Wednesday 21 March 2018

World Poetry Day and Granada

Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature has sent representatives to fellow creative city Granada for World Poetry Day. Nottingham poets Georgina Wilding and Leanne Moden are joining sixty other poets at an event which also features poetry from other UNESCO cities of literature.

 

Also in Granada is Sandeep Mahal, Director Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature, who has said, "By celebrating poetry today, we celebrate our ability to join together, in a spirit of solidarity and passion to ignite creativity and bring more poetry into the world.”

Sixty years ago - in March 1958 - Alan Sillitoe was in Granada, as you can see from this notebook inscription.

 

As it is World Poetry Day here’s a little treat from the same notebook of Alan’s, written in 1958. It’s the first draft of one of his poems. The revised edition is typed below for comparison. Enjoy.

 
 
Picture of Loot

 
Certain dark underground eyes
Have been set upon
The vast emporiums of London.
 
Lids blink red
At glittering shops
Houses and museums
 
Shining at night,
Chandeliers of historic establishments
Showing interiors to Tartan eyes,
 
Certain dark underground eyes
Bearing bloodred sack
The wineskins of centuries
 
Look hungrily at London:
How many women in London?
A thousand thousand houses
 
Filled with the world’s high living
And fabulous knick-knacks;
Each small glossy machine
 
By beside or on table or in bathroom
Is the electrical soul of its owner
The finished heart responding
 
To needle of gentle current;
And still more houses, endlessly stacked
Asleep with people waiting
 
To be exploded
The world’s maidenhead supine for breaking
By corpuscle Tartars
 
To whom a toothbrush
Is a miracle;
What vast looting
 
What jewels of fires
What great cries
And long convoys
 
Of robbed and robbers leaving
The sack of rich great London.
 
 
 
 
 

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