W. E. Henley, a poet in the rain

Looking ahead to the April showers Poet-in-Residence presents a poem titled 'Rain' written by that distinguished late-Victorian man of letters William Ernest Henley (1849-1903). And why not? April showers may soon be upon us. It's a kind of wet weekend at the seaside poem and it reminds Poet-in-Residence of many a Spring Bank Holiday. The poet W. E. Henley was a rather unfortunate individual when it came to the business of feet; but not the poetic kind. He had a foot amputated at an early age following a bout of tuberculosis and later he had to spend almost two years in hospital in order to save the other foot. He wrote a long poem 'In Hospital' about the experience. Finally he appears to have missed his footing when alighting from a moving train - an act which resulted in his unfortunate demise. The poem itself feels surprisingly modern considering it was written some 120 years ago. Poet-in-Residence suspects that Philip Larkin (see below - Philip Larkin's Mr Bleaney) might have been pleased to compose this bleak sonnet with its glimpse of silver lining.

Rain

The sky saggs low with convoluted cloud,
Heavy and imminent, rolled from rim to rim.
A bank of fog blots out sight the brim
Of the leaden sea, all spiritless and cowed.
The rain is falling sheer and strong and loud,
The strand is desolate, the distance grim
With threats of storm, the wet stones glimmer dim,
And to the wall the dank umbrellas crowd.
At home...the dank shrubs whisper dismal mooded,
Black chimney-shadows streak the shiny slates,
The eaves are strung with drops, and steeped the grasses,
A draggled fishwife screeches at the gates,
The baker hurries dripping on, and hooded
In her wet prints a pretty housemaid passes.

W. E. Henley (1888) A Book of Verses

On writing a poem, by W H Mallock (part two)

This abridged essay is the continuation and conclusion of the item posted immediately below.

How to write a poem like Matthew Arnold
Take one soulfull of involuntary unbelief previously flavoured with self-satisfied despair. Add one beautiful text of Scripture. Mix well together. As soon as ebullition commences grate in finely a few allusions to the New Testament, the lake of Tiberias, one constellation of stars, half-a-dozen allusions to the nineteenth century, one to Goethe, one to Mont Blanc or Lake Geneva and one, if possible, to some personal bereavement. Flavour with faiths, infinities, passions, finities and yearnings. Conclude with some question that it shall be impossible to answer.
How to write a poem like Browning
Take a coarse view of things in general. In the midst of this place a man and a woman, her and her ankles tastefully arranged on a slice of Italy. Cut an opening across the breast of each until the soul becomes visible. Pour into each breast as much as it will hold of strong wine of love. Cover quickly with obscure classical quotations, allusions to an unknown period in history and a half-destroyed fresco by an early master, varied now and then with the fugues or toccatas of a forgotten composer. If the poem is intelligible remove carefully the necessary particles.
How to write a modern pre-Raphaelite poem
Take fine selected early English containing no words but such as are obsolete and unintelligible. Pour in double the quantity of entirely new English, which must never have been used before. Mix together until they assume a colour different to any tongue ever spoken. Determine the number of stanzas and select a corresponding number of archaic or peculiar words, alloting one of these to each stanza. Pour in other words round them. A favourite [shape] is the following, which is of easy construction. Take three damozels dressed in straight night-gowns. Pull their hairpins out. Let their hair tumble about their shoulders. A few stars may be sprinkled with advantage. Place an aureole about the head of each. Give each a lily in her hand. Bend their necks different ways and set them before a stone wall with an apple tree and flowers. Take a cast of them in the softest part of your brain and pur in your word-composition as above described. This kind of poem is improved by a burden; a few jingling words of archaic character to ornament, inserted between the stanzas. Must be attempted only in a vacant atmosphere, so that no grains of common sense may injure the work in progress.
How to write a narrative poem like Morris
Take sixty pages of the same word mixture as described in the preceeding; and dilute with double the quantity of mild modern Anglo-Saxon. Pour into two vessels of equal size and into one of these empty a mythological story. If this does not put your readers to sleep soon enough, add to it the rest of the language in the remaining vessel.
How to write a satanic poem like the late Lord Byron
Take a couple of fine deadly sins and let them hang before your eyes until they become racy. Then take them down, dissect them, and stew them for some time in a solution of weak remorse; after which they are to be devilled with mock-despair.
How to write a patriotic poem like Swinburne
Take one blaspheming patriot who has been hung or buried for some time, together with the oppressed country belonging to him. Soak in a quantity of rotten sentiment till completely sodden. get ready an indefinite number of Christian kings and priests. Kick these till they are nearly dead. Add copiously broken fragments of the Catholic church. Place in a heap on the oppressed country. Season with coarse expressions. On the top carefully arrange your patriot garnished with laurel and parsley. Surround with artificial hopes for the future never meant to be tasted. This kind of poem is cooked in verbiage, flavoured with Liberty, heightened by the introduction of a few gods and the game of Fortune. The amount of verbiage Liberty is capable of flavouring is infinite.
Conclusion
We regret to offer this work in its incomplete state, the whole of that part treating the most recent section of modern poetry, viz., the blasphemous and the obscene, being entirely wanting. The whole of the first edition was seized by the police and is in the hands of the Society for the Suppression of Vice. We trust that this loss will have little effect as indecency and profanity are things in which external instruction is a luxury rather than a necessity. Our readers who are in need of special training in these subjects will find excellent professors in any public-house during the late hours of the evening where the whole sum and substance is delievered nightly needing only a little dressing to turn it into excellent verse.

On writing a poem, by W. H. Mallock (part one)

Poet-in-Residence takes his concise editorial typing finger and click-mouse to William Hurrell Mallock's satirical essay 'Every Man his Own Poet'; a useful 'How to...' guide to the writing of poetry, first published in 1872. Mallock was something of a satirical dilettante; prolific and various. His cutting words are more than mere grist to the Poet-in-Residence mill.

from Every Man his Own Poet
(abridged)

