Poetry

[Padraig]

[QUOTE I would like to recommend a discovery - Julia Copus, an English poet. Any Ordinary Morning is taken from Girlhood, her fourth book.
[/QUOTE]

As an addendum to the post, I was pleased to note that Julia Copus quoted from one of Emily Dickinson's poems as a prelude to the main item in her Girlhood. I was sorely tempted to post the whole poem, of which she quoted only the first stanza which begins :

'One need not be a Chamber - to be Haunted'

However, I suspected that I had already posted this poem (one does forget) so I used the search facility to check. I put in the whole first line and in the blink of an eye I found it - Poetry, 30-10-20, # 716. Just thought I would mention it.

[Forget It (U2079353)]

Yes Padraig
Julia Copus' Any Ordinary Morning
is especially refined in its mid-line rhyme-sounds.

[Padraig]

Julia Copus' Any Ordinary Morning
is especially refined in its mid-line rhyme-sounds.

I'm not getting that particular feature🤔

But she's got other spells. In her 'mirror poem' The Great Unburned, it starts:

One by one we are gathering now, preparing to return
to a land divided into good, clean souls and evil
doubletalk, hexes, plump, beguiling apples.

and ends:

One by one we are gathering now, preparing to return.
By the moon's white eye we'll take to the air, with our
doubletalk, hexes, plump, beguiling apples,
to a land divided into good, clean souls and evil.

Read the whole poem for the full effect. The poem uses the slogan of the women who marched on Washington after Trump's presidential inauguration

We're the witches you forgot to burn

[johncorrigan]

I found myself very moved by Feargal Keane's opening piece on 'From Our Own Correspondent' on Radio 4 this past Saturday. Speaking from Jerusalem, Keane spoke of the language of hope among other things and talked of the conflict that he had been raised into in Northern Ireland, comparing notes with the present Gaza conflict.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001scjn

During the piece he talked about buying a copy of Mahmoud Darwish's poetry and reading 'The Kindhearted Villagers' - I didn't know the poem so thought I would look it out.

The Kindhearted Villagers

I did not yet know my mother's way of life,
nor her family's, when the ships came in from the sea.
I knew the scent of tobacco in my grandfather's aha,
and ever since I was born here, all at once, like a domestic animal,
I knew the eternal smell of coffee.

We, too, cry when we fall to the earth's rim.
Yet we don't preserve our voices in old jars.
We don't hang a mountain goat's horns on the wall,
and we don't make of our dust a kingdom.
Our dreams do not gaze upon other people's grapevines.
They don't break the rule.

My name had no feathers, so I couldn't fly beyond midday.
April's warmth was like the balalaikas of our passing visitors.
It caused us to fly like doves.
My first fright: the charm of a girl who seduced me
into smelling milk on her knees, but I fled that meal's sting!

We, too, have our mystery when the sun falls from white poplars.
We are overwhelmed by a desire to cry for one who has died for nothing,
and by an eagerness to visit Babylon or a mosque in Damascus.
In the eternal saga of pain, we are the teardrop in the dove's cooing.

We are kindhearted villagers and we don't regret our words.
Our names, like our days, are the same.
Our names don't reveal us. We infiltrate the talk of our guests.
We have things to tell the woman stranger
about the land she embroiders on her scarf
with the pinions of our returning sparrows!

When the ships came in from the sea,
this place was held together only by trees.
We were feeding our cows in their enclosures
and organizing our days in closets made by our own hands.
We were coaxing the horse, and beckoning to the wandering star.

We, too, boarded the ships, entertained by
the radiance of the emerald in our olive at night,
and by dogs barking at a fleeting moon above the church tower,
yet we were unafraid.
For our childhood had not boarded with us.
We were satisfied with a song.
Soon we'll go back to our house
when the ships unload their excess cargo.
Mahmoud Darwish

[Padraig]

Colder here today. Do you remember when . . . .?

The ice was like a bottle. We lined up
Eager to re-enter the long slide
We were bringing to perfection, time after time

Running and readying and letting go
Into a sheerness that was its own reward:
A farewell to surefootedness, a pitch

Beyond our usual hold upon ourselves.
And what went on kept going, from grip to give.
The narrow milky way in the black ice,

The race up, the free passage and return -
It followed on itself like a ring of light
We knew we'd come through and kept sailing towards.

[Forget It (U2079353)]

Colder here today. Do you remember when . . . .?

1989.
Whole poem here: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v11/...aney/crossings

[Padraig]

1989.
Whole poem here: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v11/...aney/crossings

That was the whole poem, Forget it. It was no xxviii of 48 12 line poems divided into 4 sets of 12. This poem was in the third set, Crossings.

I should have accredited it in my earlier post as a poem by Seamus Heaney from Part 2 of Seeing Things, 1991.

[Forget It (U2079353)]

That was the whole poem, Forget it. It was no xxviii of 48 12 line poems divided into 4 sets of 12. This poem was in the third set, Crossings.

I should have accredited it in my earlier post as a poem by Seamus Heaney from Part 2 of Seeing Things, 1991.

I bow to you ...
I've only come to properly appreciate Heaney fairly recently and this forum thread greatly helps

[Padraig]

I bow to you ...
I've only come to properly appreciate Heaney fairly recently and this forum thread greatly helps

Thank you, Forget it, for the acknowledgement.

I can tell you that I am also hoping to appreciate Heaney better now that I have embarked on a second go-around of his works. I'm seeing things that I missed previously in depths suspected, but now gradually threatening my understanding.

[johncorrigan]

I bow to you ...
I've only come to properly appreciate Heaney fairly recently and this forum thread greatly helps

Poetry Extra on BBC Radio 4 Extra this coming Sunday is 'Seamus Heaney - Out of the Marvellous', F I.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001t1sn

[Forget It (U2079353)]

With the sad news https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-67646607

it's worth noting that Benjamin Zephaniah quite recently shared a selection of favourite poems from listener requests

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001sts1

which is still available as audio

[johncorrigan]

With the sad news https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-67646607

it's worth noting that Benjamin Zephaniah quite recently shared a selection of favourite poems from listener requests

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001sts1

which is still available as audio

That is such bad news, F I. I listened to that show a couple of days ago and loved it. He was such a warm, talented and brave human being. So sad!

[Serial_Apologist]

R.I.P.

[Ian Thumwood]

I was saddened to hear of the passing of Benjamin Zephaniah. When my nephew was small I bought him a book of BZ's children's poems as I knew my sister would not approve.

There are two poems by Zepahaniah which always made me laugh. One was about Aston Villa ( usually comical enough without the need of a amusing poem written about them) and another was called "I read it in The Sun" which is probably the funniest poem I have ever heard. I have never been able to find this on line and the tone of the poem was comic genius.

Basically, he wrote poetry to make you smile and think at the same time.

RIP

[Serial_Apologist]

Where have all the low-paid gone

Long time passing?

Where have all the carers gone

Not long ago?

Where's them sweet black brown folks gone?

To Rwanda, every one!

When will some ever learn?


When

will

some

e......

ver...........

learn?

(All suggested improvements welcomed)