Monday 25 August 2008

Sam Meekings and Kei Miller at the Edinburgh Book Festival

The last day at the Edinburgh International Book Festival and probably the best poetry event, though hard to really say, there have been so many excellent poetry events this year (a welcome development, let's hope this continues in the future!)

Sam Meekings is definitely a poet inspired by the natural world and human interactions with nature. His poetry is full of keen observations and vivid imagery, the poems he read from his collection The Bestiary, covered topics such as snails, seahorses and geese.

Kei Miller barely mentioned anything environmental in his poetry (there was a reference to birdsong and I think that was it), but despite this being an environmental blog, I'll let that pass! He gave a brilliant performance of some of the moving poems from his collection There is an Anger that Moves, including Speaking in Tongues, which compares the making of poetry to speaking in tongues.

It was great to hear these two poets, both of whom really understand what poetry is....

3 comments:

Geoffrey Philp said...

Crafty, I love Kei Miller's work. In fact, I've written a review of Anger that Moves for upcoming The Caribbean Writer.

Good stuff! so I can understand why you let it pass.

G

holly said...

Yes, I think that is true, making poetry, speaking in tongues...from an unknown place, that is often opened up in unexpected ways...neat! Like the dreams even...a place we can't totally understand, but it still sheds light on our selves.

J. Andrew Lockhart said...

wish I could see that!