“A single walker, stepping into the procession of language.” Seamus Heaney
When I was a child of three an older brother, in trying to teach me French, Spanish and Greek, introduced me to the pleasure in the sounds of other languages, without understanding meaning. From an early age accents and dialects fascinated me, whether the rough burr of farmers at an Ulverston auction market, or the lilt and fall of family-visiting Irish, Polish, Italian and American relatives in Cleator Moor and Whitehaven, mingling with west Cumbrian dialect and its why-use-two-syllables-when-three-can-make-a-word-into-a-song? For example, to-o-wast, for toast, or dad’s ”˜Ista-ga’in tae Gaa-ity tae blaw tha’ nowuz an’ mak’ a scuttle?’ Meaning, ”˜Are you going to the Gaiety Picture House in order to blow your nose and make a noise? The delight in the rhythm of people’s voices is to me something that connects us through, as Robert Pinsky notes, a ”˜column of air inside the chest’.
To read the rest of the article go to: Stepping into Poetry on our Poetry Space Competition website.
From now until the deadline of June 30th 2013 I shall be inviting guest poets to write short articles for Poetry Space on a variety of poetry related subjects.
