Tuesday Poem

The poem this week at Tuesday Poem is "Oranges and walnuts (still life by Luis Meléndez)" by Daphne Gloag, an English poet.

Belinda Hollyer is the editor of Tuesday Poem this week and she says of her choice:

"Daphne Gloag is a poet whose work I encountered only recently, and entirely by happy chance. ‘Poems in the Waiting Room’

(www.poemsinthewaitingroom.org) is a blessed – and tiny – UK charity that produces leaflets of poems for display in doctors’ waiting rooms, and encourages you to take and keep a leaflet for yourself. How wonderful is that: to find poetry amongst the dishevelled and out-of-date magazines! And that’s where, last month, I found this poem.

I love the apparent simplicity of the poem’s brevity and precision, and I am especially struck by the pace and power of the last two lines: the ‘fire of stars’ imagery is breathtakingly good. I freely admit that I am often charmed by poems about paintings (the first I remember encountering was by another British woman poet: U.A. Fanthorpe’s ‘Not My Best Side’). I love considering the relationship between visual art and poetry, partly because both seem to extend and enlarge the strength of their partner."

Readers can also see the painting reproduced on the blog and compare the National Gallery’s description of the painting to Daphne Gloag’s poetic interpretation.