Poetry is the art of expressing what is too foolish, too profane, or too indecent to be expressed in any other way. As a consumate cook will prepare a delicate repast so will the modern poet concoct a popular poem. The difference is that the cook would prefer good materials whilst the modern poet will take the bad from choice. The two artists work with the same - viz., animals, vegetables and spirits. Shakespeare and earlier masters make use of all, mixing them in various proportions. Moderns have found it better and easier to employ each seperately.
Swinburne uses animal matter, somewhat unwholesome in consequence, whilst Wordsworth confined himself to primrose pudding, and flint soup, flavoured with lesser-celandine, and now and then a beggar-boy boiled down to give it colour; robins and drowned lambs when additional piquancy was needed. It is difficult [with] Tennyson as the milk and water of which his books are composed make it impossible to discover the original nature of [the] materials he has boiled down. Shelley is embarrassing to classify as spirits are what he affected most [and] vegetable matter; a kind of psychic alcohol tinctured with barks of trees and rendered below proof with sea-water.
The following recipes will be found efficient guides for the composition of poems. But bear in mind that there is no royal road to anything. Not even the most explicit directions will make a poet all at once.
How to make a love poem
Take two large and tender human hearts, which match one another. Arrange close together but preserve from actual contact by placing between them some cruel barrier. Wound them in several places and insert through the openings a stuffing of yearnings, tenderness, and a general admiration for stars. Cover one heart with church-yard mould garnished with dank weeds or violets: and promptly break over it the other heart.
How to make a pathetic marine poem
This has the advantage of being easily produced and yet at the same time pleasing. The chance of it going wrong is very small. Take one midnight storm and one fisherman's family, as large and hungry as possible; must contain one innocent infant. Place this last in cradle with mother singing over it, the babe dreaming of angels or smiling sweetly. Stir the father in the storm until he disappears. Get ready a cruel crawling foam in which to serve up the father in the dull red morning. Pile up the agony to suit the palate.
How to write an epic poem like Tennyson
First catch our hero [or] be content with the nearest approach to a hero available, namely a prig. These are very plentiful and easy to catch. There are many different kinds and it is very necessary to select the right one. There is the scientific and atheistical prig, who may be observed eluding notice between the covers of 'Westminster Review'; the Anglican prig, who is often caught exposing himself in the 'Guardian'; the Ultramontane prig, who abounds in the 'Dublin Review'; the scholarly prig, who twitters among the leaves of the 'Academy'; and the Evangelical prig, who converts the heathen, and drinks port wine. None of these will serve. The only one suitable is the blameless variety. Take one blameless prig and place beside him a beautiful wife who cannot abide prigs. Add one goodly man and tie the three together with a link of Destiny. Surround this group with men and women, in fancy-ball costume, flavoured with many vices and few virtues. Stir briskly for two volumes. Blameless prig to be kept below swearing-point for the whole time. If he boils over he is worthless and you must get another. Next, break the wife's reputation into small pieces and dust them over the blameless prig. Take vials of tribulation and wrath and empty over the whole ingredients. Taking the sword of the heathen cut into small pieces the greater part of the minor characters. Wound slightly the head of the blameless prig. Remove him suddenly and keep [him] in a large cool barge for future use.

What's poetry worth?

A correspondent to these pages has recently written a poem and wants to know how much it will fetch in the bardic marketplace. The answer is, in all probability, not as much as a pound of carrots. It's probably fair to say that 99% of all poems written will earn a big fat zero. Not even a free cabbage leaf for the rabbit. Having said that, the situation is not totally without hope.
A few poems in the local evening newspaper is probably a logical start. Normally there's no payment involved, unless a contest happens to be running, but it establishes the poet's name in the locality. The satisfaction of seeing one's poem in print is 'the payment'. It's a base to build from.
The next level of 'payment' is the poetry journal received in return for a poetic contribution. The journal, magazine, pamphlet or whatever will be worth a few pence or up to seven or eight pounds. Some poetry magazines, often in the USA, do pay contributors but its basically a pittance, perhaps $5.00 or $10.00.
A poem in an anthology will also fetch little or nothing since the net income from the book will probably not amount to very much and will have to divided between all contributors. Poet-in-Residence is not yet on anybody's best-seller list and is still awaiting the first cheque from this source!
Useful and reliable sources of advice and information for the poet are Poetry Kit (see link) and jbwb.co.uk (see link). The entry fee for jbwb's quarterly poetry contests is about three pounds. It's a good idea to read through the previous winners list to 'get a feel' of what the competition judges are looking for. There are several Gwilym Williams poems on the list. They might serve as pointers to winning style, subject and form.
The next step is to consider publishing a small collection. Many would-be poets opt for this route. This is P-i-R's intended route. The forthcoming book 'Genteel Messages' (Poetry Monthly Press, Nottingham, England) is now at second proof-reading stage. An initial short print run of 50 copies is always possible with a publisher like Poetry Monthly Press. This means it may even be possible for the budding poet to break even!
Assume much work has been done, and that many poems have seen the light of day, what next? This is only the beginning. Having come this far you now need to push on. You must persuade your publisher to enter your best collection for a prestigious award such as the T S Eliot Prize.
And then having established your international poetic credentials it's a simple matter of burning the proverbial midnight oil, making those proverbial contacts, sending your poems to the so-called top journals, newspapers and magazines, keeping your name forever in the public eye, doing those British Council tours (if you live in Britain), doing poetry readings on the BBC, winning the Bardic chair (if you are Welsh), getting your collection on university and school text book lists, winning a Nobel Prize for Literature, doing some American tours, doing some more American tours, becoming a Poet Laureate, and (to make BIG BUCKS) you have to do all or most of this before you die.
Poet-in-Residence suggests a close reading of the lives of poets like Ted Hughes and Dylan Thomas. Poets, unless they have steady jobs (Armitage / probation officer), or even unsteady jobs (Bukowski / dishwasher, gas station attendant) will be a long time skint! And that's the simple fact of bardic life.

The Nameless

Poet-in-Residence recently visited an exhibition of paintings, including many paintings from World War I, by the Austrian artist Albin Egger-Lienz. The artist was assigned the task of recording military bravado during the four years of carnage; the idea being as in all previous conflicts to boldly illustrate the valiant and glorious action taking place on the field, for public consumption back home.
Egger-Lienz's patch was the Alpine region between Austria and Italy - the Dolomites. Many senseless deaths took place in those mountains. Unfortunately for the authorities Egger-Lienz painted the truth, and in its true colours. He produced masterpieces portraying the disaster of conflict and its negative effect on human dignity. To put it bluntly he didn't quite come up with the goods.
After the war he went to live in Italy where he remained until his death. A huge controversy reigned over a picture he painted for the War Chapel in his home town of Lienz. The Church of Rome decided to interdict and the Chapel was closed for religious services. Such are the ways of the Lord.
It was several decades before Rome relented and religious services were resumed in the chapel. Nowadays, because of Egger-Lienz's painting, it's something of a tourist attraction.
Poet-in-Residence has composed an Egger-Lienz poem (as an aide-memoire).

The Nameless
- title of painting by Albin Egger-Lienz

Within the immanence of death
the fighting man is alone
with his death
with his dance of death

amid the deformation of bodies

in the monochrome colouring of war
in the face of death's hush
in the dissolution
of the last consequence

symbolic sunbeams may shine
with immediacy and calmness
and there may descend
a cool detachment
and a new reality

there may arrive a time
for critical self-reflection
and quiet intimacy

but in the end
the warrior is bound
by life
and by death
and the order of generations

and when the warrior bodies
are piled in rigor mortis
as war's broken machinery
it is an admonishment
against the loss
of human dignity

'Sacrifice the dead
for a field of corpses!'
someone cries
but the cry is lost

tending hearths in luminal purity
in the depths of solace
bound-in with suffering
and desolation
the loyal wives
can raise only existential
questions

c)- Gwilym Williams (2008)

Four haiku from Zen Speug

Poet-in-Residence is pleased to feature another small selection of haiku from the ever-growing Zen Speug archives (quick P-i-R link at left). The haiku are published with kind permission of Edinburgh's talented haikuist John McDonald and displayed here with their English translations. In Poet-in-Residence's humble opinion the first and last are well worth a longish linger.


simmer shows -
the attercap biggs
his hoose o dreid

summer fairground -
the spider builds
his house of horror


the cailleach
an the burn
...at thair ain slaw raik

the old lady
and the stream
...at their own slow pace


cadger an's dug -
his dowie sang
follaes me hame

beggar and his dog -
his sad song
follows me home


yill bottle taps skailt -
he hunkers
refleckin on the galaxy

beer bottle tops scattered -
he sits
musing on the galaxy

c) - John McDonald (2008)

R K Singh recalls Garcia Lorca

There's a poem where Garcia Lorca famously gives himself, his poetry and possibly his handgun to some wanton gypsy woman. Poet-in-Residence was reminded of this poem when browsing, in all places, through Indian poet R K Singh's exotic archives. R K Singh is a regular and generous contributor to the Poet-in-Residence blogspot and the following is published with his kind permission.

