#NationalPoetryMonth Round-up (Day 30)

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#NaPoWriMo, #NationalPoetryMonth, #NPM15, Anita Endrezze, Ashley Farmer, Cupertino Poet Laureate, Elaine Feinstein, Elizabeth Bartlett, feminist poetics, floodmark poetry, Janaka Stucky, Jane Yeh, Kelli Russell Agodon, Mary Carroll Hackett, Megan Fernandez, mslexia, Nancy Lynee Woo, Negative Capability Press, Ofelia Zepeda, Poem a Day, Poetic Asides, Poetry magazine, poetry prompts, Robert Wrigley, Tammy Ho Lai Ming, Wild Violet, women poets

The best prompts, poems and news from the LAST DAY of #NaPoWriMo/#NPM15 /#NationalPoetryMonth. It’s been a great ride. Back to the regular schedule on Sunday.

Best of the Prompts

NaPoWriMo’s “Write Backwards prompt”
Floodmark Poetry’s “Hole-Punch Clouds prompt”
Mslexia’s “Object as Witness prompt”
Mary Carroll-Hackett’s “Profound Risks prompt”
Poetic Asides P-A-D “Bury the ____  prompt”
Wild Violet’s “Ars Poetica prompt”
Negative Capability Press’ “Chicken prompt”
REWIND Cupertino Poet Laureate’s “I Love My Hair prompt”

Poems I Have Loved (Tweeters’ Shares)

Anita Endrezze| “A Crown of White Hair”
Robert Wrigley| “Moonlight: Chickens on the Road”
Ofelia Zepeda| “Pulling Down the Clouds”
Elaine Feinstein| “Lazarus’s Sister”
Nancy Lynee Woo| “21 Ways of Looking at Chicken Heart”
Janaka Stucky| “Recreating a Miraculous Object”
Ashley Farmer| “Women Fix”
Jane Yeh| “Musk-Ox”
Elizabeth Bartlett| “Art Class”

Miscellaneous

Megan Fernandez on Persona Poetry and Feminist Poetics at EKA
Icaruses: Tammy Ho Lai-Ming on Ekphrastic Poetry at World Literature Today
Part & Parcel: Kelli Russell Agodon at the Huffington Post

 

**Poets, if you would like to be featured in 2sDay Poems, have your collection reviewed, guest post in the Poetry Lab or blog on any of the Thoughts on Poetry topics, including Foremother Friday or Small Press Interviews, drop me a line at  bonesparkblog@yahoo.com.

Poems with Presence: A Brief Note on the Late Elizabeth Bartlett

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Bloodaxe Books, British Women's Poetry, damaged Britian, Elizabeth Bartlett, Foremother Friday, poems with presence, Surgery, The Visitors, Two Women Dancing, women's poetry, Women's Poetry List-Serv

British poet, Elizabeth Bartlett, passed away in 2008 at the age of 84. Her first collection appeared when she was well into her 50’s and drew high praise for her skill in evoking the lives and faces of the ordinary people she ran across in her work with the National Health Services.  Critic Adam Thorpe, described her as “a kind of weird cross between Anne Sexton and Philip Larkin,” and editor Peter Forbes called her a chronicler of “damaged Britain”.

Each of her poems has a very physical presence that any student of poetry would do well to examine. “The Visitors,” written about a patient who suffered from hallucinations, is perhaps one of her best examples.  Find both the text and a lovely sound file of the poet reading at The Poetry Archive.

Listen to it several times and then skip on over to the Poetry Book Society (UK) and read her more tender “Surgery,” which with its deep vein of emotion opens Bartlett’s work up to even those that would snub poetry.

If you do not already own one of her collections, I suggest you start with Two Women Dancing (Bloodaxe), which is perhaps my favorite sampling, as it touches on broader issues as well as her own motherhood and marriage.

*If you’d like to explore more great women’s poetry, visit the Women’s Poetry List-Serv and search for “Foremother Friday”.