Today's poet

Nice choice Alf. It was his bird poems in an anthology edited by Simon Armitage that first made me aware of him. I was given his collected works (probably the same book you have?) and its brilliant. Have you read 'At the Loch of the Green Corrie'? Its written by Andrew Greig and is about his friendship with Norman and the times he visited the place that inspired so much of his poetry. Interesting.

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Originally Posted by Alf

Can't put down my book of Norman MacCaig poems at the moment. He has been described as the opposite of Ted Hughes in the ways he describes animals and birds but I like both their approaches to the subject.

Greenshank

His single note - one can't help calling it
piping, one can't help
calling it plaintive - slides droopingly down
no more than a semitone, but is filled
with an octave of loneliness, with the whole sad scale
of desolation.

He won't leave us. He keeps flying
fifty yards and perching
on a rock or a small hummock,
drawing attention to himself.
Then he calls and calls
and flies on again
in a flight
roundshouldered but dashing,
skulking yet bold.

Cuckoo, phoenix, nightingale,
you are no truer emblems
than this bird is.
He is the melancholy that flies
in the weathers of my mind,
He is the loneliness that calls to me there
in a semitone
of desolate octaves.

Norman MacCaig

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Originally Posted by Hes

Nice choice Alf. It was his bird poems in an anthology edited by Simon Armitage that first made me aware of him. I was given his collected works (probably the same book you have?) and its brilliant. Have you read 'At the Loch of the Green Corrie'? Its written by Andrew Greig and is about his friendship with Norman and the times he visited the place that inspired so much of his poetry. Interesting.

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The collection I have is edited by Norman MacCaig's son Ewen. I just read the review on Amazon of the Andrew Greig book, sounds very good Hes :cool:

April 18

the slime of all my yesterdays
rots in the hollow of my skull

and if my stomach would contract
because of some explicable phenomenon
such as pregnancy or constipation

I would not remember you

or that because of sleep
infrequent as a moon of greencheese
that because of food
nourishing as violet leaves
that because of these

and in a few fatal yards of grass
in a few spaces of sky and treetops

a future was lost yesterday
as easily and irretrievably
as a tennis ball at twilight


Sylvia Plath

Been awhile since SP's made an appearance on this thread. Shocking! I've missed her jolly verse and uplifting tones.

The Armada

Long, long ago
when everything I was told was believable
and the little I knew was less limited than now,
I stretched belly down on the grass beside a pond
and to the far bank launched a child’s armada.
A broken fortress of twigs,
the paper-tissue sails of galleons,
the waterlogged branches of submarines -
all came to ruin and were on flame
in that dusk-red pond.
And you, mother, stood behind me,
impatient to be going,
old at twenty-three, alone,
thin overcoat flapping.
How closely the past shadows us.
In a hospital a mile or so from that pond
I kneel beside your bed and, closing my eyes,
reach out across forty years to touch once more
that pond’s cool surface,
and it is your cool skin I’m touching;
for as on a pond a child’s paper boat
was blown out of reach
by the smallest gust of wind,
so too have you been blown out of reach
by the smallest whisper of death,
and a childhood memory is sharpened,
and the heart burns as that armada burnt,
long, long ago.

Brian Patten

Anyone catch Countryfile on sunday night? Simon Armitage was on, it may be on BBC iPlayer.

It is

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode...ile_15_04_2012

Thanks for the heads up Steve! I've just read on the web that his book, 'Walking Home', will be out on the 5th July and he is walking a section of the Pennine Way from Thwaite to Hawes and inviting people to join him some time in July.

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Originally Posted by stevefoster

It is

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode...ile_15_04_2012

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That's the book that I have too Alf, great isn't it? :)

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Originally Posted by Alf

The collection I have is edited by Norman MacCaig's son Ewen. I just read the review on Amazon of the Andrew Greig book, sounds very good Hes :cool:

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Nothing like the cheeriness of Sylvia...thanks Mossy (I think;) ). I did like the Patten, that's a particularly moving choice.

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Originally Posted by Hes

Nothing like the cheeriness of Sylvia...thanks Mossy (I think;) ). I did like the Patten, that's a particularly moving choice.

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Thanks Hes

I've been a bit busy recently and haven't had time to visit the thread as much as usual but was shocked to see we had been 'relegated' to the 2nd page :w00t: Despite your's and Alf plus Merrylegs...ooophs I mean Steve's stalwart contributions. I'll make amends I hope.