Category Archives: Poetry

‘As Kingfishers Catch Fire’

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Just a photo of my big ‘ol face today, I’m looking forward to when we can finally take our masks off and walk around showing our faces again. I get the masks, we need to wear them, but it’ll be so lovely to see people properly once more.

The title of this post is from one of my favourite Gerard Manley Hopkins poems, As Kingfishers Catch Fire. I love this poem, not only for its dazzling first line, but for these spellbinding words at the end of the first stanza:

…’What I do is me; for that I came.’

Whilst i’ve not suffered during the pandemic like many people have, the last year has certainly affected my mood and how I feel in myself. Sometimes I’ve felt more relaxed, without the pressures that existed pre-Covid, but sometimes I’ve felt anxious, adrift and fearful of the future. This line from the poem is like an anchor that helps me keep my feet on the ground – I just have to be me, that’s why i’m here, that’s what i’ve got to contribute.

It’s been useful to refer to during this time of crisis, but I wish I’d read this poem when I was a young teenager as well. There were times then when I felt unsure, lacked confidence, lacked a clear sense of self. These words would have provided a useful steer through the sometimes choppy waters of adolescence.

Gerard Manley Hopkins was a Jesuit priest as well as a poet. His poems often celebrate the richness and diversity in nature, richness and diversity that are God’s creation, a reflection of his greatness, and, therefore, something to be praised. Every individual living thing has a place in the world of this poetry, everything has value. It’s an approach to life that is full of humanity, and one that is much needed right now, when so many have been buffeted by the various storms that have passed over everyone in recent months.

Here’s an example; the wonderful Pied Beauty, a poem that celebrates all that is unusual and different, and a lovely counterpoint to the increasingly mean-spirited, suspicious and judgemental atmosphere that appears to be growing in the UK at the moment –

! hope things return to the gentler ways of being that I think were more widespread some time ago. I might be seeing the past though rose-tinted specs but I remember my home country as being more at ease with itself a while back. A bit more pied beauty please!

Winter’s last gasp

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Jan photographed through a sheet of ice, Saturday 20th March, 2021

Winter was still hanging on last night, but it feels as thin and brittle as this sliver of frozen water we found on our walk yesterday. It will melt away at the slightest bit of warmth from the sun, or from Jan’s breath and not return for many, many months. I’m glad, i’m so ready for spring, but I do love the painterly effect the ice produced when I photographed things through it yesterday.

Here in Berlin, Spring comes late compared to the UK, and often quite suddenly. I prefer the softer, gentler Spring in Britain. In this part of Germany everything dies back so completely in the winter, by March the landscape looks dead and blackened. Then Spring arrives, and within a week you can almost see the plants and seeds growing, and almost hear them say ‘right, we’d better get cracking, come on!’, and everything shoots up. I think this will come next week as the temperatures rise up the high teens, it’ll be all systems go. The first signs are there already, in amongst the leaf litter.

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Violets growing in the Naturpark Südgelände, Berlin, yesterday

Each morning I usually read a poem over breakfast. I have a lovely book called A Nature Poem for Every Day of the Year, edited by Jane McMorland Hunter and published by Batsford. Not surprisingly, all the poems at the moment are about spring. There are many different responses to the new season in the poems, and I can tell that my reading of them is so coloured by my experience of the Covid crisis over past year. There were some lovely comments on the blog yesterday (much appreciated, thank you!) , from people who had experienced similar feelings during the pandemic and the Covid restrictions. It’s like we’re seeing everything through the filter of a sheet of emotional ice. But perhaps this filter will melt away if things become more positive over the coming months.

Today’s poem is a few lines taken from Shelley’s Queen Mab and it expresses some hopefulness and optimism that is very welcome against the backdrop of the news broadcasts that remain quite gloomy still –

From Queen Mab, canto IX, lines 165-170, by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

Though storms may break the primrose on its stalk, Though frosts may blight the freshness of its bloom, Yet Spring’s awakening breath will woo the earth, To feel with kindliest dews its favourite flower, That blooms in mossy banks and darksome glens, Lighting the greenwood with its sunny smile.