Tag: mourning

events

not making lemonade, but…

Feb 1, 2021 #community, #fun, #grief, #joy, #laugh, #loss, #mourning, #poem, #poems, #poetry, #reading, #reading together, #shared reading, #sharing, #the 42 group, #together by Lucy Crispin

I took down the “events” page from this site in about May last year. Reading and other engagements were cancelled, of course, and though I’ve taken part in some online launches and Youtube events, it’s not the same as meeting in person. Sharing a room and a poem with others has a real magic in it, and forgoing that has been one of the many losses of The Current Situation; tiny, perhaps, but real. As Cilla might have said, there’s a lorra lorra lemons about at the moment.

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poetry appreciation

peine forte et dure

Jul 16, 2020 #acceptance, #coronavirus, #Covid 19, #Denise Levertov, #feelings, #grief, #Levertov, #mourning, #news, #pandemic, #peine forte et dure, #press, #pressing, #process, #sadness, #Talking to grief, #torture by Lucy Crispin

Apparently that’s the name for the torture whereby a board was placed on top of you and weights gradually added until the life was crushed out of you (or you made a plea in relation to the crime of which you were accused). “Pressing”, as it was also known, comes to my mind every now and then these days when I turn on the news or check out The Grauniad website and hear what the latest Thing is. I have a distinctly physical sense of another weight being added, another piece of bad news and difficulty on top of what already felt like a crushing load. Thus half an hour ago I was to be seen sitting with my forehead on the desk trying to summon the energy and will to sit upright. I’m sure this is a common experience. What works, apart from coffee, chocolate or a walk in the wood, is acknowledging to myself what I’m actually feeling; and so I give you ‘Talking to Grief‘ by Denise Levertov.

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poetry appreciation

something almost being said

May 7, 2020 #A Grief Observed, #begin, #beginning, #birth, #CS Lewis, #cycle of life, #finiteness, #grief, #In Memoriam, #Larkin, #life cycle, #May spring, #mourning, #Philip Larkin, #quatrains, #renewal, #rhyme, #seasons, #springtime, #Tennyson, #The Trees, #time by Lucy Crispin

A few weeks back I mentioned that we’d get to Larkin’s trees in May. Well, it’s May, and here are ‘The Trees‘. You can hear Larkin reading the poem, and watch an accompanying animation (commissioned by the BBC on the 30th anniversary of Larkin’s death), here.

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