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.  

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.