A poet’s voice
Writers talk about finding their voice. I was once told by a literary agent to whom I had sent a draft of a novel ‘we warmed to your voice’. But … Continue reading
Marvell’s Garden
Spenser was twelve when Shakespeare was born, Shakespeare was eight when Donne was born, Donne was twenty-one when Herbert was born, Herbert was fifteen when Milton was born, Milton was … Continue reading
A Reader’s Diary, 3 December 2014
The publication of a Collected Poems is a momentous occasion in the life of any poet. Momentous for the poet’s readers too and more than usually so with the publication … Continue reading
A poem by Charles Causley
Why do you turn your head, Susanna, And why do you swim your eye? It’s only the children on Bellman Street Calling, ‘A penny for the guy!’ The underlying theme … Continue reading
D.H.Lawrence, the poet
D.H.Lawrence was simply a writer, in the way that a composer is a composer or an artist an artist. He wrote prolifically in every literary form and showed that he … Continue reading
A Reader’s Diary – 29 January 2014
John Clare wrote three kinds of poem: observations on himself (‘I am – yet what I am none cares or knows’), observations on social change (‘Enclosure like a Bonaparte let … Continue reading
Laurie Lee
The poetry of Laurie Lee is not as well-known as it should be, unless Cider With Rosie counts as a poem, which at a stretch it might. His first volume … Continue reading
Ten rules for reading poetry aloud
Rule 1: Don’t. Poems are better read than heard, better heard in your head than your ear. Your voice is bound to sound wrong because the sound of poetry is … Continue reading
The first modern English poem
THE LOVER SHEWETH HOW HE IS FORSAKEN OF SUCH AS HE SOMTIME ENJOYED This poem by Sir Thomas Wyatt, written a few years before his death in 1542, is the … Continue reading
Thomas Hardy’s identity crisis
‘No one wanted to publish his early poems,’ Claire Tomalin wrote in the introduction to her Poems of Thomas Hardy (Penguin Classics, 2006), ‘but he kept writing verse during the … Continue reading
