Francis Webb Seminar 1- Aquinas Academy07/02/2017

Today’s session explored the complex background to Francis Webb’s powerful creative imagination. We looked first at “On First Hearing a Cuckoo”, partly inspired by Frederick Delius’ On Hearing the First Cuckoo of Spring.  Here is a reading of the poem and the conversation that ensued: 

The seminar then moved on to explore two of Webb’s early poems “Cap and Bells” and “Poem for Easter”

Here is a reading of these two poems followed by a group exploration of their meaning:

Francis and his childhood pet George, both in their mid twenties after the poet’s return from England in 1950