The North wind doth blow though not very hard. Our windmill acts like a weathervane even when it’s not turning and it is facing resolutely north. We shall have snow. Continue reading
Category: Poem of the week (Page 2 of 2)
Over the Years, a poem about ageing and Alzheimer’s, stirs a sad, sweet memory but also hope. Dementia is part of family life – and loss – for so many of us now and I remember how it silenced my once sociable father. Yet Paula Jennings’ poetry, drawing on her work in a nursing home, invites a new way of talking and listening.
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
He wasn’t literally poor, of course. William Butler Yeats was born into an Anglo-Irish Protestant family at a time when the landed gentry were still in the last phase of their ascendancy. With that came the big houses, expensive schooling and freedom to move in elevated social circles of London and Dublin. Yet the ardent nationalist, poet and politician would surely be spinning merrily at the result of the Irish referendum. Continue reading
Another Monday. Another Poem of the Week and by good chance a brand new poetry book recently arrived in the post. Look out for Richard Ings. His first collection, Occasional, is bursting with good things. Some wry, some sad, some playful, some serious, some simply beautiful.
Continue readingTread softly because you tread on my dreams
Just over a month ago I posted a poem on Facebook for Valentines Day. It wasn’t my poem and I had gone to no great trouble to seek it out, in fact I pinched Wendy Cope’s beautiful If We Were Never Going to Die off the front page of the Guardian. To my surprise within a very short time I had clocked up a lot of Likes. Continue reading
