Tag: poetry

Letters from Iceland by W.H.Auden and Louis MacNeice

~ winstonsdad ~ 7 Comments

Letters from Iceland by W.H.Auden and Louis MacNeice

English travel writing /poetry

Source Library book.

I said I had looked at the list of books on GoodReads for this year, and I had planned another book rather than this one. I had intended to try and read World Light by Halldor Laxness. But I felt I would be pushing to finish it by today. So last Sunday, I looked at the list of books, and my eyes fell on this. I just hoped my library had a copy they did, and it had arrived on Tuesday to be picked up. The book follows the two poets Auden I know slightly better than Macneice although I feel I should know more from Macneice as he came from Northern Ireland like my family does. The book also saw them going to Iceland, which is very different to the modern country, with a much smaller population than now. Also, it is not so easy to get to. They have to take a boat from Hull to get there. Anyway, this is my final choice for this week, Club 1937, waiting to find out what year we will pull up Next year. We need to read later this year

Food

In the larger hotels in Reykjavik you will of course get ordinary European food, but in the farms you will only get what there is, which is on the whole rather peculiar.

Breakfast: (9.0 a.m.). If you stay in a farm this will be brought to you in bed. Coffee, bread and cheese, and small cakes. Coffee, which is drunk all through the day – I must have drunk about 1,500 cups in three months – is generally good.

There is white bread, brown bread, rock-hard but quite edible, and unleavened rye bread like cake. The ordinary cheese is like a strong Dutch and good. There is also a brown sweet cheese, like the Norwegian. I don’t like cakes so I never ate any, but other people say they are good.

Lunch and Dinner: (12 noon and 7 p.m.). If you are staying anywhere, lunch is the chief meal, but farmers are always willing to give you a chief meal at any time of the day or night that you care. (I once had supper at II p.m.)

I love the very english descriptions of the meals they could get.

The book follows the two poets’ travels and a summer trip to Iceland. They have been hired to write a travel guide to Iceland. We get a mix of Poetry, letters, porse pieces and insight into other travellers to Iceland. Alongside this is a darker underbelly that, when it was written, maybe didn’t seem as dark, but they meet some Germans that describe the Iceland locals as perfect Germans, an undercurrent of the Aryan race that would follow in the war years. Anyway, Auden’s main piece is a five-part letter to Byron that is in the style of Byron that takes snippets to the trip and other things. I had to check Byron never went to Iceland but did write a lot of Travel Poetry. Alongside this are some prose pieces around a trip on horseback they made into the countryside with some young woman, around the hotel and the food served there. Also, The last poems from Macneice are in the spirit of the time and about the world they have been to but also the country they have left behind, and are called W. H. Auden and Louis MacNeice: Their Last Will and Testament”. I have said I was less aware of MacNeice. I read a vol of his poetry maybe thirty years ago, as he is mentioned on an album by the Blue Aeroplanes.

The book belongs to a German lady who married an Icelander, solely, as far as I can see, in order to have a child, as she left him immediately after, and now won’t go back to Germany. She had a magazine from the Race Bureau of the N.S.D.P. which was very funny. Boy-scout young Aryans striding along with arms swinging past fairy-story negroes and Jews.

In the afternoon we rode over the lake to Brekka, where the local doctor lives, and had tea. A romantic evening sky over the lake but unfortunately no romance.

The dark undercurrent of Nazis being there as well

I am not a poetry reviewer; I don’t know much about meter and context, but the Byron letter looks and feels in a tone similar to the pieces from Byrion I have read in his complete works, which I own. Macneice is a poet I would like to know and read more from over time. The book is a book of its time; it captures a far more rural and less touristic Iceland than it is now. I loved the way they described the food. Most hotels had European food, which was good as the description of the local food sounded as though neither poet was keen on it . There is also more adventure than was said when riding with the girls. The locals are captured in prose, and in pictures, the book has a selection of pictures from the trip. This is a gem of a book it is what I love about the club year I may have never picked this up. Not that I dislike POoetry I have a small collection of poetry books and often feel I should read a little more from bu[=oth the UK and around the world. Have you read this book or have a favourite book that isn’t just poetry written by a poet?

