An unusually large group met to read poems in memory of our former leader John Forster, who died in June 2022.
We started with John’s favourite poem (see the Favourites section of this site), Edmund Spenser’s sonnet ‘One day I wrote her name upon the strand’ (Amoretti LXXV).
From John’s beloved Thomas Hardy, we had the light-hearted ‘In the room of the bride-elect’, the blacker comedy of ‘The workbox’ with a similar theme of regret for a former sweetheart, and the grim ‘The dead bastard’, an outpouring of defiance against social cruelty. We could have had many more of these rueful tales from Hardy.
Philip Larkin’s ‘Mr Bleaney’ seems to be another tale of regret, though it’s the poet who imagines Bleaney’s life must have been empty. The same poet’s ‘The Winter Palace’ expresses his characteristic misanthropy, longing to know nothing about anything.
Two other poems also dealt with progressive loss of memory, though more humorously; ‘The little grey cells’ (of which we don’t know the author) and ‘Forgetfulness’ by Billy Collins. While, as these suggest, it may be inevitable, we’ll do our best not to forget John.
He may have had a thing about English poets whose surnames began with H – apart from Hardy, he particularly liked Hopkins, Herbert, Harrison and Housman.
From A E Housman we had the beautiful simplicity of ‘Loveliest of trees, the cherry now….’. From George Herbert, the complex metaphors of the devotional poems ‘Love’ (Love bade me welcome) and ‘Redemption’. The former has the unusual rhyme scheme AAB, and the latter is a sonnet.
In James Joyce’s ‘Ecce puer’, the poet’s joy at the birth of a grandson is tempered by grief at the recent loss of his father.
Gerald Manley Hopkins was represented by three poems. The ecstatic celebration of wetness in ‘Inversnaid’ was appropriate given this summer’s continuing drought. His ‘Heaven haven’ is a comforting vision of rest, and the priest’s visits offer comfort to the dying ‘Felix Randal’, in an irregular sonnet form.
The dying man in Tony Harrison’s ‘Cremation’ defiantly fends off an attack brought on by dismantling the mangle; a touch of black comedy, and another in the title. In the moving ‘Long Distance II’ the same poet’s widowed father secretly believes his wife will return.
We heard the last section of W H Auden’s ‘In memory of W B Yeats’, in which Auden wishes that poetry can bring relief in a dark time (1939/40).
The title of Christopher Logue’s ‘To a friend in search of rural seclusion’ is longer than the poem. A good one to learn off by heart?
What was it that called to the narrator in Charlotte Mew’s ‘The call’? Death perhaps, but possibly it was a call to action.
Extracts from the beginning and end of Tennyson’s ‘Ulysses’ paralleled John’s energetic activity in retirement from his headships. Ken Gambles’ ‘The old man and the sea’, alluding to the Ulysses story, is a tribute to John’s dedication to teaching. We also heard Chris Short’s ‘Tribute to John Forster’. Click on the links to find these on this site.
Shakespeare’s ‘Fear no more the heat of the sun’ from Cymbeline was a most fitting valediction.
We ended with one of John’s own poems; ‘English lessons’, in which the student bewitches the teacher.
Great recollections of a pleasant evening. I still wonder what on earth is going on in a poem. Here’s an offer: in a way, it is like sorting out a very hard sum.
We can’t always be sure what the poet intended the poem to mean, if anything, but we can consider whether for instance the words and structure move us or intrigue us. The podcasts referred to from time to time in this site’s News (search for ‘News’) offer some insights.
It was a lovely evening full of a rich variety of poetry, powerfully moving at times, and a perfect tribute to John. It was great to hear Ken read a poem penned by John himself. As was said, the focus of John’s life was education and assisting others in their pursuit of knowledge and, especially, the appreciation of literature. I met John through the poetry group and certainly was fortunate to experience this passion of John’s directly as he always supplied illuminating facts regarding the poetry we read and the poets lives and filled in some of the many gaps in my knowledge. His contributions will be greatly missed but something of his presence will remain as we move forward into the future.