POETRY WORKSHOP
Firebird takes form
Alison Chisholm is impressed by a set-form poem dealing with the theme of artistic freedom under a repressive regime
T
he lure of ekphrastic writing is irresistible. If you have a special painting, work of literature, statue or piece of music, why not celebrate it with a poem, immortalising your own appreciation of it alongside the original? Doing this provides a powerful tribute to its creator, and brings you the satisfaction of knowing you have honoured somebody else’s work.
Poet Corinne Lawrence of Bramhall, Cheshire was moved to write when David Lean’s film of Dr. Zhivago, a favourite of hers, appeared on television some years ago at the same time as a documentary about the construction of the novel, and they happened to coincide with her study of the book at a literature group.
She says: ‘A major theme of the story is how human beings and their destinies are intertwined. This, of course, is shown very clearly in the film by the central poetic love story of Lara and Zhivago. But equally fascinating to me was the story of Pasternak’s creation of the novel, which is a commentary upon post-revolutionary Russian society. A complex fusion of philosophy, poetry, politics, landscape and nature, it is a work which has held an iconic position in world literature since its publication in Italy in 1957. However, it was so contentious that it wasn’t published in the Soviet Union until 1987. This, then, was the direction in which I wanted to take my own poem’.