Tower and Fountain

January Meeting

2012-01-08T15:51:00.000Z

On an unseasonably mild day, calm after a week of stormy winds, we gathered for a Free Choice meeting. Emily Bronte’s ‘Tell me tell me smiling child’ charmed with its simple form. Staying in the 19th century Christina Rossetti’s ‘A Birthday’ – again simple at first appearance – generated a vigorous debate between the humanists and others in the group as we thrashed out the suggestion that it was overly sentimental, indebted to pre-Raphaelite imagery, and whether shells can ‘paddle’. Sir Walter Scott’s ‘Edinburgh’ from Marmion was much less controversial, while Adrienne Rich’s ‘Peeling Onions’ was approved and struck a chord with all those among us who suffer from peeling onions. An extract from John Donne’s ‘The Storme’ showed the poet in rare wryly humorous vein, while T.S. Eliot’s Little Gidding swept us wonderfully into a particularly English beauty and spirituality.

Our topic for February will be ‘Offspring’.

December meeting

2011-12-11T10:48:00.000Z

Almost the end of another year, but we did not have a Christmas or a Winter theme, but a Nautical one. And an interesting selection resulted. From Brian Patten’s enigmatic ‘Ghost Ship’, to Sophie Hannah’s intricate ‘Rondeau Redouble’, by way of Oscar Wilde’s sonnet ‘Impression du Voyage’ we had plenty to discuss, although this poem divided opinion slightly – was it tongue-in-cheek some of us wondered? Matthew Arnold’s famous and beautiful Dover Beach was less difficult, as was the short ‘Journey’ by William Orange, while Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s ‘The White Ship’ provided an easily assimilated narrative before we were plunged into the complexities of H.D.’s ‘Helen in Egypt’ from Eidolon Book III. A stimulating afternoon all round.

At our meeting in January we will have Free Choice again.

November Meeting

2011-11-06T15:59:00.000Z

We did not have a specific topic for this month, but the proximity of Remembrance Sunday seemed to permeate the free choice poems. We began with Wilfred Owen’s rivetting account of the effects of battle on land and individual alike in ‘The Show’. This divided opinions between those who disliked the intensity of the vocabulary of horror, and those who saw it as showing ‘decorum’ in the old sense of fitting the language to the topic. Keith Douglas’s light but intense ‘Canoe’ continued the theme of soldiers contemplating their fate. He died at Normandy aged 24. Modest to look at, this poem is more complex than it seems. Alun Lewis’s ‘All Day It Has Rained’, reflected the tedium of waiting for action in camp in England. Its emphasis on the cheerful companionship in idleness in bucolic (if wet) surrounding, was applauded, as was the stark contrast of its ending. It was particularly significant for us as it mentions other places in Hampshire.

A change of topic and pace came in the form of A.S.J. Tessimond’s ‘Black Monday Lovesong’. And Wendy Cope’s inventive ‘The Lavatory Attendant’ was well received. James Elroy Flecker’s ‘To a Poet a Thousand years Hence’ gave a charming sense of ‘handing on the baton’ of poetry, while Ben Jonson’s ‘To My Old Faithful Servant …’ records Jonson’s commendation to his servant, and perhaps apprentice, the playwright Richard Brome. Frank O’Hara’s ‘Ave Maria’ continued and extended the sense of witty comment, but we returned to a more thoughtful mood with John Donne’s ‘A Hymn to Christ, at the Authors Last Going Into Germany’. It is a meditation on death replete with Donne’s grief and uncertainty, it was also the poem used to dedicate our session to our late and much missed friend and colleague Brigitte.

Our topic for next time – is N – and the theme is all things nautical.

Meeting 1st October

2011-10-09T14:51:00.000+01:00

This meeting took ‘Murder’ as its ‘M’ theme. No one relied on extracts from any of Shakespeare’s great murders. No ‘Put out the light and then put out the light’ (Othello), nor ‘I can smile and smile and be a villain’ (Richard III), but a fascinating selection of poems from several centuries. These included ‘Dilemma of a Would-be Writer’ by Daphne Helliwell; ‘The Murdered Traveller’, by William Cullen Bryant; ‘The Poet’s Obligation’ by Pablo Neruda; ‘The Staffordshire Murderer’ by James Fenton, ‘He Fell Among Thieves’, by Sir Henry Newbolt; Robert Browning’s ‘The Laboratory’; John Heath-Stubbs poetic take on murder mystery novels – ‘Send for Lord Timothy’, and J.R.R. Tolkien’s creepy fantasy piece ‘The Mewlips’.

Our meeting in November will be Free Choice, but it is Bonfire Night so maybe we can expect fireworks!

