On Tuesday 2nd February we’ll be gathering at Blackwell’s to look at Christopher Reid’s Costa Prize-winning collection, A Scattering. Some of you may already have discovered that the prize came as a surprise to his publishers, Arete – the book is currently reprinting and copies are very hard to get hold of. Blackwell’s may or may not have them by Monday 1st. However, we will have printed copies of the poems we’ll be looking at to give you a taste of the book’s delights – the lightest of touches to four sequences charting the course of the poet’s wife’s brain tumour and death. It is a celebration of their 30 years together, her creative energy and his love and devotion. A heartening read despite the sadness, skilful in technique and transformative in its focus.
The title poem shows much of the book’s strengths.
A Scattering
I expect you’ve seen the footage: elephants,
finding the bones of one of their own kind
dropped by the wayside, picked clean by scavengers
and the sun, then untidily left there,
decide to do something about it.
But what, exactly? They can’t, of course,
reassemble the old elephant magnificence;
they can’t even make a tidier heap. But they can
hook up bones with their trunks and chuck them
this way and that way. So they do.
And their scattering has an air
of deliberate ritual, ancient and necessary.
Their great size, too, makes them the very
embodiment of grief, while the play of their trunks
lends sprezzatura.
Elephants puzzling out
the anagram of their own anatomy,
elephants at their abstracted lamentations –
may their spirit guide me as I place
my own sad thoughts in new, hopeful arrangements.
Looking forward to seeing you 6.15pm-8pm.
A fortnight later than planned we read a selection of poems from the remaining five poets on the T.S. Eliot shortlist. We ignored the fact that the winner was announced the night before and concentrated on the words on the page. Every single poem touched us in a different way and we enjoyed the variety of tone, perspective and subject matter. The themes spanned strength and vulnerability, aging and death, grief and rebirth – an satisfying cycle to mull over on a wet January evening.
At the end of the session it was revealed that Philip Gross had won this year’s prize with his collection The Water Table, a surprising choice for this group at least. We chose Christopher Reid’s A Scattering (Faber) to read at next month’s session, deeply impressed by the title poem. It also recently won this year’s Costa Prize in the Poetry Category. Eilean Ni Chuilleanain’s The Sun-fish was also a strong contender and is on our list to return to later.
Everyone asked after Anna, who stayed at home to look after baby Archie, who was born on 29 December 2009. Congratulations, Anna! We look forward to seeing you again soon. Maybe at the next meeting, in a fortnight’s time, on Tuesday 2 February 6.15pm-8pm, at Blackwell’s (who are ordering copies of A Scattering for us, so do pop in and buy a copy and claim your discount).
Hello everyone,
Apologies again for cancelling the Poetry Room book group on Tuesday due to the bad weather.
We’ve decided to re-arrange the meeting for a fortnight’s time (by which time we’re hoping the city will have thawed!), so that the February meeting can go ahead as planned, and the meetings can continue being in tandem with the TS Eliot Prize shortlist.
So, if you’re able to make it, please come along to Blackwell’s bookshop on Tuesday 19 January at 6.15pm for the delayed January meeting of the book group.
We’ll then continue the meetings on the normal schedule of the first Tuesday of the month from 2 February, and continue the TS Eliot Prize shortlist.
As always the meetings are free to attend and all are welcome.
Due to the extreme weather conditions, tonight’s (5 January) meeting has been cancelled. Sorry for the late notice and for any inconvenience this may have caused.
Next month’s meeting will pick up where we left off, with the TS Eliot Award special which we’d planned for January.
Drive carefully.
