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Sexual intercourse began in nineteen sixty-three

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After a week enjoyably spent revisiting UNDER MILK WOOD, I’m keen to read or re-read some other favourite poets.

Dylan Thomas died in New York in 1953, a mere 38 years old, but probably the most famous, living poet writing in the English language. It wasn’t just the writing, His memorable, dramatic readings inspired Alan Ginsberg and the Beat Poets in the USA and many poets in the UK, not least the Liverpool Poets namely Roger McGough, Brian Patten and Adrian Henri.

Many of these British poets appeared on John Peel’s NIGHT FLIGHT show and the PEEL FANDOM site mentions how popular poetry had become in the 60s..
By 1965 the new poetry movement had become big enough to fill the Albert Hall; the “International Poetry Incarnation” reading held there drew 7.000 people and was an early manifestation of what soon became the UK underground culture

However, as it is almost Whitsun, instead of heading for Liverpool I’d like to take the highway to Hull and enjoy a train journey with a grumpy poet who had little interest in pop music. He did write jazz reviews but had little time for new-fangled, modern artists like John Coltrane and Miles Davis. He was however extremely keen and highly knowledgeable about the jazz of the 30s and 40s.

I am of course talking about the poet and novelist, Philip Larkin, who worked as a university librarian in Hull. And the train journey is from Hull to London at Whitsun and is described in his poem THE WHITSUN WEDDINGS, which is a great favourite of mine.

It starts as a vividly described springtime train journey through the English countryside. But as Larkin notices how at many stations newly-weds are boarding the train, it becomes a meditation on matrimony. He has a great eye for detail and a wonderful turn of phrase.
I don’t want to quote it as that will spoil your enjoyment if you’ve not read the poem before. You’ll find a link to the poem in the comments.

My book circle pal and fellow Larkin enthusiast, Teutonic Tim, will be attending his youngest daughter’s wedding this weekend, and as father of the bride will be giving a speech. We were taking about Larkin and he commented…
It’s a wonderful poem, I particularly love that line “Success so huge and wholly farcical”. I am thinking about using it.
He also likes what Larkin writes about newly-weds setting off on their married life together,
“… ready to be loosed with all the power
That being changed can give.”

As regards poems about matrimony, personally I’m also very keen on John Cooper Clarke’s I MARRIED A MONSTER FROM OUTER SPACE

We walked out – tentacle in hand
You could sense that the earthlings would not understand
They’d go.. nudge nudge …when we got off the bus
Saying it’s extra-terrestial – not like us
And it’s bad enough with another race
But fuck me… a monster …from outer space

This is not a Philip Larkin thread, but of course if you particularly like any of his poems, I’d like to hear about it.
But I would also like to hear about poets and poems that you enjoy. They don’t have to be modern. If you want hit us with a bit of Chaucer, Homer, Sappho or Beowulf, just go for it.
And if your favourite poet wrote in French, Swedish, Japanese, Ancient Greek, Welsh, Spanish, German, etc., that’s no problem. Go for it.

I want to hear about them.

‘l’ll end with a Larkin quote

“Sexual intercourse began in nineteen sixty-three
(Which was rather late for me)
between the end of the Chatterley ban
and the Beatles’ first LP.”

1

Comments

  2. Roger McGough’s poem Conservative Government Unemployment Figures is a particular favourite.

    Has to be read out alas I can’t find a video so you’ll have to make your own interpretation.

    It goes Conservative Government Unemployment Figures

    Conservative Government…….

    Unemployment…..

    Figures

  6. I’m a big fan of Simon Armitage whose poetry is both accessible and often darkly humourous. His poem ‘Robinson’s Resignation’ pretty much summed up my own feelings when I took early retirement. I can’t find a clip of him reading it, so here it is in full.

    Because I am done with this thing called work,
    the paper-clips and staples of it all.
    The customers and their huge excuses,
    their incredulous lies and their beautiful
    foul-mouthed daughters. I am swimming with it,
    right up to here with it. And I am bored,
    bored like the man who married a mermaid.

    And I am through with the business of work.
    In meetings, with the minutes, I have dreamed
    and doodled, drifted away then undressed
    and dressed almost every single woman,
    every button, every zip and buckle.
    For eighteen months in this diving-helmet
    I have lived with the stench of my own breath.

