News
I am thrilled to have two of my poems appearing in print. ‘The Budgerigar’ was selected by poet Pascale Petit as a winner of the Poetry Society members’ competition, and will be published in the Winter edition of Poetry News. Meanwhile, ‘From the Bridge’ features in Green Verse, a new nature anthology from Saraband
From the Bridge
A white brick dappled with grey
thrown on the river stones or stranded there by high water
is, on closer view, a gull.
It turns its head dully, blinking now and then,
unable to know why it is grounded.
Swifts taunt overhead as the sun dies.
At dawn the kingfisher plies the river.
All day the gull is motionless; all night.
On the third morning it is splayed
wings wide, neck outstretched,
pressed down by an invisible block.
The shape it makes on the land
is the shape it would make in the sky,
could it any longer fly.
It has fallen down the light,
the living eye turning to slate.
– Jill Hopper
This month I interviewed fellow 26er Sarah Jane Butler: https://thewriterswalk.com/p/walking-with-sarah-jane-butler-author
– Sarah Farley
Outside Cambridge Guildhall, a small group of Global Justice Now activists sang songs with words by me: “The fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty song” to the tune “Plaisir d’amour,” and
“COP29, here’s what we want to see” to the tune “Farley Castle.”
These book-ended leaflets pumped, placards brandished and signatures gathered.
– Aidan Baker
Recommendations
I’m always inspired by visual art, and my writing always aspires to be visual. So two beautiful exhibitions provided extraordinary inspiration this month. First the Monet exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery, which has a collection of paintings Monet made in London, focusing on the Thames, sunsets and sunrises, and the bridges from Waterloo to Westminster. Great particularly for any of us taking part in the 26 Bridges project. (Image above.)
Second, the National Gallery exhibition of late works by Van Gogh, mainly painted in the Arles asylum. Out of such anguish came such joyful beauty. Great for any member of the human race. (Read Alastair Creamer’s review.)
– John Simmons
Diana McVeagh, Gerald Finzi: his life and music (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2005). In the summer I read Katharine Towers’ let him bring a shrubbe, a pamphlet of poems inspired by this composer, who died in 1956. Many of the incidents that drew poems from KT were unknown to me, but her acknowledgments included praise of the McVeagh biography. It’s a rich, detailed and clear-eyed account of Finzi’s achievements, and the detail is “warts and all.”
– Aidan Baker
Over the autumn I put together the programme notes for a chamber music festival in Essex (the Roman River Festival). One of the pieces I had to write about was called “I Find Planets” – a composition by Tom Coult which sets words generated by a Twitterbot, programmed to announce a new imaginary planet every hour. In mulling over AI for this month’s mini-project, I kept returning to it as perhaps the only AI written text that (as arranged by Tom) I have found truly moving and impactful, capturing something wonderful in its surreal non sequiturs. It reminds me of a child stumbling upon a profound truth…
– Max Parfitt
I Find Planets
I have discovered a planet.
It has 23 rings.
It is where the comets roam, obscured by a dust cloud.
We could journey there when the catastrophe comes.
I have discovered a planet.
It is not on any maps, not in the guidebooks.
It is so far.
Five moons dance under its dying star
– what a tantalising place.
I have discovered a planet.
It could be a safe planet.
They know so much about us on that world.
Some of its mountains look like topaz.
I have discovered a planet.
I set sail on Thursday.
The planet makes me think of my parents, makes me feel needed.
Something there conjures memories of an old song.
I have found you a planet.
It is right here – it is our little secret.
Will you go with me?