September

2011-09-04T12:05:00.000+01:00

After such a long absence from our usual routine of meetings everyone seemed glad to be back, and we celebrated a return to our discussions with the usual wide variety of writers and free choice topics. We began with a delightful 17th century lyric, quite clearly written to be sung, 'There is a Lady Sweet and Kind' by Thomas Ford, court musician to Prince Henry, James I and VI's short-lived son. Two of us remembered hearing it set to music when we were younger, and the poem called up other memories of learning to sing at school. We moved on to a very different poem by Simon Armitage ' The Six Comeuppances', beginning with the memorable line 'My mind is like a tree full of monkeys'! This was followed by Mark Haddon's 'Poets', a wry and whimsical piece. Section IV of Matthew Arnold's 'Faded Leaves' is called 'On the Rhine', and this prompted us to wonder why poetry like this is no longer written. The detrimental effect of modern instant gratification was our conclusion. The mood changed with Pam Ayres humorous and poignant 'The Dolly on the Dustcart'. Still tending towards humour, 'Achilles - for David Beckham', by Carol Ann Duffy, showed an accomplished take on a contemporary event by the poet laureate. Finally, the tiny, compact 'Cut Grass' by Philip Larkin gave us much to consider.

Next month we reach 'M' in our alphabetical list, and the topic will be 'murder'! Much Shakespearean tragedy springs to mind!

July 2nd

2011-08-07T16:06:00.000+01:00

Firstly, apologies for the lateness of this blog report on our July meeting, and secondly, apologies that August had to be cancelled owing to illness. By the time we get to September we may all need to look back and recall what we did in July, so here is the selection of our poems on Love.

We began with uncomfortably perceptive 'The Cat Goddess' by Rupert Graves, followed by 'The Ballad of Love's Skeleton', by Thomas Hardy. A Sonnet by Christina Rosetti divided opinion as to whether it referred to her mother or a lover. Rupert Brooke's 'The Great Lover', was followed by 'The Mess of Love' by D.H. Lawrence, and a perversely brutal piece by the early 19thC Eliza Ado which printed out as 'Reveizge' but may be 'Revenge' as it desires to inflict the sufferings of love on an enemy. Shakespeare's culturally perverse sonnet 'My Mistress Eyes are Nothing Like the Sun' lightened the mood, and a translation of one of the ghazals of the late 17thC Mughal princess Zebunisa - 'You with the dark burly hair and the breathtaking eyes' gave us the chance to enjoy her rather daring celebration of female desire.

September's topic will be Free Choice, held over from August.

June Meeting

2011-06-05T16:34:00.000+01:00

This afternoon’s meeting began with and example (in translation) of probably the oldest poet we have encountered so far as we heard one of Horace’s Odes. To be precise it was Odes, Book1, No. 6 by Quintus Horatius Flaccus (BC65-8), trans. James Michie. Following on from Thursday, and entirely by accident, we also had Tony Harrison’s poignant ‘Book Ends’, Luke Wright’s amusing lesson on time management: ‘When Instant Coffee Just Isn’t Enough’, Seamus Heaney’s ‘Death of a Naturalist’, which divided opinion, ‘Ken Edwards’s ‘Rilke Driving School’, which has demanded that we track down the statue of Rilke in the Queen Victoria hotel in Ronda (it does exist). Amazingly, 2 people brought Emily Bronte’s ‘High Waving Heather'. Roald Dahl’s version of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ amused us, and ‘Titanic’ by David Slavitt challenged our desire for a watery grave, but not so much as the handout kindly produced by Sandy on Found Verse. This was a response to our ongoing debate about what constitutes a poem.

Opinion, mostly detrimental, revolves around the problem of how one distinguished a poem in free verse from a piece of ordinary prose merely arranged in lines. The handout seemed to prove that there is no real distinction. This demanded further consideration and no doubt we will revisit the topic again (and again!)
Our topic for next month will be Love.

Tower and Fountain 2

2011-05-10T20:37:00.001+01:00

A separate blog page is now available. It will show the poems read and discussed at the Thursday meetings.

Saturday May 7th

2011-05-10T20:20:00.000+01:00

The topic today was Kings (and Queens), as the letter for this session was K. The range of poems was fascinating as always. A.A. Milne’s ‘The King’s Breakfast’ didn’t require much analysing, but was simply delightful. W.N Herbert’s ‘The King and Queen of Dumfriesshire’ could hardly have been more different as it depicted the bitterness of failed marriage in powerful images. Two poems by Kipling recalled English history of different periods: ‘The Reeds of Runnymede’ looking back to 1215 and the beginnings the English justice system. ‘The Widow at Windsor’, one of The Barrack-room Ballads’ was startlingly political. The tiny ‘Epitaph on Charles II’ by John Wilmott, earl of Rochester summed up the failings of that significant monarch in a quatrain. Opinions about Elizabeth I’s ‘On Monsieur’s Departure’ varied considerably, while John Betjeman’s ‘Death of King George V’ turned out to be more impressive than some of us had expected. Emily Dickinson’s ‘I heard a Fly Buzz’ only mentions ‘the King’ in passing, but the poem prompted comments, as did the off-topic ‘Hope’, by Christine Bousfield (it’s not often that the making of lemon curd is mentioned in a poem).

Our next Saturday meeting (4th June) will be Free Choice, as will the second meeting of the Thursday afternoon poetry group (2nd June).

'Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote' > April is the cruellest month ...

2011-04-03T12:47:00.001+01:00

Oddly, as our topic was Free Choice, no one brought either Chaucer's famous opening lines to the Canterbury Tales, nor T.S. Eliot's callous parody from The Waste Land, but we did have a number of poems that picked up the feeling of spring with their use of flowers images.

