12R Vol8 Iss2 Autumn-Winter 2017
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Confessions of a Traitor: Trials and Tribulations of Translating Poetry A Close Reading: 'The Straight Jacket' by Pascale Petit In Conversation with Beth Soule Turning Japanese – Tanka Found Poetry NNotice to Contributors CContents 13th March 2020 is the deadline for poems Contacts 2 from SPS members for the next issue. This Thoughts from the President 3 will enable them to be circulated to our Words from the Chair 3 referees for their recommendations. If you Notes from the Editor 4 are sending poems please put your name Confessions of a Traitor 5 and contact details (preferably email A Memory of George Crabbe 6 address) on each page. Submissions not A Close Reading 7 conforming to this requirement will not be Found Poetry 8 considered. Turning Japanese 4: Tanka 10 10th April 2020 is the deadline for the next Letter to the Editor 11 issue for all items other than poems: In Conversation with Beth Soule 11 articles, write-ups of events or workshops, Selected Poems 13 reviews, etc. The preferred format is an 6th Festival of Suffolk Poetry Review 16 attachment to an email to A Clutch of Larks 20 [email protected] but you may SPS Events send them by post to: Border Crossing 22 The Editor, Bridges and Crossings 22 64 Broom Street, Inspired By The Rubáiyát 24 Great Cornard, Tea at The Priory 24 Sudbury, National Poetry Day 24 Suffolk, Other Events CO10 0JT. Bugs and Blossoms Workshop 26 They Toil Not Workshop 26 It is very important that your name and Brandon Pop-Up Poets 26 contact details (preferably email address) Book Reviews (BR) are written on the item you are sending. Nine Days (BR) 27 Images, drawings or photographs are Exposure (BR) 27 welcome. Please send them, in as high a After-Images (BR) 28 resolution as possible, to Dreams of Flight (BR) 29 [email protected]. Other Items Remembering Stephen Glason 29 Front cover: Café Poets' Corner – Sudbury Café Poets 30 Photograph by Derek Adams. Future Events – 2020 31 Lavenham Press workshops 31 CContact details :: suffolkpoetrysociety..org..uk Chair Florence Cox chair@suffolkpoetrysociety.org.uk Vice Chair Beth Soule vicechair@suffolkpoetrysociety.org.uk Secretary Sue Wallace-Shaddad secretary@suffolkpoetrysociety.org.uk Treasurer Colin Whyles treasurer@suffolkpoetrysociety.org.uk Membership Diane Jackman membership@suffolkpoetrysociety.org.uk Tel: 01379 642372 for new membership enquiries 12 Rivers Editor Fran Reader editor@suffolkpoetrysociety.org.uk Publicity Derek Adams publicity@suffolkpoetrysociety.org.uk Portfolio Secretary Pat Jourdan portfolio@suffolkpoetrysociety.org.uk Crabbe Competition Rosemary Jones crabbe@suffolkpoetrysociety.org.uk Stanza Rep Derek Adams stanza@suffolkpoetrysociety.org.uk Webmaster Colin Whyles webmaster@suffolkpoetrysociety.org.uk Published by Suffolk Poetry Society, c/o Fairweather Law Ltd, Solicitors, Copyright © 2019 Suffolk Poetry Society 16 Wentworth Road, ALDEBURGH, Suffolk, IP15 5BB, UK Registered Charity 1162298 2 houghts from the .... or rather it hasn’t yet gone wild doubt that whether we are President but with typical quiet attention imported or native Suffolkers, the TT some local Quakers are reflecting contrast of our deep, quiet The Quaker Graveyard Has on what that might mean for wild landscape with the sharp-edged, Gone Wild life, visitors and, not least, pervasive noise of present-day mourners, if it were to be ‘re- politics is especially poignant. wilded’. grasses clamber on the deep-cut What do you think? Is it either or? simple stones, This beautiful county of ours quite Should we as poets turn away from flashes of colour clearly and in many places the racket of the newsroom and light up the path demonstrates the same dilemma. celebrate our heritage of natural and where there was once ordinary The small woodland path, once beauty? Should we grapple with silence neatly barbered, that I walk on the big questions of our national the deep voiced ministry almost every evening when in life in our poetry? What is a of bees Suffolk is now overgrown. It ‘political’ poem? Is there such an blazes with straggling plants, animal? speaks. many with sharp teeth. We have Having accepted the privilege of Now we are scattering the ashes perhaps got used to a rather more being your current president and of that plain, silent, image tidy version of husbandry than we see in the hedges that lean and heard, seen and read your work, I of ourselves don’t doubt that you have the skills we like to believe flash their changing leaves