Online archive has poets reading their own work

Last Updated Wed, 30 Nov 2005 13:54:07 EST
CBC Arts

A major online archive allows poetry lovers to hear poets, including greats such as Robert Browning and Alfred Tennyson, reading their own work.

The Poetry Archive, which went online Wednesday, is a project of Britain's poet laureate Andrew Motion and Richard Carrington, a recording engineer specializing in the spoken word.

Margaret Atwood is the only Canadian poet included on the site so far; but new recordings are being added as they are discovered. Atwood can be heard reading four of her poems.

The bulk of the poets are Britons, with only 28 so far, including Atwood and U.S. poet John Ashbery, from the rest of the world.

Among the treasures included on the site is a 1932 recording of W.B. Yeats reading "The Lake Isle of Innisfree".

Browning and Tennyson were recorded on early phonographs reading their own poems. Browning is heard in a rather rough recording at a dinner party, reading an excerpt of "How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix". Tennyson is recorded in 1890, reciting his "The Charge of the Light Brigade".

Harold Pinter, Seamus Heaney, Anne Stevenson and Rudyard Kipling are among hundreds of prominent poets recorded.

Motion says he wanted to store these recordings for history, but also create a site that generates interest in poetry. There is a children's section and each poet's recording is accompanied by a brief biography and a list of his or her works and where to buy them.

Visitors to the site can also buy a CD of the recordings, a project that helps pay the cost of maintaining the site.

Motion says he met Carrington in 1999, shortly after becoming poet laureate. The two began talking about the pleasure of hearing poetry read aloud and hit on the website project.

"Actors may (or may not) read poems well, but poets have unique rights to their work, and unique insights and interests to offer as we hear their idiom, pacing, tone and emphases," said Motion in an interview with Reuters. "The readings are at once instant in their appeal, and lingering in their impact."

The website has been funded by grants from the government, a lottery fund, private foundations and charities.

South Africa Legalizes Gay Marriage

by Mark Levy, 365Gay.com Cape Town, South Africa Bureau
Posted: December 1, 2005 7:00 am ET

(Cape Town, South Africa) South Africa on Thursday became the fifth country to legalize same-sex marriage.

The Constitutional Court, the highest court in South Africa, ruled that it is unconstitutional to deny gay and lesbian couples the right to marry.

The court ordered Parliament to amend marriage laws within 12 months. If it fails to act within that timeframe, the court said the ruling would automatically change the law to include same-sex unions.

"The current definition of marriage is considered to be inconsistent with the constitution," the written ruling said.

LGBT civil rights groups welcomed the ruling but some same-sex couples were unhappy they would have to wait up to a year before marrying.

Thursday's high court ruling ended a legal battle that already has dragged on for years.

The case was brought by Marie Fourie and Cecilia Bonthuys, who have been partners since 1994 but were unable to marry. Seven other same-sex couples later joined the case.

Last year the Supreme Court of Appeal ruled that the definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman discriminated unfairly against same-sex couples, and that common law should be developed to take this into account.

The government appealed the ruling to the Constitutional Court.

The Department of Home Affairs argued that the appeal court violated the rule of the separation of powers by usurping Parliament's authority by making law.

"Same-sex partnerships are a relatively new phenomena," said the Department of Home Affairs' advocate Marumo Moerane, sparking laughter in the packed gallery. He then said that, "We don't know whether single-sex relationships involve the idea of mutual support."
Lawyers for the same-sex couples argued that denying civil marriage to gays violates the constitution.

South Africa's post apartheid constitution states that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender individuals have the same rights as any other individual. Section 9 of the Constitution outlaws discrimination in South Africa based on sexual orientation.

Thursday's ruling was the latest in a series of legal wins for gays and lesbians dating back to 1998 when sodomy was decriminalized.

The following year immigrant partners of South African lesbians and gays were allowed to apply for permanent residence.

Same-sex adoption was legalized in 2002 and in 2003 the government bowed to pressure and permitted domestic partner benefits.

©365Gay.com 2005

It's the birthday of Woody Allen, born in Brooklyn in 1935. As a child he was very shy, he hated school and spent most of his free time alone in his room practicing magic tricks and his clarinet. He went to NYU where he failed his Motion Picture Production class, but in 1978, Allen's film "Annie Hall" won the Oscars for Best Picture, Best Screenplay, Best Director and Best Actress. He said, "I don't want to achieve immortality through my work, I want to achieve it through not dying."

Canadian Tory Leader: I'll Repeal Gay Marriage
by 365Gay.com Newscenter Staff
Posted: November 29, 2005 5:00 pm ET

(Ottawa) Conservative Party leader Stephen Harper wasted no time Tuesday in laying out his platform for this winter's snap election making repeal of same-sex marriage legislation a key plank.

Canadians will go to the polls Jan. 23, 2006 to elect a new Parliament. The Liberal government of Prime Minister Paul Martin was defeated Monday night (story) when the country's three opposition parties declared they had lost confidence in the government.