The poems chosen for this afternoon’s meeting were the provocative ‘Two Scavengers in a Truck, Two Beautiful People in a Mercedes’ by the Beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti. This had been left over for several months but was definitely worth waiting for. Among the others were some short selections from A.E. Housman’s charming ‘A Shropshire Lad’, Philip Larkin’s ‘Sympathy in White Major’ – a poem that taxed our hermeneutic powers and called on different cultural contexts; Archibald MacLeish’s deceptively compact but equally testing ‘Ars Poetica’; the exquisite and finely crafted ‘The Spring’ by the Cavalier poet Thomas Carew; selections from ‘The Old Vicarage, Grantchester’, by Rupert Brooke, which divided us into those who liked the very English images of the garden at the start and those who felt it was too ‘sweet’. Balancing the nostalgia we also had Martin Southall’s ‘May 1945’, and Ezra Pound’s plea for classical rigour in ‘The Return’.

Next month our topic will be ‘Kings and Queens’ – so there should be plenty of scope!

March Meeting (with apologies for lateness)

2011-03-29T20:52:00.001+01:00

For our March meeting we took Journeys as our topic, and this produced plenty of variety. A number of poems dealt with death as a journey, but others were more optimistic. Among the poems read were Russell Edson’s, ‘A Journey Through the Moonlight’, John Jarman’s ‘Embarkation, 1942’; W.B. Yeats’s ‘The Song of the Wandering Aengus’, which prompted many different approaches within the group; the very entertaining ‘From Epistle to John Bradshaw Esq.’ by the 17thC poet Charles Cotton; Thomas Hardy’s ‘Weathers’ – setting out the journey from Spring to Autumn, Philip Larkin’s thought-provoking ‘Dockery and Son’; ‘Baby Song’, by Thom Gunn; W.H. Auden’s ‘Johnny’; Alan Albers’s inventively cheeky, ‘As I was coming to school’; and Hermann Hesse’s small but intense ‘On a Journey’. This raised the old concern about reading poetry in translation, and what may be lost in the process.
Next month we will again have Free Choice.
 Please note, membership of the Saturday Poetry Reading Group is now closed because we are unable to accommodate any more participants.

 A new Poetry Reading Group is being launched.

 It will meet monthly on the first Thursday of each month from 2.15 – 3.45 pm

 It will begin on May 5th.

 New members are most welcome to join this Thursday group.

 For more information please contact Dr. Lynn Forest-Hill, email: lynnevdaATclaraDOTcoDOTuk

February Meeting: Free Choice

2011-02-06T15:22:00.000Z

We had a very busy meeting this afternoon. 16 people attended and we ran out of time so some poems will be held over to another ‘free choice’ meeting. The poems that were read prompted a wide range of responses. They also fell into clear categories. Perhaps these were an unconscious response to the miserable weather, but we had several poems on death and grief, including the horrific poem for Holocaust Day ‘More Light! More Light!: for Heinrich Blucher and Hannah Arendt’ by Anthony Hecht. Christopher Reed’s ‘Afterlife’ at least allowed some choice in the disposition of the body, while Thomas Hardy’s ‘The Voice’, remembered the dead with regretful nostalgia. The feminist icon ‘Lady Lazarus’ by Sylvia Plath called forth the usual comments. We moved on from death itself to various somatic topics. Roger McGough’s ‘The Wrong Beds’ was taken to sum up general human experience. More beds evoked melancholic observations in Elizabeth Jennings ‘One Flesh’. Away from beds, David Scott-Blackhall’s ‘Because it’s There’ discussed his own blindness, while Mimi Khalvati expressed female togetherness in ‘The Waiting House’. The body images in ‘So Do We’ by Elsa Linguanti caused much debate and we concluded for the most part that the poem was an intense consideration of language. After so much concentration on the fragility of the human body Blake’s ‘The Tyger’ was a timely reminder of physical strength, and Joan B. Howe’s ‘Rosemary’ at least had the brightness of flowers, even thought its associations are with death and remembrance.

Our theme next time (March) will be Journeys.

January 8th Meeting

2011-01-09T12:32:00.002Z

After the snow before Christmas we have been enjoying a brief milder spell of weather, but the memory of the bitter cold made our topic of ICE perfectly appropriate for this meeting. Among the poem discussed were Wilfred Gibson's incantatory 'The Ice Cart', Archibald Lumpsman's 'A January Morning', both of which contrasted brilliant colours against dullness, and Matthew Sweeneys ' The Appointment', a puzzling, rather mythic poem. John Clare's 'January - a Winter's Day' from his long work The Shepherd's Calendar delighted us with its simplicity, as did Shakespeare's song of Winter from Love's Labour's Lost. We had more Shakespeare, with Sonnet 97 'How like the Winter...' Robert Frost's 'An Old Man's Winter Night' provoked some diverse opinions, but not so many as Wallace Steven's provocative 'The Emperor of Ice Cream'. Judith Wright's 'Halfway' about a tadpole trapped in ice was a more unusual image, while J.H. Prynne's 'Charm Against too many Apples' led to a good deal of discussion.

February meeting will again be Free Choice.

December Meeting

2010-12-08T21:20:00.000Z

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.

