So I’ve returned to Roddy Lumsden’s poetry workshop every Wednesday night. This is a very well-attended group of poetry die-hards, some of whom have been there a VERY long time indeed. The mixture of debate over published poems, the big Poetry Questions and critique of each others’ work in the sessions is good, as are the intensive gossip sessions and general chit-chat in the pub afterwards.

 

I can never live without a novel on the go. I was halfway through ‘White Tiger’ which I borrowed from the library and was really enjoying, having first lent it to other interested parties. When I tried to renew it, they told me I couldn’t, because two other people had put in requests for it. So back it went, with me stuck between page 149 and 150 or thereabouts. India is proving a fruitful area for all manner of artistes. Slumdog Millionaire is nominated for everything, and when I went to see it at the Phoenix in East Finchley on a Saturday Night I was almost crushed in the stampede to get in. It is a very fine film indeed, daringly clicking between different genres, from gritty, painful tragedy to Hindi Move Kitsch. I enjoyed it immensely.

 

‘Milk’ again at the lovely independent Phoenix cinema (where they sell CAKE and where, if you phone up, you actually get to speak to a real person) is another film that’s doing well, even though it’s actually nothing to do with India. Perhaps a bit long-winded, a bit ‘and then’ish, its shortcomings are more than made up for in Sean Penn’s performance. A tour de force, I believe you’d call it. Also dredging up an astonishing piece of history which is very timeous that we find ourselves looking at the first ever black US President.

 

Well I couldn’t let this week’s blog go by without mentioning Mr B-I-Know-All-the-Metaphors Obama. His rhetoric reminds us again of the power of language, and the power of metaphor and image. His tropes are familiar - rivers, mountains etc but he takes them on with consummate ease and a natural flair for the word. I enjoy his speeches mainly for that reason.  I wonder whether he’ll continue to grow into his role of The Great Man and really change the world. We need heroes.

 

There were plenty of critiques of Elizabeth Alexander’s inaugural poem knocking around the internet, and plenty of people saying it was an impossible brief, and also impossible to follow the man himself. It was a mediocre poem with a good heart and didn’t spoil the magic of the day. That was the main thing. Look, nothing wrong with some hope and idealism. Great things have happened in the name of both. Look at the achievements of Harvey Milk. Okay, he was assassinated but not before he’d been a ringer of change. Let us hope Obama’s bullet-proof screens and robust metaphors keep him safe for the next few years and the closing of Guantanamo bay is just the beginning.