Body: a Bliss

'To see you naked
is to recall the Earth'
says Garcia Lorca

it's no sin to love
strip naked in bed, kitchen
or prayer room

the bodies don't shine
all the time nor passion
wildly overflows

but when we have time
we must remember the parts
arouse the dead flesh

rub raw with desire
peeling wet layers through light
sound, senses and taste

play the seasons:
the thirst is ever new
and blissful too

to recreate
the body, a temple
and a prayer.

c)- R K Singh (2008)

A taste of Robert Dassanowsky

The New York born poet Robert Dassanowsky is a co-editor of Poetry Salzburg Review (visit via P-i-R's link at left). Dassanowsky's poetry collection 'Telegrams from the Metropole - Selected Poems 1980-1998' was first published by Poetry Salzburg in 1999. Details of this and many other Poetry Salzburg publications can be found on the interesting Poetry Salzburg website. Incidentally, George Szirtes a recent contributor to Poet-in-Residence and a winner of the T S Eliot Prize for his collection 'Reel' has a new poem in the Spring 2008 edition of Poetry Salzburg Review, due out shortly. The Szirtes website is also worth periodic visits as the home page features what Poet-in-Residence has dubbed 'George's poem of the week'. Visit via P-i-R's link. But back to Dassanowsky; the following poem comes from his 'Telegrams from the Metropole - Selected Poems 1980-1998'. It is published here with his kind permission; and it is 'well worth reading and digesting', to quote one of P-i-R's old Eng.Lit teachers.

Staples

Heed the nuances of ferment
the sweet and sour
of spirited flesh
the alternative coffees
of tolerance
this is poetry gentle people
the crab apple of knowledge
the spreads of Apollo
the herring salad of culture

Taste a sliver at first
pull a wafer
from the columns of the temple
eat it fast or overchew
we can't save it
it spoils quickly, the flies
gather too soon

Taste the rice cakes of thought
taste the puffs of correct health
taste it on behalf
of the hungry
finding their truth
in the scrapings of tossed paper plates
and the moldy tomatoes of angst.

c)- Robert Dassanowsky (1999)

Poet-in-Residence's ILP bronze medal

Skeptics say it's impossible to win an International Library of Poetry* prize without parting with money for books, cds, or whatever. If that's the case, Poet-in-Residence has just achieved the impossible for today's post brought a 3rd Prize bronze medal suitably engraved with laurel leaves and the designation 'International Open Amateur Poetry Contest Winner' to the bardic residence!
Poet-in-Residence takes this opportunity to congratulate the other 104 prize winners (silver and bronze medals) from USA, Canada, Australia, United Kingdom, Netherlands, and Malaysia; and also first prize winner, Anni Macht Gibson of Cincinnati, who pockets a cheque for $1,000.

*commonly known as poetry.com

Charlotte Mew, poet - part 4

This is the fourth and final part of Poet-in-Residence's short series about the tragic poet Charlotte Mew, the female poet much admired by Thomas Hardy and T S Eliot. Today is the 80th anniversary of her death.
The following poem is somewhat gentle compared to some of the other Charlotte Mew poems that P-i-R has featured but nevertheless it's a very suitable poem for a final statement. Mew is reputed to have said to the doctors who tried to save her, "Don't keep me; let me go."

The Peddler

Lend me, a little while, the key
That locks your heavy heart, and I'll give you back -
Rarer than books and ribbons and beads bright to see,
This little Key of Dreams out of my pack.

The road, the road, beyond men's bolted doors,
There shall I walk and you go free of me,
For yours lies North across the moors,
And mine lies South. To what seas?

How if we stopped and let our solemn selves go by,
While my gay ghost caught and kissed yours, as ghosts don't do,
And by the wayside, this forgotten you and I
Sat, and were twenty-two?

Give me the key that locks your tired eyes,
And I will lend you this one from my pack,
Brighter than coloured beads and painted books that make men wise:
Take it. No, give it back!

Charlotte Mew (1869 - 1928)

Ezra Pound, the artistic outlaw

To mark the fifth anniversary of the 'Battle for Babylon' Poet-in-Residence turns to Ezra Pound. The following poem was written, as it says in the title, in 1915; that is during the second year of the 'war-to-end-all-wars' - to use Clemenceau's unfortunate and hapless phrase yet again. Poet-in-Residence dedicates Ezra Pound's poem to the victims of this and all other conflicts; the homeless, the wounded, the families and friends of the bereaved, the doctors, the nurses, the children, the ordinary people caught up in these dark whirlwinds.

1915: February

The smeared, leather-coated, leather-greaved engineer
Walks in front of his traction-engine
Like some figure out of the sagas,
Like Grettir or like Skarpheddin,
With a sort of majestical swagger.
And his machine lumbers after him
Like some mythological beast,
Like Grendel bewitched and in chains,
But his ill luck will make me no sagas,
Nor will you crack the riddle of his skull,
O you over-educated, over-refined literati!
Nor yet you, store-bred realists,
You multipliers of novels!
He goes, and I go.
He stays and I stay.
He is mankind and I am the arts.
We are outlaws.
This war is not our war,
Neither side is on our side:
A vicious mediaevalism,
A belly-fat commerce,
Neither is on our side:
Whores, apes, rhetoricians,
Flagellants! in a year
Black as the dies irae*.
We have about us only the unseen country road,
The unseen twigs, breaking their tips with blossom.

Ezra Pound (1885 - 1972)

*lit.trans. - day of anger

Goodbye, Arthur C. Clarke (1917 - 2008)

There is something poetic about the exploration of the stars, planets, moons and dust clouds in space; the Horse's Head Nebula or nearer home the planets Mars and Venus or the moons of Jupiter. Man dreams of journeys to the centre of the Milky Way, and perhaps beyond.
Poet-in-Residence today pens a poem to Arthur C. Clarke, 'the prophet of the space age', author of more than 1,000 articles and 100 books. By a strange quirk of fate under a paragraph about self-fulfilling prophecy in 'Greetings, Carbon-Based Bipeds!' (pub. Voyager 1999, taken from an earlier piece for the Sunday Telegraph, 'The Twenty-First Century: A Very Brief History'), Clarke penned the mysterious sentence: Check me for accuracy - on December 31, 2100. Alas, 2008 already canceled.

Goodbye, Arthur C. Clarke
By walls of cities not of Earth
All my winged dreams have run,
And known the demons that had birth
In planets of another sun.
- Lord Dunsany

The Close Encounter was always possible
when you were here
with us
or so we felt -
but now you've gone
and perhaps
our hopes have gone with you.

Somewhere in Dunsany's Universe
we try to imagine you
greeting H. G. Wells and other entities
with open arms
speaking the common parlance
of several universes
comparing telescopes
and peering through them
for intelligent life -
back here on Earth?

Somewhere beyond our outpost - that rock
where our tractor is stalled
and pointing its rundown electronics
at the incomprehensible -
is where we imagine you to be
today.

The few of us shall keep alight
for our space of time
those embers of hope
you planted in our hearts
when you were here with us -
the thoughts that someone or some thing
somehow would come
from out the vastness
to visit us
to join us in our odyssey
through the dust and stars
or at least to say 'hello'.

