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From Sunset to Star Rise

Posted in Poetry with tags , , on January 11, 2010 by telescoper

It was just a last-minute thought to borrow the title for a recent post from a poem by Christina Rossetti, but since doing that I’ve been thinking I should perhaps post something a bit more appropriate to the greatest female poet in England before the 20th Century. Christina Rossetti was both prolific and popular, but suffered long periods of depression and ill-health and cultivated a reclusive image until she died in 1894. Her reputation suffered after her death, and the arrival of modernism, as she was considered old-fashioned and sentimental but more recently her work has become much more widely appreciated. Much of her poetry is devotional – she was a committed and pious Anglican – and some was written especially for children. However, her love poems are often  highly erotic and somtimes express desire for women as well as men. She made a virtue of ambiguity in many aspects of her work, in fact. Other recurring themes are loneliness, loss and unattainable hope.

I bought an edition of her Selected Poems for £1 in the closing down sale at Borders bookshop just before Christmas, thinking I wouldn’t really like them, but I was taken aback by their range and complexity. I especially recommend Goblin Market, one of her best-known poems and also one of her strangest. I thought it was a bit long to put on here, however, so here’s a less well-known one, not so much because it has a vaguely astronomical title, but because its wintry theme beautifully expresses a sense of love of solitude tinged with regret.

Go from me, summer friends, and tarry not:
I am no summer friend, but wintry cold,
A silly sheep benighted from the fold,
A sluggard with a thorn-choked garden plot.
Take counsel, sever from my lot your lot,
Dwell in your pleasant places, hoard your gold;
Lest you with me should shiver on the wold,
Athirst and hungering on a barren spot.
For I have hedged me with a thorny hedge,
I live alone, I look to die alone:
Yet sometimes, when a wind sighs through the sedge,
Ghosts of my buried years, and friends come back,
My heart goes sighing after swallows flown
On sometime summer’s unreturning track.

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In the Bleak Midwinter

Posted in Biographical, Cricket, Poetry, Science Politics with tags , , , , , , on January 9, 2010 by telescoper

Apologies for my posts being a bit thin lately. It turned out to be quite a strange week, as I’ll explain in due course, but I thought I’d take the opportunity now to catch up a little bit. I apologize in advance for the rambling nature of this contribution, but if you read this blog regularly you’ll be used to that.

We’re all now back at work after the Christmas break, but this was always going to be an unusual week because it’s the last one before the mid-year examinations start. During this time there are revision lectures, but the timetable isn’t as full as in term-time proper, so  it’s more like a half-way house than a genuine return to full-time work. Although I’m always glad not to be thrown into full-time teaching or examination marking straight away after the break, I always find this hiatus slightly disorienting.

This year things are even stranger than usual because, after largely escaping the bad weather that has affected the rest of the country since before Christmas, snow and ice finally arrived with a vengeance in Cardiff on Tuesday night. It wasn’t too bad where I live, quite near the city centre, but a lot of snow fell up in rural areas, especially up in the valleys, with the result that quite a few members of staff couldn’t make it into work.

Talking of the weather gives me the excuse to include this absolutely beautiful picture of snow-bound Britain taken by NASA’s Earth Observatory satellite:

The problem wasn’t so much the snow itself, but the fact that the temperature dropped steeply soon after it fell leaving roads and pavements coated with sheets of ice. My regular refuse collection, scheduled for Wednesday, didn’t happen because the trucks couldn’t make it through the treacherous conditions, and buses and trains were severely disrupted. I think there’s been a similar picture across most of the United Kingdom.

Incidentally, the well-known Christmas carol from which I took the title of this post began life as a poem by Christina Rossetti, the first verse of which goes

In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter
Long ago.

I don’t know why but, as the snow was falling heavily in the early hours of Wednesday morning, I woke up with terrible stomach pains, so bad that they kept me awake all night. I assume that this was some sort of belated reaction to yuletide over- indulgence rather than anything more serious because the discomfort eventually died away and I was left with mere exhaustion after losing a whole night’s sleep. Rather than risk walking in through the snow, I retreated to bed and slept most of Wednesday although I didn’t eat or drink anything the whole day.

Columbo kept me good company during this unpleasant episode. Usually if we’re in the house at the same time he sometimes stays by my side, but he’s at other times quite happy to potter around, or sleep on his own in  a place of his choosing.  I think he knew something wasn’t right, because he never left me alone all day which is quite unusual. Alternatively, he may just have found it warmer being next to me than elsewhere. Who knows?

