Most of what I put up on my blogs is written by others. I suppose I am lucky that I do regularly find stuff that I agree with or find interesting. Every now and again, however, I do put up something that is entirely written by me and today is one of those occasions. And, seeing it is a quiet, relaxed Sunday morning, I am just going to meander a bit.
I was just listening to the superb "Sea pictures" by Sir Edward Elgar (pic above). I am lucky to have a CD on which Dame Janet Baker is the contralto and she does a superb job. The poems Elgar chose to set were drawn from quite obscure poets for the most part and my favourite song is "Where corals lie" -- written by a little-known Scotsman. I was born where corals lie (by the sea in tropical Queensland) so maybe that has a little to do with it. Following "Corals", however, is a song which is set to a poem ("Swimmer") by Adam Lindsay Gordon, a highly esteemed Australian poet. And that sparked the thought that I should have a poetry evening for the more profound Australian poets. I have already had an evening for the Australian balladeers -- Lawson, Paterson, Dennis etc -- at which the inimitable Michael Darby starred, but, much as I love the balladeers, they are not the whole of what Oz poetry has to offer. Writers like Gordon, Kenneth Slessor etc are also in my view outstanding.
Michael Darby is coming up from Sydney in a week's time to give us his renditions of English poetrty so I am somewhat inclined to give him the job of introducing my son to the more profound Australian poets as well. And I may do that. I put on a poetry evening at my place once or twice a year to help fill in the gaps in my son's education. He went right through High School without even hearing the names of such greats as Wordsworth and Coleridge.
On the other hand, is it not a little broad to look at a whole class of poets? Poets are intensely individual. So should I not also have an evening devoted to a particular poet? In one sense I do that every year of course -- on January 25 when I have a Burns Night -- a ritualized celebration of the birth of Robert Burns -- and next year I even have an old Kiwi friend coming up to help with the festivities who does a reasonable Scottish accent. I gather that his Dunedin origins account for that. So I will dragoon him into reading most of the poems.
But in my strange way, there is also a religious poet whom I very much like: Gerard Manley Hopkins. See the icon above (an icon of the pre-computer sort). And I am not alone in that liking. There are actually Hopkins literary festivals in some places. I could of course have an evening devoted to Hopkins in which I did all the reading. There are plenty of his poens that attract my enthusiasm. But while my poetry nights are mainly for the benefit of my son, I like to get a little extra out of them myself as well. So I would rather like to have a Hopkins enthusiast to do the honours. And the obvious enthusiast would have to be a Jesuit -- which is what Hopkins was. But does the Society of Jesus even exist in Brisbane? I suppose it might. I will have to look into it.
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