Tag Archives: Sandra Danby

A poem to read in the bath… ‘Oxfam’

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I read this glimpse at the detritus of life and I am standing in my local Oxfam shop. Another great offering from Carol Ann Duffy.

[photo: carolannduffy.co.uk]

[photo: carolannduffy.co.uk]

Because of copyright restrictions I am unable to reproduce the poem in full, but please search it out in an anthology or at your local library.

‘Oxfam’
A silvery, pale-blue satin tie, freshwater in sunlight, 50p.
Charlotte Rhead, hand-painted oval bowl, circa 1930, perfect
for apples , pears, oranges a child’s hand takes without
a second thought, £80. Rows of boots marking time, £4.
Shoes like history lessons, £1.99. That jug, 30p, to fill with milk.”

A reminder that in today’s world of excess, one person’s cast-offs can be another person’s treasure.

For Carol Ann Duffy’s website, click here.
Click here for Sheer Poetry, an online poetry resource, by the poets themselves, for all poetry lovers from general readers to schoolchildren.
Why did Duffy write a poem about a charity shop, click here to read a story from The Mirror explaining why.

Carol Ann Duffy

 

‘The Bees’ by Carol Ann Duffy [UK: Picador] 

Read these other excerpts and find a new poet to love:-
‘On Turning Ten’ by Billy Collins
‘Elegy of a Common Soldier’ by Dennis B Wilson
‘Alone’ by Dea Parkin

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
A #poem to read in the bath: ‘Oxfam’ by Carol Ann Duffy http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1gb via @SandraDanby

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Favourite Lines from Favourite Books: Swallows and Amazons

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page - swallows and amazons 27-7-15“I should have been sorry to lose the old box, because it’s been with me all over the world. And I should have lost the book I’ve been writing all summer in spite of the efforts of Nancy and Peggy to make any writing impossible. Never any of you start writing books. It isn’t worth it. This summer has been harder work for me than all the thirty years of knocking up and down that went before it. And if those scoundrels had got away with the box I could never have done it again.”

Captain Flint, on the return of his manuscript Mixed Moss [excerpt from Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome]

To see why my old copy of Swallows and Amazons [below] is important to me, click here. Swallows and Amazons - book cover 13-3-14

Swallows and Amazons

 

‘Swallows and Amazons’ by Arthur Ransome [UK: Vintage Children’s Classics] Buy now

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
Favourite lines from SWALLOWS AND AMAZONS by Arthur Ransome #books http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Ia via @SandraDanby

My Top 5… World War Two novels

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This was an impossible list to write. My childhood was filled with World War Two novels and films, plus lots of cowboy and westerns too, thanks to my father. So this list combines childhood favourites with literature discovered in later years.

‘Sophie’s Choice’ by William Styron World War TwoWho can forget the book, or that scene in the 1982 film. Sophie’s Choice: the phrase now commonly known to mean ‘an impossible choice’. Buy now

‘Where Eagles Dare’ by Alistair MacLean World War TwoThe 1968 film: Clint Eastwood, Richard Burton, need I say more? I gobbled Alistair MacLean’s books as a child; cheap paperbacks bought by my father and read by us all. Old-fashioned now, but still great page-turners. Buy now

‘Schindler’s Ark’ by Thomas Keneally World War TwoI bought this one in July 1983 after it won the 1982 Booker Prize. In 1993 it was made into the film Schindler’s List starring Liam Neeson as Oskar Schindler, Ben Kingsley as Itzhak Stern and a young Ralph Fiennes as the terrifying Amon Goeth. Buy now

‘Fortunes of War 1-3’ [The Balkan Trilogy] by Olivia Manning World War TwoGuy and Harriet Pringle [aka a very young Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thomspon, then married in real life, in the 1987 BBC television production]. I read the trilogy with hunger, back-to-back. They are still on my bookshelf, in fact all of these top five books are still on my bookshelf as are the others listed below. Buy now

‘Empire of the Sun’ by JG Ballard World War TwoAnother book turned into a great film. Features the Batman actor as a child, Christian Bale. This was the edition I bought, and my introduction to Ballard. After this, I bought many more of his books. Buy now

I have many more favourites:-
Fatherland and Enigma by Robert Harris
The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
The Reader by Bernhard Schlink
The Eagle has Landed by Jack Higgins
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernières
Restless by William Boyd
Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky
A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute

Others on my to-read pile?
Those Who Save Us by Jenna Blum
Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada
Night by Elie Wiesel

Do you agree with my other ‘Top 5’ choices?:-
My Top 5… music to write to
My top 5… novels about paintings
My Top 5… the Booker winners I re-read, and why

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
My Top 5 #WW2 novels http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1eh via @SandraDanby

A Poem-a-Day in April: ‘My Mother the Cow’

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A big thank you to poet Angelique Jamail who has chosen one of my poems for her Poem-a-Day series throughout April. Angelique is celebrating National Poetry Month so please check back again to see the other poems she has selected.