over the roads - and yet it’s beautiful. Is and the heart to do what poets is who we are change always a paradox? must and shine the light of poetry and a small, bright eyed wherever it needs to fall. hedgehog joins our Meeting All of us are grappling with that Kate Foley and the bees. question at the moment and I don’t ords from the Chair I passed the test to get on the Now I usually gather the course but, although I heard elements of a poem in my head, WW there were some unfilled spaces, sometimes letting it stew for as I’ve been thinking about how a I didn’t receive the offer of a long as three weeks. Then I sit at poem gets into its final shape. place. I sat on the steps outside my computer very late in the When I was younger and a poem the college and wept. When a day, literally and metaphorically, was demanding to be written, I man walking past asked what and type it up. I love the ease of would scribble it down on the matter was, I sobbed,‘I want re-drafting on the computer and whatever came to hand: the back to study here!’ Unbeknown to I save each draft as I go along. of a cheque book, an empty cake me, he was the Director of the Sometimes, after a lot of box, the edge of a page of my college. A few days later I was alterations, I return to the raw university lecture notes or even accepted on the course, and early version and make it the on a till receipt in very tiny because of it, I was able to earn a definitive one. For over a writing! Later, I would transfer decent living and swap my quarter of a century I have these drafts, sometimes with dingy room for a Paris flat with shared my poems with a couple modifications, into a succession my very own shower, toilet and of poetry writing groups, where of thick exercise books, hot water. fresh insight can be gained, unearthed from my usual criticism taken on board and new I worked for a dynamic company domestic clutter when I had a ideas exchanged. I store my spare moment. on the western edge of Paris, and it was here that I typed up my poetry in ‘year’ folders, so all the poems I have written in one I didn’t learn to type until I was poems for the first time. My particular year are in one place. 24. I had cycled from Ipswich to typing was entirely fuelled by But I must admit that I find it Southwest France the year before rage; I had a new colleague, very difficult to locate poems with a and was living in a gloomy attractive and smartly dressed, connecting theme. I would love upstairs room equipped with one but her lunch hours lasted all to hear any ideas on how other cold tap. The toilet was at the afternoon and the work that she poets store their work so that back of the yard and was shared was meant to be doing arrived retrieval is easy. with fifteen people. I was doing on my desk instead. I decided that when my extra work was temporary work as a cleaner I often wake in the night, and when I heard that I could apply done, I would type up my poems until she deigned to put in an sometimes a few lines of new to do a full-time bilingual appearance. I soon filled a poetry occur to me which I shape secretarial course at a college in whole folder with my early carefully in my head. But if, in the town and receive the works. my drowsy state, I make the minimum wage while I studied. 3 mistake of not writing down the were set to music by Colin of exploring the fusion of poetry fledgling poem on the nearest Whyles and, accompanied by with art and photography during piece of paper, in the morning I Colin, sung by Lynne Nesbit; the fascinating talk by the cannot for the life of me Virginie Roidiere’s harp music Suffolk poet Clare Best. remember the lines that had beautifully enhanced the poetry seemed so vivid and exciting. of the Rubáiyát and the a capella Poetry is not an island. Every group Triangle provided sort of artistic endeavour can This brings me to the exciting entertaining and lively songs for create associations in our minds year of shared poetry in Suffolk. the Members’ reading. I to inspire us. Whether your In May, we had another performed at the open mic at poetry is typed, memorised or successful Festival of Suffolk FolkEast for the first time, both scribbled on the back of an Poetry in Stowmarket, followed saying poems and singing a envelope, it is enriched by in June by the Rubáiyát event in ballad of mine, whose lyrics experiences, ideas and Ipswich and our annual were praised by one member of impressions which can help to Members’ reading in Walpole the audience afterwards! At the bring your words to their fullest Old Chapel.