POET’S CORNER...Bison are dangerous and unpredictable

POET’S CORNER
Source: http://www.speakup.com.br
Language level: B2 UPPER INTERMEDIATE 
Speaker: Justin Ratcliffe (Bre standard) and Chuck Rolando (Ame Standard)

POETRY BY MICHAEL SWAN

Bison are dangerous and unpredictable

(notice in Yellowstone Park)

Unpredictable be damned

Anyone who knows me

Will tell you

I am remarkably even-tempered

Just one or two things.

Don’t photograph my left profile.

Never mind why,

Just don’t.

Also

As a patriotic American bison

I object to foreign cars.

Last spring

Somebody drove a Toyota

right up to my nose

and sat in it grinning

I put it in the river.

No orange hats

OK?

And no T-shirts

With the Mona Lisa on.

I don’t like the Mona Lisa.

Never mind why.

You can stand where you like

Within reason

But don’t get between me

And my friend the heron.

You get between me and my friend the heron

You are dead meat.

That’s about it.

Just keep these few things in

Mind

And we’ll get along fine.

Oh, I nearly forgot.

No yellow bootlaces.

Have a nice day.

This poem was written in Yellowstone Park, where visitors regularly ignore the notices and get up close to the bison to take souvenir holiday photos. Bison are irritable and can run at 50 kilometres per hour, so this does not always end happily. The poem was published in BBC Wildlife Magazine in 2007.  

IN LOVE WITH THE LOBSTER

Source: http://www.speakup.com.br

Source of the picuture: http://ogunquitlobsterpound.com

Driving along the New England coast in Summer, you will see many “lobster shacks” or “lobster pounds.” The coast of Maine (with Nova Scotia in Canada) is the best place to eat lobster in North America Maine’s clean cold waters have a multitude of nutrients, and the lobstermen fish responsibly. The restaurants usually have a big tanks with cold water which contains various lobsters walking around at the bottom of the tank. The lobster’s claws are tied together so they don’t hurt each other – or the restaurant personnel. The claws also have the most succulent meat! Diners choose the animal they want to eat – maybe the lobster with the most spectacular colour or the most vivacious temperament. The victim is fished out, weighed, cooked –and shortly afterwards it is on the table. Fast food…as long as you know how to eat it of course!

PRISON FOOD!

Just imagine: in the past, lobster were used as fertilizers or fed to prisoners. Today, they are very expensive. One problem is that there are not so many of them around anymore.

Lobsters are omnivores and can live up to a hundred, but mortality is high. Only to a hundred eggs becomes a lobster that can legally be caught. Lobsters are well protected by their hard carapace as they grow. They are very vulnerable to predators.

LOBSTERS IN LITERATURE

Meanwhile, lobsters have also entered popular culture. As the distinguished writers D.H Lawrence once said: “Europe’s the mayonnaise, but America supplies the good old lobster.” Surrealist artist Salvador Dali made a sculpture “Lobster Telephone.”  As seafood, lobster are supposed to be good for your love life. The B52s first single, in 1978, was “Rock Lobster.” And if you spend too much time in the sun this summer, you might become lobstered!

INTERVIEW

Language level: B2 upper intermediate 

Speaker: Chuck Rolando

Standard: American accent

DOWN MAINE

One of the many attractions of the State of Maine in New England is the delicious lobster meat that you can eat in restaurant, all along the coast. Bill Hancock runs Maine’s oldest lobster restaurant, the Ogunquit Lobster Pound, which first opened for business in 1931. As he explains, today lobster is considered an expensive delicacy, but that wasn’t always the case:

Bill Hancock:

Standard: American accent

Lobsters have been around for a long time. And in the old days there were so many of them that you could literally walk down to the beach at low tide and picked them up. And they were considered a poor man’s’ meal because nobody really wanted to eat them and you couldn’t afford steak, so you would eat lobster.

They used to serve them in prisons all the time. They used to use them for fertilizer. And now it’s one of the most expensive things you can go buy in a restaurant, so, you know, you figure it out!

THE POWER OF POETRY

Source: http://www.maganews.com.br

Language level: C1 Advanced

Speaker: Mark Worden

Standard: British accent

The Power of Poetry

Will Stone is an award-winning English poet and translator. He recently attended the Poetry on the Lake Festival and it was here that he met with Speak Up. We began by asking him what had first attracted him to poetry:

Will Stone

(Standard English accent)

It was just something that came, really. Well, I was always good at English at school and I used t write stories, and that was obviously my forte, but I didn’t really take it up later on, English. I probably should have done a degree, but for some reason I didn’t and then the poetry just started…well, actually I started writing songs first, I was more of a musician, and I wrote a lot of songs, I had a long period of writing songs, and then I sort of…that sort of died off and I started writing poetry more, so it came out of the song.

SOCIETY TODAY

In 2008 Will Stone received the Glen Dimplex Poetry Award. this was for his book, Glaciation, which one critic called “a collection of poems of oblique and uncomfortable beauty.” The Glen Dimplex is in fact an Irish award. Will Stone believes that his poetry is considered too heavy for Britain audiences, who tend to prefer lighter, less serious work:

Will Stone:

I’m not saying that it’s all bad, but I just think a lot of what is most obvious, or what Is most evident, to people, seems to be the same genre of poetry all the time because partly that’s because that’s what people relate to, and it’s what people are…’cause a lot of people in England were turned off poetry by having to do it at school, so anything that’s difficult, or got any real depth, it’s not easy for them to engage with it. I think they tend to be more drawn to a kind of poetry that is more of an entertainment, or something that sort of has part entertainment and part…it has some meaning that corresponds with people, but it isn’t always something that your really need to think about for too long. You know, it’s like an instant hit and then it’s over, which kind of reflects our society.