Month: May 2012

At the Yeoman’s House

~ oxfordbrookesuni

June, Nine p.m.

The social bees work late,
Barren girls with honeyed thighs
Labouring among aquilegia,
The eagle flower, purple-spurred,
Multitudinous, nearly a weed.

I sit in the mid-year garden
To hear the poplars clatter,
And to admire what I have done.
The day is advanced, the bees
Drone vespers, the sun hits the wheat.

Farmers sat on the doorstep
At this hour, aching and comfortable,
Their eyes registering
A patch of pinks and mignonette
As their gaze settled for the big field.

An ancient man who had been
Young here arrived to say,
‘Mother saw to the flowers, of course’.
Of course. Father saw to that.
Their ancient son spoke of hives,

Hives here? ‘Hives, honeybees,
Pears in the orchard, muck
In the soil, all you had to have.’
The same water plashing, as
They put it then, and gulped by the horses.

Their shoes turn up in the beds.
I see my luckless father
Ploughing, confident in his rut,
His eye on the holly marker,
His tongue conversing with beasts,

Social bees will not pause
While there is light, while an anther
Can be seen to yield. And the poplars
Applaud them with gray and silver leaves,
The roses blacken, the cornfield fades.

by Ronald Blythe

‘At the Yeoman’s House’ is copyright © Ronald Blythe, 2011. It is reprinted from At the Yeoman’s House by permission of Enitharmon Press.

Notes from Enitharmon:

Ronald Blythe has written novels, short stories, poetry, literary criticism, and social history. Among his books are Akenfield, now a Penguin Modern Classic, The Age of Illusion, The View in Winter, Divine Landscapes, Aldeburgh Anthology, The Assassin (his most recent novel), and Aftermath: Selected Prose 1950-2010.  He has published critical studies of Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, William Hazlitt and Henry James and for many years has been President of the John Clare Society. He has received honorary doctorates from the universities of East Anglia and Essex and in 2006 was awarded the Benson Medal, the highest honour of the Royal Society of Literature.

When as a young writer in 1947 Blythe first visited Bottengoms Farm on the Essex-Suffolk border, the ancient house of the artists John and Christine Nash, he could not have guessed that this would in time become his own home and the centre of the writing life. The old farm nestled in a valley, in a landscape little changed since the Middle Ages, immediately surrounded by a richly-stocked garden created by the Nashes from the flinty fields. From his current perspective, Blythe looks back in this collection with affection to the friendships with artists, writers, farmers, gardeners, and neighbours that were to enrich his life. You can read more about Blythe’s relationship with the farm and the people he met there in this interview by Patrick Barkham on the Enitharmon site, and hear Ronald Blythe interviewed on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs here.

Enitharmon Press takes its name from a William Blake character who represents spiritual beauty and poetic inspiration. Founded in 1967 with an emphasis on independence and quality, Enitharmon has been associated with such figures as Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter and Kathleen Raine. Enitharmon also commissions internationally renowned collaborations between artists, including Gilbert & George, and poets, including Seamus Heaney, under the Enitharmon Editions imprint. You can sign up to the publisher’s mailing list here to receive a newsletter with special offers, details of readings & events and new titles and Enitharmon’s Poem of the Month.

Copyright information: please note that the copyrights of all the poems displayed on the website and sent out on the mailing list are held by the respective authors, translators or estates, and no work should be reproduced without first gaining permission from the individual publishers.

Loie Fuller’s Dancing School

~ oxfordbrookesuni

I am terpsichorean
a figure in burlesque.

Sometimes Miss Pepper stranded on the prairie
sometimes Buffalo Bill’s navvy
sometimes a soubrette.

Imagine my surprise at the spectacular
a bijou opera house.

An alien in melodrama
Aladdin-girl in melos.

In the cave of the fire of life,
I am Ayesha of two thousand years

finding a silhouette
within slimness.

Such methods of the divine
becomes a gal from Chicago.

by Nerys Williams

‘Loie Fuller’s Dancing School’ is copyright © Nerys Williams, 2011. It is reprinted from Sound Archive, published by Seren Books in 2011.

