Making Poems and Their Meanings

In this innovative series of public lectures at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, leading contemporary poets speak about the craft and practice of poetry to audiences drawn from both the city and the university. The lectures are then published in book form by Bloodaxe, giving readers everywhere the opportunity to learn what the poets themselves think about their own subject. Desmond Graham reflects in three lectures on how poems are nourished and how reading can grow: Opening the Door: A chance encounter with a poem in a magazine, a neighbourly visit, a letter at the right moment - such things timed right make poetry. This lecture celebrates the unsung companions essential to the nourishment of poetry: the thoughtful friend, or the clear-headed reader on whom all writers depend; the spirits of the dead in the texts we read, or the labouring scholarly editors. The Unheard Prompter: Metre, rhythm, rhyme and line end - not just the tools of the poet but the poem's secret syntax which poet and reader hear whether they know it or not. This lecture demonstrates how poets can control meaning through formal elements: from Shakespeare's voice held in the iambs of his sonnets, to Wordsworth's arguing pronouns; from Herbert's irresistible orchestra, to the problems of punctuation in Gurney. No Less Than Bread; How does the poet write, thinking poetry a lie? How does poetry sustain the poet through impossibility? How does poetry, which solves nothing, offer a way of answering? Starting with Rozewicz and Radnoti, and moving from post-war European poetry back to David Jones and In Parenthesis, this final lecture asks what poems mean, what knowledge they carry, and how do we read them to find out? This is the sixth book in the "Newcastle/Bloodaxe Poetry" series.

Desmond Graham is Emeritus Professor of Poetry at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. His books include a biography of Keith Douglas (OUP, 1974), editions of Douglas's poetry (OUP, 1978; Faber, 1997) and letters (Carcanet, 2000), a critical study of the poets of the First World War, The Truth of War (Carcanet, 1984), and five collections of poetry. He co-translated Two Darknesses by Polish poet Anna Kamienska (Flambard, 1994), and edited Poetry of the Second World War: An International Anthology (Chatto, 1995). His poetry books are The Lie of Horizons (1993), The Marching Bands (1996) and Not Falling (1999) from Seren, and After Shakespeare (2001) and Milena Poems (2004) from Flambard. After Shakespeare was translated into Polish in 2002 and the Milena poems were the subject of a jazz suite, first performed in Arnheim in 2003.