She never! She did! Well blow me A right carry-on What a palaver It’s always something More out than in so they say You could have knocked me down with a feather Well I should say so …
Category: Poetry
Stroll, Soodle or Stroam
Soodle – it means means to walk in a slow or leisurely manner; to stroll, saunter. With so many alternatives to the word ‘walk’ it seems superfluous to promote more. But “soodle” just seems so right especially for this time of the year when it takes effort to move at all when the heat is high and the humidity stifling.…
New York City Through the Window: Poetry
In 1975 the poet Allen Ginsberg was in hospital. At a later poetry reading he explained the causes in an introduction to a poem that he had written from his hospital bed.: I got real angry and wound up sick in a hospital, for various karmic reasons, and woke up looking out the window, and started taking notes on what…
After great pain, a formal feeling comes
It’s graduation season and across the land schools are saying goodbye to students and students are moving along and into the next phases of their lives. It’s all very heartwarming and etc. I usually couldn’t wait for them to be over. All that dressing up and ceremony and sitting and waiting in uncomfortable chairs. At least at the dentist you…
Who was May Herschel Clarke?
It started with a tweet from yesterday morning: So off to google where I found the same inaccurate one-line biography pretty much everywhere, including Wikipedia. May Herschel-Clarke (1850–1950) was an English poet. She is chiefly known today for her Anti-War poems Nothing to Report and The Mother, the latter of which was published in 1917 as a direct response to Rupert Brooke‘s famous poem The Soldier.…
The BWIR, Mutiny and the Men of Taranto: No Parades
Update: 15 October 2020 I’ve heard from Lyn who is the Project Lead for ‘Away from the Western Front’. ‘No Parades’ was commissioned by them as part of their First World War centenary project. The project was funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund in the UK and accordingly, they were able to commission Chris Hoban to compose this song for…
For The Sake Of Example: The story of Pvt. Herbert Morris of the BWIR
They had all watched him die, in a foreign landA warning to others from the High Command. Forfeits medals (sentenced to death). Sentence Duly carried out. This grim notation is in the UK, WWI Service Medal and Award Rolls, 1914-1920 entry for Private 7429 Herbert Morris of the 6th Battalion of the British West Indies Regiment. Amid all the cruelty,…
#SherlockPoems and Nostalgia: Claude McKay and D.H. Lawrence
I’ve been looking for a particular poem for a while now. When someone used the hashtag #SherlockPoems in a Twitter conversation I posted my inquiry. The poem I remember – but can’t find – is about a market stall heaped with glowing and colorful tropical fruits. It was used in a GSE exam paper sometime in the 1970’s. I didn’t…
Falling Wall
I began this post in 2017. The original focus was Louis MacNeice’s’s poem “Brother Fire”. MacNeice was a fire-watcher during the London Blitz which meant that he spent nights on rooftops watching for, and reporting, fires caused by incendiary bombs. The poem expresses a human kinship with the destructive power of fire: O delicate walker, babbler, dialectician Fire, O enemy…
W. H. Auden and New York
Eighty years ago today – on January 26th, 1939 – the poet W.H.Auden – accompanied by his friend and sometime lover Christopher Isherwood – stepped off the boat and arrived in New York City. It wasn’t their first visit. They had spent two happy weeks in the city in 1938, arriving by train from Vancouver on their way back from…
The Old Year
The Old Year The Old Year’s gone away To nothingness and night: We cannot find him all the day Nor hear him in the night: He left no footstep, mark or place In either shade or sun: The last year he’d a neighbour’s face, In this he’s known by none. All nothing everywhere: Mists we on mornings see Have more…
For When it Snows Part One
No snow where I am at the moment but here’s a poem to enjoy now and also tuck away to use on snowy days. And on the topic of words for snow and Eskimos it’s good to read about The Great Eskimo Words for Snow Hoax that’s been perpetrated on several generations of the educated. I was fed it in…
Bumbarrel, Mumruffin and Poke Pudding
It was Clive Bennett who got me traveling down this particular track. He’s a real birder and maintains a wonderful blog – Art in Nature – where he writes of his adventures in the hedgerows and fields and where he celebrates birds and the artists who paint them. In a comment on a post about kennings he listed some wonderful…
Lament in December
Lament In December December’s come and all is dead; Weep, woods, for summer far has sped And leaves rot in the valley bed. Grey-blue and gaunt the oak-boughs spread Mourn through a mist their leafage shed. December, season of the dead! Brown-golden, scarlet, orange-red Autumn’s bright hues are faded, fled. December, season of the dead! Robert Graves For Robert Graves…
Communist, Nationalist, Fascist, Poet and Glasgow 1960
“I have too many books but I only have my shelf to blame.” The pun came via Twitter. As does my very limited knowledge of celebrity news. Thanks to Twitter trends I know that this week Kanye and Drake have had some long-standing feud about something or other and now it has taken a turn for the better for some…