"April Rise" by Laurie Lee (poetry reading)

Laurie Lee's most famous book is "Cider With Rosie" about his childhood in the Slad Valley of Gloucestershire. The book is frequently used to teach English literature in schools. It tells a tale of hard, impoverished beginnings, the hashness recompensed by the idyllic rural setting with its richness and warmth.
http://www.whscms.org.uk/index.php?category_id=1904

In fact it's all so like an advertisement for air-fresheners that one feels that Laurie missed his true vocation. He does have a great gift for description and story-telling but he's more of a romancer rather than an honest reporter of reality. His life is like a box of chocolates, with hard and soft centres. It's sweetness and light, pretty colours and delightful odours that almost succeed in masking the more familiar country odour of bullshit.

The question that comes the mind is, "What colour is the sky in your world, Laurie?" As you can see in this poem, his world has an emerald sun, sparrows have lips that milk mossy stones and girls have green hands; it's an Eden, a demi-paradise.

Alas, Laurie's world isn't observed, it's contrived. Maybe it's the world that he would have liked to have lived in.

The portrait was by Anthony Devas ARA in 1944

The pictures are of the Slad Valley, Gloucestershire, where Laurie grew up. The farmhouse was where he lived from age 3.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• April
• Rise
• Laurie
• Lee

[shuttlem]

Bell end

pop that one in inverted commas.

[SpokenVerse]

Inverted commas are properly used for quotations For instance: you said, "bell end". Thank you for your amusing remarks.

[shuttlem]

ah, smuggness. an excellent quality in a man.

well i do believe you skirted the original point.

but feel free to nit pick.

[SpokenVerse]

Your original point was that I was wrong about Laurie Lee's idyllic life being misreported and contrived. I don't agree with you. I've already said so, given my reasons and supported them with illustrative facts.

I like "smuggness" though - the extra g improves it and conveys even more of a sense of offensive self-satisfaction. What do you expect in return for illiterate abuse, clichés and sarcasm?

[shuttlem]

Perhaps next time you feel like immersing yourself in culture, read a council tax bill or go through your last years receipts, these are "real" an will suit your bland pallet.

[SpokenVerse]

pallet - meaning a narrow hard bed or straw-filled mattress...? I'm sorry that's a little confusing.

[boboodydo99]

wonderful!

[shuttlem]

its was nice to come on here an hear this, however, the comments along the sidebar are disappointing.

Lee encapsulates the countryside through the eyes of a child, and the wonderment here in. This is the true nature of the countryside to any person of a romantic disposition. His prose is beautiful an to call it contrived suggests more about yourself than Mr Wun Lung Lee.

[written12]

Well, yes, Laurie Lee is masking any and all unpleasantness. But if he's all sweetness and light, pretty colors etc. there is some lovely word music here. Decorative poetry has its place.

And this is hardly the sappy, dull prettiness of Rod McKuen. Do you remember him? At least here in the States, he was a huge best seller back in the late sixties and early seventies.

"Listen to the Warm" was one of the books my sister had of his when she was a teenager.