Notes from Seren:

Originally from Pen-y-Bont, Carmarthen, Wales, Nerys Williams has been a recipient of a Fulbright Scholar’s Award at UC Berkeley and a winner of the Ted McNulty Poetry Prize. She gained a DPhil at Sussex in 2002 through research focused on a reading of error and the lyric in contemporary American poetics. Nerys has lectured in American Literature at University College, Dublin since 2003. A native Welsh speaker, she has also worked at BBC Wales and as a care assistant on psychiatric wards. Nerys has published poems and critical essays widely and is the author of A Guide to Contemporary Poetry (Edinburgh University Press, 2011) as well as a study of contemporary American poetry, Reading Error (Peter Lang, 2007). She recently published her first collection of poetry, Sound Archive (Seren 2011), which was shortlisted for the Forward Prize’s Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection and the Michael Murphy Prize. Of her first book Poetry Review wrote that ‘a certain other-worldliness combines well with a vigorous realism to tease the reader into putting two and more than that together to perceive something rare and beautiful.’

You can read more about the collection and watch Nerys Williams read from her book here, and follow her thoughts on her blog here. Nerys was interviewed on RTE 1 about her collection, and you can hear the discussion at this link. You can also follow the poet on Twitter; search for @archifsain.

You can find out more about Loie Fuller, the subject of the poem, at Susan Gillis Kruman’s page about the dancer and (possibly?) watch her in action here.

Seren is based in Wales (‘Seren’ means ‘star’ in Welsh) and recently celebrated its 30th birthday. Begun as an offshoot of the magazine Poetry Wales by Cary Archard and Dannie Abse in the latter’s garage in Ogmore-by-Sea, the press has now grown and employs a number of staff. It is known for publishing prize-winning poetry, including collections by recent Forward winners, Hilary Menos and Kathryn Simmonds, as well as books by Owen Sheers, Pascale Petit, Deryn Rees-Jones, and many others. The fiction list features a new title by Patrick McGuinness, The Last Hundred Days, that was longlisted for the Booker Prize. The high-quality arts books include the recent collaboration between the poet John Fuller and the photographer David Hurn, Writing the Picture.

For more details about Seren, visit the publisher’s new website, where there is a blog about Seren’s news and events. You can also find Seren on Facebook, on Twitter, and on YouTube, where there are videos of a number of poets reading from their work.

Copyright information: please note that the copyrights of all the poems displayed on the website and sent out on the mailing list are held by the respective authors, translators or estates, and no work should be reproduced without first gaining permission from the individual publishers.

Bull-Box

~ oxfordbrookesuni

I have acquired all the furniture I need
and left it behind, done all my repairs
and bought enough clothes.
The less you possess, the more they are
not decorations but what is more needed: icons
requiring as icons do small space to give up their worth –
this water jug, this stove, this lamp, this spade,
this small table and chair.
All of it “junk” in any place but here

                                                                in this hut
so tender in my feelings that when I turn the corner
I fear it might have proved a chimera,
a space among nettles, the victim of vandals.
For the dream is frail, yet firm the stone
of what is called “The Bull-Box” and that has held
one beast or another for a hundred years
so traditional is it, stone roof, stone walls,
no guttering, no drain-pipe, nettles rising to
a half-door and square window
that look onto a half moon meadow
seeded with wild wheat to a curve of stream.

                                        In the sun
I watched a trout leap, a silver sword
small, quick, cutting air
as I built steps out of brook-stones
dug a pool for my washing-water
and saw a red-backed shrike on the thorns
that are overgrown behind The Bull-Box.
I was immortal then, not seventy but
a lithe, inquisitive
child again.

by Glyn Hughes

The first Poetry Centre podcast has been launched! Each monthly podcast features the work of local poets or general discussion about poetry. You can hear the podcast on our new website at this link, and subscribe to it in iTunes by clicking on the link on the right-hand side of the Podcasts page. This month’s podcast features Claire Cox and her poem ‘Tolstoy at Astapovo Station’, which was awarded first prize in the 2011 Barnet Arts Council Open Poetry Competition. We hope you enjoy it and we welcome your comments. Get in touch with us by replying to this e-mail, via Facebook, or through the ‘Contact us’ section of the Poetry Centre site.

‘Bull-Box’ is copyright © Glyn Hughes, 2011. It is reprinted by permission of Arc Publications from A Year in the Bull-Box by Glyn Hughes (Arc Publications, 2011).

Glyn Hughes is best known as a Northern poet and novelist with a string of prizes for his work, including the Guardian Fiction Prize, the David Higham Prize, a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, and a Welsh Arts Council Poet’s Prize. He was also shortlisted for the Whitbread, Portico and James Tait Black Prizes. He was resident in the Calder Valley, Yorkshire, for forty years, and most of his work is based on the county. Glyn Hughes was diagnosed with lymphoma cancer in 2009. He had recently been granted use of an isolated stone hut – the ‘Bull-Box’ – in the Ribble Valley and the time spent there and in its environs was a major part of his healing. The poem sequence, A Year in the Bull-Box, describes the experience. Glyn Hughes died in May, 2011. You can read more poems from A Year in the Bull-Box here, some notes about him by Tony Ward at this link, and an obituary by David Pownall on the Guardian website.

