Destiny Poets
Uniting and celebrating the best "Writers" and "Poetry" from around the world centred out of Destiny Church Wakefield
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ARCHIVE MATERIAL :Gleaned from Tony Hannan’s Rugby League Archive
By Louis Kasatkin on Monday, 31 March 2014 at 10:45
February 26, 2010
Wakefield’s poet-in-residence
Super League programmes column – April 2000
PARDON me for mentioning another magazine in these august pages (it isn’t August, it’s April – ed), but in the course of the week’s weft I happened across the latest Big Issue.
The Big Issue, for those who are socially unaware, is the magazine/newspaper sold by homeless people on the streets of our towns and cities, with a view to them “helping themselves” as Carol’s Victorian dad Samuel Smilies might have put it. Anyroad, in the latest edition there is a magnificent profile of a poet by somebody called Ally Fogg. And not just any poet either. Step forward Wakefield Trinity Wildcats’ latest signing Louis Kasatkin.
Now Louis, for those of you who know about fanzines and stuff, used to edit Castleford’sRebel Yell, but these days he can be found wandering lonely as a Lancashire Lynx supporter at Belle Vue. He is, in short, Wakefield’s poet-in-residence. Whether that mean he lives permanently in the East Stand is anybody’s guess, but what is certain is that he is now officially in charge of putting together the odd quatrain or two on behalf of the Wakey faithful. Or, as Louis himself puts it, to “apply semiotics to the cultural struggle of northern England.”
Just what an inedible milk pudding has to do with anything I don’t know, but what I do know is that this a very entertaining piece and well worth a look if you can grab a copy. My regular readers in the Wildcats programme will already know of Louis’s writings, given that he has a regular column – Umberto Eco’s Ashtray – a bit nearer the front of The Wildcat than mine. And as we speak he is probably ambling gaily over yonder scoreboard end, gazing at an open canto, hand on forehead, pondering the futility of man’s existence and whether the refs have got it in for Andy Kelly’s men or not.
“(Rugby League) is not the most obvious arena to exercise the most ethereal and effete literary form,” writes Fogg. “But then think of The Iliad or The Charge of the Light Brigade- an epic rendering of heroic battles – and it begins to make some kind of sense. Or as much sense as anything makes in the company of Kasatkin.”
Louis, I’m happy to report, is ever so slightly potty. Once upon a time he wrote as Rugby League correspondent for Leeds’ Other Paper – which I also had a cartoon or two in myself – his pieces packed with classical allusions and surreal jokes. How about this? “Heroes and warrior princes, deeds fabled in inexhaustible eidolon, their countenances resplendent with mythic grandeur, return to the Casus Belli.” Eh? Now I’m not thick. I can do the Suncrossword. But something just went flying over my head and it wasn’t a Steve McNamara penalty attempt.
If Louis serves any purpose at all though, it is that he vigorously splatters those old Rugby League stereotypes on the wall of, er, life. We are not all whippet rearing, pigeon fancying, flat cap wearing, dour, miserable sods, are we?
“Poetry and rugby are both part of the continuing fabric of cultural expression…,” he opines. “They give meaning. Whether the fans or the audience are enthralled by it is neither here nor there. The point is it has been performed. It has been internalised, consumed, made sense of, and something is gained by it. That’s all it ever is.”
Quite.
Public Correspondence : ARCHIVE MATERIAL : 02 / 04 / 2014 : Yorkshire Evening Post
Lacklustre view of UK education
I FELT heartbroken after reading your article about the school that will be teaching its own pupils English as a foreign language. Then again, I ought not to have been too disappointed, given the 60 years long unending deterioration and implosion of teaching standards and academic attainments in the UK. My own experience, albeit as a pupil disadvantaged in a far more institutionally racist and pupil-on-pupil bullying educational culture than would be tolerated let alone imagined today, calls into question the lacklustre and appeasing nature of UK education in general as exemplified by the school in your article.
Being of Austrian/Russian parentage and speaking only German at home, actually made me bilingual at the age of five and drove me to be top of the class in English year after year. Given the far less arduous welcome from their hosts these days, I cannot understand why the children of incomers are assumed to “need” additional privileges. A lack of institutional will and purpose and the UK being the only EU member not to insist on linguistic competence as a condition of residency is the true source of the problem.
Louis Kasatkin, Founder of Destiny Poets,
#DestinyPoetsUK #LouisKasatkin #WakefieldPoetInResidence
http://www.destinypoets.co.uk
** EVERYWHERE **
Setu English
Board of Advisors:
Louis Kasatkin, UK
Graham Vivian Lancaster, South Africa
Joneve McCormick, USA
Santiago Villafania, Philippines
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https://www.setumag.com/2018/12/by-louis-kasatkin-louis-is.html
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http://www.setumag.com/2017/01/poem-by-louis-kasatkin.html
https://www.placesofpoetry.org.uk/poem/23494/?
https://murmurs.ml/2019/04/daily-routine
http://www.thebeautifulspace.co.uk/a-journal-of-mind-art-and-poetry/category/parkinsons-a-poem-by-louis-kasatkin
https://www.thebeautifulspace.co.uk/a-journal-of-mind-art-and-poetry/archives/07-2019
http://www.schlock.co.uk/pb/wp_99271197/wp_99271197.html
https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/d5f5d8_55e39990a222481a857ebd83123dc693.pdf
https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/d5f5d8_eac636c6c7d94e52b1fa760a23aada19.pdf
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http://medusaskitchen.blogspot.com/2016/03/opportunities-like-seagulls.html?m=1
http://medusaskitchen.blogspot.com/2019/10/the-stranger.html
Board of Senior Editors:
Louis Kasatkin
Writer, Poet, Editor, Administrator
Destiny Poet
U.K.
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