I'm proud to report that the Fell Poets had a fine night at Gummers How. HHH, OW & Freckle had a good run and row. The beer at the end is always worth it.
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I'm proud to report that the Fell Poets had a fine night at Gummers How. HHH, OW & Freckle had a good run and row. The beer at the end is always worth it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Harry H Howgill
Fell poets regatta
With harry to the port
whippet to the starboard
And freckle enjoying the view
We present our motley "scratch crew".
O'er the lake , with a huff and a puff
And a loyal hand
Three fell pals ascend "at pace"
Before tumbling back down.
To the waters edge,
And with a nifty push
We take the run off with aplomb
Clambering the final steps to a lush
Peroni!
Thank you to Harry and Old Whippett for being the perfect gents and loyal team mates...a wonderful day out with sunshine, running and laughter!
I am uttery amazed that you both ran Tebay before Gummers How and were still available to haul me up that hill!
A special day and one to remember!
x
This could be one for the Druids at Stonehenge today.
Written on a Summer Evening
The church bells toll a melancholy round,
Calling the people to some other prayers,
Some other gloominess, more dreadful cares,
More harkening to the sermon's horrid sound.
Surely the mind of man is closely bound
In some blind spell: seeing that each one tears
Himself from fireside joys and Lydian airs,
And converse high of those with glory crowned.
Still, still they toll, and I should feel a damp,
A chill as from a tomb, did I not know
That they are dying like an outburnt lamp, -
That 'tis their sighing, wailing, ere they go
Into oblivion -that fresh flowers will grow,
And many glories of immortal stamp.
John Keats
Well done fell poets!!! I am very sorry I wasn't able to make it this weekend due to the Open Studios...maybe next year.Quote:
Originally Posted by Harry H Howgill
Great poem Freckle and well done on Gummers How. I wish i could have been there.xx
Quote:
Originally Posted by freckle
I really like Alf's Keats for the summer solstice. I am contemplating what to do for it myself. I know it will involve a certain person, a run, a hill and a picnic but where and what order is yet to be determined. I've just been listening to Radio 3 on Iplayer and can totally recommend Sunday's edition of Words and Music called Miniatures. Here is a lovely one that I think describes passion very well (sorry its before 9pm :) )
The Storm
Miles off, a storm breaks. It ripples to our room.
You look up into the light so it catches one side
Of your face, your tight mouth, your startled eye.
You turn to me and when I call you come
Over and kneel beside me, wanting me to take
Your head between my hands as if it were
A delicate bowl that the storm might break.
You want me to get between you and the brute thunder.
But settling on your flesh my great hands stir,
Pulse on you and then, wondering how to do it, grip.
The storm rolls through me as your mouth opens.
Ian Hamilton
Late Fragment
And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved,
to feel myself
beloved on the earth.
Raymond Carver
Just so everyone knows, Freckle wrote that in the boat on the way back across ;-)
Row row row your boat,
across Windermere.
Up to the top of Gummers How,
And back down for a beer.
Quote:
Originally Posted by freckle
That is an absolute classic and one of my favourites. I never tire of reading that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hes
Well done Fell Poet Rowers :cool:
mother Goosander
leads her seven young proudly
down denuded Wharfe
Great choice Hes ! :cool::DQuote:
Originally Posted by Hes
Some great choices on here tonight with Alf setting the tone with this beautiful poem. Hes I love the Raymond Carver poem one of my all time favourite's and so true on so many levels. Harry I think i liked your version of events better than mine, short and sweet!Quote:
Originally Posted by Alf
this is my summer solstice choice...not directly linked, more of a tonal thing!
Wild Strawberries
Helen Dunmore
What I get, I bring home to you:
a dark handful, sweet-edged,
dissolving in one mouthful.
I bother to bring them for you
though they’re so quickly over,
pulpless, sliding to juice
a grainy rub on the tongue
and the taste’s gone. If you remember
we were in the woods at wild strawberry-time
and I was making a basket of dock-leaves
to hold what you’d picked,
but the cold leaves unplaited themselves
and slid apart, and again unplaited themselves
until I gave up and ate wild strawberries
out of your hands for sweetness.
I licked at your palm:
the little salt-edge there,
the tang of money you’d handled.
