Today on My Poetic Side, we take a look at the poem for the Queen’s platinum jubilee, the vocalist inspired by W.B Yeats and the death of George Lamming.

Queenhood

No matter where you are in the world you would have been hard pushed not to have heard at least something about the Platinum Jubilee, and the four days of celebrations taking place in the UK. To mark the occasion the poet laureate, Simon Armitage, has once more written a poem to celebrate this incredibly important Royal occasion. The poem which is titled “Queenhood” was made available to the general public to purchase as a signed limited edition souvenir pamphlet to mark the occasion.

Armitage also read excerpts of the poem for ITV news and talked about the thought process that he goes through when he is writing his poems.

Vocalist to Rework Poetry by W.B. Yeats for Solo Album

Nad Sylvan, the Swedish vocalist is considering using some of the poetry of W.B. Yeats and reworking it for his next solo album which will be titled “Spiritus Mundi.”

The vocalist lives in a small log house on the outskirts of Stockholm and declares that he is something of a country boy having holidayed as a child in both West Cork and Gothenburg. Over the years he has had a number of very successful albums but is now looking to create something that is just a little different. This new album Spiritus Mundi is just that. He has been working with Andrew Laitres, a Canadian songwriter and instrumentalist to put some of the poems created by Yeats to music. This is a project that has been a number of years in the making. When Laitres asked Sylvan to listen to one of his songs he found himself wondering who had written the lyrics. They were in fact the poem “The Lake Isle of Innisfree.”

He liked it so much that the collaboration between the two artists was born. Yeats was a popular and intriguing poet and his works, of which there are many, span a number of different forms and subjects making them a great source of lyrical inspiration. Whilst the work has been a challenge, particularly for Sylvan he feels that it has brought out his inner poet.

George Lamming, Barbadian Poet Dies Aged 94

The internationally acclaimed writer and novelist George Lamming has died at the age of 94. He was just a few days shy of his 95^th birthday.

Lamming was an important figure in the Caribbean and particularly in his native Barbados. Speaking after the news of his death was announced the Prime Minister of Barbados stated that he should be considered to be “one of the most famous writers that the region had produced”

Lamming began his career as a teacher at a Trinidad boarding school, he then emigrated to the UK where he worked in broadcasting. He also worked as a writer in residence and lecturer at a number of universities all over the world. During this time he wrote a number of novels including “In the Castle of My Skin,” his first and best novel. He also wrote and published poetry.