blog – Page 11 – lucy crispin, poet

look… feel that…

Feb 13, 2020 #being human, #God, #intimacy, #Kerry Hardie, #mindful, #mindfulness, #particular, #presence, #relationship, #Sheep Fair Day, #universal by Lucy Crispin

Phew. Someone else writing a poem involving sheep (which I seem to do a surprising amount of the time). Good to know I’m not alone! That’s one reason I picked ‘Sheep Fair Day’ by Kerry Hardie. The other is simply that I loved it: I find it very alive and very moving. Seeking to take God on a journey round her life, Hardie takes us along too. Read this vivid and lovely poem here. (I had a look on Youtube but found only a lot of vlogs about marts, so you’ll have to read it to yourself!)

poetry appreciation

what a difference an ‘a’ makes

Feb 6, 2020 #A Bitterness, #article, #bitterness, #definite article, #disappointment, #grief, #indefinite article, #love, #Mary Oliver, #Oliver, #poem, #poems, #poetry, #resentment, #sorrow by Lucy Crispin

I apologise for that appalling pun. Had to be done. If you’re still speaking to me, have a look at this poem, ‘A Bitterness’ (here), then think about what it would feel like with even only a slight change in the title—’Your bitternesss’, or just ‘Bitterness’, or even ‘The Bitterness’? Wouldn’t that make it a really different poem?

poetry appreciation

lost

Jan 30, 2020 #David Wagoner, #fear, #forest, #forest bathing, #here, #lost, #meditation, #mindfulness, #presence, #shinrin yoku, #the peace of wild things, #tree, #trees, #wendell berry, #wood by Lucy Crispin

Seems like a good moment to think about being lost…
Let David Wagoner’s lovely poem ‘Lost’ find you: listen to it here or here, or read it here.

poetry appreciation

yes, please

Jan 23, 2020 #grief, #kind, #kindness, #Larkin, #learning, #Naomi Shihab Nye, #Nye, #Philip Larkin, #poem, #poems, #poetry, #sadness, #sorrow, #Talking in Bed, #wisdom by Lucy Crispin

Something to move and comfort us today, a poem nourishing and everyday-special as homemade soup. Naomi Shihab Nye’s ‘Kindness’ actually mentions soup, but her poem is not the ‘weakened broth’ to which it refers. No, this is a complete meal. It’s tender and wise and lives up to its name. You can read it here or hear the poet read it here.

poetry appreciation

westward, look…

Jan 16, 2020 #Arthur Hugh Clough, #Clough, #despair, #doubt, #faith, #hope, #poem, #poetry, #Say not the struggle nought availeth, #Victorian by Lucy Crispin

I left you last week with the promise of handrails and lifelines. Ta-daa! Here they are: ‘Say not the struggle nought availeth’, another poem straight out of the C19th’s death-throes-of-faith anguish which has, however, long performed the handrail/lifeline functions for me. You can read the poem here and or last week’s reader can read it for you here. Alternatively, Derek Jacobi reads it here; I much prefer his reading but could do without the music. The poem is there to create the mood all by its little self, after all. However… See what you think.

poetry appreciation

handrails and lifelines and emergency lanterns

Jan 9, 2020 #Arnold, #despair, #doubt, #Dover Beach, #faith, #fear, #hope, #Matthew Arnold, #melancholy, #poem, #poetry, #sadness, #The Buried Life, #trust by Lucy Crispin

In an article in The Times in 2016 Libby Purves wrote of how ‘[p]eople have been through everything before us and some, by great grace, have recorded it with undying power. English-speakers are particularly lucky,’ she continued, ‘since some of the very best have done this in our fabulously hybrid, magpie language… [Poets] have crafted handrails and lifelines and emergency lanterns. They reassure us that others walked this hard trail and lived to express it’.

poetry appreciation

‘there’s nothing either good or bad,

Jan 2, 2020 #fellowship, #hope, #hopes, #intentions, #Jackie Kay, #Matt Goodfellow, #New Year, #Ogden Nash, #poem, #poems, #poetry, #potential, #promise by Lucy Crispin

but thinking makes it so’. A trio of poems which see the coming of the new year from very different places. First, we have Ogden Nash’s ‘Good riddance, but now what‘, which finds the poet in characteristically wry mood. The apparent cosiness of the opening invitation—’Come children, gather round my knee’—is soon dispelled with the imagery of something ‘about to burst/… like a time bomb in the hall’. It brings to mind Dorothy Parker’s notorious way of greeting visitors or answering the phone: ‘What fresh hell is this?’. I love the fact that here Nash has the clock ‘crouching, dark and small’—small, as a bomb is, in relation to the size of the destruction it can wreak. Assume brace position. Be ready to duck. I can certainly recognise in myself a mood where I look at the future with that sort of attitude.

poetry appreciation

‘… passions that are not my own’

Dec 26, 2019 by Lucy Crispin

Someone read excerpts from Wordsworth’s ‘Michael’ at a group I was facilitating earlier this month, and one phrase really jumped out at me—the bit where the speaker is talking about how ‘the gentle agency / of natural objects led me on to feel/ for passions that were not my own’. It is, of course, All Very Wordsworth to emphasise how being in relationship with nature can help you access empathy, compassion and understanding of what is otherwise unknown to you; but I was struck, once again, by the fact that that’s what exactly poetry can do, too. And since then I’ve found myself thinking about Don Paterson’s ‘Waking with Russell‘, which speaks of a relationship I will never get to understand from lived experience. In so doing, so vividly, this poem allows me a bittersweet insight into ‘passions that [are] not my own’.

news

the stickleback has landed

Dec 21, 2019 #Hedgehog Press, #love poetry, #poem, #poems, #poetry, #Sticklebacks, #wish you were here by Lucy Crispin

What on earth is she talking about? you may be wondering.
The Stickleback series is the collection of micro-pamphlets published by Hedgehog Press. Mine, wish you were here, has arrived from the publishers.
Much excitement. First edition, hot off the press and all that.

If you’d like a copy, get in touch via the contact form, and I’ll get back to you.

poetry appreciation, reflection

what did I know, what did I know…?

Dec 19, 2019 #child, #children, #Christmas, #families, #family, #father, #kind, #kindness, #love, #mother, #poem, #poetry, #Robert Hayden, #Those Winter Sundays by Lucy Crispin

It’s a time of year when, in the West at least, we’re surrounded by images of families: usually shiny-haired and smiling ones, deployed in warm-jumpered rows on bouncy new sofas (“delivered in time for Christmas”) and sharing some ecstatic experience of shopping, gaming or no ordinary food. But it’s a poem about the ordinary extraordinariness of love which has been very much in my mind, in the last week or so, and not just because it’s cold. Here it is: Robert Hayden’s ‘Those Winter Sundays‘. (You can hear the poet himself read it here.)