she [Music] hi everybody um thank you so much for coming we're so happy to see this Full House poetry always wins the day um thank you also to llo assembly rooms for letting me start this new poetry series of mine um and to Jess who's not here who's been just the most extraordinary host also thank you to Robert Willis dean maritus of Canterbury and Herford um it's such a privilege to have him as my first speaker and tonight we're going to explore together the codes of poetry from our two very different standpoints is from the church spiritual nature of poetry and music together and mine from the Arts some of you know my background um and how I've let poetry Collide With It Through The Years um complimentary drinks and now in the interval you'll be pleased to hear so they're on the horizon bubbles halfway through um let's make a start Robert thank you very much indeed let's get a microphone I feel very privileged to be sitting here with P at the same time this is a tremendous self-indulgence um in talking about your own creative gifts uh there's a great enjoyment in searching back to see when things developed and also um who encouraged you what encouraged you which poems inspired you and when you first started writing particular verses uh and finding that that was really satisfying in a different way from Pros now I think that we'll find throughout the evening that pros and poetry have no hard distinction between them sometimes a piece of Pros can be essentially very poetic and I I think for example of St Paul who's generally a very prosy person and then suddenly in a in a chapter like 1 Corinthians 13 launches in to that great Hymn of Love or charity though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels that actually is to me Pros poetry and so we are holding a very thin curtain between the two but there are times when and I think of um Cardinal Newman's motto which he had uh as a cardinal and that was heart speaks to heart and the language of the heart speaking to another heart becomes very much the language of poetry symbols are used intuitive uh response is required and we find that that certain poems at certain times of life that we may have known all our lives suddenly give us a new feeling of this poem really is for me if I go back um and and think of how poetry entered my own life then I had a very musical mother and a rather more severe but very poetic father who could recite reams of Tennyson just like that I started some of them last night and Judy Cox joined in and said oh I knew that and started saying it with me sink me the ship master gunner sink her and split her in Twain fall into the hands of God not into the hands of Spain and the Gunner said I I but the Seaman made reply we have children we have wives and the Lord has spared Our Lives let us live to fight again another day how can I remember that well because he used to say it quite often but at the same same time because the rhyme and the Rhythm give you uh memory codes and I find exactly the same and we had quite a should we say heated strong discussion about this I find the same with Tunes to the words that I set and often it's the tune that will evoke the memory of the words and that you found um restrictive and and py will talk about her own inspiration from other creative arts because I think that when we are are hearing poetry even more than when we are writing poetry or imagining poetry it's it's that time when you think I remember that and the tune will take you along and other things will give prompts well to go back my mother would often sit at the piano with me and we'd we'd play things together quite often it was church music himn and very often himn is very fine poetry by people like George Herbert we both love the the verse a man that looks on glass on it may stay his eye or if he pleaseth through it pass and there the heaven aspy that is pure poetry to aspy Heaven by breaking through the hard physical Veil into the area of intuition and heartfelt imagination all those things mother and I would Quarry away at and um we'd sing paror songs as well and the Tunes come back and they remind me of those happy times but father was the one who had the Poetry inside him and he loved nothing more than reading a section of the King James Bible where for example in Ecclesiastes um or in the Book of Job you find huge passages of of poetic Pros so what started me off in poetry itself well I'm bound to say that a facility for rhyming words was given to me by the liist Ws Gilbert because his magnificent and very correct language uh was something that I enjoyed playing on the piano and and singing his words to I always find it a a lovely thing when there's a rhyme hanging in the air and you have to wait till the last line of the verse to find the very often one syllable word that's going to seal it but then at the same time people like um Houseman and I i' like to speak of him here in lllo but I I got to know him through his verses and used to carry his shop shad and then the volume because I I found myself s en enjoying the Poetry of last poems his second volume and that vast expanse of time between them uh I found myself thinking yes I'd rather have that so I then began to carry the collected version around and other books too took their place and one goes in and out of should we say love affairs with poets uh of their their work and you think oh yes I used really to idolize that and now I'm into this or I'm into that and the verses are there with you so that the rhythms and Rhymes and meters help one and in writing um comic songs mother used to say you can always rhyme rubbish quite easily but why didn't you write something more serious but it was the bishop of Salsbury who first said to me George reor write me a Hymn for the the festival we're going to have in the cathedral and I did with his encouragement and a Little Help from the prenter of SSB at that time a man called CV Taylor who was a great musician and this is how the hymn came out and it came from a verse in the first chapter of St Mark the kingdom is upon you the voice of Jesus Christ fulfilling with its message the wisdom of the wise it lightens with fresh Insight the striving human mind creating new dimensions of faith for all to find God's King kingdom is upon you the message sounds today it summons every Pilgrim to take the questing way with eyes intent on Jesus our leader and our friend who trod Faith's road before us and tro it to the end the kingdom is upon us stirred by the spirit's breath we glory in its freedom from emptiness and death we celebrate its purpose its Mission and its goal alive with the conviction that Christ can make us whole I remember the feeling of a full Salsbury Cathedral singing that Hymn for the first time and the bishop who was about to preach a sermon was in the Pulpit above me and I looked up and he looked down and nodded as if to say that's it and it also said don't stop there so you have a go now and start okay thank you my turn I don't think I can beat it but I'll try um well um I come from an extraordinary an interesting creative background um I was born into a wealth of inspiration my father a great sculpter my mother just a wonderful poetry lover like Roberts um I think what they taught me looking back is that art is never about you um that that's that's my superpower I think and um even though I was born into an Islington household that was full of artists every Saturday night mostly men talking