November Meeting

2010-11-07T11:34:00.001Z

The afternoon after Bonfire Night, and just a week after Hallowe’en, seems apt for our discussion of poems on the twin topic of Heaven and Hell. The balance tipped towards Hell, but included poems that asserted the reality and the unreality of Heaven and the Sartrian notion that Hell is other people. Among the poems chosen Paradise Lost occurred twice. Extracts from the fall of Lucifer and his first actions and response to the burning lake and its surrounding ‘darkness visible’, followed the building of Pandemonium. This of course reverses the order of these episodes in the poem, and the building of the Satanic palace posed the question of why Milton includes elegant refinements of architectural fashion, such as Doric columns, and symphonies of music, when Hell is the antithesis of all heavenly harmony. Theories were advanced for the literary necessity of including an aesthetic more consistent with Heaven.

Among the other poems chosen were ‘The English Lesson’, by Michael Schmidt; ‘Annabel Lee’ by Edgar Allen Poe; ‘Back in the Playground Blues’ by Adrian Mitchell; ‘The Parable of the Old Man and the Young by Wilfred Owen; Lucifer in Starlight by George Meredith; and ‘All Souls’ by Dana Gioia; and the first part of Richard III's opening speech from Shakespeare's play.

December will be Free Choice again.

October Meeting

2010-10-03T12:18:00.000+01:00

Our October meeting was very well attended, with the usual wide range of poems from the famous to the ‘utilitarian but fun’. We were trying to catch up with poems left over from last month, but once again discussions were so enthusiastic and varied in opinion that some members of the group did not get to read their poems. This will eventually work itself out in further ‘Favourite poems’ sessions.

The poems we did manage to cover this month were the very inventive ‘Recipe for a Salad’, by Sydney Smith – surprisingly modern for an 18thC poet; the famous and entertaining ‘A Smuggler’s Song’ by Kipling; a whimsical but untitled poem discovered as part of an advertisment for Dulux paint - this is the 'utilitarian but fun poem' created for a commercial purpose and none the worse for that. We also heard and commented on Andrew Motion’s clever comment on middle class complacency: ‘A Glass of Wine’; the insightful, beautifully restrained and very witty ‘A Message to My Grandson’ by the Australian poet Michael Thwaites; ‘Nettles’ by Vernon Scannell; and the renowned ‘Lady of Shallott’ by Tennyson. This poem caused more comment and controversy that might be expected. Disliked by some, loved by others, we almost ended up deciding on a whole session devoted to (1) this poem, or (2) Tennyson, or (3) similar works of the 19thC. In the end we agreed that the next meeting in November should take on the topic of Heaven and Hell – very appropriate for a meeting that will take place less than a week after the Feast of All Hallows!

September Meeting

2010-09-08T20:24:00.000+01:00

Our topic for September was Free Choice, but in a very full afternoon we did not get through many poems. Those we did cover were ‘The Cat and the Moon’ by W. B. Yeats, and Shakespeare’s ‘Prologue from Romeo and Juliet’, both of which generated a good deal of discussion. The rest of the afternoon was given over to the provocative OULIPO ‘poem’, an N+7 version of Wallace Stevens’ ‘The Snow Man, that was my choice.
Chosen to try to help is unravel our feelings about ‘what is a poem’, what is a good poem’ – topics we come back to at almost every meeting – the OULIPO creation certainly provided a challenge. It also revealed some interesting things about how we as readers relate to the ‘thing’ on the page.
Some of us were ready and willing to attempt interpretations, at least of the bits that made some syntactical sense. Some of us thought it an annoying waste of personal time. This was the reaction I had thought would be most general. I didn’t expect anyone to regard it as worthy of further contemplation. This raised interesting thoughts about how form and authorial declarations may control our reception of poems.
We also compared the OULIPO ‘poem’ against Shakespeare’s Prologue which divided opinion and opened up the vexed question of the ongoing effect of the old Leavisite idea of the ‘canon’ of literature. All in all we covered a great deal of ground in our discussion – everyone participated and it made for a rich diversity of attitudes towards poetry.
Because the OULIPO discussion took up so much time our meeting in October will again be on the topic of Free Choice.

August 7th 2010 - Geography

2010-08-08T16:31:00.000+01:00

As we reassembled after a 5 week month, we welcomed 2 new participants to the group and the discussion during the afternoon was as diverse and lively as usual. Our topic was Geography and we found many approaches to it.

Starting very sensibly we heard Caroline Bird’s short and somewhat pessimistic ‘Geography Lessons’. This was followed by Keat’s ‘On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer’ – what a contrast as the poet presents his excitement at intellectual discovery in terms of geographical exploration. My poem was the last part of Shelley’s ‘Mont Blanc’, and after this, came Ian McKay’s ‘Volcanoes’. It was remarked that the first 4 poems all contained references to mountains of one kind or another – but all very differently handled.

We had a complete change of location with Seamus Heaney’s ‘The Peninsula’ and Robert Frost’s ‘The Road Not Taken’. Following their engagement with psychology and to some extent even with epistemology, Edward Thomas’s profoundly melancholy ‘Rain’ provoked a good deal of comment.
The emerging poet Miriam Gamble’s ‘On Fancying American Film Stars’ generated some discussion on one of our perpetual themes: ‘what makes a poem a poem and what makes a good poem?’
We finished gently with Frances Thomson’s ‘Arab Song’.
In September we have Free Choice again.

