Poetry on the brain

The Wild Swans at Coole: Jackie Morris

For as long as I can remember, I’ve tried to read a poem a day, pulling out battered old anthologies, volumes by favourite poets, and assorted collections at random, including variations on a ‘poem a day’ theme. And then I discovered The Writer’s Almanac, the brainchild of Garrison Keillor. Now, I receive a daily poem by e-mail and, generally speaking, each proves to be a delightful surprise.

Many are by contemporary American poets, whose names are new to me, although yesterday the seasonably appropriate The Wild Swans at Coole flew in. Exquisite Celtic twilight from W.B. Yeats and a poem I love, having studied his work in some depth when I was doing completing my Open University degree. The opening stanza will give you a flavour:

Under the October twilight the water

Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones

Are nine-and-fifty swans.

Jackie Morris produced a superb illustration of this poem for an anthology and kindly gave me permission to reproduce it here. Do take time to vsit her website; Jackie's work is quite breathtakingly beautiful.

While we’re on the subject of poets, I will be tuning in to BBC Radio 4 for the Afternoon Play today. It’s The Ted Hughes Letters. According to the Radio 4 website, this is what we can expect:

‘Novelist Jane Feaver introduces a selection of previously unheard letters from the late Poet Laureate, written to family, friends, academics, children and fellow writers.’

I read Ted Hughes's Birthday Letters, described on Amazon as ‘ . . .88 tantalising responses to Sylvia Plath and the furies she left behind . . .’, when first published in 1999 and, earlier this year, greatly enjoyed Elaine Feinstein’s excellent biography, Ted Hughes: the Life of a Poet, so this afternoon’s broadcast sounds like something of a treat. To be listened to without interruption so I may just take the phone off the hook for 45 minutes. Work or no work. Late lunch break, I think.

(And, in that coincidental way, it turns out that Jackie Morris has also illustrated Ted Hughes’s work in the past . . .)

Later . . .I've just listened to The Ted Hughes Letters; if you missed it, I do urge you to Listen Again. You have just seven days.

Comments

[Maureen]

I've just listened to the Ted Hughes programme while driving back from Buckfast. Excellent! It gave a new insight into the very complex relationships Hughes had and made me feel far more sympathetic towards him. I've had a biography of Ted Hughes on my shelf for a couple of years, I'm encouraged to read it now.

[60goingon16]

As I've got older and learned more about life and relationships generally, I have become more sympathetic to him as well. The letters we heard today confirmed that for me. And what about that astonishing poem that he wrote when he was just 19?

Some distant relatives of mine live in the same village in which Ted Hughes and his wife Carol lived. They (the rellies) are not at all bookish and knew him simply as a friend and neighbour. He was, they told me 'a lovely man'.

[Juliet]

I had listened to the R4 Ted Hughes programme not long before reading this. Very well done, I thought. I hope to listen again before it disappears from the website. Thank you so much for highlighting the work of Jackie Morris - absolutely beautiful and enchanting - her watercolours of birds with the gilded backgrounds (of which the swans you feature is one) are indeed breathtaking. I recognised her style from cards and books, but had never noted her name or seen her other work. Definitely 'find of the week' for me, so thanks again.