Mark McGuinness, poetry

Philip Larkin — ‘A Study of Reading Habits’

July 19, 2009

Following on from Auden’s American accent, I’ve discovered the reverse phenomenon in Larkin’s Sunday Sessions.
In ‘A Study of Reading Habits’ he uses the American word ‘dude’ — which, in the recorded version, he pronounces ‘dyood’ (instead of the usual ‘dood’) in a very arch Received Pronunciation.
It’s very funny. And I’m guessing deliberately conservative, in a [...]

Philip Larkin — The Sunday Sessions

July 18, 2009

Required listening for Larkin fans — The Sunday Sessions — a recently rediscovered recording of the poet reading some of his best poems:
The Sunday Sessions consists of twenty-six poems, the contents of two tapes recorded by Philip Larkin in Hull in February 1980 — reportedly each on a Sunday after lunch with John weeks, [...]

Geoffrey Hill Interview in the Oxonian Review

May 25, 2009

Thanks to Baroque in Hackney for finding this Interview with Geoffrey Hill in the Oxonian Review.
For someone with a reputation for forbiddingly serious poetry, its nice to see he doesn’t take himself too seriously:
How do you envisage your own poetry’s readership?
Impossible to say. When I see my half-yearly royalties statements I seem not to [...]

Seamus Heaney — ‘Casualty’

May 10, 2009

I‘m two thirds of the way through Stepping Stones, Dennis O’Driscoll’s interviews with Seamus Heaney, which effectively constitute an autobiography. (So expect the Heaney tag in the sidebar to keep getting bigger.)
It’s like reading in High Definition.
There are some spectacular moments, like Heaney’s description of a visionary experience among the skyscrapers of Manhattan, [...]

Ted Hughes on the Poet’s Gift

April 26, 2009

The poet’s only hope is to be infinitely sensitive to what his gift is, and this in itself seems to be another gift that few poets possess.
‘Context’, Winter Pollen
Apart from self-knowledge, this is a good argument for feedback – provided you can find an infinitely sensitive critic (who doesn’t mince their words).

Seamus Heaney on R.S. Thomas

April 25, 2009

Heaney nails R.S. Thomas in on of the Stepping Stones interviews with Dennis O’Driscoll:
He got very far as a poet, a loner taking on the universe, a kind of Clint Eastwood of the spirit.
Hilarious. As well as accurate and affectionate. If there isn’t an R.S.Thomas collection called Unforgiven, there should be.

Sticks and Stones — Dryden and Rochester

April 23, 2009

Dryden had virulent enemies in his time. His satires and the king’s favour enraged John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, who legend says had him mugged one night in a dark passageway off Garrick Street, near Covent Garden.
(Michael Schmidt, Lives of the Poets, p.300)
I’m not a big fan of Dryden’s poetry, and there’s nothing wrong with [...]

Seamus Heaney — ‘Bog Queen’

April 19, 2009

I have an especially happy memory of writing ‘Bog Queen’ Because it was the first time in my life, believe it or not, that I’d spent a whole uninterrupted work day on a poem. Before we moved to Wicklow, you know, my time wasn’t particularly my own: there was always the Queen’s job, or the [...]

Seamus Heaney — ‘The Lift’

April 11, 2009

How about this for a piece of verbal magic in Heaney’s elegy for a ‘favourite aunt’ (in District and Circle):
She took the risk, at last, of certain joys –
Her birdtable and jubilating birds,
The ‘fashion’ in her wardrobe and tallboy.
Look how hard the word ‘jubilating’ is working here — except it’s not really working, more like [...]

Allen Ginsberg on Poetry

April 11, 2009

Allen Ginsberg pops up in the Dylan documentary No Direction Home and gives this impromptu definition of poetry:
Poetry is words that are empowered to make your hair stand on end, that you recognise instantly as being some form of subjective truth that has an objective reality to it, because somebody’s realised it.
Then you call it [...]

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A notebook of poems I read, a scrapbook of poems I write