    So I am finished with the whole affair.
    As for this friendship thing, I couldn’t give
    a weeping fig for those so-called brothers
    who are all voltage, no current. I have
    emptied my locker. I should like to leave
    and to fold things now like a pair of gloves
    or two clean socks, one into the other.

    This is my final word. Nothing will follow.

    Here he is reading another poem, ‘Thamk You For Waiting’

      • I had to accompany some GCSE students to a poetry day. Apart from JCC, Simon Armitage also appeared he performed a poem about Luddendenfoot and as I have friends who live there I was very keen to find it. Searching hit a dead end and it wasn’t until I was reading one of his books, not a poetry one, that I came across it and found it was called Full Moon. Our old neighbours moved to the village of Luddenden so this has a double resonance for me.
        I think Simon Armitage sums up the area well.

        Full Moon

        It’s midnight in Luddenden,
        midnight in Luddenden,
        midnight in Luddenwhen
        all of a suddenden
        here comes a shape in a cloak and a hood.
        They’re holding hands in Luddendenfoot
        and there’s trouble in Luddenden,
        trouble in Luddenden,
        Luddenden, Luddenden, Luddendenfoot.

        Luddendenfoot, Luddendenfoot,
        they’re forming a circle in Luddendenfoot,
        but the frumpy librarian’s really a witch
        who’s bedding a druid from Hebenden Bridge –
        hubble and bubble there’s trouble in Luddenden
        trouble in Luddenden,
        Luddenden, Luddenden, Luddendenfoot.

        Luddendenfoot, Luddendenfoot,
        they’re closing rank in Luddendenfoot.
        Round the back of a hut
        a goat gets killed with a woodenden clubenden,
        chickens are slaughtered,
        Catholics are neutered,
        the queen of the covenden
        working up phelgm with soya milk bubblegum
        gobs on the grave of the great and the goodenden
        curses the vicars
        of Mixenden, Illingworth, Warley and Ovenden.
        Look, Mother, look,
        in the locked-up, blacked-out community centre
        they’re burning a book. Nothing is sacred –
        they’re writhing and shaking, they’re stark bollock naked
        they’re painting their genitals green and magenta,
        they’re veggies as well but they’re eating placenta
        they’re all in a huddleden
        daubing themselves with henna and mudenden,
        here comes the knife and here comes the bloodenden.
        Call for the cops –
        there’s trouble in Luddenden,
        trouble in Luddenden,
        trouble tonight and it’s double in Luddenden,
        Luddenden, Luddenden, Luddenden, Luddenden,
        Luddenden, Luddenden, Luddenden, Luddenden,
        Luddenden, Luddenden, Luddendenfoot.

  7. Roger Robinson is another fine poet who also sings. He came to Kulturhuset here a few years back and we got an evening of two parts.

    Interview and poetry reading.

    And then a gloriously dubby set with German DJ, DISRUPT.

    I really loved one poem which he read, GRACE, about a Jamaican nurse working on a maternity ward

    That year we danced to green bleeps on screen.
    My son had come early, just the 1kg of him,
    all big head, bulging eyes and blue veins.

    On the ward I met Grace. A Jamaican senior nurse
    who sang pop songs on her shift, like they were hymns.
    “Your son feisty. Y’see him just ah pull off the breathing mask.”

    People spoke of her in half tones down these carbolic halls.
    Even the doctors gave way to her, when it comes
    to putting a line into my son’s nylon thread of a vein.

    She’d warn junior doctors with trembling hands: “Me only letting you try twice.”
    On her night shift she pulls my son’s incubator into her room,
    no matter the tangled confusion of wires and machine.

    When the consultant told my wife and I on morning rounds
    that he’s not sure my son will live, and if he lives he might never leave the hospital,
    she pulled us quickly aside: “Him have no right to say that—just raw so.”

    Another consultant tells the nurses to stop feeding a baby, who will soon die,
    and she commands her loyal nurses to feed him. “No baby must dead
    wid a hungry belly.” And she’d sit in the dark, rocking that well-fed baby,

    held to her bosom, slowly humming the melody of “Happy” by Pharrell.
    And I think, if by some chance, I’m not here and my son’s life should flicker,
    then Grace, she should be the one.

    https://www.brinkerhoffpoetry.org/poems/grace

  8. Great threads, KFD

    Three from me – each of which landed like a poem-shaped meteorite in my brain when I first read it.

