Here again – for the summer solstice – are those Wittenham Clumps. By the early 1940s Nash’s was in declining health. Suffering from chronic asthma – triggered his wife Margaret believed by inhaling gas at Passchendaele in 1917 – he had endured several spells in hospital. He and Margaret, began to make visits to nearby Boars Hill where their friend Hilda Harrison lived…
Home no one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark you only run for the border when you see the whole city running as well your neighbors running faster than you breath bloody in their throats the boy you went to school with who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory is holding a gun bigger…
Forget the mother of all bombs and the father of all mankind – here is the ultimate parent of all apologies. Just look at this great list as the poet slyly moves from the serious to the playful, from the abstract to the mundane, from the burden to the lightweight. It’s an insistence on going on living and enjoying small…
“My boy you should go in for nature.” Sir William Richmond’s advice to Paul Nash on reviewing some of his early drawings. One of Paul Nash’s friends at the Slade School of Art was Claughton Pellew-Harvey who “had a deep love for the country, particularly for certain of its features, such as ricks and stooks of corn.” At first I…
Poltroon – the very word is like a … what? a.) A North American mammal of the raccoon family known for its habit of rooting for grubs in the undergrowth of deciduous forests b.) A metal or earthenware pot typically having a funnel-shaped top, often kept under the bed c.) An abject or contemptible coward, lacking courage; ignobly timid and faint-hearted. The Poltroon…
Did you have a special place as a child? Perhaps somewhere secret and magical? A corner of a city park, a place in the garden, somewhere under the trees or behind the shed? Do you have one now? For the artist Paul Nash his first special place was Kensington Gardens, in west London, near where he was born in 1889.…
The Dancers All day beneath the hurtling shells Before my burning eyes Hover the dainty demoiselles — The peacock dragon-flies. Unceasingly they dart and glance Above the stagnant stream — And I am fighting here in France As in a senseless dream. A dream of shattering black shells That hurtle overhead, And dainty dancing demoiselles Above the dreamless dead. …
Do you have any favorite poems about trains and train journeys? I was compiling such a list – the way one does on a rainy Tuesday in June – when I discovered this gem from C. K Chesterton. What a delightful put down of a very annoying verse that’s been stuck in my head since I was about eight. An…
How to Read a Poem: Beginner’s Manual First, forget everything you have learned, that poetry is difficult, that it cannot be appreciated by the likes of you, with your high school equivalency diploma and steel-tipped boots, or your white collar misunderstandings. Do not assume meanings hidden from you: the best poems mean what they say and say it. To read…
There’s a story behind every poem. There’s always a story. And the story behind this one is that the poet – Frank O’Hara – was on his way to Staten Island where he was to give a reading with Robert Lowell at Wagner College. It was February 1962 and the weather was nasty. O’Hara picked up a newspaper to read on…
Before reading the poem – take a look at this painting. Take a good look. What’s there? Be literal. What is in this picture? What do you see? So you climbed the staircase with the one-legged man with the help of a crutch while the world about you lay in ruins. In spite of all, you started the climb while…
The End and the Beginning After every war someone has to clean up. Things won’t straighten themselves up, after all. Someone has to push the rubble to the side of the road, so the corpse-filled wagons can pass. Someone has to get mired in scum and ashes, sofa springs, splintered glass, and bloody rags. Someone has to drag…
A bike ride in the country. A conversation interrupted by a near accident and the shock of a racist chance encounter. The ride resumes only to be interrupted again by a moment of menace. And then something quite unexpected happens.. I love the way the poet just drops us into the middle of what seems like an ongoing conversation. As if…
Blackbirds are notorious for being able to mimic the sounds they hear as they hop about the celestial chimney pots of suburbia. Ice cream van jingles, phone ring tones, car alarms and ambulance sirens – they can do the lot. John Drinkwater – born in Leytonstone, London – writes about the song of the blackbird in Loyalties – the anthology…
Two Lorries It’s raining on black coal and warm wet ashes. There are tyre-marks in the yard, Agnew’s old lorry Has all its cribs down and Agnew the coalman With his Belfast accent’s sweet-talking my mother. Would she ever go to a film in Magherafelt? But it’s raining and he still has half the load To deliver farther on. This…