News from Hawker’s Pot

All has been quiet of late here in the halls of Hawker’s Pot as I have been in a small back room busily preparing new postcards to sell from the Hawker’s Pot suitcase.  Here is one of the thirteen new designs:

(Hawkers and Potters of long standing and good memories may remember the joke from some years ago.)

The suitcase will be making its first outing this year on this Saturday, 4^th May, as part of the Site Festival opening night at Stroud Valleys Artspace on John Street.  I will be there between 7 and 9pm.

On the weekends 11-12^th and 18-19^th May, my studio at SVA will be open with a fully stocked suitcase of cards as part of the Site Festival Open Studios weekends.  I will also be showing paintings, drawings and nonsense verse including this sort of thing, a misdirected version of "My mother said I never should":

My mother said I never should

Play with the gypsies in the wood.

My father said I didn’t oughter

Play with the mermaids in the water

And when I asked my Aunty whether

I could play with the fairies in the heather

She said I’d really better not

Play with them,  a desperate lot.

They said they’d rather that I didn’t.

But, then again, I never listened:

I played with the gypsies on the heath,

I played up above and far underneath

And then I kissed them, one two three!

Tell mother I’ll be back for tea

(And the one who comes back will be a lot like me).

In other news:

Hawker’s Pot cards are now also for sale (from a natty little day-case) among the assorted delights in the Made In Stroud shop on Kendrick Street. 

Tennyson

Nigel Swift, in his poetic researches, has discovered an unpublished version of the poem from Tennyson’s In Memoriam that begins:

“Old Yew, which graspest at the stones

That name the under-lying dead ...”

and ends:

“I seem to fail from out my blood

And grow incorporate into thee.”

Nigel thinks that, while this earlier version may lack some of the beauties of the published one, it certainly makes its point more clearly. 

_________________

ii.

Old Yew, which grasps at the cold stones

That  name the under-lying dead,

What thoughts revolve in your dull head?

Why do you mutter in such tones?

The seasons slowly swing around

And bring the snow and bloom and fruit,

But like a gentleman in a suit

You stand there staring at the ground.

And in your shade, from morn till eve, 

I stand here writing reams of verse;

My voice it rumbles like a hearse;

It is a place I rarely leave.

Month after month, without hope or view,

I stand beside this grave and mourn.

The truth approaches, like the dawn:

O tree!  I’m turning into you.

*

(Nigel Swift’s note:  Corrections on the manuscript show that Tennyson was in some doubt as how to spell the last word of this poem.  This may have been what led him to abandon this otherwise irreproachable version.)

The Obverse

All things in Heaven – for what it’s worth –

Have their counterparts on Earth.

Each sky-borne thing – don’t let me start –

Has its earthly counterpart.

For every cloud, a lump of coal,

For every star, a tiny hole,

For every bird that flies around,

A worm that travels in the ground.

Even a poet, a clod like I,

Has his version in the sky:

And that one’s poetry – no surprise –

Is witty, bright and wonderfully wise.

______________

Algernon Swift recalls meeting Miles Prothero, the originator of these lines:  

I enquired after the mystical meaning of the second verse but Prothero quickly digressed onto his peculiar theory about birds and worms, saying:

“If one considers the physical law of equal and opposite forces, it quickly becomes apparent that whenever a bird pulls a worm from the earth, at the same time the worm pulls the bird under the ground.” 

I diligently brought the conversation back to the meaning of the poem as a whole.  I said I took it to be concerned with Platonic Ideas.  

Prothero replied: 

“All Art is an attempt to bring into the world something as near to perfection as possible.  

“But what I suppose I was trying to say was, if perfect versions of everything already exist - as they do according to Plato - one doesn’t really need to bother!  A better version of whatever one’s trying to make is out there already so a bodge job is as good as anything.  

“I find that an incredibly reassuring thought!”   

Whereupon he gave me a cheery wave and departed on his bicycle, which I had noticed was in a calamitous state of disrepair.