Runners up Poem 1: Street life in Preston by Joan Yates

The sun rose with little enthusiasm,
over the Preston skyline,
tinting the anaemic dawn a rosier hue.
In the late spring of ‘thirty-nine the
threat of war hung in the air, thicker than
the mist that hovered over the River Ribble.

Hooters wailed their melancholy tune,

summoning dockers and factory workers

for the early shift; their clogs clattering

over uneven cobbles, a staccato sound,
gathering momentum, as millworkers
tumbled out of terraced houses, joining the exodus.

Women in metal curlers, resembling alien

invaders, gossiped in a huddle on the corner.
Some, heavily pregnant, wore floral smocks
with coats that didn’t quite meet at the edges.

Boys, wearing ragged breeches and

‘hand me down’ jerseys, played marbles
and fired catapults in a back alley.
A battle scarred tom-cat, nine lives fast
diminishing, dodged their missiles.

Chimneys belched thick smoke into the air

as tubercular scarred lungs coughed up
threads of scarlet, paying, in painful
instalments, the heavy price that the
industrial north demanded from its people.

A child, too small to see over the hood,

pushed a pram, jiggling its noisy occupant.
Born into poverty, they shoulder a precious
burden, their parents’ hopes and dreams.
A fragile link to a better future.

Poets from around the World #4 - Gustav Suits (Võnnu, Estonia)

Gustav Suits – Estonian Poet: Identity and Independence. by Ian Fairey

Gustav Suits was an Estonian poet born in 1883. He is considered to be one of the greatest poets of the country.

First I think I should explain the place he came from. Estonia is a country that lies south across the Baltic Sea from Finland. Finland is also considered to be one of the closest neighbours in consideration to the language. On the Eastern border of Estonia is Russia and on the south border is Latvia another Baltic state.
　
The Estonian landscape is very flat with the highest peak (Egg Hill) being around 318m, which is smaller then the size of Rivington Pike, Lancashire. The area of Estonia is about 45,000 Km2 which is bigger then the size of Wales, however its population is about 1.3 million people. This means there is a lot of room for nature and nature reserves including forests with wolves, bears , places to pick blueberries and hundreds of species of birds. As well as a lot of nature there is a room for a lot of little towns.
Gustav Suits was born to a village teacher in one of these tiny towns called Võnnu in the late 19th century. During this time Estonia was part of the Russian Empire, having in the past been ruled by countries such as Germany and Sweden. Twelve years later Suits moved to Tartu. Tartu is the second largest city in Estonia, smaller in population then Preston, Lancashire.

Suits had his first poem published when at the age of 16 and a couple of years later he was involved in a literature circle of school children. They were called The friends of Literature and included A.H. Tammsaare who would become, as some would see, Estonia’s greatest novelist.

Suits was then involved in with a group called Noor Eesti (which translated is Young Estonia). Young Estonia followed on from the national movement in the late 19th century in literature. (In the late 19th century Kalevipoeg the national epic was written, which was composed of various folktales of Estonia. This epic along with other poets and writers could be seen as a pre-cursor to Young Estonia.

Suits wrote the phrase in one of their publications saying “ Let us be Estonians, but also become Europeans”. Which may give an indication of the viewpoint of Estonians at the time.

Historians have varied views on Young Estonia group. Some say that is started a new Era in Estonian Literature, however others say that it just continued on what was started in the 19th Century. Anyway Young Estonia tried to extend literature influences to France and Nordic Countries. Although some people criticised the group for being alien, that they imitated other nations and other criticisms the group was essential in Estonian literature development.

After spending some time in Finland Suits was offered the position of Professor at the university in Tartu. This was in 1921 and just a few years into independence for Estonia. At the university there was some development in the fact that he was the first professor of literature to teach in Estonian, and his work as a scholar and professor as groundbreaking. He wrote papers on older Estonian work and made contacts and lectures through Europe.

However independence did not last long, only lasting 22 years from 1918. Estonia only seeing independance again in 1991. In 1941 Suits house was burnt down and his many scholarly papers were lost. He fled to Stockholm via Finland , along with many other Estonians. He did manage to continue his scholarly work and produce more poetry before he died in Stockholm, where he is now buried.

He is an important figure in Estonia and one of his poems is quoted on a monument for independance in Tallinn.


I have found two poems of Suits to try and show some of the themes I tried to pick out in my talk. His poetry had various themes including militant and romantic.
He had a collection of poems called Land of Winds. Some people suggest that this was his name for Estonia, others that it was about himself. The two poems I chose were "My Island" and "Under Quivering Aspens". Both of these can be found here to read along with two other poems.



I know I have said nothing new here but I hope this has inspired you to find out more!

There are plenty of resources out there on the background to the Russian Empire, Baltic Singing Revolutions, Estonia itself etc etc.
However you may struggle to find some information on Estonian Poetry. So here are some resources that I used for my talk:
Estonian Literary Magazine and Article on Gustav Suits
Wikipedia entry for Gustav
Suits

and of course my adventures in Estonia... which can be found on this Estonian/English Poetry and Creativity Blog

Poets from around the World #3 - Arthur Rimbaud (Charleville, France)

Arthur Rimbaud by Vincent Smith

Arthur Rimbaud was born in Charleville in 1954. He was a prodigy but also a bit of a delinquent, rude and undisciplined. One of his teachers made a prophetic statement – “he is intelligent but has eyes and a smile I do not like … he will end badly. He will be the genius of good or evil”. As a teenager he ran away to Paris on several occasions and tried unsuccessfully to get his poems published. Later he thought of sending copies to the established poet Paul Verlaine, who invited him to come to Paris to stay with him and his family. However, Rimbaud was so dirty, unkempt and rude that he upset everybody and was ordered out of the house. Verlaine was so besotted with the young genius that he went with him and they spent a period living together and having a homosexual relationship. They went to London and worked as French teachers, but Verlaine wanted to end the affair and one evening after a drunken quarrel he produced a pistol and fired two shots at Rimbaud. He was arrested and although Rimbaud was not seriously hurt, was imprisoned for two years.

