Poet at the Bat: Cricket Test Series Finds Laureate

Fine will write a series of twenty-five poems (one for each day of the Test series) exploring the nature of the game and relationships between opposing sides and their supporters. The poems will be published on the Web, and  Mr. Fine  will also write a series of  "poetical-anthropological essays" based on his discussion with the self-named Barmy Army, a group of staunch English soccer fans, His uniform will be a white T shirt emblazoned with "I speak of bats, balls,and wickets."

All of this is good fun, of course, but sports metaphors have been invoked to explain and promote all sorts of  human endeavors, most notably war. In a beautifully written meditation on the work of  Siegfried Sassoon, Mr. Fine concludes that "war is sport without love."

Conversely, sport becomes "war with love". And it is from the poet's two great interests, poetry and cricket, that this innovative project was born. Poets, after all, make metaphors, and in so doing seek the commonality between two ostensibly very different kinds of things.

Just as importantly, Fine hopes to attract people who are either uninterested or uninformed about poetry to look at it in a new way, and perhaps to buy a volume or two the next time they visit the bookstore. Fine notes that in the U.K. a new book of poetry sells only about 500 copies, a sticky wicket indeed for both publishers and poets.

For those who don't know, the Ashes is a Test ( the longest form of cricket between competing nations) played between England and Australia. Each year the matches are played in the previous series winner's country. It is necessary for the visiting team to win in order to force the next series back to their country.

Visit the Web site, and read. After all, it is not often that we get to be present at the birth of what may turn into a sporting and literary tradition.