Blythe Smart Publications

An Introduction

There are poets, and then there are writers, and then there are academics. Authors of great renown usually fall into one category or the other, in the same way that Titian and Canaletto could not be confused with Constable or Turner, or in more recent times with either Dali or Picasso. These genre paintings as with pre-eminent literature have a distinctive style of their own, imposed by artistic dictates of their age, and their creators would no more indulge in the other than an elephant would follow a monkey up a tree!

  Of course, breaking writing down into just three main categories is an over simplification, since there are several distinct forms including play-writing, literary fiction (without any real plot), science fiction, other-worldly fantasy, historical narrative, children’s books and journalism. However, if you aspire to make any kind of mark in the literary world that is not just sensational success, you should try fiction, non-fiction and of course - poetry.

  For inspiration in this regard there is no better place than Freshwater Bay with its stunning scenery and history of artistic residents. In the same way that artists were attracted to St. Ives, Cornwall there was a large gathering of renowned Victorians on the Isle of Wight. Alfred Tennyson was made Poet Laureate after the death of Wordsworth in 1850 and moved to Farringford five years later, then Julia Margaret Cameron the pioneer photographer came to Dimbola in 1860, whilst Anne Thackeray Ritchie spent summers there by the bay, and G.F. Watts the painter resided at The Briary.

  Other visitors were Rev. Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) who received inspiration for Alice there, Robert Browning, Ellen Terry, Charles Darwin, William Thackeray, John Ruskin, John Millais and Thomas Carlyle. Virginia Woolf the great niece of Cameron satirised this cultural circle in Freshwater a play in 1935, but many still came including T.S. Eliot (on honeymoon), J.B. Priestley (who lived at Brook Hill House nearby), Henry Longfellow, D.H. Lawrence, George Bernard Shaw, John Betjeman and W.H. Auden.

  The author’s first attempts at poetry came at school followed by a number of pieces examining issues of un-requited love, the natural environment, and (like Goldsmith) loss of more innocent agrarian societies. These were all written in London but a move to Freshwater opened new creative doors, after learning of Cameron, Tennyson and their compatriots, and research for the historical books by the author provided some fresh political insights. It appears a truism that the Victorian gentlemen’s education made its students polymaths, but today’s curriculum exam-based method is found wanting.

  Only those at the “Everest” pinnacle of the education system who attend Oxford or Cambridge Universities (revealing their fine talents on University Challenge), can in any way aspire to the skills of these Victorians in so many fields. The average student who labours on Government-based exams will find they emerge from the education process with only a morsel of English, European and World history or knowledge of various fields. These short-sighted objectives by the Government to provide workers of economic use mean the student misses a greater enlightenment, and going backwards, they know less than their counterparts from history - despite straights “A”s.

  The knowledge that was gleaned from writing historical books and travel involved in its research; then led to an insatiable desire for more travel and contemporary experiences - in an attempt to belatedly catch up with these well-informed learned students from history, the product of a more inspired pedagogy. An appreciation of their writing or poetry, and travel in Europe, America and Australasia, gave further inspiration for the later poems, which were written especially for this book from such experiences or ideas. These are inter-twined with great works from history that likewise inspired.

  The resulting work seems quite satisfactory and there is but one complaint. The five day week, so engrained on Western Society, is often insufficient to the author since it breaks the creative flow, and legislation should be passed to make a ten day week without the weekend’s most irritating interruption. Of course, once this was introduced and imposed by the State, the writer would be obliged to do a piece on how the five day week was far better, that it was much fairer, and that the Government opposed the will of the people by bringing in such unfair legislation against their express wishes!

                                                                        John Blythe Smart