My guts apparently having recovered, I went into the department on Thursday for a busy day of project interviews. These are held half-way through the third year in order to assess the students progress on their projects. In between the interviews I was trying to keep up with progress on the last day of the test match between South Africa and England taking place in Cape Town, where the weather was somewhat different to Cardiff. The match had been coming to the boil, eventually ending in a draw as England’s last pair once again staved off what looked likely to be a defeat. Shades of Monty last summer! Although it was clearly a gripping finale, I’m glad in a way that I didn’t get to follow it more closely. I always get an uneasy churning feeling in my stomach during tense passages of play, and after what had happened the day before I think that was best avoided.

Yesterday (Friday) was the date of the January meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society in London, and I decided to show my faith in the public transport system by making the round trip to London.  No-one can accuse me of having lost my spirit of adventure! Some trains had been cancelled, but those still running seemed to be on time and I thought the odds weren’t too bad.

The specialist Discussion Meeting featured a programme dedicated to the legacy of XMM, a highly successful X-ray satellite that has just had its funding axed by STFC. Later on, during the Ordinary Meeting there was an interesting talk by Alan Fitzsimmons about the impact of a small asteroid with the Earth that took place in October 2008,  and Matt Griffin presented some of the stunning new results from Herschel. RAS Discussion meetings are always held on the 2nd Friday of the month. Astronomical historian Alan Chapman reminded the Society that the corresponding meeting 80 years ago, on 10th January 1930,  was an important event in the development of the theory of the expanding universe.

Fully recovered from my tummy problems, I rounded the week off with a trip to the RAS Club for a nice dinner at the Athenaeum. Turnout was a bit lower than usual, presumably because of the inclement weather. This was the so-called Parish Meeting, at which various items of Club business are carried out, including the election of new members and Club officers. Professor Donald Lynden-Bell recently announced his retirement from the position of President and this was his last occasion in the Chair; the resulting Presidential Election was a close-run affair won by Professor Dame Carole Jordan. The election of new members is an archaic and slightly dotty process which always leaves me wondering how I managed to get elected myself. At one point during these proceedings the Club finds itself to be “without Officers”,  whereupon the most junior member (by length of membership rather than age) suddenly becomes important. On this occasion, this turned out to be me but since I didn’t know what I was supposed to do, I fluffed it. If I’d known I might have seized the opportunity to stage a coup d’etat. Other than this, it seemed to go off without any major hitches and eventually we dispersed into the freezing night to make our ways home.

As usual on Club nights I took the 10.45pm train from Paddington to Cardiff. In the prevailing meteorological circumstances I was a bit nervous about getting home, but my fears were groundless. The train was warm and, with Ipod, Guardian and Private Eye crosswords, and the last 100 pages of a novel to occupy me, the journey was remarkably pleasant. We got to Cardiff 4 minutes ahead of schedule.

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A Compression of Distances

Posted in Biographical, Poetry, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , on December 28, 2009 by telescoper

I’m back in Cardiff after a few days of yuletide indulgence in my home town of Newcastle upon Tyne in the North East of England. And very nice it was too, although my mass has increased as a consequence. We didn’t do much except eat and drink, although we did manage a scenic drive on Boxing Day through the beautiful Northumberland countryside, even more beautiful than usual because of the covering of snow that fell heavily before Christmas and never got round to melting.

Last year I did the round trip from Cardiff to Newcastle by train, which is quite a lengthy ordeal, but this year the powers that be have decided to close the main railway line from South Wales into England (via Bristol) because of engineering work. Route B, via Cheltenham and Birmingham, was also closed, so the only way to do the journey by train would have been via Manchester, a trip of around 8 hours each way. It wasn’t a very difficult decision therefore to abandon the railways this year and fly, which turned out to be remarkably painless. Although we landed in snow at Newcastle the planes both ways were on time and, with a flying time of less than an hour, I had much more time for sloth and gluttony.

Just before I left for my short break a book sent from Cinnamon Press popped through my letterbox. I occasionally post bits of poetry on here, and if there’s any doubt about copyright I always check with the publisher before putting them online. I had a nice exchange of emails with this particular publisher as a result of which they sent me a collection of poems they thought I might like to feature. This one is called A Compression of Distances and it’s by a poet quite new to me, Daphne Gloag.

Poetry books are ideal for reading on short trips on train or plane. They’re usually slim so they are easy to carry and you can read them one poem at a time in between pesky interruptions, such as take-off and landing. I didn’t have time to read this one before leaving so I put it in my pocket and took it with me. Given the changed mode of travel this year, the title seemed quite appropriate for this journey!

