The Reader Online

It’s a bank holiday (in England and Wales) today, so although technically, we’re ‘off-air’, when’s a better time to sit and appreciate a good poem? So today, I thought I’d choose a poem that will, I hope, make you stop to consider what you’ve got around at this moment and think, as you go about your daily life, what special forces surround you at every moment. Enjoy your day (whether it’s a holiday or not).

The Word

There are so many things I have forgot,

That once were much to me, or that were not,

All lost, as is a childless woman’s child

And its child’s children, in the undefiled

Abyss of what can never be again.

I have forgot, too, names of the mighty men

That fought and lost or won in the old wars,

Of kings and fiends and gods, and most of the stars.

Some things I have forgot that I forget.

But lesser things there are, remembered yet,

Than all the others. One name that I have not –

Though ’tis an empty thingless name — forgot

Never can die because Spring after Spring

Some thrushes learn to say it as they sing.

There is always one at midday saying it clear

And tart — the name, only the name I hear.

While perhaps I am thinking of the elder scent

That is like food, or while I am content

With the wild rose scent that is like memory,

This name suddenly is cried out to me

From somewhere in the bushes by a bird

Over and over again, a pure thrush word.

Edward Thomas (1878-1917)

If you want to read more Edward Thomas, click on the links to previous blog posts below:

Recommended Reads: The Poetry of Edward Thomas

‘Time swims before me’

Featured Poem: ‘Adlestrop’ by Edward Thomas

We are big fans of the poet Sharon Olds whose latest collection One Secret Thing has been shortlisted for The Forward Prize for Best Collection 2009. Yesterday in an excellent interview with Jenni Murray on Woman’s Hour, she read two of the poems from the book and talked about why, despite her opposition to the war in Iraq, she has begun to write about honour, bravery and brutality in war.

Unfortunately we cannot post any of her poems here for copyright reasons but the interview is well worth hearing.

From Bea Colley, Education Manager at The Poetry Society

After piloting The Poetry Society’s slam championship in Liverpool last year, SLAMbassadors UK is now nationwide and coming back to the city for more beats and rhymes. Running in partnership with BBC Blast in 2009, The Poetry Society’s centenary, this is the chance for all 13-19 year olds to take part in a workshop that could see them meeting performance poet Benjamin Zephaniah and performing live in London in the Autumn!

Young people nationwide have been taking part in slam poetry workshops with The Poetry Society’s team of performance poets. They are encouraged to write a 60 second piece around the theme of identity, perform their poem/rap to camera, then are uploaded to the BBC Blast website to be entered into the SLAMbassadors UK competition. In November, six lucky acts will be invited to attend a workshop in London with internationally renowned performance poet Benjamin Zephaniah and poet and SLAMbassadors Mentor, Joelle Taylor. They will then perform at a prestigious London venue and receive ongoing support from The Poetry Society.

On Saturday 12th September, The Poetry Society is running two workshops with kind support from the Bluecoat, for young people aged 13-19. Liverpool poet Nikki Blaze and SLAMbassadors Co-ordinator Joelle Taylor will run sessions at the Bluecoat to help you start slammin’. See our website for more information.

For more information, please call Bea Colley on 020 7420 9894 or to book your place, email: blast-liverpool@bbc.co.uk. If you would like to bring a group of young people along, please get in touch. I would be very grateful if you could pass this information on to any young people you think may be interested and do let us know if you would like us to send some flyers for you to hand out.

Ever since the magazine began, we have featured a literary Quiz. At first we liked to describe Buck’s Quiz as fiendish and as there was no helpful Google at hand in those early days our winners had to put in hours of reading, searching through reference books and haunting bookshops to come up with the answers. At issue 28 however I decided to relent a little and for Reading Back this week here is the result of that softening: a not so fiendish quiz on literary homes and houses.

