Last Thursday (16th May 2024), I finished a three-year marathon, reading the whole of Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal (155 poems in English and in French) at my weekly on-line poetry event called Wolfie’s Poetry Surf which will have been running for exactly twelve years this coming Thursday.

I’ve hosted poetry events in my home town of Lewes over the years and read my own work at a number of venues in London, in the US and elsewhere, but, I have discovered, over a number of years now, that no audiences have been as diverse as those that can come to events on-line. Virtual worlds, such as the original player, Second Life, are open to anyone, anywhere in the world, and the audiences for my weekly events, may never be large, seldom more than 25 or 30 people, but they have come from the UK, the US, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Serbia, the Netherlands, The Republic of Georgia, Portugal, Singapore, China, Japan, The Philippines, Brazil, Argentina, Ireland, South Africa, and Australia. They often attend at unsociable times, early morning or late at night depending on their time zone, we meet at 2pm, US EST, and it has been a wonderful experience to hear poets reading their own works from so many different countries, and, often, in a number of different languages.

Every week, apart from holidays and illnesses, I have appeared in my avatar form, Wolfgang Glinka, to host an open mic read poetry hour for all comers, where I also read poetry, my own, and mostly complete poetry collections, a poem a week, by some of the greatest names of poetry.

In these twelve years, I have read a lot of my own work, often trying out new pieces, I have always started the event by reading from three featured poetry books, three poems, each taken from the our three ‘guest poets.’ I’ve read William Shakespeare (The Sonnets), William Blake (Songs of Innocence and Experience) Alfred Lord Tennyson (In Memoriam), Arthur Rimbaud (Les Illuminations and A Season in Hell), T.S. Eliot (Four Quartets), John Donne (Songs and Sonnets), Tomas Tranströmer (New Collected Poems), Ocean Vuong (Night Sky with Exit Wounds), Frank O’Hara (Lunch Poems), Eduardo C. Corral (Slow Lightning), Billy Collins (Horoscopes for the Dead), Ezra Pound (The Cantos – all except without the Chinese Mandarin language ones), T.S. Eliot (The Waste Land), Rae Armantrout (Versed), Elizabeth Bishop (North & South/ A Cold Spring) and Charles Baudelaire (Le Spleen de Paris and Les Fleurs du Mal),

It felt special this week when I got to the final poem in Baudelaire’s Les Fleur du Mal, not only because it has been a genuine marathon, maybe the first time the work has been read in its entirety online in French and in English, but also because Baudelaire’s poetry is so important, he was maybe the first ‘Modern’ poet, and the complete work was intended to be read as a whole, leading to the longest and grandest poem at its conclusion. Le Voyage, is a journey, just as the reading of all 155 poems was a journey too. A journey through life, one that in Baudelaire’s world-view, doesn’t reach an expected end or a simple conclusion. He is talking about life as much as death, and the two are, of course, inter-connected. No Romantic denouements for Baudelaire. We have been taken on a journey through a life that has seen misery, unfairness, the joys and tragedies of love and an honest close-up look at the erotic with all its dangers, delights and poisons. We must always search, he says, always move on, usually this is away from the boredom, the ennui, of our mundane lives, but, sorry, guys, he says, what do you find in the end? Maybe we’ve journeyed from boredom and tears to find only more of the same.

If Baudelaire was the great poet of boredom, he was never boring.

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I read from my latest book, my debut poetry collection Remembering Blue at my local pub, the Elephant & Castle, here in Lewes UK – it was a lovely event with a great and receptive audience. Luckily, or not, depending on your opinion, someone was there to video my performance. In all humility, I think it’s not too bad, actually it’s a lot better than I dared predict.

In the first set there is a collection of short poems, beginning with a haiku. Here are poems about some of my obsessions, some strange experiences and other things that have delighted or frightened me.

In my second set, I read poems some of them that can be seen as tributes or at least portraits of people or works that I admire or, at worst, have always been interested in, American poet, Frank O’Hara, singer/ . songwriter Joni Mitchell, the composer of the opera Madama Butterfly, Giacomo Puccini, the modernist Portuguese poet, Fernando Pessoa, William the Conqueror’s mate, William de Warrene, Vergil’s Dido of Carthage, – they probably say more about me that about them.

