Author Archive for anna

Stars and Sperm Whales at the Poetry Room

A dog that thinks it’s a horse.  A panda that thinks it’s a Beatle.  Poetry that thinks its prose – or the other way round?

This September at the Poetry Room we will be discussing Simon Armitage’s Seeing Stars:  a disorientating poetry collection full of heart and chutzpah.  These poems strain at their leashes – join us as we grapple with them. 

Some of the poems we will be looking at include:

The Christening

An Accomodation

I’ll Be There to Love and Comfort You

Poodles 

Sample poems from the collection are online at <www.lovereading.co.uk/book/4229/Seeing-Stars-by-Simon-Armitage.html >

We will be meeting on Tuesday 7 September at Blackwell’s bookshop, Newcastle from 6.15pm-8pm for a friendly informal discussion of the book.  Come and enjoy a starry night.   Never been before?  You’re especially welcome!

Due to crossed wires and closed doors, last night’s Poetry Room reconvened in the convivial atmosphere of The Crow’s Nest (I hope any late-comers saw our note!)  After a few flourishes of our poetry books we soon had a quiet corner to ourselves and got on with the matter in hand – discussing Hugo Williams’ most recent book West End Final.

Name-dropping is the order of the day in many of the poems (inspiring the title of this blog entry!) We started with Heavy Father which describes the speaker watching his actor father in old films (Williams’ father was the actor Hugh Williams and the poems encourage a reader to make a biographical connection).  The father is disguised as playing a series of stock characters until ultimately his role as a father is also portrayed as an act (‘the father as the father’ as one person put it).   The absence of the father’s own character in this poem was discussed as was the son’s identification with him in age.  The ingenious half rhymes for father throughout (fedora/mascara/operator) were admired.

We moved on to Ghost Town – a spare poem, devastating in its conjuring of children on a train being sent to boarding school.  The passengers are described as ‘out-staring’ their tears in ‘third-class carriages’.  The descriptions gain weight through the brevity of the piece.  One person, a boarding school alumnus, particularly identified with this poem.  And God Created Woman is a poetic recreation of a child’s letter home from school.  The poet suggests a child on the edge of adulthood through his use of precocious language juxtaposed against child-like pleas to his parent.  The child’s desire to see the film And God Created Woman set against the school’s more hearty choice of Scott of the Antarctic was enjoyed.   A Suitable Cane was our final foray into the public school world.  The poem describes a ritualistic and surreal caning.  The repetition of ‘cane’ suggests strokes of the implement.  The speaker describes saving the expression of his pain ‘for later use’:  this could be seen as the poem itself.  There was some discussion about the poet’s return to his subject matter across this book and previous collections.  One person found it indulgent while others felt that this was what all poets did and that Williams mined his own experience through new angles.    

No Disrespect returns to the thespian world for a biting monologue by an embittered colleague of the father’s.  An actor in the group gave us an insight into the profession which backed up the material in the poems.  Finally we just had time to look at some sections of A Pillow Book – a remarkable and inventive twelve poem sequence- describing a couple preparing for bed.  One person aptly described it as twelve director’s cuts of the same scene.

Back to Blackwell’s  (as Amy Winehouse nearly sang) for our final Poetry Room of the season next month.  We will be meeting on Tuesday 6 July at 6.15pm-8pm.  Please bring along a poem you love and some photocopies (about ten) and we’ll read around (or someone else can read for you if you’d prefer).  The more the merrier.  Even if you haven’t been before, do give us a try! Hope to see you there.

It was a full house at the Poetry Room this month as we entered the strange and beautiful world of Paul Durcan.  Many thanks to everyone who came along and helped make such an interesting evening.      

We started by looking at ‘Sport’.  The poem describes a young man, watched by his father, playing football for Grangegorman Mental Hospital.  Heartbreaking and funny was the general consensus.  The son’s pride at impressing his father is tempered by the rarity of the praise and the location of the match.  However, the father’s effort in travelling to see his son and the gruff ‘Well played, son’ was also noted.  It was felt the short lines of the poem added to the impact of the narrative.  It was discussed that the poem, originally published in a collection called Daddy, Daddy, had echoes with Sylvia Plath’s famous poem ‘Daddy’.

