A Mutual Friend: Poems For Charles Dickens is as much a response to Dickens’ life as his legacy and its Salford-based editor Peter Robinson, Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Reading,brought a number of its contributing poets to Manchester with him for an evening of live poetry and discussion which was a feast for poetry lovers.
My day began with meeting Mairi MacInnes off the train from York. As this was her first visit to the Portico she carried a copy of A Mutual Friend: Poems For Charles Dickens so she could be recognised! We returned to the Library to meet her fellow poets and had a very civilised afternoon tea made by our wonderful cook Kathy. Jeffrey Wainwright said they were the best scones he had ever tasted. If you want to see if you agree with him you could always pop in to the library to sample Kathy’s cakes and scones. Yum! Yum!
The poets talked about their work and what is going on in the world of poetry at the moment. As The Portico’s resident literary groupie, I listened in rapture! The evening began with wine and nibbles -the poets believing it important to relax the audience before a poetry reading. Our own Alan Shelston, long-time member of the Portico, introduced the poets and delighted us with his tribute to Dickens in poetic form:
On a
little dog, run over by Dickens’ carriage in the Hyde Park
‘Vague thoughts of a new book are rife within me just now; and I go
wandering about at night into the strangest places especially ─ seeking rest
and finding none. As an addition to my composure I ran over a little dog in the
Regent’s Park yesterday (killing him on the spot) and gave his little mistress
─ a girl of thirteen or fourteen ─ such exquisite distress as I never saw the
like of.’ (The Selected Letters of Charles Dickens ed. Jenny Hartley, 2012)
This little dog earned his distinction
Through his very sad extinction:
Mr Dickens in his carriage,
Reflecting sadly on his marriage
Didn’t think to look outside
And so poor Fido quickly died.
Dickens thought his little mistress
‘Exquisite’ in her dreadful distress.
Time it took when all was over
To regain his own composure.
This is an early entry for our Dickens poetry competition. Do you think it has a chance of winning? It is certainly in the spirit of the occasion of Dickens' bicentenary as is A Mutual Friend.
Peter Robinson gave the audience a fascinating insight into the genesis of the
book and then read his erudite poem Rubbish
Theory. He followed this by introducing several other poets
such as the lovely Mairi MacInnes, who movingly read her poem The Death Of Little Nell from the
anthology and explained how she had first come
across Dickens as a little girl of seven. We moved from an innocent death to
award-winning poet Susan Utting’s poem about the death by drowning of the
villain Quilp. Dogs in Dickens seem to be popular subjects for poems, as journalist and former
MMU Professor Jeffrey Wainwright read his poem Merrylegs
based on the dog in Hard Times, and the Portico’s very great friend and judge of the poetry
section of the Portico Prize for Young Writers, Mandy Coe read her poem Bullseye, a heartfelt tribute to the dog
of Bill Sykes. Hull University’s creative writing professor Carol Rumens followed with a reading of
her inspiring poem Marshalsea Quadrille. All the contributors are fine examples of the formidable pedigree of the writers in the book (among the others: John Hegley, Philip Gross, Derek Beaven, Jayne Draycott and Manchester poet Peter Riley).
At the end of a wonderful evening the poets all dashed off to catch trains to various parts of the country but not before agreeing that we are all friends now and that the Portico Library is a wonderful place for book launches and poetry!
A Mutual Friend: Poems for Charles Dickens (2012) is published by Two Rivers Press with the English Association and is available for £10 from the Library or through Two Rivers Press.
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