Roses Are Red

Sydney Morning Herald

Friday February 10, 2006

Alicia Wood

Violets are blue. Bad love poems make you hurl. Alicia Wood reports.

"I think poetry on something like Valentine's Day is like sex or pizza. Even if it's bad, it's kind of good," says Benito Di Fonzo, who has co-hosted the Bardflys spoken-word and poetry nights for more than a decade with ABC 702's Tug Dumbly.

Whether you think poetry is the language of love, or as cheesy as bad pizza, there is no escaping it this week.

At the State Library, Susannah Fullerton is reading poetry about courtship, marriage and "love that's gone a bit wrong".

"[Many poets] have written some of their greatest verse as a result of being in love. The poet Robert Burns said that it was only after he fell in love that he realised he was a poet," she says.

But why are love and poetry so inseparable?

"Because poetry is a language of emotion," Di Fonzo says.

"It's an irrational language; it's stupid and violent and meaningless."

This stupid, violent language can be your Valentine's Day soundtrack, overlooking the harbour with a picnic and a worthy someone, courtesy of Woollahra Library and poetry readers such as John Tranter and Delia Falconer.

If you can't wait for your poetry fix, New Zealand's Jenny Bornholdt and Penrith's Jennifer Maiden are reading their work at Penrith Regional Gallery this Sunday. The gallery also has some of Bornholdt's verse inscribed on vases as part of a Noel McKenna exhibition.

Di Fonzo has some advice in case you decide to skip the professionals and turn your own verse.

"It's good if you have a little double meaning in there to make it work outside the love poem sense.

"But why bother? It's just there to get you a root anyway.""Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness..." Benito Di Fonzo warms up for Tuesday.

POETRY

Trans-Tasman poetry Sunday, 4pm, Penrith Regional Gallery, 86 River Road.

Poets' picnic Tuesday, 6-8pm, Blackburn Gardens, 548 New South Head Road,

Double Bay

Love poetry Wednesday, 12.30-1.30pm, State Library, Macquarie Street, $16.50/$11.

Bardflys returns March 7, 8pm, Hotel Hollywood, Surry Hills.

© 2006 Sydney Morning Herald

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