National Poetry Day: Light

Today is National Poetry Day.

Poetry is the fine dining of literature. We spend most of our days tossing together the everyday pasta of prose, finding a few quick metaphors in the fridge and splashing in a dash of humour to add to the flavour.

But sometimes we want to spend the extra time to make a meal to linger over. We pick out the best of our rare similes and assemble them artfully, paying careful attention to rhyme and metre. The restrictions force us to pare down to the essentials, letting the flavour of the ingredients speak for themselves. The intention is not just to sate the appetite for words, but to stroke the senses and stir the imagination. To create an occasion. A poem.

I'm afraid my blog is not a fine dining establishment this evening. I tried to put some ingredients together, but they somehow failed to produce anything worth keeping. Fortunately others are better poetry chefs than I am, and they have left a menu. You can enjoy the free National Poetry Day book here, with poems new and old on the theme of light.

Bon appetit!

Comments

Mr White Watson of Bakewell

Once upon a time, back in 1795 or so, lived a man who was always asking questions. The kind of questions like, "Why is glass transparent?" or "Why do fruit trees grow better in that place than in this place?" or "What does the earth look like underneath the surface?" This last question was one that he was particularly interested in, and he went so far as to work out what the rock layers looked like where he lived, and draw little pictures of them. Now he was a marble sculptor by trade (as well as fossil hunter, mineral seller, and a few other things) so he thought it would be even better to make his little pictures in stone. That way he could represent the layers using the actual rocks they were composed of. Over the course of his lifetime he made almost 100 of these tablets, as he called them. Then he died. And no one else was quite as interested in all those rocks and minerals as he was. His collection was sold off, bit by bit, and the table...

Erewash Valley Trail: Strelley and Broxtowe

I'd had another four-week gap between walks (who invented half terms and inset days?), and was itching to get out on my explorations. The weather forecast optimistically predicted sunny spells. Unfortunately the weather hadn't got the memo; it was overcast for my entire walk, and then the sky cleared as I was driving home. Oh well. I arrived at the Nottingham Canal to find bulldozers buzzing up and down the towpath. The car park I'd intended to park in was closed for renovation, but there was a layby a little further up the road towards Cossall, so that was fine. The first part of the road had nice wide verges - easy walking - but after the canal bridge it was called Dead Lane, which felt descriptive. It was tightly hemmed in by hedges and I had to flatten myself against the hawthorn when cars passed. Cossall Road Dead Lane The bridleway to Strelley was mostly paved road, but blessedly traffic-free apart from a couple of bikes and a bin lorry performing manoeuvres. Tim Brin...

The Churnet Way: a wonderful walk

The loop from Oakamoor to Froghall and back was one of the most enjoyable walks I've done in a long time. It had a bit of everything: woods, ponds, rivers and railways; steep climbs and sweeping views; an unusual church, an ex-industrial wharf, and, as a final bonus, car parks with toilets. Of course, the sunny weather helped too. I parked in Oakamoor and set off along a quiet lane called Stoney Dale. This is the route of the Churnet Way, which deviates away from the river for a couple of miles. After a while I turned right and climbed up through the woods on a gravelly path, then dropped down to the B5417. a spring in Oakamoor Crossing the road, I entered Hawksmoor Nature Reserve. It has some fine gateposts commemorating John Richard Beech Masefield, "a great naturalist". I found a photo of the opening of the gateway in 1933; unsurprisingly, the trees have grown a lot since then! A track took me down through the woods to East Wall Farm. Lovely view! Nice duck pond as ...

Martha's Marvellous Munchies

Search This Blog