Grevel Lindop

WELCOME to the Home Page of Grevel Lindop, poet, biographer, critic, editor, essayist, and writer on just about everything...

TRAVELS ON THE DANCE FLOOR was RADIO FOUR'S BOOK OF THE WEEK from August 11-15, and the book, published by Andre Deutsch, part of the Carlton group, is now available from booksellers and online from amazon.co.uk.

When poet and biographer Grevel Lindop took up salsa dancing in rainy Manchester, he thought he was just keeping a New Year’s resolution to get some exercise. His only qualifications were two left feet (size twelve) and some excruciating memories of ballroom dancing lessons long ago in adolescence. But salsa has a way of taking over your life. Intense, intimate and addictive (a lot like sex, in fact) this adrenalin-pumping Afro-Latin-American dance style, which is rapidly becoming a worldwide craze, soon turned into a passion. He set out on an odyssey to discover the roots of salsa, learn the most authentic moves and find dance heaven in the heartland of this rich, kaleidoscopic tradition whose very name means a ‘sauce’ or spicy mixture.

His quest took him through the streets, clubs, bars and dancehalls of Cuba and Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and Miami, bringing encounters with musicians and dancers, poets, artists and crooked cops, voodoo priests, hookers, hustlers and thieves - and even the occasional goddess!

The story of his adventures and misadventures on this amazing journey makes a spellbinding read.

GRAMMAR OF UNREASON: A course at the Poetry School, Manchester, Spring 2009.

Grevel Lindop writes:

"I've now spent more than forty years reading, writing, teaching, reviewing and editing poetry. I've also judged several competitions and won the odd prize. Lately I've been increasingly concerned to find a way to hand on to other writers as much as possible of my practical experience as a poet. Some of this has been achieved in poetry workshops and creative writing courses, but this time I'd like to set my own agenda so I can cover all the aspects I want to share with other writers, both new and experienced.

This is why I've decided, this time, to use the format of four talks or lectures, followed by discussion. That way I can set an agenda - but you can change, deepen or question it!

The lectures will be totally honest to my deepest beliefs and my personal experience about the nature of poetry, the use of language and form, the many ways of communicating your work to readers, the business of confronting competitions, readings, open mics, magazine and book publication - and the sheer problem of surviving day-to-day as a poet in a crowded, cash-strapped and constantly changing environment.

I want to say what I really think and have experienced, ranging from quite profound spiritual things to inconvenient truths that the poetry world doesn't always like to admit!

This may well be the last full course I shall give for the Poetry School or any other creative writing organisation so I hope enough fellow-writers will come along to make it all worthwhile, and maybe start a few debates too!"

For full details of dates and how to book, please see the Poetry School website at Poetryschool.com

WHAT OTHER WRITERS HAVE SAID...

'This poet's best gifts - care for detail, love of Nature, clear eye and formal excellence. Every poem shows us more than we have seen with our own eyes.' - Elizabeth Jennings, The Independent.

'Every trick in the poet's bag works for him as for a master, so unobtrusively that it is only at the second or third reading that you become aware that the thought and feeling...are supported by an amazingly intricate web of sound.' - R.V. Bailey, The North.

'Grevel Lindop celebrates a cosmic harmony that upholds the greatest and the least parts of the universe...I find something akin to those early French films like Rene Claire's Sous les toits de Paris in the eye with which he habitually sees the world. [Yet] whatever parallel such poetry may have with Impressionism, the atmosphere is unmistakably English. His perspectives open on the stories within stories, where what is "real" and what is illusory are woven together. Grevel Lindop does not see the world about him as in need of "improving", for he sees all with the eye of love.' - Kathleen Raine, Temenos Academy Review.

'A lyric voice that handles images well, that distinguishes - as few poets do - the erotic from the sexual, that moves language in and out of metaphor with skill and grace...It reminds you of an ordered and structured world. It is somewhat the voice of a happy spirit, with, maybe, a measure of regret and an interesting intimation of waste.' - Eavan Boland, PN Review

'Transparently accomplished. Lucid of contour, with a syntax almost too elegaically attuned to form, his work displays...the kind of internal 'itinerary' which (in Mandelstam's image) is the mark of achieved poetry.' - John Kerrigan, London Review of Books.