about other great artists and themselves and each other um it was quite overwhelming for me and my sister so when my mother cleverly started reading us poetry as bedtime stories we found great Sanctuary um little did I know that that would end up leading my life and that art and poetry became so intertwined um was a joy to me and a great struggle um the one poem that I remember the most that mom used to read to us is Tennyson um the lady of shalot um people say that you know children don't understand long poetry or it's too difficult for them but um to me it was the opposite and to many children I think it un loocks the imagination unmediated there's nobody else there but you and the language and the poet um and it lets us live in rooms where the Ancients sing songs to us um so I thought I know that Robert would agree with that so I'm just going to read a couple of verses I don't know how many of you know the poem but I'm just going to read some of it and let the language wash over you and the Rhythm and the meter cuz no one does it like Tennyson by the margin Willow veiled Slide the heavy barges trailed by slow horses and un hailed the shallop fth silken sailed skimming down to Camelot but who hath seen her wave her hand or at the casement seen her stand or is she known in all the land the lady of shalot there she weaves By Night and Day a magic web with colors gay she has heard a whisper say a curse is on her if she stay to look down to Camelot she knows not what the curse may be and so she weaveth steadily and little other care hath she the lady of shot and moving through a mirror clear that hangs before her all the year Shadows of the world appear there she sees the highway near winding down to Camelot there the river Eddy whs and there the Surly Village churs and the red cloaks of Market girls pass onward from shalot but in her web she still Delights to weave The Mirror's magic sights for often through the silent nights a funeral with plumes and lights and music went to Camelot or when the moon was overhead came two young lovers lately wed I am half sick of Shadows said the lady of shalot his broad clear brow in sunlight glowed on burnished Hooves his warhorse trod from underneath his helmet flowed his cold black curls as on he rode as he rode down to Camelot from the bank and from the river he flashed into her Crystal mirror TI L by the river sang s Lancelot she left the web she left the loom she made three Paces through the room she saw the water lily bloom she saw the helmet and the plume she looked down to Camelot out flew the web and floated wide the mirror cracked from side to side the curse is come upon me cried the lady of shot that's enough for now don't to go on um I think that uh that poem illustrates absolutely how verses stay in your mind so that the the beginning of that poem The on either side the river lie long fields of barley and of Ry that clothe the world and meet the sky uh and I think that that uh rhythm in that case prompts you as you go through I said I carried Houseman with me and I did for a long time and know so many of his things by heart but there is a wistful quality about housemen a quality of of of loss and uh probably the best poem which you must living here in low know by heart all of you is is the the poem where he says into my heart an air that kills from yon far country blows what are those blue remembered Hills what spires what Farms are those that is the land of lost content I see it shining plain the happy highways where I went and cannot come again there's that wistful quality which Houseman has and Thomas Hardy had exactly the same kind of quality sometimes in his pastoral novels everything is is happy but in so many of his novels and poems there is that quality of loss and one of my favorite poems of Hardy is the darkling thrush I lent Upon A Copus gate when Frost was Spectre gray and Winter's drgs made desolate the weakening eye of day the Tangled bind stems scored the sky like strings of broken liars and all mankind that haunted nigh had sought their household fires once a voice arose Among The Bleak Twigs overhead in a full-hearted even song of Joy illimited an aged thrush frail gaunt and small in Blast beruffled plume had chosen thus to fling his soul upon the growing Gloom so little cause for carings of such ecstatic sound was written on terrestrial things a far or nigh around the I could think that trembled through his happy good night air some blessed hope of which he knew and I was unaware that sense of loss those of you who know that poem well I I missed out in verse two just to give a little bit of of a shorter poem for you in in looking at things that I had tried to write early on in boxes it became easier because we just cleared out the Deery which was an enormous task uh and in various boxes I found verses and other things that I had written uh and when I went to to Salsbury uh Richard Shephard used to set many of my words and we would write um comic operas together which the L Clarks could perform at Southern Cathedrals festivals but I found in one box this script it's a libretto which I'd written for him to set and then the occasion never came about it's actually a libretto of The Selfish giant the Oscar wild story of the giant who who wouldn't allow the children to use his garden and so the spring never came into his garden only winter came into his garden and then one day after he' been on holiday he came back and found that the children had broken through the wall and the garden was full of flowers and spring had begun to enter his garden and then you'll remember there's one littley Bo who can't climb into the tree and he takes pity on him and that almost cracks the Giant's heart cuz he's never known that that pity before and places the little boy up into the branch of a tree whose petals immediately turn beautiful colors and the the giant then um is happy that the children are there but the boy vanishes and he never sees him again and he's full of sadness but nevertheless is giving the children free reign of his garden I'm saying all that because I wrote I see here I'd forgotten all about it a free verse shall we say not with strict rhythms at all of the song of the giant at his sense of pitiful loss that this child whom he' loved in putting the boy into the tree and had taught him to love all the children in his garden um this child had gone and here is the the sort of freeish verse that I wrote at that time which as I say I'd forgotten all about this is the giant singing is this the way of love one Blissful Shining Moment then an age of longing is this the way of Love is this the way of Joy a blaze of light upon the soul and then a lifelong memory is this the way of joy is this the way of life yet even so I would regret no moment of that Vision he showed me joy and love now I can live in hope so that lies in the hope of that deetto having been written but never was set to music um but those kinds of poems strict Rhythm and then uh a Freer verse and sometimes with with no Rhymes in them but for the moment I was I was contracted almost to write hymns people would say write me a Hymn for this write me a hym for that and with hymns it's much more difficult to break out of the Rhythm and and line meter because they they fit together with the way we we like to sing so here's a harvest hymn which was written at that kind of time when I was um in uh no I wrote this at the beginning of my Canterbury time about sort of 