Skip to main content

Tichborne at 28: Radical Poetry

Chidiock Tichborne, the greatest one poem poet in the English language, was executed at the age of 28 after a memorable stay in the Tower of London.  His elegy is one of the reasons I wanted to be a poet, as its force inspired me greatly when I was young.  Now, at the same age, Bethan Tichborne, his relation, has been charged after leaping a fence near to David Cameron, British PM, as he stood on stage with Santa Claus to light a Christmas tree.

Tichborne was commended by judge Tim Dooley for her brilliant poetry collection, in the 2012 international Melita Hume Poetry Prize competition, which Eyewear runs.  Apparently, in this instance of activism, she was seeking to get near enough the prime minister, a believer in press freedom, so she could read out the names of those on "Calum's List" who have died due to the severe budget cuts imposed by the Coalition. Apparently these will continue for some time.

Tichborne is a highly intelligent, strongly driven person of great integrity and bravery.  Her poems, when they become better known, will impress - Eyewear Publishing hopes to have her book out in 2014.  In the meantime, she reminds me of a young Shelley, another well-educated graduate whose passion for justice led him to espouse radical causes.  Tichborne may have disrupted the peace, but has also reminded us that English poets can be creative rebels.  She goes to Kabul soon, on a fact-finding mission for a book she is planning to write.  She's a fascinating emerging literary-political figure.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart?  A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional.  Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were.  For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ?  Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets.  But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ?  How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular.  John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se....

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and  Silence of the Lambs .  I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".

THE SWIFT REPORT 2023

I am writing this post without much enthusiasm, but with a sense of duty. This blog will be 20 years old soon, and though I rarely post here anymore, I owe it some attention. Of course in 2023, "Swift" now means one thing only, Taylor Swift, the billionaire musician. Gone are the days when I was asked if I was related to Jonathan Swift. The pre-eminent cultural Swift is now alive and TIME PERSON OF THE YEAR. There is no point in belabouring the obvious with delay: 2023 was a low-point in the low annals of human history - war, invasion, murder, in too many nations. Hate, division, the collapse of what truth is, exacerbated by advances in AI that may or may not prove apocalyptic, while global warming still seems to threaten the near-future safety of humanity. It's been deeply depressing. The world lost some wonderful poets, actors, musicians, and writers this year, as it often does. Two people I knew and admired greatly, Ian Ferrier and Kevin Higgins, poets and organise...