From: owner-alloy-digest@smoe.org (alloy-digest) To: alloy-digest@smoe.org Subject: alloy-digest V6 #228 Reply-To: alloy@smoe.org Sender: owner-alloy-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-alloy-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk X-To-Unsubscribe: Send mail to "alloy-digest-request@smoe.org" X-To-Unsubscribe: with "unsubscribe" as the body. alloy-digest Wednesday, August 29 2001 Volume 06 : Number 228 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Alloy: Thomas' father's poetry ["Robin Thurlow" Subject: Alloy: Thomas' father's poetry Thomas has just written and asked me to forward this link. There's now a very good website where his father Martin Robertson's poetry can be read: http://rtnl.org.uk/now_and_then/ It's nicely organised... one can look up poems by date, or alphabetically according to either title or first line. I'm really excited to see these poems published, personally.... about a year and a half ago, one of Martin Robertson's books of short poems came down to me from our University library's collection. I was very surprised to find this, since I hadn't known Thomas' father was a published poet. I'd known of his work as an authority on ancient Greek pottery (our library has his books on this), and heard/read his poetry in Medieval Latin in Thomas' music... but finding so many poems he'd collected and published was something I certainly never expected! This prompted me to check for more, & found another of his books, an epic poem based on the story of Sleeping Beauty, but told from the Prince's point of view (this is entitled "The Sleeping Beauty's Prince") After mending "Hot Bath At Bedtime" I withdrew both books, and took them with me to a very interesting international book arts conference in Rochester. I didn't know anyone else there, and so I spent my spare time alternately wandering the marshes completely lost (I was trying to find the shopping center!) or safely in my room reading Martin Robertson's work. I found the poems to have a very clear and strong 'voice' to them. Whether the topic was something very personal, or more academic, or seemingly ordinary observations, the poems always feel quite intimate, as true expressions of thought. In these ways his writing reminded me very strongly of Thomas' own writing and music. There is a very similar sort of intense honesty that touches on a topic and then is off again onto something else almost right away, always very intelligent and strongly individualistic. One of the best things in both their work is the choice of subject matter.. the ideas that inspire them. It might be obvious from my description that I fell in love with these poems & was really disappointed to find that the books had gone out-of-print commercially.. but of course, considered myself very lucky that my library had them for me to find. I know "The Sleeping Beauty's Prince" is heavily used by students in the English department's course on Myths and Fairy Tales at our university. Incidentally if this should ever go up onto the website along with the short poems, I hope they're able to include the beautiful illustrations that were in the first edition, as well as the cover art. Our copy has long since been recased and I'd love to see the original cover... This very long story (which i didn't mean to be this long) is just to say that after all this, I'm so happy for the opportunity to approach the site's webmaster and ask how to go about properly obtaining the poems and hand binding them into a volume. Deciding on the art is going to be a challenge though... (meander, meander...) xxxx Robin T ------------------------------ End of alloy-digest V6 #228 ***************************