Arthur C. Clarke, we wish you well
and we scan the high horizon . . .


c- Gwilym Williams (19 March 2008)

A walk in the spring - second and final revision

This is the third and final version of the poem that Poet-in-Residence has been working on over the last 3 or 4 weeks on the blog, in public as it were. The first thing to be changed this time is the title. The words 'March on...' have been added for their multi-layered meaning and to enhance the military aspect of the poem. The verse lengths have been cut and several phrases deleted. The idea being to give a more regimented feel to whole thing. It is after all meant to be not only a description of an afternoon stroll in springtime but also a warning against repeating the follies and excesses of history.

March on Oak Hill

Between the old bomb craters
the grass lies flat and is gray.

But pushing through the straw
the early cowbells -
like mice they are,
sleek and hairy to the touch.

Scrubby oaks
house tiny spiders
now lowering lines
to rosehip tangles.

Molehills litter a corner
where the moles are busy
building mounds for beetles
to explore.

On a wooded slope
in winter's wreckage
of wood and fenceposts
I find the violets
and pause
to inhale their scent.

The rustle of the zephyr
in the scrubby oaks
is like the beating wings
of a thousand butterflies.

A small white shed
stands with its roof caved-in
and the door and window gone.
Shadows wave on a limewashed wall.

And all the time I hear
the relentless chirps and warbles
the invisible hymns
and anthems.

Lizards sleep in craters
under mossy stones
and wait for warmth.

At the top of the hill a man
stripped to the waist
is flying a kite
for his family.

I crunch an abandoned shell
underfoot as I come to the top,
to the smashed concrete
of the old battery,
to the spent fireworks
of the New Year celebrations
to the March wind's icy blast.

c)- Gwilym Williams (2008)

Wilfred Owen's birthday present

What to give a boy for his birthday is often a problem. Some men like the lawyer Atticus in the best-selling novel 'To Kill a Mockingbird' (memorably played in the classic film of the same title by Gregory Peck) will give a boy a gun. A gun turns a boy into a real man, a kind of super-hero figure, is the blunt message. But who can say where that first gun may lead a doomed youth?
Wilfred Owen, like 10,000,000 others, perished in the so-called 'war to end all wars'; killed in action, as the official saying goes. Tomorrow, March 18th, is his birthday. Owen, who refused to glorify war, was one of the leading poets in a position to speak about life, if you can call it that, in the trenches. His working motto was 'true poets must be truthful'.
P-i-R's grandfathers were both wounded but somehow survived the slaughter. Many of the young men who died in the rat infested trenches or 'going over the top' were in reality only boys. In one infamous battle 1,250,000 soldiers perished. 600,000 on one side and 650,000 on the other.
'Nothing New on the Western Front' is the original meaningful and poignant title of Erich Maria Remarque's book known in English as 'All Quiet on the Western Front'. Why the difference? Why the mistranslation? A telling example of 'the fog of war' perhaps?

Arms and the Boy

Let the boy try along this bayonet blade
How cold steel is, and keen with hunger of blood;
Blue with all malice, like a madman's flash;
And thinly drawn with famishing for flesh.

Lend him to stroke these blind, blunt bullet-heads
Which long to muzzle in the hearts of lads.
Or give him cartridges of fine zinc teeth,
Sharp with the sharpness of grief and death.

For his teeth seem for laughing round an apple.
There lurk no claws behind his fingers supple;
And God will grow no talons at his heels,
Nor antlers through the thickness of his curls.

Wilfred Owen (1893 - 1918)

Down Aspidistra Street with Harold Monro

The poet and bookseller Harold Monro shuffled off his mortal coil on this very day 76years ago. Like George Orwell, author of the period novel 'Keep the Aspidistra Flying', it was tuberculosis that brought about Monro's all too premature end.
Poet-in-Residence is today pleased to pay a poetic tribute to the poet and founder of the Poetry Bookshop in London. The following appears to have been composed on a rainy day in Manchester. It reminds Poet-in-Residence of his own sad days in what are euphemistically known as lodgings. The aspidistra is a pretentious plant that requires little more than the passing flick of a landlady's duster. It is invariably placed in the parlour window.

Aspidistra Street

Go along that road, and look at sorrow.
Every window grumbles.
All day long the drizzle fills the puddles,
Trickles in the runnels and the gutters,
Drips and drops and dripples, and drops and dribbles,
While the melancholy aspidistra
Frowns between the parlour curtains.

Uniformity, dull Master! -
Birth and marriage, middle-age and death;
Rain and gossip: Sunday, Monday, Tuesday...

Sure, the lovely fools who made Utopia
Planned it without any aspidistra.
There will be a heaven on earth, but first
We must banish from the parlour
Plush and poker-work and paper flowers,
Brackets, staring photographs and what-nots,
Serviettes, frills and etageres,
Anti-macassars, vases, chiffoniers;

And the gloomy apidistra
Glowering through the window-pane,
Meditating heavy maxims,
Moralising to the rain.

H E Monro (1879 - 1932)

A North Wales 'Poetry & Music Event'

If you happen to be free on the evening of Saturday 22nd March 2008 and if you're in the North Wales or West Cheshire area Poet-in-Residence suggests you try to get along to Shotton. Situated between Chester and Flint, it is handily placed on the Warrington (Bank Quay) / North Wales train line. Entrance to the 'Poetry & Music Event' in the Plymouth Street Community Centre will be 3.00p (concessions 2.50p). The poetic proceedings are due to begin at 7.30pm.
Poets reading from their work will include Sally Evans, editor of Poetry Scotland, and Aled Lewis Evans, as well as the winners of the North Wales/Flintshire 2007 Poetry Competition. Musical entertainment will be provided by Onya Wick, featuring the versatile Mike Penney, Maureen Weldon and Kemal Houghton. The trio performed to great acclaim at the 2007 Callander Poetry Festival.
Another useful 'get yourself along there' tip from Poet-in-Residence!

P-i-R's Spring 2008 Poetry Quiz

COMPETITION CLOSED: POETRY QUIZ ANSWERS ARE NOW GIVEN! There being no winner/s the five book prizes on offer will be donated to the popular book exchange at P-i-R's local Irish pub. A Poet-in-Residence St. Patrick's Day present!
The solution AGALAJDRESRGHROWEDJR is the first letter from each answer (see below).

Poet-in-Residence's Spring 2008 Poetry Quiz is, as it says on the sign at the Penny Arcade, intended 'for amusement only'. However, Poet-in-Residence has raided his bookshelves and found some suitable prizes. The winner, that is the first blogger to come up with the correct solution, will be invited to choose a couple of poetry books from the following list. The runner-up will be able to choose one book from the three left over after the winner has chosen. Entry is completely free by the way! Do have a go.
The prize list comprises the following books:
'Ancestor Worship' - Michael S. Begnal (salmon), 'Looking for Icarus' Roselle Angwin (bluechrome), 'Carrying Fire' - Oz Hardwick (bluechrome), 'No Laughing Matter' - Roger Elkin (Cinnamon), 'In the beginning was the song' - Glenys Jones (troubador).
The first 15 answers can be found here on Poet-in-Residence. The final 5 answers will probably require a little research. Simply note the first letter of each answer and then when you have all 20, or as many as you can find, submit your complete solution. In the event of nobody getting all 20 correct then the person/s with the most correct will obviously be the winner/s.
Your submitted entry will look something like this: DGFBNUPPOTSREWGGELKP. Remember, only the first letter of each answer is required. If you don't know an answer you can skip it by using the letter X. The correct solution will be revealed in a week or so. Here, without any more ado, are the questions.