Anyway, it’s a very interesting collection altogether but there are a few poems at the end, taken from a  much longer collection called Beginnings, which seem to me to be the most appropriate to put on here. I agree wholeheartedly with the comments  on the jacket by John Latham

Her poems are remarkable, especially in the way she has successfully taken complex concepts in modern science – particularly cosmology – and integrated them successfully and seamlessly into poems which speak of the human condition in an effective and moving manner.

I have to say that it is a difficult task to combine modern physics with poetry. Often, attempts to do this either completely trivialise the scientific content or become tiresomely didactic. I think these poems get it just right. What Daphne Gloag does is to juxtapose  ideas from comtemporary cosmology (inflation, dark matter, etc) with diverse aspects of human experience. The parallels are often very moving as well as ingeneous. The poems are also preceded by brief explanations of the physics. Here is one of the best examples.

The children’s charity concert:
matter and antimatter

Particles and antiparticles are interchangeable, but just after the big bang the process whereby they kept annihilating each other ended by producing very slightly more matter than antimatter, making the universe possible.

Arriving at the church for the children’s charity concert
we remembered the words of Richard Feynman:
Created and annihilated,
created and annihilated –
what a waste of time.
He was speaking of those particles and antiparticles
at the beginning of time
annihilated in explosions of light.

In the church the children were playing
for the refugees of Kosovo;
our granddaughter’s long hair shone
like the sheen of her violin.
She did not know
she was a child of that hair’s breadth victory
of particles over antiparticles
in the early universe: annihilation
for all but a few, a final imbalance
just enough for making galaxies and worlds
and at that end of time
those children and the making of their years.

They played Bach and Twinkle twinkle little star,
not knowing what a star is
or the violence of stars,
not knowing they were perfected children
of the violent universe,
not knowing the years piled up on the scrap heaps
of that country they’d raised money for…
the man with his ear sawn off slowly
and fed to a dog like offal, the girl
with her legs torn off, her family machine gunned,
blown into darkness.

So many annihilations of perfected years.
But also those children in their panache of light.

You can order a copy of A Compression of Distances by Daphne Gloag directly from the publisher.

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Poem for the Day

Posted in Poetry with tags , , on December 17, 2009 by telescoper

October, 1803 

These times strike monied worldlings with dismay:
Even rich men, brave by nature, taint the air
With words of apprehension and despair:
While tens of thousands, thinking on the affray,
Men unto whom sufficient for the day
And minds not stinted or untilled are given,
Sound, healthy, children of the God of heaven,
Are cheerful as the rising sun in May.
What do we gather hence but firmer faith
That every gift of noble origin
Is breathed upon by Hope’s perpetual breath;
That virtue and the faculties within
Are vital,–and that riches are akin
To fear, to change, to cowardice, and death?

(by William Wordsworth).

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Bright Star

Posted in Biographical, Poetry with tags , , on December 7, 2009 by telescoper

After spending the best part of the day ploughing through a succession of tedious jobs and wasting most of my lunch break trying to cope with a recalcitrant IPod, I came home with a brain completely drained of any bloggable material. However, picking up the paper instead of switching the television on proved to be a good move. It reminded me that I went to see the film Bright Star a couple of weeks ago. Since yesterday’s post was in poetic vein a quick post about it would seem to be in order, although I’ve never attempted a movie review on here before.

Directed by Jane Campion, Bright Star is a film about the life of John Keats (played by Ben Whishaw) and his passionate infatuation with the girl next door, a young lady by the name of Fanny Brawne (Abby Cornish). This romance inspired Keats to compose some of the most famous  love letters ever written in the English language. Keats’  letters were published in the 1870s (long after his death in 1821 at the aged of 25) but the other half of the correspondence – the letters written by Fanny – are lost. This is a problem for literary historians, who don’t really know what to make of her, but a boon for the dramatist, who has the chance to create a character from scratch unfettered by too many preconceptions. What emerges is a dignified, slightly eccentric and highly fashion-conscious heroine who makes stylish hats and frocks while her admirer is scribbling his verses. There’s more sewing in this film than in any other I’ve ever seen. The clothes look great, if a bit anachronistic. It’s a costume drama with a difference. Overall, in fact, the film looks gorgeous. The photography is just stunning – it has been a very long time since I last saw anything so beautiful on the big screen.

