After posting some rather heavy poems from Ovid, I feel the need to change the tone. Briefly.
This is a reading of my poem during the St Ives September Festival on 18 September 2023. Algernon Swinburne (1837-1909) was a poet who became notorious in the Victorian period for his transgressive lifestyle. He was also a remarkable poet. The painting of Swinburne is by Mike Newton. I wrote this poem in response to Mike’s portrait and I used the ’roundel’ form invented by Swinburne, reflecting on his life in a lighthearted manner. You can see other paintings by Mike Newton on the walls in the video below. The Festival performance of paintings and poetry was entitled: The Art of the Romantic.
Getting a Roundel in for Mr Swinburne
O Algernon Swinburne, how long and lovely were your locks!
And though you were not tall or beautiful, you still could turn
A head or two in Grosvenor Square, or walking near the docks.
O Algernon Swinburne,
How we delighted in your naughtiness, your pre-modern
Poke at our pretended sensibilities. O! what shocks!
The bottle and the birch! Wicked ways topped off with auburn
Jauntiness! Alas, who was it killed the heterodox
In you? A priest of Proserpine? The pale Galilean?
But O! how wild you were before the tyranny of clocks.
O Algernon Swinburne.