The true nature of English poetry
In 2007 Simon Armitage published a translation of the fourteenth century poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. In 2018 he published a Revised Edition. In a “NOTE” on this new version he says: There are no radical changes, particularly in the tone and attitude of the translation and its emphasis on alliteration;
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It is almost fifty years ago that I first gained some acquaintance with the wonderful 14th century poem called ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’. Since that time I have grown to love and respect its wonderful wit and craftsmanship more deeply.
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It was in 2004 that I took a more active interest in The Poetry Society of which I had been a member for some years. It had long seemed to me that most of the new pieces that were published as ‘poetry’ in the Society’s quarterly Newsletter and in its magazine Poetry Review were not truly poetry at all.
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I ask the question because I found the process of learning a poem of his for the purpose of recitation somewhat maddening. I am used to memorising poetry. the better to perform it; and sometimes I can master a poem in a day, but it took me months to memorise ‘The Hawk in the Rain’, the title poem of Ted Hughes’
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Ruth Padel has been ‘Chair’ of The Poetry Society, and is an authoress of note. I present here an analysis of some of her recent writing about English poetry. *** Ms Padel published a book in 2002 called 52 WAYS OF LOOKING AT A POEM.
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In her book 52 WAYS OF LOOKING AT A POEM published by Chatto and Windus in 2002 Ms Ruth Padel chooses as her first poem a piece called ‘Mrs Noah: Taken After the Flood’ by Jo Shapcott. Here it is: I can’t sit still these days.
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I have a great interest in English poetry, as I am sure do many if not all members of The Queen’s English Society. I think that ‘the world of English poetry’, if it may be called that, is in considerable confusion in some respects.
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Don Paterson’s essay in Poetry Review, Volume 97:2 is entitled
The Lyric Principle
Part 1: The Sound of Sense
and has this introduction:-
These are the first two sections of an essay the concluding instalment of which will appear in the next issue of Poetry Review, 97:3.
The three paragraphs of this peculiar Editorial are taken sentence by sentence, in order, as it were, to keep our footing in somewhat slippery stuff.