Poem of the Week

 Today is my final day working for The Reader Organisation, marking the end of the Reader-in-Residence project at Bibby Line Group. Consequently, this week’s poem comes a few days early.

 I’ve been thinking carefully about what sort of poem to pick this week . At first I thought of lots of goodbye//sorry-I’m-leaving//best wishes-for-the-future poems. None of them seemed quite right though.

 So in the end, it’s quite a personal choice. I’ve simply selected the first ‘proper’ poem that I decided I loved ten years ago, when I was about eleven. It was featured in a BBC drama– Sex, Chips and Rock ’n’ Roll – and although I can recall very little about the show itself, I do remember listening to one of the characters recite this poem, and realising that something absolutely magical was going on. I hope you enjoy it too.

  

He Wishes For The Clothes Of Heaven

 

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half-light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

W.B. Yeats

 

To all the lovely people at Bibby Line Group who I have met, emailed or read with during the last twelve months – happy reading and keep dreaming always.

Poem of the Week

Today’s Poem of the Week is an extract from William Shakespeare’s last play, The Tempest which is a tale about power and isolation set on a magical island. Click here to read a full synopsis. This passage is spoken by Prospero, a talented wizard and one of the central characters of the play. He has just used magical spirits to put on a pageant to celebrate his daughter Miranda’s forthcoming wedding. These words are spoken as the magic fades…

  

from The Tempest, Act 4, scene 1, lines 146-158

 

Be cheerful, sir:

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,

As I foretold you, were all spirits and

Are melted into air, into thin air;

And, like the baseless fabric of this vision

The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces

The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve                   inherit: i.e. occupy it

And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,

Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff         rack: cloud

As dreams are made on, and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep.

 

Prospero begins by referring directly to the ‘end’ of the pageant he has just conjured up, as well as the end of his own magic. In addition to this, Shakespeare is cleverly alluding to the approaching climax of The Tempest. This takes on greater poignancy when you remember that The Tempest, written in 1611, was probably Shakespeare’s final play. The magic of the play melts ‘into thin air’, and everything in which you believe whilst watching it  (‘the cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces / The solemn temples, the great globe itself’) shall all ‘dissolve’ , leaving ‘not a rack’ behind. 

 

 Shakespeare also seems to be making an observation about the nature of life itself. Although our words and thoughts and actions seem so profound whilst we live, ultimately they mean very little in the end. They fade, and we do too, for all human life is essentially transient. Indeed, with that much-quoted line ‘we are such stuff / As dreams are made on, and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep’; we are presented as nothing more substantial than a flimsy dream which will end with sleep (i.e. death).

 

This speech could easily slide into melancholy but actually reads rather beautifully, as the aging Prospero seems so calm and composed. He does not rage against the inevitability of his end but accepts it with grace and dignity – even managing to provide some words of advice along the way: ‘be cheerful, sir.’

 

I couldn’t say it better myself…

As usual, do please let me know what you think of this week’s choice.

Poem of the Week

Today’s Poem of the Week is one of my favourites. Sitting at my very sunny desk on this gorgeous Friday afternoon, time is quavering, nearly ceasing altogether. It is a sensation which reminds of this poem.  I haven’t chosen it for any reason other than the fact that I love it. And I hope that at least one Bibby employee reading it this afternoon enjoys it too – and remember to let me know if you do…

 

Meeting Point

 

Time was away and somewhere else,
There were two glasses and two chairs
And two people with the one pulse
(Someone had stopped the moving stairs)
Time was away and somewhere else.

And they were neither up nor down;
The stream’s music did not stop
Flowing through heather, limpid brown,
Although they sat in a coffee shop
And they were neither up nor down.

The bell was silent in the air
Holding its inverted poise -
Between the clang and clang a flower,
A brazen calyx of no noise:
The bell was silent in the air.

The camels crossed the miles of sand
That stretched around the cups and plates;
The desert was their own, they planned
To portion out the stars and dates:
The camels crossed the miles of sand.

Time was away and somewhere else.
The waiter did not come, the clock
Forgot them and the radio waltz
Came out like water from a rock:
Time was away and somewhere else.

Her fingers flicked away the ash
That bloomed again in tropic trees:
Not caring if the markets crash
When they had forests such as these,
Her fingers flicked away the ash.

