - Happy New Year

There it was gone. 2018. Would you believe this blog site celebrated it's tenth anniversary sometime last year? I couldn't tell you when exactly but I think around August. Ten years ago 'Something For The Weekend, Sir?' had its focus elsewhere. It wasn't a site dedicated to the spoken word then but a team blog which featured the talents of Roger Stevens and Michael Leigh. There were others including me. Back then it was all about nostalgia. Little post's about the things we'd liked when growing up. The Monkees, Ivor Cutler, Roger McGough and so on. Then, on June 3rd 2014, I posted a piece about the demise and rise of poetry. I didn't really think poetry was ailing or terminally ill but I did want to turn this site into something other than what it had been. I ploughed ahead but shouldn't have. Why? When you are part of a team site the other members of the team should have a say. I didn't even ask which I greatly regret. Both Roger and Michael are two talented individuals but also generous.

Throughout 2014 there was an assortment of poets who posted spoken word poetry of the highest calibre. Lorna Wood, Charlotte Rogers, Roger Stevens, Doriandra Smith, Russell Ragsdale and oodles more. It was a very impressive year, unexpectedly good but sadly not bound to last. On the 31st December 2015 I wrote this in frustration as I had been unable to find, therefore continue, the blog in the way I wanted...

. ...This site is closed. Apparently my views on poetry being spoken not just read appeals to far too few.  

"Spoken word poetry is the art of performance poetry. I tell people it involves creating poetry that doesn't just want to sit on paper, that something about it demands it be heard out loud or witnessed in person." - Sarah Kay

For the following year, all of 2016, there wasn't a single post. Not one post featuring spoken word. Then, almost one year to the day, I started 'nicking' spoken word poetry off YouTube. I figured no one would mind. I hope I was right. Throughout 2017 and 2018, 'Something For The Weekend,  Sir?' has featured posts full of established poets. Two years of the best by some of the best. That is all fine and dandy and I will continue to pursue that course BUT, I would really like to have, having made my point about spoken word, the relay of poets that was so successful in 2015. For poetry, be it written or oral, has to be progressive. If not of itself or by itself but by the very act of going where it hasn't been before. It is the same with any art. It needs to challenge itself, to seek new ways to present itself even if the presentation includes work that is traditional but the method of presenting the art is new. 

I will try again. Lord knows if I'll succeed or not but I'll have a go. Anyway, I thought a 'facelift' might be in order, no, not mine although you may have a point  - 'Something For The Weekend, Sir?' Hope you like it. Happy New Year to one and all. Have a great 2019 we certainly shall try to here.

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All poems are copyright of the poet. Permission for this poet to post their work here has been granted by blog owner. All rights remain with the individual poet and their respective publisher.