On Tuesday the 7th of May, The Wordsworth Trust had the pleasure of welcoming poets Anne Stevenson and Meg Peacocke for an evening of well written entertainment.
Meg Peacocke has lived and worked on a hill farm for 30 years, her daily observations providing her with the inspiration for her poetry. Other interests her work draws on, includes childhood memories, nostalgia, and a regard for life which is often depicted with a real sense of self-expression.
Meg Peacocke reading for The Wordsworth Trust
Meg gave a reading from her most recently published poetry book, Caliban Dancing. The title hints at a selection of poems in the book about Caliban, and displays the implications concerned with the difficulty of language, “Caliban Hunting” is a poem with created language, playing with the sound of words such as “Bubbler sidler twiddler” highlighting the creativity Meg possesses for creating new landscapes within her writing. Her passion for using language brought about a discussion on William Wordsworth himself and the challenges he faced finding and using appropriate language, thus demonstrating how similar these issues still are today for poets.
Meg’s use of language is at times humorous, as displayed in “Goose Hymn”; a particular favourite amongst the audience – taken from her other work – Selves. Written in the Geese’s own language, the rhythm and the flow of the poem injected humour with lines such as “It look us lub feed us/ going out comin in/ mind it mangly boot”. The longing of nostalgia and times past was deeply apparent in “How It Was”, conjuring up evocative images of “red tin buckets” and with phrases such as “if we could tell such stories”. “Dog Days” followed the same theme, the tone beset with colloquial language; “at your age, eh?” drawing on humour to emphasise these familiar points.
Anne Stevenson is a USA born poet who now splits her time between Durham and North Wales. Her work focuses on exploring her interests and her inspirations; which include the conflicting nature of science and technology with her own work as a poet and her childhood ambition to pursue a musical career. She read from her most recent publication, her 16th collection of poems Astonishment, the inspiration of which came from dreams.
Anne Stevenson reading for The Wordsworth Trust
Starting with “The Loom”, Anne painted a wonderfully atmospheric picture of a dreamy landscape, with descriptions containing “liquid shadow, fathoms deep”, and images that also display Anne’s musicality through her phrasing and texture of the words. “Constable Clouds and a Kestrel’s Feather” main focus is between the two different ideologies; of the poet and the scientist – Anne and her husband – “As a child did you never play the cloud-zoo game on summer days like these?”. The clouds mentioned in the poem are discussed from a scientific view and also through imagination and engagement with the world around us too, harking back to the focal point of childhood nostalgia. In “Teaching My Sons to Swim in Walden Pond”, Anne refers to herself as a “poet scientist”, a theme that blends the two different sides together in her poetry to form a unique perspective on her observation.
Anne’s emotive language is clearly displayed in “Night Thoughts”, a poem concerned with contemporary life and the transition between paper and technology. Dedicated to Glenn Storhaug, a printer and John Wells, an archivist, this philosophical poem is also a guise for exploring identity and the afterlife; a “story I’ll keep turning the pages of until it ends”, is a particularly resonating message for us all.
Next week we are pleased to welcome poets W N Herbert and Hannah Lowe for an evening on the 21st of May.
By Jo Marychurch, May 2013
Grasmere Poetry 