The Art of Poetry

Tamsin Abbott – inspired by “The Runaway” by Robert Frost

“Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.”

Leonardo da Vinci

www.obsidianart.co.uk Obsidian Art, Old Risborough Road, Stoke Mandeville, Bucks, HP22 5XJ

01296 612150 info@obsidianart.co.uk

“The Art of Poetry”

“The Art of Poetry” 22nd March – 28th April 2013

“Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.”

Leonardo da Vinci

With many thanks to all the contributing artists and makers, and the poets who inspired their work.

Alexandra Buckle

The Way Through the Woods

The Way Through the Woods They shut the road through the woods Seventy years ago.

Weather and rain have undone it again, And now you would never know There was once a road through the woods Before they planted the trees.

It is underneath the coppice and heath And the thin anemones.

Only the keeper sees That, where the ring-dove broods, And the badgers roll at ease, There was once a road through the woods.

Yet, if you enter the woods Of a summer evening late, When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools Where the otter whistles his mate, (They fear not men in the woods, Because they see so few.)

You will hear the beat of a horse’s feet, And the swish of a skirt in the dew, Steadily cantering through The misty solitudes, As though they perfectly knew The old lost road through the woods ...

But there is no road through the woods.

Obsidian Art www.obsidianart.co.uk

Rudyard Kipling

The Windhover To Christ our Lord I caught this morning morning’s minion, kingdom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing, As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding Stirred for a bird, - the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shèer plòd makes plough down sillion Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear, Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold vermilion.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Amanda Lawrence - Windhover detail

Hushness Hushness, Waiting, Pulsing, Beating, Fingertips heating, Palms glowing Heavy with the weight of the sun.

Tendrils creeping, misty tweaking, Turning liquid, smooth and flowing, Urging with greater insistence, Latent muscles to bend and extend.

Unfurling the banners, Released from restraint.

Stillness, Waiting, Lending, Bending, Body extending In time and tune With the music of the soul.

Annette Elizabeth Sykes Annette Sykes

Hushness

Time standing still. The Dandelion Clock.

Time standing still in decorative white A head of delicate seed, Waits to fly into the light, not valued Only a rampant weed The colour of its flower just a day ago Was the colour of butter and gold, The tiny petals like sunshine stand A pleasure to behold The dandy of the common land, Decorating the emerald field.

Its serrated leaf like sword, does guard The stem that holds the tiny seed.

Day turns to night then again into day And the weed has changed her gown, From golden head to white lace strands A gossamer orb sits like a delicate crown.

Across the meadow, a breath of wind Stirs and lifts the white seed from their berth.

The wait is over, free at last they fly High they go into a warm summer sky.

The sphere gently dissipates, Now the seeds are on their way, To spread, to multiply on the land, The Dandelion will have its day.

Brenda Hurley

Time standing still. The Dandelion Clock.

Brenda Hurley

Brigid Marlin

Peace

Christine Tacq

The Gale

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

Hope

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

Hope is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul, And sings the tune without the words, And never stops at all,

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

And sweetest in the gale is heard; And sore must be the storm That could abash the little bird That kept so many warm.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray, I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

I’ve heard it in the chillest land, And on the strangest sea; Yet, never, in extremity, It asked a crumb of me.

William Butler Yeats

Emily Dickinson

Fields of History What is it about these paintings that lingers?

Is it the way the canvas seems to hum where the red roofs like daubs of lipstick have kissed it?

Or is it the quiet houses beneath with their gaping doors and windows?

Are they really as safe as or are they simply your self watching obliquely from the edge of the frame?

In the one you call Fields of History for instance three gaunt trees sway on a hill whilst copper blood seeps into the stained landscape and six red-roofed houses stare in silence.

Catherine Barnes

Fields of History

These are your emblems then and red is your colour: you told me it comes closer than any other and has the loudest voice.

It vibrates longest and is always the last to dry.

Philip Sealey

Dick Onians

Di Oldfield

‘Intimations of Immortality from recollections of Early Childhood’

A Sea Beneath a Cloudless Sun

Past, Present, Future

Wordsworth’s Ode ...

Tell me, tell me, smiling child, What the past is like to thee ?

‘An Autumn evening soft and mild With a wind that sighs mournfully.’

The 4 elements within my carving are each inspired by different lines which I list below:

Tell me, what is the present hour ?

‘A green and flowery spray Where a young bird sits gathering its power To mount and fly away.’

