It takes a lot of work to organise and administer a poetry competition and quite simply we wouldn\u2019t be able to run it if we didn\u2019t have help from volunteers. This year our help comes from undergraduates on the UEA Literature and Creative Writing courses. We invited them to contribute blogs on the subject of Nature and Place and are glad to publish what they\u2019ve come up with. I\u2019m particularly impressed with their humanity, their openness and optimism.<\/p>\n
Sailing to Byzantium<\/strong><\/p>\n I<\/p>\n That is no country for old men. The young<\/p>\n In one another’s arms, birds in the trees,<\/p>\n \u2014Those dying generations\u2014at their song,<\/p>\n The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,<\/p>\n Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long<\/p>\n Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.<\/p>\n Caught in that sensual music all neglect<\/p>\n Monuments of unageing intellect.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n II<\/p>\n An aged man is but a paltry thing,<\/p>\n A tattered coat upon a stick, unless<\/p>\n Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing<\/p>\n For every tatter in its mortal dress,<\/p>\n Nor is there singing school but studying<\/p>\n Monuments of its own magnificence;<\/p>\n And therefore I have sailed the seas and come<\/p>\n To the holy city of Byzantium.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n III<\/p>\n O sages standing in God’s holy fire<\/p>\n As in the gold mosaic of a wall,<\/p>\n Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,<\/p>\n And be the singing-masters of my soul.<\/p>\n Consume my heart away; sick with desire<\/p>\n And fastened to a dying animal<\/p>\n It knows not what it is; and gather me<\/p>\n Into the artifice of eternity.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n IV<\/p>\n Once out of nature I shall never take<\/p>\n My bodily form from any natural thing,<\/p>\n But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make<\/p>\n Of hammered gold and gold enamelling<\/p>\n To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;<\/p>\n Or set upon a golden bough to sing<\/p>\n To lords and ladies of Byzantium<\/p>\n Of what is past, or passing, or to come.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n William Butler Yeats<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Nature and poetry have, and always will be, inextricably tied. Regardless of our drive for materialism, development and industrial growth, in our deepest moments of need a small blackbird will offer relief, reminding us of the finitude of our day to day worries, will point us towards the infinite and towards an understanding that something exists that is bigger than us. In short, nature, like art, endures. And yes, it is fair to say that both chop and change, day to day and year by year they migrate and evolve following different patterns, performing different tasks. But they seem to remain the irremovable backdrop to the expression of our united situation as humans, the main ways in which we learn who we are as a community of beings. Regardless of the diversity of responses that nature encourages, it seems accessible to everyone. In this way, nature and art draw our experiences together, encouraging us to stand as a whole and not as separate parts. I have chosen this poem to underline the importance of nature and place and what it means to me because I feel it highlights the idea that nature signifies and remains, \u2018what is past, or passing or to come.\u2019<\/p>\n It\u2019s difficult to summarise briefly what nature and place means to me and the main point to make here is that it means something wonderfully different to everyone, which is why, as a stimulus, it produces such exciting and diverse art and why this competition has been so interesting to work on. I think that the diversity that writing about nature encourages excites my own creativity. However, it allowed me to see that nature means so much in so many different ways to so many different people \u2013 something I feel the volunteers and employees at the RSPB understand so well. Nature seems to make no distinction, it interacts with everyone on some level – whether they like it or not.<\/p>\n To me, nature comes to mean understanding and sharing. Understanding that we are all standing on the same piece of land and sharing in its magnificence together. This competition is deeply important because it highlights the essential message of this poem \u2013 that Nature endures through art and that art endures through Nature. The bird may not endure if we continue to overlook its brilliance. Art must gild the bird in gold in order for it to survive symbolically. Art and nature must work together to immortalise, to bring us together. We must do our best to remember that as long as we care for nature, as long as we continue to consider what is hidden in the hedgerow both literally and metaphorically, something bigger than us will endure when we are gone.<\/p>\n