Tag: anxiety

poetry appreciation

just say it

Jul 10, 2020 #anxiety, #Astrophil and Stella, #CBT, #courtly love, #fear, #inspiration, #love, #loving in truth and fain in verse my love to show, #quatrain, #Renaissance, #Sidney, #Sir Philip Sidney, #sonnet, #telling the truth, #the Muse, #vulnerability, #writing, #writing poetry by Lucy Crispin

I’m very partial to a sonnet and was delighted, when teaching a course on Renaissance literature some years ago, to have the chance to indulge in some of my favourites. Marking the end-of-course essays, though, I was more dismayed than I can tell you when confronted with the datum that “Orsino puts Olivia on a pedal stool”. In at the ears and out at the pen without having passed through the brain… Think about pedal stools, then, as you read today’s poem, Astrophil and Stella I or ‘Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show‘ by Philip Sidney.

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poetry appreciation, reflection

‘we read to know we are not alone’

Dec 5, 2019 #4am, #5am, #anxiety, #Fleur Adcock, #grief, #insomnia, #poem, #poems, #poetry, #Things by Lucy Crispin

As anyone knows who’s been to a workshop or event I’ve facilitated (or follows what the afternoon knows), this is something I bang on about a lot. I’m unapologetic about it, though, because it’s such an important dimension of reading (and indeed experiencing any kind of art). Surely anything that pierces our loneliness—whether from each other or from (parts of) ourselves—is worth celebrating? So today I want to think about how reading helps us know we are not alone, and do so in relation to the understated but marvellous poem ‘Things’ by Fleur Adcock.

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