Drop-in with Nigel Kent
Nigel Kent is a poet and author of "Sent", "Fall", "Unmuted", "Saudade" and "Psycho Pathogen". He is also a poetry reviewer and critic and has been nominated five times for the Pushcart Prize, and three times nominated for Sabotage Award: Reviewer of Literature.
I was delighted when he accepted to review "Songs from Last Imaginations". Below is the Drop-in, a brief talk about one of my poems from the pamphlet.
To learn more about Nigel and his body of work, please visit his website at nigelkentpoet.wordpress.com
Drop-in with Dorian Nightingale
I have a growing admiration for the output of Flight of the Dragonfly Press, an independent publishing press with a small but quality list. I'm delighted to welcome Dorian Nightingale, to reflect upon a poem from his pamphlet, Songs of the Imaginations, which is due to be published by FoDP any day now.
I had always wanted to write a poem inspired by Claire de Lune as it is one of my favourite pieces of classical music.
That said, when I did start sketching out ideas for the poem, the influences were to come from three different art forms – not just from the music but in poetry and painting. I was intrigued to find out that in the latter part of the 19th century, three different artists - the French poet Paul Verlaine, the English painter John Atkinson Grimshaw and the composer Claude Debussy - were all trying to express the concept of moonlight within their own respective mediums.
Verlaine had written a poem called Claire de Lune in 1867; by 1869 John Atkinson Grimshaw had started painting nocturnal moonlit landscapes and most notably by 1890 Claude Debussy had composed his Suite Bergamasque (though it has been claimed he had been struggling to complete the suite since 1870, inspired no less by Verlaine’s poem).
So with this in mind, it provided me with an opportunity to craft a poem that could interweave the language and imagery gleaned from all these three mediums.
Whilst not expressly writing an overtly ekphrastic poem, I did however want to use the opening few bars – “that watercolour opening” - of Debussy’s Claire de Lune as the main pivot of the poem.
It’s a magical start. That descending arpeggio. Those notes. It has a beautiful, ethereal quality that immediately transports the listener into an almost transcendental state.
I paid close attention to the choice of words ensuring they had comparable harmonic and sonic structures – almost seeing them as complimentary chords. I tried to use words that were phonemically soothing; that were syllabically compatible; and had the capacity to be discrete when internally rhymed.
In terms of the how the poem looked on the page, I used line breaks to enhance its visual appeal. I did not want all the lines to be anchored by the margin as I felt it would detract from the poem’s dreamy aesthetic. In some cases I allowed a line to contain just three to five words so as to re-imagine the soft notes being played from the opening bar.
In all, I wanted the poem to capture its flowing textures, its sensory mood and smooth rhythms. To be written as delicately as possible. To be reflective and respective of Claire de Lune’s Impressionistic roots.
A fleeting moment.
When we simply stop whatever we are doing and float.