As we stayed in the woods, hidden,
we heard the sound system below us
calling the winners at Chepstow,
faint as the breeze turned.
The sun came out on us, the shade blotches
went hazel: we heard names
bubble like stock-doves over the woods
as jockeys in stained silks gentled
those sweat-dark, shuddering horses
down to the walk.
Always nice to see your haiku DT :-) lovely imageryQuote:
Originally Posted by Derby Tup
a half moon rises
yet still gilding scything swifts
the midsummer sun
Nice haiku Hes. Still some swifts around last night above the village but they wont be around much longer :(
The tree is here, still, in pure stone,
in deep evidence, in solid beauty,
layered, through a hundred million years.
Agate, cornelian, gemstone
transmuted the timber and sap
until damp corruptions
fissured the giant's trunk
fusing a parallel being:
the living leaves
unmade themselves
and when the pillar was overthrown
fire in the forest, blaze of the dust-cloud,
celestial ashes mantled it round,
until time, and the lava, created
this gift, of translucent stone.
Pablo Neruda
Lovely Haiku HesQuote:
Originally Posted by Hes
I must find time to write one
Just too busy now
this is sooooooooooooooooo lovely..............sighQuote:
Originally Posted by Derby Tup
nice haiku hes too!
Cheers Freckle. :)
Quote:
Originally Posted by freckle
I just realised that I hadn't posted the details of the Dufton campsite for all the fell poets off to teh Armitage gig. Here you are:
Dufton Hall Farm Campsite, the owner is Margaret Howe and her email is [email protected]
the phone number is 017683 51573
Stef bought me a collection of love poems called Hand in Glove (don't know if its named after the Smiths song) edited by Carol Ann Duffy. This caught my eye straight away:
Come Back
Come back often and take hold of me,
sensation that I love, come back and take hold of me -
when the body's memory revives
and an old longing passes through the blood,
when lips and skin remember
and hands feel as though they touch again
Come back often, take hold of me in the night
when lips and skin remember . . .
C P Cavafy
This is just absolutely awesome DT, I love the observations being made in this poem it is so evocative and conveys so well a sense of yearning for someone not physically present or perhaps the metaphysical sense of being held.......sigh (again)...your on a roll! where is stef anyhow? hope she is well, haven't seen on here for yonks!Quote:
Originally Posted by Derby Tup
Thanks Hes! :-) xQuote:
Originally Posted by Hes
Stef's fine and running well atm. She'll be along later I bet. I had to Google C P Cavafy. Modern Greek poet, who wrote often about longing :)
How are you freckle? Any more boating trips planned? :cool:
Here's one from the man himself...
Nightshift
Once again I have missed you by moments;
steam hugs the rim of the just-boiled kettle,
water in the pipes finds its own level.
In another room there are other signs
of someone having left: dust, unsettled
by the sweep of the curtains; the clockwork
contractions of the paraffin heater.
For weeks now we have come and gone, woken
in acres of empty bedding, written
lipstick love-notes on the bathroom mirror
and in this space we have worked and paid for
we have found ourselves, but lost each other.
Upstairs, at least, there is understanding
in things more telling than lipstick kisses:
the air, still hung with spores of your hairspray;
body-heat stowed in the crumpled duvet.
I am glad she is doing well...shame you guys can't make Dufton but ce la vie!Quote:
Originally Posted by Derby Tup
I am very well thankyou but not enough fell running at the minute, training for a marathon in September and just not seeming to get the chance one way or another to get to the fells! As for boat trips I think we need to enter a whole sqaud of fell poets in next years gummers how! :-)
I will look up that poet me thinks
Gummers How race report...
http://www.nwemail.co.uk/sport/climb...th=home/2.3320
Quote:
Originally Posted by Harry H Howgill
I notice that international fell running stars took part in this event!!!!!!! blimey!
Hi Freckle
I'm still here :)
I'm concentrating on keeping busy and getting back into traing again which means less time on the laptop! I've started eating healthy food instead of junk too. I'm on a mission to get fit and lose a few pounds gained :o
Hope all is well
Stef
Quote:
Originally Posted by Derby Tup
What a lovely poem
Oh yes please come back!
Hug all my troubles away,
Make me whole again
Candles by C P Cavafy
The days that are to come, they stand before us
like to a row of lighted little candles, —
brilliant, and warm, and lively little candles.