And what is the future, happy one ?

‘A sea beneath a cloudless sun ; A mighty, glorious, dazzling sea Stretching into infinity.’

Emily Brontë

“And see the Children sport upon the shore and hear the mighty waters rolling evermore”.

“Thou Child of Joy Let me hear thy shouts, thou happy Shepherd boy”.

“Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing boy”.

“To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears”.

The Sunne Rising Busy old fool, unruly Sun, Why dost thou thus, Through windows, and through curtains, call on us ?

Must to thy motions lovers’ seasons run ?

Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide Late school-boys and sour prentices, Go tell court-huntsmen that the king will ride, Call country ants to harvest offices ; Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime, Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

Thy beams so reverend, and strong Why shouldst thou think ?

I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink, But that I would not lose her sight so long.

If her eyes have not blinded thine, Look, and to-morrow late tell me, Whether both th’ Indias of spice and mine Be where thou left’st them, or lie here with me.

Ask for those kings whom thou saw’st yesterday, And thou shalt hear, “All here in one bed lay.”

She’s all states, and all princes I ; Nothing else is ; Princes do but play us ; compared to this, All honour’s mimic, all wealth alchemy.

Thou, Sun, art half as happy as we, In that the world’s contracted thus ; Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be To warm the world, that’s done in warming us.

Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere ; This bed thy center is, these walls thy sphere.

John Donne Linocut depiction of Derek Jarman’s home, ‘Prospect Cottage’ in Dungeness, where he had ‘The Sunne Rising’ on the wall of the cottage

Diana Ashdown

Prospect Cottage, Dungeness

Moonrise I awoke in the Midsummer not to call night, in the white and the walk of the morning: The moon, dwindled and thinned to the fringe of a finger-nail held to the candle, Or paring of paradisaical fruit, lovely in waning but lustreless, Stepped from the stool, drew back from the barrow, of dark Maenefa the mountain; A cusp still clasped him, a fluke yet fanged him, entangled him, not quite utterly.

This was the prized, the desirable sight, unsought, presented so easily, Parted me leaf and leaf, divided me, eyelid and eyelid of slumber.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Flora McLachlan

Moonrise

Frank Newhofer

Indian Serenade

Glenn Hart

The Harbour

Indian Serenade I arise from dreams of thee In the first sweet sleep of night, When the winds are breathing low, And the stars are shining bright.

I arise from dreams of thee, And a spirit in my feet Has led me -who knows how?

To thy chamber-window, Sweet!

The wandering airs they faint On the dark, the silent stream The champak odours fail Like sweet thoughts in a dream; The nightingale’s complaint, It dies upon her heart, As I must die on thine, O beloved as thou art!

Oh lift me from the grass!

I die! I faint! I fail!

Let thy love in kisses rain On my lips and eyelids pale.

My cheek is cold and white, alas!

My heart beats loud and fast; Oh press it close to thine again, Where it will break at last!

Percy Bysshe Shelley

In The Harbour: Loss And Gain When I compare What I have lost with what I have gained, What I have missed with what attained, Little room do I find for pride.

I am aware How many days have been idly spent; How like an arrow the good intent Has fallen short or been turned aside.

But who shall dare To measure loss and gain in this wise?

Defeat may be victory in disguise; The lowest ebb is the turn of the tide.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Daydreams Through the ghostly leaves of the canopy the forest of my mind is revealed drifting, silently upon contours of history visiting the memories in places concealed.

Up trunks and through branches, recalling recollections, reviewing reminiscences, remember, remembering, remembered.

Mnemonics designed to help the review, Mnemosyne recognized, inspired recall to search more deeply for every hue of patterned rainbow.

Feelings renewed red, green and white, black, yellow and blue.

The light bulb flashes back and forth shining lightly in my thoughts, sparking memories sweet to savour Slowly Evocatively, Revealing my soul.

The leaves gently rustle as the branches sway, hiding the memories for another day, mindfully returning through the high canopy, Renewal of spirit at the end of the quest, refreshed from the sojourn as memory’s guest. Š Heather Hunter

Heather Hunter

Daydreams

Jan Ruddock

The Old Vicarage, Grantchester

Jeannie Clarke

On Saturday

From ‘The Old Vicarage, Grantchester’

On Saturday

Just now the lilac is in bloom, All before my little room ; And in my flower-beds, I think, Smile the carnation and the pink ; And down the borders, well I know, The poppy and the pansy blow . . .

