Epitaph for Castlereagh

Music (Spot on for today's writing) - Withholding Pattern - John Surman

Finished Birthday Letters last night. It may seem like it has taken me ages but I have only been reading it on the bus on the way home on Tuesday's. Yesterday's poems almost had me crying so I finished the book last night rather than suffer the embarrassment of being the snivelling weirdo for next week as well. I haven't got the book with me now to mention any specifics but some of the events described were so vivid and created such images in my head that it was almost like being there. The biographies don't give you any sense of reality, more of a detached literary standing back. Birthday Letters is a memoir, nothing more. I had to read one poem over twice, not because it was difficult but simply because it was too good. And the final line of the whole book gave me my reverse dolly zoom moment for the week; it just fitted with an image I have had in my head for some time. Steal it and read it and go back in time.

There is one poem - The Rabbit Catcher - about a planned trip into the country around Devon where Plath is angry for an undescribed reason (Hughes says he cannot remember why) and I felt as if I was one of the 'babies' carried around by Hughes, just witnessing the events. Plath began ripping out snares she found which Hughes with his "Country Gods" thought almost sacrilege - She saw murder while he saw a little local poverty lessened by the extra food. Plath wrote a poem with the same name and Hughes does this often throughout the book and even within poems he uses titles and lines from Plath poems as a sort of echo. The whole thing gives an impression of a man who knew his wife very well. The stand out passion of these poems is proof enough of his love for her. I cannot imagine how to write things as honest as this and yet still have them meaningful and well constructed.

Remember it is National Poetry Day tomorrow.

(Segues nicely into ) The Mark Steel Lectures. Last night's programme was on Byron and I have to say - what a guy; a cross between Billy Bragg, Bob Geldof and Mick Hucknall (Sorry about that one). He once wrote :-

I should, many a good day, have blown my brains out, but for the recollection that it would have given pleasure to my mother-in-law;

The excitement of being able to sit at the table and just write is amazing and it never happens. I just sit and watch TV though the broadcasters seem to trying their best to make me turn off. I keep saying to myself I should set aside an hour for reading and then an hour for writing but the anticipation of this is always nicer than the reality. Most of my writing is done here in the hour before work or at Lunchtime. The electronic devices seem to suck you in to writing. It is impossible to resist the temptation. Fleetingly I have a desire to just write all the time but then there is the realisation that I am just not good enough. I go back to the thought I had some weeks ago about the general underestimation of how many people there are in the world and how interested they actually are in anyone else. Some of the blogs out there assume that everyone is reading when the reality is that the visitors consist of an odd random surfer and a few Spammers from Florida. There is this from Bill Thompson "over at the BBC". Still I can comfort myself with the thought that my worst poem is better than the drivel they print in our local paper. I will find my worst poem for you. Of course that does not include the early blank verse from when I was twelve. It was called 'loneliness' and my school actually submitted it along with others for a book competition and we were the only ones to enter. The competition did not go ahead and the poems were returned. My dad has a copy of the poem somewhere I think. It was drivel but at least it didn't use forced rhyme.

Instructions to everyone - go and write a poem for tomorrow. A Haiku would be good and shouldn't take you long.