Republished by MacGibbon & Kee, 1961 and in Penguin Books,1966 (as England, Half English, A Polyphoto of the Fifties, with a new introduction by the author).
Thursday, 23 December 2021
Colin MacInnes, The Parthenon Marbles, 1957
Saturday, 18 December 2021
Theodorakis, Britten and Bob Dylan: Poetry as Song
Just published: my illustrated article on Poetry and Song, Theodorakis, Britten and Bob Dylan:
https://c20ajournal.com/2021/12/18/theodorakis-britten-bob-dylan-poetry-as-song/
From ISSUE no. 5 of C.20 - an international journal.
"This issue commemorates the late Mikis Theodorakis with an essay "POETRY AS SONG" by Jim Potts, who attended many concerts by Theodorakis in the 1970s and has been professionally involved with the composer's works. He celebrates Theodorakis' compositions for voice in the context of Benjamin Britten and Bob Dylan".
Saturday, 11 December 2021
Christmas Poem (from Words on the table)
Poem from Words on the table, Colenso Books
Words on the table
Top Amazon reviews from
5.0 out of 5 stars An Important Collection
Reviewed in the
This collection is a truly
important one which reflects our relatively recent international and national
history in a way few books of poetry can. Many of the poems are short and
hugely digestible while others, longer, re-awaken the reader to memories too
easily forgotten, such as the war in
5.0 out of 5 stars A real feast of poetry
Reviewed in the
Words On The Table is a veritable
feast of poetry, spanning many decades and forged from a life spent all over
the world. Jim Potts’ poetry is rich and varied, with pithy and wry
observations and profound comments about the state of the world. There is a
restless quality to the poetry, a yearning for a better world and an admirable
curiosity about areas of interest, like music, history and architecture. I
thoroughly recommend this excellent book of poetry.
5.0 out of 5 stars Journeys with Jim Potts
Reviewed in the
Jim Potts' poems take his readers
by the hand and guide them around the world, visiting countries where he has
lived-
Anthony Hirst - ΑΝΤΟΝΥ ΧΙΡΣΤ, ΕΝΑΣ ΠΟΛΥΜΑΘΗΣ ΚΑΙ ΠΟΛΥΤΕΧΝΙΤΗΣ ΕΛΛΗΝΙΣΤΗΣ
Continuation:
Anthony Hirst, poems in Greek translation:
https://neoplanodion.gr/2021/12/12/anthony-hirst-plateia-klauthmonos-kai-alla-poiemata/
Friday, 26 November 2021
COLENSO BOOKS CATALOGUE
See Twitter posting for clearer text presentation:
https://twitter.com/DorsetWriter/status/1464335365792276488
Tuesday, 23 November 2021
Press Release from Colenso Books: WORDS ON THE TABLE, JIM POTTS
PRESS RELEASE
Words on the table, Jim Potts, Colenso Books,
PRESS RELEASE
Words on the table, Jim Potts, Colenso Books,
Words on the table, Jim Potts’ new collection of over 200 poems
has just been published by Colenso Books. Alongside his previous Colenso Books
collection, Reading the signs, the
two books represent the author’s selections from six decades of poetry written
in the many countries where he has lived and worked.
The author writes
of revolutions, both ‘velvet’ and violent, military coups, Cold War encounters
and unfolding historical events to which he was an eye-witness. He lays his
cards on the table and “faces off” the Thought Police. He responds to the
activities of the Secret Police who hovered in the background throughout the
time he worked and travelled in Central and
To what extent
the author “lays bare his soul” in Words
on the table (which another reviewer believes he does) is left to the
reader to decide.
A lover of the
Blues, Jazz, Folk and ‘World Music’, Jim Potts’ poems and songs reveal his
passions and diverse interests. Some poems may remind readers of the Beats and
their celebrations of life on the road. A Greek poet and translator has
compared him to a semi-nomadic “modern-day transhumant, a wry participant and
observer of life and a bearer of memory”.
His years in
Greece, Czechoslovakia, Central Europe and the Balkans have left their mark, as
have his experiences in Sweden, the USA, Ethiopia and Australia, Aboriginal art
clearly means a lot to him, as much as rock ‘n’ roll, William Barnes’ Dorset
dialect poems, modern Greek literature and rebetiko
songs.
As Michael Rosen
has written, Words on the table is “a
rich ride”. Many of the poems reflect a strong sense of ironic observation and humour.
