“This short post is related to what I do on the Poethead blog and I suppose to the area of women’s writing that has been a concern for a few years now.
Many of the poems that are a part of Poethead have found their way into my possession as gifts, or from the libraries and collections of people who bought (or ordered) the books when they were originally published. Quite a few of the books that I have been privileged to read are not obtainable from our local friendly bookshops, though they can often be had through Amazon or other such internet outlets.
The poems on the site were in the main transcribed from books by me, though not all of them are.
I started transcribing poetry as an exercise a few years ago because of something I had read in A.S. Byatt’s Possession. Roland Mitchell’s thoughts on the teaching methodologies of his superior regarding transcriptions stuck with me. I wanted to test how I would do if I were to know a poem through the copying of it. I soon learned that no matter how carefully one attempts a transcription, it is incredibly easy to mess up the simplest things and change the sense of the work completely. “
The whole article is available at the Women Writers, Women Books Blog , it is related to two pieces on Poethead, which I am linking here, Hannah Weiner‘s Book of Revelations and Nagy’s Hemisphere. I thought to add in Nuala Ní Chonchúir‘s piece about the Saturday Woman Poet also, here at Nuala’s Blog.
Chris Murray 