Stations and poets: Poetry in Motion | Editorial

Hull's Paragon hire lies during a end of a single of a quieter rail lines in a country: a city, like a trains, hits a buffers by a North Sea. In many regards, it could not be some-more different to London's St Pancras, a scrubbed up, shop-infested terminal for sleek services to Europe, whose depart play promise connections to Antwerp, Aachen as well as Avignon rather than Bridlington. But a two stations do have something in common. They are a usually ones in Britain to commemorate poets with statues: Philip Larkin in Hull, as well as John Betjeman during a end of a Eurostar platforms in London. Both statues were erected recently, models for what should be a debate to move rhyme to a rails. Christmas as well as brand new year journeys are a impulse to consider about who should be celebrated, as well as where.Travel has turn a clinical affair; motorways have numbers, not names, as well as trains have exchanged character for neon-lit efficiency. But Betjeman's statue in London, hat clutched to his head, staring up during a great roof tiles of a hire office building he helped save, is a reminder which journeys should also involve a senses: he recognised, when others did not, a glory of Victorian railway architecture during its pomp, as well as wrote about it. Larkin, often sour, loved travel less, though in The Whitsun Weddings he captures a frustration many have felt this Dec during a delayed sight outing to a family eventuality far away: "Not compartment about / One-twenty upon a sunlit Saturday / Did my three-quarters-empty sight lift out, / All windows down, all cushions hot, all clarity / Of being in a precipitate gone."Every large town or city has its poet, as well as soevery large hire should too. Dylan Thomasin Swansea; WH Auden during Euston or, better still, Carlisle, nearby where his famous night sight crossed a border; William Wordsworth should be upon a small platform atWindermere,at a end of a line he objected to though which right divided does its best to keep cars di! vided fr om a Lake District; Emily Bront during Leeds; Thomas Hardy during Dorchester West. There are no longer trains by Derbyshire's Monsal Dale for John Ruskin to complain about "now each dope in Buxton can be in Bakewell in half an hour as well as each dope during Bakewell in Buxton", he wrote when a line opened. But Newstead hire has been reopened as well as is ready for Byron, whose home was two miles away.William Blake should be during Westminster tube station. And Dundee? It should remember William McGonagall. "Beautiful Railway Bridge of a Silv'ry Tay! / Alas! we am really contemptible to say / That ninety lives have been taken away", he wrote when a Tay Bridge collapsed: proof which great trains can inspire even bad poets.

Stations as well as poets


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