My new year resolution was to read more poetry. I started the year off with this. It follows loosely a lesser character from The Odyssey, a book I have just finished...but it is about the sea and water and time I think too. I read it slowly several times over, it is utterly, beautiful. I think it worked so well for me partly because I have Emily Wilson’s translation of the Odyssey fresh in my mind. Some sections made me stop and reread again and again for the wonderful images and thoughts they conjured up in my mind. I took myself to a lonely beach and read some, which was a lovely experience. I even got my watercolour paints out and did some little abstract painting of the sea inspired byTillyer...clearly and obviously not in the same league but still enjoyable


‘as far as a man can shout across water
and his shout with blown back wings
loses its bearings and is never heard of again
and not her man can hear the crying waves
but his answer
dissolves in water like an oval of soap’

I will never forget the image of seals snuffling about in sleeping bags or cormorants being like eroded crows.

Anyway, if my year of poetry carries on this way I will be very happy