Tuesday Martin went to the Governor General, the Queen's representative in Canada, for the election writ.

"I have just met with the Governor General, and she has agreed to dissolve the 38th Parliament. A general election … will be held on Monday, January 23," Martin told reporters outside Rideau Hall.

In the foyer of the House of Commons, Harper immediately threw down the gauntlet in what is expected to be the nastiest and costliest election campaign in Canadian history.

While government scandals will be the prime focus of the Conservative campaign, Harper said he will also campaign on the repeal of the country's same-sex marriage law.

A Conservative government would move to restore the traditional definition of marriage if Parliament supports the idea, he told reporters.

``It will be a genuine free vote when I'm prime minister.

``I will not whip our cabinet,'' he said referring to process by which Martin's ministers were forced last summer to support the marriage bill.

Harper would consider the matter closed if MPs don't support introducing new legislation to once again define marriage as the exclusive domain of one man, one woman.

Either way, Harper promised to preserve more than 3,000 gay marriages already performed across Canada.

``That's the commitment we've made and it hasn't changed,'' he said in the lobby outside the House of Commons.

Harper made a point of raising the thorny issue even after his handlers had cut off questions from reporters. He believes same-sex couples should be recognized through civil unions that set out economic rights but don't infringe on traditional marriage.

In the 2004 election, the Tory stance against gay weddings cost the party crucial support in urban Ontario and among younger voters.

It also helped the Liberals portray Harper as a kind of far-right bogey man who would undercut the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. They wasted no time Tuesday repeating that message.

``Mr. Harper begins his campaign with an unequivocal statement that, if elected prime minister, he would act swiftly to roll back charter rights,'' Martin spokesman Scott Reid said soon after Harper's comments.

Gay activists were dismayed.

``It's really disheartening,'' said Gilles Marchildon, executive director of EGALE Canada.

``What does that say about our confidence in the government, that when a law is passed we can rely on it?

``Instead of creating conditions that bring peace, order and good government, it's chaos, confusion and uncertainty.''

Marchildon says the issue was decided after a two-year national debate.

``A decision was made, and I think a majority of Canadians - whether or not they agree with the outcome - agree that we should move on.''

Not so, says former Liberal MP Pat O'Brien.

He has teamed with ex-Tory Grant Hill to form Defend Marriage Canada. They plan to raise money, publish letters and lobby voters during the campaign to elect candidates who oppose gay marriage.

O'Brien quit the Liberals over the issue to sit as an Independent MP and is not running for re-election.

He says same-sex weddings are not over in the minds of ``millions of Canadians.''

But most legal experts agree that a raft of court judgments and a reference opinion from the Supreme Court of Canada give the Conservatives little room to move.

Heather MacIvor, a political scientist at University of Windsor, Ont., recently published the book Canadian Politics and Government in the Charter Era.

She leads a seminar class on the Supreme Court opinion and says the high court was clear that marriage, under the Constitution, now includes gay couples.

``You can't use the notwithstanding clause to override the division of powers in the 1867 Constitution.''

The court also stressed ``that same-sex marriage is not opposed to the values and principles of the Charter --it flows from them,'' MacIvor said.

``This is the law of the land and we cannot go back on it.

``I don't know if it's just that (Harper) doesn't have anybody in his entourage ... who is capable of explaining this to him, or if it's just that he's ignoring all of these facts.

``He knows that his political base doesn't like same-sex marriage.''

www.365Gay.com 2005

It's the birthday of Mark Twain, born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, in Florida, Missouri (1835), who wrote Life on the Mississippi (1883), The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), and his own favorite, The Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc (1891). He was cynical and irreverent, but he had a tender spot for cats. There were always kittens in the house, and he gave them names like "Sin" and "Sour Mash." "Mamma has morals," said his daughter Suzy, "and Papa has cats."

He swore constantly and without shame. His streams of profanity broke his wife's heart on a daily basis. One day he cut himself shaving, and she heard a string of oaths from the bathroom. She resolved to move him to repentance, and she repeated back to him all the bad words he had just said. He smiled at her and shook his head. "You have the words, Livy," he said, "but you'll never learn the tune."

After he published The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, he found himself awash in cash, which he invested in a typesetting machine that was very complicated and very ingenious and demanded more and more investment and in the end would not work. He had to declare bankruptcy, and he decided to go on a worldwide lecture tour, the proceeds of which he would use to pay back all of his creditors. His visits to Africa and Asia convinced him that a God who allowed Christians to believe that they were better than savages was a God he wanted no part of. He was a funny man and is remembered for his humorous sayings. He said, "It is better to keep you mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt." He also said, "Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life."

I'm not thrilled about the prospect of a federal election in January, but I'm hopeful that Canadians will again reject the idea of (right-wing, closed-minded) Stephen Harper as Prime Minister.