Turbines: a poem by Gillian Southgate

TURBINES

 Now stand with me, and contemplate the turbines,

Tall and austere, and standing in a line.

We’ve tried, but haven’t managed to discover

A fossil fuel alternative as fine.

As energy official on the council

I’ve heard it said that coal’s a better bet,

But we feel coal is thoroughly polluting,

And nuclear carries an insistent threat.

So windfarms, splendid windfarms are the way now,

Irresolute in water, hugely high.

Observe the symmetry, remark the order,

The movement of the future on the sky.

The sheep that graze the marshes lend perspective,

They can’t demur, nor can they make reply:

Stern, fundamental, practically silent,

The turbines state their case. We must comply.

  

G M Southgate

Details of an upcoming poetry/music event supplied by Jonty Driver:

 On Saturday 8th July, from 3-4 p.m. in the church of St Mary in the Marsh (TN29 0BX), as part of the JAM (John Armitage Memorial) Festival in the Romney Marshes, I shall be reading some of my sequence of poems, The Journey Back , first published in the 1990s, about my return visit to South Africa after nearly thirty years of exile. A text of the poems will be available for those who, like me, prefer reading to listening.  In between some of the poems, Peter Fields will be playing on my violin (made by the Brothers Carcassi in Florence in 1751) Corelli’s variations known as La Folia. Admission to the recital is free, though there will be a collection for the Hantam Community Education Trust in the Karoo

June 2017 News

Thanks to Jonty Driver for the following account of our June meeting:

I’ve known Vesna Goldsworthy for a dozen years, since meeting her at the Writers’ Centre in Norwich and then in a variety of other contexts. Now, I find it tricky to separate what I’ve learned about her over the years from what I learned when I listened to her talk to the Winchelsea Literary Society when it met on Friday 16th June.  She isn’t a hugely productive writer: an academic study, Inventing Ruritania, then a memoir, Chernobyl Strawberries, then a book of poems, The Angel of Salonika, then the best-selling novel, Gorsky, a post-modern retelling of Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby but now set among Russian oligarchs in London. It was the last of these which provided the ostensible reason for her visit to Winchelsea, though in fact she has close personal links with the area. Her husband’s family had lived in Iden and in Rye for a good many years, and Vesna and her husband had lived here for a year too.

Part of the reason for her meticulous output is her busy-ness as an academic: originally employed by the BBC, she then taught Creative Writing at Kingston University, before becoming head of the Creative Writing department at UEA, and then opting out of the administrative demands of that role to teach at Exeter, though she still supervises PhD students at UEA. Vesna is unusually frank about the demands made on her by family and career; indeed, one of the things I like best about her is her un-English habit of answering questions straight, never obliquely. Her language (now) is English;  I suspect her heart will always be Serbian.

Her intelligence, her sense of a personal style, her self-critical honesty are all remarkable traits;  and I have a sort of hunch that there are some remarkable novels still to come. I hope there will be some poems too; and I shall be surprised if the WLS doesn’t queue up to get her back again.

C.J.Driver

A link to the blog of Marian Molteno, our March speaker:

http://www.marionmolteno.co.uk/marionsblog/2017/reading-to-the-swans/

Storms River: Chaos Theory, by Jonty Driver

This is a "taster" for Jonty's poetry reading on Saturday 8 July (see details above) Click on the text to see a larger print version.