Verse of the Week
I am off to the Annual General Meeting of the Alliance of Literary Societies, at the University of Sussex. Among the attractions will be a talk by Dr Alex Bubb on ‘Rudyard Kipling in Relation to Other Authors’.
Kipling certainly admired some of his fellow writers, but had no time for the reverence and associated political expectation that would go with the post of Poet Laureate. In a letter to E.L. White, in 1891, he said, ’For myself, I love not to hear a spade called a spade, because there are so many varieties of spade’. To be required to write on subjects chosen by others would never attract him.
Here’s a verse from a time when Kipling had already been considered for preferment, and needed to say that he would be ruled only by his own desire to write:
www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poem/poems_thomas.htm
The illustration is of Alfred Lord Tennyson, Poet Laureate from 1850 to 1892. He is represented by the tennysonsociety.org.uk – a member of the Alliance.
Consult John’s library of previous posts here…
