The Poetry Society Annual Lecture by Rita Dove - and other Poetic Events

It has certainly been a poetic few days!

I was in London last night, listening to Rita Dove as she delivered The Poetry Society Lecture for 2015. Rita served as Poet Laureate of the United States and Consultant to the Library of Congress from 1993 to 1995 and as Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia from 2004 to 2006.

'How does a shadow shine?' ... such an evocative title

Rita Dove preparing to begin at King's College, London, 13 October 2015

Taking questions at the end, helped by Judith Palmer

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Last weekend included a lunch event at The Wentworth Hotel in Aldeburgh to celebrate the 2015 winners of The Crabbe Memorial Poetry Competition organised by the Suffolk Poetry Society. Here are the winning poets, with Caroline Gilfillan taking First Prize. Robert Seatter was the judge.

Overall Winner, Caroline Gilfillan with the Rose Bowl; Robert Seatter on the right

In addition to a lovely lunch, we were treated to a reading of the winning poems. Robert Seatter also read us a poem from each of his three collections.

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Some days ago I attended a stimulating poetry workshop led by Gregory Warren Wilson on the theme of Textiles. I came away with work to polish and at least one poem still to write, though it just might be the beginning of a series.

I took a piece of my Scottish family tartan to the workshop as a prompt. I saw more tartan and other Scottish items yesterday at the current exhibition at the British Museum on the 'Celts - Art and Identity'. I was excited, but not surprised, to find displays relating to the poetry of 'Ossian', linked, of course, to James Macpherson (1736–1796), who came from the same Kingussie area of Scotland as my ancestors. You may well have read in the press about the recent discovery of the Kingussie time capsule, dating from a century later.

The remains of Ruthven Barracks (built from 1719), edge of Kingussie

And finally, working back in time to National Poetry Day, I had a Haiku on the theme of 'Light' in the Paper Swans online presentation, which you can watch and read here.  

• Current reading: The Face of It by R.F. Langley (Carcanet).

The Crabbe Memorial Poetry Competition Lunch 2014

It was lovely to join with members of the Suffolk Poetry Society and the 2014 Crabbe Memorial Poetry Competition prize-winners for a celebratory lunch at the Wentworth Hotel in Aldeburgh. 

The judge was Gregory Warren Wilson (second from the left in the above photo) and the winning poem by David Healey (fourth from the left) was about a particular swan feed at WWT Welney, a place I know well.

Swans at WWT Welney

 

Fiesta Time (9): Scotland at the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival

We spent a grey November day in Aldeburgh, enjoying the 23rd Aldeburgh Poetry Festival, laid on by The Poetry Trust. We had visited this beautiful east coast town before, but this was our first visit in 'festival season'. 

Aldeburgh is proud of its poet, George Crabbe ... 

We had tickets for the Scottish Islands Reading event in the Jubilee Hall. Poets like Jo Bell, who had not arrived when I took this photo, and Penelope Shuttle joined the audience of local people (like us!) and followers who had come from further afield. There were representatives from the Poetry Society, and it was good to meet Judith Palmer for the first time.   

Words are the building blocks of poetry (see photo above), and it was particularly exciting to hear three poets flitting between languages, namely the languages of Gaelic, Shetlandic and English. Of course, this kind of rich diversity is not new to me, having just moved from the bilingual climate of Wales where the 'dragon has two tongues' (see here).

The three sets of readings were by Robert Alan Jamieson from Lerwick, Shetland; Meg Bateman, a lecturer at the Gaelic college, Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, on Skye - and an honorary lecturer in English at St Andrews University ... and Rody Gorman, who was born in Dublin and also lives on Skye. Rody has translated Cavafy poems into Gaelic.

There were various threads running through the poems, and Jamieson's short poem, 'Welcome to the Folk Museum', struck a particular chord with me, reminding the reader (or listener) just how easy it is to 'romanticise' the Highland and island way of life, glossing over the stark realities at e.g. the time of the Clearances.

Readers of this blog will know that we have a great affinity with Eilean a' Cheò aka the 'Misty Isle'. We also enjoy (if that is the right word) the heart-rending poetry of the Raasay poet, Sorley MacLean, so we were particularly pleased to have the opportunity of hearing some modern Gaelic voices. It was interesting to learn that while Gaelic has a limited lexicon, it has a richness of its own as so many of its words have a plethora of meanings.

Thank you to all took part and to those who gave us fascinating insights into the poetry of the northern isles.  

Aldeburgh ... in November

We spotted the home of a famous Aldeburgh resident ...