TWENTY-TWENTY VISION

Today, 1st October, is National Poetry Day and this year’s theme is Vision.

It’s the ideal opportunity to offer up a ‘secular prayer’ to St Anza, the Patron Saint of poetry and what is a poem if not a secular prayer.

Find the National Poetry Day link at https://nationalpoetryday.co.uk/about-npd

Here’s a particular favourite of mine.

ADLESTROP by Edward Thomas

Yes. I remember Adlestrop –

The name, because one afternoon

Of heat the express-train drew up there 

Unwontedly. It was late June.

The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat. 

No one left and no one came

On the bare platform. What I saw

Was Adlestrop – only the name

And willows, willow-herb, and grass, 

And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry, 

No whit less still and lonely fair

Than the high cloudlets in the sky.

And for that minute a blackbird sang 

Close by, and round him, mistier, 

Farther and farther, all the birds

Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

PS.  It being National Poetry Day, I was invited into the BBC Radio Guernsey studio this morning to talk about all things poetic. 

The broadcaster, Jenny Kendal Tobias, laid on a surprise in the form of a telephone link-up with current Poet Laureate, Simon Armitage, and we were able to have an interesting chat.

Whilst this wasn’t a physical encounter, since Covid-19 has made such things impossible at present, I believe I can still add Simon to the ever-growing List Of Poets Laureate I’ve Encountered, where he joins former Laureates, Andrew Motion and Carol Ann Duffy.