Kieron is a poet and literature teacher in Oxford. He kindly joined us for lunch on 8 May to share with us some of his poems and influences.

Having read English at Christchurch, Oxford, Kieron now teaches in Oxford. He often teaches American undergraduate students who are on their junior year abroad. His first collection of poems, The Mortal Man, is named after a pub located at Troutbeck in the Lake District. This collection features poems about the Lakes, Wordsworth, and Oxford amongst other things, and Kieron started his talk to us by reading us a poem about the Tradescant Collection at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.

He went on to read us a poem about his childhood memories of playing scrabble with Auntie Mable, as well as one called The Duplicator about his late father’s duplicating machine (the precursor to photocopiers for anyone who needs an explanation). One of our members was moved on the way home from lunch to compose this limerick in appreciation:

A poet named Winn came to dine

And said he liked rhythm and rhyme.

But prose is the fashion,

So now it’s his passion

And anyway nothing rhymes with duplicating machine.

(with apologies to Kieron!)

Kieron shared with us his memories of his father who was a long-standing member of the Lions, and (having cautiously double-checked that Rotary and the Lions were not mortal enemies) he read us a poem about Charter Night at the Lions.

Kieron confessed to a regrettably unfashionable liking for regular rhythm and rhyme. He enjoys the poetry of WB Yeats, and none of us were aware until Kieron’s speech that during the 1920s Yeats used to live in the building that is now Wendy News on Broad Street, Oxford. He liked TS Eliot’s view on why poetry is greater than prose (answer: it’s shorter). Kieron’s American students apparently have a tendency to ask him whether he feels that “form” (that is, rhythm and rhyme) is constructing, and his answer is always that he feels it is not. Rather, the writer should try to “go for a walk arm in arm” with rhyme or alliteration or whatever structure is being used. Rather than being constricting, Kieron feels that regularity can lead to clarity and harmony.

Finally Kieron shared with us his favourite quite about writing, which is by John Ruskin:

“The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion, all in one.”