Rimbaud took up with another writer, Germain Nouveau and in 1874 went with him to London. But Nouveau saw the danger to his own reputation of being associated with Rimbaud and he quickly ended their relationship.

Rimbaud gave up his literary pretensions and spent the rest of his life wandering around Europe and farther afield, doing largely unsavoury jobs. He worked as a mercenary in Java and a gun runner in Ethiopia, where, under the cover of a legitimate business he was also involved in the slave trade. In 1891 he developed what was almost certainly bone cancer and had an unpleasant last few months. He had a leg amputated but the cancer spread rapidly and he died in late 1891 at the age of 37. All his poetry had been written before the age of 21, yet he had an important influence on the direction poetry was to take.

One of his most famous poems is about vowels, in which he assigns a different colour to each one. Much has been written trying to analyse the meaning, but Rimbaud himself said it had none, that he was just experimenting with ideas and sounds. Here it is in the original, followed by a literal translation.

Both the original French and the English versions can be found here

Poets from around the World #2 - Thomas Hardy (Dorset , England)

We were also entertained with grand performances of poems. One of which was Thomas Hardy's The Ruined Maid. Unfortunately we have no recording of this but I have put some links below for you to look at.

The Ruined Maid by Thomas Hardy. Hardy was born in 1840 in Dorset and was a Novelist and poet. More information about him can be found here

Poets from around the World #1 - Edgar Allan Poe (Boston, US)

Recently the Preston Poets were asked to give a talks on Poets of the World at the Brownedge Festival. This is the first of the poets for you to read about.

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) by Gwen Weiss

Edgar Allan Poe was born in Massachusetts USA on 19th January 1809. He was the son of travelling actors David and Elizabeth Arnold Poe. His father, an alcoholic, deserted the family which included a brother and a sister, and his mother died when he was two years old, and Poe was fostered by a prosperous Scottish merchant, John Allan, in Richmond.

Allan always refused to adopt Poe which led to bad feeling between them. The family moved to Scotland for a time and also lived in England returning to America in 1820. He fell in love with Sarah Elmira Royston but lost touch with her when he was at university.

Despite considerable academic success, after one year at the University of Virginia, his gambling debts forced him to leave, and by 1827 Poe with typical restlessness had moved from Boston to Richmond and then back to Boston again. On learning that Sarah had married he joined the army by saying he was twenty two although he was only eighteen and gained a good reputation, which he joined in 1827, but spent a miserable year at the US Military academy at West Point in 1930 before being dishonourably discharged, which he had deliberately engineered and it was at this point John Allan washed his hands of him.

He stayed in Baltimore from 1831 – 35 and began writing more seriously, working as a journalist earning a bare minimum on which to survive and from 1835 he began to edit the Southern Literary Messenger, from which he was sacked for being drunk. He was involved with several magazines thereafter and in 1836 he secretly married his 13 year-old cousin Virginia, her age being recorded on the marriage certificate as twenty -one. He later married her again in a large public ceremony.

Around this time he turned to writing short stories which revealed a fascination with emotional extremes, particularly fear, though his essays show that he was capable of being objective and critical. His early fiction tales, starring the fictitious detective C. Auguste Dupin laid the groundwork for future detectives in literature and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle said of his work that ‘ Each (of Poe’s detective stories) is a root from which a whole literature has developed…where was the detective story until Poe breathed the breath of life into it?’ The Mystery Writers of America have named their awards for excellence in the genre as ‘the Edgars.’

He was also admired by Jules Verne and H,G. Wells for his science fiction work.

In 1844 he moved to New York but despite popular acclaim his life was still wretched and remained poor. Virginia died of tuberculosis in 1847 and Poe, still poor and an alcoholic died in Baltimore two years later aged just forty.

As well as admirers, it seems that he also made enemies because after his death a long obituary in the New York Tribune, signed by a man using the pen name Ludwig, stated ‘ Edgar Allen Poe is dead…This announcement will startle many, but few will be grieved by it.’. He was soon identified as a Rufus Wilmot Griswold, an editor, critic and anthologist who had borne a grudge against Poe since 1842, and he set out to destroy Poe’s reputation after his death. He wrote a biographical article ‘Memoir of an Author’ depicting Poe as a depraved , drunk, drug addled, madman and included letters purported to have been written by the author. This biography sold well but was denounced by people who knew the victim well, and was later proved to be made up of lies and the letters were forgeries.

Conversely his work was often criticised by such as Ralph Waldo Emmerson who said of his work ‘The Raven,’ a poem which made him a household name , “ I see nothing in it.”; Aldous Huxley wrote that Poe’s work ‘falls into vulgarity by being too poetical - the equivalent of wearing a diamond ring on every finger.’

Many of his poems are very long and personally I found them flowery and difficult to follow but I enjoyed his rather macabre short stories such as ‘Murder in the Rue Morgue,’ ‘The Pit and the Pendulum,’ and ‘The Purloined Letter, this last demonstrating his interest in ciphers.’

The Poem read on the evening was "To My Mother" and other poems can be found here along with more information here