Rediscovering poetry

It’s been a funny summer. Five or six weeks ago I bought a few new poetry collections — well, old ones mostly, including three by Peter Reading — thinking I might do the Sealey Challenge, laid down by poet Nicole Sealey, to read a book of poetry every day in August, and share some aspect of it. In the same way I do with material for my Thursday lunch-hour sessions, I thought I’d mix up brand-new, classic, and older but off-beat stuff (hence the Peter Reading), lyrical and political (hence the Peter Reading), English and translated, etc. It was going to be a blitzkrieg of poetry!

Instead of which, on the first of August I managed to hit my head with force on the 5in-diameter branch of a dead peach tree. And August was knocked into a cocked hat. A cocked hat with stars circling round it. The stars homed in on my already-bad left eye, to the extent that I bought an eyepatch online, which did help.

I spent about a week on my bed in an oddly pleasant haze, listening to audiobooks.

Since then, with one or two interludes of overdoing it, it’s been one thing after another: nausea, dizziness, mood swings, & lately a strange little non-specific raised temperature. Sometimes life just deviates from poetry, even from language. All you can do is ride it, like a wave, and see what flotsam you float back with.

My new, late-start allotment is bombarding me with windfall apples and beautiful pears, tomatoes, courgettes, and beetroots. I’ve got some preserving to do, starting with my first-ever homemade ketchup. Homesteading isn’t going to save us this winter, but it might keep me in condiments…

This is more than flotsam: somewhere in there I did actually finish my own manuscript! The poetry project I started this time last year, maybe even this week last year, my From Lines by Kenneth Patchen collection. This is not small news! I’ve shown it to a small handful of trusted friends, edited it, done another last lightning burn-off-the-brush, and it’s ready to be booted out to seek its fortune.

I’ve been reading novels! I’ve read Clare Pollard’s novel, just out, called Delphi — and loved it. A short, fast novel about a woman losing her marbles during lockdown, it’s inventive and funny, very recognisable, and ultimately moving. I read A Tale of Two Cities, which I strongly recommend. I’d never read it before (in fact I once flunked a term of English because I couldn’t get on with it, to my shame, but it really felt like reading cardboard with no printing on it; strange how things can change in only 150 years).

Fascinating, after knowing so much about the book all my life, to read the whole story unfolding And then, after watching the series on BBC iplayer (I missed its first time round; peak year of babies), I reread The Buddha of Suburbia. Still wonderful. Fresh, funny and poignant, and just as real and true as the first time.

Now we’re all going Back to School. Workshops start in three weeks, the flood of poetry into the world continues, and the wind is changing — new challenges, new demands on everyone. We need new language!

We’re heading (as always) into the unknown. Come and join us, on a Weds or Sat, armed with your pen.

See the main page or ‘work with me’ for details of the workshops.

And all right: here’s a bit of Peter Reading. From Perduta Gente.