Today dawns frosty, the car windscreen is frosted up with pretty patterns. But I have my defrosting kit from the garage should I need to go out. My £25 pounds is well spent, they have checked battery, antifreeze and tyres, even taking the car out on a run to check performance. Not so good news I will need a couple of front tyres sometime in the future.
I pottered around the town whilst the car was in the garage, buying vegetables and watching the small market set up. Drifted through the church yard and admired the clipped yews, much neater than ours. The town runs up a hill just above the church is a moated site called Vivers Hill Castle, unusual because it is situated on a hill. At the very top of the hill is the late medieval Neville Hunting Lodge with just one small part of a wall standing.
When will princes, politicians and unscrupulous businessmen go to jail for crimes committed? Andrew is being punished by the withdrawal of charity support, he has been turned into a black sheep by his family and thrown to the wolves? Anyway he will not be drawing a state salary.... The Queen consulted Prince Charles on what to do, does it not sound like 'Alice in Wonderland' to you.
Simon Armitage is handing out his salary he receives as Poet Laureate to anyone who can write a good eco-poem. Just read Deborah Harvey's poem which is political rather than about nature.
Suddenly I remember a poem by John Masefield, I must have learnt it at school... Sea Fever ... how simple it seems amongst the confusion of the days we live in.
I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking.
It turns out that Simon Armitage is not seeking individual poems for The Laurel Prize but 40 page collections of poetry entered by publishers. It took me a while to realise that you were in Kirbymoorside and not Malton...where my father was born.
ReplyDeleteI love Kirkbymoorside, Malton has too much traffic going through, though of course it has the supermarkets. Unfortunately the road is closed between our village and Malton for a whole month as they strengthen the pack horse bridge over the river.
ReplyDeleteLovely old poem... It lives on, because it speaks, to the human soul. "Find Peace!" "Find Peace!" "Find Peace"
ReplyDeleteI will not comment on your political news, or rather Royal news. Simply because I get so very, very, very tired, of people from other lands, commenting on ours.
But I do agree, about people looking for poets, to write poems on nature, which are _really_ about political views. -sighhhhh-
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