MY INSPIRATION: KOEF NIELSEN (NARC MAGAZINE)
Excerpt: Inspirations come in many guises – as poets, Robert Frost and Edward Thomas, not so much as “nature” poetry but in their language and speech patterns, Creeley, Pickard and Bunting for their concision. Yeats for I made it out of a mouthful of air. From people, heroes such as Tony Harrison, whose drive and intelligence unfolding through his career have awed me ever since Newcastle is Peru, the late Martin Turner who introduced me to Pound while were at school together, and, again, Tom Pickard, with whom I worked over 50 years ago in his bookshop, and at the Morden Tower. His uncompromising commitment to his talent through all opposition and adversity has never failed to inspire me. The Morden Tower, which Tom and Connie founded and made work, was a huge catalyst for poetry in the UK. I seriously believe that Newcastle was nearer then to the West Coast and the Black Mountain School in the US than to London – but this independence has always been the city’s strength as a seed bed for talent across all disciplines.
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'LATE SKETCHES & STUDIES' TONY TOWLE - REVIEWED BY MARTIN STANNARD
Excerpt: Let’s begin this with a quotation:
you come by to type
your poems and write a
new poem instead on my
old typewriter while I sit
and read a novel about
a lunatic’s analysis of
a poem by Robert Frost
it is all suffocating
Frank O’Hara, from “The Light Presses Down” (July 26, 1963)
and point out that the “you” O’Hara is addressing here is Tony Towle.
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