Keats once described Fanny as “beautiful, elegant, graceful, silly, fashionable and strange”. I think Abby Cornish conveys all of that. But at other times he was less flattering, calling her

ignorant – monstrous in her behaviour, flying out in all directions, calling people such names that I was forced lately to make use of the term Minx – this I think not from any innate vice but from a penchant she has for acting stylishly.  I am however tired of such style and shall decline any more of it.

Of course he did no such thing. Keats’ friend Charles Amitage Brown thought Fanny was an interfering flirt and American critic  Richard Henry Stoddard said “She made him look ridiculous in the eyes of his friends”.  There’s no way of knowing what she was really like – it’s always hard for outsiders to understand other people’s obsessions anyway – but in the movie she is definitely a bit prickly at times.

By contrast with Fanny’s perky glamour, Keats himself is a drab, introspective, almost ghostly figure. His brother dies of tuberculosis – the disease which will shortly get him too. His descent into poverty and illness is exacerbated by the terrible critical reception that greets his poetry. The only thing he really has to cling to is his relationship with “The Minx” which is beautifully portrayed, their growing intimacy only gradually revealed. Much of their dialogue is taken, word for word, directly from Keats’ letters but somehow it doesn’t sound stilted. Their passion is restrained, but keenly observed.

The title of the movie is actually taken from that of one of Keats’ poems. Written in 1819, a year after he met Fanny, this expresses a desire to withdraw from the shifting uncertain world of change and enter a world of timelessness where he can be with his beloved for all eternity.

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art–
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors–
No–yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever–or else swoon to death.

Keats himself died just a couple of years after writing this, although I doubt that his death from tuberculosis amounted to the kind of blissful rapture he suggests in the last two lines.

Walking back home afterwards, it struck me that  if you didn’t know anything about Keats and Fanny Brawne before watching the film, you would think it was Fanny who was the “Bright Star” of the title. During his lifetime there was never any suggestion that John Keats would ever – even in death – acquire a reputation as one of the greatest poets in the English language.  His work was never popular in his lifetime and was pretty universally reviled by critics too. In poetry as well as in science, it is well nigh impossible to know what is going to last. Only time will tell.

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Science and Poetry

Posted in Poetry, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , on December 6, 2009 by telescoper

In amongst all the doom and gloom about job cuts and the oncoming onslaught that goes by the name of impact, I found in this week’s Times Higher a thought-provoking article about the demise of poetry. The author, Neil McBride, is principal lecturer in Informatics at De Montfort University and the piece is made all the more interesting by the fact that it includes some of his own verse. In fact, with his permission, I’ve included one of the poems below.

I agree with some of what McBride says in his article and disagree with some too. I don’t intend to dissect the piece here, and suggest instead that you read it yourself and form your own opinion. Since I wanted to include one of the poems here, however, I thought I should at least address its context in the article. The opening paragraph states

Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, the renowned astrophysicist, hid her love for poetry from the world until she retired, out of fear for what people would think.

In fact, I posted an item about an anthology of astronomy-inspired poems edited by Jocelyn on this blog many moons ago. McBride goes on to describe an anthology of poetry written by scientists that was published in 2001 wherein all the writers remained anonymous, the reason being

Good intelligent men and women, clothed in cold rationality, considered it professional suicide to admit to any literary emotions.

The following poem, McBride’s own, develops this image to the point of caricature:

Science and Poetry

In his lab he’s hid “Whitsun Weddings” behind the sink,
The latest volume of Fuller sandwiched between reagent catalogues.
Shakespeare’s sonnets encoded in the lab book
Rossetti pasted to the wall behind the periodic table.

Amongst the chaotic dishes and tubes, there cannot be anything poetic at all
Rhythm and language must be neutralised, the third person
Is the wash of objectivity, the veneer of scientific discipline:
Verse is hidden at the back of a draw covered with Millipore.

The poets of science have no names, clothed in the shame
Of irrationality, the atrocity of the literary mind is unspoken
Words must be disguised, sanitised. Any evidence of life
Outside the rational, the objective, must be denied.

The observatory is cold, dark, starless. Pulsars blip
The steady drip, drip of numbers stripped of spirit
The poetry of the stars must be denied
Planets are mathematical objects swimming in an emotional vacuum.

Do not suggest that patterns, laws, and the aesthetics of structure
Hold anything of the spirit. Don’t speak poetry to me:
We silence our critics, mute emotions, declare ourselves ‘observers’.
There is no soul, nothing but a rotting body of clockwork chemicals.

