Summer casts a spell
A sense of place informs a reader’s poem, workshopped by Alison Chisholm
A sense of place, season and weather suffuses many poems. From Shakespeare’s wintry countryside (When Icicles Hang) to the domestic setting-free of Billy Collins’ Today (If ever there was a spring day so perfect) we are given these descriptions as essential content or as an imagerich backdrop to the poem’s message.
Poet Gill Hawkins was influenced by both venue and season when she attended the Swanwick Writers’ Summer School in Derbyshire last year. The poem is about that experience, but its third stanza evokes place and summertime to add another dimension to the message. Another strand in the poem recognises the nation’s love affair with Harry Potter, which Gill explains.
‘The poem was started at Swanwick, inspired by the poetry course and the grounds at the Hayes conference centre – it is a lovely place. (The poetry course leader’s) comment about poets being the magic makers gave me the ‘Hogwarts’ comparison. Having travelled to Swanwick by train and then hearing the steam trains whistle in the grounds helped continue the theme. Once home and having had time to trawl through my notes I came up with this simple but hopefully fun piece of poetry.’ The poet was accurate in her summing up, that this piece of writing is simple but hopefully fun. The simple is a loaded word. It might imply slight or inconsequential, but simplicity in a poem is neither of these. Rather, it suggests that plain words have been used, that the meaning has not been obscured, and that the message is easily assimilated.