Book launch event this Saturday 2nd October!

At this point I have abandoned the idea of tickets - too complicated - just turn up!

Lovibonds

4.30-6pm
Saturday 2nd October,
Lovibonds Brewery, Market Place,
Henley-on-Thames
RG9 2AA
(entrance off the car park).

Beer, poetry and good company in lovely Henley-on-Thames.

Here is the Amazon link to David Henschel's Heres and Nows. A limited number of copies will be for sale on the day at the special launch price of £5 (RRP £6.50).

And you – whoever recognise
a kind of beauty, any place
in anything where eye or ear discerned
and touched with them in turn
your spirit with the laughing wand
have also waked, and passed beyond.

- from Each waking one of us, David Henschel

The beauty of accomplishment

As promised, here is the whole poem Old age.

As I wrote earlier this month, the beauty of accomplishment is the summation of the nobility, persistence and good humour with which we have met the ordinary challenges that come our way today.

If we are impatient and ill-tempered now, can we expect tranquillity later? I suspect not. I think the stillness that is to come must be won now. That is what we would wish to retain when everything else is lost or forgotten.

Old age

How often old age
Achieves the beauty of accomplishment.
In lines of clear enigma
Time’s translation writes down what was said
By tongues of passion, or of pain, or peace
In languages of longing, loving, learning,
Learning forgetting,
Forgetting
What was once done.

That it is done
Is so simple an idea to live with
It gives the face – time’s page, like paper –
Transparency
And one may look through the eyes
Into stillness.


(Here is the Amazon link to David Henschel's Heres and Nows.)

A new frontier

On Friday I shall be going to Henley to look at the venue for the launch of Heres and Nows. I feel sure it will be excellent.

Meanwhile I am still struggling to get the Search Inside function on Amazon to work. It seems I have to set up a new account with Amazon.com, as my Amazon.co.uk password does not work. Nevertheless by following this blog you can get a good idea of the 111 pages of thought-provoking poetry you can buy for a mere £6.50.

Here is another fragment. Why panic and pain? Only, in my interpretation, because to accept the wonder of an opening reality we have to give up so much that is old.

From

Panic and pain

Of course lifelong I had been finding
thoughts, or they found me.
But suddenly
it seemed I crossed a frontier to a land
as rich as spring with newnesses and
no more frontiers.

Book launch event - venue confirmed

Photo adapted from Steven Depolo

We have a venue for the publication launch party for Heres and Nows.

The date: Saturday 2nd October, in the middle of Henley Literary Festival.
The location: the tasting room at Lovibonds Brewery in the heart of beautiful Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire.
The time: 4.30-6pm (time to be confirmed).

This event will suit poetry lovers and lovers of fine beer alike.

I need to know numbers as space is limited. If you would like to come, please contact me using the email address at the foot of the right-hand column of this blog, when you will receive a virtual ticket.

Please also click the 'follow' icon opposite to be kept up-to-date with postings and poems on this blog.

Old age and the beauty of accomplishment

We are what we have become.

Obvious, of course, tautological.

Yet if we could remember this, we should perhaps become better than we are. We shall become the result of what we do and are now. Then, when old age comes, we shall have something - made of the nobility, persistence and good humour with which we have met the ordinary challenges that come our way today.

David's poem Old age is optimistic in this respect. The poem begins:

How often old age
Achieves the beauty of accomplishment

and ends:

And one may look through the eyes
Into stillness.

I would suggest that it is how a person is at the end that measures the achievement of his or her life. And to find the stillness then, we have to be capable of finding the stillness now.

That at any rate is my opinion. I shall let the poem speak for itself when I publish the whole poem on this blog later this month.

Meanwhile check back each week for new updates.

David Henschel's Heres and Nows: Poems From A Life. is available on Amazon and at the Bell Bookshop, Henley-on-Thames.