My Fan Club

I started a fan club on Facebook. I'd seen other people open fan clubs for their pop music bands so I started one for my poetry. I called it Fan Club For Angela Lansbury Author and it was just for poems which I sent out daily the first week and after that I thought people would be overwhelmed to I sent them out about once every three days. One of my fans said he expected a poem a day.

This week Dec 19 my fan club has vanished. I am hoping this is just a glitch and it will reappear. Otherwise I'll have to start another one called something like fans of Hazel Nutter Comic Poet.

Join Angela Lansbury Author Facebook Fan Club For A Personal Poem

Yes, that's right. For a limited time only, if you join my Angela Lansbury Author Facebook Fan Club and you ask me, I'll write a personal poem for you and about you - or any other subject you choose.

I write comic poetry.

I have three comic poetry books on Lulu.com 

You can buy them from Lulu as paperback books or the budget version is the download version. You can also browse the cover and first few pages and read my comic comments.

Seriously Funny poems has my first poems and illustrations. My best performance poem was Oh No Susanna, a parody of the song Oh Susanna. It includes the line, 'I'll go to Piccadilly with my bus pass on my knee.'  the book contains my villanelles. 

At the end for me, and other parents and teachers, there's a handy list of famous poets and poems, such as: Edward Lear, The Lion and Albert, and songs.

Poetry Workshop Workbook is not only amusing, it also gives you the patterns for writing your own sonnets, villanelles, limericks, acrostics, terza rimas, not in that order but sensibly arranged as an A to Z of poem forms. The book starts with quotations about poetry. It contains my new poetry form, the Hi-coo. Poet's Dictionary is at the back. It's handy if you want a quick guide to the English form of sonnet and the Italian version. 

My favourite limerick is the one about the Secretary, ending, 

You realise I'm essential

When I'm hiding in the loo.

For songwriters I wrote Grandmother's Clock,  a parody of My Grandfather's  Clock. My sonnet, imitating Rupert Brooke's the Soldier, is The Taxpayer.

My latest poetry book is Writing Poetry For Fun With Angela. It tells you how to write poems for anniversaries, birthday cards, Xmas cards and even funerals. My two favourite poems to read aloud from this book are: Wedding Disasters; To My Ex Boyfriend (about gatecrashing his wedding - there's a twist end revealing something about the narrator's relationship with the bride.) The book ends with the poem We've Finished.

Whilst I have your attention, I also have restaurant reviews on Trusted Places. And a video on You tube including me reciting my short poem on Milton Keynes - type in Angela Lansbury author.

Happy reading and writing!

Was Keats Jewish?

Here's the latest. Keats supposedly died of consumption overseas. Now the church has discovered that his supposed body is four inches taller and matches the description of his friend's servant who had consumption.

Sounds like Katz, hiding the fact that he was Jewish, got tired of the pretence so he could marry his Jewish girlfriend and go back to being Jewish. So he pretended he'd died, and the servant's grave was given his name.

Keats - really a Jewish poet?

Now for the best story for poetry lovers. Wordsworth's immortal poem Daffodils, goes:

I wandered lonely as a cloud
Then all at once I saw a crowd
A host of golden daffodils ...

It doesn't sound the same if you say A host of yellow daffodils. A bit prosaic. Brighter colours. But no, golden daffodils is better.

The original version had yellow daffodils. Who changed it? The Wordsworths' visitor, a Mr Katz. He was married to a Jewish Miss Gold and in business with her brother. Dorothy Wordsworth said Mr K would not eat meat.

Now we wait to hear from the cemetery whether they will allow an exhumation and whether Mr Katz, same dates at Mr Keats, was the same height too.

POETRY STYLE & SUBJECT BEING POSITIVE

POETRY STYLE

I just opened the blog of a poet. He had some good metaphors. Although lots of his poems read like lists rather than poems. I write comic poems and songs. I am always looking at my lists of ideas. When you read them out at a poetry reading, despite the repetition, they still sound like lists.

If you had not been told they were poems, you would have thought they were shopping lists, wish lists, written first thing in the morning or last thing at night or when maudlin, drunk or high. No order. No control. Not memorable. What else does a poem need?

I am good at creating rhymes and rhying couplets. I struggle to get good rhythms. I can count syllables.

I prefer poems which have a proper rhythm, either on the odd beats or the even beats.
The rhythm carries you forward, sweeps you along until the long sentence reaches a resting point, a sudden end. Or a wistful dying phrase, or a neat, clever, satisfying conclusion.

The rambling list is not a person in control. Clever repetition can have an insistent effect. I look at a poem and wonder about the author. What would this person be like to meet? Disorganized and obsessive?

I can't say that to or even about another poetry writer. How rude it would sound. It would make the other person unhappy. It would make me sound unfeeling. So no, I do not comment on them. I merely comment on myself and how I have tried to turn my life around.

Some of the greatest success stories are people who have come through tragedy or difficulty smiling, hopeful, determined to reach happiness.

What image are you conveying of yourself? A commentator asked the poet if it was just a subject of if the writer really was suicidal? The poet was right to answer the query by saying he used to be suicidal. Not any more.

Who wants a boyfriend or girlfriend who is suicidal? As a taxi driver in Washington DC once said to me when he stopped my tale of woe - "Lady, I've got problems of my own."

Of course one cannot write only upbeat poetry. One has to deal with serious issues.

Two solutions I have found to the problem of self-image. One is the traditional solution of describing yourself as 'my friend'. (You know the joke. Doctor ... my friend ... The joke or story ends with the revelation that the person with the problem is really the speaker.)

So, of course 'I' am never pregnant, handicapped, in ill health, short of money or having spouse or boyfriend problems in real life. That just attracts other losers who sympathise. My 'friend' has the problem.

The modern techniqe of positive thinking used by hospital doctors is to talk about the pain or problem the patient had previously, in the past, and how well they will be in future, as if they are getting better all the time.

I read a lot of relationship advice newsletters. They say that if you describe yourself as unlucky in love you will stay that way. The first step to finding love is having a positive image.

SUBJECT
So, what do I think I would do with a poem on suicide? I would be unlikely to write one. Why depress yourself and possibly the reader? No such subject for me. Unless I felt it might help a pupil or teenager.

There are jokes and funny films on the subject of suicide. Jokes? Yes, Dorothy Parker wrote a comic poem about considering all the unpleasant ways of committing suicide, ending 'you might as well live'.

The end result was that you could laugh at the subject, laugh at yourself, laugh with her. Your image of her was not of a woman likely to commit suicide but a fun friend who had a dry wit.

That is my aim. To appear to be a fun, witty person. Not an unsympathetic person, but someone who will cheer you up when you are temporarily down, and make you happy.