National Poetry Month

[photo: fanpop.com]

My poem ‘My Mother the Cow’ was written quickly when I was musing on fertility, springtime and motherhood. I grew up on a dairy farm and, of course, milk depends on cows and the birth of calves. So, I was surrounded by fertility from an early age, even if I didn’t quite understand the significance. My mother, the farmer’s wife, was the centre of the farm and our family.

To read my poem, click here to visit Angelique’s website ‘Sappho’s Torque’.

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
A #poem for #NationalPoetryMonth: ‘My Mother the Cow’ by @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Ca

A poem to read in the bath… ‘Sometimes and After’

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I am making a point of reading poets I am unfamiliar with, and wanted to share this poem by American poet Hilda Doolittle.

Hilda Doolittle

[photo: Wikipedia]

‘Sometimes and After’
Yet sometimes I would sweep the floor,
I would put daises in a tumbler,
I would have long dreams before, long day-dreams after;

 
there would be no gauntleted knock on the door,
or tap-tap with a riding crop,
no galloping here and back;

 
but the latch would softly lift,
would softly fall,
dusk would come slowly,

 
and even dusk could wait
till night encompassed us;
dawn would come gracious, not too soon,

 
day would come late,
and the next day and the next,
while I found pansies to take the place of daisies,

 
and a spray of apple-blossom after that,
no calendar of fevered hours,
Carthago delenda est and the Tyrian night.

Doolitte died in 1961. I love the transitory passing of time in this poem. And no, I didn’t understand the last line. Google Translate tells me ‘Carthago delenda est’ means ‘Carthage is destroyed’ in Latin, which I didn’t study at school. ‘Tyrian night’ still mystifies me, can anyone else help?

For more about Hilda Doolittle at the Poetry Foundation website, click here.

Hilda Doolittle

 

‘Collected Poems’ by Hilda Doolittle [New Directions] 

Read these other excerpts and find a new poet to love:-
‘The Road Not Taken’ by Robert Frost
‘Digging’ by Seamus Heaney
‘The Cinnamon Peeler’ by Michael Ondaatje

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
A #poem to read in the bath: ‘Sometimes and After’ by Hilda Doolittle http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1yt via @SandraDanby

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A poem to read in the bath… ‘Name’

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Today’s poem to read in your bath is another by the wonderful Carol Ann Duffy. I flick through her slim anthologies, looking for poems to select for this feature, and stop again and again: ‘this one, and this one… and this one.’

‘Name’ is about the delights on new love, not necessarily young love, just the feeling when you realize liking is loving.

[photo: wikipedia]

[photo: wikipedia]

Because of copyright restrictions I am unable to reproduce the poem in full, but please search it out in an anthology or at your local library or click the link below to hear Duffy read the poem aloud.

‘Name’
When did your name
change from a proper noun
to a charm?

Its three vowels
like jewels
on the thread of my breath.

Duffy encapsulates that feeling of new love so well it is impossible to read without being drawn back through years of memories.

To read another Carol Ann Duffy poem, ‘Elegy’ in my blog series ‘A poem to read in the bath…’, click here.

To listen to Carol Ann Duffy read ‘Name’ click here for The Poetry Archive website.

In 1989, Carol Ann Duffy spoke to the BBC Programme ‘English File’ about what inspires her to write. Click here to watch it.