When in
Words on the table is arranged in four sections, after the
Introduction:
1. "Birth,
life, death" (largely autobiographical and family-related);
2. Songs and
singers (the author's songs, and poems about singers and other musicians from
many cultures);
3. The written
word (reflections on authors and writing);
4. Facing off the
Thought Police (poems on censorship, political repression, assassination),
followed by a "Postscript on
Three books by Jim
Potts have been published by Colenso Books:
Words on the table
Reading the signs
This spinning world, 43 stories from far
and wide
All these books
are available on amazon.co.uk, including Words
on the table:
In case of
difficulty, contact colensobooks@gmail.com
Anthony Hirst, Colenso Books
Author page, Jim Potts:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Jim-Potts/e/B003N1JW2U%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share
Thursday, 11 November 2021
Demetris Dallas on my poetry! Words on the table (my new book, just published).
Demetris Dallas:
“I have received your poems. Thank you for the sparse untarnished words from a septuagenarian heart…This may be the Taoist way to Art…”
“Deceptively simple and unassuming poems…almost tactile in their digging for what was and no more exists”.
Thank you for your comments, Demetri!
Demetris Dallas is writer and translator who lives in Corfu Town.
Saturday, 30 October 2021
Four Short Poems from Words on the Table, the new collection by Jim Potts
Four lighter poems from Words on the table
Jim, sung by Billie Holiday (YouTube)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vJiNV0EIuU
Monday, 25 October 2021
JIM POTTS: NEW BOOK, "WORDS ON THE TABLE", Colenso Books
Words on the table - laying my cards on the table and facing off the Thought Police!
Precious collection:
Sunday, 3 October 2021
John Farnleigh, Weymouth, Wood Engraving
John Farnleigh, Last Bus, Weymouth (1950)
A wonderful wood engraving by John Farnleigh
- and one which I have just acquired
Michael Church, Musics Lost and Found: Song Collectors and the Life and Death of Folk Tradition
BBC Radio 3 interview (from 17-minute point)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001074z
"Tom Service meets up with author Michael Church at Cecil Sharp House in London to talk about Michael's new book, Musics Lost and Found: Song Collectors and the Life and Death of Folk Tradition. Tom also talks to Veronica Doubleday about her many years of folksong collecting in Afghanistan, and her assessment of how the country's rich folksong heritage will be affected by its new government",
"This is the first-ever book about song collectors, music's unsung heroes. They include the Armenian priest who sacrificed his life to preserve the folk music which the Turks were trying to erase in the 1915 Genocide; the prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp who secretly noted down the songs of doomed Jewish inmates; the British singer who went veiled into Afghanistan to learn, record and perform the music the Taliban wanted to silence. Some collectors have been fired by political idealism - Bartok championing Hungarian peasant music, the Lomaxes bringing the blues out of Mississippi penitentiaries, and transmitting them to the world. Many collectors have been priests - French Jesuits noting down labyrinthine forms in eighteenth-century Beijing, English vicars tracking songs in nineteenth-century Somerset. Others have been wonderfully colourful oddballs. Today's collectors are striving heroically to preserve endangered musics, whether rare forms of Balinese gamelan, the wind-band music of Chinese villages, or the sophisticated polyphony of Central African Pygmies. With globalisation, urbanisation and Westernisation causing an irreversible erosion of the world's musical diversity, Michael Church suggests we may be seeing folk music's 'end of history'. Old forms are dying as the conditions for their survival - or replacement - disappear; the death of villages means the death of village musical culture. This ground-breaking book is the sequel to the author's award-winning The Other Classical Musics, and it concludes with an inventory of the musics now under threat, or already lost for ever". Text from Amazon.co.uk
Monday, 13 September 2021
Grapevines in the Village
Alas not there to harvest the bountiful crop.
Thanks for the photos, Fantina.
Mikis Theodorakis, IM
I have just remembered a poem I wrote in Addis Ababa in July 1974, published in Corfu Blues (the book) in 2006.
Wednesday, 25 August 2021
USA, Roadtrip
A few images from my grandson's road trip across the USA. Just finished. He shared these photos:
Thursday, 19 August 2021
Martin Parr, West Bay. Seaside Photographs. Think of England.
The influential photographs of Martin Parr.
http://www.martinparr.co.uk/west.htm
"Think of England is a mosaic of English clichés. From Socks and sandals to telephone boxes; top-hats to bacon sandwiches, Think of England asks, in an overwhelming display of saturated colour and kitsch, what it means to be English. The photographs in this series originate from throughout the 1990s when Martin Parr made countless trips to provincial towns and seaside resorts".
http://www.martinparr.co.uk/think.htm
Martin Parr publications:
http://www.martinparr.co.uk/publications.htm
.
Tuesday, 17 August 2021
St. George, Portland, Dorset. "Primitive Georgian". Gabriel Max.
I was intrigued by this print, hanging close to the altar.
It is the work "Jesus Christus" by the Prague-born Gabriel Max (1874), later ennobled as Gabriel Cornelius Ritter von Max (1840-1915). The original painting is known as
"Le Voile de Veronique", The Veil of Veronica.
It was sold at Christie's for 47,000 Euros:
Related work by other artists: