The Saison Poetry Library Open Day: Poetry in Performance

With permission of The Saison Poetry Library


A week ago I went to this year's Open Day for the Saison Poetry Library at London's Southbank.

The theme was Poetry in Performance, and the organisers brought together some fascinating strands of that theme: not just the concept of poetry readings, but permutations such as poetry as music (focusing on the work of Leonard Cohen), historic recordings of Tennyson and Browning (here referred to as "The Victorians: Those Gods of Slam"), automatic writing, books and poetry as art, actors reading poems...the list goes on.

The displays made a great space for browsing, leafing, listening and enjoying. I signed the Seamus Heaney book of condolences, pored over a wonderful-looking long poem from 1981 called Fox Running by Ken Smith, and marvelled at the very crackly recording of Tennyson reading 'The Charge of the Light Brigade'. Although no recordings of Gerard Manley Hopkins were ever made, librarian Chris McCabe pointed out in his writeup: "Hopkins' art was led by his instinct and an inversely atavistic desire to listen to what poetry from the future might sound like. Through listening to himself he was expressing all that he strongly felt that poetry could be." In the section on Comedian Poets, digital co-ordinator Chrissy Williams noted: "It's often prompted by deliberately boisterous or comical performers, but we've heard distinguished poet Geoffrey Hill's banter between poems drawing hearty laughter in the past."

There was also a very interesting section on the ghazal, the great Persian/Arabic/Indian form, which has arrived in the West through writers such as Adrienne Rich, W S Merwin, Marilyn Hacker and Mimi Khalvati, and stayed closer to its origins in the work of the great twentieth-century Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz. Finally, I saw collections and books which pushed the poetry-as-visual-art to its utmost limits, bringing in daring reflections on censorship and design.

In the evening, there were readings by Claire Crowther, Charlotte Higgins and Linus Slug: Insect Librarian, all of which were adventurous with the poetry-in-performance concept, whether sonically, or in terms of theme or style.

I'm already looking forward to next year's Open Day. Here are a few photos:

 

Ron King, ‘Alphabeta Concertina’ (Circle Press, 2007), with permission of The Saison Poetry Library

Mette-Sofie D. Ambeck, ‘Dust to Dust’ (Ambeck, 2012), with permission of The Saison Poetry Library

 

 

With permission of The Saison Poetry Library

"Sweet Fire the Sire of Muse": Gerard Manley Hopkins Turns the Volume Up to 11

TO R.B. (Gerard Manley Hopkins)


The fine delight that fathers thought; the strong
Spur, live and lancing like the blowpipe flame,
Breathes once and, quenchèd faster than it came,
Leaves yet the mind a mother of immortal song.
Nine months she then, nay years, nine years she long
Within her wears, bears, cares and moulds the same:
The widow of an insight lost she lives, with aim
Now known and hand at work now never wrong.
Sweet fire the sire of muse, my soul needs this;
I want the one rapture of an inspiration.
O then if in my lagging lines you miss
The roll, the rise, the carol, the creation,
My winter world, that scarcely breathes that bliss
Now, yields you, with some sighs, our explanation.


Gerard Manley Hopkins seems to be at or near the top of a lot of people's lists, whether of favourite poets, or most influential, or whatever list they choose. I find him amazing, but frankly overwhelming - his poetry is so intense both sensually and spiritually that I get overloaded quite quickly when I read him. His poetry, almost unrecognised and unpublished in his Victorian lifetime, was very innovative for its time and has gone on to be massively influential. I hear echoes of him in so many poets. Ted Hughes's 'The Hawk in the Rain' descends in a straight line from 'The Windhover'. Dylan Thomas also reminds me very much of Hopkins (though I'm equally unprepared to comment on either of them.)

I came across this poem, 'To R.B.', quite recently and loved it. R.B. was the poet Robert Bridges, who I recently crossed paths with as he edited an anthology of heroic poetry during World War I which Mallory took with him to Everest. Robert Bridges was a close friend of Hopkins and encouraged his poetry, and later edited and published collections of Hopkins' poems after his death.

The poem itself is pretty stunning, an inspired ode to inspiration. I must confess that the line "Sweet fire the sire of muse, my soul needs this" had me picturing Hopkins as the lead singer of...well...a hard rock/metal band with almighty riffs, bombastic tunes, and exceptionally good lyrics. Couldn't you just hear Robert Plant, Axl Rose, Freddie Mercury, Matt Bellamy, Sammy Hagar, Geoff Tate...er...(someone please stop me...) belting out those lines?