With Our Great Pleasure

If the chanting of  'Cargoes'  was the opening of a door at primary school, then hearing the voice of Dylan Thomas at grammar school was another epiphany.  We enjoyed the privilege of having Mr Leadbetter as our English Lit and Language teacher at St Bede's all the way through to GCEs: a happy, self assured chap with a determination and need to show us what English was capable of. He was one of those teachers who had a natural authority because of his intelligence and manifest good nature: he knew his worth to us and we recognised it in return. Early on, with the help of the latest technology of the time (a gramophone) he played a recording of 'Fern Hill' and the world has never been the same since.  It comes to mind as I was sorting out the last of my vinyl records today - on their way to the Oxfam shop in Ulverston if you are interested. 'Fern Hill' is on the 'A Child's Christmas in Wales' album.  FERN HILL Now as I was young and e...

I am going to duck out on an introduction for these most famous words and leave it to Aubrey Lewis via Anthony Clare. I will put my own sixpennorth in at the end though for what it is worth. Professor Clare appeared on Radio Four's 'With Great Pleasure' in 1985. Some of you will remember his long running series 'In The Psychiatrist's Chair'? Here are his concluding remarks to his own collection that also included Eliot's 'Journey of the Magi', 'The Second Coming' by Yeats, John Clare's 'Written in Northampton County Asylum'. "I intended to end my selection with Emily Dickinson, a poet who more than once concerned herself with medicine and madness. It was she who wrote: Faith is a fine convention For gentlemen who see; But microscopes are prudent In an emergency. As fine a comment on the limits of belief and usefulness of science as I know. But my last choice is Shakespeare. Having once seen Gielgud as Prospero, ...

Tomorrow night (12th August) weather permitting, we will sit out in the garden on our loungers to watch the big night of return of the Perseid shower - an annual ritual of ours.  This is the sort of thing that can happen. Stargazing The night is fine and dry. It falls and spreads the cold sky with a million opposites that, for a spell, seem like a million souls and soon, more, and then, for what seems a long time, one. Then of course it spins. What is better to do than string out over the infinite dead spaces the ancient beasts and spearmen of the human mind, and if not the real ones, new ones? But try making them clear to one you love, (whoever is standing by you is one you love  when pinioned by the stars): you will find it quite impossible, but like her more for thinking she sees that constellation. After the wave of pain, you will turn to her and, in an instant, change the universe to a sky you were glad you came out to see. This is the act of the ...

These lines are Ms Le Guin's version of those  I posted here  not long ago. It is from her translation of the  Tao Te Ching : I downloaded the Kindle edition the other day. If you compare the two, I have to confess that I prefer the original if only for its idea of 'things that happen naturally' than the simple 'we did it?  What do you think? Eleanor introduced me to Le Guin's marvellous 'Earthsea Quartet' - a sort of 'Lord of the Rings' you imagine at the start, that ends up being a compelling, dark, morally complex contemplation of universal challenges and rites of passage - and I have been a fan of hers ever since. I was almost put off because Ms Le Guin is described as a 'science fiction writer', the section in a bookshop I usually walk straight past, but make no mistake she is simply just a great writer full stop. Try a collection of her short stories to kick off with. I am also reading a collection of her essays, talks, revie...

Remember that you first heard of Chloe on my Blog. I am sure that she is going to write a lot more excellent poems like this one dedicated to her new cousin, Connie.  A Poem for Connie There is a land of remembered toys Which is full of laughter and full of joys And there stands a willow tree  Full of happiness and full of glee And down come rainbows of beautiful shapes And there sits a sea of gentle waves So remember - there are always happy days! Chloe Evans, age 7 Thank you for the Potter and Evans family for allowing me to publish it.  Inevitably I recall her Grandad's famous poem with its pathos and elegiac quality... An accident happened to my Uncle Jim, Someone threw a tomato at him; Tomatoes are soft and they don't hurt the skin, This one was different - it was wrapped in a tin. by Allan Potter, age 94

I typed out a copy of this poem on 23rd March 1993. Two years after visiting Berlin as a guest of an old Army friend, Bob Lloyd, who was commander of the British garrison after the Wall came down, as I typed I would have been thinking of particular angels and my pilgrimage to visit as many scenes as possible from Wim Wender's wonderful film 'Wings of Desire' released thirty years ago last May. A lot of the places in the film I visited have long been built over, including of course, the site of Hitler's bunker that was in no man's land between the two walls. It was quite something to follow in the footsteps of Bruno Ganz and Otto Sander across the Potsdamer Platz, around the National Library and other locations. I wonder if this Michael Roberts is related to Michael Symmons Roberts featured  here?  There is a similar style and an affinity for the unseen, implacable and remorseless. Just checked the younger Roberts entry on  'Wikipedia'  but it doesn...

Thank you Martin, for reminding me of another old favourite: TO MY FRIENDS Dear friends, and here I say friends the broad sense of the word: Wife, sister, associates, relatives, Schoolmates of both sexes, People seen only once Or frequented all my life; Provided that between us, for at least a moment, A line has been stretched, A well-defined bond. I speak for you, companions of a crowded Road, not without its difficulties, And for you too, who have lost Soul, courage, the desire to live; Or no one, or someone, or perhaps only one person, or you Who are reading me: remember the time Before the wax hardened, When everyone was like a seal. Each of us bears the imprint Of a friend met along the way; In each the trace of each. For good or evil In wisdom or in folly Everyone stamped by everyone. Now that the time crowds in And the undertakings are finished, To all of you the humble wish That autumn will be long and mild.