No challenge at all to get enjoyment from poetry

Jan 13 2010 by David Whetstone, The Journal

THERE’S a pleasing roundness to the number 10, which might have occurred to you already, a couple of weeks into this new year.

It seems so much easier to work out birthdays, anniversaries and suchlike than when the year ended in a nine.

Let’s make the most of it because 2011 sounds like another awkward customer for those of us numerically challenged.

With 2010 just days old, a poetry anthology called Book of Ten lands on my desk. It proclaims itself “an anthology of poetry on the theme of TEN” and it comes from Zebra Publishing, of Gosforth, whose editors are Jeff Price and Annie Moir.

They are poets, too, as you will see from their contributions to the anthology, which includes the work of an impressive line-up of 76 poets.

Annie describes herself as “a veteran of the poetry scene in her native North East” and is a former member of the Poetry Vandals who, rather like the Romans, viewed poetry as something of a gladiatorial enterprise. Smashing the opposition in poetry slams was one of their specialities.

Annie’s poem is The Unbearable Lightness of Being which tackles Einstein and the speed of light.

Jeff’s poem is News at Ten and he comes clean: “Jeff Price is editor of Zebra Publishing and is aware of the fact that he is unlikely to reject his own poetry, so it appears here without any critical judgment whatsoever.”

The poem is a list of 10 highly unlikely headlines, such as: “President Obama admits he was born in Sunderland not Hawaii.”