The other days, the by-gone, lag behind,
a mournful row of candles that are quenched:
a few of them, the nearest, smoulder still,
but most are cold, and crooked, and reduced.
I dread to look on these: their shape is grievous,
and grievous the remembrance of their light.
In front, my lighted candles I behold.
I dread to turn, lest I perceive, affrighted,
how fast the sombre row is lengthening,
how fast the extinguished candles multiply.
Another from the Hand in Hand poetry collection, edited by Carol Ann Duffy
The Linen Industry
Pulling up flax after the blue flowers have fallen
And laying our handfuls in the peaty water
To rot those grasses to the bone, or building stooks
That recall the skirts of an invisible dancer,
We become a part of the linen industry
And follow its processes to the grubby town
Where fields are compacted into window-boxes
And there is little room among the big machines.
But even in our attic under the skylight
We make love on a bleach green, the whole meadow
Draped with material turning white in the sun
As though snow reluctant to melt were our attire.
What's passion but a battering of stubborn stalks,
Then a gentle combing out of fibres like hair
And a weaving of these into christening robes,
Into garments for a marriage or funeral?
Since it's like a bereavement once the labour's done
To find ourselves last workers in a dying trade,
Let flax be our matchmaker, our undertaker,
The provider of sheets for whatever the bed --
And be shy of your breasts in the presence of death,
Say that you look more beautiful in linen
Wearing white petticoats, the bow on your bodice
A butterfly attending the embroidered flowers.
Michael Longley
That's a good posting freckle, the man is pretty good isn't he :cool: :DQuote:
Originally Posted by freckle
Quote:
Originally Posted by Stef F
I enjoyed that Stef while reflecting there's an awful lot of burnt out candles behind me :( :D
I like this DT. I have read it a few times now and it gets better each time. I am not familiar with his work so now I am looking for more. Thanks for posting it :DQuote:
Originally Posted by Derby Tup
This is dedicated to the Gummer's How intrepid team of fell poets :D
Crossing the Loch
Remember how we rowed toward the cottage
on the sickle-shaped bay,
that one night after the pub
loosed us through its swinging doors
and we pushed across the shingle
till water lipped the sides
as though the loch mouthed 'boat'?
I forgot who rowed. Our jokes hushed.
The oars' splash, creak, and the spill
of the loch reached long into the night.
Out in the race I was scared:
the cold shawl of breeze,
and hunched hills; what the water held
of deadheads, ticking nuclear hulls.
Who rowed, and who kept their peace?
Who hauled salt-air and stars
deep into their lungs, were not reassured;
and who first noticed the loch's
phosphorescence, so, like a twittering nest
washed from the rushes, an astonished
small boat of saints, we watched water shine
on our fingers and oars,
the magic dart of our bow wave?
It was surely foolhardy, such a broad loch, a tide,
but we live—and even have children
to women and men we had yet to meet
that night we set out, calling our own
the sky and salt-water, wounded hills
dark-starred by blaeberries, the glimmering anklets
we wore in the shallows
as we shipped oars and jumped,
to draw the boat safe, high at the cottage shore.
Kathleen Jamie
Quote:
Originally Posted by Stef F
This is very moving stef...nice choice...i am glad things are well with you and you are enjoying your running, I am ok not seeing fells as much as I would like but back into running more regularly which is good. Onwards and upwards eh? x
A Prayer for Apollo.
Lord Apollo give me strength to finish my race,
Guide my heart on it's way so i do not fail,
Give me the words to celebrate your name,
Bring me the poetic heart so i can tell my tale.
My muscles and sinews are strong my lord,
As your music fills me the race does start,
I praise you for the sun on my back,
Filled with your strength and power in my heart.
Leonidas.
Ooooo now this is very enigmatic....bit like our little trip!!!! (NaaaaaaT!...)...thank you for posting, how sweet....Quote:
Originally Posted by Alf
DT I liked The Linen Industry although I had to re read a few times, really loved the line about "as if snow reluctant to melt were our attire" ...very slick!
Hi Leonidas good to see some orginal work on here too....i am stuck as far as writing goes at the minute
i like the way this woman writes, something sassy and sharp about it...
http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetrya...o?poemId=13745