I have been reading and writing poetry since I was seven years old.
My first school report said that I was best at recitation and art.
Recitation!
You won't find that in the curriculum today. But maybe Minister Gove will bring it back in the near future. If students are going to have to learn poetry, let it be good poetry.
I can remember being frightened to go to school and read "The Charge of The Light Brigade", which I love today, in spite of its glory in warfare.
As a writer, I started with Limericks, inspired by Popeye on TV. I composed them in strings to amuse my friends. This naturally led on to Edward Lear when I was sent off to boarding school.
I loved how he delighted in playing with words. But I did not like his limericks because he lazily repeated the first line with the last.
It didn't work for me.
Today there is a lot of stuff that doesn't work for me as well. I will be trying to show what is not so good about modern poetry as well as sharing stuff I think is great.
This blog will have rants and criticism, guest commentary, poems and poem-pictures. It is a brother blog to my
http://poetryandpicturesatthemuseum.blogspot.co.uk/2012_07_01_archive.html
which looks at poems written around inspiring objects from museums.
I am particularly interested in combining imagery with poetry. Sometimes an image cries out for a poem. Sometimes a poem does not work without the image or images which inspired it.
The book which inspired me to create my own poem-pictures was "The darkling thrush and other poems by Thomas Hardy, with illustrations from Gordon Beningfield."
For the most part the images evoke the world of the poems so beautifully. There are some odd exceptions. There is no thrush at all in the picture which goes with the title poem. Maybe it is only the voice of the thrush that makes all the difference for the poet here.
Thrushes are becoming rare. I am so happy that there are now two, which come to feed in our garden. One flew into the house and had to be carefully escorted to freedom. I was really worried about her survival. But she is doing well now.
So here is my first offering;
The Darkling Thrush
I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-grey,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.
The land's sharp features seemed to be
The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.
At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.
So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.
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