1. Name the author of the poem 'Miss Discombobulated'. A: Alan Morrison
2. Who found himself in limbo when adjusting his clocks? A: Gerald England
3. This Liverpool born poet was unpopular at Oxford. A: Arthur Clough
4. A sunset tribute to a famous tenor. Who was he? A: Luciano Pavarotti
5. She wrote about a lonely death. A: Adelaide Crapsey
6. He was in the guardhouse at 3o'clock in the morning. A: John Harrison
7. His paintings were arrested by six fat constables. A: D H Lawrence
8. He said we should love the wild swan. A: Robinson Jeffers
9. A Grimmet betrayed? Yes, but which one? A: Edwin Grimmet
10. Poet who wrote a poem about a turnip snedder. A: Seamus Heaney
11. Poet wrote of love being negotiated in a perfume bar.A: R K Singh
12. Poet known as the cerebral poet. A: George Meredith
13. Poet who observed that 'time is a hideous gastropod'.A: Heinrich Heine
14. He said 'You will find me in my poems'. A: Rabindranath Tagore
15. He wrote of a woman with 'lips of flame and heart of stone'. A: Oscar Wilde
16. Who wrote the following?-
I see in an article on Wordsworth, in one of the current English magazines, the lines, "A few weeks ago an eminent critic said that, owing to the special tendency of science and to its all-devouring force, poetry would cease to be read in fifty years." But I anticipate the very contrary. A: Walt Whitman
17. Who wrote the following?-
Can't see that yr. work has any marked individuality, or as yet any character to distinguish it from anyone elses. England has gone to hell, and if you are determined you had better go somewhere else, as you will get nothing but carrion and pus from your surroundings. A: Ezra Pound
18. Who wrote the following?-
I'm staying here in John Davenport's house. He's an amateur writer & musician, extremely able, weighing nineteen stone. It's a big house, full of books & pianos & records. There are lots of other people staying here too.A: Dylan Thomas
19. Which poet's grave is very close to the grave of Ezra Pound? A: Joseph Brodsky
20. Which poet and songwriter in a preface to one of his books wrote, 'I was bred to the plough and am independent'? A: Robert Burns

'Learning should be made enjoyable' says Poet-in-Residence!

Merseyside poets - A. S. J. Tessimond

Poet-in-Residence continues with his research into the Mersey poets of yesteryear.
The only child of a bank inspector, Arthur Seymour John Tessimond was born in 1902 across the river from Liverpool in the ship-building port of Birkenhead. Childhood and school years were basically unhappy times. He ran away from Charterhouse School and stayed for a couple of weeks in London. Later in life he spent half of his inheritance on nightclub girls and striptease dancers and the other half on psychoanalysis. It's possible that electric shock therapy may have sparked the brain haemorrhage from which he died at the age of 59. During his troubled existence he managed to publish three collections of poems. His literary executor Hubert Nicholson recalls him as 'an elegant, fair, mannerly figure, at large with a rolled umbrella in the big city streets' in search of an 'unperplexed, unvexed time.'
What exactly did A. S. J. Tessimond find in those 'big city streets'? The following poems may serve to give some idea; a keyhole into his life as it were.

Wet City Night

Light drunkenly reels into shadow;
Blurs, slurs uneasily;
Slides off the eyebally:
The segments shatter.

Tree-branches cut arc-light in ragged
Fluttering wet strips.
The cup of sky-sign is filled too full;
It slushes wine over.

The street-lamps dance a tarantella
And zigzag down the street:
They lift and fly away
In a wind of lights.

Cats

Cats no less liquid than their shadows
Offer no angles to the wind.
They slip, diminished, neat through loopholes
Less than themselves; will not be pinned

To rules or routes for journeys; counter
Attack with non-resistance; twist
Enticing through the curving fingers
And leave an angered empty fist.

They wait obsequious as darkness
Quick to retire, quick to return;
Admit no aim or ethics; flatter
With reservations; will not learn

To answer to their names; are seldom
Truly owned till shot or skinned.
Cats no less liquid than their shadows
Offer no angles to the wind.

Not Love Perhaps

This is not Love perhaps - Love that lays down
Its life, that many waters cannot quench, nor the floods drown -
But something written in lighter ink, said in a lower tone:
Something perhaps especially our own:
A need at times to be together and talk -
And then the finding we can walk
More firmly through dark narrow places
And meet more easily nightmare faces:
A need to reach out sometimes hand to hand -
And then find Earth less like an alien land:
A need for alliance to defeat
The whisperers at the corner of the street:
A need for inns on roads, islands in seas, halts for discoveries to be shared,
Maps checked and notes compared:
A need at times of each for each
Direct as the need of throat and tongue for speech.

A. S. J. Tessimond (1902 - 1962)

R S Thomas meets Wallace Stevens, part 3

We continue with our fictious meeting of the poet-priest and the poetic insurance man; R S Thomas meets once again the poet he admired for his use of metaphors and adjectives, Wallace Stevens. The two poems this time are 'Two Views of a Gorilla' from Thomas and arguably Stevens' most famous poem, 'Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird'. Are these two poets, in a way saying the same thing, although coming from different standpoints? Is the 8th verse of Stevens' poem giving the same basic message as the 2nd verse of the Thomas poem? And what of Thomas's concluding lines about '...stars in a frenzy...'? Two piercing poems deserving of lengthy and serious contemplation. There is no easy answer. It is all a matter of feeling.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.

I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.

The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.

A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.

I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.

O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?

I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.

When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.

At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.

The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.

It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.

Wallace Stevens (Harmonium)

And now to R S Thomas's observation of the gorilla. The male and the female of the species and the gorilla make two. Perhaps inspired by the 4th verse of 'Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird'?

Two Views of a Gorilla

We confront one another,
a meeting not of minds
but of fingers. Is it sadness
I imagine on his gnarled
face, sadness for failure
to catch up; sadness rather
for what I have become,
a brother who has put him
behind bars, when all he asks
of me is that I love him?
When two such contemplate
each other, which is made monster
by the bars that are between them?

Dying, she puts out a finger
in my diretion; trembling
I touched it. The gorilla
postponing the death of the species
behind bars, puts out a hand, too,
which I take, putting the stars
in a frenzy. All over the night
sky their alarm rings,
warning of the danger
that, in all the emptiness
around, when two creatures
meet, they can come so close
via the emotions to meaning.

R S Thomas (Unpublished Poems)

Merseyside Poetry Project

Poetry Kit's March 2008 Newsletter brings news of 'Poetic Licence' a Merseyside Poetry Project event to be held on Wednesday 12th March 2008. Proceedings will commence at 8:00pm. The bardic venue is situated opposite New Brighton Railway Station - New Bright Art, 8 Atherton Street, New Brighton. To read your own latest masterpiece, should you have a burning desire to do so, arrive EARLY and book your spot (or contact info@poetrykit.org). Admission is FREE.
With Jim Bennett as host a great time is sure to be had by all; or Poet-in-Residence will want to know the reason why.

P-i-R's International Women's Day poem

To celebrate International Women's Day, a movement begun in New York 100 years ago in 1908 when 15,000 women marched through the streets demanding a better deal, Poet-in-Residence has selected an Elizabethan sonnet parody by Sir John Davies written in the 16th century. Sir John, an Inns of Court man, was no romantic fool or sentimentalist. His sideways look at the poet's attitude to the so-called fairer sex makes entertaining reading. P-i-R has updated the spellings of a number of Elizabethan words, for the purpose clarity. The sonnet shows Elizabethan men as the pompous fools they could be - especially when it comes to women.

from Gullinge* Sonnets - no. 6

The sacred muse that first made love divine
Has made him naked and without attire;
But I will clothe him with this pen of mine
That all the world his fashion shall admire:
His hat of hope, its band of beauty fine,
His cloak of craft, his doublet of desire;
Grief for a girdle shall about him twine;
His points of pride, his eyelet holes of ire,
His hose of hate, his codpiece of conceit,
His stockings of stern strife, his shirt of shame,
His garters of vainglory, gay and slight,
His pantaloons of passions I will frame;
Pumps of presumption shall adorn his feet,
And socks of sullenness exceeding sweet.

