Keele Books of Life
Dr Karen Schofield
"My career has been in clinical haematology although I have now retired from the NHS. This gives me time to write poetry and occasionally to supervise Keele University medical students who choose a medicine and poetry humanities option. I am an active member of the Stoke Stanza group and ‘Keele Poets at Silverdale Library’ and receive support for my writing from both groups."
"My poetry is often informed by my medical experiences and I like to think of unexpected ways to express the emotions of clinical encounters. I was shortlisted for the Hippocrates prize in 2016 and was awarded a commended place in 2014, 2016 and 2017."
"Here are some poems which students may enjoy reading. They are non-medical and are a mix of more well known classical poems with some more recent less well known ones."
Adlestrop
by
Edward Thomas
On Midsummer’s Day, the 24th of June 1914, the poet Edward Thomas made a journey from London to Ledbury on a steam train which stopped at Adlestrop, a tiny settlement on the border between Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire.
The Lambeth-born, Anglo Welsh poet later recalled the sights and sounds of that hot summer afternoon in a rather wonderful short poem called ‘Adlestrop’.
An Arundel Tomb
by
Philip Larkin
‘An Arundel Tomb’ is one of Larkin’s most popular and widely anthologised poems. It might also be called one of the truly great love poems of the twentieth century.
The inspiration for ‘An Arundel Tomb’ came during a New Year holiday in early 1956, when Larkin visited Chichester Cathedral with his long-term partner, Monica Jones
The Windhover is one of the best known sonnets by Hopkins and was inspired by the sight of a small falcon which often faces against the wind to hover above its prey. Hence the alternative name of windhover.
The poem then transforms the bird into a spiritual symbol of Christ. As a Jesuit priest Hopkins was clear in his belief that the beauty in Nature mirrored the beauty of God.
The Windhover
by
Gerald Manley Hopkins
The Light Streams In
by
Tomas Transtromer
The Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2011. His poetry has been translated into 60 languages Swedish nature and landscape have inspired much of his poetry, . Tomas Tranströmer is as much a poet of humanity as he is of nature. He worked as a psychologist for most of his life. He has been married for over fifty years to Monica Tranströmer, who became his voice to the world after he suffered a stroke in 1990.
The Second Coming
by
W.B.Yeats
"The Second Coming" is a poem written by Irish poet W. B. Yeats, it was written in 1919 in the aftermath
of the first World War and the beginning of the Irish War of Independence that followed the Easter Rising, The poem uses Christian imagery regarding the Apocalypse and Second Coming allegorically to describe the atmosphere of post-war Europe
Little Cosmic Dust Poem
by
John Haines
Poet, John Haines was born in 1924 and studied art and painting. In 1947, Haines bought a 160-acre homestead claim 80 miles outside of Fairbanks, Alaska, intending to pursue painting. According to Haines, when his paints froze, he turned to writing. His poems are noted for their stark, spare imagery, and evocative rendering of the brutal beauty of his adopted home.