It’s hardly surprising that Billy Collins thinks that ‘Stepping from the title to the first lines is like stepping into a canoe. A lot of things can go wrong.’ His titles are so wonderful, they’re practically vertiginous – Another Reason Why I don’t Keep a Gun in the House, To a Stranger Born in Some Distant Country Hundred of Years from Now, I Chop Some Parsley While Listening to Art Blakey’s Version of ‘Three Blind Mice’, Lines Composed Over Three Thousand Miles from Tintern Abbey and the title of the ‘Selected Poems’ itself – Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes. This put some people off at first but they were soon won over by the warmth of his wit and imagination.
We spent a lot of the session laughing out loud and sighing in admiration at these poems often rooted in daily life but which took off into other realms entirely, conjuring waddling lamps, Beethoven’s solo for a barking dog or a skeleton with a penis at a typewriter. We were also touched by the undercurrent of seriousness beneath his playfulness, his fascination with Time, and its ultimate corollary, Death. These apparently simple poems, sparked by ideas about culture and his own experience, weave threads of Life and Art together till it’s hard to tell the difference.
Tripping the Rift: The Movie movie download There was space at the end to review the past year’s sessions. Everyone seemed happy with the format and tone and is looking forward to more of the same but different in 2009. If you have anything at all to add, please feel free to contribute to the forum here. Details of the next season, January-July, will be posted soon. We will be starting on 27th January with Tony Harrison’sSelected Poems (2006), in advance of his reading at Culture Lab on the 29th.
Till then have a warm and happy holiday, best wishes for the new year and see you very soon!