Since it was founded in 1969, Arc Publications has adhered to its fundamental principles – to introduce the best of new talent to a UK readership, including voices from overseas that would otherwise remain unheard in this country, and to remain at the cutting edge of contemporary poetry. Arc also has a music imprint, Arc Music, for the publication of books about music and musicians. As well as its page on Facebook, you can now find Arc on Twitter; search for @Arc_Poetry. Visit Arc’s website to join the publisher’s mailing list, and to find full details of all publications and writers. Arc offers a 10% discount on all books purchased from the website (except Collectors’ Corner titles). Postage and packing is free within the UK.

Copyright information: please note that the copyrights of all the poems displayed on the website and sent out on the mailing list are held by the respective authors, translators or estates, and no work should be reproduced without first gaining permission from the individual publishers.

Children in the Cherry Tree

~ oxfordbrookesuni

They perch in the cherry tree – two fledglings
Not quite hidden, gigglers in the dusk, hatching a plan.
The tree begins to shake them. It is not laughing,
It groans, its limbs beat slowly like prehistoric wings
And skin-soft leaves, yellow and pink and red cascade.

So high and so cold, the tree now such a stranger.

Peering out from their eyrie, and down through the web
Of branches, the silent high-riders hear shouts
In their throats. Their colours are lowered, dashes
Of scarlet and white legging it down as light fails.
As darkness lopes along the waiting blue hills.

by Kevin Crossley-Holland

Upcoming events from the Poetry Centre

This week, as part of the Amazing Acts festival at the Pegasus Theatre in Oxford, Oxford Brookes presents two literary events. On Thursday 10th May at 7pm, Philip Pullman and Kate Clanchy host a showcase for competitively-selected students of the prestigious Oxford Brookes Creative Writing MA Programme. On Friday 11th May at 7.30, poet Fiona Sampson presents ‘Science Writes to Life’, an event in which budding and professional poets read original writing inspired by contact with scientists at Oxford Brookes. Fiona Sampson will also be reading some of her own work, commissioned by the Poetry Centre. All are welcome to these evenings, and more details about these and other festival events, including ticket information, can be found on the Oxford Brookes website.

‘Children in the Cherry Tree’ is copyright © Kevin Crossley-Holland, 2011. It is reprinted from The Mountains of Norfolk by permission of Enitharmon Press.

Notes from Enitharmon:

Kevin Crossley-Holland is a poet, translator from Anglo-Saxon, and Carnegie Medal-winning author for children. His new and selected poems, The Mountains of Norfolk, was published in 2011, and brought together poems from eight previous collections. These works are spare yet sensuous, bearing witness to relationships, history, East Anglia, language and the craft of writing, and the meeting-places of body and spirit. The volume also contains a group of new poems musing on youth and old age, friendship, love and the layers of landscape. Kevin Crossley-Holland is the author of the bestselling Arthur trilogy, Gatty’s Tale and The Penguin Book of Norse Myths. His most recent book for children is Bracelet of Bones, in which a Viking girl travels from Norway to Constantinople, and he is the author of The Hidden Roads, a memoir of childhood. Kevin has worked with many composers and artists, and with Lawrence Sail he has edited two anthologies for Enitharmon Press: The New Exeter Book of Riddles and Light Unlocked: Christmas Card Poems. Kevin is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Patron of the Society for Storytelling and of Publishing House Me, and an Honorary Fellow of St. Edmund Hall, Oxford. He is currently the President of the School Library Association. He lives in north Norfolk with his wife and four children. You can read another selection from The Mountains of Norfolk here, and find out more about Kevin Crossley-Holland from his website.

Enitharmon Press takes its name from a William Blake character who represents spiritual beauty and poetic inspiration. Founded in 1967 with an emphasis on independence and quality, Enitharmon has been associated with such figures as Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter and Kathleen Raine. Enitharmon also commissions internationally renowned collaborations between artists, including Gilbert & George, and poets, including Seamus Heaney, under the Enitharmon Editions imprint. You can sign up to the publisher’s mailing list here to receive a newsletter with special offers, details of readings & events and new titles and Enitharmon’s Poem of the Month.

Copyright information: please note that the copyrights of all the poems displayed on the website and sent out on the mailing list are held by the respective authors, translators or estates, and no work should be reproduced without first gaining permission from the individual publishers.