 

 

Winstons score – A little gem of travel writing poetry and Prose.

Ædnan an Epic by Linnea Axelsson

~ winstonsdad ~ 4 Comments

Ædnan an Epic by Linea Axelsson

Swedish fiction.

Translated by Saskia Vogel

Source – Review copy

I am on the list of books coming out this year. This was one of the ones that really caught my eye. An epic novel set in Sweden around the Sami community appealed to me as there aren’t enough books in translation from indigenous writers. So I was pleased when pushkin sent me a review copy, Linea Axelsson was born in the north of Sweden around the area, the book is set. She studied art history at university and then moved to Stockholm. This is her debut novel and focuses on the last century in a Sami community following three generations and their struggles in an ever-changing Sweden. This book won the August prize when it came out.

Through the Rosta River Valley from Lake Adjávárddojáurrit. Past the rivers

Tamok and Dapmoteatnu, 1913

(BER-JONÁ)

My brother and I

Aslat

we sang nothing

we no longer sang forth the earth and the memories

–

Vessels of song formed by the voice

When words were not enough for the lives we lived

They had trudged through hate

They had waded in sorrow

The birth of the twins in 1913 a harsh world they are born into

The title of the novel means the land , the ground the Earth. This is an epic verse novel. that felt like you were sitting by a campfire as a family recounting that history over the century. the book is the history of two families over three generations from 1900 until nearly modern day. The book opens with a young couple heading to the winter feeding grounds as they are expecting twin boys. Aslat and Nila, but when Nila, the smaller twin, is found to be too weak to be of use and his brother suffers an injury. add to this the fact they have Norwegians have closed the border, meaning families and couples are separated. And it is a hard life. We meet the twin’s father and when he is a much older man and living in a Swedish city in Projus. The family is now part of the indigenous studies by the Swedish government at the time. At this point, the narrative switches to the other family, neighbours Off. Ristin, and we follow Lise’s story. so we get the next generations to take on being indigenous as their natural  grazing band is being looked at and may be taken over to build a dam and a hydroelectric plant. This is in the 70s. The book just goes on after this, but I will leave you to discover the end of the book.

The little needlecase

made of reindeer horn that she had on her belt that one time

The seaplane made

an emergency landing in the fells and she was there

and had to mend a tear in the wing with sinew thread

You didn’t usually have the needlecase on you Mama

But that time you did

–

You who always said that you were sure I’d marry a Swede

I loved a lot of the little details thrown in like the little needle case here.

Ever since Lisa has done her indigenous reading weeks, it has made me more conscious of writers from indigenous backgrounds. what really grab me to know about this book, I was the style of writing a three verse with no punctuation in short bursts of three lines. Something almost hypnotic times about reading it. Have you really got the feel of an Icelandic epic or those great verse poems? It’s almost as though the World she wrote about has lost it anyway is it is this is it testament to the struggles of the Sami People in the 20th century; it is also a description of how hard the nomadic life can be when we follow the life of the twins in a harsher world, and where life is a struggle day to day.She also little snippets of everyday life from the way they live or what they carry, those little things that set them apart but mean so much in their nomadic world. One of the reasons I wanted to get to this book was I felt it would be a strong contender for the Man Booker International Prize, and it is always handy to get those 500-page novels out of the way before the long list is announced. I found, but to be fair, this book is nearer half the size in pages as it is all told in three lines and that means about fifty to sixty words on each page. So if you like sparse yet powerful family histories and growing up in an indigenous background, this is a book for you. Have you read this book?

