Football Poets

Football Poetry Thoughts

¶ 1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 ‘thoughtball poet’ questions: Q:(bold )
Football Poets edititor answers : A:(light) after each question .

¶ 2 Leave a comment on verse 2 0 Q: Essentially What is the aim of Football Poets now? Is is to showcase work of lots of poets regardless of how good the work actually is?

¶ 3 Leave a comment on verse 3 0 A: Hi thoughtball poet – yes and no. We look for and enjoy reading quality poems but are here to encourage writing and reading per se. No-one is excluded and obviously we want to encourage creativity and thoughtfulness across the board. Poetry and this little site is for everyone- regardless of race, colour, creed, level of education etc; How discriminatory would you like us it be? Everyone has a voice and searches to express themselves. This is a free way of being instantly published and seen and hopefully to be inspired or influenced by others who love the international language that is this game.

¶ 4 Leave a comment on verse 4 0 Q: Is it to pioneer football poetry?

¶ 5 Leave a comment on verse 5 0 A: Yes defintely and I would love to have the tools and money to be able to develop it in a bigger way with back-up. Online we hope it ‘pioneers’ people, perhaps even for the first time towaerds being confident enough to reflect, develop and be emotive in verse while also wanting to make it accessible to all, much in the same way that rap is used increasingly more and more to day in education. It was never set up to be a select bunch of highbrow snobby luvvie ‘poets’. ..

¶ 6 Leave a comment on verse 6 0 “Most people ignore most poetry ..
..because most poetry ignores most people” Adrian Mitchell .RIP

¶ 7 Leave a comment on verse 7 0 Q: Is it to educate through use of football in literacy?

¶ 8 Leave a comment on verse 8 0 A: Yes defintely.. but more than that-to inspire like it says on the site. But just look at the flak the goverment have received for using the Olympics with all our money “to inspire”.

¶ 9 Leave a comment on verse 9 0 Q: I’m not sure what this site now represents you see. there must be some great poetry in here but to be honest a lot isnt. now that’s fine if you are happy to have a curates egg, but is that the end result? are football people just too tribal as a group to appreciate the work of rival tribes?

¶ 10 Leave a comment on verse 10 0 A: I would say people here ARE more and more open to rival tribes and different views . We have passionate fans of one club who write purely on their club aspect but also tackle other subject brought up by others. We also have people who have introduced us to great aspects/ historical figures and great moments and games that have had a profund effect or influence on us all. We have always tried in our incredibly limited way to encourage subjects which ignite and then change. This means though, because of its current long-time techological limited situation that it has remained a blog type site.

¶ 11 Leave a comment on verse 11 0 Q: Is regular poetry too snobby to allow football poetry access to a more traditional platorm?

¶ 12 Leave a comment on verse 12 0 A: No .But it will never be mainstream. Why woud we want it to be?
To generalise and discard ‘regular’ poetry as being snobby is strangel.
And what is ‘regular’ poetry anyway? Though I think i understand what you are trying to say? More and more, with football’s ridiculous infuence on our lives and within the media (alongside its endlessly soaring money aspect /peopletrying to emulate celebrity lifestyles / banking system collapse, wars/ suffering)…yet still we escape and are drawn like moths weekly to its strange facinanation. We strive to express and share our little observations of it all – our passion for it and the longing to win, survive, succeed and be inspired . Life and death subjects really.. with a ball on grass! We cling to the game and write our feelings while for many, from Stroud to Senegal, we feel totally priced out.

¶ 13 Leave a comment on verse 13 0 However, I’ve lived with being called Crispin my whole life (my mum and my grandmother who brought me up when my dad left home were into Shakespeare ).. and when I got asked to do football poetry stuff on racism iin Welsh prisons twice with sex offenders and football hooligans, I said to the warden.. let’s just keep it to Cris !

¶ 14 Leave a comment on verse 14 0 I’ve also got up at festivals/open mikes/ straight poetry and performance poetry gigs for years for nothing and equally at up-market middle class ‘regular(?)’ literature festivals ..or in the high street and at Glastonbury/ Big Green Gathering etc; and always squeezed live footie poems in . But it will alway fare best with a football loving audience and on a football related platform.

¶ 15 Leave a comment on verse 15 0 Q:I remember Swapping Shirts with Shakespeare, it should have been a great advert for football poetry, Sir Tom Finney had provided the forward too i seem to recall, now come on why did this slip away, you had people (and editors) working in education who should and could have done more, Irespect certainly received enough publicity…again not a negative knee jerk rant but a thought out observation ?

¶ 16 Leave a comment on verse 16 0 A: i can only speak for myself . Time restraints i guess. Nursing a dinosaur – self-employed survival…common excuse but true. I still have the cover design though!”Those in education who edited here over the years , had hard education jobs to hold down and careers to maintain somehow and juggled for as long as they could with their time.

¶ 17 Leave a comment on verse 17 0 Q: Basically tho i reiterate What is the aim of this website now, and if the ethos is to simply just have people post up whatever they want to write albeit football related can it actually then be anymore than it already is…?

¶ 18 Leave a comment on verse 18 0 A: The aim has always been to promote and develop literacy through football. The Education Through Football Project , which I was involved in twice a year for a few years, started at Chelsea and it embraced art, poetry and more. Football Poets exists to encourage reading and writing of the written and spoken word through football. .Page and stage. Yes of course it can be a million things more than it is.already .I assume you write or perhaps submit here under a pen name maybe.. or maybe did once and became disenchanted ..but look you are still here? Probably as frustrated by it as we are. Are you saying we should just dump the site that loads love? I hope not ..we will carry on anyway . I

¶ 19 Leave a comment on verse 19 0 I’m sorry if we fail and are broke..but we try. Honest we do! Crispin