Three more great poetry blogs

Thought I’d share with you three more notable blogs that I’ve come across recently.

1. Tweetspeak Poetry

Not, as it sounds, a site devoted to Twitter poetry (is that actually a genre now? I think George Szirtes is doing his bit to promote it anyway) but a magazine-style blog with regular features such as ‘This week’s top ten poetic picks’ and series such as ‘How to read a poem’ and ‘Take your poet to work’ (in the run up to ‘Take your poet to work day’ which is apparently on July 17th.) Every month the team behind Tweetspeak Poetry hosts a Twitter party (although it’s at 9pm EST, which makes it more of an early-hours lock-in for us Brits).

I was intrigued to know who was behind Tweetspeak, which is a very professional set-up, and indeed turns out its sister site is Every Day Poems, a subscription site (price seems to vary from between $2.99 and $5.99 a year, depending on what page you’re on). Every Day Poems describes itself like this:

Read a poem every day. Become a better writer. Participate in our writing projects, so we can see your work. If one of your poems is a good fit, we might feature it in this newsletter, with your permission.

The idea of creating community around the reading of poetry in a user-friendly and social (media) way appeals to me a lot.

Twitter: @tspoetry

2. Book of Kells

Kelli Russell Agodon is a poet, writer and editor whose blog is a collection of musings, happenings, book reviews, favourite poets … very much a personal record and written in a relaxed and easy style. I suppose I would compare it to Kim Moore’s blog in that sense. As well as writing about her life and professional experiences, Kelli has interesting things to say and share on related topics including photography, creativity and marketing. This is a blog grounded in the Pacific Northwest of the USA, a part of the world where I lived for a short while so perhaps that adds to its appeal.

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/agodon
Twitter: @elliagodon

3. Ron Silliman’s blog

Those of us who talk too much on our blogs need to take a lesson or two from Ron Silliman. Simply subtitled “A weblog focused on contemporary poetry and poetics” this is a super and ever-growing collections of interviews, reviews, videos, recordings and links both contemporary and historic, with very little added verbosity. This felt like a real find.

Ron has an impeccable pedigree as an educator and writer (over 30 books, with poetry and criticism translated into 12 languages). From his photo there’s also a striking resemblance to Ernest Hemingway.

This site also has a formidably long archive which goes back to 2002 – respect!