“Earth has not anything to show more fair…”
Hmm, okay. I’ve landed back in London to an absolute whirlwind, which so far has been mainly a whirlwind of sonnets, one way and another… my desk is a mountain of sonnet books, plastic folders full of old sonnets, opened bills, letters from various agencies telling me what they need (argh), piles of books (Wilde and James prominent, Ellman in gargantuan hardback, other books I thought might have sonnets in them), and scraps of papers with forlorn, scrawled to-do lists… Elsewhere, mounds of washing. Clean. I’m hoping tomorrow I’ll have a chance to catch up, but today I have five things to do, in different places, requiring different paperwork, portfolios, books, outfits, etc… and there’s no printer paper in the house at ALL. Feck.
But it is autumn! Saturday will be Halloween. And what could possibly be more autumnal than a nice sonnet? Eh? And who knows more about seasonal celebration than the author of this exultant, Whitmansesque tribute to autumn? Not really anybody. If you were in Connecticut you would totally know what he’s getting at with those gourds. I got out, but some people have to navigate that stuff year after year… little did the Pilgrims realise what they were starting.
So it made perfect sense when I came home and found Colin McEnroe on my Facebook wall, talking about sonnets. Why wouldn’t he be? McEnroe is one of the funniest guys in Connecticut. And also (it’s so often the way with funny people) one of the smartest. Else why else would he run an amusing chat show about sonnets? (Recently he did a show on memorising. And one about tea. You see?)
And thus, tonight – that is, at 1pm New York time – I will be on NPR radio talking to Colin on his new show. I’ll be on the phone, of course, and Colin will be in the studio with the poet (and editor of Drunken Boat) Ravi Shankar, and the erudite and jolly esperantist Humphrey Tonkin. If you’re in CT, you know what to do. If not, or whatever, you can catch it afterwards on the WNPR website.
And now I have to go get ready for the first thing… I’ll be emailing people by phone today, I think.
4 Comments
October 28, 2009 at 12:09 pm
Dear Katy
Bon courage et bonne chance pour ce soir!
Best wishes from Simon
October 29, 2009 at 10:15 am
I cried, laughing at that gourd poem! I grew up in Massachusetts and it resonated….
October 30, 2009 at 12:53 pm
Dear Katy
I’ve just listened to your NPR radio broadcast and found it a really interesting discussion. I recognized the sonnet you read out, ‘The Huge Husband’ from your first collection. I discovered Shakespeare’s sonnets when I was about thirteen and was mesmerized by them. However, when I tried to write some myself, twenty years later, I discovered I had no real talent for the form and only successfully managed a couple. Still, the sonnet form is definitely being reclaimed and that can only be a good thing.
My father was Professor of Politics at Reading University and in the late 1970’s he did a year’s exchange with a professor from Hertford so he was very familiar with the place.
Best wishes from Simon
October 30, 2009 at 2:57 pm
Hey, thanks Simon
I’m glad you liked it – I haven’t dared to listen again! Picture me, huddled in the upstairs room in a pub, having been rung for the show an hour earlier than expected, because I didn’t realise they hadn’t put their clocks back! When the phone went I was in the Old St Somerfields, having walked all the way form Covent Garden, & had to dash down the road as fast as I could go, to what I hoped would be a quiet space… And it mostly was, except for two guys who came in halfway through with their pints… And no chance to get even a bottle of water! So if I was even remotely compos mentis it’s a miracle.
I think Ravi Shankar is fab, by the way; his online journal Drunken Boat was one of the first really good online poetry spaces. I thought he was a great speaker.
Contrary to Colin’s assumption, btw, I was actually born in New York; we moved to Hartford when I was 9. I had seven very memorable years there.
Anyway, thanks for giving it a listen. Maybe I should pluck up the courage.