2001 we reap the harvests of the Earth from seed which we have sown fruit of our hopes and Keen desires with care and patience grown conceived by faith with tender skills God's gifts of Priceless worth creating as the seasons pass a green and fruitful Earth we see the harvests of the earth as sewn by humankind some rich with God's creative gifts of human hand or mind while others swn in selfish greed and Scorn for human life produce a Barren Harvest field of Bleak and bitter Strife God reaps the Harvest of the earth and treasures every grain each golden seed of sacrifice the fruit of love and pain such seeds as these will In Due Time by God's creative hand be swn again with patient care to bless the waiting land so a harvest hym of that sort but at the same time one went steadily on also writing um hymns which gave the the the flavor of of of verses that uh that um were more poetic than himlike here's one which was written for a Carol service in in uh Canter Cathedral and was originally set to music by Matthew Martin who's now become quite famous as a composer Frozen Earth Cries Out For Life buried root and withered stem with the gift of warm New Birth Heaven responds at Bethlehem wounded us Cries Out For Peace words to heal and not condemn with Angelic songs of Hope Heaven responds at Bethlehem fearful Earth Cries Out For Love brighter than a precious gem with a newborn human child Heaven responds at Bethlehem or lastly before we go back to Pelle three verses um complimenting the verses of the stat Mar Mary standing at the foot of the cross and these two formed part of a composition by Matthew as he wrote a stabat mar but put my English verses in between here are the three English verses in silence crying at the cruelty of death in love identifying with each agonizing breath as you in torment to your son prove true oh Blessed Mother help us stand with you in grief disabled by the appalling sense of loss in patience waiting for some comfort at the cross as you in torment to your son prove true oh Blessed Mother help us wait with you in passion passive like the suffering ones of Earth in Destiny accepting of a broken World's new birth as you in torment to your son prove true oh Blessed Mother help us watch with you you wonderful Robert thank you I've just melted um so um I went to boarding school and uh for me it was horrible like a a a garden perpetually winter as Oscar wild would have understood um I not very nice people then I went to work at the RO College of Art after doing art history at Nottingham to try and understand what art really meant for me and um I hated the roal College of Art after 3 years I thought I've had enough of this I'm going to Rome to be a poet and the garden turned to Summer um I was so happy there and I started writing poetry I read Sheamus heene Oxford lectures which if you want to know what poetry really means read them all it might turn into a poet um and then I had a slip disc um and I had to return to the UK which was devastating for me um and I lay on the floor in my flat in Islington um reading Sylvia Plath um who for me was almost like a priestess of language um she knew how to make pain into something Majestic and eloquent and plainly spoken everyone thinks poetry is very complicated um but I'm just going to read you a couple of verses from her poem tulips which she wrote when she was in a site Ward um and you'll understand what I mean if you focus on the words she's chosen you'll understand how simple they actually are um I'm going to stand up because you have to stand up for Sylvia Plan before they came the air was calm enough coming and going Breath by breath without any fuss then the Tulips filled it up like a loud noise now the air snags and edies round them the way a river snags and edies round a sunken rust red engine they concentrate my attention that was happy laying and resting without committing itself the walls also seem to be warming themselves the Tulips should be behind bars like J dangerous animals they are opening like the mouth of some great African cat I am aware of my heart it opens and closes its bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me the water I taste is warm and salt like the sea and comes from a country far away as health um I applied for the um Ma at UEA under Andrew motion um I was told that it was full up there was no more application so I rang him and said uh can you just can I come and see you can I send you an application anyway anyway I got on the course um he was a great teacher um when I had mental block one week he said uh go and away and write five poems on one subject so I did got my Philip Lin collection The North Ship studied it very closely and then wrote five poems took them to Andrew and he said uh you're trying to write like Philip baring go away and write like yourself um I've been trying to do that ever since like all diligent poets um I I'll just read I'll recite to you one of the poems that I wrote when I was there he he compared me to Emily Dickinson which I then ate out on for years it's not true of course um but this is one that I used to say at parties um as a way as a barrier I suppose and a way to show people who I I was oh and it's about my boyfriend at the time who's called Misha Glenny we used to drink in pubs and is lingon together spectacle if I wore glasses darling I would only take them off for you remove the delicate Circles of glass trapped by wire just like you do and give the pub their frame for an hour while we too sat with nude eyes busy being seen by the one other thing that new um that got me through a lot of parties uh it worked to say it with a drink you know in London sometimes um poetry has a lot more um presence in those situations than people think and I learned as I went um after I left UA I I went to be ptin Residence at T modern wrote to Nix serot and said I think you need a poet in Residence and he agreed um went to New York to interview Louise B um I recited that very poem to her and she started drawing so I thought um oh this is interesting um I became very preoccupied with artists and poetry and how poetry affected artists and how they poets and artists could live together before the what they created happened to them um when I got to the Royal Academy I uh I didn't want to write poems about the pictures on the walls cuz I thought that would be boring for everyone so I decided to research the great poet the great artists and what their connection to poetry had been and it was like I'd struck gold um van was showing at the time and his love of poetry is profound and spiritual yeah he loves John Keats Christina Rosetti Long Fellow so I created a performance using only the Poetry he loved and um extracts from The Odyssey cuz I figured he was a bit like adus and I just threw three actors on the stage and got them to recite it and um I needed an actor to play Van Golf and I didn't know any so a friend said I know this guy Christian R and he walked into the cafe in the Cen in SoHo and I was like he can't play Van go he was so tall blonde handsome statuesque so I uh I said okay look come outside onto the street and read me this letter by Van go and let's see how it goes and he rolled a licorice rolly leaning against the wall and recited this letter and it was like van goer just walked up to me um so he played my Vang go and before I pass over to Robert I just like to read a little bit of this letter if I can find it I don't think I can find it I might