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.”
CXXXIX As the actress said to the bishop“Cor, that’s a big one, Bish!” the actress lied.
“You’re quite a Lord, my lad,” she coyly giggled
As he unveiled his archepiscopal pride
And joy. “Well, thank you, dear!” he blushed, and wriggled
In modest and obese embarrassment.
“But I must warn you, Madam,” he pursued,
“We bishops are subject to sexual harassment
And blackmail. When I featured in the nude
As centrefold of
Hustler magazine
Some years ago, most clergymen enthused
About the pics (both tasteful and obscene),
But Synod – sadly – was not much amused,
And sentenced me to wear sackcloth and ashes
For forty days, and suffer forty lashes.”
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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