Winston score A I gave this book an A as it already feels like it could be one of my books for the year

My rivers by Faruk Šehić

~ winstonsdad ~ Leave a comment

My rivers by Faruk Šehić

Bosnian poetry

Original title – Moje rijeke

Translator – S D Curtis

Source -Review copy

I struggled to review this as I do read poetry not as much as I did in my late teens and early twenties, when I read a lot of poetry. But that was mainly English Poetry and not a lot in translation. But this is a collection form a Bosnian writer whose fiction I have really enjoyed. The translator is a poet herself and also the owner of Istros books. So I feel the wieght to review this poetry collection in a way but I also love how he connects events in his life to rivers this harked me back to Esther Kinsky in her book Am Fluss (river) where she connected her life to rivers asnd event that had happened but also the fluid nature of memories and rivers or Alice Oswald with Dart another poem about a river.This poetry collection won the biggest poetry prize in the Balkans.

Here the Americans and British disembarked in two world wars

Here in the bay the HMS Lancaster sunk in 1940, with the loss of 4000 souls

Fraternal flags flutter proudly on masts (two of the few that I can stomach)

Respect is the only thing I can feel imagining American warships in the centre of Saint Nazaire

The menacing grey of steel determined to defend the world from Nazism

Here was the USS Saratoga, whose name Iloved as a child, the river waters softening the smell of the ocean

The second verse of the poem liberation day

 

 

My Rivers is a poetry collection in Four cycles: From France and the Loire, Germany and the Spree River then the Great Balkan River the Drna and a final cycle beyond the river. The collection opens in Paris and the Loire and Faruk hear his name in the wind and the spirits of the world wars echo in this poem and I was so touched by the end line of this poem, Liberation Day as the sea makes us whole again it seemed so poignant and have so many means. Then as an Emigre in Berlin, he talks about being able to Podst himself there and how it feels to wander the Postdamer Platz, drink milky coffees and see exotic food served. Then, Berlin’s problematic history, but he felt it was a city for him. In the poem, Emigre’s soul opens the Spree cycle. Then a powerful and brutal imagery in a return to the Garden of Eden in the Drna cycle messages from the dead signs only he sees grubby kids Sarajevo. That smell of meat at the butcher. The pile of excuses, this is a stomach-thumping poem about a return to a place. In Beyond the River: The Last Cycle, he talks about the Revolution as an Odyssey ghost, lost books, lost texts, a tear in a spider web, and revolution like pigs eating all in front of them all ends with the lines, there is no other way but the cross on your back and the road up ahead what a powerful image.

I’m hooked on the odour of the Berlin underground promising speed and good times

I must post myself to Berlin touch the Brandenburg Gate

caress the stone buttocks of Greek goddesses the colour of milky coffee sipped in Potsdamer Platz serenaded by sparrows, those feathery balls navigating the glass domes of arcades strung with sails or what seem now like sails, now like neckties made for giants

Those sparrows surround me as I drink in the late sun, they’ll wait for crumbs while I sit in the garden of an exotic restaurant (serving crocodile steak and koala fillet)

A section from the poem Emigre’s soul

I said I struggled with how to review this. I am no poet I  struggle to convey how powerful this felt to me it is stunning in its soul, a man’s soul like the intestines he talks about in one poem laid out for all to see the innermost soul of a man the ghost of the war but then how do you move past that and that is the river in a way he is like a stone thrown roughly with edges and other time those barbs of a man and a war are heading to the sea smoothing slowly forming something else water always finds a way and this is like a soul finding a way in words. I love that Susan did this, as she is a wonderful poet in her own right she wrote a heartwrenching poem about her own life that is worth reading. As Nick Cave said in his poem Crooked River “O sullen river, wide +weary, what are you running to? to a watery grave, o doomed sailor, to the grave I’m taking you. ” The river drags your soul in with it at times. Have you a favourite poetry collection in Translation ?

Winston score – +A Heart wrenching at times. I just wish I was better placed to review and give it the just review it needs.

