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Wendell Berry (1934–) is, Wikipedia tells me, “an American novelist, poet, essayist, environmental activist, cultural critic, and farmer.” I feel that I sort of know his name, but the poem below I found in my collection. I can’t remember where I found it. It’s the simplest of poems, almost prose, but expresses well the peace…

Stevie Smith (actually Florence Margaret Smith, 1902 –1971) was a poet unlike any other—like William Blake and Emily Dickinson. Of course all poets are different, and have to be, but some are more different than others. Smith was deserted by her father, spent three years in a sanatorium as a child, lost her mother to…

“Metamorphoses” is the most famous work of Ovid (43 BCE-17 or 18), one of the greatest of Roman poets, and has huge cultural importance, inspiring poets, painters, and other artists. A translation into English by Arthur Golding in 1567 was an inspiration and source for Shakespeare. I have a copy of Golding’s translation, but it’s much…

Li Bai (702-761) is one of the greatest Chinese poets of the Tang Dynasty. His poems, Wikipedia tells me, celebrate “the pleasures of friendship, the depth of nature, solitude, and the joys of drinking.” I can’t pretend to know about Li Bai or to have read any other of his poems, but somehow (and I can’t remember…

We all know that eventually we will lose everything—our life, those we love, even our planet. And most days we lose something—keys, our voice, a friend, our place in the novel we are reading. Loss is a constant in our lives, and Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979) tells us in this great poem that losing is an…

T S Eliot (1888-1965) is one of my favourite poets. I haven’t had to make the awful choice faced by those on “Desert Island Discs” of which one book would I take to the desert island, but it might well be Eliot’s “Collected Works.” You can never get to the end of Eliot—just admittedly as…

This morning I started reading Gavin Maxwell’s great book “Ring of Bright Water” in which he describes living alone on a remote Scottish coast and befriending an otter. Published in 1959 it captured something in the zeitgeist and became a best seller, and its magic has lasted. The book has already enchanted me. But I…

Dilys Rose (1954–) is an accomplished poet, novelist, and artist and a friend of mine. We have known each other since we were students together in Edinburgh in the early 70s. I’ve watched with pleasure, satisfaction, and even pride as her career has developed and read many of her books. She has recently produced a…

I had never read this poem until this morning, but I’ve read a collection of poems by William Carlos Wiliams (1883-1963). He was what the British call a general practitioner, who practised in Paterson, New Jersey, for most of his life. In this simple but deep poem he mocks the knowingness of doctors, particularly young…

I found this still, understated, and beautiful poem in my collection but with no name attached. I felt ashamed that I hadn’t recorded the author, but the gift of Google allowed me to find in seconds that it was by Helen Dunmore (1952-2017). She was born in the same year as me but is already…