July 3rd 2010 Free Choice

2010-08-08T16:25:00.000+01:00

After our excursion into France and all things French in June, we were back to free choice in July. This produced the usual eclectic mix and intense discussions, so much so that at least one poem had to be held over until August.

Among our July poems were the troubling and fascinating ‘Yeah Yeah Yeah’ by Roddy Lumsden which is a reaction to and elaboration of the Beatles song of the same title. Ben Jonson’s Epigram XLII – ‘On Giles and Joan’ was a much merrier and wittier insight into the relationship of a married couple at a time when it was virtually impossible to get out of a marriage no matter how bad it was. We stayed in the early modern period with the Dirge from Shakespeare’s Cymbeline that begins ‘Fear no more the heat o’ the sun’. The importance of renown was not appreciated by everyone, but the poem met with general approval. Seamus Heaney’s grim ‘Mid-Term Break’ continued the theme of mortality, relating the funeral rites for his little dead brother. The phrase ‘wearing a poppy bruise’ was particularly noted. ‘Hamnavoe’ had to be left over till August as we ran out of time. It was fortunate then that our August topic was to be Geography.

June Poems

2010-06-12T10:31:00.002+01:00

Our topic this month was France and anything connected with it. This gave us plenty of scope and produced not only the usual wide range of poetry but confronted us with some problems of translation. Among the poems presented were ‘Last Post’ by Carol Ann Duffy, about WW1, ‘Maison d’Aujourd’Hiu’ by Donald Hall, stanzas from ‘The Grande Chartreuse’, by Matthew Arnold, 2 versions of ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’, 2 poems by Baudelaire ‘The Erotic Perfume’, and ‘The Albatross’ – this one caused problems because various translations are available, but not all of the same quality. The mood was lightened by a humorous poem called ‘Do a project’, and was changed again to perplexity by 2 short poems by the modern French poet Jacques Vert: ‘ For you my love’, which began like a traditional folk song or rhyme but developed to become rather dark and troubling* and ‘Breakfast’ which seemed inexplicably banal - which was probably the point! Our difficulty did not lie so much with the translations of the last 2 poems as with the style of these modern works. The fifteenth-century ‘Carol for Agincourt’ did not require much thought, but was gently entertaining. Our poems next month will be free choice.

* As in previous sessions, we notice a generational split at time as those of us who remember the original feminist struggle take a more rigorous and bleak view of some poems, while your younger female colleagues seem unperturbed by insights into the inequalities of gender and depictions of patriarchal oppression that some mid-20thC poets include in their works.

May Poems

2010-05-18T19:59:00.000+01:00

This month we had a free choice and the usual wide variety of poems gave us plenty to discuss. We were much exercised by D.H. Lawrence’s enigmatic poem ‘The Man of Tyre’, and debated the significance of its reference to ‘maidenhair’. Gillian Allnutt’s ‘Alien’ created more debate with its high-feminist agenda. Tatamkhula Afrika’s ‘Nothing Changed’ continued the political theme from another perspective and introduced most of us to bunny chows – an interesting-sounding snack of hollowed bread with curry filling.

Still being political, 2 members of the group brought poems by Kipling. One, the hymn-like ‘Recessional’ was full of war-like imagery of the high days of Empire, the other, an apt satire in 6 lines on corrupt politicians under the title ‘A Dead Statesman.’

In a shift away from politics of all kinds Roger McGough’s ‘P.C. Plod versus the Park Road Rapist’ was initially taken as light-hearted mockery of the stereotypical ‘thick’ policeman of earlier times, but on further reading most of us were disturbed by the potential consequences implicit beneath the humour, and the poem took on its own bleakly satirical edge.

Less controversial was ‘Musee des Beaux Artes’, about the Brueghel painting of the fall of Icarus. We were treated to a copy of the painting in order to get some idea of the context. The disjunction between ordinary and extraordinary was remarked upon. Philip Larkin’s ‘An Arundel Tomb’ found general approval for its atmosphere of enduring love.

Everyone seemed to relax and enjoy the beautiful extract from Shakespeare’s A Merchant of Venice. It was Lorenzo’s short speech to Jessica that begins ‘How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!’ No wonder Ralph Vaughan Williams set it to music.

Our topic for June will be FRANCE.

April, with it's showers sweet ...

2010-04-07T21:28:00.000+01:00

Our topic for the month was Eroticism, and the poems chosen ranged from the subtle to the almost obscene, and many provoked strenuous debate. Polarised views of the poetry on offer opened up 'fault-lines' defined probably by generational differences, but the range of poems revealed how important the expression of human sexuality has been in every age - from the Old Testament to the present day. The mode of expression mirrors the age and culture in which the poems are produced, as we would expect, but the representation of delight, anxiety, and revulsion, gave us plenty to consider.

Among the poems read were and extract from The Song of Songs, John Donne's 'Unruly Sun', Yeats's 'Leda and the Swan', John Updike's 'No More Access to her Underpants', Herrick's 'Upon Julia's Clothes', an extract from Milton's Paradise Lost, D.H. Lawrence's, 'Figs', Donald Hall's 'Villanelle', Kim Addonizio's 'For Desire'.

