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Three great blogs – poetry

It’s always nice to get those ‘congratulations, another blogger is following your blog’ emails from WordPress, and even nicer when you check them out and discover a real gem of a blog you’d not come across before. That’s how I found John Field’s excellent blog Poor Rude Lines – “I’m just another reader, rather like you, curled up in bed with a book or two.”

It made me think it would be fun to have a regular feature where I could share interesting blogs with you. I expect you’ll already know at least some of them, but who knows, maybe not. Blogrolls are great, but a proper introduction is even better – I’m hoping you may reciprocate and tell me about other fab blogs that I’m missing. Anyway, three is my favourite number, so I may as well call it ‘Three great blogs…’

Let’s start with poetry, and indeed with Poor Rude Lines.  Like Josephine Corcoran I tend to err towards blogs about poetry rather than blogs where an individual posts his or her poetry, although I quite like a mix of the two.

Poor Rude Lines
Poor Rude Lines – John Field

The first thing I love about Poor Rude Lines is that stunning masthead – go on, name all the poets depicted – and John’s use of photos to break up the text and enhance the reading experience. I was immediately drawn into his review of Fiona Moore’s The Only Reason for Time and quickly realised this is a marvellous reviews site, as well as much else. Check out the archives. John also appears to be a high quality Tweeter – worth following.

Cliff Yates
Cliff Yates – Poet, Writer, Teacher

I’m suitably embarrassed to admit I’ve only recently come across Cliff Yates. What can I say? This poetry world is a big ‘un, and I’m but a lowly ant picking my way across its vast acreage. How Cliff finds the time to blog I don’t know, he’s clearly a busy working poet and tutor and his ‘about’ page is inspirational. There’s a comprehensive blogroll, lots of resources for teaching poetry, useful links, details about Cliff’s books, workshops and other activities and yes, some of his poems too. The site is built on WordPress and has a workman-like visual theme, but for me it oozes generosity, warmth and down-to-earth-ness.

Another Lost Shark
Another Lost Shark – Graham Nunn

Established Australian poet Graham Nunn’s blog is Another Lost Shark, which is also the title of his publishing imprint. Graham’s blog documents his many collaborative poetry projects, most recently haiku walks and experiments with other Japanese poetic forms. I loved this post about how famous poems are being pasted on the side of garbage trucks during the Sydney Writers’ Festival (going on at the moment). Watch the video short, it’s brilliant. Cue a couple of workers in their hi-vis jackets taking a break from rubbish collection: “What are you reading, Barry?” “I’ve always been partial to a bit of Lord Tennyson…”

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  1. Thanks for the shout out!

  2. This is excellent, thanks, Robin. I already follow, and admire, Poor Rude Lines and Cliff Yates’ blog but I didn’t know about Graham Nunn’s blog so I’m looking forward to investigating that.

  3. Thanks Josephine – I often learn about new blogs to follow from you, so I expect you’ll see quite a few you recognise!

  4. charlottegann charlottegann

    Fab post, thanks Robin!

  5. Hi, Robin.

    I echo Graham’s sentiment: thank’s for the shout out. Fiona Moore’s collection is superb, isn’t it? Have you read her blog, Displacement? (http://displacement-poetry.blogspot.co.uk) I also enjoy reading Matthew Stewart’s excellent Rogue Strands (http://roguestrands.blogspot.co.uk). Matthew’s posts are well-considered, succinct and always worth reading. Finally, have you discovered Sonofabook (http://sonofabook.blogspot.co.uk)?

    I shall look forward to discovering yet more excellent bloggers here.

    Best,

    John

    • Hi John, thanks for stopping by and for the brilliant tip-offs – I do follow Fiona’s blog but Rogue Strands and Sonofabook (great title) are new to me so I shall check them out 🙂
      Robin

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