Outside my window, a linnet on the laburnum shows poetry to the other birds, preens, stutters its wings and corrugates away across the lawn, and the nest of words I am waiting to hatch goes cold.

And after, ere the night is born, Do hares come out about the corn ?

Oh, is the water sweet and cool, Gentle and brown, above the pool ?

And laughs the immortal river still Under the mill, under the mill ?

Say, is there Beauty yet to find ?

And Certainty ? and Quiet kind ?

Deep meadows yet, for to forget The lies, and truths, and pain ? . . . oh ! yet Stands the Church clock at ten to three ?

And is there honey still for tea ?

Rupert Brooke

Yesterday, as from the office window I watched a vessel leave the lockpits, outward bound for Genoa, slipping the tugs from the task in hand my feet were treading Italian ground before the Humber had healed in her wake.

I knew, once, a tall school window high above the tiers of desks where, in carbolic air, peas imprisoned in a jar strove for the sky and begged me join in their climb to the place where every day is Saturday and Saturday is Christmas.

Maurice Rutherford From “And Saturday is Christmas”

From “A Shropshire Lad” - XXVII “Is my team ploughing, That I was used to drive And hear the harness jingle When I was man alive?”

Ay, the horses trample, The harness jingles now; No change though you lie under The land you used to plough.

“Is football playing Along the river shore, With lads to chase the leather, Now I stand up no more?”

Ay, the ball is flying, The lads play heart and soul; The goal stands up, the keeper Stands up to keep the goal.

“Is my girl happy, That I thought hard to leave, And has she tired of weeping As she lies down at eve?”

Ay, she lies down lightly, She lies not down to weep, Your girl is well contented.

Be still, my lad, and sleep.

“Is my friend hearty, Now I am thin and pine, And has he found to sleep in A better bed than mine?”

Yes, lad, I lie easy, I lie as lads would choose; I cheer a dead man’s sweetheart, Never ask me whose.

A.E.Housman Jeremy White

“Is My Team Ploughing?”

Glimmers I want to wake in the morning, hear again the sound of an alarm half-muffled through the wall.

Its murmuring, ‘Get up. You must get up.’

Then, minutes later, the front door closes in the hall.

I want to run my hand across that pillow where your head lay dreaming in the dark.

Before I busy myself, tidying the little flat so it’ll be our haven when you return from work.

I want the joy of sharing supper again.

To sit in comfort at our table while you say the meal that I’ve made is very tasty.

You serve up news of what you’ve done that day.

And I want us both to listen as the wireless turns this humble room into a giant stage.

To catch the fragrance when you smoke your pipe or, as you read, the whisper of a turning page.

Jo Hinchliffe

Dreaming of Home

I want to be beside you in the car again as we roar downhill, then zoom up to the clouds seeing a magical world waltz past us.

I want these things. I want them here and now.

Suddenly I’m jolted from my fantasies.

Back in the workshop. Loads of mica to split and a harsh voice in my ear, ‘Your crate’s almost empty. That’s not very good, is it?’

Rose Scooler (translated by Sibyl Ruth) with kind permission of Sibyl Ruth, great-niece of Rose Scooler

My Garden

Joe Stockton

My Garden

If I could put my woods in song And tell what’s there enjoyed, All men would to my gardens throng, And leave the cities void.

Æolian harps in the pine Ring with the song of the Fates; Infant Bacchus in the vine,-Far distant yet his chorus waits.

In my plot no tulips blow,-Snow-loving pines and oaks instead; And rank the savage maples grow From Spring’s faint flush to Autumn red.

Canst thou copy in verse one chime Of the wood-bell’s peal and cry, Write in a book the morning’s prime, Or match with words that tender sky?

My garden is a forest ledge Which older forests bound; The banks slope down to the blue lake-edge, Then plunge to depths profound.

Wonderful verse of the gods, Of one import, of varied tone; They chant the bliss of their abodes To man imprisoned in his own.

Here once the Deluge ploughed, Laid the terraces, one by one; Ebbing later whence it flowed, They bleach and dry in the sun.

Ever the words of the gods resound; But the porches of man’s ear Seldom in this low life’s round Are unsealed, that he may hear.

The sowers made haste to depart,-The wind and the birds which sowed it; Not for fame, nor by rules of art, Planted these, and tempests flowed it.

Wandering voices in the air And murmurs in the wold Speak what I cannot declare, Yet cannot all withhold.

