Aug 2021 – Familiar meeting

In August 2021 we returned to the Mother Shipton after a gap of 9 months, hoping for a reunion with those members who couldn’t participate in our Zoom meetings. The chosen theme therefore was ‘Reunion’, though widened into ‘Meeting’ in case the former was too limiting. The range of poetry this produced was as wide as ever; entertaining, provoking and even shocking by turns.

In Philip Larkin’s ‘I remember, I remember’, the poet has a chance reunion with his home city. The irregular rhyme scheme is notable.

In Keith Douglas’s ‘Vergissmeinnich’, the poet encounters a dead enemy soldier clutching a memento of his girlfriend.

Robert Browning was well represented. ‘Meeting at night’ is a simple but compelling narrative, which could precede the scene in ‘Porphyria’s lover’, with its gasp-inducing climax. An extract from ‘The Pied Piper of Hamelin’ concerned the first meeting of the town council and the piper.

Thomas Hardy also came up three times. In ‘After a journey’ the poet has travelled to a Cornish cliff-top, hoping to encounter the ghost of his dead wife. In ‘Paying calls’, the old friends he visits remain silent. ‘Convergence of the twain’, surprisingly, is a response to the sinking of the Titanic. This poem employs an unusual form.

Sylvia Plath’s ‘Bee meeting’ turns an encounter with a group of neighbourly bee-keepers into something strange and threatening.

In Leonard Cohen’s ‘Suzanne takes you down’ he meets an irresistible force and we too are captivated.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s sonnet ‘Silent Noon’ from ‘The House of Life’ captures the bliss of lying next to your lover in a summer meadow.

In Tennyson’s ‘Crossing the bar’ the poet’s voyage will end in meeting his Maker.

‘Under the clock’ is where Tony Harrison’s lovingly-remembered parents would meet.

Ken Gambles’ ‘Fruits of Love’ is similarly concerned with fond memories of a parent.

In Walt Whitman’s ‘To a stranger’, in contrast, the poet’s chance meeting sets him off inventing memories. And in Brian Bilston’s ‘First date’, his date’s interests set him off re-inventing himself.

Penelope has to subject Odysseus to yet another trial before they are properly re-united, in an extract from Book 24 of Homer’s The Odyssey (translated by Emily Wilson).

In an extract from Dante’s ‘Inferno’ (translated by Dorothy L Sayers), the poet meets his inspiration, Virgil, who will guide him through Hell.

Two famous poems appropriate to the theme, that did not come up on the night, but always worth re-reading, are Wilfred Owen’s powerful ‘Strange meeting’ and Gerard Manley Hopkins’ ‘The Windhover’.

The four of us in attendance, all Zoom regulars, were disappointed that our long-missed non-Zoomers did not appear. However, one subsequently provided her choice of poems on the theme, and I include these as further suggestions for further reading. They can all be found on the internet:

Two Glasgow poets; Jim Carruth ‘The long bench’ and Ami F Torrance ‘Aw done’.

John Cooper Clarke ‘Haiku No1’.

The last two lines of Robert Burns ‘The author’s earnest cry and prayer’.