God or whatever means the Good
Be praised that time can stop like this,
That what the heart has understood
Can verify in the body’s peace
God or whatever means the Good.

Time was away and she was here
And life no longer what it was,
The bell was silent in the air
And all the room one glow because
Time was away and she was here.

Louis MacNeice

 

It’s a glowing haze of a poem. Notice how the couple are ‘two people with one pulse’; existing in their own special sort of heaven which is completely separate from everything: ‘time was away and somewhere else.’ The ‘moving stairs’ – escalators presumably? – remain still. The bell is silent, ‘holding its inverted poise’. The waiter does not come and the clock forgets them. The ‘crash’ of the financial markets is utterly unimportant compared to the ‘forests’ of love. To have ‘time stop’, achieve ‘body peace’ and forget all the world just for a moment is, I think, pretty rare. The poem captures the magic of that perfectly. It’s very romantic – and there’s always room for that….

 

It’s lovely to read aloud and/or listen to because of the gently rocking rhythm and repetition of the first and last lines of each verse. There’s a YouTube video with Louis MacNeice himself reading it, so click here if you’d like to watch it. The images are slightly questionable; but it’s definitely worth a listen!

BBC Poetry Season – An Update

Reproduced with kind permission from The Reader Online, written by Mark Till

The BBC’s Poetry Season is now fully up and running. Last weekend, BBC Four showed a series of programmes – some old, some new – about Wilfred Owen, Dylan Thomas, Ted Hughes, Stevie Smith, Philip Larkin, Carol Ann Duffy, W. H. Auden and Radio 4’s long-running Poetry Please. A few are still available to watch on iPlayer, along with Ian Hislop’s witty and interesting look at the role of Poet Laureate, The Changing of the Bard.

But there’s plenty more to come, including:

Armando Iannucci in Milton’s Heaven and Hell
Wednesday 27 May, 21:00, BBC Two

Armando Iannucci explores his passion for John Milton – a poet whose preoccupation with ideas of sin, liberty and the fall of man, may seem out of step with 21st century Britain but, as Iannucci reveals, has never been more relevant.

Arena: TS Eliot
Sunday 31 May, Time TBC, BBC Two

A profile of TS Eliot which, with unprecedented co-operation from the Eliot Estate, tells the story of one of the 20th century’s most celebrated and elusive writers.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Thursday 4 Jun, 21:00, BBC Four

Having published an acclaimed translation of the 14th-century poem, Simon Armitage goes on the trail of the mythical Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

The Poetry Season website is also well worth a visit. It has What’s On listings for TV and Radio; an Events guide; short features about, and sample poems by, a selection of great writers; and a (well-intentioned but rather meaningless) vote to find Britain’s Favourite Poet.

In addition, SKY Arts (channel 256 – an oasis in the digital desert) will be broadcasting a daily round-up of this year’s Guardian Hay Festival, Hay-On-Sky, presented by The Book Show’s Mariella Frostrup, starting this Friday at 19:00.

Who needs to go out?

Poem of the Week

Today’s Poem of the Week is just a quick one in celebration of the long weekend…

 

Weekend

When drudgery and care impose themselves,

Each request and promise a feather turned to brick,

Even the strong and stalwart plead for

Kind relief. What wise soul first decreed an

Ending to weekly trials? … with Sunday comics,

Naps and leisurely brunch – time to arrange flowers,

Dogs curled at your feet, and a stack of good books nearby.

M.A. Mohanraj

 

Whatever you’re doing – enjoying some longed-for sunshine/catching up with much-needed sleep/taking a well-deserved trip away – I hope you have a peaceful and relaxing three days!

Poem of the Week

I spend lots of my time travelling around the country visiting various Bibby offices. In fact, I’ve noticed that I usually spend more time on my journeys than I do at my destinations, which can be quite unsettling. It’s also tedious and surprisingly tiring. Recently though, my journeys have been illuminated by a special sort of joy. The countryside is coming to life once more. On days when the sun is shining and the skies are blue, I do believe that there is no colour more beautiful or vibrant than the gold of the fields and the green of the trees:

 

The Trees

 

The trees are coming into leaf

Like something almost being said;

The recent buds relax and spread,

Their greenness is a kind of grief.

 

Is it that they are born again

And we grow old? No, they die too,

This yearly trick of looking new

Is written down in rings of grain.