Waters that wash my garden-side Play not in Nature’s lawful web, They heed not moon or solar tide,-Five years elapse from flood to ebb.

When the shadow fell on the lake, The whirlwind in ripples wrote Air-bells of fortune that shine and break, And omens above thought.

Hither hasted, in old time, Jove, And every god,--none did refuse; And be sure at last came Love, And after Love, the Muse.

But the meanings cleave to the lake, Cannot be carried in book or urn; Go thy ways now, come later back, On waves and hedges still they burn.

Keen ears can catch a syllable, As if one spake to another, In the hemlocks tall, untamable, And what the whispering grasses smother.

These the fates of men forecast, Of better men than live to-day; If who can read them comes at last He will spell in the sculpture, ‘Stay.’

Ralph Waldo Emerson

My Heart Leaps Up

Kim Major-George

the fixing of things

the fixing of things I write and here it stays, on the page where it belongs. I spit out words of every tongue, one by one.

I take exception, seethe, explode - to no avail.

It changes nothing, so long as minds stay fixed.

Chair, book, planet - these are solid words, unlike love, quantum, faery, dream, singularity. On this page I will oppose the fixing of things, the clunking, bolting down of the world.

In this sense, mathematics and poetry are bedfellows: enemies of the solid state, of literal, blind belief- and of sanity.

Steve Thorp

My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky: So was it when my life began, So is it now I am a man, So be it when I shall grow old Or let me die!

The child is father of the man: And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety.

William Wordsworth

Barbara Sedassy The Rainbow

Habanera Love is a rebellious bird that nobody can tame, and you call him quite in vain if it suits him not to come.

Nothing helps, neither threat nor prayer.

One man talks well, the other’s mum; it’s the other one that I prefer.

He’s silent but I like his looks.

Love! Love! Love! Love!

Love is a gypsy’s child, it has never, ever, known a law; love me not, then I love you; if I love you, you’d best beware! etc.

The bird you thought you had caught beat its wings and flew away ... love stays away, you wait and wait; when least expected, there it is!

All around you, swift, so swift, it comes, it goes, and then returns ... you think you hold it fast, it flees you think you’re free, it holds you fast.

Osvalda Warner

Habanera

Love! Love! Love! Love!

Love is a gypsy’s child, it has never, ever, known a law; love me not, then I love you; if I love you, you’d best beware!

Georges Bizet The score of this aria was adapted from the habanera “El Arreglito,” originally composed by the Spanish musician Sebastián Yradier.

Bizet thought it to be a folk song; when others told him he had used something that had been written by a composer who had died only ten years earlier, he had to add a note to the vocal score of Carmen, acknowledging its source.

Pirjo Keene

Dark Days

Pirjo Keene

Fallen Leaves

Dark Days

Fallen Leaves

these dark days dressed in white no longer fool me

in the frozen stream the fallen leaves of mellow days pause in their final dance

Pirjo Keene

Pirjo Keene

Pollyanna Pickering

Electraglide in Blue and Green

Electraglide in Blue and Green I caught Him on the edge of sight In Autumns Lovely lower light A match Struck With a turquoise flame Then quenched – then lit Then quenched again Through Autumn’s sunlit Saxon hall He hurtled like a fireball Eloping through the waning light A needle darning day and night Through myrtle – snow and candlelight A seraphim of second sight Through mistletoe and frost and ice The Fisher King in brush stroked flight Written For Pollyanna Pickering and Anna-Louise Richard Bonfield Newton Harcourt Leicestershire Late November 2006

Kate Watkins

Pelicans 2

The Pelican Chorus King and Queen of the Pelicans we; No other Birds so grand we see!

None but we have feet like fins!

With lovely leathery throats and chins!

Ploffskin, Pluffskin, Pelican jee!

We think no Birds so happy as we!

Plumpskin, Ploshkin, Pelican jill!

We think so then, and we thought so still!

We live on the Nile. The Nile we love.

By night we sleep on the cliffs above; By day we fish, and at eve we stand On long bare islands of yellow sand.

And when the sun sinks slowly down And the great rock walls grow dark and brown, Where the purple river rolls fast and dim And the Ivory Ibis starlike skim, Wind to wing we dance around, Stamping our feet with a flumpy sound, Opening our mouths as Pelicans ought, And this is the song we nightly snort; Ploffskin, Pluffskin, Pelican jee!

We think no Birds so happy as we!

Plumpskin, Ploshkin, Pelican jill!