The Heeding by Rob Cowen

~ winstonsdad ~ 2 Comments

HEED

Orgin: Middle English Heden, Old English hedan, Old Saxon Hadian

Verb:

  1. To mind, to regard, to take note of, to attend to; to observe.
  2. to pay attention, care
  3. To guard, protect

Noun:

  1. Paying particular notice or careful attention tp advice or warning.

The Heeding is another of the longlist books for the Wainwright prize and is the second book of Poetry I have reviewed in the 13 years of doing this blog, it isn’t that I don’t like poetry but maybe I don’t sit and dole I had here and read Rob Cowen collection. He is a poet based in North Yorkshire, which I passed through quickly yesterday on my way up to the Northumberland where we are on Holiday and when I arrived I sat and read this collection of 35 poems that followed a year like another book win the collection it was written during the lockdown year and sees row Observations of this unique year and how it changed the world for tat one moment of time and both Nature and also the Nature of people. The book is also accompanied by a wonderful collection of bold and eye-catching illustrations from  Nick Hayes.

NOISES Off

Indigo sky pressing down like debt.

All cars quietened; nothing stirs.

Late spring status, abandoned, wrecked.

Hell of a thing to be afraid of air

Of touch of family. Of friends. Of work

To not leave home for four days straight.

This is the opening verse of Noise off

I’m never overly sure how to describe a collection of poems but in this one, I just decided I would mention a few of the poems and how I as a reader connected to them. First is the second poem which is called Noises off and is about the new silence of Lockdown we all remember the clarity of sound we all got during the day when there is no cars, no planes in the sky factories are silent the world but also a world of new fears and worries is as it once captured here b Rob and his words far better than I can. Then we have starling which is an ode to that little coal-black bird ( which seemed apt as I am staying in a former colliery village at the moment) this described maybe seeing afresh this little bird which is yes noisy and often in loud groups but when you actually look at this little bird it is so beautiful with as Rob puts it the iridescent purples, greens and blues, the rare hues of petrol on water when describing its feathers. I loved those images and yes they are as soon as I read those words I saw them I was also reminded that I want to see the murmurations (the patterns in a flight of starling of which a large roost near to me is meant to be a place to see this wonder of nature.

We forget that you one shimmered through the frozen air; ripple bird.

Shape-shifter, dusk dancer. Murmurer, sh=ky writer,

Endlessly becoming in the darkening Gold;

Animals, patterns, waves.

And how e wonderstruck, witnessed a nightly unity against death

The second verse of the poem starling mentions their flight of them in groups and the patterns and shapes they make which is so eye-catching and one of the true wonders of Nature.

Well I just mentioned two from this collection in depth the collection is bookended with two poems called the duel about hawks hunting and Hawks reoccur in another Poem that I loved about seeing them in flight whilst driving and Like Rob how often does this happen on a motorway I always nearly crash and often think which bird it was I know Kestrels well as I have seen so many of the years but as for other hawks and how to know which is which glimpsed against the sky I am never quite sure. He also shows how he was touched by ovoid from his personal experience to that off the loss of those around him near and also faces in a crowd like a man at his allotment. Rob captures those mad twelve months in these 35 poems with a poet’s eye that ability t see beyond to describe and in a time like that is what is needed in a time of Madness and the uncertain nature of the world we need a poet to be are guide to cross the river of covid to make sense of the currents and eddies of that river to show us what we missed those little moments in that time like a collection of items which ties into the start of the book which sees Rob describe his desktop and the collection of items he has a stone, musket ball an otter print. Well, this is his desktop of that year his collection of items picked up along that year. Do you think poets can be beacons in dark times to guide the world around us?

Winstons score – + A, a stunning collection that captures in Amber a once-in-a-lifetime year of wonder and fear.

 

 

