Temperatures on the narrowboat dip below zero, so Sally takes the advice of Virginia Woolf and stays in bed to read poetry. She immerses herself in The Child’s Story, by the Oxford writer Elizabeth Jennings, a poem about the fear and the potential of love. Sally reflects on the connectivity between learning, teaching and love, and the regenerative possibilities of a New Year.

Further Reading:

Elizabeth Jennings was born in 1926 and studied at St Anne’s College, Oxford. She lived in the city for the rest of her life, becoming a familiar sight in local cafes where she wrote poems and chatted to the other patrons. She wrote more than 20 books of poetry throughout a very difficult lifetime, which often saw her struggling with depression and doubt. Her poetry collections Recoveries (1964) and The Mind Has Mountains (1966) dealt with a nervous breakdown and its aftermath.

Jennings was initially identified with “the Movement”, a group of poets including Philip Larkin and Thom Gunn, but she increasingly became recognised for her own, very individual voice. Her poetry, described as her “outlet for a tumultuous inner life”, became very popular at the end of her life, even as she fell deeper into poverty; the tabloid newspapers gave her the unkind nickname “the bag lady of the sonnets”.

Jennings, who was a lifelong Catholic, once said: “Sometimes I feel that an act of the imagination is more use than an act of faith.” She died in 2001.

In 2018, the American poet Dana Gioia wrote of Jennings: "Despite her worldly failures, her artistic career was a steady course of achievement. Jennings ranks among the finest British poets of the second half of the twentieth century. She is also England’s best Catholic poet since Gerard Manley Hopkins.”

You can find The Child’s Story here:

https://www.pnreview.co.uk/cgi-bin/scribe?item_id=5801

Sally previously spoke about Virginia Woolf’s 1926 essay, On Being Ill, in the first episode of this podcast. Woolf prescribed poetry for those who were feeling ill; she suffered from ill health and depression throughout her life. You can find the essay here:

https://thenewcriterion1926.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/woolf-on-being-ill.pdf

Jack Frost is a figure of myth and folklore who may originate in Anglo Saxon and Norse winter customs. He's traditionally said to leave frosty, fern-like patterns on windows on cold winter mornings. In the modern world, window frost has become far less commonly seen because of double-glazing.

Hannah Flagg-Gould's 19th century children's poem "The Frost" personifies him as a figure creating beautiful ice paintings on windows but, upset at the lack of gifts, uses the cold to break and ruin things.

https://www.storyberries.com/poems-for-kids-the-frost-by-hannah-flagg-gould/

The producer of the podcast is Andrew Smith: https://www.fleetingyearfilms.com

The extra voice in this episode is Emma Fielding

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Thanks to everyone who has supported us so far. Special thanks go to Violet Henderson, Kris Dyer, and Maeve Magnus.