Sir John Davies (circa. 1594)

*possibly sham or counterfeit

Pastor Niemöller's famous poem

The Lutheran pastor was imprisoned for 7 years in Sachsenhausen and Dachau. Poet-in-Residence publishes Niemöller's most famous poem below, to mark the 70th anniversary of Hitler's march into Austria, and for educational purposes. He then adds a verse of his own.
This week the Austrian press, radio and televison are full of historical flashbacks, comment and opinion. There's no getting away from it. A day that will live in infamy as somebody once said about something else. Something that we'll no doubt come to in due course.
An interesting aside to all this is the business of re-naming of streets. Zeitgeist and political climate demands that Vienna's Frieden-platz (Frieden=Peace) becomes Mexico-platz becomes again Frieden-platz becomes Hermann-Göring-platz becomes Roosevelt-platz. If the name changes again Poet-in-Residence's money will be on Vivaldi-platz, for a Vivaldi memorial was recently imported from Italy and erected there.

First They Came for the Jews

First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out -
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the communists
and I did not speak out -
because I was not a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out -
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.

Martin Niemöller (1892 - 1984)

And here's P-i-R's version:

First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out -
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Slavs
and I did not speak out
because I was not Slavic.
Then they came for the Gypsies
and I did not speak out -
because I was not a Gypsy.
Then they came for the psychiatric cases
the mentally handicapped
and the infirm
but again I did not speak out.
And then they came for
the little children
suffering in the hospitals,-
ideal material for their cruel experiments.

And finally someone spoke out.

But it was far too late.

Philip Larkin's Mr Bleaney

On Poet-in-Residence there is a Gwilym Williams poem about a 'turtle in a tank'. A line in the poem refers to the turtle's expression as being 'Larkinesque'. The Larkin in 'Larkinesque' is of course the English poet Philip Larkin, one of the best homegrown poets of recent years. In the 1980s a survey of English children of secondary school age revealed that Larkin was by far the most loved poet.
Photographs of Larkin sometimes show him wearing a slightly bewildered expression. Hence that line in the 'turtle in a tank' poem. Larkin was sometimes bewildered, if that's the right word, by the values he found in the world around him. It was a kind of sad but humorous bewilderment as the poem 'Mr Bleaney' serves to illustrate. This poem is Poet-in-Residence's favourite poem by Philip Larkin. It comes from 'The Whitsun Weddings', Larkin's best collection and a wonderful book.

Mr Bleaney

'This was Mr Bleaney's room. He stayed
The whole time he was at the Bodies, till
They moved him.' Flowered curtains, thin and frayed
Fall to within five inches of the sill,

Whose window shows a strip of building land,
Tussocky, littered. 'Mr Bleaney took
My bit of garden properly in hand.'
Bed, upright chair, sixty-watt bulb, no hook

Behind the door, no room for books or bags -
'I'll take it.' So it happens that I lie
Where Mr Bleaney lay, and stub my fags
On the same saucer-souvenir, and try

Stuffing my ears with cotton-wool, to drown
The jabbering set he egged her on to buy.
I know his habits - what time he came down,
His preference for sauce to gravy, why

He kept on plugging at the four aways -
Likewise their yearly frame: the Frinton folk
Who put him up for summer holidays,
And Christmas at his sister's house in Stoke.

But if he stood and watched the frigid wind
Tousling the clouds, lay on the the fusty bed
Telling himself that this was home, and grinned,
And shivered, without shaking off the dread

That how we live measures our own nature,
And at his age having no more to show
Than one hired box should make him pretty sure
He warranted no better, I don't know.

Philip Larkin (1922 - 85)

A walk in the spring - the first revision

On 24th February 2008 (scroll down) Poet-in-Residence bravely published the first draft of 'Spring on Oak Hill'; based on rough notes in his poet's notebook. The idea being to revise and construct the final poem, before the eyes of the world. It is intended as an expose´ of P-i-R's thought processes - such as they are. And now is the time, the poem having cooled its heels for 10 days or so, to do the first revision. The following revision was done this morning in a busy hospital waiting room. Waiting for ideal conditions has no sense. One might wait forever and never get anything done.
On re-reading the poem the first thing P-i-R observed was that the title 'Spring on Oak Hill' was overstating the obvious. The title was shortened to the sharper 'Oak Hill'.
In the first verse some minor changes were made. P-i-R decided to keep the post-Hardy quality in there because the poem is going to be a journey through time as well as place, from the late 1930s up to the present day. The Hardyesque syntax provides a double-meaning for the word 'most' - a generous bonus! Style will change as the poem unfolds.
In the second verse again some minor changes. The verb 'litter' is introduced. This
suggests spring - and new birth - in connection with the burrowing moles as well as its more obvious meaning in the poem's context.
In the third verse the word 'comes' is inserted early on to create an echo later. The word 'rustling' is reduced to 'rustle' to create a half-rhyme with 'zephyr'. The echo and the half-rhyme serve to give the breeze some quality.
In the fourth verse the words 'And here's...' replace 'There's now...'. This moves the poem on more convincingly. The words 'and on the floor inspect a broken window' are removed and the words 'where lizards sleep under mossy stones' are brought in from a later verse which is to be deleted. The word 'anthems' is now brought in, in connection with birdsong. This points the way the poem is going to go. It's a stand-alone word.
The fifth verse is deleted except for the 'lizards' phrase which was moved, as we have seen, into the fourth verse.
The sixth verse is deleted completely.
The last verse has one minor change. This important concluding verse starts with the heroic male figure flying his standard atop the hill with his family round him and ends with the destruction of a house, albeit a snail's - that slow moving, slow thinking creature - and a look at military ruins and spent fireworks - the party is over! This is a satisfactory ending. It is pointless to continue the poem beyond this point.
The poem teaches us that changes have to be made if we are to avoid the mistakes of the past. But the poet, as we see, is not optimistic that this will happen.
This then is the second draft. Like the first draft, it must also cool its heels. In a week or two the final revision will be possible. And then P-i-R will consider the fate of the poem. To be or not to be, as it were.

Oak Hill

Between the bomb craters
the grass is flat to the ground and grey
and bursting through.
Between the grassy straws are furry cowbells -
like fluffy mice they are
most hairy to the touch. Nearby are
scrubby oak trees with pale brown leaves
and tiny spiders throwing lines
on rosehip tangles and old black berries.

Loamy molehills litter the corner of the field
- the moles have been busy
building hills for beetles
to trundle up and down - and
there on the wooded bank in winter's wreckage
of wood and fencepost I see
the violets. I stoop and inhale their perfume.

There comes the rustle
of the zephyr in the crabby oaks
- that tiny stream of sound like the wings
of a thousand butterflies. It comes and goes
in its intensity.

And here's a ruined shed with its roof caved-in
and the door gone. I look inside
at shadows on a limestone wall.
All around the unseen
birds gargle and twitter
their throaty chirps and warbles -
anthems
in trees and bushes
and somewhere hidden in the grass
where lizards sleep
under mossy stones.