have to read it later um oh here it is painters to speak only of them being dead and buried speak to the following generation or to several following Generations through their works is that all or is there more even in the life of the painter death May perhaps not be the most difficult thing for myself I declare I don't know anything about it but the sight of the Stars always makes me dream in a simple way as the black spots on the map representing Town towns and Villages make me dream why I say to myself should the spots of light in the firmament be less accessible to us than the black spots on the map of France just as we take the train to go to tasa or Ru we take death to go to a star I'm sure that he wrote that beautifully cuz he read so much poetry thank [Music] you so as it becomes known that you are able to write verses people begin to ask you to write verses for special occasions and that's always very difficult because you're writing to order um and you have to decide how you pitch it and what kind of occasion it is but it's also very enjoyable because in the end you're giving a gift which is especially for them and there's nothing better than the gift of a of a of a a good poem which expresses exactly what they wanted from it so these two poems which I have here which both sing um they were poems written in response to requests from hbook companies for poems concerning tragedy and disaster it's a terrible thing to think about but nevertheless uh we only had things like um oh hear us when we cry to thee for those in trouble on the sea and they'd been written um 100 years ago or so and there was nothing which spoke of the kind of disasters that could happen in a modern world and the English Himel company was the first want to ask for something like that and then I had another request uh which was for I I don't want to call it a festival but a gathering together of people who had come for prayer um following dark tragedies and uh the first one in the end I don't know where the inspiration came from uh but this is how it went this is the the uh response to the English Himel for their their their times of trouble and distress and and natural disasters and and human occasions of [Music] violence Earth's fragile Beauties we possess as Pilgrim gifts from God and walk the slow and dangerous way his wounded feet have trod though Faith by tragedy is rocked and love with pain is scored we sing the Pilgrim's song of hope your Kingdom Come O Lord Earth's human longings we possess by love or grief compelled to take and bear the heavy cross Christ's wounded hands have held by cloud and fire he leads us on through famine plague or sword singing with faith the pilgrim song Your Kingdom Come O Lord God's Own True Image we possess in innocence first known now tainted by the hate and spite to Christ's own body shown by that same Wounded Heart of Love God's image is restored to sing again the Pilgrim's song Your Kingdom Come O Lord and the second written for this great mother's Union day of prayer for um natural disaster and people suffering in all lands this came from a a a speech that Terry weight who had been in dark captivity and with no news of any Redemption coming to him seeing a a of light come from a shutter badly set in his cell and the Darkness suddenly gave way and he he gave this speech in the general sinate which instantly um written on the back of a sinate agenda gave me the idea for for for this one which Richard Shepherd set to music later in a world where people walk in darkness let us turn our faces to the light to the light of God revealed in Jesus to the day star scattering our night for the light is stronger than the darkness and the day will overcome the night though the Shadows linger all around us let us turn our faces to the light in a world where suffering of the helpless casts a shadow all along the way let us bear the Cross of Christ with gladness and proclaim the dawning of the day for the light is stronger than the darkness and the day will overcome the night though the Shadows linger all around us let us turn our faces to the light let us light a candle in the darkness in the face of death a sign of Life as a sign of Hope where all seemed hopeless as a sign of Peace in place of strife for the light is stronger than the darkness and the day will overcome the night though the Shadows linger all around us let us turn our faces to the light now those are for disaster times but there are other times you asked to write something for a joyful occasion and um a wedding is about the most joyful occasion that you could find I'm trying to find a hymn that was written um for a wedding and uh set to music and has now become a very good hymn to sing at the feast I got it at the Epiphany when the story is always told of the waiters where the wedding has run out of of wine and the wait is being told by Jesus at the instigation of his mother and and he she says to the waiters do whatever he tells you and he ordered them to fill the jars with water so that beautiful good wine may be created from them and this is what this hym is trying to say and it was written for a wedding love spoke the word and by that word pure water turned to Wine creating at the wedding Feast love's first Redemptive sign for by that sign of water changed Humanity was blessed able to share the self-same love through love the wedding guest love saw the need when wine ran dry the wine cup to refill met human need with his own life and meets that longing still for as in kaaa on that day two human lives were blessed so richest blessings we receive from love the wedding guest love joins the feast to celebrate where love is freely given creating from our human love the quality of heaven so shall our life and love m like wine pronounced the best transformed to that which is divine through love the wedding guest so there's a a wedding for you Rob's just going to play the piano before we go to the inter so first of all this is a Christmas carol which was was written and uh it's it's words and then I'll play you the tune among Earth's multitude of Lights a new star shines it lights the Journey of the wise who travel with deep searching eyes from Eastern shrines among Earth's languages and words a new child sleeps amid the ceaseless noise of Life of strident power and angry Strife he silence keeps among Earth Landscapes of despair A New Hope Springs which to the weary human form new made as at creations's dawn God's image brings and the tune is a fairly regular one I wrote it as a as a hymn tune that will be sung sort of Four Square which is here [Music] [Music] [Music] and the next one is um a a Carol that I I wrote for the girls choir in Canterbury Cathedral who weren't then allowed to sing at the Christmas carol service that was for the boys they were allowed to take part in the Advent so I thought how do I get round this and so each year for four years I wrote a Carol for the girls and said I'd like this song at the Carol service and so enter the girls choir and now in the Church of England if you do anything two years running you can then say as is our custom next year but this this uh this this hym um if I can just lay my hand on the words of it yes here we are this hymn was also a kind of tribute to those who wander the Earth Homeless looking for home and it's talking about Mary and Joseph so I'll read the three verses and then play you the tune hard was the journey and crowded the pathways as Joseph or Mary