Saturday, April 17, 2010

'What's been bad for the career has been good for the poems' ... Eleanor Ross Taylor


Little-known 90-year-old wins $100,000 poetry award | Books | guardian.co.uk

At pension age, I feel like I'm twice the poet I was when I was a youngster. It is always good to have a senior poet up ahead of the pack who is still achieving - and ninety sounds quite daunting, about as daunting as 65 did to me twenty-five years ago

A book of mine from 1992 has just been republished, with some poems lifted out and others put in. (Mother Waits for Father Late, available through http://www.picaropress.com/ ) It is a challenging experience for my writing practice today. I certainly have moved on, but what have I gained and what have I lost in this process of development? Now I can see these strengths and weaknesses as I view the resurrected poems, so further change is on its way. And, as I keep quoting, time is a measurement of change - both growth and decay. Age supplies the same pluses and minuses.

Watch this space for future developments ...

More about Eleanor Ross-Taylor at http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=6762

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