On the top of the hill there's a man
stripped to the waist
flying a colourful kite for a girl and a woman
with a voice like a squeaky wheel. I crunch
a snail's abandoned shell underfoot as I come to the top,
to the smashed concrete of an old battery and the spent
fireworks of the New Year celebrations.

c)- Gwilym Williams 2008

Poem of the month - Finnegans Wake

Is 'Finnegans Wake' one of the longest poems written in modern times? The 600+ pages took James Joyce 17 years to scribble out -or so we are led to believe. He footnotes the last page: Paris 1922 - 1939.
R S Thomas says of poetry in his poem 'Don't ask me...', 'The listener should come / to and realise / that verse has been going on / for some time. Let / there be no coughing, / and no sighing. Poetry / is a spell woven / by consonants and vowels / in the absence of logic' Thomas's defintion applies de facto to Finnegans Wake, as we will see. A novel, in the normal sense of the word, it certainly isn't. For as a novel it is unreadable.
Many 'coughing' and 'sighing' professors may dutifully claim that the book defies categorisation, or even that it has no literary merit. Poet-in-Residence disagrees. To put it bluntly P-i-R says - Finnegans Wake is nothing more or less than a long poem. The only problem with it is - it's on the wrong shelf.
P-i-R has taken a single paragraph (FW-p409) completely at random and set it out in verse form. This simple act reveals the wink in Finnegans Wake. Nowt but a sillyole pome it is.

from Finnegans Wake

Goodbye now, Shaun replied,
with a voice pure as a church-mode,
in echo rightdainty,
with a good catlick tug
at his cocomoss candylock,
a forestaste in time
of his cabbageous brain's curlyflower.

Athiacaro! Comb his tar odd gee
sing your mower
O meeow?
Greet thee Good?
How are them columbuses!
Lard have mustard on them!

Fatiguing, very fatiguing.
Hobos hornknees and the corveeture
of my spine.
Poumeerme! My heaviest crux
and dairy lot it is,
with a bed as hard as the thinkmuddles
of the Greeks
and a board as bare
as a Roman altar.

I'm off rabbited kitchens
and relief porridgers.
No later than a very few fortnichts
since I was meeting
on the Thinker's Dam
with a pair of men
out of glasshouse
whom I shuffled hands with
named MacBlacks - I think
their names is MacBlakes -
from the Headfire Clump -
and they were improving me
and making me beliek
no five hour factory life
with insufficient emollient
and industrial disabled
for them that day
o'gratises.

I have the highest gratification
by anuncing how I have it
from whowho but Hagios
Colleenkiller's prophecies.
After suns and moons,
dews and wettings,
thunders and fires,
comes sabotag.

Solvitur palumballando!
Tilvido!
Adie!

New Poet-in-Residence poem on ink-sweat-and-tears

Poet-in-Residence's latest poetic offering is today fronting-up ink-sweat-and-tears -'the fastest growing' poetry website. The poem is called 'An Old Man Walks Home' (handy link to IS&T at left). It's all a bit sad - but then life can be sometimes.
If you need cheering-up take a look at 'Kerr's Ass'. It's immediately below!

P-i-R's book of the month

Almost everybody enjoys recommending a good book. And with his 'book of the month' feature Poet-in-Residence is no exception. This month's book tip is the humorous and authentic autobiography by one of Ireland's favourite poets, 'The Green Fool' from Patrick Kavanagh (Penguin Classics).
The book turns on the story of how Kavanagh walked halfway across Ireland and back because he wanted to be a poet. It is packed with lovely Irish tales and yarns. Poet-in-residence found himself laughing out loud, and wiping away the tears...and this was only on the bus!
Here's a poem of Kavanagh's purloined 'for educational purposes' from Crotty's anthology of Modern Irish Poetry (Blackstaff) to set the scene; life in the village of Mucker, a place where time hardly matters - the birthplace of Patrick Kavanagh.

Kerr's Ass

We borrowed the loan of Kerr's big ass
To go to Dundalk with butter,
Brought him home the evening before the market
An exile that night in Mucker.

We heeled up the cart before the door
We took the harness inside -
The straw-stuffed straddle, the broken breeching
With bits of bull-wire tied;

The winkers that had no choke-band,
the collar and the reins...
In Ealing Broadway, London Town
I name their several names

Until a world comes to life -
Morning, the silent bog,
And the God of imagination waking
in a Mucker fog.

Patrick Kavanagh (1904 - 67)

Edward Thomas and Robert Frost

Today is Edward Thomas's 130th birthday. As we have seen on Poet-in-Residence (scroll sidebar), he was one of the ten million killed in the so-called 'war to end all wars', as the French leader Clemenceau phrased it.
Thomas began writing his poetry at the age of 36 and wrote 143 poems. His first collection was published posthumously.
Robert Frost, born 4 years before Thomas, lived to be almost 89. One of Frost's most famous poems was inspired by Edward Thomas,- his friend and 'accessory' as Frost called him.

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost (1874 - 1963)

The road that Edward Thomas took led in 1917 to Aras and away from Frost, and it was a cruel road covered with 'blood and beer bottles' as his diary entry testifies. It was the last road that Thomas saw as he manned his machine gun. But maybe, as Poet-in-Residence imagines, as he lay there battle-weary, firing those last rounds into the smoke-filled distance, he had time to recall his own 'fair' and 'less traveled' road. Frost and P-i-R sincerely hope so.

Adlestrop

Yes. I remember Adlestrop -
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.

The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform. What I saw
Was Adlestrop - only the name

And willows, willow-herb, and grass,
And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,
No whit less still and lonely fair
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.

And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

Edward Thomas (1878 - 1917)

R S Thomas meets Wallace Stevens - part 2

In his poem 'Homage to Wallace Stevens' (scroll-on down) R S Thomas, the priest-poet from Wales, pointed out that Stevens' poetry was a church in which curious marriages were conducted and in which metaphors were burned like incense. Stevens does not deny this. In fact he illustrates the point himself in a poem from 'Transport to Summer'.

Thinking of a Relation between the Images of Metaphors

The wood-doves are singing along the Perkiomen.
The bass lie deep, still afraid of the Indians.

In the one ear of the fisherman, who is all
One ear, the wood-doves are singing a single song.

The bass keep looking ahead, upstream, in one
Direction, shrinking from the spit and splash

Of waterish spears. The fisherman is all
One eye, in which the dove resembles the dove.

There is one dove, one bass, one fisherman.
Yet coo becomes rou-coo, rou-coo. How close

To the unstated theme each variation comes...
In that one ear it might strike perfectly:

State the disclosure. In that one eye the dove
Might spring to sight and yet remain a dove.

The fisherman might be the single man
In whose breast, the dove, alighting, would grow still.