sought shelter that night for Galilee Home Fires seemed far far behind them when bethlehem's lamps through the Hills came in sight wearily wearily onward to Bethlehem seeking a welcome and comfort within but voices there met them with no word of greeting and Stark was the message no room at the end over Earth's Pathways the people are moving by Will of great Caesar compelled to leave home from Valley and Village in Syrian Landscapes the people are moving commanded to Rome wearily wearily onward to Bethlehem hoping as Nightfall some shelter to win but lamp light and Fire Light give false hope of welcome the doors close against them no room at the end Through The Bleak darkness comes one sound of Welcome a voice giving promise of shelter and rest some kindly words spoken a stable door opened to find their a Manger as birds find their nest cheerily cheerily home now in Bethlehem where for the Christ Child new life must begin for one voice of Welcome enough for God's purpose is saying no longer no room at the in and that I sort of set to a a kind of folk tune which the girls sang First In Harmony and then uh with a desk hand so let's set this up a little stay still can you hold this flet so that doesn't slide out of my reach thanks [Music] [Music] so a very different kind of style in a f kind of Rhythm uh very good for going to have a glass of prco which we now do [Music] to the light of to the [Applause] [Music] [Music] suffering of the heav the sh all the way let us the CR Christ and Proclaim theing of the day [Music] [Music] us [Music] to let us a c the darkness in the face sign of Life as a sign of Hope well as a [Music] gra for the is stronger the darkness the will over heart for the sh [Applause] [Music] feels a bit more bubbly now um thanks again for coming I um you may have noticed on your seats is the cards which I got done in time thanks to my lovely husband Fabio to put down on the seats tonight it's on the 12th of September and it's another journey into poetry the reason I'm bringing it up now is because Robert refers to having love affairs with poets on the page well about halfway through my story I had a love affair with a real person who was married and um instead of turning the page he took me to a very expensive hotel in California called The Ritz Carlton um that was definitely a page I didn't think I would ever turn um I wrote a collection of poems when he went back to his marriage um partly to survive the situation I hadn't written anything particularly worthwhile for a long time I've been doing these performances at the Royal Academy um but I I had to do it and um I used I knew from what the experience that poetry was the perfect form to express this story because it's very crystallized it's formal but it's also a place of um release as Roberts referred to many times um I wrote it very quickly I wrote it in about a month um I read it at the chelam literature festival and then the Sunday Times rang Me Up Magazine and asked me to write a feature I'd realized one another reason I'd written it was because there's nothing in the history of literature written in the voice of the mistress it's always the wife or the husband and she's always a sort of scapegoated creature gagged and thrown in the corner um Sharon Olds I don't know if any of you know her work she's a great American contemporary poet had written recently um a book recently to my situation a book called Stags Leap which was about um a woman whose husband walked out the door for another woman and she wrote it live and it's extraordinary so I felt like I was talking to her across the page and across continents um I wrote this feature in the Sunday Times magazine it was Pros actually um partly because they said they'd include some of my poetry in the magazine and I thought well if I can say I got perching the Sunday Times magazine then it's worth you know exposing myself um and also because you know when you're a poet you have to write something shocking you're there to sort of disturb the universe not write about flower pots or sunsets so that was what led me forward um anyway on the 12th of September I'm going to read the whole thing for the second poetry series along with Christian row who's the actor who was so fantastic as van go and he's going to be reading Ovid because I thought it would be a good idea or an interesting idea to have this ancient voice speaking about mischievous flirtations and then a contemporary woman reading about this extraordinarily painful event um anyway this is a small extract from one of the poems um it's called The Ritz Carlton Laguna Niguel he goes away he comes back he goes away he takes me to another hotel it's higher clearer more beautiful it is as if our Affair has been moved to a costlier ocean that low cool marble Atrium the dollars of footsteps and Orange Blossom hoisted in their garlands higher than us even everyone is in white waiting as our car rounds the bend a swarm of help the valets come like large white butterflies I have been lifted to a handmade heaven so visible it hurts wow wow I said getting out of our black car into the white release of an asylum millionaire America style So This is Love well thank you that was costly I want to explain the provence of the three pieces that I want want to read in different sections as we go through part two now and um they come from a particular commission from someone who loves to commission pieces and can and can well afford to do just that and at the same time to encourage um younger musicians uh and was wanting uh maybe a A canata or a peace celebrating the Holy Angels because there are so many uh handle um uh oratorios which speak about Judas macabus or Solomon or even Messiah itself but the Holy Angels are um a force to be reckoned with and this is him speaking he said I I think that many more people have a sense of angelic presence sometimes in their lives than have a sense of the Holy Trinity as a Doctrine and uh this man is a a very firm and and devout Roman Catholic but wanted this written so he said uh could you write that so we talked long and hard about what that would look like and I went home and flet and I talked it over together to see how this might look and I produced something which was fairly milk and water um and and uh then F said no that's not what he wants at all just just you know I'll lock you in a room and come out when youve written something it begins to look half like an oratorio on the Holy Angels so um that's where these come from and I I uh I've been a a dean of a cathedral for over 30 years by then Herford first for 10 years and then Canterbury for 21 and it's the office of the dean always at Martin's and even song daily if present to read the second lesson and um I therefore had had been taken by a Verger day after day for 30 years except when I was away um to the Lector to read the Holy scriptures and therefore I was in even from my upbringing I've known the gospels fairly well but even more so now I knew every sort of Dot and comma by the time we'd finished that long sequence of reading aloud in public and so I thought well perhaps um in the Epistles there was a sentence that could help me and you agreed with this sentence as well the sentence was from the epistle to the Hebrews which said be not forgetful to entertain stranger for in so doing many have entertained angels unawares and so I thought at that time yeah that's that's the title and that was seen to be not milk and water but