There is one last section – one poem that ends and, also in a way, begins this my first poetry collection. My poem October 30th 2008 is a record and a meditation on the day when I almost died from a brain haemorrhage. It’s not depressing, I believe, actually, it’s full of optimism. Give it a listen.

It is published by Ward Wood Publishing – ways to buy it are detailed to the right of this blog.

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Last night in Lewes, UK, there was a chill in the air and, or so I’m told,  snow on the outskirts, but it was warm enough in the Lewes Arms, my local pub, when it hosted the 7th anniversary of Lewes Poetry and showcased some of the poets who have read there over the years. I was glad to be invited back as I have happy memories of the first time I read there as, six years go,  it was the venue for my very first poetry reading as I described in yesterday’s blog.

There was a good turnout considering we, the South-East English, are known to make an unnecessary fuss if the January temperatures sink anywhere lower than warm. The success of Lewes Poetry, and the reason why so many people risked less than mild temperatures, belongs to its host and creator, the wonderfully chaotic Ollie Wilson, poet and compere at these suitably anarchic events where ‘stage’ poets share the stage with ‘page’ poets and everyone gets along just fine. I read some of my recent re-writes of my first poems which all dated from 2009 and this seemed a suitable anniversary for their first public reading. I had been nervous about tinkering with poems that had already been published and, possibly, set in stone, but they seemed to go down well, people clapped, laughed and were silent in all the right places,  and I left feeling that those rewrites of early poems still had something to say, but now had much stronger legs, considering that they written when I didn’t really know what I was doing.

Outside, as you can see in the photos below, if they weren’t at the Lewes Arms,  or some other local hostelry, Lewesians were all snuggled up at home. Well, you don’t want to catch cold on a chilly January night.

When Lewes is busy, it is very, very busy, but when it is quiet, it’s deserted.

It is a real pleasure wandering outside on a night like this when the streets, or so it seems, belong to me.

I always feel a bit stranger than usual after performing my poetry – it’s an exposing experience where hidden parts of myself have a brief public airing, and, afterwards, I need to take time to return to what, I guess, is ‘normal’.

On nights such as these, there’s nothing better than a solitary walk in the middle of town, especially when it is as pretty as Lewes.

If you’re interested in Lewes Poetry, here’s the link:
http://lewespoetry.blogspot.co.uk/

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I’ve been asked to read at a poetry event tonight just round the corner from my house here in Lewes, UK. The splendidly anarchic Lewes Poetry is having its 7th Anniversary celebration upstairs at my local pub, the Lewes Arms where I first dared to read my poetry at my first Lewes Poetry event in 2009 when I was still recovering from a major illness. I’d been told that it would have an open mic element so I went along, after much persuasion, with my little file of poems only to find that the open mic part had been cancelled because the evening was so full of invited poets including the much admired Lewes poet, John Agard, later to win the Queen’s Medal for poetry.

I thought I’d run away when I heard this, after-all, I’d only been writing poetry for less than a year even though I’d been lucky to get some published in various journals,  but the organisers saw that I’d brought my poems so decided to fit me in. Several expletives passed through my head when I heard I was to follow John Agard, who incidentally, was quite brilliant. Actually, hearing this man’s wonderful delivery, forced me to drop my inhibitions and to ‘go for it.’  Well, I survived and have been back to the events several times since.

I’ve been rewriting a lot of those early poems recently so it seems appropriate to re-read some of them tonight as a gesture of appreciation to Lewes Poetry and all those nice folk who were so encouraging then to an unknown, brain-damaged and stammering poet wannabe. It would have been so easy to have put me off for life.

I’m not sure who else is reading tonight but it is always fun so come along if you can.

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Today is all about poetry. My latest poem, Hummingbird Feeder is published by Every Day Poets,
http://www.everydaypoets.com/  that great and enterprising on-line poetry journal that publishes a new poem every day of the year. This is my second poem they have published this year, so thanks again Every Day Poets. You can read it if you go to this site http://www.everydaypoets.com/ – you can vote for it too if you want.

