July 2023 – Open house

Our evening of un-themed poetry included a lot of humour but started at the other end of the emotional spectrum with the tragedies of Chinua Achebe’s “Refugee mother and child”, Robert Graves’ WW1 poem “The leveller” and Matthew Sweeney’s “Tube ride to Martha”. John Stalworthy in “Poem about poems about Vietnam” takes issue, too censoriously I think, with protest poets who were never near the action. AE Housman’s “The laws of god and man” is an early cry for gay rights. Don Paterson’s elderly dog, ‘light as a nest’, bows out in the touching sonnet “Mercies”.

In more celebratory mood, George Mackay Brown’s “Gray’s Pier” evokes the salty breeze of the Orkneys, while Gerard Manley Hopkins in “Inversnaid” rejoices in wilderness and wet and Sylvia Plath’s “Morning Song” describes her delight in her newborn baby. DH Lawrence is moved by memories of childhood in “Piano” and Rudyard Kipling feels the past stirring in “The way through the woods”. “Meg Merrilies” by John Keats recalls a long-dead gypsy woman.

We had inspirational life-lessons from Deborah Ann Quinell, whose “Glue” is based on a beautiful image, and from Rumi (freely translated by Coleman Barks) in the two extracts “Indeed, we are one soul…” and (from ‘The Great Wagon’), “…there is a field”. Chris Short’s “Rumi tattoo”, which can be read on this site, refers to various versions of the second passage. Yevgeny Yevtushenko considers that “There are no boring people in this world” and Lizzie Rosewood finds that “The Universal Helix” (read it on this site) binds rather than divides us. Her “Life Force” describes the pleasure of swimming in the Nidd at Knaresborough.

Two somewhat “difficult” poems: Les Murray’s “Poetry and Religion” finds parallels between the two and in Wallace Stevens’ “The idea of order at Key West”, a woman’s singing enhances the poet’s experience of the sea – an idea pursued at some length.

Now to the funny stuff, though UA Fanthorpe’s “You will be hearing from us shortly” has disturbing connotations. Roger Stevens’ “Louder” is a hilarious performance piece as is Marriott Edgar’s “The Lion and Albert”, made famous in lugubrious recitations by Stanley Holloway. Chris Mansell’s “Definition poem: Pissed as a parrot” is a frustrating search for the origin of a phrase, and frustration also impels Ann Ziety’s jaw-dropping “One day he’s gonna cook me a meal”. Aesop’s wife and William Wordsworth’s sister also suffer from the inattentions of their menfolk, in Carol Ann Duffy’s “Mrs Aesop” and Lynn Peters’ “Why Dorothy Wordsworth is not as famous as her brother”. The same poet’s “I suspect” is a pithy poem about poetry, and Billy Collins’ “Introduction to poetry” was a funny and fitting finale to the evening.