It’s certainly a finely crafted piece of satire, but as a scientist myself I have to stand up for my brothers and sisters and say that it is very far from my experience of their view of literature. Perhaps astronomy attracts more romantic types more likely to wear their hearts (and literary sensibilities) on their sleeves than computer scientists or chemists. The many scientists I know who do read and write poetry do not hide- and, as far as I know, never have hid – this from their peers or anyone else. And I doubt if it ever occurred to any of them that confession to a love of poetry would damage their careers. I don’t think there ever was a reason for Dame Jocelyn to have hidden it away for all those years, or perhaps she was just using poetic license?

McBride goes on to discuss a number of possible reasons for poetry’s falling popularity. Modern poetry is too difficult , too obscure, too “academic” , for the reader-in-the-street to understand. That’s not helped by the fact that, in this digital age people, the immediate availability of easier visual forms of entertainment is making people less receptive to literature that requires prolonged reflection. I think there’s truth in both of these arguments, but I think there’s another possibility: that the internet revolution may just be changing the way literature is conceived and delivered, just as technological and sociological change has done many times in the past.

In the course of his very interesting piece, McBride also touches on another theme I’ve posted about a number of times. To quote:

Perhaps the power of poetry is its downfall. It addresses uncertainty. It questions, it leaves frayed edges and loose wires. We reject poetry because we shun its emotional engagement.

This reminds me of the stereotypical image of a scientist as an arrogant god of certainty, one that I don’t recognize at all. Scientists are constantly addressing uncertainty. That’s their job. I’m sure we’re all too aware of frayed edges and loose wires too. The conflict and indeterminacy we face in our work is not the same as people find in their emotional lives, of course, but the need to engage with it causes similar levels of stress!

Most people don’t care much for either science or poetry. Both are considered too hard, but probably in different ways. The digital age hasn’t turned everyone into unthinking zombies, but I think it has probably led to more people opting out of difficult ways of earning a living and finding easier ways of spending their leisure time. But there are still some who find pleasure in what’s difficult. Perhaps the reason why so many scientists love poetry is that they know how hard it is.

You can find more of Neil McBride’s poetical work here.

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Black Hole

Posted in Poetry, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , on November 24, 2009 by telescoper

After an exceptionally trying day, I’ve been relaxing by dipping into a collection of poems called Dangerous Driving by Chris Woods. He’s an interesting character who works part-time as a GP in Lancashire and tries to balance medicine, family and writing. His poetry has appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers and has also been broadcast on BBC Radio and Channel Four Television (including a series called Six Experiments that Changed the World, to which I was also a contributor).

Anyway I’ve developed  a bit of a habit of putting up poems with vaguely astronomical themes so when I found this one, I decided to put it up here not least because it made me think of the person who has been causing me so much hassle over the past few days….

Black Hole

You turn all the lights off
but never sleep,
pace round the edge of yourself,
never communicate.
A million dark years distant,
you suck in light like spaghetti.

You got too big for yourself
and collapsed,
but ferocious energy remained
and now you’re back, muscling in
carving out your own space
and time.

You smash up your neighbourhood,
pull the light off stars.
Masked,
you are far outside our laws,
giving nothing away,
stealing everything from everything.

(reproduced with the kind permission of Comma Press).

You can also see a video based on the poem Black Hole from Ghost Code on Vimeo although I have to admit I could make neither head nor tail of it.

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Planet Wave

Posted in Jazz, Poetry, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , on November 17, 2009 by telescoper

Regular readers of this blog (both of you) will know that from time to time I like to post little bits of poetry. The verses are usually related to astronomy (or science generally)  and they’re usually things I come across pretty much by accident when I’m browsing through the books of poetry I occasionally buy. This evening I was leafing through a collection called A Book of Lives, by the popular and highly respected Scottish national poet Edwin Morgan.  In the middle of this set is a long sequence of poems called Planet Wave, each of which is to do with a specific historical episode or important character, such as Copernicus or Darwin. The first poem in the cycle is about the Big Bang so I thought it would be a good choice.

However, regular readers will also know that I like to post bits of jazz on here too – although the blog statistics suggest that these are much less popular than the poetry!  I read in the Book of Lives that the first half the sequence of poems making up Planet Wave was commissioned by the Cheltenham International Jazz Festival and set to music by the excellent Tommy Smith. The poetry and music combination was first performed in Cheltenham Town Hall on 4 April 1997.

