Alan Stubbs, an up-and-coming poet, and brother of the Deputy Head of our Junior School, gave three talks to the Williams Project on what he thinks poetry is, and what he thinks it’s for. His talk was illustrated by several of his own poems, including the Arvon-prize winning ‘a philosophical provocation’, an intriguing attempt to describe a tree in ways which take the reader through various stages of reality: from literal ‘scientific’ truth, to wonderfully rich ‘poetic’ sounds and images, to surrealism, and on to using the tree as a metaphor for the very attempt to describe itself – and all in 16 lines! Other poems included “To Ithaca”, the only poem Alan has deliberately ‘constructed’, written for his daughter’s marriage. It’s a haunting piece which uses the Japanese ‘kesa’, a formal garment made from reused silk, as an image for the ceremonial strength and deep-rootedness of marriage itself.