Apr 2023 – Movers and shakers

Our session on Creativity celebrated artists of all kinds, and even a city.

We heard from several poets discussing their own creative processes:

William Wordsworth in the opening section of ‘The prelude’ tells how the gentle country air fostered a tempest of creativity.

We heard several of Seamus Heaney’s ‘Glanmore sonnets’ (I, II, III, IX, X), the first of which deals with the turning over of earth – as so often in his work. And as in the Wordsworth, Heaney is here finding inspiration in the country. We also heard his beautifully observed and crafted ‘Digging’. All these use half rhymes extensively.

Ted Hughes stares into the night and is visited by ‘The thought fox’; another poem of half rhymes.

Robert Lowell’s ‘Night Sweats’ – a double sonnet – and Adrian Mitchell’s ‘Booze and bards’ mention some of a writer’s difficulties.

Many poems apostrophise the poets of the past; we heard William Cowper praising ‘Milton’, and Samuel Johnson comparing ‘Shakespeare and Jonson’. For recommended additional reading, Matthew Arnold’s sonnet celebrates ‘Shakespeare’ with a very Shakespearean image. UA Fanthorpe’s amusing anecdotal poem ‘He refuses to read his public’s favourite poem’ similarly channels Yeats.

Charles Bukowski gives sound advice in ‘So you want to be a writer?’

Adam Thorpe’s ‘English’, from his collection ‘Meeting Montaigne’, describes school English lessons deadening to creativity. We also heard his ‘PE’, about a typically boorish PE teacher.

Tony Walsh’s ‘This is the place’ celebrates the creativity of Manchester in its many aspects including its industry, sport, science, politics, and its bands.

Continuing with music, Philip Larkin is grateful ‘For Sidney Bechet’, while the composer of ‘My song’ is hoping the sincerity of his rough and ready effort will impress his girl. It’s by Lew Brown (lyrics) and Ray Henderson (music), recorded by Rudy Vallee in 1931. Chris was easily persuaded to sing the verses.

Now to the visual arts: Arden Hunter’s ‘Ode to my tattoo artist’ describes the uncomfortable process of creating a tattoo and the compensating buzz of the resulting new look.

John Updike’s un-rhymed sonnet ‘Lucian Freud’ evokes that artist’s startlingly fleshy paintings. Abigail Caroll’s ‘Dear lover of light’ is a litany of the subjects of a very well-known artist’s paintings. Ken Gambles read his own ‘The Fifermanet’, recalling a reproduction on the wall of his school, which he grew up to realise was actually The Fifer (by) Manet. All ekphrastic poems.

Finally, in ‘Ode’, Arthur O’Shaughnessy contends that all kinds of creative artists are the ‘music makers’ and ‘movers and shakers’ who inspire an empire-building impulse. We limited ourselves to only verses 1 and 3 from this now disturbing poem.