Weekend Creative Corner 18th August

Words are our most inexhaustible source of magic.

– J. K. Rowling

I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering.

– Robert Frost

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.

– Douglas Adams

A sunny August Sunday afternoon, a perfect time to write, so why is it hard to settle? I decided to explore what other writers had said about writing, enter the question into your search engine of choice, and a multitude, of answers return. I chose the three above, because, well magic and discovery. Don’t you love the idea of discovering the world, yourself, simply by laying down words on a page one after another after another?

It seems that there are so many voices telling us what to think, and how to think, laying down a path of words to find our own wisdom is magic. As for Douglas Adam’s quote, I admire the levity, a reminder that we don’t always need to take our writing so seriously and I suggest random truancy from routine chores is a most sensible approach!

So, on this sunny August afternoon, I put my notebook aside, and picked up ‘ The National Trust of Nature Poems-treasured classics and new favourites’ with the intention of finding a poem to celebrate summer. Instead a picked up this pebble of treasure.

A Blackbird Singing

It seems wrong that out of this bird,
Black, bold, a suggestion of dark
Places about it, there yet should come
Such rich music, as though the notes'
Ore were changed to a rare metal
At one touch of that bright bill.

You have heard it often, alone at your desk
In a green April, your mind drawn
Away from its work by sweet disturbance
Of the mild evening outside your room.

A slow singer, but loading each phrase
With history's overtones, love, joy
And grief learned by his dark tribe
In other orchards and passed on
Instinctively as they are now,
But fresh always with new tears.

R.S Thomas 

R. S. Thomas – Topic ©️

Ronald Stuart Thomas (29 March 1913 – 25 September 2000), published as R. S. Thomas, was a Welsh poet and priest and widely recognized as one of the leading poets of modern Wales. Often described as a religious poet, he was influenced by the writings of Edward Thomas, Fiona Macleod, (pen name for the Scottish writer William Sharp) and William Butler Yeats.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/r-s-thomas gives a comprehensive biography of Thomas, his writing and influences. Almost all of Thomas’s work concerns the Welsh landscape and the Welsh people. However, he was a stoical and an unsentimental man. I chose this poem because the simple spare language describes the magic and mystery symbolised by the humble blackbird.

Three stanzas tied together with judicious use of consonance, assonance and alliteration. internal rhyme and half rhyme. Once again this is a poem to be heard and recited. Thomas weaves together metaphor with his images. To me, this poem speaks to the changing seasons, and invites the reader to appreciate the beauty and yet allow themselves the space to ponder

grief learned by his dark tribe

for the poem’s blackbird, and surely the reader themselves.

What does it sing to you?

Happy reading, and writing, and enjoy this August Sunday afternoon!