Saturday, September 12, 2009

Frank Sinatra and Antonio Carlos Jobim - Erbacce interview

Over the last week I've been interviewed, via email, by Alan Corkish, the co-editor of Erbacce magazine, which is to publish an edition dedicated to the Edge Hill Poetry and Poetics Research Group. Alan asked me what colour I would recommend for the cover, and I replied 'Blue', which led to a mild Frank ('Old Blue Eyes') Sinatra reference. So here he is, with Antonio Carlos, in exemplary relaxed mode. If you can't see the connecction between this and poetry may I point you towards the fact that this bossa nova song (like many others by Jobim) features the lyrics of poet Vincius de Moreas. Additionally, readers are directed to the anthology Sinatra, but buddy, I'm a Kind of Poem, edited by Gilbert L Gigliotti, and published by Entasis Press, Washington DC (2008), to see the range of contemporary poets who have written about Sinatra. (It includes my own 'Angel at the Junk Box', which appears in Complete Twentieth Century Blues.)

However, all of the above is a just a chain of excuses unrolled to justify keeping this extraordinary clip from a test run to link to YouTube!