Are there any poets out there?

[salymap]

That's why I couldn't find Cargoes in my anthology. Is it the poem that starts "Where are you going to, all you big steamers?"

No-one mentions Auden, Isherwood, etc these days. I was very keen on their poetry as a teenager but haven't readthem for years.

[mercia]

the poem that starts "Where are you going to, all you big steamers?"

that's Kipling's "Big Steamers"

http://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_steamers.htm

this (second one down) is Cargoes

http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/masef01.html

here's a funny rendition of Cargoes

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgBvDyY4fms

[salymap]

Many thanks Mercia. I'm afraid we oldies do get muddled sometimes. So much music, so many poems and books, all fighting for the room available in our memory banks.

[cloughie]

Many thanks Mercia. I'm afraid we oldies do get muddled sometimes. So much music, so many poems and books, all fighting for the room available in our memory banks.

Space in memory banks - I remember the poem but a bit that didn't register was the end of the first and the second line - were they amended at all or is it just my memory?

[Mary Chambers]

No-one mentions Auden, Isherwood, etc these days. I was very keen on their poetry as a teenager but haven't readthem for years.

I think Auden gets mentioned quite a lot. There was even a popular little paperback of his poetry issued after Funeral Blues (Stop All the Clocks) was used in Four Weddings and a Funeral. If memory serves me right, it had Hugh Grant on the cover. Funeral Blues, like quite a few other poems by Auden, was written for Britten, for his Cabaret Songs in this case. Auden had a bit of a crush on Britten, who was six or seven years his junior.

[salymap]

I didn't see that film Mary and didn't know the Britten connection. Ijust had a Penguin, comprising, Ithink, Isherwood,Auden ans Spender. Unfortunately I lent it to someone and it never came back...........

[Hornspieler]

(incidentally, I'm intrigued that you moved from playing the horn in an orchestra to being a management consultant - quite a career jump )

If you can manage some of those horn parts by Strauss, Walton and Shostakovitch, you can manage anything.

Actually, the transition was not as strange as it might seem:

I gave up my contracted orchestra job, because I realised that I was almost playing on auto pilot for a lot of the time and using only about 30% of my mental capacity. So I went for the challenge of Managing an Orchestra (I'd had plenty of opinions as to how it should be done when I was a player and it was time to "put my money where my mouth was" !)
Another reason was in consideration of my future.
For a few years, I continued playing as a freelance and also managing the affairs of two orchestras. But at the age of 40, having been a professional horn player for more than 21 years, I decided that I was unlikely to go any further as a player - the only direction from there would be downwards. I knew so many once great players who had not had the sense (or the opportunity) to give up playing and so I joined the BBC as Manager of their Training Orchestra. (I also undertook production of music programmes for Radio 3 on occasions, so I learned a lot about recording equipment and techniques).

When the BBC disbanded their Training Orchestra (by now reduced to Chamber Orchestra size and laughingly renamed "The Academy of the BBC") I realised that I had to move on. So I obtained qualifications from the Institute of Management Services and became a Management Services Consultant.

No longer on call 24 hours a day. Able to pick and choose my contracts and every job a different problem to be solved, working in environments as far apart as Oxford University Press and Rank Xerox International on the one hand and National Health Service and the Manpower Services Commission on the other.

I had achieved my ambition to play under some of the World's greatest conductors, but, as I said to one of my friends who queried my decision to give up playing:
" ... if anyone can say that they have heard me play badly, they would have to possess a long memory - not a short one."

But one cannot totally subdue the need to be creative artistically, which is why I took up painting, writing (both poetry and prose) and photographic processing.

Much of what I have written here was contained in my message #27 but I felt that a little amplification as to my reasons was neccesary.

HS

[Mary Chambers]

I didn't see that film Mary and didn't know the Britten connection. Ijust had a Penguin, comprising, Ithink, Isherwood,Auden ans Spender. Unfortunately I lent it to someone and it never came back...........

It was quite a substantial connection, saly. Auden and Britten worked together in the GPO Film Unit in the thirties, and Auden wrote the texts for a number of Britten's early works - his song cycle On This Island, Night Mail, Paul Bunyan, Hymn to Saint Cecilia, .and one or two others. Britten, in his early 20s, was very impressed by Auden's intellect and confidence, but he avoided him later.

It's a bit difficult to imagine two such brilliant people these days working in what was basically advertising. Maybe there are lurking geniuses somewhere!

You didn't miss much with the film

[salymap]

It was quite a substantial connection, saly. Auden and Britten worked together in the GPO Film Unit in the thirties, and Auden wrote the texts for a number of Britten's early works - his song cycle On This Island, Night Mail, Paul Bunyan, Hymn to Saint Cecilia, .and one or two others. Britten, in his early 20s, was very impressed by Auden's intellect and confidence, but he avoided him later.



















It's a bit difficult to imagine two such brilliant people these days working in what was basically advertising. Maybe there are lurking geniuses somewhere!

You didn't miss much with the film

Mary, it must be my age . I really like those old GPO films and knew Auden wrote severalof them. I went to a private cinema with my colleagues at Augener and saw them there and have them on my computer. 'Coal Face'. 'Night Mail' and one other, I think. I also knew about the others including 'On this Island'.

saly

[Mary Chambers]

Mary, it must be my age . I really like those old GPO films and knew Auden wrote severalof them. I went to a private cinema with my colleagues at Augener and saw them there and have them on my computer. 'Coal Face'. 'Night Mail' and one other, I think. I also knew about the others including 'On this Island'.

saly

I love the old GPO films, too. I meant you didn't miss much with Four Weddings and a Funeral - at least, I didn't think much of it, but then I'm not really a film person. I think I must have seen it on television.

Would the 'one other' be The Way to the Sea? I know Britten wrote the music for that, but can't remember who wrote the text.

PS Just googled. It was Auden.

[salymap]

Yes Mary, thanks. saly

[amateur51]

It was quite a substantial connection, saly. Auden and Britten worked together in the GPO Film Unit in the thirties, and Auden wrote the texts for a number of Britten's early works - his song cycle On This Island, Night Mail, Paul Bunyan, Hymn to Saint Cecilia, .and one or two others. Britten, in his early 20s, was very impressed by Auden's intellect and confidence, but he avoided him later.

It's a bit difficult to imagine two such brilliant people these days working in what was basically advertising. Maybe there are lurking geniuses somewhere!

You didn't miss much with the film

A fascinating book about the time/place when/where Britten and Pears lodged in a house with Auden, Paul and Jane Bowles, Carson McCullers and Gypsy Rose Lee in Brooklyn.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/February-House-Sherill-Tippins/dp/0743257243/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_1

[Mary Chambers]

A fascinating book about the time/place when/where Britten and Pears lodged in a house with Auden, Paul and Jane Bowles, Carson McCullers and Gypsy Rose Lee in Brooklyn.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/February-Hou...tt_at_ep_dpt_1

Rather astonishingly, this book has been turned into a musical in New York.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/04/nyregion/a-review-of-february-house-at-long-wharf-theater-in-new-haven.html

[EdgeleyRob]

I'm back !

Todays boat race now is all done,
My goodnes wasn't it great fun,
A chap decided on a whim,
To jump in the Thames for a swim,
The oarsmen they were not too chuffed,
The officials all huffed and puffed,
This made it despite all the jeers,
The most exciting race in years.

[salymap]

Rob, nice to see you back one more,
But Oxford must be feeling sore,
Their moment snatched away by one,
With jealousy he's overcome,
The race was spoilt by needless spite,
No celebrating here tonight.


A VERY HAPPY EASTER TO EVERYONE