It was National Poetry Day yesterday. I love poetry. But there's nothing worse than looking at your Twitter timeline and seeing folk banging on about it. I dislike the feeling of being churlish and sour of spirit (where's the harm in tweeting poetry?), while at the same time I think it's quite a sane reaction; Twitter is no place to be, if you want to 'create' anything other than kitten pictures, puns and one-liners. The inner disquiet produced by all this, is enough to put me off writing, completely. Well, for about five minutes. Almost!
It's not really that though. For me, the whole literary thing feels a bit distasteful and uncomfortable. There are a couple of exceptions though. There's a John Betjeman account I like, and a Richard Jefferies.
My favourite poet is probably Coleridge. I'm fondest of him anyway. It's probably the opium. I've most likely absorbed quantities of it via his poems, through some form of psychogenic osmosis.
Frost at Midnight is probably my favourite Coleridge poem. 'The Frost performs its secret ministry, Unhelped by any wind*.'
I'm unlikely to have discovered it had I not bought a small second hand edition of a selection of his poems after browsing in a second hand bookshop about twenty years ago. The bookshop closed ten years ago, at least, and now there is nowhere to browse, unless I go to a city.
Don't start me off complaining again, but you can't browse books on the internet. You just can't.
There once was a girl with a plan
To cook with an old frying pan
She fried up some bread
And stood on her head
In a market in Uzbekhistan.
S.T. Coleridge (after)
*titters at the word wind
It's not really that though. For me, the whole literary thing feels a bit distasteful and uncomfortable. There are a couple of exceptions though. There's a John Betjeman account I like, and a Richard Jefferies.
My favourite poet is probably Coleridge. I'm fondest of him anyway. It's probably the opium. I've most likely absorbed quantities of it via his poems, through some form of psychogenic osmosis.
Frost at Midnight is probably my favourite Coleridge poem. 'The Frost performs its secret ministry, Unhelped by any wind*.'
I'm unlikely to have discovered it had I not bought a small second hand edition of a selection of his poems after browsing in a second hand bookshop about twenty years ago. The bookshop closed ten years ago, at least, and now there is nowhere to browse, unless I go to a city.
Don't start me off complaining again, but you can't browse books on the internet. You just can't.
There once was a girl with a plan
To cook with an old frying pan
She fried up some bread
And stood on her head
In a market in Uzbekhistan.
S.T. Coleridge (after)
*titters at the word wind
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