The poem was written after a trip I made to rural New Jersey, USA, in the summer of 2011. I had a great time discovering that New Jersey isn’t just the home, on the wrong side of the river from New York,  of mafioso bosses like Tony Soprano and other unsavoury members of the criminal elite.  In fact it is a lushly beautiful state and, when I was there, in early July, hot enough without being overwhelmingly humid. Exotic enough though for an Englishman used to temperate climes. One of the most exotic and unexpected pleasures of that trip was my first encounters with hummingbirds who are plentiful in those parts and who are fed in New Jersey gardens with a sugary liquid dispensed  from bright red feeders that are often strung from those other characteristic NJ features, the porch in front of the house. These feeders are garishly red and usually made from plastic – I hadn’t seen anything like it before. They have to be this colour to attract the hummingbirds who are genetically programmed to feed from brightly coloured tropical flowers. I was amazed by these tiny birds, much smaller than I had imagined them and also much faster moving. Frantic in fact to feed whilst their wings flutter manically keeping them in position. Their frenzy was what led me to write the poem.

I had watched them up close on the porches of various friends houses during my stay and felt that it was not only the hummingbirds were receiving New Jersey hospitality. I hope you enjoy the poem. I shall read it tonight at the Fifth Anniversary gathering of Lewes Poetry, a group that meets in the pub just round the corner from my house.

It is also the venue of my first public poetry reading when, beardless after my hospital stay, I was still in the early stages of recovering from my brain haemorrhage and learning to live with the stammer that was one of its side effects.

I was persuaded by a friend to go along to Lewes Poetry’s next meet because it was a mix of well-known featured poets and ordinary newbie poets like me, reading in an ‘open mic’ section. I was very unsure if my stammer would let me read and I also wondered if my poetry was good enough to risk a public outing.

I arrived, armed with a file of poems and was told at the door that there wasn’t any open mic that night because it was a special event featuring the well-known poet John Agard, last year’s winner of the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry. I was about to run away and hide but the organisers felt sorry for me and said they would try to find a slot for me to read. So what would have been nerve-wracking enough anyway now became a moment of terror as I realized that I was being thrown into such distinguished company. I survived and my stammer behaved as it now always does when I read poetry. I also learnt a lot from seeing John Agard’s dramatic delivery style. As I sat listening to his funny and furious poems, I thought I have to try and make my readings performances in some way even if I can never match his unique delivery.

So thank you Lewes Poetry for giving me the chance and for making it such a memorable one too. If you’re anywhere near Lewes tonight, come along and celebrate a great Lewes event.

Last night was another performance moment in my family and I was in Brighton for the debut gig of Adam Bell’s new band Octopuses. His old band, Foxes! is hibernating for a while but Octopuses opened a new chapter in Adam’s musical life with songs that are more thrustingly masculine but was also wryly humourous and witty, dramatic, studiedly self-concious and, yes, wiser about life. I was very proud of him and his musical colleagues.

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I spent some time yesterday busying myself around my home town of Lewes, UK, publicising the new poetry event that we are holding at Lewes’ very pleasant Pleasant Stores on the first Wednesday of every month.

Pleasant Stores, the shop that used to be Ron’s,  is the place for all good things, organic food, wonderful bread and cheese to say nothing for the espresso coffee or the hot meals but now it is also to be the place for delicious poetry too.

Every month I hope to welcome established, new and wannabe poets for an evening of words and fun.

Anyone interested can contact me by email info@wolfiewolfgang.com but you can also just turn up at the door or visit the shop for details.

First Wednesday Writers will be held on the first Wednesday of every month at 7.30 pm and admission is free. You can if you wish by some of store owner Sara Grisewood’s delicious refreshments.

Poetry, food and drink – things could hardly get better.

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I”ll be reading some of my poetry tonight at the Lewes Arms, in Lewes, UK. It would be great to see you if you want to come along.

Here’s the link:  http://www.pubs.com/main_site/pub_details.php?pub_id=1073

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