One of the most memorable seminars on my Creative Writing MA* several decades ago was the first on the Long Poem and Poem Sequence module. We were divided into small groups, mostly with people we didn’t know, and asked to start a translation of Beowulf from the original text. In the second half of the session we read and discussed Louis MacNeice’s ‘Autumn Journal’, and were set the task of writing our own journal for the duration of the module.

Whilst I’ve always liked MacNeice’s poetry, and used several phrases from his poems for some early paintings of mine, ‘Autumn Journal’ had eluded my attention. What a wonderful text it is, each canto offering a different perspective and take: a mix of the personal, political, social comment along with observations of the changing seasons, all in a relaxed, conversational metre, with deft use of full, near and off rhyme throughout.