Tag: poetry

thing 30: ‘we are the wood drake’: reading together

‘… and then you’d think aha! something interesting is going to happen and then someone would mention Derrida and it would all be over…’

Thus my friend Simon, speaking about his time reading English at Oxford and the death-by-theory thing which can so often happen during formal study. I know what he means. In my very first group supervision at Cambridge we were issued copies of a poem—I have repressed the knowledge of what it was, if I ever knew—and the Director of Studies’ opening gambit (more…)

thing 29: ‘one person, and they’re talking to you’: a radio interview

A few years ago I was interviewed in a sort of rent-a-therapist slot on Radio Cumbria; they wanted someone in the biz to say something vaguely intelligent for a “dealing with difficult events” programme. Getting the phone call from some BBC gofer I’d thought it was a wind-up, but there I was, about an hour later, sitting in my study being invited to pronounce on a variety of things down the telephone—and live on air. Surreal. ‘Ah yes, (more…)

do not adjust your sets…

Your thing 26 parcel is currently in preparation and will be dispatched from the what the afternoon knows warehouse very soon. In the meantime, some news of an upcoming thing.

When I was on the course at Charney (see thing 17) a conversation with Paul, one of the facilitators, led to an invitation to come on the radio show he hosts, Calon on Books, on community radio in Wrexham. This definitely sounded like a thing! Not as terrifying as an abseil, or not in the same way, though I will have to watch my language as the show is live. It’ll be on at 6 on Wednesday 24th October, and you are warmly invited to listen in on the interweb, if you’d like to. Just go to calonfm.com at the appointed hour, and click the magic livestream link. Afterwards the show will appear on the site’s listen again menu, and Paul tells me there’ll be a soundfile I’ll be able to put up here in due course.

So, get the bourbons in; or possibly, given the hour of the broadcast, a sherry. I’d better save mine till after the show.

‘loveliest of trees, the cherry now’, AE Housman

You can read this poem here.

This is one of those poems I read and simply think, ‘Yes’. The simplicity of the rhyme-scheme and the regularity of the metre feel part of the irrefutability of what the poem has to say. It seems very Housman that he’s feeling such a drive to make the most of his time at the not-very-old-really age of twenty! I started mentally re-writing stanza two to say ‘Now of my threescore years and ten/Fifty will not come again’ and then realised it was all going to go wrong at the end of life three, so abandoned that… But however premature his worry may seem, about running out of time, his point stands: that spring is a time when we may connect with the joy of renewal, the beauty of the world, and the anguish of our own fleetingness. I think Housman has it right, though. The only thing to do, in the end, is make the most of what you get. About the woodlands let us go…