Rapture by Carol Ann Duffy 16-6-14

 

‘Rapture’ by Carol Ann Duffy [UK: Picador] 

Read these other excerpts and find a new poet to love:-
‘Runaways’ by Daniela Nunnari
‘Sometimes and After’ by Hilda Doolittle
‘Happiness’ by Stephen Dunn

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
A #poem to read in the bath: ‘Name’ by Carol Ann Duffy http://wp.me/p5gEM4-14G via @SandraDanby

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A poem to read in the bath… ‘My Heart Leaps Up’

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This short poem by William Wordsworth says a lot of me about being a child, being an adult, and appreciation of nature. I had a wonderful Wordsworth lecturer at university who truly loved the poet and she brought his poems to life with her enthusiasm, so this poem is dedicated to Mary Wedd who recited Wordsworth’s poems and showed us photographs of the Lake District.

William Wordsworth

[photo: lake-district-guides.co.uk]

‘My Heart Leaps Up’
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 WordsworthAbove is my old copy of ‘Selected Poems’, written on the inside cover with my name and college and the date ‘December 1979’ making it one of the first books I bought. I remember the anticipation I felt, never having studied Wordsworth before. My Everyman’s University Library edition was published in the Seventies by JM Dent & Sons. Dent is now an imprint of Orion.

William Wordsworth

[photo: poetryfoundation.org]

For the Poetry Foundation’s biography of Wordsworth [above], click here.

William Wordsworth

‘Selected Poems’ by William Wordsworth [UK: Penguin Classics] 

Read these other excerpts and find a new poet to love:-
‘The Dead’ by Billy Collins
‘Name’ by Carol Ann Duffy
‘Alone’ by Dea Parkin

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
A #poem to read in the bath: ‘My Heart Leaps Up’ by William Wordsworth http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1g1 via @SandraDanby

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Great opening paragraph…61

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haruki murakami - dance dance dance 10-6-13“I often dream about the Dolphin Hotel.

In these dreams, I’m there, implicated in some kind of ongoing circumstance. All indications are that I belong to this dream continuity.

The Dolphin Hotel is distorted, much too narrow. It seems more like a long, covered bridge. A bridge stretching endlessly through time. And there I am, in the middle of it. Someone else is there too, crying.

The hotel envelops me. I can feel its pulse, its heat. In dreams, I am part of the hotel.”
‘Dance Dance Dance’ by Haruki Murakami [translated from the Japanese by Alfred Birnbaum]

A poem to read in the bath… ‘Winter Song’

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I came first to the war poets when I studied English Literature at university in London. We read them all: Owen, Sassoon, Graves, Brooke. I think it’s fair to say that in my early twenties I didn’t ‘get them’, not really. Wilfred Owen [below] composed his war poems between January 1917 when he was first sent to the Western Front, and November 1918 when he was killed. Only four of his poems were published during his lifetime. He is agreed to be the finest of the English poets writing about the First World War.

[photo: poetryfoundation.org]

[photo: poetryfoundation.org]

Instead of his most famous poems, ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ and ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’, I have chosen ‘Winter Song’. Written in October 1917, it immediately conjures up for me a Paul Nash painting [below] called ‘We are Making a New World’, painted in 1918 and on display in London at the Imperial War Museum. Paul Nash - We are Making a New World 19-6-14‘Winter Song’
The browns, the olives, and the yellows died,
And were swept up to heaven; where they glowed
Each dawn and set of sun till Christmastide,
And when the land lay pale for them, pale-snowed,
Fell back, and down the snow-drifts flamed and flowed.

From off your face, into the winds of winter,
The sun-brown and the summer-gold are blowing;
But they shall gleam again with spiritual glinter,
When paler beauty on your brows falls snowing,
And through those snows my looks shall be soft-going.

A quick search on Amazon revealed that a new copy of my edition of The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen would cost me £110, a used one £0.01.

For an interesting review by the BBC of the role poetry plays in our view of the First World War, click here.
To read The Poetry Foundation’s biography of Owen, click here.

the collected poems of wilfred owen 19-6-14a

 

‘The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen’ [Chatto & Windus]

Great opening paragraph…60

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Lord Jim - OP
“He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet, powerfully built, and he advanced straight at you with a slight stoop of the shoulders, head forward, and a fixed from-under stare which made you think of a charging bull. His voice was deep, loud, and his manner displayed a kind of dogged self-assertion which had nothing aggressive in it. It seemed a necessity, and it was directed apparently as much at himself as at anybody else. He was spotlessly neat, apparelled in immaculate white from shoes to hat, and in the various Eastern ports where he got his living as ship-chandler’s water-clerk he was very popular.”
‘Lord Jim’ by Joseph Conrad