a strong title to to have and at the same time I thought if we're going to do this I think it does need to have structure and at that time I thought thought of Milton with his Paradise Lost and Milton wrote in the ambic pentameter The rhythms of um strong uh sorry weak strong weak strong 10 syllables along the along the line not necessarily rhyming could be in blank verse as it's called but with this strong beat of yan pentam a heartbeat and uh uh Shakespeare uses it for his sonnets Chula uses it you find it everywhere in English Works particularly so I thought why didn't we do that and I had in my mind this this wonderful scene at the end of Paradise Lost which you will all know where Adam and Eve are about to be uh evicted from the Garden of Eden from Paradise and the Archangel Michael comes down to give them a briefing about what's going to happen next in the side world and you'll remember he says please don't Despair and then he says only add Deeds to thy knowledge answerable add Faith add virtue patience Temperance add Love by name to come called charity the soul of all the rest then Willl thou not be loath to leave this paradise but shall possess a paradise within thee better far and that seemed to me really powerful writing in yamik pentam and I sort of held on to it and I thought if we're doing angels unawares we need scenes where someone is visited by an Angel in some way but they don't know it and so um there are plenty of scenes like that in the Gospels and certainly in the Old Testament and so I began to write and once sorry that's my telephone and I don't know what to do with it sorry I meant to I meant to have sounds like that because I always forget to turn it off and it doesn't matter they just think a bird has got into c garden if it um so uh at this point um I thought maybe we we start chronologically almost through the scriptures and find those scenes and Fletcher said we must have evil angels as well because music is fairly threadbear if it's all good good music you really want themes as in the dream of jonus where demons appear uh or in the apostles where Judas gets the best part of singing rather than Jesus and so at that point um I decided to go all the way back and write through but I've chosen three of these tonight and I'll do them in separate sections and then we can have um an interval between me going back to you and I'll do the other two after after that this first one is called ezekiel's vision and it is uh the prophet Ezekiel in Exile with his people Jerusalem lies in Ruins is been totally destroyed by the Babylonians and they you have to just read Psalm 137 By the Waters of Babylon we sat down and wept when we remembered the O as our Harps we hung them on the trees that are therein and these um scenes of Exile come in Ezekiel but e Ezekiel also has a vision of a bright future given to him by an Angel and here it is in in the yamik pentameter by babylon's Waters we sat down and wept I and my people far from our own land for 5 and 20 years we dreamed of home and of our ruined Temple desolate beside the river kear's flowing course an angel in my vision came to me and showed me our own Temple now restored but from the East towards the Rising Sun Fresh Waters from the altar flowed quite free we stood outside and watched the river flow the angel with a measuring line at hand caused me to walk a thousand cubits East the river swelled and now was ankled deep a thousand more and water reached our knees and then beyond it grew too deep to cross but where the river flowed all life would Thrive trees grew where deserts were before fish filled its Waters creatures of all kinds inhabited its banks and where it flowed Waters which had been poisonous were made fresh and it shall come to pass the angel said that Where the River Flows lands will be healed and on its banks the trees will bear their fruit their leaves will never fade and month by month new fruit will ripen and All Creatures feed the leaves shall be for healing and for strength for Where the River Flows all life shall Thrive it seemed to me a good vision for our care not only of the planet but of each other at this time as Ezekiel dreams his dream with the angel on the side of the Babylonian River an exile far from home thank you Robert that was very moving um um so my love affair turned once more to the great Dead Poets um and I went to Rome ran away again back to this that Garden um and I discovered Keat I po in Residence at Keat Shelly house there where Keats had died and I was doing performances there to similar ilk to what I've done at the roal Academy using only their texts um to create the narratives um what Robert just read to me was very similar to A's poem um some of you may know that he was a pharmacist at gu hospital when he was young and then he was so talented that they wanted him to assist in the operations and he couldn't bear the blood he couldn't bear the agony so he gave up being a surgeon's assistant and decided to become a poet and formed he formed this great belief that poetry was as healing as medicine and just just like Robert's poem that just been read something comes over you when you read Keats that you feel healed and nurtured and I mean Way Beyond those things he wrote his five great Odes in three months um then went to Rome sadly to die his graveyard is features in our film which is the film that Damen Lewis agreed to be in during lockdown playing Shelly um and we're now making another one um when I was in Rome I met my now husband while my back was turned um the great Fabio Barry he's not here he's in Rome but um I wanted to mention him because he's been such an extraordinary influence on my work and my understanding of things and um there's a quote by Cicero about Homer who was blind um that reminds me of Fabia tradition holds even now that Homer was blind but we see his painting not poetry he didn't paint by the way he only ever wrote what region what Coast what place in Greece what type and mode of fighting what battle what rowing what movement of men or of beasts has not been so depicted that he has caused us to see what he himself could not have seen and to me that's poetry is one of the great painters anyway Robert thank [Music] you so we come to the gospels and there's much more Old Testament in in what I've written but I've got two gospel poems to finish with this this first one for this section um in I was reminded in in going to arvar books the other day and picking up u a first sort of penguin edition of some of the writing of Oscar wild that in his day profundis he is writing and he describes the fact that it read in jail at Christmas time um and he was coming toward the end of his time in prison it would still be May before he was released but at Christmas time the governor changed and the new governor at reading jail seeing um what wild was trying to do gave him for his use a Greek Testament and uh Oscar wild says to um Lord arred Douglas whom he's writing to uh it would be very good for you in your disordered life to do as I do each morning because I find that walking into 12 verses of the gospels um plucked from anywhere is like walking into a garden of lilies out of a dark encl and my prison feeling is is lifted by this and he said to start that paragraph I remember him saying um I have of late sounds like Hamlet I have of late been at studying those four Pros poems on the life of Jesus that's what he calls the gospels I think it's a very enlightening