PIllars of Stuart Pillar one WIlliam Butler Yates

~ winstonsdad ~ 1 Comment

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As I said yesterday , I wanted to remember mum , but as I was thinking of Mum , I thought of how she and my dad had both set me on the road to being a book blogger and lifelinger reader. Now I read as a kid mile most Kids Narnia , BB novels , Tolkien , the adventure series and many more these are like the ground fill my pillars are to be built on. I Say Pillars after WIlliam H Gass and Scott Esposito both of whom have done 50 pillars that made them  the reader and writer they are, also  lot of personnel canons of books  have  been doing the rounds last few weeks, but I felt I need to do fifty post one on each book , writer or even film. Yates is part of my first love at school my teacher Mr Savage (or as we knew him Doc Savage after the Ron Ely Doc savage or mr savage was a tall man that loved poetry ). He sparked an early love of poetry and he gave us a small collection of poems he had selected for us to study. Yates wasn’t in this list but from my love of the band the pogues at the time , I some how managed to get to Yates and his ability to mix the everyday and fantasy world of Ireland , a world I knew from reading my grans book of Irish myth one hoilday , I feel for his poems especially The magi , the stolen child (with a waterboys background ) , a cradle song and so many the front page here above is the collection I brought as a teen for 2.60 is a 1938 collection of his works that has never been far from hand since then. As I looked to build this personnel history of my reading and writing life of the books that made the blogger this was the first that came to mind and the poem below made me think of mum , she never got to be old but she loved the sight of a peat fire and the smell of peat smoke one few things from her time in Ireland she loved . She also used encourage me reading especially poetry , even read my early tries at poetry. LIke Yates says in cloth of heaven I weaved him in my dreams and books and laid them under my feet as a reader stepping forth my books are my dreams each making me the reader , writer and dreamer I am . Each step and book a new pice of cloth in my cloak of reading .

When you are old by William Butler Yates
When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars

 

Yeats Day

~ winstonsdad ~ 2 Comments

W B Yeats book

Well its a double hit this week of Irish writer days today is the 150th annivesary of the birth of William Butler Yeats .I first came across Yeats at school he is one of the few Poets I have actually like from reading the first poem by him which I was The Magi . I brought the above copy about twenty years ago and have read it few many times .This collection was sorted and put together by Yeats himself so I found it maybe a choice of what he considered his best work and for me that is good enough my copy came out in 1938  .Then later in the week we have this years Bloomsday .

The Stolen Child

WHERE dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water rats;
There we’ve hid our faery vats,
Full of berrys
And of reddest stolen cherries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim gray sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And anxious in its sleep.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

I choose the first two verses of Stolen child as it ties in with a song version of the poem from the Waterboys . It is also worth checking out there album of songs from his poems a n appointment with Mr Yeats .

Have you a favourite  poem by him

 

Winstons covers – dart by alice oswald

~ winstonsdad ~ 6 Comments

 

A  new feature ,in which I feature a pretty book cover or a book that is linked in some way to something that is happening in the world .I ve loads of books so never short of a cover to take a picture of one.This collection I love it is ilustrated by Jonathan Gibbs

So I start here with Dart from Alice Oswald I won this as a set of six poetry first books from Faber from Nonsuch books last year ,as the riots we raging on the tv the other night I decided to find solace in some nature poetry and choose this to read at 48 pages long it took less than two hours to read .It won the T S Eliot award in 2002 .Oswald spent a number of months on the river talking to people who use the river dart which the poem is about .

woodman working into twilight

you should se me in the moonlight

comb my cataract of hair,

at work all night on my desire 

Oh I could sing Hylas,

how the water wooed him senseless,

I could sing the welded kiss

continuous of Salmacis 

Alice Oswald 

The peasent poet -John Clare

~ winstonsdad ~ 2 Comments
john clare

Is probably the greatest nature poet that lived ,he was born to a farm labourer in Northamptonshire in 1793 ,he wrote poems in his local dialect about the natural world that surrounded him .sell his earliest poems to save his family’s home ,in later life he was locked in a asylum for a few years .this period of time gave Adam Fould the idea for his booker shortlisted novel the quickening maze .Clare also reworked some of Byron’s poems during his later life ,as it is national poetry month I d thought I d highlight a poet who’s works have brought me pleasure

birds in alarm

The fire tail tells the boys when the nest are nigh,

and tweets and flyes from every passer bye,

The yellowhammer never makes a noise ,

but flyes in silence from the noisey boys ,

the boys will come and take them every day ,

and still she lays as none were taen away

the opening of birds in alarm by John Clare .

Last year penguin brought out a wonderful volume containing Clare and loads of other poems about birds .

the poetry of birds

 good luck to all readthon peeps today .

what is your favourite nature poet ?