With Our Great Pleasure

There was a general murmur of appreciation and anticipation when the leader of the Spooky Men's Chorale announced their penultimate song based on Tennyson's famous poem at their performance in Kendal last night (21st July) In contrast to most of the rest of the their show which is fabulously clever, brilliantly arranged and sung and very, very funny indeed, this one held the throat until long after the performance ended. If you get chance to see them, sell everything to get a ticket: they were sold out last night and every seat was occupied an hour before they kicked off. Plug in the earphones to catch the chaps singing the song  here. The Aussie maestros are at Womad this weekend. Crossing the Bar Sunset and evening star,   And one clear call for me! And may there be no moaning of the bar,   When I put out to sea. But such a tide as moving seems asleep,   Too full for sound and foam, When that which drew from out the boundless deep,    Turns home again.

From my commonplace book again, copied out from a newspaper about fifteen years ago. What I Say's Just a Rough Draft What I say's just a rough draft - whispered since it isn't time yet. Only heaven lifts the trophy, whose heft of victory is all our blood and sweat. And under purgatory's provisional sky to have grown forgetful's not so rare- not seeing that heaven's in our custody already - the lifelong home we have carried with us everywhere.

I stumbled across 'The Book of the It' in the medical library at Furness General Hospital a long time ago. One of those volumes that creeps onto the shelves, the purchase requested by an enthusiast and read by hardly anyone else - 'Psychosynthesis' by Assagioli was one I recommended and when no one else had taken it out after fifteen years or so, I brought it home as a remainder.  Groddeck's thinking would fit well with the analytical psychology model structured into a distinct discipline by Assagioli. For the 'It' read the 'Self' archetype - the central organising psychic principal. A ghost in the machine if you like. Groddeck is considered to be a pioneer of psychosomatic medicine.  I was amused to find that his  Wiki article  says that this book is 'an unusual work in which each chapter is form of a letter to a girlfriend, addressed as 'my dear'. Health, disease, talent, action and thought, but above all, perception and will and

Knowing the character I am talking about will give you an added appreciation of this introductory anecdote, Potter and Narey, but I hope the sheer imagination and wisdom of 'Sambo' Duckworth will also shine like the brightest of night skies to the rest of my audience. Anyway, one night me and Sambo were walking back from the pub on a massive clear winter night, putting the world to rights, when he paused, looked up at the cosmic display, utterly transfixed: 'You know Des..... it is times like this.... when I look up and contemplate all that universe, all that space.... the enormity of it all... it just makes me realise..... just how tiny.... how minute.... trivial .... how meaningless..... how insignificant it all is compared to me...' Maybe this is what Auden is getting at? Or maybe something else. The More Loving One Looking up at the stars, I know quite well That, for all they care, I can go to hell, But on earth indifference is the least We have to d

Oh Taste and See Because of a kiss on the forehead in the long Night's infirmary, through the red wine let light shine deep. Because of the thirtysix just men that so stealthily roam this earth raise high the glass and do not weep. Who says the world is not a wedding? Couples, in their oases, lullabye. Let glass be full before they sleep. Toast all that seems to vanish like a rainbow stared at, those bright  truant things that will not keep; and ignorance of the last night of our lives, its famished breathing. Then, in the red wine, taste the light.

Thank you Martin for  'Clearances' by Seamus Heaney.   Completely unknown to me until now.

"If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you"- Gospel according to Thomas. Below is a short quotation from an excellent article  in today's 'Observer' by Nicci Gerrard which anticipates the report of an all party parliamentary group into 'arts, health and wellbeing' to be launched next Wednesday 19th July. OK it's not a poem, but it is my blog, my rules. In health, we live in a world rich with meanings that we can call upon as a conductor calls upon the orchestra, and are linked to each other by a delicate web of communications. To be human is to have a voice that is heard (by voice I mean that which connects the inner self with the outer world).....To be trapped inside a brain that is failing, inside a body that is disintegrating, and to have no way of escaping (is a form of torture). If evidence is needed, this report robustly demonstrates that the arts can come to our rescue when traditional lang

An early Xmas present suggestion? I can't remember the last time I found such an exciting, sustained and even collection as 'Drysalter', winner of the 2014 Forward Prize. I found it in Ulverston Library after discovering Roberts in a recent number of the 'London Review of Books'.  Going through a volume I always make a note of the poems I particularly like but I have clocked fifteen already and I am only half way through the book. There is something plain wilful about public libraries: it just doesn't make any economic sense in today's global system that an old geezer on his way to the bus stop in the rain with a bagful of shopping can simply walk into a building and walk off it with a treasure like this - scot free!  There's a loophole somewhere. You can't have austerity and free poetry. It is heartening that there is still evidence of an public spirit - a commitment to the common good: I must take it back after I have filleted it with a