Join the Neopoet online poetry workshop and community to improve as a writer, meet fellow poets, and showcase your work. Sign up, submit your poetry, and get started.
A Northern Love Song
I hear the wild lands,
the rough lands,
the bleak lands.
the harsh, north wind lands
where the curlew’s cry
is swallowed up,
in the vast, empty hugeness
of the great, grey sky.
I see the heather lands,
the bog lands,
sparse grass lands,
the barren, dry stone wall lands
where, hardy sheep
seek shelter,
from wind
and rain and sleet.
I feel the driving weather lands,
my back against the storm.
We cannot conquer these lands,
and call them all our own.
This gritty harshness
with all her iron force,
has moulded men
since time began
and forged our very form.
Last few words:
I come from the North of England. I was born in the same city (town then) as the Brontes and for a while lived in Haworth, in a house which backed onto the moors, where Branwell, Anne, Emily and Charlotte all walked.
It's rough, sheep country, wild and at times bleak, especially for visitors. But, I love it, it's a part of me.
This is a homage to my home turf :-)
Jx
Editing stage:
(c) Neopoet.com. No copyright is claimed by Neopoet to original member content.
User login
Author information
Other recent work
Active Workshops & Contests
Contest
Workshop
- Splash Pool: How to use imagery in poetry..
- Wading Pool: Neopoet How To Video Resources
- Olympic Pool: Earn A Poem Workshop 2
- Olympic Pool: Earn A Poem Workshop 1
- Plunge Pool: Stream Workshop
Comments
Keith Logan
Sun, 2016-05-15 00:25
This could
almost be my dear Scotland. Beautifully descriptive and highly emotive, what a wonderful poem.
Keith Logan
the happy chappy
https://www.neopoet.com/community-guidelines
jane210660
Sun, 2016-05-15 05:08
Thank you Keith. Yes I can
Thank you Keith. Yes I can think of many places in Scotland that have that same huge, dramatic bleakness and yet are so incredibly beautiful at the same time.
I am in total awe of these lands, which despite our ever advancing technology we can not bend to our will, those that live on them have had to adapt .
Nature 1 Mankind 0
Jx
------------
Remember we are a workshop site.
Don't forget to offer critique on poems you read.
author commentKeith Logan
Sun, 2016-05-15 07:33
I for one
would have it no other way. That created by the supreme power can never be equated with man's measly efforts.
Keith Logan
the happy chappy
https://www.neopoet.com/community-guidelines
judyanne
Mon, 2016-05-16 00:20
great poem Jane
Very emotive and descriptive
nothing to crit, very well written - you had me standing there
Love judy
xxx
'Each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star,
shall draw the Thing as he sees It, for the God of Things as They are.'
(Rudyard Kipling)
mand
Mon, 2016-05-16 08:52
Hi Jane
I've been up north - many years ago - what you describe is exactly how I remember it. The people are hardy borne of the harsh existence. I have never seen this type of poem before - is it of your own invention?
Very effective. :)
LOve Mand xxx
jane210660
Mon, 2016-05-16 10:41
Hi Mand
Hi Mand
As far as I know it is. It needed to be like this, to match the environment I was describing. I didn't plan it, I'm not that technical, I always just write them and they turn out like they do.
Unless it's a triolet :-)
Jxx
------------
Remember we are a workshop site.
Don't forget to offer critique on poems you read.
author commentmand
Mon, 2016-05-16 12:52
Well done
it's nice to see people pushing the boundaries. Good work!
scribbler
Sun, 2016-06-12 11:53
Wild lands
Whether bleak northern or lush southern lands....they make those who inhabit them far different from those who have only known concrete and asphalt.........btw good poem..stan
jane210660
Sun, 2016-06-12 11:58
Thanks Stan
Am just doing a spot of editing.
When I started writing poetry I was still under the misapprehension it had to be set out as we learned at school.
The capital letters at the front of each line were annoying me, so just had an hour replacing them with lower case. Jx
------------
Remember we are a workshop site.
Don't forget to offer critique on poems you read.
author commentEsker
Sun, 2016-06-12 17:21
Wuther the weather!
thanks to the telly
and high school
..
mid ontario but my father was a railroader
forty one years with only something like a day
off work....they dont make em like that anymore
no moors...
watched a show on the Brontes just a week
ago....Amazing! I could relate to Branwell
the land and town is pretty splendid looking
although they are right victorian england
it would have been pretty damn rough!
and it was their father who worked at getting
the reservoirs built for a supply of fresh
water!
I never read any of their works yet...
I saw the program host..a funny little
chap who walked it and interviewed
people about the town..and the
ruins that the young writers based
the books on! the stone circle
atop the great hill was pretty cool!
dating back to the Druids!
pretty dramatic views and it still
looks wild!
I can see this now in your poem
or feel it! and I knew a second
generation Bog Irish family!
thank U!
jane210660
Sun, 2016-06-12 17:40
Hi Esker
I used to live in Haworth and it is pretty wild and wuthering.
All of the family wrote, including Branwell - he was an excellent artist too. The drink and opium finished him off and all the girls died of consumptive diseases, except Charlotte, the eldest, who actually died of extreme mal nourishment due to morning sickness. A gifted, but tragic family. Their books are classic English reading, but possibly not to everyone's taste. If you do read any, start with Wuthering Heights, it's wild, dark and bleak (by Victorian standards), with a good gothic dollop.Some of the others' Victorian morality might stick in the throat a bit.