Next, Durcan entered the building as we listened to a recording of him reading ‘The Kilfenora Teaboy’ and ‘Hymn to a Broken Marriage’.  The poet explained how he didn’t ‘do’ introductions to poems.  The relish and authority of his voice was much enjoyed.  Discussing the second of these poems, some of the group felt sympathy for the narrator while others felt he tended towards self-indulgence, perhaps knowingly so. ‘Raymond of the Rooftops’ continued the marital theme and the delicious wit of this poem was much appreciated.  The poet’s use of repetition and everyday language was noted.  It was felt that the portrayal of the sexes was not straightforward and that the long-suffering wife in the poem was also an agent of her own misfortune. 

From there to ‘Death in a Graveyard:  Pere Lachaise’ which describes a wife falling into her husband’s grave having been knocked out by a chestnut.  The laugh out loud lines had us doing exactly that.   ‘A Spin in the Rain with Seamus Heaney’, like ‘Sport’, describes a ball game – this time between two poets.  Like many of Durcan’s poems, the narrative of the poem becomes increasingly outrageous as events move from the ordinary to the extraordinary.   The ending of this poem with its full rhyme was particularly admired.  Our final poem of the night was ‘The Virgin and Child’, one of Durcan’s many poems triggered by visual art.  A couple of readers drew attention to its juxtaposition of religious language with fresh unexpected lines such as ‘A brief trout of a frown/Jumps up/The brief weir of her face.’

For more on Durcan, don’t forget the man himself is coming to Newcastle on Thursday 10 June <www.ncl.ac.uk/ncla>.  Next month at the Poetry Room we’ll be looking at Hugo Williams’ collection West End Final.  For one month only we’ll be meeting on the second Tuesday of the month on Tuesday 8 June at 6.15pm-8pm  in Blackwell’s bookshop, Newcastle.  Keep an eye on this blog for details of the poems we’ll be looking at.  In the meantime, happy election day!

With many poetry laurels already to her crown, Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy received perhaps the ultimate accolade this month:   the Poetry Room treatment!  New faces and old friends gathered at Blackwell’s bookshop – this time in their business department (!)- to discuss the Selected Poems. 

We started with Standing Female Nude.  The setting of the poem was discussed – it was noted that the Georges mentioned in the poem might suggest the artist Georges Braque, although this is never made specific.  A visual artist in the group commented that the lot of a contemporary life model is a happier one, thankfully, than that described in the poem.  One person found Duffy’s exploration of power clichéd but generally the poem was felt to be ground-breaking and beautifully achieved.  Its short effective lines were noted.  It was discussed how its themes were explored throughout Duffy’s work and how well the poem would have fitted into her later collection, which looks at issues of gender and power, The World’s Wife.  

Warming Her Pearls was warmly received for its tenderness and subtle eroticism.  It was suggested that the two women in the poem could also be considered as two halves of the same person – the real woman and the ‘made-up’ one.  Originally provided a change of pace from the persona poems.  The description of the narrator’s tongue ‘shedding its skin like a snake’ was much admired as was the poet’s clever use of line-breaks.

Our penultimate poem was In Mrs Tilscher’s Class which like Originally depicts a rite of passage.  The opening stanzas with their descriptions of windows being opened with long poles and skittles of milk took us all back, despite our varying ages, to a familiar infant classroom.  Someone noted the poem was a list poem.  Another person suggested this form was a natural progression from the poet’s use of short punchy lines.

Time – a preoccupation of Duffy’s was against us.  We had a quick look at the wonderful Away and See then we were gone into the night keen to ask the man holding the future his name.

On Tuesday 6 April from 6.15-8pm at Blackwell’s we will be looking at Don Paterson’s award-winning collection Rain. Do keep an eye out on this blog for the poems we will be looking at.  All, as ever, are very welcome.

The following poets and collections have been shortlisted by judges Simon Armitage, Colette Bryce and Penelope Shuttle for the prestigious T.S. Eliot Prize 2009:

At next month’s Poetry Room from 6.15pm-8pm on Tuesday 3 November at Blackwell’s bookshop, Newcastle, we will be looking at sample poems (as many as physically possible!) from the poets on this list.  For free downloads of the sample poems, please go to:

www.poetrybookshoponline.com/tsereadinggrouppoems.php

We will also be bringing print-outs of the poems along with us.

There’s something to suit all tastes, so enjoy! And looking forward to seeing you (new-comers as well as familiar faces as ever very welcome!) in November.