The Poetry Voice

Gerald Manley Hopkins (1884-1889) There was a time Hopkins featured on school lIterature syllabi. He may still do. He was often the first shocked encounter students had with a poet who was ‘difficult’. Generations floundered attempting to write something intelligent about something they found incomprehensible. They could of course get technical and try reading about ’sprung rhythm’, though that may have left them even more confused than before. They could delve into the biography and consider

Hugo Williams (1942-) I have admired William’s poetry since I discovered that the author of “No Particular Place to Go'“ wrote poems. My copy of that strange excursion into America has 1983 written inside the cover as its date of purchase. This poem is taken from his most recent collection, ‘Lines Off’ (Faber 2019). Most discussions of Williams’ poetry will sooner or later discuss the art of artlessness. In a world of pyrotechnics and syntaxtic acrobatics, written by earnest survivors of

James Laughlin (1914-1997) I knew very little about Laughlin except that he founded New Directions Publishing after Pound had told him ‘to do something useful’. I think this poem is a ‘version’ of a Latin poem by Propertius rather than a strict translation. I’ve taken it from ‘World Poetry’ edited by Washburn and Major where the poem’s title is followed by: (After the Pervigilium Veneris and Propertius’s ‘Nox Mihi Candida’.) Centuries after the originals were created, I suspect most people

T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) ‘For us there is only the trying, the rest is not our business’. Eliot’s disenchanted view of writing poetry probably sounds familiar to anyone who is serious about practising the craft. It’s full of quotable phrases. Writing poetry as a ‘raid on the inarticulate’ is perhaps the best description of the process that I know. This is only an extract. I would like to admire Four Quartets as a whole but I think it’s very uneven. It contains beautiful lines and images,

Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618) One of those poems that doesn’t date, that stays relevant? Ralegh or Raleigh, take your pick. The ultimate hyphenated man of the Elizabethan Renaissance. And nowhere does the gap between what the poems claim and what the poet did in his day job seem greater: this was the man who took part in the massacre at Smerwick. But he set off in tiny ships to sail to America, flamboyant Courtier, Royal Favourite, Brutal soldier, Poet, scholar, patron of poets, falling out of