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| This not-quite golden (?peat) shovel is displayed in the Somerset Levels, having come from the China Clay Museum in Cornwall |
24 November 2017 news update: there is now an international Golden Shovel competition run by Roosevelt University for young people and international undergraduate students: details here.
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I attended a poetry workshop and reading at the ¡Cornucopia! Alde Valley Festival on Saturday. One of the poems read out to us by Sue Wallace-Shaddad was in the Golden Shovel form. This was new to me. Its name immediately brought to mind not only Wordsworth's 'host of golden daffodils', but a diverse array of other 'golden' items, rules and concepts - the goose's golden eggs, the Golden Section, a golden handshake and so on.
The image that lodged most firmly in my mind was the 'Golden Marshalltown' trowel, the prized possession of an archaeologist, in The Golden Marshalltown: A Parable of the the Archaeology of the 1980s by Kent V. Flannery (American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 84, No. 2, June, 1982, 265-278): you can read about the article here.
I am still trying to work out the connection between the trowel and the shovel since both (like the pen: remember Heaney) can be used for digging.
Here are a few links to websites about the new poetry form...
- the poem by Terrance Hayes that gave the form its name.
- about Terrance Hayes, the creator of the form and about Gwendolyn Brooks, in whose honour the form was created.
- concerning the rules, as laid out by Robert Lee Brewer
- The Golden Shovel Anthology: New Poems Honoring Gwendolyn Brooks, edited by
- Poetry School review by Bridget Minamore of Seasonal Disturbances by Karen McCarthy Woolf (Carcanet). The review mentions the poet's Golden Shovel poems which feature in the book.
- Excellent advice and help from Peter Kahn and the Young Poets' Network - here.
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