Recently, there have been leaflets and posters publicising the Wantage (not just) Betjemen Literary Festival.  Thursday 4th October is also National Poetry Day. The theme of this year’s National Poetry Competition is Stars.

In 2009 an Abingdon based poet came second in the  National Poetry Competition . Since winning that prize, two well received poetry books have appeared. The latest is called Constellations.

There are also Abingdon poets from the past. One name I came across in Abingdon Library for the first time today was Willoughby Weaving. His first published book of poems was called The Star Fields.

He went to Abingdon School and seems to be best known for World War I poems like Birds in The Trenches and Between The Trenches and Progress. In the introduction to The Star Fields, Robert Bridges says “although there can scarcely have been a more genuine and prolific poet in the trenches ; where he did well, until, invalided home in 1915, he was safely restored to his Country Muse, to whose protection I very humbly and confidently commend him …”

Here is a more recent poem from this poet. It appeared in a 1951 Festival of Britain anthology of Abingdon poets called, “Local Colour”. It is about his family home, Pewet House …

Pewet

(demolished for an airfield)

The house where I for many a year was bred
Men are demolishing stone after stone.
As if some giant plucked me bone by bone
Slowly to pieces I can feel the dread
Disintegration through me seconded.
I did not dream how much of me had grown
Into its walls, nor how I should go down
Taking its lonely grief upon my head.

The ghost of the house will haunt the place
In my imagination solid yet
While I am absent. If I do draw near
Will it abide my coming, give me grace
To see it as it was once firmly set?
No, not without a disillusioning tear.

(Has anybody out there other examples of notable Abingdon poetry or poets for National Poetry Day)