Peter Thompson (U.K.)

Richard Berengarten

I have known Richard Berengarten’s work for 50 years. Personally, and as a reader, I have always valued his poetry along with the greatest ever written, and both as reader and composer, I find that the poems always elicit an excitingly creative response; twice then I have been tempted to creatively ‘illustrate” them further through a musical setting

The first was ‘At the Window’, which I noticed as a single poem in Roots/Routes (1982) but later formed part of the long poem The Manager (2001). This I set for unaccompanied four-part choir in 1988.

The second poem I set was ‘Dawn’; again, I noticed this as a single poem, published on a card, and later discovered it is part of Changing (2016). I set it for solo voice and piano in 2003.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udpAGRoHB34

Over the 50 years I have collected all of Berengarten’s works as poet, and it has always been a moment of great excitement to discover a new volume, or even a new edition of older work! From the early days I have never understood why his poetry has not been taken up and been more widely publicised by those ‘authorities’ in the field; it really does appear that “Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil…... But lives and spreads aloft…”

I am not versed in the literature of criticism, so will not attempt to further explain my liking of Berengarten’s work, but it does appear to me to cover such a vast terrain and can be as clear and “glistened in dew” as Dawn affirms, or entirely multi-layered and meaning-bending, yet “cohering” …. as in At the Window, where “…this glory the real world inflects”.

Back to introduction here.

Next contribution here.