A Poem For Sunday

Dish poetry editor Alice Quinn writes:

Today we post a poem chosen in light of the chapter “Capturing Animals” from Poetry in the Making: An Anthology of Poems and Programmes from ‘Listening and Writing,’ a series we introduced yesterday that was designed by the poet Ted Hughes for the BBC in the 1960s and addressed primarily to children and teachers.

Early on in the book, he struck the note of his approach, “Imagine what you are writing about. See it and live it . . . . Just look at it, touch it, smell it, listen to it, turn yourself into it. When you do this, the words look after themselves, like magic. . . . The minute you flinch, and take your mind off this thing, and begin to look at the words and worry about them . . . then your worry goes into them and they set about killing each other. So you keep going as long as you can, then look back and see what you have written.”

The nineteenth-century English poet John Clare, whose poem appears below, wrote with exceptional ease, naturalness, and intimacy about the creatures of our world.

The Sand Martin by John Clare (1795-1864):

Thou hermit haunter of the lonely glen

And common wild and heath—the desolate face

Of rude waste landscapes far away from men

Where frequent quarries give thee dwelling place,

With strangest taste and labour undeterred

Drilling small holes along the quarry’s side,

More like the haunts of vermin than a bird

And seldom by the nesting boy descried—

I’ve seen thee far away from all thy tribe

Flirting about the unfrequented sky

And felt a feeling that I can’t describe

Of lone seclusion and a hermit joy

To see thee circle round nor go beyond

That lone heath and its melancholy pond.

(Photo of two sand martins by Jo Garbutt)