    TS Eliot – Macavity the Mystery Cat

    Macavity’s a Mystery Cat: he’s called the Hidden Paw—
    For he’s the master criminal who can defy the Law.
    He’s the bafflement of Scotland Yard, the Flying Squad’s despair:
    For when they reach the scene of crime—Macavity’s not there!

    Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity,
    He’s broken every human law, he breaks the law of gravity.
    His powers of levitation would make a fakir stare,
    And when you reach the scene of crime—Macavity’s not there!
    You may seek him in the basement, you may look up in the air—
    But I tell you once and once again, Macavity’s not there!

    Macavity’s a ginger cat, he’s very tall and thin;
    You would know him if you saw him, for his eyes are sunken in.
    His brow is deeply lined with thought, his head is highly domed;
    His coat is dusty from neglect, his whiskers are uncombed.
    He sways his head from side to side, with movements like a snake;
    And when you think he’s half asleep, he’s always wide awake.

    Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity,
    For he’s a fiend in feline shape, a monster of depravity.
    You may meet him in a by-street, you may see him in the square—
    But when a crime’s discovered, then Macavity’s not there!

    He’s outwardly respectable. (They say he cheats at cards.)
    And his footprints are not found in any file of Scotland Yard’s.
    And when the larder’s looted, or the jewel-case is rifled,
    Or when the milk is missing, or another Peke’s been stifled,
    Or the greenhouse glass is broken, and the trellis past repair—

    Ay, there’s the wonder of the thing! Macavity’s not there!
    And when the Foreign Office find a Treaty’s gone astray,
    Or the Admiralty lose some plans and drawings by the way,
    There may be a scrap of paper in the hall or on the stair—

    But it’s useless to investigate—Macavity’s not there!
    And when the loss has been disclosed, the Secret Service say:
    ‘It must have been Macavity!’—but he’s a mile away.
    You’ll be sure to find him resting, or a-licking of his thumbs;
    Or engaged in doing complicated long division sums.

    Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity,
    There never was a Cat of such deceitfulness and suavity.
    He always has an alibi, and one or two to spare:

    At whatever time the deed took place—MACAVITY WASN’T THERE!
    And they say that all the Cats whose wicked deeds are widely known
    (I might mention Mungojerrie, I might mention Griddlebone)
    Are nothing more than agents for the Cat who all the time
    Just controls their operations: the Napoleon of Crime!

    Musee de Beaux Artes by WH Auden

    About suffering they were never wrong,
    The Old Masters: how well they understood
    Its human position; how it takes place
    While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along

    How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
    For the miraculous birth, there always must be
    Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
    On a pond at the edge of the wood:
    They never forgot
    That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
    Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
    Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
    Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

    In Brueghel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
    Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
    Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
    But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
    As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
    Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
    Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
    Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

    As Much As You Can – CP Cavafy

    And if you can’t shape your life the way you want,
    at least try as much as you can
    not to degrade it
    by too much contact with the world,
    by too much activity and talk.

    Try not to degrade it by dragging it along,
    taking it around and exposing it so often
    to the daily silliness
    of social events and parties,
    until it comes to seem a boring hanger-on.

  9. A Larkin poem I particularly like is Dockery and Son, where he is back at his old school and the Dean informs him that Dockery, who was junior to him when he was at school now has a son there. It then leads to a reflection on life choices and paths not taken.

    https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48416/dockery-and-son

    A word in defence of Larkin’s jazz tastes. He seems to get a bit of a kicking for not liking the bebop stuff, but I think if you are a fan of the 30s and 40s jazz, then there’s no reason why you should also like folk like Coltrane and Davis. The music is very different. You don’t have to always like the cool stuff.

  10. One of my favourite quotes from Philip Larkin when asked he ever fancied travelling abroad.

    “I wouldn’t mind visiting China if I could be back home the same day.”

  11. I recently aquirred a book of Japanese Death Poetry. I’m a fun kinda guy. This was written by Gozan a monk who died on 17th December 1789.
    The snow of yesterday
    that fell like cherry petals
    is water once again.

