Sex, Eton and acting – sound like your kind of thing? If so, come along to The Poetry Room on Tuesday 8 June from 6.15pm-8pm at Blackwell’s bookshop, Newcastle where we will be discussing Hugo Williams’s show-stopping tenth collection West End Final.
The poems we will be looking at in particular are:
Heavy Father
Ghost Train
And God Created Woman
A Suitable Cane
No Disrespect
Poems to my Mother
A Pillow Book
Marital Visit
Copies of the poems will be available on the night. Some of the poet’s work is on the web at www.poetrybookshoponline.com/Williams_Hugo.pdf
Looking forward to seeing you there: new faces, as well as old friends, are very welcome!
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!