Yeup, till Patrick Bronte got it organised, the water supply for the village actually ran through the graveyard. Not surprisingly a lot of them died of typhus.
I love those moors, they speak to me. Jx
------------
Remember we are a workshop site.
Don't forget to offer critique on poems you read.
author commentEsker
Sun, 2016-06-12 19:08
Our music and influence as teens....
I was dredged through school...parents divorce...mid wealthy....
I have FM radio Stephen King...Straub...Poe...and poets...
then..mid high school wearing odd clothing..sitting like the raven
in the cafe most of the free time sketching..writing..reading books
or the library I started to draw the intellectuals..bohemians..
last year of high...Beth the vali and second brightest academically
and teachers were regulars during coffee breaks...They were the
ones who got me too read the top end shakespeare...and other
classics....Joseph Conrad...Joseph Cambell...Margaret Atwood
etc...Met some import from Derby?? and one of the lads was
into Joy Division...Echo and the Bunnymen! Manchester I just
found out was a creative hotbed..not too mention Manchester
United the footballers....we watched all the sixties sci fi thrillers
But I never did read of this family....Heard of them...we had
Catcher in the Rye...A Separate Peace..etc
My journey with many people..families and women showed me
how fast the body is taken over by illnesses etc...thankful for
our paid for OHIP health care and that I lived in cities with
most of these incredible minded out there people...because
had we lived remote or poorly...food banks at least gave
sustenance and dumpster scrounging...any shortness in
decision in seeking medical aid would have been tragic too.
almost lost a few...Life is delicate. I had pnuemonia once
and without antibiotics...IV fluids...close...saw a lot of
close brushes..Not hard to imagine victorian times..and
untreatable TB....it ravaged many here well into the
early sixties. I like the premise of the story now...
I did get to read a lot of H.P Lovecraft..an american
horror author late eighteen hundreds. It was the
vivid excrutiation details I liked...Atmosphere....I see
now its the atmosphere of the writes I like!
next month when the fresh supply of funds comes in
I will go pick up a used book and try to read this
classic. I know I wont be dissapointed!
The Moors look pretty epic!!
thank U!
jane210660
Sun, 2016-06-12 21:23
I hope you enjoy it. I'll be
I hope you enjoy it. I'll be interested to know what you think.
The Bronte women wrote under male pseudonyms, such was the prejudice in Victorian England against women doing anything meaningful - Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell and considering the times, their work was pretty explosive stuff. In Jane Eyre,(written by Charlotte) the governess demands equal status to her employer Mr Rochester as he declares his love for her and the melodramatic, gothic love story of Wuthering Heights is quite brutal in its descriptions of cruelty. Most definitely not ladylike!
In my late teens and twenties I read anything and everything. Read all the authors you mention with the exception of HP Lovecraft. Particularly enjoyed Margaret Atwood - Alias Grace, the Blind Assassin and a short story of hers - The Good Bones. Although was older when they were published. I don't read as much now, well until I went off work sick, I didn't have time. It's a habit I should get back into.
I hope you find a copy of Wuthering Heights and let me know what you think.
------------
Remember we are a workshop site.
Don't forget to offer critique on poems you read.
author commentKeith Logan
Sun, 2017-07-16 19:25
I could not finish it
I found it as melodramatic as any of the works pre- Jane Austen. Now hers were novels I loved as a teen and now nearly half century later, still enjoy. I also like Dickens, but as he was paid by the word for most of what he wrote, it understandably meant he tended to be wordy in his writings. But the sheer improbability of being able to maintain the secrets in some of their offerings killed it for me.
Keith Logan
the happy chappy
https://www.neopoet.com/community-guidelines
Esker
Sun, 2016-06-12 21:33
into the writers lairs and lands
atwood and laurence forged ahead in our land..long before I was but a kid..
library book sale shelf I picked up Rebecca Godfrey.."the torn skirt"
a coming of age book set in vancouver in the late eighties....she wrote
a reality book based on a horrific crime..and then promptly vanished
from writing....another book was "tiger tiger" a female author who
spoke out against her experience..and likewise went underground
its still a mysoginistic world...I have yet to read any Harry Potter but
I greatly like Rowlings as a persona having watched some documentaries
on her... I like the detailing of characters and settings. In real life I
spent a lot of time with very dynamic women! I think my peculair airs
drew me a lot of attention from vibrant women...but I was raised in a
pretty heavily dominating male land....except seventies on times changed
and women pretty much run the show on paper...they did then!
and its far from perfect today... It was exciting to read the female
authors....Buffalo Afternoon set during the vietnam conflict was extremely
good too....the critics were so suprised a woman could write about men
like this....cave man thinking!!!! im certian I will enjoy the book now..
thank U!
Eumolpus
Sun, 2017-07-16 00:13
a song indeed
but one that also works as a poem. Because of the repetition your poem can be sung, i can almost hear the English melodies by Vaughn Williams, and voice by Kathleen Ferrier.
The images and language of the poem are great, a joy to read. I have been to your area, the cliffs, the fogs, the strong winds from the channel. The land of gritty harshness.
Sounds like as good a place as any to take the poetic vows.
Eumolpus
I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance
ee cummings
jane210660
Sun, 2017-07-16 20:18
Hi and thank you
for visiting.
I've been tidying up some older poems, as you do, so this one hit the stream again. I'm pleased with the revision though.
Thanks for the feedback, it's always good to hear from you.
Jx
------------
Remember we are a workshop site.
Don't forget to offer critique on poems you read.
author comment