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W H Auden (1907 –1973) wrote some very fine poems, some of my favourites, but he also wrote many impenetrable poems. I’m reading my way through a collection of his poems, and end a lot of them unmoved and without understanding. (“Why,” you might ask, “are you reading them?” I would answer “That’s a good…

This morning I read “Poem in October” by Dylan Thomas, a soaring, hymn-like poem. It’s a beautiful poem best heard read by Thomas himself, Richard Burton, or some other person with a resonant singsong Welsh voice. I’ll share that poem soon, but for now I want to share a different, much less grand poem, a…

I’ve been very tied up with Kathleen Raine (1908-2003), whose life was coterminous with that of my grandmother, who was also called Kathleen. For almost a year I’ve been reading through her collected poems, and I’ve just finished “Remember the Rowan,” a novel about by Kirsten MacQuarrie about Raine’s intense but ultimately destructive love for…

I always imagine William Shakespeare (1564-1616) sat at a desk and writing exquisite poetry at break neck speed with a quill pen. I don’t suppose that it can possibly have been like that, but my image has its origins in his poetry seeming to flow effortlessly in a torrent. As I watch his plays I’m…

I encountered this poem by Helen Waddell (1889-1965)  in “Waiting for the Last Bus” by Richard Holloway, who was once Bishop of Edinburgh.https://richardswsmith.wordpress.com/2022/04/24/an-elegiac-book-filled-with-wisdom-and-poetry-that-gently-teaches-us-about-life-and-death/  The “Last Bus” is death, and Holloway’s book is a meditation on death as well as life. Poetry is hugely important to Holloway, and the book is full of references to poems and poets.…

I’m 72 and this extract from “Little Gidding” by T S Eliot (1888-1965) has lived in my mind for many years. It’s a painful view of old age. Eliot was only about 54 when he published the poem in 1942 during the war. The poem is part of the “Four Quartets,” which can be read…

This poem was written in Gaelic in the 8th century by a student of the monastery of Carinthia, which seems to be in Austria. He wrote the poem on a copy of St Paul’s Epistles. He must have written in Gaelic because he was from Scotland. The poem speaks to me of loneliness rendered bearable and…

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) is one of the bad boys of English poetry, promoting atheism and radicalism, abandoning his pregnant teenage wife, enjoying being loathed by the press and establishment, and drowning at sea before his 30th birthday after sailing in a  storm. But his friends found him gentle, urbane, and lovable, and after he…

I read this poem by D H Lawrence (1880-1935) for the first time this morning. In fact I read only the last stanza in The Burning Man by Frances Wilson, a book that after reading 10% of it I don’t hesitate to strongly recommend. I found the rest of the pome later. Lawrence wrote the…

William Henry Davies (1871-1940) was a poet who in his time was ranked alongside W B Yeats and Ezra Pound. His mentor Edward Thomas even compared him with Wordsworth. Davies lived a life as a supertramp, losing a leg when trying to jump on a train in the US. But he returned to Wales and…