Poetry

One of our tango friends, Julian, is a poet and I recently asked whether I could read some of his poems. Charles duly came home from tango last night and presented me with a shiny, unread copy of one of Julian’s books that he had been asked to pass on to me.

As a result, this morning I found myself curled up on Charles hall carpet, opening up the book and wondering what I might find. I was a bit wary. Poetry, for me, is usually love or hate and I was so worried that I might not like any of Julian’s work. What on earth would I say to him then?! I opened at a random page and started reading. I needn’t have worried – the poem was lusciously wonderful, full of colours and shapes and imagery… all orange and swirly. I decided orange and swirly was good. So I turned back to page one and read through the entire book in one sitting, devouring the poems one after the other like a bag lady let loose at a feast. Each poem made me want to hurry on and taste the next and the next and the next.

I wish I could copy some of the poems out for you here but I’m not sure how appropriate it would be to display such wonderful poems surrounded by the Barbie-doll pink fripperiness of my blog! So I shall leave them where they are in Julian’s book.

The nice thing is that I feel awakened to poetry again. Back in my teens and early twenties I read a lot of poetry, and attempted to write some (rather bad) poetry myself. I discovered poets I loved (Byron, whose poetry when read aloud rolls richly around, massaging your ears with sound; and Milton, whose Paradise Lost gives you every single thing that a poem should have); and also poems I hated (Coleridge’s This Limetree Bower My Prison, which has more exclamation marks in it than the whole of Foyles book shop). But I realised that, in order to write poetry myself, my head had to be in a rather weird place some several miles above Cloud Cuckoo Land, and I decided that I didn’t want to be weird any more I wanted to have friends and be normal! So poetry died away. But now I want to discover it again, read all my old favourites and find some new ones. Maybe I won’t write anything because I’d quite like to keep my brain on Planet Earth, but that doesn’t stop me enjoying a good read!