Poetry And . . . Strength, Hope, Discovery and Silence

It’s good to be by the sea out of season. It’s even better to be somewhere quiet in the company of others who share your needs and interests, chances to read and talk together, good food provided, and peace on tap. That’s what is on offer throughout this long weekend at Othona.

 POETRY AND  STRENGTH, HOPE, DISCOVERY AND SILENCE  

We are living in unusual times. Never has a small community like Othona seemed more able to fill the gap in our lives and massage what we have. The four themes of this weekend belong together like a quartet of instruments: hope against the odds, strength to manage our lives and ourselves, discovery of new ways and possibilities, silence as a place of renewal and energy.

HOPE

For George Herbert, hope is an anchor and for Emily Dickinson it’s a thing with feathers. But the painter G F Watts had other ideas: he pictured it as a she, blind or at least blindfolded, sitting in apparent comfort on top of the world and trying to hear what music the single surviving string of her broken lyre could play to her and anyone listening. This puzzle picture can tell us things we want to know about Hope. Some of the poets featured in our Hope sessions leave us in no doubt as to how they see hope. Others share Watts’s sense of it as a mystery.

Poems to be chosen from Emily Dickinson, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Elinor Morton Wylie; Nobel Laureates Seamus Heaney and Wislawa Szymborska;  Wales’s former National Poet Gillian Clarke; Thomas Hardy, George Herbert, Elizabeth Jennings, William Shakespeare, Alfred Tennyson.

STRENGTH

The experiences of those who love poetry clearly suggest that reading the right poem at the right (or even the wrong) moment can leave us actually feeling stronger. 

We think we need strength to go back to a place in childhood, build self-belief in difficult circumstances, or keep our heads above water. Then the poets show us how strength can actually come from doing these things, and we can feel, as we read, how the strength was coming to them, and some of it rubs off on us.  

Poems can prove that when we may be at a loss to find strength, we are not alone. A poem becomes the letter in our pocket that we have just opened and are relieved to have read.

Poems to be chosen from Anna Akhmatova, Charles Bukowski, John Clare, C Day-Lewis, Emily Dickinson, W S Graham, Seamus Heaney, W E Henley, Vladimir Khodasevich, Edna St Vincent Millay, Marianne Moore, Jo Shapcott, Alfred Tennyson, R S Thomas, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Adam Zagajewski.

DISCOVERY

Poems about discovery can be our best reminder to live here and now: these poems, at their best, celebrate noticing what just happened (on or off the page) and stopping to drink it in. Elizabeth Bishop can make you think that you have never really seen a fish before, John Ormond that you have not thought thoroughly about the builders of cathedrals. Every time, the poet is at least one step ahead of us, or even on a path we’ve never taken. The result may be renewal as well as newness, which is what W H Auden meant when he hoped his reader would say, “Of course, I knew that all the time but never realized it before.” 

Ivan Lalíc finds communion with a young woman visited by Vesuvius in Pompeii, William Carlos Williams discovers the taste of cold plums, Philip Larkin listens to trees. Their discoveries need not be envied, because they have gifted each one to us, and we get to live twice over and over again.

Poems to be chosen from Fleur Adcock, John Berryman, Elizabeth Bishop, W Carlos Williams, Charles Causley, Eleanor Farjeon, Thomas Hardy, Jane Hirshfield, Kathleen Jamie, Jackie Kay, Galway Kinnell, Ivan Lalíc, Philip Larkin, D H Lawrence, Edna St Vincent Millay, John Ormond and William Stafford.

SILENCE

Many people find a potent silence in the action of reading or writing poetry. We sense a stillness that surrounds those moments when poetry ‘moves’ us. There are qualities of silence on the poem’s page, along the lines, connecting the verses, above, below, beside and between the words. And there is the experience of silence in life which comes to us through the poet’s understanding of our inner and outer worlds. Poets who read poetry make better poets. Readers get better too. 

Edward Thomas is gifted an owl’s cry in the night, Arthur Rimbaud holds his breath at dawn, Antonio Machado watches the rain from his winter fireside, Jorie Graham reflects on silence in the poem, Qiu Wei is walking in the hills. 

Poems from Anna Akhmatova, Matsuo Basho, Elizabeth Bishop, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Jorie Graham, Seamus Heaney, George Herbert, John Keats, Antonio Machado, Qiu Wei, Arthur Rimbaud, Umberto Saba, Sappho, Wallace Stevens, Edward Thomas, William Wordsworth, W B Yeats

These sessions are always focussed and informal. Everyone can feel free to express their thoughts and feelings about the poems as they want to. A lot of ground gets covered, poems and readers come alive, and friends are quickly made of the poets and each other.