  12. Not normally thought of as a poet, but Joyce Grenfell wrote some lovely stuff.

    This was read at my wife’s funeral, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it was read at mine.

    If I should go before the rest of you
    Break not a flower nor inscribe a stone
    Nor when I’m gone speak in a Sunday voice
    But be the usual selves that I have known
    Weep if you must
    Parting is Hell
    But life goes on
    So sing as well.

    • I discovered last week @black-type, that there was a book of Dylan Thomas poems in the coffin when Burton was buried.

      This interview from 1982 provides a wonderful portrait of DT.

      I was curious to know who the interviewer was. YOUTUBE helped out. Here’s the whole thing…

      Interview in depths 1982. Budapest. The original version in English by JÚLIA BALÓ , Hungarian TV Personality, Author of Published Books

      Baló Júlia – RICHARD BURTON inerjú – eredeti, angol változat

  15. We need poetry and songs to express our feelings in times of great joy.

    And we need them in times of loss, fear and confusion.

    If ever there was a poem that talked of the times we are living though right now, it’s THE SECOND COMING by YEATS.

    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.

    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

    Donald, Donald, Take a bow.

  16. I’m now going to name a popular, Swedish poet, Gustav Fröding, who was born 22 August 1860 and died 8 February 1911.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustaf_Fr%C3%B6ding

    I’ve got to know him thanks to the Värmland band, Mando Diao, who set his poems to music and did such a great job that their album, Infruset, was an enormous hit.

    Here’s one of the songs with English subtitles.

    Calling @Locust, Do you have any favourite poets, Swedish or otherwise?

    Here are Mando Diao live. Superb.

    What is rather moving is seeing all the youngsters at this Skansen concert, singing along to and enjoying poems written over 100 years ago.

    Hata off too to Mike Scott and the Waterboys for their Yeats album.

  17. If you wanted to put on an evening of poetry at the Albert Hall in 2026, who are the poets who would put bums on seats?

    I am very impressed that an evening of poetry reading at the RAH on JUNE 16 1965 was completely sold out.

    Here is what they said in the Albert archives

    https://catalogue.royalalberthall.com/record/performance/Easaniezoos_Myl

    The event attracted an audience of 7,000 people to readings and live and tape performances by a wide variety of figures. ‘The International Poetry Incarnation’ or ‘Gathering of the Tribes – Poetry Reading Festival’ was sometimes called the first British ‘Happening’ where beatniks met the emerging hippie culture. The near-hallucinatory event, which was organised and booked at the last moment, was unlike anything that had taken place at the Hall before and came to be seen as one of the cultural high points of the Swinging Sixties. Audience members were handed flowers as they entered and the arena quickly became filled with a marijuana smoking and heavy drinking crowd. The seventeen mainly American Beat and British poets were not given any running order and the event ran for four hours.

    Adrian Mitchell read his popular anti-Vietnam War poem ‘To Whom it May Concern’ to huge enthusiasm. Allen Ginsberg read ‘New York Bird’ by Russian poet Andrei Vosnesensky, who was present but forbidden to perform by the Russian authorities. To round off the evening Ginsberg read two of his long poems – ‘The Change’ and ‘Who Be Kind To’ which contained the line ‘Tonite Let’s all Make Love in London’.

    The event was filmed by Peter Whitehead who made the film, ‘Wholly Communion’ (1966) to document the event.

    Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithful met at this event. Other guests in the audience included Indira Gandhi, and poets Christopher Logue and George Macbeth.

    The Daily Mail later reviewed the ‘Happening’, citing many of the poets who complained that they hadn’t been paid and the Hall’s General Manager Christopher Hopper saying “I don’t want that sort of filth here. Would you send your teenage daughter to hear that sort of thing?” However the Times Literary Supplement (17 June 1965) declared that the event ‘made literary history by a combination of flair, courage, and seized opportunities’.

    The event was attended by John ‘Hoppy’ Hopkins who was a counterculture impresario who defined and chronicled Sixties underground culture. His obituary in the Times stated that, ‘He identified the moment when the British counterculture first coalesced as a 1965 poetry reading by Allen Ginsberg at the Royal Albert Hall. “You walked in, saw 6,000 people just like you and thought, ‘are there that many of us?’ It gave us a lot of confidence.” ‘
    (The Times, 3 February 2015)

    This article has some excellent photos.

    https://galacticjourney.org/june-16-1965-the-international-poetry-incarnation/

    Some footage from the event.

