Composer and poet Giles Swayne will be reading selections from his recent book of 200 sonnets, Matters arising. Known for his powerful choral compositions, Swayne reveals in his poetry the same intellectual rigour and emotional depth which characterises his music.
Matters arising is Swayne’s first major poetry collection. The sonnets reflect on memory, mortality, and the quiet dramas of everyday existence. Many of them are comic, and some are quite lewd. To quote Christopher Reid (Poetry Editor at Faber and Faber from 1991 to 1999) they are “an emphatic declaration on the side of high spirits, and a refusal to be cowed or silenced by menacing realities.”
LXXXI Depression (1)
The octopus, as far as we can tell,
Is unafflicted by self-doubt, depression
Or black despair; and yet it seems they are
Intelligent and highly social creatures
Who help each other, treat their children well,
And do Good Works. Despite this, the impression
Most humans have of them is very far
From cosy: to our eyes their salient features
Are tentacles that wriggle and repel
Us strongly. Given their natures, this confession
Of weakness is disgraceful, and should bar
Us from our pulpits as pan-global preachers.
But if with tender feelings it is blessed,
Why does the octopus not get depressed?
CLXXXVII Hello?Why do we write? What fine words can we utter
To butter parsnips? Is that old creative
Urge a genetic
tic, a mere neurosis?
Perhaps it is; perhaps we leave our mark
In music, words or pictures like a dog
Which lifts its leg against a pissing-tree
To mark its passage – “Hello, world – it’s me!”
It’s not as if this planet’s all agog
To read these lines; why, then, did I embark
On writing them? Was it some strange hypnosis
Which led me on? Are bardic urges native
To all of us, or am I just a nutter?
Whatever be the reason, all I know
Is that it does me good to say hello.
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