Monday, April 28, 2014

Serendipity

I was browsing through the poetry section in a little Waterstones at the weekend (as you do) when I picked up 'A Poet's Guide To Britain' . Opening it at random I found myself looking at John Betjeman's 'Shetland 1973' (the year and place I come from) and Jen Hadfield's Blashey-Wadder. Jen Hadfield is a poet I was absolutely unaware of 3 weeks ago (because like many people I'm woefully ignorant of contemporary poetry) but who's name I've kept coming across ever since, she won the T. S. Elliot prize for poetry in 2008 and is resident in Shetland. There was a brilliant episode of The Echo Chamber on radio 4 a couple of weeks ago about Hadfield which is where I heard about her first and has got me really interested in her work - I don't always listen to it and but for the chance hearing of a dialect word on a trailer would probably have missed this episode (it's on at that time of a Sunday afternoon when I can't put off domestic chores any longer). That Shetland is a small place and she my stepmother knows her makes me feel like I've really missed a trick here.

I bought the book - I rather felt I had to. It accompanied a BBC series which I also managed to totally miss (on BBC4 I think which I do watch quite a bit of but generally find - as I am tonight - that it's a programme about mushrooms or some such) presented by Owen Sheers (who is another contemporary poet I know nothing about but who has a very impressive CV - is it just me or is there something deeply encouraging about the number of people out in the world who's job description is poet?). Anyway I'm guessing it was a really good programme, the book is certainly charming.

I've been reading a fair amount of poetry recently, mostly odds and ends found in anthologies, and specifically looking for poems which conjure strong images for me. This is the time of year that I feel particularly homesick for the north of Scotland, I miss the sea and the light, theoretically I miss the dark in the winter too but not in quite the same way, it really is enough to just read about that. Finding a poem - preferably a shortish one - that captures some element of what I miss, which can be copied down and carried around talisman fashion, and which can be mulled over in the dull corners I work in (wine doesn't appreciate direct sunlight even if wine merchants do) is not the worst way to deal with the frustration of being stuck inside on a glorious spring day.

9 comments:

  1. Actually, the mushroom programme was fascinating...:)

    Last week I forced a recorded reading of Walter de la Mare's 'The Listeners' on one of my adult English classes - I expected them to hate it and complain about not understanding every word of it, but they were utterly entranced. I guess we could all do with more poetry in our lives. Have you come across the anthology 'A Poem a Day'? They're good for memorising.

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    1. I really enjoyed the mushroom programme, especially the teeny tiny ones that explode very fast - they were both disgusting and brilliant. I'll keep an eye out for that anthology, it's not one I have or have paid any attention to elsewhere. There's nothing quite like a good poem to remind you of the power of words is there!

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  2. Owen Sheers own poetry is stupendous, and some early poems referring to teenagerhood (can't recall titles just now) are surely accessible to teenagers too. His Channel Four programmes concentrated on one place at a time, showing landscape and comparing with it with lines in the poems being used. They were thus very atmospheric and beautiful. I'd like to see them again.

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    1. After I posted this I had a good dig into that series, I watched the George Mackay Brown episode but missed the rest of it, I would really like to see more of them. I will look up some of his own poems as well. It was one of those books that on the surface I wouldn't normally go for but now I've had a proper look I'm really enjoying. It's everything that makes a book exciting!

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  3. Like Helen, I also found the mushroom programme surprisingly interesting! Owen Sheers is always good, and I really like the strong graphic design of the cover (avoiding 'butter -packet landscape', as Alice Oswald would say) so I'll put this one on my list. I must confess to never reading Gone with the Wind as I didn't take to the film, but you've convinced me to give it a go!

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  4. It's well worth a look. The mushroom programme was excellent and well worth watching but I do seem to have a knack of missing the ones on art and literature and hearing Edwardians talking that I'd really like to watch, In the same way I always find films like North Sea Hijack and St Trinians on film 4 (I find those films on a lot) and never the ones I really want to see (why are they never repeated?)

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  5. Owen Sheers' novels are excellent, I've not read his poems or seen the programmes though. I love the design of this book - the cover would shout out to me!

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  6. The cover is very attractive and I'm keen to read Sheers own work now - all the feed back is very positive which is extremely encouraging.

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  7. Re poets from Scotland, do you know Kathleen Jamie? If not, I can highly recommend.

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