I went back to reading poetry during Lockdown, like many people, apparently. This is partly because I had time to do something I’ve been meaning to do for a while, partly due to Poet Laureate Simon Armitage (see below) and partly because I managed to get this book delivered (shout-out to Toppings Bookshop in Bath for that).
It’s A Little History of Poetry by John Carey, published by Yale. Having read glowing reviews of it I decided to try it and it did not disappoint. It really is a triumph of accessible reading and I would buy it for anyone who has a literary bent. Below are three quotes from the back of the book. For once they are absolutely spot-on.
“Books about poetry are rarely page-turners, but Carey’s little history is gripping, is unputdownable!” Daljit Nagra.
“Warm in tone, informative, generous in its sympathies, inviting in its choices, with a clear emphasis on human stories underpinning poetic achievement.” Emma Smith
“An elegant history of poetry, what it is, what it does, why it matters….Masterly.”
Ruth Padel
This book has illuminated poems I have read before but now they feel new and shining. What a treat. It’s reintroduced me to several poets that I intend to re-read – Donne and Browning for example – and it’s also introduced me for the first time to some wondrous-sounding Chinese and Japanese poets that I am keen to try, plus some astounding female poets of the past who are at last being set alongside their better-known male compatriots.
It’s also made me feel angry that I was taught poetry so very badly, both in school and at University, where I ‘studied’ English Literature but was in fact mainly force-fed the sayings of a few venerated pre-war Oxford and Cambridge dons, sayings which I had to quote in essays to get marks. ‘Modern poetry’ was deemed to stop at Larkin (and was apparently only white British or American) even though this was the 1980s. John Carey is actually an Emeritus Professor at Oxford but he has a much fresher approach.
I feel the same anger about my so-called art education, too. I did an art A-level but my teacher was too beaten-down by comprehensive life to care what was going on and so I got all I knew about art history from the E. H. Gombrich Story of Art book written decades before in 1950. Now I watch great art TV presenters such as Andrew Graham-Dixon and Waldemar Januszczak and marvel at what I don’t know.
I’ve just bought a second poetry collection – The Fire of Joy by Clive James, published by Picador.
I’m really looking forward to reading both the poems and Clive James’s entertaining and erudite commentaries. I’m not sure whether I’ll learn any to recite but I might…I do know one poem off-by-heart. I learnt it for a public speaking competition in primary school and it’s given me pleasure to still remember it down the years, so perhaps Clive James was onto something. This is his last book, prepared before he passed away last year. He spent a lifetime learning poems and he wanted to pass on his favourites and his love of memorising them.
I’ll be spending a day this week reading a new rhythmic picture book text out loud to an empty kitchen, to make sure it’s a good read, so perhaps learning some new works might also help me with my own rhythmic writing in the future.
Finally I recommend the brilliant Poet Laureate Simon Armitage’s Radio Four show – The Poet Laureate has Gone to his Shed. He’s made the recordings in his writing shed where he's supposed to be busy translating a medieval poem – The Owl and the Nightingale – but he's stopped every now and then to invite interesting guests to chat to him in the shed (or remotely once Covid arrived). It’s on BBC Sounds and it’s a charming relaxing listen.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p089r6hn
Happy readying and listening. Think of it as feeding your own writing with a mulch of nutritious relaxing joy!
Moira Butterfield is a writer of non-fiction and picture books for 3+. Increasingly they are becoming mixed up together. due to the delays of Covid she has had three books published since August - Trip To the Future (Big Picture Books), The Secret Life of Trees (Quarto), Dance Like a Flamingo (Welbeck).
www.moirabutterfield.com
Twitter @moiraworld
Instagram @moirabutterfieldauthor
Youtube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCk74GKogEymUxb3HBNUNzhg?view_as=subscriber
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