To celebrate Valentine's Day I'm posting a poem written by Adrian Henri for his short-lived (late 60s) Poetry-Rock band The Liverpool Scene. It is a fun way of looking at poetry which many of you will appreciate. It's like a pop song made into a poem, a pop poem maybe? Oh, how I love the wonderful and sometimes unexpected world of poetry!
Love Is...
Love is feeling cold in the back of vans
Love is a fanclub with only two fans
Love is walking holding paintstained hands
Love is
Love is fish and chips on winter nights
Love is blankets full of strange delights
Love is when you don't put out the light
Love is
Love is the presents in Christmas shops
Love is when you're feeling Top of the Pops
Love is what happens when the music stops
Love is Love is when you open Valentines Love is when you read those awful lines(?) Love is when you read between the lines*
Love is
Love is you and love is me
Love is a prison and love is free
Love's what's there when you're away from me
Love is
Adrian Henri
* These three lines are from the version in the following video, the original went like this: Love is white panties lying all forlorn.
Love is pink nightdresses still slightly warm.
Love is when you have to leave at dawn.
Dickens' 200th anniversary will be marked tomorrow in ceremonies across the world.
The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall will be leading celebrations in the United Kingdom and Charles will lay a wreath on Dickens' grave at Westminster Abbey, where he was buried in 1870.
Ralph Fiennes, who will next be seen as Magwitch in a new film adaptation of Great Expectations, will read an extract from Bleak House with readings also being given by Mark Dickens, great-great-grandson of Charles Dickens.
The Schools minister Nick Gibb has said today that Great Expectations is one of the books all children should read before they leave primary school. The truth is that it may be a little too hard for eleven-year-olds to read it as Dickens wrote it. (source)
The Guardian is making it easier for us as they have published the digested read versions of three of his finest books, Great Expectations, Bleak House and David Copperfield, at guardian.co.uk/books. Who can resist Pip, Miss Havisham, Lady Dedlock, Steerforth and Dopey Dora? Over the course of the year, they will be digesting all Dickens's greatest novels. Next up this month? What better for these miserable days of austerity than Hard Times? Give them a try!
The following is a cartoon about the life and times of Dickens made by the BBC. Turn on (or activate) the subtitles for an easier viewing.
I'm also posting one of the most famous beginnings of a novel in English. From A Tale of Two Cities:
"The Period
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,
it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness,
it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity,
it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness,
it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair,
we had everything before us, we had nothing before us,
we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct
the other way--in short, the period was so far like the present
period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its
being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree
of comparison only."