Buck’s Quiz 28
Be It Ever So Humble…

1.      ‘Home is the sailor, home from the sea/ And the hunter home from the hill’. Whose lines are these?
2.      Who owned and lived in Manderley?
3.      What was the name of the house bequeathed to Margaret Schlegel?
4.      Which author lived at 48 Doughty Street?
5.      Which gentleman of fortune came to live at Netherfield Park?
6.      Which fictitious diarist lived in Brickfield Terrace, Holloway?
7.      Who was the butler at Darlington Hall?
8.      Who lived at Wragby Hall with her husband who had been disabled in WW1?
9.      Where did Isabella and Edgar Linton live?
10.    Who lived in Abbots Ford until his death in 1832?
11.    Whose address was 17 Gough Square from 1748-1759?
12.    Naulakha was the name of which English author’s home in Vermont?
13.    Where did the Marchmain family live?
14.    Where did Ada Clare and her companion Esther go to live?
15.    In which play does the heroin, Nora forge the signature of her dying father as security for a loan?
16.    On 16th June 1904, where did Leopold Bloom live?
17.    Whose aunt lived at Brinkley Court, Brinkley-cum-Snodsfield-in-the-Marsh, Nr Market Snodsbury, Worcs?
18.    Who lived in a Robin Reliant in Gloucester Crescent, Camden Town?
19.    Which 13yr old girl’s home was ‘bright orange brick, squat, lead paned baronial Gothic’ and had a fountain in the garden with ‘a half-scale reproduction of Bernini’s Triton in the Piazza Barberini in Rome’?
20.    Who sings ‘Thou thy worldly task hast done,/ Home art gone and ta’en thy wages’?

We will print the answers in a few days…

Are you ready for the future? Do you want to find out how to thrive in an increasingly complex and uncertain world?

Arts About Manchester (AAM) and Mission Models Money (MMM) are working together to answer these questions and attempt to unearth what makes great leaders in the arts & cultural sector.

By completing this survey you are contributing vital information. Not only will you be participating in unique and ground-breaking research that will advance knowledge of the UK arts & cultural sector into wholly new territories, you will also be learning about yourself.

You can receive a free personalised report that compares your responses to others and suggests points to reflect upon. You may also benefit from being involved in further research to enhance your personal and professional development.

Please note all answers are confidential and will be analysed anonymously.

START SURVEY

One of the primary goals in the Mission Models Money (MMM) programme is to help individuals and organisations in the arts & cultural sector become better equipped to thrive in an increasingly fast changing, complex and uncertain world.

The People Theme research seeks to understand the competencies, qualities and attributes needed, how they can be developed, and how contexts can be influenced to enable these competencies, qualities and attributes to flourish. This survey is one part of that research which will be published in late January 2010.

This survey will take a minimum of 20 minutes to complete. As it must be completed in one go, please make sure you allocate enough time. The deadline for completing the survey is 14th September 2009.

For more information about the People Theme research and the MMM programme visit www.missionmodelsmoney.org.uk.

Thank you very much for your time.

http://www.aam.org.uk/survey/2009/Thrivinginthe21stCentury.htm

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844 – 1889) says simple things in strange ways and so makes them exotic and fabulous. At times his way of wording is so utterly (and alliteratively) alien it reads and sounds scarcely human: as if some higher intelligence, the possessor of cosmic secrets, had manifested itself in the mind of a mild-mannered Victorian Jesuit priest and made him write. Hopkins’s experiments with metre (“sprung rhythm” as he termed the technique) may be difficult to understand, but the effect is unmistakeable. It’s like some fantastic code, a succulently succinct and strangely strenuous shorthand of pure sensation. “Distilled” is the word that comes to mind, as of a wine or spirit. He has taken, so it seems, ten pages of dense thought and description and kept blending and blending them down, making the mixture more and more concentrated, until we’re left with just a few words that say it all.

‘The Windhover’ is perhaps Hopkins’s best known poem, and you must read this one aloud: take slow, savouring sips and let each sprung syllable burst and fizz on your tongue and lips. The imagery is, to push a metaphor beyond all reasonable taste, intoxicating.

The Windhover

(to Christ our Lord)

I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
   dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
   Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
   As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
   Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
   Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: sheer plod makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
   Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

To summarise, in case it proves impenetrable on a first reading, Hopkins describes a Falcon (“morning’s minion”, the “dauphin”, or crown-prince, of daylight) drawn by the dawn’s dappled light and hovering high and steady in the air, as if riding an invisible horse. Then it suddenly performs an impressive sweep and glide, whereupon “Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here / Buckle!” – that is, all of these individual attributes melt and merge into the same thing: a kind of lovely, dangerous fire. But, he claims in the last stanza, there is no wonder in such beauty: it’s everywhere. Even a plodding plough shines as it cuts through the earth (“sillion”); and even unpromising “blue-bleak embers” can fall, break open, and reveal a burning gold-vermillion centre.

