Featured image: aAh! | Featured Illustrations: Meghan Millar
As part of the annual Manchester Literature Festival, HOME hosts Carol Ann Duffy and John Sampson to read from ‘Earth Prayers’. The festival celebrates ‘imagination, ideas, stories and voices’ from across the globe, bringing together people with a passion for language.
In her latest works, Duffy collates ‘encounters with poetry in the natural world’, a wonderful collection spanning across years and voices. It explores the relationship with growing concern for ecological crisis, through minds of empathy or indifference.
HOME bustles with the anticipation of former poet laureate, a rare experience to hear such acclaimed work in this intimate setting. Red chairs are sat simply on the stage, with little frill to dramatise the mood.
Sampson strolls on stage with the confidence of a man who is about to break anticipation by playing various wind instruments – it’s unorthodox but met with nervous giggles. The trumpet is his first weapon; he reveals his arsenal of crumb horns, recorders and goats horns.
While jaunty and folk-inspired, the music is rather moving. It echoes a sense of belonging to a planet much wiser and older than us, and the human experience of trying to unravel it through art.
It is the cornetto that he chooses to announce Duffy with, and no sooner than he comes to an end, she begins to read from the collection.
We’re graced with readings of ‘The Woman in The Moon’, ‘The Human Bee’ and ‘Lessons in the Orchard’ amongst others, read solemnly. As she finishes ‘Blackbird’, a haunting discussion of the consumption of a bird, Sampson once again begins to play his recorder.
It is up to Sampson to read ‘Toad’, due to his close relationship with Norman Maccaig. He introduces the verse with anecdotes of their friendship – a stark contrast to the apathetic style of Duffy. They perform in direct contradiction to one another, lightening the readings into a performance of humorous dichotomy.
She finally introduces a poem, explaining that she tackled a sestina – a fixed verse of six stanzas and six lines – with the help of Sampson. He gave her the words to base the poem around, including ‘tosser, chancer and arsehole’. It is the first levity we see from her, delivered with utter stoicism. The comedy is palpable.
In the following readings of her work, we hear stories from lockdown in the form of ‘Nest’ and ‘Daughter’. As she explains that sometimes the elegiac tone of these poems feature the human, it is clear in her work the strong understanding of womanhood that she has become so known for.
The session is closed by the reading of her proclaimed favourite poets, Alice Oswald and Seamus Heanney. It is ‘Prayer’ and ‘Postscript’ respectively that close the anthology, in a sublime reconnaissance of the human relationship with natural forces.
Sampson plays the audience out with ‘Hallelujah’, performing the melody on his (sorely underused) trumpet. The audience sings the refrain together, and it’s difficult to avoid being moved to tears.
Manchester Literature Festival is a two-week festival taking place in October annually. For more information about the events and the 2025 Spring programme, visit manchesterliteraturefestival.co.uk/
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