Next month is a free choice of favourite poems again.

Bright but Chilly March

2010-03-07T14:34:00.000Z

The Poetry group met in an alternative venue this month. The Library had been taken over by numerous educational events and displays, so we move across the Junction to The Art House, and we were made very welcome and comfortable (I can recommend the coffee!)

It was a different kind of meeting because we started with a free selection of short poems which were followed by a group discussion on T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land. We only got through Part I 'Burial of the Dead', and that gave us a great deal to discuss. Among the short poems that preceeded this were Jenny Joseph's thought-provoking 'Dead of Night'; U.A. Fanthorpe's insightful 'Deer in Gowbarrow Park'; Thomas Hardy's charming poem 'The Weather'; Sonnet 64 from Edmund Spenser's 'Amoretti' - was he parodying convention? Spike Milligan's brilliantly daft 'Rain', and the wonderfully named Sir Aston Cokaine's 'To Plautia'. I took along Robert Herrick's surruptitiously subversive 'Cavalier' poem 'Delight in Disorder'.

Having unintentionally covered all sorts of clothing this month, next month we will probably be considering the lack of it as the topic for April is Eroticism.

February 6th

2010-02-07T11:06:00.000Z

February's Free Choice
On a fine and much milder afternoon we met to discuss both our chosen poems and the 'way forward'. It has often been suggested that we should take on a single poem or poet as a group project. After some debate about who, and how, it was agreed that at our next meeting we would all look at T.S. Eliot's THE WASTE LAND, but we will not necessarily devote the whole meeting to it, so we have agreed to bring along SHORT poems of our own choice to counterbalance the intensity of Eliot's work.

We have been alerted to the liklihood of a change of venue in March, from the Library, to the ART HOUSE, a cafe opposite the Junction, owing to a large educational event taking over the Library. The Art House has an upstairs room that the library staff are negotiating for on our behalf. Confirmation of the move will be emailed or telephoned to all members of the group by Sandy later in the month.

Yesterday's meeting produced the usual stimulating selection of poems which included Sylvia Plath's 'Daddy',
Dylan Thomas's 'And Death Shall Have No Dominion', G.K. Chesterton's 'The Donkey', Charles Cotton (1630-87) 'Winter's Invasion'; Seamus Heaney's 'Docker', and Jenny Joseph's 'Dead of Night'. Oddly, in view of our opening discussion, I had brought along 'Death by Water', section IV of The Waste Land!

January 2010

2010-01-03T14:22:00.000Z

Happy New Year! 2.1.10

Here we are in a new year and what an interesting selection of poems we had to start us off. As we were doing ‘Favourite poems’ diversity could be expected, but the natural world turned out to be a kind of unofficial theme. We began with Shelley’s ‘The Cloud’, which gave raise to lots of differing views. Moving further out into space, John Donne’s ‘Song’, beginning ‘Go and Catch a Falling star’, swiftly moved back into the early modern convention of the faithless female beauty. Kipling’s atmospheric ‘The Way Through the Woods’ had us roughly divided between those who thought there were ghosts, and those who had other ideas. Ralph Hodgson’s ‘Eve’ proved fascinating for its unusual treatment of the Temptation because of its very English setting which included not only the orchard and the lane, but ‘titmouse’, linnet, and Jenny Wren. Ted Hughes ‘The Thought-Fox’ certainly made us think! As did his ‘Crow’s Nerve Fails’. After all the wildlife, Simon Armitage’s ‘About his Person’ returned us unequivocally to bleak modern human life, and Tony Harrison’ ‘First Aid in English’ challenged us to consider the limitations of language when confronted with atrocity. After some of the rather sombre subject matter, was nice that the last things on the agenda were light-hearted couplets and epigrams gathered from the Internet.

Our next meeting is on Feb 6th. And the topic is ‘poems beginning with D’. FYI – Sylvia Plath’s ‘Daddy’ has already been ‘bagged’!

December Meeting

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Dec 5th 2009

Our topic was Christmas – naturally! And we had quite a selection of poems, although tending mainly towards those concerned with the Magi. Indeed, two members chose exactly the same one and some rapid renegotiation of the choice. The exception to the Christmas theme seemed to be Caroline Bird’s ‘Gingerbread House’, except that the title recalls the story of Hansel and Gretel, sometimes adapted as a pantomime. The poem had nothing of a pantomime about it, but suggested an allegorical representation of drug abuse!
Among the other poems presented were: ‘The Coming of the King’, Anon but attributed by some to Henry Vaughan; ‘The Magi’, W.B. Yeats; ‘Christmas is Really for the Children’, Steve Turner; ‘Christmas Landscape’, Laurie Lee; ‘Dear True Love’, U.A.Fanthorpe. This is a rewriting of the old song ‘On the first day of Christmas my true love sent to me…’; ‘Christmass’ from The Shepherd’s Calendar, by John Clare; and 'Holly and Ivy’, anon. A 15thC version, and a carol in the medieval sense of a dance song with a burden or refrain. No prizes for guessing who chose this!

Our next session is Free Choice.

