Coleridge in Nether Stowey

Coleridge in Nether Stowey.

Coleridge in Nether Stowey

Coleridge and Wordsworth in Nether Stowey

 

london exhibition

 

Welcome to my second instalment on life over here in the UK.  For this piece I thought it best to look at some local history to where I reside, in Nether Stowey – here in the Somerset countryside.  Samuel Taylor Coleridge described it as “The deer Gutter of Stowey”.  Coleridge is most famous for his poetry – and he wrote all his most famous poems and other notable prose in Somerset, particularly in Nether Stowey.  Not in the north of England in the Lake District, as is often assumed.  However, as I found out at one of the “Friends of Coleridge” conferences I attended in 2010 – Coleridge was primarily a “Philosopher”.  Unlike career poets such as Wordsworth, Coleridge really was diverse.  Only Blake and Shelley have similar diversity, though as this magazine is called “eclectic” then Coleridge is the very embodiment of the word!  Later he would describe himself (to William Godwin, the novelist) as “half poet – half madman”.   He was a poet, a playwright, a journalist, political radical, a religious preacher, a lecturer (much like later with Charles Dickens), critic, a theologian, essayist, dramatist, metaphysician…the list seems endless…As a critic his love of Shakespeare even led to “Hamlet’s” first staging in over a hundred years.  In this article rather than compiling a generic factual account you could read anywhere – I have tried to go into the background behind the poems and influences as well as such aspect as the imagination, science and collective memory.  The latter being the collective memories, often inherited, within social groups and passed on down the ages to us all.

Here is a poem I have displayed at the Roald Dahl Museum in the UK…A tribute to Dahl and Coleridge

The Ancient Turtle and the Boy who loved him……

A poem

by Ben Manning

 

Based on the short story “The Boy Who Talked with Animals”

by Roald Dahl

Written in the style of Samuel Taylor Coleridge

 

 

No Politics please…we’re British! – Nuclear Power and Environmentalism in the UK

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Welcome to my author Blog!  I look forward to reporting on news and all things  artisticand creative from over in the UK, from reviews of museums and exhibitions to the latest news and even the odd historical or literary figure from our past.  Perhaps even the a piece on my one sporting passion, that most English of games…Cricket.