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| | e-Pistle News from the University Church |
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| Services this Week
THERE WILL BE NO LUNCHTIME EUCHARIST TOMORROW, 16TH JULY.
Sunday 19th July Trinity 710.30am Sung Eucharist
Preacher: Revd Judith Maltby
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Forthcoming Events
Thursday 16th July, 1-2pm: Poetry Seminar (Simon Armitage)
Throughout the summer, we'll be running a family craft stall on Thursday afternoons. Pop in for colouring, sewing, stained glass-design. |
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Forthcoming Concerts 27th July, 8pm, Oxford Philomusica SCHUBERT 4 Impromptus, Op. 90
BRAHMS Variations on a Theme of Paganini, Books I and II
BRAHMS 8 Klavierstücke, Op. 76
SCHUBERT Fantasie in C major, D. 760, ‘Wanderer’
28th July, 8pm, Oxford Philomusica GEORGE BENJAMIN Sortilèges
BEETHOVEN Piano Sonata No. 19 in G minor, Op. 49 No. 1
Piano Sonata No. 26 in E flat major, Op. 81a, ‘Les Adieux’
Piano Sonata No. 20 in G major, Op. 49 No. 2
GEORGE BENJAMIN Piano Figures
BEETHOVEN Piano Sonata No. 21 in C major, Op. 53, ‘Waldstein’
Tickets for both evenings from Tickets Oxford or on the door. |
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| Message from Zoe Cuckow: Cake stall on the 19th July
I will be holding a cake and biscuit sale after the service on the 19th July.
This August I will be working with a charity called United (Universities Together Empowering Development) for 5 weeks. The charity helps university students set up and run their own social action projects in their local communities. United currently reaches 3,000 students through 8 Ugandan universities and plans to expand across other East African universities.
I’ve been working with the organisation for the past 2 years. While in Uganda, I’ll be co-leading day skills and training camp for 150 student leaders from across Uganda and helping implement students’ projects. |
| | Poetry Corner About His Person
Five pounds fifty in change, exactly,
a library card on its date of expiry.
A postcard stamped,
unwritten, but franked,
a pocket size diary slashed with a pencil
from March twenty-fourth to the first of April.
A brace of keys for a mortise lock,
an analogue watch, self winding, stopped.
A final demand
in his own hand,
a rolled up note of explanation
planted there like a spray carnation
but beheaded, in his fist.
A shopping list.
A giveaway photograph stashed in his wallet,
a keepsake banked in the heart of a locket.
No gold or silver,
but crowning one finger
a ring of white unweathered skin.
That was everything.
Simon Armitage (b. 1963)
Simon Armitage has recently been announced as the incumbent Professor of Poetry at Oxford, taking over from Sir Geoffrey Hill in Michaelmas 2015.
In this poem, everything – even the title – is mysterious. What do we learn about this person from the things found ‘about his person’? Nothing, or a surprisingly good deal? First, let’s establish that the subject is, we can infer, dead; we become the detectives trying to piece together his life. Everything is a potential clue. And they are nearly all deathly, final images, the more we look at them: even the library card is on its “date of expiry”; the diary is “slashed”; the carnation image is “beheaded”. Even the “mortise lock” has the French for ‘death’ at its heart.
Armitage uses deft half-rhymes throughout, so that “exactly” morphs to “expiry”, “stamped” becomes “franked”, “lock” changes to “stopped”, each mutation bringing with it a more complete sense of finality.
After all this detail, the final line is both provocation and key: of course, this isn’t everything; we can’t possibly get a sense of the man from this paltry list of possessions. But perhaps the line refers instead to the “ring of white unweathered skin” – presumably the ghost of a wedding ring. That was everything, perhaps, to the unnamed, absent protagonist. This clever, moving little poem provides answers, but is coy about posing the questions, which can give away more than the simple facts do.
Join us for a lunchtime seminar on Armitage’s poems on Thursday.
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