Poetry: Introduction

[Under development: 3 June 2005]

I have made sadly little time to read poetry over the past twenty years: one of those many activities that slides down the to-do list, eclipsed by work, shopping, cooking and DIY. To be precise, as soon as I contemplate reading for pleasure, I feel guilty that I am not marking student work, writing up counselling notes, or catching up on a million household jobs. However, when I am able to neutralise the acid of guilt, I enjoy reading Shakespeare’s sonnets, and Langman’s Piers the Plowman.

My tastes were formed during my teenage years, heavily influenced by the Mersey Poets: Roger McGough, Brian Patten and Adrian Henry, but have since steadily fossilised. I met Roger McGough at the Chester Gateway Theatre in the early 1970s when he was part of a sort of musical band called The Scaffold. It is not unusual to hear him hosting poetry programmes on BBC Radio 4 these days, and also standing in as a presenter on the BBC Radio 4 programme that John Peel used to host: Home Truths.

I like the work of Gerard Manley Hopkins (and who, taking the trouble to read this page, doesn't know and love Pied Beauty?), and some William Wordsworth: Upon Westminster Bridge. I know some of the work of the First World War poets, such as Wilfred Owen, and of inter-war poets such as W.H. Auden, Dylan Thomas and D.H. Lawrence. More recently I have encountered the work of Constantine Cavafy, and particularly admire his philosophical poem Ithaca. I read the poems of Jon Silkin sometimes. He is an intense and insightful man, with whom I have attended several valuable workshops. I have compiled a short personal testimony consisting of a selection of poems and extracts meaningful to me, some of which I use in my teaching: Testimony

I have published poetry for contemporary British poets: Anne Born and Richard Skinner (I recently came across a poem written by Richard Skinner in a peace garden in the centre of Birmingham.). Anne Stevenson wrote a wedding poem (published in The Times) for my late father and his second wife on their marriage in the mid-1980s. I have attended one of Anne's workshops, too.

When moving from adolescence into my early adult life, I, too, wrote poetry. Much of it was serious (a term that, in the North East of England, also means 'seriously disturbed') and focused on my troubles and concerns in life, particularly concerning love, relationship and sexuality. Not long after, when faced with the challenges of my first full-time job, I wrote The Classroom as one of many responses to my experiences teaching in UK comprehensive (secondary) schools, as well as a prose fragment Chlorine. I also wrote some prose pieces, attempting to address significant issues, such as Sandra. (Others may be listed here in due course.) Animal Factory Fever was written to myself when I realised what factory farming of animals involved. By way of relief, the most fun poem I ever wrote was Kin ferry coffee down. I have written some poems about my experience of personal relationships, such as When I return home, and some love poems, such as Sing me a love song, but considering the emotional origami required to craft my feelings into words, the effort hardly seems worthwhile. Swifts of Summer and Descent into Pisa are more recent poems.

I have written short religious pieces, e.g. The Song. Such pieces owe much to the work of Kahlil Gibran, e.g. Love. In a similar vein is the well-known Desiderata. I have tried to give shape to my religious beliefs through such poems as God is ... (1) and God is ... (2). Most obvious expression of my religious beliefs is given by my daily prayer

. There is also a poem which brings together themes from counselling and spirituality: I wear a score of painted masks.

 

  p.g.h@btinternet.com