poetry – lucy crispin, poet

a touch of cold

Oct 14, 2021 #autumn, #Frost, #Hulme, #image, #Imagism, #Imagist, #moon, #natural world, #peace, #poem, #poetry, #stars, #TE Hulme by Lucy Crispin

You know that first smell of autumn? The first morning you leave the house and the air is different?—crisper, with that first whiff of deliciously decaying leaves? That’s one of my favourite moments in the year, and I’ve been looking for a poem which celebrates it. So far I haven’t found quite the thing—do let me know if you know one—but I did like the reference to ‘A touch of cold’ in this small but lovely poem, ‘Autumn‘, by TE Hulme. See what you think.

poetry appreciation

message in a bottle

Oct 7, 2021 #anon., #art, #beauty, #communication, #function of art, #Joyce Glassman, #longing, #message in a bottle, #poet, #poetry, #sorrow, #transmission, #truth, #Western Wind, #Westron Wind, #yearning by Lucy Crispin

I was interested, the other week, to come across these words from Joyce Glassman: “Artists are nourished more by each other than by fame or by the public. To give one’s work to the world is an experience of peculiar emptiness. The work goes away from the artist into a void, like a message stuck into a bottle and flung into the sea.”

poetry appreciation

an independent ambassador for conscience

Here’s Ellen Hinsey on poetry: ‘Poetry is the conscience of a society… No individual poem can stop a war—that’s what diplomacy is supposed to do. But poetry is an independent ambassador for conscience: it answers to no one, it crosses borders without a passport, and it speaks the truth. That’s why… it is one of the most powerful of the arts”. Given what’s been going on in the world these last couple of weeks it feels like one of those too-apt-to-be-a-coincidence coincidences that I should meet Hinsey’s words in the same week as someone should bring to the 42 group Larkin’s ‘Homage to a Government’.

poetry appreciation

the gifts of loss

Aug 19, 2021 #bereavement, #change, #grief, #grieving, #hope, #loss, #magic realism, #Moving forward, #music, #openness, #poetry, #Rilke, #sorrow by Lucy Crispin

This week—today, in fact, if you read this on a Friday—I’m having to do a big bit of letting go. The house where my Mum and Dad lived is now sold, and I’m up in Scotland, emptying the last bits of furniture, locking the door and walking away for the last time. Like much that has happened in my life (let alone in the wider world) over the last couple of years, this feels too big and disturbing to understand at once. I feel as though I can’t think and feel all the “necessary” things, and get in a sort of panic. Just the right time, then, to read a poem about letting go and feel it find me in the way that poetry (like music) can. Here is ‘Moving Forward‘ by Rilke.

news

I always have time for sheep

Aug 12, 2021 #poem, #poetry, #poetry prize, #segora competition, #the behaviours of sheep by Lucy Crispin

Have I mentioned before that I don’t know of any poet who’s written more poems about sheep than I have? I’m willing to be proved wrong on that one—do send me some sheep links—but in the meantime, some sheep have won me a competition…

poetry appreciation

where the enchanted live

Aug 5, 2021 #Brendel playing schubert, #choir, #escape, #freedom, #Lisel mueller, #live music, #lockdown, #mueller, #music, #poem, #poetry, #rapture, #reopening, #singing, #transport by Lucy Crispin

Like many singers, I’m starting to look forward to stepping back into some version, at least, of the regular rhythm of rehearsing and performing which has been part of the structure of my life for—jings—4 decades now. At an informal sing in someone’s garden the other week (I can’t really dignify it by the title of rehearsal!) it was chastening to realise how much our voices have suffered from separation and silence. But it was still delicious to come together to make music, croaky and awkward as it was. I love the way Lisel Mueller honours and articulates the particular joy of live music (in the poem’s case, of listening to it). Read ‘Brendel Playing Schubert‘ or have it read to you (press the little arrow at the top. Poem starts c. 3.10.)

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.

poetry appreciation

the unbroken

A couple of years ago the 42 group began a December tradition of making a poetry advent calendar. We choose a topic and each contribute a few of our favourite poems which, with a great deal of sherry and swearing, I grapple into a vaguely consistent format, allotting a poem to each day of advent and emailing out the resulting document. This year our topic has been healing/reassurance/comfort, that sort of thing. The Christmas Eve poem a group member contributed was new to me—so beautiful and so apt for these strange times that, with apologies to group members who are seeing the same poem twice in one day, I share it here too. Delight in ‘The Unbroken‘ by Rashani.

poetry appreciation

autumn beauty

Oct 29, 2020 #ageing, #autumn, #beauty, #inspire, #melancholy, #poems, #poetry, #school, #swans, #teacher, #The Wild Swans at Coole, #time, #trees, #WB Yeats, #woods, #Yeats by Lucy Crispin

This was one of the three poems that changed the course of my life. That sounds rather dramatic, but it’s true. We “Did” Yeats for A-level and I was blessed with one of those teachers whose capacity to inspire you feel at the time without really realising what’s going on. Without Stevie I don’t know if I would have “got” literature and followed it as student, teacher, writer, throughout my life. So this is a very important poem for me. Here it is: ‘The Wild Swans at Coole‘ by Yeats.*

poetry appreciation

thank you

At the moment, the world is offering us lots of reminders that life is short and time’s winged chariot is always hurrying near. It’s easy to get sucked into fear, anger or sorrow about this. They’re all around us (as well as inside us). So I was particularly delighted to discover this poem which suggests a different and beautiful response to intimations of mortality. Here it is: ‘Thank you‘ by Ross Gay. Read it and be refreshed. (You can also hear him read a couple of bits from a recent book here.)

Tag: poetry