Additional - on the sestina form

The sestina form as used by Carol Rumans for 'Rules for Beginners' is exactly a sestina. Rhyme isn't necessary, but repetition of words at line ending is. The last 3 lines of the poem are called the envoi because the form originated with the French troubadours. It is described as the most complicated verse form they ever devised.

February Meeting

Our topic for today was ‘Offspring’, and it proved more difficult to find poems for this topic than we had expected. In addition, we seemed to have inadvertently turned it into a meeting about daughters, since most of the ‘offspring’ turned out to be daughters. Maybe this was because we were an all-female group, although that seems unlikely.


We began with a poem we had a few weeks ago: Carol Rumens’ ‘Rules for Beginners’, and it was well worth revisiting. This is a brilliant sestina, perfectly formed, and in its use of trite and colloquial language for the repeated patterns of line endings and three-line envoi it conveys the sense of the subjects constricted life and limited ambitions, until the final breakout. Gillian’ Clarke’s ‘Cold Knap Lake’ turned out to be an uncomfortable read, moving as it does from heroism to brutality and uncertainty. A short poem illustrating maybe why Gillain Clarke is the Welsh poet laureate. Adrian Henri’s ‘Mrs Albion You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter: For Allen Ginsberg’ is full of recollections of the 1960s when Liverpool was the centre of the universe for the younger generation. Two poems by Sylvia Plath ‘Morning Song’ about her own baby daughter, and ‘The Beekeeper’s Daughter’ about her troubled relationship with her father/ husband (as usual) were full of her startlingly apt imagery. Section 29 of George Oppen’s ‘Of being Numerous’ was, in contrast to Plath’s lushness, stripped bare as it explored his own unsatisfactory relationship with his daughter Linda. So it was pleasant to have John Clare’s ‘The Vixen’ to return us to the soft English countryside, a protective maternal relationship and probably numerous offspring of the cuddly russet kind.

Next month will be free choice again, and maybe when we get to ‘S’ we should redress the balance by taking ‘sons’ as our topic!

January Meeting

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

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

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

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

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!