way to think of them because Jesus could draw perfect pictures in his Parables uh and and those parables are are um what should we say capable of all kinds of interpretation but he could also within the gospels the four evangelists are very very good at drawing pictures of people and the one that I am um going to to use now the F the first of the the PO from the gospels is what I called the song of Mary of magdala and she is the one who's speaking I watched life slowly drain upon the cross and felt the darkness once more fill my mind that ancient Darkness hopeless and profound which his own words of Life had freed me from when mind was filled with light and heart with love now it returned and blotted out that light as life and love hung dying on the cross I watched as Joseph LED with tender care the broken bleeding body taken down laid carefully in his own Seiler and sealed with one huge Stone to mark an end the darkness one once more filled my tortured mind Twisted with grief that endless Sabbath day till with the dawn the first day of the week I felt impelled to Journey to the tomb I found it open wounded body gone even a place to grieve him was denied in panic anger hopelessness I ran ran to the men whom he had called his friends who came and saw as I an empty tomb then left me in the garden all alone the morning sunshine mocking my despair yet through my tears I sensed a presence there the dark tomb seemed to shine with Heaven's light a light quite other than the morning sun that spoke of Hope of promises reborn two angels gently asked me why I wept their words of comfort causing me to turn I Heard a Voice which simply called my name I knew him then as Love and Hope returned raboni I replied all would be well wow okay um thanks Robert I hope this works I've just got a little slide to show you um I moved to San Francisco with Fabio after I met him and I got the phone call every poet dreams of um from an architect saying um Pelle it's Eric Parry quite wellknown British architect um I need you to write a poem for a freeze in the Chelsea Barracks development I need it to be 3,000 characters long and to cover four elevations and I need it in three months so I said okay luckily I was married to Fabio at that point and he helped me a lot he said why didn't you write a chento well actually it was my idea and he said that's a chento the chento is um a a Roman forms a collection of poems a poem made by other poems lines of other poems by other poets and I can't get this working oh damn it what am I doing wrong sorry about this where's it coming from she be coming from my computer [Music] should I keep should I keep talking go back back um anyway uh so I we were in a little flat in San Francisco and I got my mkin notebook I tore out the pages and I wrote out this poem I stretched mkin Pages all along my wall to make it look like an freeze on the inside and um I plucked out beautiful lines each elevation was um looking out over a different scene so one was looking out over the Chelsea pensioners um house one was looking out over the Chelsea physic Garden one was looking out over the river and the other was looking out over ranley the old ranley Gardens where they used the pleasure Garden so um I constructed this feeling of a feeling I wanted to evoke and then I found the lines by other poets and my own and lay them in lines of three so that you could read them along like that in lines or you could read them in the panel there were 40 panels which covered the whole scheme or you could read them make your own poem and choose a line like rose Thorn War so standing there as a spectator looking up you became a part of the poem and that was the idea and uh when my dad walks past it he bursts into tears he says you can't believe how amazing it is and I can't really read you the poem because it doesn't work on the page it only works there and carved into the Portuguese Limestone and you may not even be able to see on the wall but um it doesn't matter we don't need to look at it now um I'll talk about it another time uh and yes so there it is set in stone poet's dream if you stretch it out it's the length of two football fields and um it really does work in the stone um and to walk around it when you walk around it the poem moves and is a living thing um yeah I did that so that was nice they paid me 15,000 quid for that it's the most I've ever been paid for anything and uh There It Is Well I think that's probably a prompt to go straight there and see it in walk around it on the four sides and it really is wonderful to see and and so I'm sorry that we've not been able to see it tonight but the real thing is infinitely better one and congratulations on that Lely piece of work so we we come to the the third of the the gospel Pros poems pictures and this is one from the story in St John's gospel the first chapter where Jesus meets Nathaniel It's a Wonderful 12th century stained glass in in Canter Cathedral of that scene where the where Phillip and Andrew and and Nathaniel and Jesus are standing there and they're all labeled in Latin and there also is the fifth character which is the Fig Tree and there it says Ficus against it as though it's a character in the plot we remember that that Philip is the one who comes to call Nathaniel to Jesus and here it is again in yamek pentameter the song of Nathaniel so he is the spokesman now beneath the green Le fig tree I would pray beside the shore of Galilee Great Sea when fishing nets were mended for that day and shelter needed from the noontide heat it was there that Phillip called me and I came smiling at the Fantastic claim he made for Jesus from unlikely Nazareth that day what good could come from there it seemed to me he brought me on Beth cider's homely Shore amidst the places we had known since birth and stood me in the compass of his gaze who likewise smiled and with Amusement said behold an Israelite who knows no guile with Beating Heart I asked him how he knew beneath the Fig I saw you he replied you are the Son of God and Israel's King the words came out unass from deep within you say that he replied still with surprise because I say I saw you in the shade beneath the fig trees leaves you shall see more see Open Heavens and Angels sent from God Ascend and descend on the son of man my eyes were opened and new life began so that's just three of the uh poems I was going to end with something a bit lighter if that's all right before it's I was just going to ask you how long will the aoria be and when can we hear it well it's at the moment in the mind of the person who's commissioning it is being um composed by James McMillan and um it's thought that it will take place in the cine Chapel at the end of 25 so who knows if that's and so that's not in any way definite that is the the the dream of the man commissioning it and he's a person who is not to be um doubted really are going to be two seconds so we can to the slid he's just to tell okay we may get your picture do you want to read your I will yes yes okay this is this is something silly it's not from me at all it's a friend of ours who's called Lori Duncan wed whose um wife is the curator of the lovely Church in tudley with all the lovely shagal glass there and he's shown us around it many times but he's no mean musician and writes lovely songs and sings them to his guitar this is quite unlike anything we've had tonight but it's a bit of loose verse writing um by Lori Duncan we and it comes from