www.traversepoetry.org

One of Bonnie’s colleagues passed on a link to this article in the Times Online about Josephine Hart’s poetry events. There’s a wonderful quote from the article selected by Bookninja that’s worth repeating:

Going to a library to listen to an actor read poems is not, she insists, an act of self-improvement. ‘It’s allowing yourself to stop depriving yourself of what is incandescently beautiful in life. To deny yourself that is voluntarily to starve your soul. And if your soul is starved it is impossible to be happy. Modern life makes it hard for people to feed their souls, and that’s what people find there. They’re on a starvation diet and they come out and they suddenly think: “My god! This is a feast!”‘

‘After all, what is it that makes us human? It is language. And poetic language is the most rare form. It’s like a gem because the wisdom and insight of the poet is compressed into it. It’s a thrilling thing that a line can set off in your mind a whole world of potential experience. Either it inspires you in terms of wanting certain experiences, or it can help you to treasure the experience within those lines. And therefore life, for the short time we’re on this Earth, is immensely enriched.

Beautiful stuff.

Hello and welcome to the online home for Traverse Poetry.

Traverse Poetry is a new Canberra project funded by artsACT due to take place in 2009. This blog will contain updates and information about the project as well as details of spoken word events in the ACT, plus miscellaneous musings on writing and poetry.

Planning has already begun on the Traverse Project – so keep your eye on this blog or, better still, subscribe to this blog by RSS and sign up to the ACT Poetry Slam e-Newsletter.