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In the Company of Poets: An Anthology Celebrating 21 Years of Readings at Torriano Meeting House
 
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In the Company of Poets: An Anthology Celebrating 21 Years of Readings at Torriano Meeting House (Paperback)

by John Rety (Editor), Emily Johns (Illustrator)
4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
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Product details

  • Paperback: 320 pages
  • Publisher: Hearing Eye (29 May 2003)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1870841891
  • ISBN-13: 978-1870841894
  • Product Dimensions: 20.6 x 14.8 x 2.4 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 1,516,272 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Product Description

Synopsis
This anthology has been compiled to celebrate a community of poets who have gathered over the past 21 years at the Torriano Meeting House. This is a small but internationally known cultural space in Kentish Town, North London, where Sunday evening readings have been held since 1982. Contributors include: Christopher Hampton, John Heath-Stubbs, John Hegley, Judith Kanzantzis, Jeremy Reed, Labi Siffre and Sarah Lawson.

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Average Customer Review
4.5 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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5.0 out of 5 stars THE WORLD IS MY OYSTER, 2 Feb 2004
By June English (DEAL, KENT United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
In the Company of Poets anthologizes over a hundred contempory poets and translators. The poems are presented in strict alphabetical order - no chapters, no thematical groupings, nothing that overtly shapes or forms the poems into a collection. My initial reaction was that I'd found a bag of pearls with no string to hang them on.

The difference in material and poetic styles is both surprising and groundbreaking in places. Big pearls, Dannie Abse, Alan Brownjohn, John Heath-Stubbs, (Queens Gold Medal for Poetry 1958) and Mimi Khalvati, to mention but a few, sit side by side with lesser-knowns and unknowns. Therein lies its charm. Poems of geographical and historical moment pop up between poems of family and friend. There are political poems, sexy poems, poems that deal with physical and mental disabilities, poems with a marked difference in cultural values. Poets voicing their different views.

The scene is set at the outset with Dannie Abse's Dog on a Beach. Abse's howling dog,

attentive to the inaudible
world of Eternity, faces
the unfolding, funeral-paced,
incoming waves of night
and begins to howl.

is not 'sentimental.' He's not looking for his master. His reaction is deeper, more basic than that. Abse uses the word 'purpural' to describe the sky, as if it bleeds with the going down of the sun. The dog howls for the dying day. The stage is set and one by one the poets walk out to voice their truths, just as they have done for over 21 years at Torriano.

Abse is followed by Shanta Acharya. Her poem City Slickers gives us an insight into the life of 'A single, Indian female, I am trapped alas,/ in a cage of bomb-proof, shatterproof glass.' I, despite being a married British female, found complete empathy with her situation. The persona is 'trapped' in a man's world, trying desperately to 'mend the rules of the old boys' network'.

The difference between Abse's work and Acharya's sets up expectancy in us. I felt like an explorer travelling unknown fields, finding a quiet spot here or there, as in Jane Duran's Coastal and James Harvey's Kaleidoscope. Such poems are juxtaposed against poems that lend us insight into human sufferings: Peter Campbell's, Night and Morning, a moving reminder of First World War casualties, 'The battered boys from Flanders'. War in Afghanistan by Pat Arrowsmith, (written and read at a protest rally in 2001). And so the show goes on, sexy scenes, Simon Darragh's hilariously funny, I'm After Leaving Monaghan. Sad scenes as in, Windows of the Soul, by Philippa Lawrence.

Telling scenes that shouldn't be missed: Bruce Barnes, dis is able, a poem that shapes flags on the page - each a tribute to the disabled:

The
first fruit is
impearment/impairment
a coming together that denies
the labels their sense of power.

This book is a tribute to John Rety's lifetime devotion to poetry and his strong belief in the human right to free speech. A timely reminder that, 'the world is not my oyster', it is OURS. I take my hat off to him.

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4.0 out of 5 stars A Broad Church, 8 Jul 2003
By phil woodpecker (birmingham, england) - See all my reviews
Apparently the Torriano Poets meet every sunday but are anything but narrowly religious. This is a very broad church of poetry and gives a flavour of most of the kinds of poetry available in London today from performance to comic to earnest to difficult. Everything is more or less accessible though there are examples of the experimental; John Kerkhoven's spiral poem about a dragonfly, as well as down-to-earth "decenza quotidiana" such as Jo Roach's poem about her growing daughter who matures very quickly in a short lyric. The book opens with a resonant poem by Dannie Abse about a dog on a beach which becomes archetypal. Other well known eminences grise include John Heath Stubbs on why a preface is as necessary as a good soup before a meal. (Most of us are not averse to a little explanation.) Balancing that you can find schoolboys telling you about wars in the playground as well as the russian translator Richard McKane on the wars we all worry about. From the brief bios at the back one may guess that a number of contributors have not published before which makes it very democratic without appearing to be any kind of compromise. Good company!
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