Julia Copus at Woodstock

It was the second Woodstock Poetry festival in Oxfordshire this weekend. This is an up and coming festival and I didn’t know about it last year. So with the assistance of Cassandra the satnav I and a friend set off on Saturday to hear Alice Oswald recite Memorial in the entirely appropriate setting of the Woodstock Methodist chapel. I’ve previously written about Memorial and it was just as mesmerising to hear it for a second time

Next on the bill was Julia Copus. I like her style of poems and this was a chance to hear them in a smaller setting than the TS Eliot prize readings of 2012. Her most recent collection is  The World's Two Smallest Humans .

 

She is credited with having ‘invented’ the mirror poem in which the lines of the second verse repeat those of the first but in reverse order. As she charmingly and disarmingly explained she thinks this form has been around for a lot longer than her. One of my favourite poems of the evening, Raymond, at 60, is a mirror poem about her uncle, who remained child-like even as an adult. There were more real people in some of the other poems – Jan Grzelski who was in a coma for nineteen years, an ex-husband in ‘This Is the Poem in which I Have Not Left You’ and the German great grandfather of her current husband. He was killed in the first world war and this is one of the poems commissioned by Carol Ann Duffy for 1914 Poetry remembers. Julia Copus gave just enough explanation before each poem to give you the context. I left Woodstock wanting more poems which is just as it should be since I came away with a copy of The World’s Two Smallest Humans.

Up for the Prize

Sometimes, although this can be rare, planned outings have a way of working out perfectly and this is what happened with yesterday evening's trip to the TS Eliot reading. Perhaps it is the effect of the South Bank weaving a kind of magic as it did last September when I was there for the reading about Edward Thomas. He managed to tiptoe into last night's event too, with a mention in Carol Ann Duffy's poem about the counties of England.

So the T.S. Eliot prize. Who should win? Well all of them of course although my personal favourites are David Harsent and Esther Morgan. Ian McMillan was the perfect choice as MC, giving the audience permission to gasp, to murmur, to laugh and reminding us we were a tribe - all 1,700 of us in the auditorium. Apparently those on stage could not see us in the dark and they may have been dazzled by the lights hence the importance of the laughs, gasps and murmurs. On the whole the male poets seemed to deal with the nerves better, except perhaps John Burnside who had to perform a magic trick of his own to make a bottle of water appear under the lectern not once but twice and from which he took hasty gulps. During the evening I found myself preferring the men's poems but realising at the same time I was being unduly influenced by the lower register of the male voice and the confident delivery which made their poems appear to have more layers to peel off. I warmed to Carol Ann Duffy again, whose poetry I loved before she became poet laureate and therefore a member of the establishment or so I mistakenly decided. I was wrong - she is as honest and spiky as ever.

There were a surprising number of angels in the poems - most obviously in Esther Morgan's poems. Also dead parents and the evening ended with Carol Ann remembering her mother - a poignant moment. That is one of the purposes of poetry to give continued life to those who have gone on before us. Discuss?