{"id":486,"date":"2011-11-09T17:07:36","date_gmt":"2011-11-09T17:07:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/WritingTutors\/?p=486"},"modified":"2011-11-09T17:09:25","modified_gmt":"2011-11-09T17:09:25","slug":"a-new-poetry-collection-from-pauline-hughes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/WritingTutors\/?p=486","title":{"rendered":"A new poetry collection from Pauline Hughes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pauline’s poetry collection Bint<\/em>\u00a0is to be launched on\u00a0November 13 in Gallery North at Northumbria University at 6 pm.\u00a0 It is published by Red Squirrel Press<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Pauline writes:\u00a0 \u2018Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words\u2019 Robert Frost.\u00a0 I hope that what I have to say, if anything, is in the poems.\u00a0\u00a0 Is there a message in there?\u00a0 As Alan Bennett said of talking Heads \u2018Nobody knows and I certainly don\u2019t\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0 But there is an attempt to reach the heart of feeling, to use language to express rather than be locked in the prison house.<\/p>\n

The poems are essentially lyric. This Greek term means song \u2013 a non-narrative poem expressing a state of mind or feeling.\u00a0 The impact of the lyric has been perhaps reduced by making it a purely personal voice and the influence of Confessional poetry on what is written is still strong.\u00a0 There is a sense in which the lyric should be addressing an audience; one should be singing to other persons but with the fragmentation of society you can\u2019t be sure who they are.<\/p>\n

There is still the concept of the poet as voice and witness.\u00a0 Auden talked of the double nature of poetry as both magical incantation (Ariel) and wise\/true meaning (Prospero<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u2018The will must not usurp the work of the imagination\u2019 said Yeats but you do have a role as witness (Heaney).\u00a0\u00a0 Poem needs both intellect and passion he has said.\u00a0 It does need to tell the truth.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There may be social and political pressures one is susceptible to, feeling compelled to give voice to the voiceless, to give space to those who have been denied.\u00a0 But poetry makes its point in terms of imagery, symbols, language, rhythms. The poet may have no moral obligation to the world\u00a0 but a poem often is a \u2018truth won from life against all odds\u2019 (Donald Davie).\u00a0<\/p>\n

In much contemporary poetry, irony and dispassion are the default tone; a self consciousness which I sometimes find has strangled the poet\u2019s voice.\u00a0\u00a0 My poems in Bint<\/em> are an attempt to express in a more barefaced way.\u00a0\u00a0 Some are personal, some are observations, some are personas.\u00a0 There is immense freedom in subject matter in the writing of poetry now.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But I feel that these poems foreground a woman\u2019s voice speaking and attempt to convey women\u2019s lives from real lived experience.\u00a0\u00a0 But I hope this is done with a light touch \u2013 with what Heaney calls vitality and insouciance.’<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pauline’s poetry collection Bint\u00a0is to be launched on\u00a0November 13 in Gallery North at Northumbria University at 6 pm.\u00a0 It is published by Red Squirrel Press. Pauline writes:\u00a0 \u2018Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[95,44,96],"class_list":["post-486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry","tag-launch","tag-lyric","tag-women"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/WritingTutors\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/WritingTutors\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/WritingTutors\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/WritingTutors\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/WritingTutors\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=486"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/WritingTutors\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":490,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/WritingTutors\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486\/revisions\/490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/WritingTutors\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/WritingTutors\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/WritingTutors\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}