Welcome to Big Bang Poetry

Welcome to Big Bang Poetry, dedicated to reinventing the life of a poet in the modern world.

And what a challenge that is. Since poetry was last pop, the world of entertainment has undergone generations of change. Past-timers are now grabbing for their games, their Tivo'd HBO shows, their Netflix movie ques and their novels about zombies and vampires.

And I love all of those things. My Netflix is full of Glee episodes and movies about ghosts. Later this afternoon, I have time carved out to happily make my next iTunes mix.

So then how does one cultivate their inner poetic intellectual inside all this (pretty fun) noise?

On Big Bang Poetry we're going to talk about the whole life of the poet, how we fit into the larger world of literature and mass culture and how we can start to deal realistically with where we are right now. Then we can start to think about Buck Rogers and the 25th Century and where poets and poetry will fit in then?

We'll talk about real issues of:

1. Publishing (how we gonna get that?)
2. Money (how we gonna live on that?)
3. Community responsibilities to each other (who has time to read poetry?)
4. We'll also be updating the Action List at the top of the page. An action list is good for poets whose biggest energy expenditure is often pure contemplation.

We have to reinvent this bugger. The fact is poetry publishing is a business…and a failing one at that. If it don't get rethunk, it will continue to wither away.

Poetry matters. As a poet, you matter. You have value in this culture. It's simply time to start using your brilliance to start thinking outside the box. Even though you hate that phrase.

As Gandalf tells Frodo in Fellowship of the Ring, "We cannot choose the time we live in. We can only choose what we do with the time we are given."

Now off you go.