---
Poet-in-Residence suspects that R S Thomas, being a fisherman of souls, would have appreciated that one. But his reply, in this imaginary P-i-R debate, comes not from his poem 'Negative' - a poem that begins: One word. Say it. / 'No.' No is the word, then? / 'No,' Stevens misled us. but maybe with this questioning extract found in another R S Thomas poem. The Welsh priest-poet enjoyed nothing more than to get into his doomsday Man v. Machine/Science/Bacteria/Genetics/mode.

from Winged God

All men. Or shall we say,
not chauvanistic, all
people, it is all
people? Beasts manure
the ground, nibble to
promote growth; but man,
the consumer, swallows
like the god of mythology
his own kind. Beasts walk
among birds and never
do the birds scare; but the human,
that alienating shadow
with the Bible under the one
arm and under the other
the bomb, as often
drawn as he is repelled
by the stranger waiting for him
in the mirror - how
can he return home
when his gaze forages
beyond the stars? Pity him,
then, this winged god, rupturer
of gravity's control...

or if not that one then certainly the following extract from 'The Echoes Return Slow', picking up on Wallace's 'dove' theme.

from The Echoes Return Slow

Fleeing for protection
from the triviality
of my thought to the thought
of its triviality - what sanctuary

there? The barbarians
are at the door. The old
forces of nihilism
and bad faith have no respect

for such altars. Dove of God,
self-powered, return
to this wrecked ark, though it be
with radiation in your bill.

Charlotte Mew, poet - part 3

Poet-in-Residence presents another unusual poem from Charlotte Mew, a poet who published only 16 poems in her lifetime. Mew was a favourite of Thomas Hardy and T S Eliot. In 'Monsieur Qui Passe' we find another strange and remarkable poem. It is 80 years this month since Mew took her own life. Her two siblings died in the mental asylum.

Monsieur Qui Passe

A purple blot against the dead white door
In my friend's rooms, bathed in their vile pink light,
I had not noticed her before
She snatched my eyes and threw them back to me:
She did not speak until we came out into the night,
Paused at this bench beside the kiosk on the Quay.

God knows precisley what she said -
I left to her the twisted skein,
Though here and there I caught a thread,-
Something, at first, about 'the lamps along the Seine,
And Paris, with that witching card of Spring
Kept up her sleeve,- why you could see
The trick done on these freezing winter nights!
While half the kisses of the Quay -
Youth, hope,- the whole enchanted string
Of dreams hung on the Seine's long line of lights.'

Then suddenly she stripped, the very skin
Came off her soul,- a mere girl clings
Longer to some last rag, however thin,
When she has shown you - well - all sorts of things:
'If it were daylight - oh! one keeps one's head -
But fourteen years! - No one has ever guessed -
The whole thing starts when one gets to bed -
Death?- If the dead would tell us they had rest!
But your eyes held it as I stood there by the door -
One speaks to Christ - one tries to catch his garment's hem -
One hardly says as much to Him - no more:
It was not you, it was your eyes - I spoke to them.'

She stopped like a shot bird that flutters still,
And drops, and tries to run again, and swerves.
The tale should end in some walled house upon a hill.
My eyes, at least, won't play such havoc there,-
Or hers - But she had hair! - blood dipped in gold;
And there she left me throwing back the first odd stare.
Some sort of beauty once, but turning yellow, getting old.
Pouah! These women and their nerves!
God! but the night is cold!

Charlotte Mew (1869 - 1928)

The daffodil doddle

According to the 'Penguin Concise Dictionary' the word doddle means 'a very easy task'. P-i-R's normally reliable 'Wordsworth Concise English Dictionary' and his impressively titled 'The New International Webster's Comprehensive Dictionary of the English Language' don't even mention the word.
The daffodil doddle P-i-R is thinking about today, this being the 1st day of March, is the annual cross-country run along the Roddlesworth Nature Trail through the area of ancient woodland near the moorland village of Tockholes in Lancashire, England, which takes place at this time of year. The 5 km course is not too strenuous, a mere doddle.
Roddlesworth is a scenic spot and at this time of year the woodland paths are ablaze with daffodils. P-i-R has taken part in this cross-country run several times. It is a favourite run, heralding as it does the return of spring. There's also a run for children, over a shorter course, and each child participant is rewarded with a daffodil.
In 'Cambrian Country - Welsh Emblems', the Swansea poet David Greenslade writes of the daffodil, that it is ...an opportunity to spread some Cambrian light. That the daffodil is a genuine golden yellow is a tribute to its lack of relationship with suffering. The daffodil doesn't care about complaints. Today is St. David's Day; the day when the Welsh wear their daffodils in their lapels or put them in vases in their front room windows.
St. David was, according to legend, born in a field in the south-west corner of Wales some 1600 years ago. It was said to be during a thunderstorm. P-i-R has visited the spot and also St. David's Cathedral which stands, not proudly on a hill, but discreetly in a hollow and therefore safe from ancient enemies.
Today there will be harmonious singing of traditional songs like Sosban Fach (Little Saucepan), perhaps a game of rugby and some supping of good Welsh beer to keep the songsters' throats well oiled.
On this Welsh National Day, and it is not even an official holiday mark you, there will be no parading of the military, no tanks rumbling down the main streets, no guided missiles on the backs of lorries. Wales is a proud land with a history that will stand up to any close scrutiny. The land may be small and have more sheep than people, but it is not and never will be some kind of jumped-up banana republic. In that way, the sons of Llywelyn ap Gruffydd (the last indigenous prince of Wales defeated in 1277) are most astute. There's a Welsh proverb that sums up the Welsh mentality. It's to do with the way the Welsh perceive themselves and it has grains of truth by the cartload in it.

To be born Welsh
is to be born privileged,
not with a silver spoon
in your mouth
but music in your blood
and poetry in your soul

anon

Wales is first and foremost a land of seashore and ancient mountains. These mountains are of granite, slate and coal. The land is bounded on three sides (north, west and south) by the sea. Nobody in Wales lives very far from the sea.

On the Seashore

On the seashore are red roses;
on the seashore are white lilies;
on the seashore is my darling
who sleeps by night and wakes by morning.

On the seashore is a flat stone
where I exchanged a word with my sweetheart;
around this stone grows the lily
and a few sprigs of rosemary.

On the seashore are blue stones,
on the seashore are the flowers of youth.
On the seashore are all mode of virtues;
on the seashore is my own sweetheart.

traditional

John Ceiriog Hughes known as Ceiriog was a very famous Welsh lyric poet. The following poem, a popular bass/baritone solo piece, is written in Welsh. The title and first line translate to 'The Great Mountains Remain'. Perhaps some kind reader will translate the whole of the poem into 'the thin language', as R S Thomas was prone to call English. Poet-in-Residence, living in 'exile' regrets that his smattering of Welsh is no longer up to the mark.

Aros Mae'r Mynyddau Mawr

Aros mae'r mynyddau mawr
Rhuo trostynt mae y gwynt
Clywir eto gyda'r wawr
Gan bugeiliaid megis cynt.
Eto tyfa'r llygad dydd,
O gylch traed y graig a'r bryn;
Ond bugeiliaid newydd
Sydd ar yr hen fynyddoedd hyn.

Ar arferion Cymru gynt
Newid ddaeth o rod i rod;
Mae cenhedlaeth wedi mynd
A chenhedlaeth wedi dod.
Wedi oes dymhestlog hir
Alun Mabon mwy nid yw -
Ond mae'r heniaith yn y tir
A'r alawon hen yn fyw.

Ceiriog (1832 - 1887)

Finally, it's back to that song about the little saucepan. This is one that every Welsh child learns at his mother's knee.

Little Saucepan

Mary Ann has hurt her finger;
David the servant is unwell;
the baby in the crib is crying
and the cat has scratched little Johnny.

Little saucepan boiling on the fire,
little saucepan boiling on the fire,
and the cat has scratched little Johnny.

Mary Ann's sore finger is better;
David the servant is in his grave;
the baby in the crib is now quiet,
and the cat is resting in peace.

traditional

Poet-in-Residence wishes all readers, whatever their language or location in the world, a happy and peaceful St. David's Day.