Who first wrote roses are red, violets are blue, honey is sweet and so are you? Who were the lines written for? And when? Plus is poetry the language of love? Just some of the questions Pele Cox and I seek answers to in this special lovers’ edition. Oh and which poet would you take to bed?
Ovid was Rome’s supreme poet of love so who better to choose for this St Valentine’s Day special? The Amores, a collection of elegies addressed to a mistress named Corinna, sparkled with humour, self-mockery, and erotic candour. He followed this with the Heroides, a daring series of fictional letters written from the perspectives of mythological heroines — Penelope, Dido, Medea — giving voice to women’s desire and suffering in ways that felt revolutionary. His most notorious work, the Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love), presented itself as a tongue-in-cheek instructional manual on seduction, covering everything from where to meet lovers to how to maintain their affections. It was playful, subversive, and deeply at odds with Emperor Augustus’s moral legislation promoting traditional family values.
Rich writes…
Iamb, caesura, enjambment… there are loads of fancy words when you look under the bonnet of any poem and, just like the engine of my old Ford Capri, you don’t need to know what every part does to enjoy the thrill of the open road or read. In this episode I mention iambic pentameter and hexameter. Put simply an iamb is a unit of measure in poetry much like a centimetre or inch is a unit on a tape measure. Specifically an iamb is two syllables: the first a short one; the second longer. I am is a good example although I prefer to think of an iamb as a heartbeat ba- boom, ba-boom, ba-boom.… So pentameter is five heartbeats or iambs. And iambic hexameter is six heartbeats. I’d thoroughly recommend THE MAKING OF A POEM – A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms by Mark Strand and Eavan Boland for its easy-to-read approach to all things iambic. Think of it as the poetic equivalent of the Haynes Workshop Manual I still have for that Capri!
What is poetic voice? Is it synonymous with style? Or something else? Perhaps the poet’s “take” on the world? Pele Cox and Rich Uridge seek answers from a range of greats including Emily Dickinson, Edna St Vincent Millay and Vernon Watkins who, with a drunken Dylan Thomas, tripped over a feather!
Pele Cox and I ask: what is the purpose of poetry? With the help of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sir Philip Sidney and Sir Thomas Wyatt, we conclude that, in part, poetry’s job is to move readers to virtuous action or “well doing and not well knowing only” as Sidney put it.
Along the way we notice similarities between 16th century Elizabethan London and 21st century Trump’s America where to speak one’s mind risks losing one’s head – figuratively if not literally these days. But despite the risks poets, we agree, need to be rebellious.
A walking stick, a deadly arc Your face unstitched and come apart. The dying light’s the deepest dark It casts a shadow, leaves a mark.
A finger painting just in red A rainbow arched beside your bed. No treasured end, a chest of blood All stuffed with sheets to stem the flood.
While three wards up a different cry From howls of pain to sobs of joy A mother chests a swaddled boy
And each lights up the other’s face Both full of life both full of grace A summer sun that floods the space.
We are three kinds of spectral light: The lightning on a summer’s night, The flash that makes us blinding bright;
The lodestar guiding us from birth That marks the way and warms the earth And steers through storms that plash our path;
The dying light’s the deepest dark. It casts a shadow, leaves a mark.
This is the latest in a series of poems born* from my mother’s violent death at the hands of another resident in what should have been the safety and sanctity of her care home bedroom. Black Holewas the first creative response to the awfulness of it all.
Three kinds of light has been a long time coming. It started as a no more than a few lines and a title three months ago and has gradually taken shape – perhaps even subconsciously – ever since. Until it emerged in roughly the shape it is presented here I might have been inclined to call that period a time of writers’ block. But it strikes me now that struggling with the mechanical part of writing – putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard – is really just a sign that you haven’t yet done enough of the rational and emotional stuff that lies at the very heart of poetry.
*I think that’s the right word. It struck me as she departed this world from her A&E cubicle at Luton Dunstable Hospital how, just a few floors away, other souls were arriving in the maternity unit. Arrivals and departures almost like railway terminus.
The poet Pele Cox and I discuss the differences between poetry (her world) and journalism (mine). With the help of Ted Hughes and his Birthday Letters we talk about how poetry can tackle shocking subject matter in a way that prose alone cannot. I talk about writing my own shocking experience.
Plus poetry as a portal to another world or a time machine to another place. And the need for absolute honesty.
Poets
Ted Hughes (55 Eltisley; The Blue Flannel Suit, both from The Birthday Letters)
Delighted to announce that I’m co-hosting a series of talks on poetry with the poet Pele Cox. I’ll make sure I post each episode here as we record it. Or you can check out the programme website or sign up through your usual podcast provider. Just search for Pele’s Poetry Podcast.
Richard Uridge interviews the photojournalist, Don McCullin, in his Somerset home for BBC Radio 4’s Open Country programme. Produced by Hugh O’Donnell.
Like many journalists of my generation I’ve had a fascination with the work of the press photographer Don McCullin for my whole career. Each of his images manages to tell a story that us writers would struggle to convey in a thousand words.
It didn’t just tell a story then. It speaks to us now. Not least how the nature of protest has both changed and stayed the same. Juxtapose this image in your head with a contemporary one from the front line of protests in London now. And remember front lines aren’t always in war zones.
When I first posted this I promised to see if I could dig out the audio from my interview with him. Thanks to a very helpful producer at the BBC I’ve managed to secure a copy. I hope you’ll agree it makes a fascinating listen. Copyright, of course, remains with the BBC for who I am grateful for allowing me to share this programme first broadcast on January 22nd 2005.
There is no past Remembered Or future Imagined. Just the present.
Tense.
A singularity.
You live in the moment. Very on point as they say. Content (or so I hope) sucking tea from a sippy cup Or shredding tissues in your lap
While I am walking an imaginary dog (the one I was convinced would persuade you to let me have a real one for my 13th birthday) Searching for something Like a long forgotten book Cursing that it’s always in the last place you look And hearing you laughing In that slightly hurtful grown up way of yours: Of course it is! Because when you find it You stop searching.
Finding something, I say: Remember that time… …before trailing off. Both of us lost to thought.
Though August’s barely halfway through The copse is clad in autumn’s hue Its summer greens now fading fast And taking on a rusty cast.
Embroidered by the evening sun The trees from threads of gold were spun But in the furnace split and cracken And dieback tips of ash twigs blacken.
Limp limbs hang from peels of bark The heartwood dry and much too dark. Blackthorn sloes - peas - shrivelled slim Won’t stiffen up the Christmas gin.
And conkers spilt from cankered cases Too small for boys to string on laces. Once shiny pebbles dulled by dust The stream bed still, the silt now crust.
Yet though the drouth fires rage infernal A shoot of green, spring hopes eternal.
