The Saturday Poem : U A Fanthorpe - the poet as fangirl
As it happens we are reaching F on the poetry shelf and so Ursula Fanthorpe, and I imagined choosing one of her faith - based poems for an Easter entry .However I am being strictly fair = although I have a complete set of her poems on a lower shelf, on the shelf we are following at present I have only the first book of her work I had , over 20 years ago and it does not really have any Easter writing as such.
What it does have is a celebration of new inspiration coming from old customs and old ways .In this case a jaded audience at a performance of Hamlet arriving with their “astonish me “ smug smiles thinking they have seen it all and being rocked to the core…
The rest is “ as good a theatre review as it is a poem” someone has written and as readers will see makes UA Fanthorpe something of a talisman for this column ; the poet as fangirl
Robert Lindsay’s Hamlet
( for Braham Murray )
That’s him, in the foetal position, among
The front row watchers
Sweatshirt and jeans ,nothing particular,you
Wouldn’t look twice,till
He stands to pace that eccentric circuit, from
Clouds still hang on you
To cracks a noble heart ,with the special props
That signal The Prince:
Two swords, recorders, skulls, a cup, a book.
The junk has banked up
Along the years .He can’t move a foot without
Dislodging clinker-
First Folio, the good Quarto ,bright guesses
From dead editors ,
A notion of Goethe’s ,a sad hometruth of
Seedy STC’s.
Business inherited from great -grandfathers
Garrick, Kean, Irving
Heir to all this , as his watchers are heirs
Of dead playgoers ,
Coming to see what they already know, with
Astonish me! smiles .
Who could mine anything new from this heap of
Old British rubbish?
But this man, discarding limelight and ketchup
Customary suits
Delivered raw at each performance ,elbows
Us along the trite
Life of the man who thought faster than any-
One ever, till we
Losing our poise, are lost, like the ignorant
Playgoer watching
The story, whispering at the wrong moment
Does he kill him now?
The words quoted are the first addressed to Hamlet by Claudius in Act 1 scene 2 and then Hamlet’s epitaph spoken by Horatio in the final scene of Act 5,in other words she means that the audience was gripped the entire time.
Here is a picture of a much younger RL in the production which was thirty years ago in 1983.
What it does have is a celebration of new inspiration coming from old customs and old ways .In this case a jaded audience at a performance of Hamlet arriving with their “astonish me “ smug smiles thinking they have seen it all and being rocked to the core…
The rest is “ as good a theatre review as it is a poem” someone has written and as readers will see makes UA Fanthorpe something of a talisman for this column ; the poet as fangirl
Robert Lindsay’s Hamlet
( for Braham Murray )
That’s him, in the foetal position, among
The front row watchers
Sweatshirt and jeans ,nothing particular,you
Wouldn’t look twice,till
He stands to pace that eccentric circuit, from
Clouds still hang on you
To cracks a noble heart ,with the special props
That signal The Prince:
Two swords, recorders, skulls, a cup, a book.
The junk has banked up
Along the years .He can’t move a foot without
Dislodging clinker-
First Folio, the good Quarto ,bright guesses
From dead editors ,
A notion of Goethe’s ,a sad hometruth of
Seedy STC’s.
Business inherited from great -grandfathers
Garrick, Kean, Irving
Heir to all this , as his watchers are heirs
Of dead playgoers ,
Coming to see what they already know, with
Astonish me! smiles .
Who could mine anything new from this heap of
Old British rubbish?
But this man, discarding limelight and ketchup
Customary suits
Delivered raw at each performance ,elbows
Us along the trite
Life of the man who thought faster than any-
One ever, till we
Losing our poise, are lost, like the ignorant
Playgoer watching
The story, whispering at the wrong moment
Does he kill him now?
The words quoted are the first addressed to Hamlet by Claudius in Act 1 scene 2 and then Hamlet’s epitaph spoken by Horatio in the final scene of Act 5,in other words she means that the audience was gripped the entire time.
Here is a picture of a much younger RL in the production which was thirty years ago in 1983.