December already!

We lightened the December gloom at this meeting with some beautiful imagery and touching sentiments (but not sentimentality), but began with a local poem inspired by a couple of the monuments in the city. The poem was called ‘Statues in the Park’ and referred to the statues of Isaac Watts and Robert Andrews (one of our historic mayors) that stand in 2 of our most beautiful parks. If you live in Southampton then you will know that the city is famous for its impressive Victorian parks, but sometimes we don’t quite notice the statues.

Ted Hughes’ ‘Fingers’ taken from the Birthday Letters changed the tone, and the ‘Evening’ sequence from Milton’s Paradise Lost elevated it to new heights. ‘Island Man’, by Grace Nichols returned us to melancholy personal detail. Cecil Day Lewis’s ‘Walking Away’ was, we thought, beautifully expressed and controlled, while the first 20 lines of the 14^th century poem ‘Pearl’, by the Gawain-poet demonstrated both the beauty and the complexity of medieval poetry.
We will meet again on 5^th January 2012, so Merry Christmas!

November meeting

On an unseasonably mild day for November, it was hardly surprising that we had a selection of poems that included some more evocative of spring and summer than the deep autumn. Not a golden leaf, not a foggy morning, not so much as a witch or mushroom! The range of emotions was, however, considerable.

Thomas Hood’s ‘The Song of the Shirt’ was both poignant and angry at the sweat-shop conditions of the 19^th century. Wilfred Owen’s ‘From My Diary, July 1914, was poignant in its complacency, full of prettily expressed conventional images, unaware, of course, of the horrors shortly to be visited on the young swimmers and lovers. Similarly complacent and apparently self-satisfied was ‘Leisure’ by W.H. Davies. This famously popular poem divided opinion, but those who did not know the poet’s life-story were astonished at it, and it had to be admitted that the poem is incredibly well-known and loved.

In contrast to Davies couplets, ‘Daed-traa’ by the contemporary poet Jen Hadfield conformed to modern free verse, expressing the effect of a rock-pool on the poet. The images were strange, diverse, and sometimes arcane. The title seems to be Gaelic. We discussed the problem, as we saw it, of poets who intentionally distance their readers by including little-known things, and we compared Hadfield to T.S. Eliot. Ezra Pound might have been added.

As well as this meditation on poetic inspiration, we had the alternative view from Alice Walker, trying unsuccessfully to reject the poetic impulse in ‘I Said to Poetry’.

It was a richly varied selection of poems prompting so much discussion that we ran out of time.

December’s meeting will be on 1^st, free choice as usual.

6th October Meeting

Our selection of poems for the October meeting included Laurie Lee’s provocative re-reading of spring in ‘April Rise’; Donald Hall’s ‘Ox Cart Man’, which polarised opinion. Less controversial were ‘A New Song on the Birth of the Prince of Wales’ – a poem with an initially limited publication and originally printed in Preston; W.B. Yeast’s wonderful ‘He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven’; and an extract from Alexander Pope’s entertaining ‘An Epistle from Mr. Pope to Dr. Arbuthnot’. We also heard an amateur piece showing wit and inventiveness: ‘An Evening at the Mansion’ by the young poet Laura Mckenzie.

As usual we will have free choice for our poems for November.

September

After a long break owing to a combination of unfortunate circumstances we assembled again with a great variety of poems to discuss. Robert Browning's 'Meeting at Night' provoked more debate than its 2 short stanzas might have suggested. Thomas Hardy's 'The Walk' was another 2 stanza poem in which we found an intense play of meanings. 'Office Friendships' by the Liverpool poet Gavin Ewart was both fun and a perceptive insight into modern life. John Keats's Petrarchan sonnet 'To My Brothers' was a good deal more human and realistic than its classical form might have suggested, and we all enjoyed revisiting Hilaire Belloc's 'Tarantella' with its fascinating rhythms and rhymes.

Our next meeting is on October 6th for more free choice.

Cancellations

Apologies that our July and August meetings could not take place. Hopefully both strikes and illnesses will have passed by the time September's meeting comes round.

September's topic is as usual Free Choice

June Meeting

Our second meeting found us revisiting some poets and unexpectedly encountering others. Lachlan McKinnon made his second appearance in 2 months and his poem ‘Strewth’ caused much discussion over its topic (the ecological consequences of singing in the bath) rather than its style. ‘At Tea’, by Thomas Hardy, though short, prompted discussion of its ‘backstory’ as well as the allusiveness of its rhyme scheme. ‘Lines Written in Dejection’, by W.B.Yeats puzzled us with its strange and un-Yeats-like imagery. Tony Harrison’s ‘The Icing Hand’ provoked a good deal of discussion.
These were poets who had been included in the Saturday Poetry group on various occasions. But oddly, we had never looked at one of Byron’s most famous – ‘She Walks in Beauty like the Night’. It received a mixed reception once we had heard it.
Among other ‘new’ poems, were Anne Stevenson’s ‘The Marriage’, Christina Rosetti’s ‘From Sing-Song’, and ‘Last Night As I Was Sleeping’ by Antonio Machado, (translated from the Spanish), a very thought-provoking poem.
We continue next month with our Free Choice of poems.

The First Meeting

We had our first meeting of the Thursday Poetry Reading Group this afternoon. During a very relaxed but thoughtful session we read an discussed Roger McGough’s ‘A Fair Day’s Fiddle’, Derek Walcott’s ‘Love after Love’, Seamus Heaney’s ‘Clearances 3’ Mary Oliver’s ‘The Journey’, Patrick Hadley’s ‘My Beloved Spake’, W.B. Yeats’s ‘The Coat’, and with a little time to spare, ‘another poem by Mary Oliver ‘Wild Geese.’
For our June meeting we will again be bringing favourite poems, and we will organise photocopies.