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Tag Archives: Carol Ann Duffy

Valentine’s Day and A Poem

Happy Valentine’s Day, Galentine’s or Palentine’s – whatever floats your boat!

I have a couple of favourite love poems. Today I give you Carol Ann Duffy’s Valentine, one the teenagers in my English classes really took to.

Not a red rose or a satin heart.

I give you an onion.
It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.
It promises light
like the careful undressing of love.

Here.
It will blind you with tears
like a lover.
It will make your reflection
a wobbling photo of grief.

I am trying to be truthful.

Not a cute card or a kissogram.

I give you an onion.
Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips,
possessive and faithful
as we are,
for as long as we are.

Take it.
Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding ring,
if you like.
Lethal.
Its scent will cling to your fingers,
cling to your knife.

We have been out this evening to Home Ground’s Pizza night, a delicious meal, all handmade from fresh ingredients, in lovely cosy surroundings and a really lovely ambience.

2 Comments

Posted by mybeautfulthings on February 14, 2025 in Celebration, Eating out, poetry, Postaday2025, Redruth, Uncategorized

Tags: Carol Ann Duffy, Home Ground coffee shop, Valentine

St Ives, Pages of the Sea and Peace

11 Nov

We’ve been in St Ives today for the Pages of the Sea event initiated by Danny Boyle to commemorate 100 years since the Armistice was signed and WW1 came to an end. It was one of thirty such events on beaches around Britain today. My choir was singing. Several of us wore white poppies which symbolise two important things. The white poppy is to remember ALL the dead, those of all nationalities caught up in the horror of war as soldiers or civilians and to show our commitment to working for Peace.

St Ives when we arrived

Flowers left at low tide to be taken as the tide came in

The sand art at Porthmeor, courtesy of WildWorks. Captain Edward ‘Teddy’ Hain (15 August 1887 – 11 November 1915)

Waiting for the tide to wash away the image of the soldier

Being washed away by the incoming tide

One of the soldiers being remembered today and, on the back, a beautiful and very moving poem written for today by Carol Ann Duffy

St Ives as we were leaving

Other beaches in Cornwall had sand drawings of soldiers too.

Lieutenant Richard Charles Graves-Sawle. On Porthcurno Beach

On Perranporth Beach. Photo by Naomi Smith

15 Comments

Posted by mybeautfulthings on November 11, 2018 in Cornwall, Peace, Photography, poetry, Postaday2018

Tags: Bloggers for Peace, Bloggers4Peace, Carol Ann Duffy, Danny Boyle, Pages of the Sea, Porthcurno Beach, Porthmeor Beach, sand drawing

Carol Ann Duffy, Singing and Pastor Niemoeller

08 Oct

Today is National Poetry Day in the UK and the BBC have been celebrating with poems throughout the day. One of the first poems I heard this morning on the BBC was this favourite, much loved by all those who have been 10 years old and by all those who recognise a 10 year old that they have known – a delightful evocation of that final year of primary school and the transition to being just a bit more grown up – and maybe learning things you weren’t really sure that you wanted to know. It reminded me so much, not only of my own top year in Primary School at Bosvigo in Truro but also of the six years I taught the top class, the 10-11 year olds, at Plover Primary School in Doncaster. Those were such happy days full of fond memories.

In Mrs Tilscher’s Class

You could travel up the Blue Nile
with your finger, tracing the route
while Mrs Tilscher chanted the scenery.
Tana. Ethiopia. Khartoum. Aswan.
That for an hour, then a skittle of milk
and the chalky Pyramids rubbed into dust.
A window opened with a long pole.
The laugh of a bell swung by a running child.

This was better than home. Enthralling books.
The classroom glowed like a sweetshop.
Sugar paper. Coloured shapes. Brady and Hindley
faded, like the faint, uneasy smudge of a mistake.
Mrs Tilscher loved you. Some mornings, you found
she’d left a gold star by your name.
The scent of a pencil slowly, carefully, shaved.
A xylophone’s nonsense heard from another form.

Over the Easter term the inky tadpoles changed
from commas into exclamation marks. Three frogs
hopped in the playground, freed by a dunce,
followed by a line of kids, jumping and croaking
away from the lunch queue. A rough boy
told you how you were born. You kicked him, but stared at your
parents, appalled, when you got back home.

That feverish July, the air tasted of electricity.
A tangible alarm made you always untidy, hot,
fractious under the heavy, sexy sky. You asked her
how you were born and Mrs Tilscher smiled,
then turned away. Reports were handed out.
You ran through the gates, impatient to be grown,
as the sky split open into a thunderstorm.

Today was my first time back at singing with The Suitcase Singers and it was just wonderful. How one’s spirits can be lifted by singing in harmony with other voices! Our lovely Choir-babies were there being very busy and a new baby has arrived while I’ve been away. Welcome, little one.

Two of our Choir-babies

I asked the lovely Mr Smith for a poem for today that he would like me to include in today’s blog. Fern Hill by Dylan Thomas was one considered but he came to this one after lots of discussion and thought. We have had this postcard on our noticeboard in the kitchen for years.

First they came….

5 Comments

Posted by mybeautfulthings on October 8, 2015 in Beauty, Choir-baby, friendship, Happiness, photography, poetry, Postaday 2015, singing

Tags: Carol Ann Duffy, First they came, In Mrs Tilscher's Class, Pastor Niemoeller, The Suitcase Singers

Moth, Card and War Photographer

11 Sep

I noticed a moth fluttering in the garden, went out as quickly as I could on crutches and it waited for me! I haven’t been able to identify it. Can anyone help?

There was a lovely surprise in the post this morning, a card from a very kind blogging friend in Louisville, Kentucky! Thank you so much, Marilyn.

It is the 80th birthday of the war photographer, Don McCullin. Carol Ann Duffy wrote this remarkable poem about him and his work which I find very moving as did my GCSE pupils. Don McCullin is on Radio 4 now in the programme Front Row, worth listening to on iPlayer if you are able to as he talks about the influences of war photography and that the photographer has to do ‘what someone must.’

War Photographer – Carol Ann Duffy

In his dark room he is finally alone
with spools of suffering set out in ordered rows.
The only light is red and softly glows,
as though this were a church and he
a priest preparing to intone a Mass.
Belfast. Beirut. Phnom Penh. All flesh is grass.

He has a job to do. Solutions slop in trays
beneath his hands, which did not tremble then
though seem to now. Rural England. Home again
to ordinary pain which simple weather can dispel,
to fields which don’t explode beneath the feet
of running children in a nightmare heat.

Something is happening. A stranger’s features
faintly start to twist before his eyes,
a half-formed ghost. He remembers the cries
of this man’s wife, how he sought approval
without words to do what someone must
and how the blood stained into foreign dust.

A hundred agonies in black and white
from which his editor will pick out five or six
for Sunday’s supplement. The reader’s eyeballs prick
with tears between the bath and pre-lunch beers.
From the aeroplane he stares impassively at where
he earns his living and they do not care.