A poetry plan

A poetry plan

I’ve been digging through old files, and found a project I started three years ago, using a GK Chesterton poem as a device for titling pictures.

The Strange Music is a beautiful and moving piece, and my son had asked me to read it at his wedding. I managed, but not without a lump in my throat and slightly damp eyes. I decided to use the lines as titles for a series of pictures, because each has its own resonances, and would – I hoped – pick up on the mood I wanted in the picture, and enhance it.

So here’s a project for the next few days (should you choose to accept it). Pick a poem: possibly one you know and love, or wander through a book or website to find one you like. It could be ethereal and romantic, or it could be a limerick if you want.



This will give you a number of different ways to spend your time profitably. You may end up with some unusual and thought-provoking titles for pictures. You may discover poems you don’t know – or maybe discover poetry as a whole, if you’ve never been interested since some teacher made you learn ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud’ off by heart.

And you may find a way to organise otherwise-random pictures into a sort of sequence. Yesterday, in a Critique Gallery comment, I suggested that free association might be a good technique to use for finding objects to put together in a still life picture, and it strikes me that reading poetry on the web or in an anthology may be a way to stimulate such thinking.

And a suggestion: my favourite book of poetry is called Other Men’s Flowers. It’s one man’s collection of the poems he remembered and loved from school – not a negative experience for him, clearly. Although it was compiled around 80 years ago, it’s still freely available, both used and new.