Great, I thought. Here’s a chance to combine jazz and poetry (for what would only be the second time on here, the first being this post). Unfortunately, though, I’ve been unable to locate any recording of a performance of this work. I found an interview with Tommy Smith on the net which suggests a recording was made but never released. I’d certainly love to hear it and I hope that there might be a jazz fan out there somewhere who knows what happened to it.

Anyway, in the absence of the music here’s just the first verse of the first poem of the cycle.  As you will see, Morgan’s style is very inventive, often extremely funny, and always extremely Scottish.

In the Beginning
(20 Billion BC)

Don’t ask me and don’t tell me. I was there.
It was a bang and it was big. I don’t know
what went before, I came out with it.
Think about that if you want my credentials.
Think about that, me, it, imagine it
as I recall it now, swinging in my spacetime hammock,
nibbling a moon or two, watching you.
What am I? You don’t know. It doesn’t matter.
I am the witness, I am not in the dock.
I love matter and I love anti-matter.
Listen to me, listen to my patter.

(Reproduced by kind permission of Carcanet Press.)

If you want to read the rest you’ll have to buy the book! And if anyone out there knows what happened to the recording of Planet Wave please let me know. I’d love to hear it!

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Dulce et Decorum Est

Posted in Poetry with tags , on November 9, 2009 by telescoper

Folowing on from yesterday’s post, here’s probably the greatest poem by the greatest of all the poets of the First World War, Wilfred Owen. He captures the horror and brutality of war in language so potent that it still retains the ability to shock even now, 90 years later. Every image attacks the myth of war as a noble or glamorous thing and the cumulative effect of this onslaught is overwhelming. The title comes from a phrase in Horace, also quoted in the last lines of the verse: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori (It is sweet and suitable to die for your country).

There is a nice short video clip featuring Jeremy Paxman that really says it all, but it’s just as powerful if you read the text yourself.

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!– An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.–
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,–
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

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Valley Comprehensive

Posted in Poetry with tags , , on November 6, 2009 by telescoper

The other day I wandered into a bookshop in Cardiff and happened upon a collection of poems by Patrick Jones called darkness is where the stars are (published by the wonderful Cinnamon Press). In case you weren’t aware, Patrick Jones a Welsh poet who is the brother of Nicky Wire, the bass player of the Manic Street Preachers and he has collaborated with the band extensively over the years.  You can find his official website here.

This particular collection of poems was at the centre of a controversy around this time last year because a campaigning group called Christian Voice decided it was blasphemous and protested in large numbers outside Waterstone’s Bookshop where the book was to be launched at an event at which poet was planning to read some of his work. The launch was cancelled at  the advice of the local Police, for  “safety reasons”. Jones later read some of his poems at the Welsh Assembly.

Whatever its motivations this protest clearly backfired because the book gained  more publicity than a publisher of modern poetry could ever dream of. It certainly made me curious about it last year, although I soon forget about it. However, seeing it again more recently, I finally decided to buy it.

As an atheist, I’m not competent to pronounce on whether or not it is blasphemous, although some of the poems do deal uncompromisingly with themes about which many are extremely sensitive, especially religion and sexuality.

I thought I’d put one of the poems on here by way of an advertisement for the collection as a whole which Peter Tatchell describes on the cover as “thoughtful, provocative and challenging”.  I picked a poem called Valley Comprehensive. Although written from the point of view of an English teacher bemoaning the regimentation of modern school education, it struck a chord with me in the light of yesterday’s post. Science education nowadays also has too much of an emphasis on the memorising of facts and too little on the drawing about the creative abilities of the human brain. I always thought the main problem is that the word “learn” can be taken to mean “memorise” as well as “discover”. Too much education concentrates on the former rather than the latter.

I don’t think it really matters so much whether you use words or equations to express ideas. Poets and physicists are not as different as you might think, except writing poetry is harder.

when questions become answers
when stars are merely facts
as the white board becomes all knowing lord
and red pens stamp our destiny on our stooping backs

the beauty of learning dies
when minds cannot search and find
just swallow factations whole
when exam results and league tables
fire the engines of education
it’s the premiership in the classroom
no room for the least able
the noose tightens on free thought
as sets slyly amputate aspiration

only those who will pass the tests
will be allowed to take the tests

as
the unchosen
stammer in silence
tread water in clock watched anticipation
until their failure is legitimised
and school becomes brain asphyxiation

no wonder in the universe
no questions for their gods
i’d rather a tree taught me how to grow
than
tell a class how not to write

only those who will pass the tests
will be allowed to take the tests

shouldn’t education be
about teaching children

how,

not

what

to think?

(reproduced with the kind permission of Cinnamon Press).

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