That’s a very basic summary – not to mention the allusions Hopkins is making to Christ, as his dedication implies – but it’s the language that really makes this poem fly. “The achieve of, the mastery of the thing!”

If you liked this, you can find other Hopkins poems here and here.

We are delighted to announce that we have two new jobs and two new internships on offer at The Reader Organisation. They are:

· Trainee GIR Project Worker (Young People)

· Reading Community Outreach Worker – Toxteth Library

· Communications Internship

· Arts Administration Internship

For more information on all of these positions, full job descriptions and details on how to apply, visit our website or call us on 0151 794 2830.

I admit to being a confirmed landlubber and a Libran to boot making me totally at home on good earth and totally at sea on well… sea. So it was with little enthusiasm and purely in the role of faithful companion that I trailed along with my sailor friend last Friday to hear Dame Ellen MacArthur giving a talk in Liverpool. I have to admit that it even crossed my mind to take my book, as the prospect of sitting through an hour of tales of the high seas was pretty dismal.

I am sick to death of hearing people spout on about their ‘dream’ or their’ passion’ or their ‘journey’ but from the moment that the small figure stepped gracefully on to the stage I was, I have to say, completely captivated and by the end, if she had said follow me to the top of a mast in an Atlantic storm, I would have thrown away my book and gone with her. Ellen MacArthur is five foot three of pure blood and grit. She is wonderfully articulate and speaks using her whole body. Speaking of sails she becomes a wind-driven sail; with the suppleness of a dancer she demonstrates the structural design of a trimaran and with wings she becomes the albatross that followed her boat in the Southern Ocean. With no notes and just a few slides her talk was divided into three parts. The first concentrated upon her childhood: how, living in landlocked Derbyshire, she saved something from her school dinner money every day for 8 years until she had enough to by a small dinghy. Having bought it she could not afford to put it onto the local reservoir so, she sat in her boat in the garden and fixed her eyes upon the horizon. And this single minded determination that drives her whole life took her, some thirteen years on, to the world record for the fastest solo circumnavigation of the globe. She told of approaching Kingfisher (her sponsor for her first round the world race) saying of course at that meeting they had a choice and they chose to back this 21 yr old to the tune of hundreds of thousands of pounds. But actually, I would think they did not. For you do not say no to this woman. She is instantly recognisable as humanly super special and not because of what she has achieved in the past but in the sheer dynamism of her very forceful presence.

The second part highlighted the work of The Ellen MacArthur Trust which takes young people aged between 8-18 sailing to help them regain their confidence, on their way to recovery from cancer, leukaemia and other serious illness. These children are her obviously her inspiration. The third was a surprise to her audience. A visit to South Georgia eighteen months ago impressed upon her the need for humanity to live in a more sustainable way. Her life now is dedicated to the reduction of her own and her company’s energy and resource consumption and to the promotion of this message world wide. To this end she declared, standing in front of us looking so impassable that even a bulldozer would crumple if it tried to move her, she has given up racing ‘ a sort of sacrifice’ she called it with a shrug. ‘Where do you get your inner strength from?’, someone in the audience asked. “ I don’t know’ she said simply, suddenly and briefly looking very small and alone.

What has all this to do with The Reader Organisation blog. Well nothing really except that in all our reading groups and teaching we say look for the passages in books and poems that move you; that mean something personal to you and put a mark beside them. And so it seems only natural that when in life outside books I have the privilege of coming across that rare thing, a truly inspirational human being, someone that in the pretty impersonal setting of a lecture hall can nevertheless cross boundaries and deeply move me, then I must somehow make my mark beside her.

(If you would like to know more, take a look at Ellen’s impressive website.)

This week’s poem has been chose by Paul Eccles, a  newly graduated English student from the University of Liverpool and a volunteer marketing assistant at The Reader Organisation.

Glory is that bright tragic thing

That for an instant

Means Dominion –

Warms some poor name

That never felt the Sun,

Gently replacing

In oblivion –

by Emily Dickinson

A year to the day Michael Phelps was part of the American swimming team that won the 4×100m medley relay at the Beijing Olympics. In doing so Phelps became the first Olympian to win eight gold medals in the same Olympic games. One would expect such an achievement to sustain his status as a vision of glory from now until forever, but can glory ever be so long-lasting?