November's Free Choice

2009-11-08T14:20:00.001Z

We were a smaller group than usual this month, but still did not manage to get round to discussing everyone's poems! Those we did discuss ranged widely from the mildly bawdy eighteenth-century broadside ballad 'An Amorous Dialogue between John and his Mistress' . This under-represented form of ephemera drew plenty of approving comments. It was followed by John Masefield's 'Cargoes' - always a favourite for its marvellous imagery and mimetic rhythm. I took along John Keats 'On First Looking into Chapman's Homer', after which U.A.Fanthorpe's 'Atlas' brought us right up into modern form and content. Its transition into metaphor created some debate. The next, and last poem, that we had time for was Michael Ondaatje's 'House on a Red Cliff', which puzzled and delighted in roughly equal measure.

As our next meeting is 5th December the topic will be Christmas, but it doesn't have to be the trite approach to tinsel and fairy lights, so it will be interesting to see if anything subversive turns up!

October 3rd, October 8th

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At our October meeting we were fortunate enough to have a visit from the local poet Joan McGavin. She brought along some of her poems and read them to us, analysing each one as she did so. It was an enlightening and fascinating experience to listen to a poet explaining the thinking behind her technique and inspiration. Joan's poems were 'Birthday Sleepover 3', 'Dining with the Dead', 'At a Distance', 'One Use of a Painting', 'Salt' (a most enigmatic poem), 'Soft', and my own favourite 'The Tremulous Hand Speaks'. Everyone in the group found the afternoon engrossing, and indeed the break for refreshment prompted so much small-group discussion it took a while for us all to refocus because we all had so much we wanted to discuss.

Members of the Poetry Reading Group have also had an open invitation to visit Sunrise of Bassett, the sheltered faciltiy for elderly residents. With the help of the Activities Co-ordinator and a young volunteer, some of the resident ladies and gentlemen have formed their own literary group which includes poetry reading and they have invited us to join them and contribute to their discussions. I have already done so, taking along Shakespeare's Sonnet 18, and Carol Ann Duffy's sonnet 'Prayer' for discussion. It was a delight to meet more people with an interest in poetry.

I hope everyone enjoyed and participated in National Poetry Day on 8th October. A lady next to me on the bus was reading the Faber Book of Blake's Verse. I read my Princeton Encyclopaedia of Poetry and Poetics. Two of the members of the PRG were fortunate enough to get tickets for Carol Ann Duffy's appearance in Winchester.

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2009-09-26T12:04:00.004+01:00

September Meeting

Among the poems read were the short but atmospheric 'Night and the House' by Sophia de Mello Breyer, 'In My Craft or Sullen Art' by Dylan Thomas, a poem that caused some debate over the significance of adjectives, and one that seems heavily influenced by Shakespeare's Prospero. Of particular interest was Carol Ann Duffy's poem 'Prayer', not simply because it is the work of our first female Poet Laureate, but because it came with a printout of an analysis of the work. How much faith should be placed in http://www.squidoo.com/ is a matter of personal judgement, but the analysis is sufficient to help readers new to poetry and to Duffy's work, although it skims the surface rather too often, and simply observing that 'Duffy has included plenty of metaphor and imagery...to evoke a plethora of contrasting emotion' is really avoiding saying anything!

In October the group is looking forward to the visit of local poet Joan McGavin, who will be talking to us about her work, including the poingant 'Salt', and 'One use of a Painting'.

August Meeting

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This month our topic was Beginnings. As usual we enjoyed a wide and varied selection of poems. They were William's Blake's deceptively simple 'Lamb', 'New Every Morning' by Susan Coleman, an untitled poem by Simon Armitage that caused a good deal of debate; Walt Whitman's enormously long 'I Sing the Body Electric' - we only had time for the first and last sections. Amy Clampitt's meditative 'Beach Glass', Edwin Muir's post-apocalyptic 'The Horses'; the very appropriate 'Rainy Summer' by Alice Meynell, and taking the topic literally - Caedmon's Hymn, said to be the very first English poem.
September will be Free Choice

June, July, and August

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It has taken us 2 meetings to complete our latest 'Favourites' topic because 15 of us attended the meeting in June so we only managed to get half way through our poems. With such a full house, Sandy and I decided it might be wise to see about a bigger room, and guess what, for our July meeting only 9 of us enjoyed the facilities in the much larger seminar room! However, it was a lively and interesting meeting as always. Among the poems read was an extract from John Betjeman's verse autobiography Summoned by Bells which prompted a good deal of debate.

For our August meeting we will be bringing poems on 'Beginings'

March Poems

2009-04-20T20:06:00.003+01:00

Some of our poems in March were carried over to April as we spent some time in each meeting on technical aspects of poetry. The topic was Favourite Poems again and includes:
My Best Friend-Jeremy Lloyd; The Weeds of Warwickshire-Felix Dennis; The Crack-Denise Levertov; The Windhover-Gerald Manley Hopkins; The Snow Man-Wallace Stevens; Toast-Sheenagh Pugh; From A Shropshire Lad-A.E. Housman; Digging-Seamus Heaney; Harlem Night Song-Langston Hughes. They all gave us plenty to talk about. We also had Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard as an example of accentual-syllabic iambic pentameter verse and considered the complex use of stress and meaning in the poem.

