News | Thursday, 28th September 2017
Manchester writers celebrate National Poetry Day by sharing their favourites
Writing School poets are also releasing new work inspired by Manchester
Today is National Poetry Day.
To mark the occasion, Manchester Metropolitan University writers have chosen some of their favourite poems.
It has been a busy year for many of our Manchester Writing School poets. They have written new work either about, or inspired by, the city of Manchester. Michael Symmons Roberts, Professor of Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University, released ‘Mancunia’ earlier in the year, and Professor Antony Rowland’s new collection ‘M’ is out this week.
Our new Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing, Andrew McMillan, has written a new poem for Visit England on National Poetry Day to celebrate Manchester, which you can watch him perform.
Professor Symmons Roberts and Dr Helen Mort are performing new work at the 'Contains Strong Language' festival, which launches on National Poetry Day as part of Hull UK City of Culture 17.
On National Poetry Day, readers and writers are encouraged to share their favourite poems to get people talking about the power of verse.
So Jacqueline Grima from Humanity Hallows asked some of our award-winning writers and poets from Manchester Writing School about their favourite poems.
Andrew McMillan – Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing (Poetry)
Sharon Olds - What Left?
Something like a half-person
left my young husband’s body,
and something like the other half
left my ovary. Later,
the new being, complete, slowly
left my body. And a portion of breath
left the air of the delivery room,
entering the little mouth,
and the milk left the breast, and went
into the fat cuffs of the wrists.
Years later, during his cremation,
the liquids left my father’s corpse,
and the smoke left the flue. And even
later, my mother’s ashes left
my hand, and fell as seethe into the salt
chop. My then husband made
a self, a life, I made beside him
a self, a life, gestation. We grew
strong, in direction. We clarified
in vision, we deepened in our silence and our speaking.
We did not hold still, we moved, we are moving
still - we made, with each other, a moving
like a kind of music: duet; then solo,
solo. We fulfilled something in each other -
I believed in him, he believed in me, then we
grew, and grew, I grieved him, he grieved me,
I completed with him, he completed with me,
we made whole cloth together, we succeeded,
we perfected what lay between him and me,
I did not deceive him, he did not deceive me,
I did not leave him, he did not leave me,
I freed him, he freed me.
He said: “In poetry oftentimes, I think we speak of being ‘given permission’. Sharon Olds was one of the first poets who really gave me permission to write about the self in an un-ironic, sincere and straightforward manner.
“This poem is the final poem in her astonishing collection that deals with her divorce. There is something so celebratory and even-handed about the poem; it avoids the bitterness a poem like this could easily take on. The musicality of it too, is quite simply sublime. Sharon Olds talks about wanting her poetry to be ‘useful’, which I’ve always found a wonderful way to think about poetry.”
Anjum Malik - Lecturer in Creative Writing (Script and Poetry)
Anjum chose a Manchester-themed poem by Ryan Williams, written after the May Arena attack.
A grey Tuesday morning, 'neath Lancastrian skies
We wake once again to wipe tears from our eyes
Forced to wear robes of weakness and pity
As cowards attack the very heart of our cityLike always, we'll comfort and hold one another
A Mancunian family of sisters and brothers
For a time our strut is reduced to a stagger
But make no mistake, we'll rekindle our swaggerWe'll learn how to live with another deep scar
If you think you can beat us, you don't know who we are!We're Collyhurst, Ancoats, Moston and Sale
We're Oldham and Bury; Ashton; RochdaleWe're Pankhurst and Turing, the Gallagher Brothers
We're Morrissey, Marr and a million others!We're a city of workers, a city of shirkers
A city of tracksuits, and bibles and burkasVegetarian, Rastafarian, Atheist, Jew
100 Red! 100% Blue!We're each of us different but never alone
In this Cosmopolitopia we get to call 'home'So, come at us again, and again if you must.
Time after time we'll rise from the dust.
You'll never prevail - not against us...This is Manchester, our Manchester,
And the bees still buzz!
Helen Mort, Lecturer in Creative Writing (Poetry)
Edna St Vincent Millay- 'I, being born a woman and distressed'.
I, being born a woman and distressed
By all the needs and notions of my kind,
Am urged by your propinquity to find
Your person fair, and feel a certain zest
To bear your body’s weight upon my breast:
So subtly is the fume of life designed,
To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind,
And leave me once again undone, possessed.
Think not for this, however, the poor treason
Of my stout blood against my staggering brain,
I shall remember you with love, or season
My scorn with pity, —let me make it plain:
I find this frenzy insufficient reason
For conversation when we meet again.
Mort said: “Millay was a bold, non-conformist poet, openly bisexual and totally comfortable writing about her sexuality. In this poem, she sends up the idea that women are demure and fragile by talking about how lust sometimes overcomes reason - controversial in 1923!
“I love the poem's closing couplet, I've always read it as saying: 'just because we slept together doesn't mean I want to talk to you.' I love her wit and defiance.
"I'm also really enjoying Michael Symmons Roberts' new collection Mancunia and my favourite from the book so far is 'On Your Birthday', a dazzling tour of The Northern Quarter 'in full vamp / its post drizzle glory'. Because I commute to Manchester from my home near Sheffield, I always feel like a bit of a tourist here but Michael's poem is so intimate it feels like a secret tour of the city."
If you are interested in writing your own poetry, the 2017 Manchester Writing Competition Poetry Prize is still accepting entries until Friday 29th September.