    Fast forward to the 21st century and Simon Armitage talking about what poetry means to hm.

    Simon’s list of great people from Yorkshire is very imressive.

    • There was a reprise Poetry Olympics at the RAH in 1996 (so they’re due another one). The surprise star turn was Kylie reciting the lyric to I Should be So Lucky. No really, look –

  18. I spent a very enjoyable evening last year attending a double bill of Brian Bilston and Henry Normal. Both have a similar poetic style, mixing light hearted verse with more gently political material, and Henry Normal’s occasional appearances on Radio 4 are always worth a listen. Here’s a poem about his wife:

    I SAID TO ANGE

    I hope I die first
    That would be the biz
    Cos I don’t really know
    Where anything is

    Making funeral arrangements
    Is not really me
    I’m much better
    At the RIP

    I hope I’m first to pop
    I’m not good at ends
    And I wouldn’t be much cop
    At talking to your friends

    No, all said and done, I said
    I should be the first to go
    And Ange said to me
    ‘Oh, I do hope so’

    • Thanks @stcf. Two new names for me so I was keen to learn more. I suspect they are both local heroes who have a profile in the UK but are not so well-known abroad.

      This BBC clip is a good introduction to Bilston.

      This was great fun too.

      Henry Normal sounds like a man after my own heart.

      Another witty wordsmith.

      • I think BB is great. I’ve seen him live and have a few of his books. This is superb

        Refugees

        They have no need of our help
        So do not tell me
        These haggard faces could belong to you or me
        Should life have dealt a different hand
        We need to see them for who they really are
        Chancers and scroungers
        Layabouts and loungers
        With bombs up their sleeves
        Cut-throats and thieves
        They are not
        Welcome here
        We should make them
        Go back to where they came from
        They cannot
        Share our food
        Share our homes
        Share our countries
        Instead let us
        Build a wall to keep them out
        It is not okay to say
        These are people just like us
        A place should only belong to those who are born there
        Do not be so stupid to think that
        The world can be looked at another way

        (now read from bottom to top)

  19. I find myself falling back on old standards and warhorses: I think twice about posting them, because everybody knows them. But this is shortish, so I’ll post it anyway – and it’s Yeats, of course.

    Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

    Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
    Enwrought with golden and silver light,
    The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
    Of night and light and the half light,
    I would spread the cloths under your feet:
    But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
    I have spread my dreams under your feet;
    Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

    • No need to apologise for reminding us what a great poet Yeats was, @fitterstoke.

      A thread like give us all a chance to think back and remember old favourites.

      No mention yet of William Blake. The combination of his poetry and Britten’s music is magnificent.

      And here by way of complete contrast is BATPOEM by THE LIVERPOOL SCENE.

  22. I just stumbled across a recent interview with LILYTHEPINK HITMAKER Roger Mcgough. There aren’t many poets who performed on a chart-topping single. He hasn’t lost his sense of humour.

    https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/jan/10/poet-roger-mcgough-interview-radio-4-poetry-please

    As you may know, he’s still in the public ear as the presenter of the world’s longest running poetry radio programme, POETRY PLEASE.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poetry_Please

    I’d never heard of it.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06wbrk9

    That led me to this excellent GUARDIAN article about the show by Tim Dee, the producer.

    https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/sep/26/poetry-please-pulse-nation

    It’s a show that is the butt of many jokes but seems to do good job inspiring an interest in poetry.

    Dee explains…

    This year is my 25th as a radio producer at the BBC; for half those years I had nothing to do with Poetry Please. Before I was asked to make it, I heard it as a mildewed and musty monument of public service, giving the wrong poems to the wrong people. Then one day I looked through the filing cabinet. Discovering a thousand times over that someone’s words had meant so much to someone else changed my mind completely.