February 7th

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Winter
This turned out to be a very pertinent topic given the snow, ice and frost that had been gripping the country. However, in spite of this most of the usual members managed to make it in and we had a lively meeting. Poems by John Clare (February-a Thaw), T.S.Eliot (Song for Simeon), Sylvia Plath (Winter Trees), Ambrose Philips (A Winter Piece), and Louis McNiece (Snow), gave us plenty of food for thought, while Ogden Nash (Winter Complaint) made us all smile. Our next meeting on 7th March will be a free choice and I have offered to give the short talk on Iambic Pentameter that had to be postponed last autumn.

Saturday 3rd January 2009

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We started the new year with more of our favourite poems. The session was almost oversubscribed and we had to ask for 2 more chairs to accomodate the 14 of us! Our Topic for February will be Winter.

November Meeting

2008-11-08T11:53:00.004Z

Sandy reports: We had 8 people but only managed to get through 7 of the poems as there was a lot of interesting discussion.
Tim read 'Rhapsody on a Windy Night' (Eliot) which generated a lot of discussion. It's such a dark, atmospheric poem and was just right for such a dreary day. We all read Vicky's choice 'The Raven' (Poe) as it was quite long but once again very appropriate. Lawrence read 'Sweeney Among the Nightingales' (Eliot) which sparked much discussion too; although most of us liked it we still didn't understand it too well! Keely, the new lady, came and joined in a lot which was great. She brought 'Begin' (Brendan Kennelly) which was a nice contrast amongst all the doom and gloom.
'The Raven' and 'Rhapsody on a Windy Night' were particularly appropriate after halloween and for such a dismal, grey day.

Next meeting: 6th Dec. The topic is Parodies.

2008-10-23T19:46:00.003+01:00

Special Topic for October was Gold.

Sandy reports: We had another great mix of poems at the last poetry meeting. My favourite was 'Gold' by Donald Hall which had so much under the surface. Nobody felt able to criticise it because of the circumstances under which it was written (his wife dying of cancer)- it is just so poignant. 'Churning Day' by Heaney is beautiful and brought up the old poetry vs. prose debate and Mark managed to stun us all again with 'Byzantium' by Yeats. Freda read 'Soybeans' which also sparked a lot of discussion. Lolly came along and brought a Carol Ann Duffy poem, 'Education for Leisure', which had recently been controversially banned from the school syllabus for potentially inciting and glorifying knife crime. As you can imagine this also raised some interesting discussion.

August's special topic

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On 2nd August our topic is HAIKU. Further suggestions for meetings include a session on IAMBIC PENTAMETER.

April 07 - Favourite Poem

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The Slave's Dream - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Lie in the dark and listen - Noel Coward
Roads - Edward Thomas
Mower to the Glow-worms - Andrew Marvell
Prophecy - Elinor Wylie
The Dream Song - John Berryman
For John Berryman - Robert Lowell
In Memoriam Easter 1915 - Edward Thomas
The Carpenter's Son - A E Housman

March 07 - Emotions

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Drunk as Drink - Pablo Neruda
Groping - R S Thomas
Field of Hands - Tom Gunn
Sonnet 129 - William Shakespeare
Untitled - Emily Dickinson
We are Seven - William Wordsworth
Mowing - Robert Frost
The Wildman's Life - Anon.
The Perfect Life - Donald Hall
Song - Aubrey de Vere
Hope - Emily Dickinson
Bad Woman - Anon.
Self-pity - D H Lawrence
I didn't want you anyway (song lyric) - Hear'Say

January 07 - The Sea

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Pibroch - Ted Hughes
The Seafarer - Anon.
Sir Patrick Speus - Anon.
Silence - Anne Rowe
Tempest - Beverley Maiden
The Old Ships - James Elroy Flecker
Crossing the Bar - Alfred Lord Tennyson
Destroyers in the Arctic - Alan Ross
The Song of the Wandering Aengus - W B Yeats
The Sea Question - Elizabeth Smither

December 06 - Favourite Poem

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Child - Sylvia Plath
The Rolling English Road - G K Chesterton
Prize Winning Poem - Fleur Adcock
Remembrance - Sir Thomas Wyatt
A Musical Instrument - Elizabeth Barratt Browning
The Ice Cart - Wilfred Gibson
Solitude - Ella Wheeler Wilcox

November 06 - Spring

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Verses from the Song of Solomon - King James's Bible
To the Tune of Annie Laurie - John Betjeman
Spring - T Nash
Spring Poem (flower shape) - J T Mori
4pm Spring Day - Greek poet (1936)
Snowdrop - Ted Hughes
Spring Song - John Dressel
Song of Songs
Loveliest of Trees - A E Housman
Between Meanings - Blooming
West Wind - John Masefield
Where to look - Sophie Hannah

October 06 - Favourite Poem

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Autumn Poem - A E Housman
Dolls - Frederic Prokosch
Cargoes - John Masefield
Hope is a thing with feathers - Emily Dickinson

THE GROUP SO FAR:

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Among recent topics, we have discussed poems on the themes of EMOTION, TIME, the SEA, and SPRING.

We have had presentations on Shakespeare's Sonnets, on How to Read a Poem, and on Free Verse.

More details of topics, and lists of poems already covered will be posted here as they become available.

Welcome to Tower and Fountain

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