Category: Studying

PoetryFriday

Poetry Friday: In an Artist’s Studio (Christina Rossetti)

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Reading Time: 2 minutes Christina Rossetti’s poem about her brother – and more importantly, his muse Lizzie Siddal. I came across it a couple of years ago when the BBC series about the Pre-Raphaelite movement was on, and I was looking for love poetry for one of my sixth form lessons. This poem is certainly about love, but it’s a very unbalanced, dangerous love that is being reflected. Rossetti isn’t openly critical of her brother’s attitude towards his lover – more, she seems to understand it yet pity the muse who is impossibly stuck in the relationship, unable to change it with a lover …

PoetryFriday

Poetry Friday: The ABC (Spike Milligan)

 

Reading Time: 3 minutes A lovely antidote to last week’s sad affair! One of the fabulous things about literature, and poetry in particular, is that there’s something suitable for all occasions and this is a great cheerful poem from a great nonsense writer. I’m not often a fan of nonsense poetry – as a writer and teacher I love searching for hidden meanings, and the way that poetry expresses emotions in perfect little translucent bubbles of language.

PoetryFriday

Poetry Friday: Death is Nothing At All

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Reading Time: 5 minutes Bit of a sad one today in some ways – apparently this is popular at funerals (odd phrase) and that’s where I heard it too. If you don’t do well with sadness, then feel free to skip this one and come back next week, or read an earlier one again that’s more cheerful! It’s been a little over a year since my grandma died, and her house is being sold today – which is the last thing, really, left ‘to do’. I don’t think tasks and jobs like that are given enough importance when we talk about grief. The focus tends …

PoetryFriday

Poetry Friday: Love after Love

 

Reading Time: 2 minutes I first came across this poem in an anthology – it is on an English GCSE specification, though I’ve never read or studied it – when I was looking for something for a lesson, I’ve forgotten what. It resonated with me immediately, because there’s something so powerful about the sentiment of having loved and lost, and coming to the realisation that in fact the most important thing is to be happy and comfortable with yourself. Although in some ways I think I’m probably the same as when I was very little, in many, many ways I am completely different. Every time …

PoetryFriday

Poetry Friday: The Hug

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Reading Time: 2 minutes I thought it’d be nice to introduce some more regular posting, and to take the opportunity to share some things I find inspirational or interesting here.  I love poetry; I read quite a bit of it, mostly for work but am trying to read some more modern work as well, and there’s something truly stunning about the way poets manage to use language in such a concise and glorious way. The Hug It was your birthday, we had drunk and dined Half of the night with our old friend Who’d showed us in the end To a bed I reached …

PoetryFriday

Poetry Friday: Marital Visit

 

Reading Time: < 1 minute Marital Visit The odd thing put away in the wrong place – cups and plates back in the cupboard that I always leave out, curtains open on the street that I always keep drawn, remind me of your recent brief progress through here, looking for something in the attic. How could I forget: butter in the fridge, but never eggs, burnt matches everywhere, in spite of the gas lighter, jam jars soaking in water to get the labels off. How typical of you to give the Chinese teapot a last chance to prove itself in company. And look at that …