Carillon Magazine

A Touch of Poetry

(Notes from a history lesson)

In learning how to write poetry and, later, how to teach it, I inevitably picked up some of its history. I then wanted to know more and carried out a little research. These are some of my thoughts following on from that period of examination.

Writing groups and writing classes are full of poets and would-be poets. Editors, like me, receive bucket-loads of poetry submissions every week from all over the world. And, it seems, almost every day another book or booklet of someone’s poetry is published.  Only yesterday, for instance, I received a slim volume from an acquaintance in Osset to join the three received last week from Surrey and Scotland. Poetry has never been more popular, even though it doesn’t sell. But when we put pen to paper or stand in front of a group like this and read out our work, we are the at the end of a timeline that stretches back to civilisation’s earliest writings.

English poetry, as we know it, goes back just over a thousand years. The first and most important surviving record is Beowulf : an Old English tale of heroism written in two parts.

 In the first part, Beowulf fights and kills the monster Grendel and in the second. 50 years later, he fights and kills a dragon that was attacking his tribe. Beowulf  himself is mortally wounded in this.

The manuscript dates from the 10th century (AD). The original poem, however, is reckoned to be from nearer the 8th century. The 8th century makes sense as the poem has strong elements of Christian morality in it and, during the 8th century, England was being converted from paganism to Christianity. Some references in the poem suggests that it is based on something that happened in the 6th century.

The poem is admired by scholars for its language and regularity of form. Each line is split into two parts, each with 2 stressed syllables with a gap in the middle (a form of Caesura).  It also makes much use of Alliteration (the close repetition of initial consonants). Alliteration was the standard poetic technique up to the 11th century. I believe, but am not yet certain that Alliteration came to England from Germany.

Some lines (literal translation) from Beowulf

Hey! We of the spear-Danes in  yore days

The kings’ glory       power have asked to hear

How the princelings       deeds performed!

Oft scyld scefing       of the enemies of the throng,

many tribes       mead seats took off,

scared earls,     after he was first

However, Beowulf is a spring chicken in the world’s history of poetry.