In the UK the 8th of October will be National Poetry Day, an day to encourage people to read or listen to some wonderful verse. Its not always easy, even with heavy readers; too many people say “I don’t like poetry”, which always seems odd to me to be so dismissive – I ask them if they like the songs of the Lennon and McCartney or Dylan and usually they say yes. You’re enjoying a form of poetry then – see you do like some of it. This year to try and encourage more poetry reading the Association for Scottish Literary Studies has teamed up with Glasgow’s Metaphrog, creators of the wonderful Louis comics, to make a four page comics adaptation of The First Men on Mercury by the great Edwin Morgan.
(some of the art from Metaphrog’s adaptation of Edwin Morgan’s First Men on Mercury)
“We’re thrilled to be working on this. Adapting poetry into comics is proving to be a really interesting project, and “The First Men on Mercury”, being largely dialogue-based, is ideally suited to this,” Metaphrog.
Said comic will be distributed to 30, 000 secondary school pupils in the poet’s hometown of Glasgow. I’m doubly delighted – I love Metaphrog’s comics work and Morgan is my favourite living Scots poet. He was the first ever National Makar appointed by the Scottish Parliament when it came home to Edinburgh, an indication of respect both for his work and for the role poetry plays in the cultural life of a nation. Over recent years we’ve seen a growing tendency to embrace comics to encourage reading (think of the Alan Grant/Cam Kennedy Stevenson adaptations or Simon Gurr and Eugen Byrne’s Darwin graphic biography); how wonderful to see Morgan’s work – and one of his science fiction pieces at that – being adapted in comics to encourage a love of reading. Fingers crossed we’ll be able to share more of it with you here come Poetry Day.
“One of my long-standing interests has been science fiction. I enjoy writing science fiction poems, and try to give them some “point”, so that they are not merely fantastic. In “The First Men on Mercury”, I imagine the first successful Earth expedition to the planet Mercury, and an attempt at conversation between the leader of the expedition and the first Mercurian who comes up to see what has happened. … Earthman conquers the universe – or does he?” Edwin Morgan in Nothing Not Giving Messages, published Polygon, 1990.
October 21st, 2009 at 1:49 pm
Ode to NASA’s LCROSS Mission
At Cabeus did NASA geeks,
A swifty Centaur rocket hurl,
Where dust, and mayhap water reeks,
‘Pon craters numberless, and peaks,
Under the cosmic whirl.
Sent a metric ton of massy metal,
To feel out lunar soil’s fettle.
And also careful cameras set,
To record impact on lunar rill,
Ensure the wants of public met,
Make time long record of the thrill,
Assure sunny days for budget till.
But, oh! When stopwatch ended countdown,
To indicate the mighty crashdown,
Appeared no hint of fiery flash down,
There on Selene’s apparition.
Were the cameras to be faulted,
For missing flash on Moon assaulted?
Or had some Lunar Politician,
Told Ace, a junior lab technician,
“Strip down that leftover techy thing,
From building that new Saturn ring,
Set a force field strong and watchful,
To stop this arrogant man sent missile. ”
“Include a grokking gizmo, Ace,
To do that thing of the Martian race.
Twist that racing Terran thing,
Clear outa this here four D space.
Enough of taking human guff!
Teach those Earthlings right enough,
That they’re not really red hot stuff!”