• 7th Oct 2010
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Roundup

National Poetry Day

Construction is a deeply practical business, but there’s also time for reflection, and perhaps even room for the odd moment of poetry.

To mark National Poetry Day on October 7, we asked CM readers and CIOB members to share their moments of poetic inspiration, either by sending us their own compositions, or nominating a favourite work by an established poet.

And we certainly found evidence that poetry has its place in construction, and vice versa. Kieran Gannon MCIOB gave us the entire history of a project in verse, and poets Angela Topping and Peter Cowlam shared work that takes its inspiration from the built environment.

Peter White ICIOB nominated a beautiful poem by William Ernest Henley, who died in 1903. His Wikipedia entry makes for a fascinating life story.

There are also four more poems to enjoy on the CIOB website. To view, please click here: http://www.ciob.org.uk/news/view/2860

 

Striking edifice……………

By Kieran Gannon MCIOB

Countless lines gel side by side

A skyscraper perhaps, an Architects stride

Before the Client Chartered Builders confides

A masterpiece in the making? the Surveyors applied

Machinery trundle familiar ground

Terra firma the goal, Engineers boots pound.

The competent workers, in the Irish we found

Turning conversation, specification and numbers around.

“The clock ticks away” the Planners do say

The PM twitching, there will be hell to pay!

With laughter and smiles, cranes dance and sway

A magnificent topping out, crowning the day

A legacy for all in neighbouring backyards

Majestic in stature, an award on the cards

Loggias and atriums, facades and mansards

An explosion of form, new material, postcards?

With keys handed over, the new owners pride

A place to think, work, play, to hide?

And looking back, we took it all in our stride

A striking edifice, to adorn, to reside……….

 

K Gannon 2010©


I Sing of Bricks

By Angela Topping

Who first

thought of you?

Warm cakes of baked clay

exact corners

strictly rectangular

correct and

all the same

yet each one

slightly different.

 

Many hands

made you, many others

raised you into walls

to fend off weather.

Sunlight loves you

and shows off

your masculine charms.

Rain decorates you

bringing out the greys and reds.

 

Victorians loved

playing with you

embroidering houses

with elegant stitchery in earth tones.

 

How willingly

you align yourselves

clinging to mortar.

Your conversation,

always consonantal.

In deep clunks and scrapes

you engage with the previous courses.

 

Clubby and solid

as earth

you prop up our defences,

rise to roves

reusable.

 

You plunge into eaerth

making no moan.

Supporting your fellows

is your delight.

Little loaves

you make up the smallest

pig house, the grandest manor,

humble, strong, biddable

servants, solid as hearth and home.

 

http://angelatopping.wordpress.com

Planar City

See, in the shadows

of a New York street,

 

a man who wears

a slanted hat

and saunters from a paper stand,

 

who in a morning trance

has read the news

of undeclared relationships

that someone’s found

 

between the geometry

of old apartment blocks

 

and intersecting

avenues and streets.

 

Peter Cowlam (not a CIOB member)

www.petercowlam.info

 

 

Margaritae Sorori

William Ernest Henley

A late lark twitters from the quiet skies:

And from the west,

Where the sun, his day's work ended,

Lingers as in content,

There falls on the old, gray city

An influence luminous and serene,

A shining peace.


The smoke ascends

In a rosy-and-golden haze. The spires

Shine and are changed. In the valley

Shadows rise. The lark sings on. The sun,

Closing his benediction,

Sinks, and the darkening air

Thrills with a sense of the triumphing night--

Night with her train of stars

And her great gift of sleep.


So be my passing!

My task accomplish'd and the long day done,

My wages taken, and in my heart

Some late lark singing,

Let me be gather'd to the quiet west,

The sundown splendid and serene,

Death.

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