standing on the platform at um at 7 Oak station um watching the com the commuters going off to their office in the morning and imagining what's going on amongst them here we are it's simply called Seven Oaks waiting at the railway station got to hide my desperation keep it in got to work before the rest got to be the first the best got to win feed the illusion of control feel the pressure crush your soul thicken skin got to have the perfect life eaten kids and Trophy Wife thick and thin rich is cus wanting more see no crime but being poor now that's a sin never made to look a fool massive house and kidney pool bespoke Jim waiting for the heart attack that kills you Stone dead like a rat so warer in everything is clean and bright ala Alo Frank Lloyd Wright T that's what it says on the tin failure can't be contemplated straight jacketed and unsedated looney bin only winning makes me whole size 10 ego size five Soul let war begin just a piece of nonsense but I feel that Lori has sort of insights in that sorry ending on a different note maybe are we that oh yes I won't I won't take long just so you didn't leave feeling um hard done by um yeah so this is the site I'm probably in the way no you're never in the way I am impossible thing that's one Grenadier Gardens where the yellow is that's where my freeze is and Eric's building um yeah that's his design he was going to have horses around it but they were more expensive so he rang me instead thankfully oh this is it so that's the book my amazing book I've got here right on the table which is the oh Norton anthology of poetry and I just I just carved out verses just to see how they would look if they were stretched out in panels alonger um well that's my note that's my San Francisco carpet see I I was dividing up words passages lines to make something that could look architectural um I think it was good it was in the deep end so yeah like elements popers sacred to Palace bubbling um um also you had to work out where the word could end and begin in the new panel and there was no punctuation it was just a DOT between each word um it was quite liberating actually um that's me on the floor doing it um the poem GRS grows time shortens Fabio wrote that uh sorry a bit and same that's it that's one elevation um see what I mean you can't really see it from here maybe it would have been better just to leave the mystery after all but yes please go and see it um that's it thank you very much indeed thank you it is very very much what going to see and walk all the way around too um Robert should we just go to questions yes yep we're thinking we'll go we have the lights put on and then we can go back to questions and comments just for a bit and if any of you are wanting to to leave where are we now um it was just after quarter 9 so don't be frightened to sort of tip to out if you've other things to do but we'll we'll have 10 minutes of of um comments and questions because you must have things inside you that you might want to say anyone being [Music] brave tired maybe what tired maybe yes I think we're oh yes please it's me again I'm afraid don't be afraid it just spk the rest um the question I wanted to ask both of you or each of you is when the poetic urge calls and you have written and I'm reminded of something that Thomas Hardy answered when he was asked do you like writing and he said no but I'm glad when I've written which do you feel if you have written something that you are pleased with is it an exorcism or is it a catharsis do you want to go first okay yes I mean to me it's it's it's neither really it's it's uh I would say it's a sort of birth of something that's been within you and as with all creative things if it comes out to your satisfaction there is intense pleasure uh and you know that this is something that you can share with people and you you never know which unlikely person is going to come up and and say that really touched me to the quick especially the line and usually it's the most surprising line that you almost cut out you know that that kind of things go on but it is a sharing of part of yourself and so an intense pleasure if if it comes out well um yeah just quickly that's a great question um when I was younger I used to run across the room to grab my pen and notebook before it changed my mind um fear probably but then when I wrote the mistress account um I had to tell the story and I had to lift myself up off the floor to tell the story and uh somebody said to me who read the poems before now you were writing poetry with a capital P and now you're writing real poetry with a small P so I think it's about how epic it feels or how real you want it to be or how true you want to be and that's a reflection always of yourself V Williams fourth Symphony which is very unusual because it's very a tone said of it when he was conducting the first rehearsals well if that's modern music you can keep it but I meant I wrote what I meant and how does ones self edit you've expressed yourself but how does one know until it's read by other people or you read it to other people that what you've expressed actually communicates you don't you don't no you don't it it's it's it's a poetry is either yours in inside you and it's still yours when it's in front of you on the on the page and you can be full of satisfaction but until it takes birth in someone else you don't know whether this this um child has a life which is going to help the other people and when the first come and say this is just wonderful at something or other you think well good that's a lovely feeling it's definitely a yes from us I think Robert your case um thank you what was I going to say about that and carry on for the moment please and uh we then we'll then we'll maybe everyone maybe that's it anything else um P you mentioned writing pros and I know that that you've written much more than just the example that you gave um and Robert with you um composing music as well as doing um do you find that um working in different media brings out a different you yes I find it much harder writing music onto a page than I do putting words down but sometimes Tunes in my head but being a liberus myself I never would say to anyone who was setting my thing to music this is the tune I have in my head it will be fatal and one is told that with the Gilbert and Sullivan partnership Gilbert always had a tune in his head though his voice was apparently tuneless and and what Sullivan had said do Never Never sing the tune to me except when they got to Jack Point's song the jester song in The Omen of the guard and he couldn't get anything from it so he asked um Gilbert to to hum the tune that he had in his head I think after that any any tune would have done but and i' just like to say yes the extraordinary privilege of being asked to do something so Civic with the freeze um I made me feel like a different person and also I teach now at gather up in the some of my students here um in lllo and teaching is to me the greatest craft and privilege of all to share great poems with budding poets we couldn't get better than that stop Yes will stop I was just going to say in answer to your question one of my favorite poems is SE freed Theo everyone suddenly burst out singing yes and that sort of as a a conclusion of the first world war and everything he'd been through seemed to me to be the most lovely expression of of of suon himself we'll go home and read it thank you thank you than thank you so much you