December Meeting

Our December meeting was something of a triumph of determination to beat the bad weather and bitter cold and enjoy some pre-Christmas poetry, and not a carol in sight! Among the poems were several on wintry themes, such as ‘Skater’ by Fiona Sampson, one of the poets nominated for the T.S.Eliot prize this year. Philip Larkin’s deeply atmospheric sonnet ‘Winter Nocturne’ continued the theme of frozen winter nights, while Edna St Vincent Millay’s mournful sonnet ‘What lips my lips have kissed’ overlaid wintry motifs with grief for the lost young men of WW1. Yet another sonnet, curtailed but not quite ‘curtal’ was Theodore Roethke’s ‘Dolor’. Changing the tone but not the form, Milton’s sonnet ‘Lawrence, virtuous father of virtuous son’ mention winter in order to celebrate the power of companionship. After so many sonnets, Henry Vaughan’s ‘The Bird’ began with a storm and after 6 stanzas ended in brightness. Not everyone chose seasonal poetry. Sylvia Plath’s ‘Aquatic Nocturne’ plunged deep into the submarine world, while Carol Ann Duffy’s ‘The Diet’ plunged into the modern [female] psyche. Finally, Hamlet’s Ghost’s speech ‘So lust, though to a radiant angel linked’ took us into adultery, incest, and murder.

Our next meeting will take Ice as its theme. Let's hope it is only a topic for poetry, not a fact of life on January 8th.