Volgens ‘n berig op Times Online gaan Ted Hughes, voormalige poet laureate van Engeland, vroeg volgende jaar vereer word deurdat toestemming deur die Wesminster Abbey verleen is dat ‘n gedenkplaat vir hom in die suidelike deel van die tuine, beter bekend as die Poet’s Corner, aangebring mag word. Ander beroemde digters wie in dié gewyde aarde hul rus gevind het, en in dié tuin vereer word, is onder andere Chaucer, Shakespeare, Keats, Eliot en Auden.
Volgens die amptelike verklaring geskied sodanige eerbetoon nie outomaties nie, maar berus dié besluit volledig by die hoof van die Abbey, tans die Very Reverend John Hall, wat sy besluit op die kundige aanbevelings van poësiekenners baseer. “Deciding within a few years of people’s death that they will be remembered in hundreds of years’ time is, of course, impossible,” het Dean Hall gesê. “And yet, it is sometimes right to make such a decision, as deans have done over the centuries. By no means every poet laureate has been commemorated in Poets’ Corner. But the overwhelming weight of advice I have received suggests that this is the right decision.”
Volgens Time Online was dit veral die Ierse Nobelpryswenner, Seamus Heaney, en Hughes se opvolger as poet laureate, Andrew Motion, wat hulle vir dié besonderse eerbetoon beywer het.
Vir jou leesplesier plaas ek Ted Hughes se beroemde gedig, “The thought-fox” onder aan vanoggend se Nuuswekker.
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Na ‘n periode van stilswye maak Carina Stander vanoggend weer haar terugkeer met ‘n hartskeurmooie vers van Sylvia Plath. In nog ‘n belangrike plasing sedert Vrydag het Bernard Odendaal die brief wat hy aan die rektor van die Vrystaatse Universiteit, prof. Jonathan Jansen, geskryf het in sy blogruimte geplaas. Hierdie is ‘n besonderse bydrae tot die taaldebat wat tans op verskeie kampusse in die land gevoer word. In die gedigtekamers is daar twee nuwe toevoegings, naamlik gedigte deur Joan Hambidge en Loftus Marais.
Lekker lees en mag hierdie week gemaklik in sy groewe lê vir jou.
Mooi bly.
LE
The Thought-Fox
I imagine this midnight moment’s forest:
Something else is alive
Beside the clock’s loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.
Through the window I see no star:
Something more near
Though deeper within darkness
Is entering the loneliness:
Cold, delicately as the dark snow,
A fox’s nose touches twig, leaf;
Two eyes serve a movement, that now
And again now, and now, and now
Sets neat prints into the snow
Between trees, and warily a lame
Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
Of a body that is bold to come
Across clearings, an eye,
A widening deepening greenness,
Brilliantly, concentratedly,
Coming about its own business
Till, with sudden sharp hot stink of fox
It enters the dark hole of the head.
The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed.
© Ted Hughes