We think so then, and we thought so still!

Edward Lear

The Magic in the Air The magic in the air streams Gently awakening forgotten hopes and dreams Of life beyond the turmoil and the strife Of current times it listens in the trees With gentle dancing breeze.

And birds dawn calling crow, dove and hen.

Resounding round the countryside Flying in early tapping sun The cacophony of sound and colour, While most of man is still abed Head pillowed softly in night-ending Far away before consciousness arises.

Baby-sleeping perfections calm Heaven-kissed earthly balm Bathed in fond embrace, twisted sheets Loves single embrace body resting free With gentle snore and moan vibrates The steamed windows and stirs the air Yet asleep no care, no knowing, only peace.

Nature’s call rings loud and clear ‘I’m here, so waken to this new day.

It’s time for magic and for play.

Open your mind from blindness And feel the constant joy reverberating Rosemary Graham

From earth to stars. The Universe masses The many-silvered streams of life calls The new dawn day of bliss.

This is the way, hasten away From slumber to be, to see the miracle.

It’s in the dashing of the sea The sun, the stars, the moon.

Its force is come, none too soon.

So clothe yourself, get up and dance Engage in what waits, sits on your plate Unnoticed with eyes open at last.

Forget the past and see wide-eyed Wide-eared and voiced. You have the choice.

I beg of you to know, feel the glow Of each moment now, its liberty is yours.

Open all your doors and be.

Stand bare-chested in the ecstasy And life will never be the same.

Join the game to freedom It’s free for you, and you and me And the whole world needs this space Its place is here right now And I have shown you how.

The Magic in the Air

Rosemary Graham

Song of Wandering Aengus I went down to the hazel wood, Because a fire was in my head, I cut and peeled a hazel wand, And hooked a berry to a thread; And when white moths were on the wing, And moth-like stars were flickering out, I dropped the berry in a stream And hooked a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor I went to blow the fire aflame, When something rustled on the floor, And someone called me by my name: It had become a glimmering girl With apple blossom in her hair Who called me by my name and ran And faded in the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering Through hollow lands and hilly lands, I will find out where she has gone, And kiss her lips and hold her hand; And walk among long dappled grass, And pluck till time and times are done The silver apples of the moon, The golden apples of the sun.

William Butler Yeats

Sue Clegg

Song of Wandering Aengus

Sue Forster

“The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam”

Tony Ashton

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

From “The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam”

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ Moves on; nor all thy Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

Oberon’s speech I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows, Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine, With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine: There sleeps Titania sometime of the night, Lull’d in these flowers with dances and delight; And there the snake throws her enamell’d skin, Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in: William Shakespeare

A Darkling Thrush I leant upon a coppice gate When Frost was spectre-gray, And Winter’s dregs made desolate The weakening eye of day.

The tangled bine-stems scored the sky Like strings of broken lyres, And all mankind that haunted nigh Had sought their household fires.

The land’s sharp features seemed to be The Century’s corpse outleant, His crypt the cloudy canopy, The wind his death-lament.

The ancient pulse of germ and birth Was shrunken hard and dry, And every spirit upon earth Seemed fervourless as I. At once a voice arose among The bleak twigs overhead In a full-hearted evensong Of joy illimited ; An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small, In blast-beruffled plume, Had chosen thus to fling his soul Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings Of such ecstatic sound Was written on terrestrial things Afar or nigh around, That I could think there trembled through His happy good-night air Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew And I was unaware.

Suzy Drake

A Darkling Thrush

Thomas Hardy

Antonia Glynne Jones

Olympic Sunflowers III

AJ Blustin Hymn of winter

Hymn of winter

Ah Sunflower

Early frost of starlight, you bless the field at evening, Filigree of treetops worshipping below; And I’m watching for the end of the day, as it is leaving Sunset lying amber in the snow.

Ah Sunflower, weary of time, Who countest the steps of the sun; Seeking after that sweet golden clime

Though the world is frozen - and animals are sleeping, Birds have flown away - I know I’m not alone, For in every twig and snowflake I feel that he is near me, Spirit child of winter long ago.

Where the traveller’s journey is done; Where the Youth pined away with desire, And the pale virgin shrouded in snow, Arise from their graves, and aspire Where my Sunflower wishes to go!

Deep within the stillness, the spirit child is singing; What is still to come draws near what went before, And what’s old is ever young, and each end is a beginning: Yesterday, tomorrow, evermore.

A J Blustin

William Blake