    There are still those who don’t care for Poetry Please – or its poems. I recently heard John Cooper Clarke raise a sneery laugh with talk of Roger McGough as the silver fox of poetry. There are jokes about the programme on I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue – that sacred cow of radio comedy. But spare me the angry performance poet who thinks their shouty rhymes are fluttering poetry’s dovecote and are relevant in a way Donne cannot be; spare me also the received idea that the programme trades solely in poetic warm beer (cricket, the sun going down, spinsters on bicycles, guildhalls, the carved, bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang etc). To think like this is rather evidence of cloth-eared listening. It also betrays a more depressing thought: that poetry, old or new, has nothing to say to us today. Poetry Please asserts the opposite.

    Here are the ten most requested poems.

    The 10 Most Broadcast Poems on Poetry Please

    Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening – Robert Frost
    ‘How do I love thee? Let me count the ways’ – Elizabeth Barrett Browning
    Adlestrop – Edward Thomas
    Fern Hill – Dylan Thomas
    The Darkling Thrush – Thomas Hardy
    Dover Beach – Matthew Arnold
    ‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds’ – William Shakespeare
    The Listeners – Walter De La Mare
    Remember – Christina Rossetti
    To His Coy Mistress – Andrew Marvell

    Radio is the perfect medium. Are there any other radio, or indeed tv, shows where we can hear more poetry?

  23. Two from Adrian Mitchell.

    Reply To A Canvasser

    Cats are spies for something dark.
    Rabbits are wiped out.
    Captain Cousteau scares the shark
    With an underwater shout.

    Snakes slide over jagged ground
    Making the same sound as grass.
    Elephants are pushed around.
    Fish are hooked, or circle worlds of glass.

    Hyenas have a nervous laugh,
    Corruption is their only need.
    Worms get fat, then cut in half.
    A dog’s a footman on a lead.

    I’d rather be a stag at bay
    Daubed in colours brown and gory,
    Or any creature any day
    Than be a bloody Tory.

    Solid Citizens.

    Let us praise the dead

    Snug in their wooden homes
    Under the aerials of Christ
    Keeping themselves to themselves.

    They do not strike or demonstrate;

    Should they do so
    They would lose the support
    Of a sympathetic public.

    And two from John Berger.

    Kerchief.

    In the morning
    folded with it’s wild flowers
    washed and ironed
    it takes up little space in the drawer.

    Shaking it open
    she ties it round her head.

    In the evening she pulls it off
    and let’s it fall
    still knotted to the floor

    On a cotton scarf
    among printed flowers
    a working day
    has written it’s dream.

    AT REMAURIAN

    9.

    Stones still warm
    Taste of your hands

    Length and height lose
    Their terraced scale

    The light decends to the level sea
    With the waters of the robe I do not wear

    The dark examines us
    By touch alone.

    • My sister had me read this one at her wedding.

      somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
      any experience, your eyes have their silence:
      in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
      or which i cannot touch because they are too near

      your slightest look easily will unclose me
      though i have closed myself as fingers,
      you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
      (touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose

      or if your wish be to close me, i and
      my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
      as when the heart of this flower imagines
      the snow carefully everywhere descending;

      nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
      the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
      compels me with the colour of its countries,
      rendering death and forever with each breathing

      (i do not know what it is about you that closes
      and opens; only something in me understands
      the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
      nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

        • My Dad left this to be read at his funeral. I had three attempts on the privacy of my bedroom and managed about 3 lines before disintegrating so I outsourced it to my cousin, a vicar, who knocked out out of the park.

          Death is nothing at all.
          It does not count.
          I have only slipped away into the next room.
          Nothing has happened.
          Everything remains exactly as it was.
          I am I, and you are you, and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged.
          Whatever we were to each other, that we are still.
          Call me by the old familiar name.
          Speak of me in the easy way which you always used.
          Put no difference into your tone.
          Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.
          Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me.
          Let my name be ever the household word that it always was.
          Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it. Life means all that it ever meant.
          It is the same as it ever was.
          There is absolute and unbroken continuity.
          What is this death but a negligible accident
          Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight
          I am but waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just round the corner.
          All is well.

          Henry Scott Holland

  25. I always enjoyed this version of Jabberwocky.

    Es brillig war. Die schlichte Toven
    Wirrten und wimmelten in Waben;
    Und aller-mümsige Burggoven
    Die mohmen Räth’ ausgraben.
    Bewahre doch vor Jammerwoch!
    Die Zähne knirschen, Krallen kratzen!
    Bewahr’ vor Jubjub-Vogel, vor
    Frumiösen Banderschnätzchen!

