Kathleen Dillon - 2 Poems For Dancing (1915)

Forgotten Poems #111

    
              —: I :—

       It is a cold, grey morning,
       and the wind scarcely moves,
       and the sun cannot pierce through its covering
       of grey . . . .
       The wind wakes up,
       the trees begin to sway,
       and the paper in the street below
            is blown in a circle . . . .
                 then . . . right away . . . .
    

“This poem danced out is one of the most charming I know. Miss Dillon appears in a short white frock and a green peplum. She recites the poem, at the same time making conventional gestures which at once evoke images of the morning, the wind, the sun, the trees. Then with the lines ‘and the paper in the street below / is blown in a circle . . . / then . . . right away . . .’ she pirouettes two or three times and blows off the stage.” (John Rodker, in The Drama, 1916)

    
              —: II :—

       Oh! moon,
       pale thing that shines at night,
       and casts the long shadows
       of the trees
       towards me.
       They seem to grope
       like long, black, tapering arms,
       when they are moved by the wind.

       Oh! wind,
       the cooling rush of air,
       that fans my hair,
       when you are rough
       I love you.

       To be on a hill,
       with the moon and the wind,
       the smell of grass and trees,
       to dabble with the cool dew.
       Moon . . . . . . .
       wind . . . .
       trees, dew,
       grass . . . and you.
    

Kathleen Dillon (1898-1990) was born in Croydon, England, and at age 13 became “one of the chief personalities of the famous Margaret Morris School of Dancers.” (The Tatler, Dec. 1919) