#Hawickfest review

Our friend from the west poet Rab Wilson has written a fine review of #Hawickfest spokenword in the National which you can find here:

http://www.thenational.scot/news/15463860.Rab_Wilson__Airts_festival_an_eclectic_mix_o_kenspeckle_ingine/

All we need to add is: good times were had.

More photos are available on our Facebook page here https://www.facebook.com/poetandgeek.ezine

p&g is already looking forward to next year. Thanks Thomas Clark for organising the clamjamfry and Julie Witford and the Cornucopia Magazine for hosting in their lovely venue.

#Hawickfest spoken word 5th August 2017

Looking forward to #Hawickfest spoken word sesh 1-3pm Cornucopia Room (opposite Heart of Hawick) - see you there to enjoy the words of the very talented Jules Horne Tom Murray Anita John Sara Clark Brian Holton and Thomas Clark. p&g will be reading too.

You can find out more about the Heart of Hawick Music Festival here https://www.facebook.com/hawickfest/

In the forest

This poem has been haunting me this week here at p&g. It picked itself.

What I like about Zhang Zao's 1996 poem especially is that everything happens at the same time. A poem of transformation written in 3D. So the forest is like a generator, squirrels make telephone calls long distance, china shops, bills and ballet in the mist and vegetation. "You walk about,as if the forest isn't in the forest." And yet it becomes more forest because of it.

And that it was written on New Year's Day so it fits in with a whole other genre of new year poetry.

And Brian Holton's translation!

He feels he's got from the universe, for the first time, a pair of hands and violence.

Zhang Zao tweet poetry

Zhang Zao (1962–2010) was a Chinese poet and academic whose goal was to “transform one’s self and life”.

This tweet poetry is from his poem In the forest translated by Brian Holton (who was born in p&g's neck of the woods). The full poem can be found in Jade Ladder, the Bloodaxe anthology of contemporary Chinese poetry.

More information here http://www.poetryinternationalweb.net/pi/site/poet/item/979/Zhang-Zao