***
Den 4 maj kunde man lyssna till de båda författarna Jack Mapanje och Landeg White i The Poetry Library, Southbank Centre. Under ledning av David Constantine berättade de om sin 45 år långa vänskap, samt läste ur sina verk.
I varje bok som Mapanje har gett ut förekommer det referenser till den gode vännen, och omvänt så finns han närvarande i Landeg White's verk.
Det finns en fin opublicerad dikt om deras vänskap. Jag vet inte om den är gemensamt författad, eller vem av dem som är upphovsman.
You offer me your metaphor: trees,
buttress-rooted, flowering, fruitful.
You write it in lines like a sjambok.
I give you mine in rivers: brimming
or broken with their evergreen banks,
their depths glimmering through images
of countries and continents they drain.
***
Den 27 april var min favorit Don Paterson på besök i Edinburgh. Han höll "The Hugh MacDiarmid Lecture" under rubriken Adventures in rhythm: some curiosities of poetic metre.
Jag har tidigare berättat om hans bok 40 Sonnets (Faber, 2015) och dess prisnomineringar. Det var inte första gången han gav ut en bok med sonetter. Redan 1999 var han redaktör för den trevliga boken 101 Sonnets : from Shakespeare to Heaney. Ur den hämtar jag en rolig dikt av Wendy Cope.
from Strugnell's Sonnets, by Wendy Cope
(101 Sonnets : from Shakespeare to Heaney. London : Faber, 1999.)
Not only marble, but the plastic toys
From cornflake packets will outlive this rhyme:
I can’t immortalize you, love – our joys
Will lie unnoticed in the vault of time.
When Mrs. Thatcher has been cast in bronze
And her administration is a page
In some O-Level text-book, when the dons
Have analysed the story of our age,
When travel firms sell tours of outer space
When aeroplanes take off without a sound
And Tulse Hill has become a trendy place
And upper Norwood’s on the underground
Your beauty and my name will be forgotten –
My love is true, but all my verse is rotten.
***
En något ovanlig workshop ägde rum i Edinburgh den 28:e april. Poeten och skådespelaren Andrew Sclater lärde ut hur man tolkar och reciterar lyrik. Det handlade alltså inte om Spoken Word i den bemärkelsen utan snarare om Poetry Out Loud.
I databasen hos Scottish Poetry Library hittade jag en dikt av Andrew Sclater. Den får avsluta torsdagens inlägg.
The Scotswoman who married into the Home Counties, by Andrew Sclater
(from Songs of Other Places: New Writing Scotland 32. Glasgow, 2014.)
Like tweed like pearls
like fire like wood
like loss like Listen with Mother with me
Like prayer like water
like a Scots laird’s daughter
like your three darling war-dead before me
Like heather that shrivels in Hampshire
like silver birch going sick on the chalk
like your loch all clogged up beyond the border
Like grin and bear it
like you limp to the shop
like bravery how I wanted to shake you
Like you meant the marriage
like you could not
stop him being like he was
in his unlikeness
like a moor set down in a wheat farm
like your composure stiffening
Like your bad hip
like the smell of you ageing
like you knowing of the coming
of your death all the time he poured beer
that last evening in Broughton
like you never were like yourself down here.
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