World Poetry Day and Granada

Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature has sent representatives to fellow creative city Granada for World Poetry Day. Nottingham poets Georgina Wilding and Leanne Moden are joining sixty other poets at an event which also features poetry from other UNESCO cities of literature.

 

Also in Granada is Sandeep Mahal, Director Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature, who has said, "By celebrating poetry today, we celebrate our ability to join together, in a spirit of solidarity and passion to ignite creativity and bring more poetry into the world.”

Sixty years ago - in March 1958 - Alan Sillitoe was in Granada, as you can see from this notebook inscription.

 

As it is World Poetry Day here’s a little treat from the same notebook of Alan’s, written in 1958. It’s the first draft of one of his poems. The revised edition is typed below for comparison. Enjoy.

 

 

Picture of Loot

 

Certain dark underground eyes

Have been set upon

The vast emporiums of London.

 

Lids blink red

At glittering shops

Houses and museums

 

Shining at night,

Chandeliers of historic establishments

Showing interiors to Tartan eyes,

 

Certain dark underground eyes

Bearing bloodred sack

The wineskins of centuries

 

Look hungrily at London:

How many women in London?

A thousand thousand houses

 

Filled with the world’s high living

And fabulous knick-knacks;

Each small glossy machine

 

By beside or on table or in bathroom

Is the electrical soul of its owner

The finished heart responding

 

To needle of gentle current;

And still more houses, endlessly stacked

Asleep with people waiting

 

To be exploded

The world’s maidenhead supine for breaking

By corpuscle Tartars

 

To whom a toothbrush

Is a miracle;

What vast looting

 

What jewels of fires

What great cries

And long convoys

 

Of robbed and robbers leaving

The sack of rich great London.