 

Yet still the unresting castles thresh

In fullgrown thickness every May.

Last year is dead, they seem to say,

Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

Philip Larkin

 

Larkin’s view of the ‘greenness’ of the trees ‘as a kind of grief’ is a bit of puzzling line. Why would they possibly symbolise grief? Perhaps because the unfurling of the leaves also denotes the death of the ephemeral spring blossom? Or maybe because trees are able to ‘look new’ every year – something of which we humans can only dream? Note how Larkin himself doesn’t really have the answer – there are so many question marks running throughout the poem, as well as words and phrases which indicate uncertainty: ‘almost’, ‘kind of’, ‘seem’. This hesitation is absent from the last line though. ‘Begin afresh, afresh, afresh’ is an incredibly powerful and hopeful statement. You don’t have to be a tree to a make a new beginning or fresh start. We can all do that, whenever we want.

 

As always, let me know what you think of this week’s choice!

Poem of the Week

This week’s poem is another romantic one and has been recommended by Dan Thompson from Direct Workforce. Dan writes “This is my favourite, romantic poem. The idea of something as mundane as doing the washing up bringing back memoires of a perfect romantic day has always stayed with me since I first read this at school. The imagery of the glass in the river and the description of the romantic setting are both so vivid, and I love the way Hardy relates these images to the basin and chinaware. I think it is just such a lovely poem and I thought it might be nice to spread a bit of romance!”

 

Under The Waterfall

 

Whenever I plunge my arm, like this,

In a basin of water, I never miss

The sweet sharp sense of a fugitive day

Fetched back from its thickening shroud of grey.

Hence the only prime

And real love-rhyme

That I know by heart,

And that leaves no smart,

Is the purl of a little valley fall                                   purl = ripple

About three spans wide and two spans tall

Over a table of solid rock,

And into a scoop of the self-same block;

The purl of a runlet that never ceases                    runlet = small stream

In stir of kingdoms, in wars, in peaces;

With a hollow boiling voice it speaks

And has spoken since hills were turfless peaks.

 

And why gives this the only prime

Idea to you of a real love-rhyme?

And why does plunging your arm in a bowl

Full of spring water, bring throbs to your soul?

 

Well, under the fall, in a crease of the stone,

Though precisely where none ever has known,

Jammed darkly, nothing to show how prized,

And by now with its smoothness opalized,

Is a drinking glass:

For, down that pass

My lover and I

Walked under a sky

Of blue with a leaf-wove awning of green,

In the burn of August, to paint the scene,

And we placed our basket of fruit and wine

By the runlet’s rim, where we sat to dine;

And when we had drunk from the glass together,

Arched by the oak-copse from the weather,

I held the vessel to rinse in the fall,

Where it slipped, and it sank, and was past recall,

Though we stooped and plumbed the little abyss

With long bared arms. There the glass still is.

And, as said, if I thrust my arm below

Cold water in a basin or bowl, a throe

From the past awakens a sense of that time,

And the glass we used, and the cascade’s rhyme.

The basin seems the pool, and its edge

The hard smooth face of the brook-side ledge,

And the leafy pattern of china-ware

The hanging plants that were bathing there.

 

By night, by day, when it shines or lours,             lours = darkens

There lies intact that chalice of ours,

And its presence adds to the rhyme of love

Persistently sung by the fall above.

No lip has touched it since his and mine

In turns there from sipped lovers’ wine.

Thomas Hardy

 

I love this poem simply because it sounds so beautiful. Try reading it quietly to yourself – the gently rocking rhyming couplets which run throughout the verses make it a lovely one to listen to. And of course, as Dan points out, the poem perfectly captures the power of memory. It seems as if the speaker (most likely Emma, Hardy’s wife) is not just remembering this most romantic of days as she’s doing the washing up, but actually re-living it. Hardy does not attempt to explain or account for the human mind’s mysterious tendency towards nostalgia, but simply wonders very poetically, ‘why does plunging your arm in a bowl / full of spring water, bring throbs to your soul?’

 

As always, let me know what you think of this week’s choice.

With many thanks to Dan Thompson.

Poem of the Week

Today the new Poet Laureate will be named by the Culture Secretary, Andy Burnham. The Poet Laureate’s duties include writing poetry to commemorate royal events and working to raise the profile of poetry in the UK. All previous Poet Laureates have been English men, and the role call includes legendary figures such as Ted Hughes, Sir John Betjeman, John Masefield, Lord Alfred Tennyson and William Wordsworth.

