What a brilliant man. He is like a poem himself, all quiet, ordinary and extraordinary, focused and tall.
He spoke simply about poetry as the art of the simple, the everyday, no truth but in things. Taking a different angle.
All poems are a gift to a stranger.
I was powerfully reminded of how essential it is to create. It's too easy to get sucked into managing and enabling the creativity of others. As John Howden reminded us in his talk, enjoy, talk, do. Ruskin was a powerful advocate of the power of craft and creativity to generate satisfaction.
My Dad was a poet, but he used wood and chisel not pen and paper. Here's the poem I wrote about him, inspired by this session.
Dad
My brittle nest of wood shavings,
Amongst the off cuts on the floor.
Wafts off Old Holborn mixed with Elm and Oak and Yew.
Huge lumps of wood, sized, shaped and tamed.
And the great thwack as your mallet drives your chisel along.
A rollup wet with spit.
I scoop warm sawdust over my bare toes
And gaze up at the ebb and flow of tension in the sinews of your wrists
Like moving marble.
When you were old and could hardly anymore lift your hands,
You got lost in the pleasure of paring softly away at tiny wooden spoons,
We each had six for salt and sugar.
And you gave them away to strangers whose work still found ways to move you.
As we lowered your coffin,
We placed your favourite chisel and an unfinished spoon on the lid.
And Jake sent you off with a nice pebble he said you would like.
He was right.
You would hate to be carving the same bloody spoon for eternity.
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