    Er griff sein vorpals Schwertchen zu,
    Er suchte lang das manchsam’ Ding;
    Dann, stehend unten Tumtum Baum,
    Er an-zu-denken-fing.

    Als stand er tief in Andacht auf,
    Des Jammerwochen’s Augen-feuer
    Durch tulgen Wald mit wiffek kam
    Ein burbelnd ungeheuer!

    Eins, Zwei! Eins, Zwei! Und durch und durch
    Sein vorpals Schwert zerschnifer-schnück,
    Da blieb es todt! Er, Kopf in Hand,
    Geläumfig zog zurück.

    Und schlugst Du ja den Jammerwoch?
    Umarme mich, mien glänzlich Kind!
    O Freuden-Tag! O Halloo-Schlag!
    Er chortelt froh-gesinnt.

    Es brillig war. Die schlichte Toven
    Wirrten und wimmelten in Waben;
    Und aller-mümsige Burggoven
    Die mohmen Räth’ ausgraben.

  26. I stumbled across this documentary about Larkin. They did some excellent with the photographs and interviewees.

    I knew that Larkin’s father was an unapologetic fan of Hitler. I didn’t know that he’d taken the teenage Philip on two trips to Germany in the late 30s to admire the Third Reich in situ. That was no ordinary childhood.

    They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
    They may not mean to, but they do.
    They fill you with the faults they had
    And add some extra, just for you.

    https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48419/this-be-the-verse

  27. From the city of Malmö in the south of Sweden, a poet gets to see his poetry make an appearance in an unusual setting: manhole covers!

    Sounds like an inspired idea to me!

    By m

  28. Here’s a Swedish poet who is probably not so well-known abroad, Tomas Tranströmer.

    On Södermalm there is a public library named after him.

    In 2011, a few years before his death, he won the Nobel Prize, the first Swede to do so in 40 years.

    And now a couple of his poems.

  29. The oft-neglected ‘other Thomas’, RS Thomas. A fantastically grumpy Vicar who would often jump over walls to avoid speaking to his parishioners.

    Song for Gwydion

    When I was a child and the soft flesh was forming
    Quietly as snow on the bare bough of bone,
    My father brought me trout from the green river
    From whose chill lips the water song had flown.

    Dull grew their eyes, the beautiful, blithe garland
    Of stipple faded, as light shocked the brain;
    They were the first sweet sacrifice I tasted,
    A young god, ignorant of the blood’s stain.

  30. Interesting that most of the contributions here have a solid rhyme scheme. I find non-rhyming poetry fairly impenetrable as it’s like reading badly worded prose. What’s the secret to appreciating it?

  31. It’s a good question, @Twang. I did English at Uni, and I read quite a lot of poetry that was, for me, prose arranged into stanzas.

    There’s quite a lot of modern verse that’s referred to as poetry when it isn’t. Nothing wrong with verse, but it isn’t poetry.

  32. My favourite poet – the effervescent Selima Hill

    Basil

    A high-pitched woman’s voice is shouting Basil!
    and then a spotty dog comes whizzing past;

    and then a little ball of dried-up seaweed
    comes rolling and hopping casually along

    with that serenely happy air about it
    that Mary’s naked bush used to have:

    Mary, I can see you now so vividly
    doing handstands with no knickers on!

    And you used to call your nipples Jane and Rosie,
    or Basil and Rosie, I think — one was a boy.

    Is that the little dog back again?
    It’s really hot out here on the dunes.

  33. Our discussion about Steve Barrow and dub reggae made me think of a few dub poets.

    The very dapper Linton Kwesi Johnson who I’ve seen here twice in Stockholm. Once with Dennis Bovell and his fine band and once solo.

    Anthony Joseph is probably best known for the wonderful CALLING ENGLAND HOME.

    And then, the late, great Benjamin Zephaniah.

    Poet, actor, musician, professor of poetry – a Renaissance man.

    • YouTube just suggested this excellent clip of Benjamin Zephaniah on the BIG NARSTIE SHOW.

      I didn’t know much about him but he was clearly a very amusing and interesting chap. Now I really want to read or hear more of his poetry.

      That led me to this very enjoyable interview.

      It really is great fun.

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