JOHN KEATS, POETRY, LIFE & LANDSCAPE

 

I am so pleased to have the opportunity to share with you a new book about John Keats on the anniversary of his death. The wondrous Suzie Grogan just published this amazing book of her journey in his footsteps and influence of the landscape on his work. Over to you Suzie.

John Keats has been with me for many years, since my teens in fact, as a poet, as a man of letters and as a wise companion – his letters are full of the most wonderful insights into matters both worldly and personal. He has taken me on a journey with poetry that has given me a love of the art and an appreciation of what makes a poem a ‘good’ one. I have studied him in depth, but my appreciation is not just academic. Following in his footsteps has taken me into landscapes both historical and contemporary, with poets famous, and less well known. I would always advise even the most cynical person to find a poet who speaks to them as Keats does to me. As I say in my book, John Keats: Poetry, Life & Landscapes, ‘poetry distils the very essence of what it means to be human and to experience the joy, pain and occasionally sheer routine of being alive.’ It is not mere dreaming. It comes from somewhere deep within us.

Keats is not known as a poet of ‘place’ as Wordsworth is for example but walking with him it soon became clear that he was as influenced by landscape as any poet. The ‘landscape’ of London for example – both central and outer limits (he was born in Moorgate, trained at Guy’s Hospital and is best known for living in Hampstead) and of the home counties – Oxford, Chichester, Winchester, The Isle of Wight. In 1818 on a walking tour of the Lake District and Scotland he wrote no ‘classic’ great poetry, but images he absorbed on that journey are crucial to his development as a poet and appear in work he wrote the next year. ‘I never forgot my stature so completely;’ he wrote: ‘I live in the eye, and my imagination, surpassed, is at rest.’

 As impressed as he may have been by a view, however, he was still influenced by daily events of personal, local and national importance, as many poets are.

When we are at school, we are often required to read poetry out of context and without knowing much about the poet, their motivation or biography. This doesn’t always matter – poetry can speak to us on such a deep personal level that it is almost as if we had written it ourselves - but it is why so many still think of Keats as a poet ‘out of this world’, alive only as he reads the classics and dreams of the past. His place as a poet of landscape and of history, affected as much by contemporary events as his peers, like Shelley, has been the focus of the most recent scholarly work and has established Keats as a robust and pugnacious man, a loyal friend, a keen traveller and a poet of place. It is time we dispelled forever the myth of the consumptive youth, lying limp on a sofa in Hampstead and being nursed in Rome until his death from TB aged just 25.  

Thanks Suzie. It is interesting how people are parceled up into simple ciphers that can easily be sold to the public. 

You can read reviews of her book [and purchase a copy] here. It is an excellent read, treat yourself.

Until next time.

THE UNINVITED

The Uninvited is Chrissy Banks’ second collection and was recently published by Indigo Dreams. I have to say it is excellent and I have been returning to it again and again, over the past month. There is a quiet beauty to Chrissy's work and I have long been a fan.

The theme of The Uninvited is “what lives in shadow is always seeking a gap.” Chrissy is the cartographer of those liminal spaces that flicker on the edge of vision, a chronicler of the abandoned and ignored:

A house that’s forgotten

bellowing air, the pulse

of music and dance -

too long without children.

There is joy and a quiet humanity in its pages:

Sometimes all you need do

is ask, walk through the door

to the next room. Even now,

they are setting a place for you.

A thread of autobiography runs through The Uninvited, there are tales of Chrissy’s childhood and the strong women of her family.

the leggy girls from Liverpool, long-lashed, lush-lipped

hairtossers, hipswingers, quickwitted teasers and twisters,

minis under maxis, some slant eye boy on their mezzled minds

Even these autobiographical poems echo the temporary, seasonal workers on the Isle of Man were known as comeovers, the mystery of who exactly Uncle Lawrence was, and a New Year’s Eve’s ferry caught in all it’s diverse beauty. Her humanity and compassion are present on every page, this is a wondrous collection.

I urge you to check out this book. It is the work of a true poet. 

Minnows by Lizzy Stewart

There were indications that Lizzy Stewart had become a poet in Cardigan Heart, but now with her new work Minnows there is no denying the fact.  Lizzy emerges as a poet with her own distinct style-influenced, I suspect, as much by song lyrics and artists, as by the poetic tradition. She has a wonderfully fresh voice.

Minnows can be savoured for her beautiful illustrations, which at least, rival, if not outdo Cardigan Heart. It also contains some excellent poetry. 

You in the first instance, the opening poem, Lizzy presents a single moment in time. Two people on the cusp of a relationship. There is a clever use of the negative that informs the reader of how the relationship will develop. This poem sets the scene for the rest of the book. The accompanying illustration focuses on the feet of the lovers, the shadows their legs cast and the eye is drawn to a row of terraced houses in the distance. It is an effective statement of intent.

Throughout my initial reading of the book I was struck by the confident way in which Lizzy handles words. Whether she thinks so or not, I believe she is a poet. The second piece Every place I have lived presents eight line drawings of the places she has lived since leaving home. There is a colour coded list of people and events that illuminate her life. It is charming. I found this a very original take on the list poem.

Lizzy has an acute appreciation of the ebb and flow of life around her- the Big Parade, as King Vidor called it. We are all surrounded by the triumphs and tragedies of others and Lizzy captures this in a sensitive and respectful manner. In Cardigan Heart we had a series of illustrations (At 12.42) of what people were experiencing at a specific moment, in Minnows Lizzy presents us with Bravery and heroism on 27^th May 2012, South London.  In the 12 scenes she presents we need text to understand exactly what is happening, and it is beautiful. Lizzy demonstrates that she has the eye of the poet and more than a smattering of the novelist.

Ok, it doesn’t all work; A Poem and Another Poem appear to have wandered in from an earlier stage in her development. But the other work, especially Minnows itself more than makes up for this.

We are presented with a man who is interested in river words and we are able to savour a selection for ourselves: pebble, pond skate; riverbed and their small illustrations. We are told:

The Minnows that shoal up the high street are not like the ones that he caught in a jar.

On the fourth page we are presented with a woman in a dress composed of the river and surrounded by reeds. It is beautiful. There is both joy and love here.

At the end of the book Lizzy states that she cannot really write, this is not, she claims what she does:

but gosh I want to write stories for you.

You have Lizzy. Thank you.