Poetry. It’s only now that I realise what a privileged upbringing that was, to have a grandfather who quoted Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Tennyson, Browning, Dickinson, Coleridge or Dylan Thomas. He thought it normal to read the War Poets to me even though I didn't understand them. He was the only person in my, then, family with any integrity. He taught me about nature, the stars, plants and he taught he to read. He used to shout Yeats and Lear at the top of his voice when my bitch of a grandmother was doing or saying something awful. She pushed him down the loft ladder once and he broke his leg and almost died of pneumonia. When he eventually died I was not told. I was locked in the kitchen and I remember standing on a stool peering through the keyhole and saw these men come in with a box and then go out with it. I didn't know at the time that he was in it. He was never mentioned after that. I need to find his grave and go and read him some poetry.
This continuing love of poetry has influenced me all my life and I turn to it for every occasion or every mood. Poetry and art. Literature I can take it or leave it - Victorian literature I can definitely leave. There is something about poetry - words, so lovely, so magical, so powerful, what is said in between the words. When I read a book I think 'get on with it, stop waffling about - I disliked the bookish side of my degree intensely and loved it when critique was applied to poetry, music and art. yet so elusive. I feel as though I am in a lyrical embrace when reading poetry.
Poetry is my light in the darkness, my finger in the chocolate fudge, my rock when fear surrounds me. Poetry is my delight, it breaths in air and it breaths out light. I bask in the joyful glow that is poetry.
Poetry by Pablo Neruda
- And it was at that age ... Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no, they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
frm the branches of night,
abruptly from others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.
I did not know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names,
my eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire,
and I wrote the firts faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating plantations,
shadow perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire and flowers,
the winding night, the universe.
And I, infitesimal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
for myself a pure part of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke loose on the wind.
(Translated form the Spnish by Alastair Reid)