For the first time ever, this position is going to be filled by a woman, Carol Ann Duffy. Her work is work is both accessible and academic, making her a good choice for Poet Laureate. It’s possible to understand and enjoy her poems at first reading, and also possible to write 5000 word essays on her writing (believe me, I’ve done it!)  

In light of today’s announcement, I thought our Poem of the Week should be one by Duffy herself. Enjoy, and as ever, let me know what you think.

 

Tea

I like pouring your tea, lifting

the heavy pot, and tipping it up,

so the fragrant liquid steams in your china cup.

 

Or when you’re away, or a work,

I like to think of your cupped hands as you sip,

as you sip, of the faint half-smile of your lips.

 

I like the questions – sugar? Milk? –

and the answers I don’t know by heart, yet,

for I see soul in your eyes , and I forget.

 

Jasmine, Gunpowder, Assam , Earl Grey, Ceylon,

I love tea’s names. Which tea would you like? I say,

but it’s any tea, for you, any time of the day,

 

as the woman harvests the slops

for the sweetest leaves, on Mount Wu-Yi,

and I am your lover, smitten, straining your tea.

Carol Ann Duffy

 

I like this one because something as commonplace as tea-making suddenly takes on greater significance in the context of a new relationship. It’s not just making tea; it’s an opportunity to think of your lover’s ‘hands’ and ‘lips’, to get to know their tastes ‘by heart’, to look deep into their eyes and just see ‘soul’. Who knew that making a cuppa could be so romantic?!

Another week, another book list

This time, it was to celebrate the ten year anniversary of the children’s laureateship. The current Children’s Laureate, Michael Rosen and his four predecessors, Jacqueline Wilson, Anne Fine, Quentin Blake and Michael Morpurgo selected the 35 best books for young readers. Seven of the books were published during the 19^th century, with the oldest being Charles Dickens’ 1838 novel Oliver Twist. The most recently published book to feature was Mr Gum and Dancing Bear by Andy Stanton. Controversially, none of JK Rowling’s Harry Potter books appeared on the list! Instead, the list displays a clear preference for classic children’s literature; including Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, What Katy Did by Susan Coolidge, Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild, The Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling, The Railway Children by Edith Nesbit and Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Click here to view the full selection.

Let me know if you agree/disagree with the choices! 

 

Poem of the Week

I recently re-discovered today’s poem whilst participating in The Reader Organisation’s Read To  Lead Corporate Training at Bibby Line Group earlier this month. The language is a little dated and as such, it probably requires a few readings to make sense of it. Reading aloud really helps, or alternatively, click here to listen to a recording of it:

 

Say not the struggle naught availeth

 

Say not the struggle naught availeth,

The labour and the wounds are vain,

The enemy faints not, nor faileth,

And as things have been they remain.

 

If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars;

It may be, in yon smoke conceal’d,

Your comrades chase e’en now the fliers,

And, but for you, possess the field.

 

For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,

Seem here no painful inch to gain,

Far back, through creeks and inlets making,

Comes silent, flooding in, the main.

 

And not by eastern windows only,

When daylight comes, comes in the light;

In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly!

But westward, look, the land is bright!

Arthur Hugh Clough

 

It is easy to understand why Winston Churchill quoted from this poem during the Second World War. There are images of military battle, suggested by the use of words such as ‘enemy’ and ‘comrades’ and ‘wounds’; but the poem is not limited to this sort of conflict. Indeed, it could be about any struggle and how we must never give up the fight. The poem seems to offer encouragement, inspiration and a sort of “don’t worry, I’ve been there before and come out the other side” attitude. The second verse advises us not to be deluded by either ‘hope’ or ‘fear’ into giving up because our ‘comrades’ may well be pushing forwards. The third verse asks us not to despair. It may seem that our work is in vain and not achieving anything, but help or change is coming, even if we can’t see it yet. The rousing final verse reminds us to look at the whole picture – the sun does not only shine in the east, but ‘westward’ too – and there ‘the land is bright!’

 

As always, remember to let me know what you think of the choice.

(With thanks to Natasha Andrews and Jan Underwood for helping me to re-see this poem)