Author: Lucy Crispin

poetry appreciation

the same but different

Feb 3, 2022 #amazement, #annie lighthart, #beauty, #drama, #encounter, #helpful, #hope, #Hughes, #lighthart, #numinous, #openness, #possibility, #Revelation, #Roe-deer, #Ted Hughes, #the readiness is all, #the verge, #wonder by Lucy Crispin

I guess what makes a poem “helpful” is going to vary depending on what sort of help you need on any given day. This week’s poem helps me in a lot of ways, not least its opening reminder that ‘Reason is a fine thing, but… there are other ways/ to live’. “Sense” is not always head sense. What else do you find in Annie Lighthart’s ‘The Verge‘? (Garrison will read it for you at around the 19th line, the tall one after the lowest one, on the audiotrack.)

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poetry appreciation

ways to persist

Jan 28, 2022 #acceptance, #Bass, #courage, #despair, #determination, #difficulty, #Ellen Bass, #encourage, #endurance, #grief, #hope, #KBO, #loss, #persistence, #presence, #the thing is, #vulnerability, #weariness, #weary by Lucy Crispin

Lots of us find this time of year difficult at the best of times and, as we have noted before, these are not the best of times. So for the next while I want to share some poems which I find helpful. I would also be delighted to hear from you about poems which support you to carry on. (Drop me an email or comment below and we can have your poem in the column sometime soon.) But for today I want to share Ellen Bass’s ‘The Thing Is‘ which I find breathtakingly honest and stark and beautiful, and which definitely inspires me.

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poetry appreciation

something winter-y

Jan 21, 2022 #calm, #creation, #delightful, #Dylan Thomas, #hennen, #magic, #mysterious, #mystery, #mystical, #oneness, #owl, #peace, #playful, #rabbit, #sheep, #sheep in the winter night, #spirit, #spiritual, #the force that through the green fuse drives the flower, #Thomas, #Tom Hennen, #trees, #unity, #whimsical by Lucy Crispin

This week’s poem is another recent discovery and I’m not sure quite what appeals to me so much about it. But something does. See what you make of Tom Hennen’s charming ‘Sheep in the Winter Night (which Garrison will read for you at 2:38, if you so wish).

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poetry appreciation

come, poor Jackself

Jan 14, 2022 #compassion, #Crews, #despair, #fear, #generosity, #Gerard Manley Hopkins, #Hopkins, #James crews, #kindness, #my own heart let me have more pity on, #self care, #self-compassion by Lucy Crispin

My therapy practice would be a lot less busy if people really knew how right it is to be self-compassionate. So many of us can pay lip service to the notion of “put on your own oxygen mask first” while not truly believing it’s “allowed” or, actually, the long-term more altruistic thing to do (in that it helps you keep in a fit state to support others). So I love this poem—a recent discovery—which expresses that sense of unease about kindness to self. Here’s James Crews’ ‘Self-Compassion‘.

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poetry appreciation

coming to America, going not so well…

Dec 9, 2021 #circumlocution, #circumlocution office, #compassion, #emptahy, #envy, #evasiveness, #fear, #form, #grace, #hatred, #immigration, #injustice, #loathing, #paranoia, #passive, #poet laureate, #power, #powerlessness, #racism, #smith, #tone, #Tracy k Smith, #USA by Lucy Crispin

And now, as the Pythons used to say, for something completely different. Yes, it’s another another arrival in America, courtesy of Tracy K Smith, a former Poet Laureate; but it’s very different from last week’s. Read ‘The United States Welcomes you‘ and shiver.

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poetry appreciation
poetry appreciation

the dark side

Nov 25, 2021 #bullying, #fear, #greathouse, #hatred, #horrow, #LGBQT, #litany of ordinary violences, #oppression, #prejudice, #torrin a greathouse, #transgender, #transgender day of remembrance, #violence by Lucy Crispin

Next week we’ll have a quietly uplifting poem to remind us of those unexpected moments of connection and shared humanity which can transform our day. Today, however, I offer this disturbing-but-important-to-read poem which offers us a glimpse into a darker side. Here is ‘Litany of Ordinary Violences‘ by torrin a greathouse.

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poetry appreciation

and yet more weather

Nov 11, 2021 #acceptance, #ageing, #autumn, #death, #Early October Snow, #Germaine Greer, #Greer, #Haight, #intimations of mortality, #mortality, #November, #October, #Robert Haight, #Snow, #The Change, #winter by Lucy Crispin

I realise it’s a bit late to offer you a poem called ‘Early October Snow‘, but it turned up in my inbox right at the end of last month and I can’t bear to wait another year before sharing it! I think Robert Haight’s poem is quietly beautiful in its imagery, and powerful in an understated way; so I hope that, thinking so too, you’ll forgive my tardiness.

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poetry appreciation

more rain, and leaves

Nov 4, 2021 #autumn, #beginning, #Binyon, #confinement, #ending, #freedom, #hope, #Laurence Binyon, #light, #possibility, #rain, #spring, #trees, #weather by Lucy Crispin

Last week the rivers were rising in Cumbria and the water flowed brown and white and angry through the centre of towns. The big rain down did rain and brought trouble to many. This rain poem, however, has a mood of hope and possibility: here’s the charming ‘The rain was ending‘ by Lawrence Binyon.

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news

strange but true

Nov 2, 2021 by Lucy Crispin

I picked up an email from my non-fiction site the other day. Having decided it wasn’t spam—they didn’t want to sell me Ray Bans or improve my performance in search engines or the bedroom—I replied to it and found myself in conversation with Kate Winslet’s assistant (as you do). Kate, as I must now call her, wanted to read one of my poems at a charity event the following night. Well…. okaaaay then.

How heartening to know that such an International Cheese was involving herself with a local good cause. I feel proud to have been read for such a purpose, and in such company. Unfortunately I don’t have a recording but I do have the delight of my work being chosen. ‘Poetry makes nothing happen’, eh? You just never know.

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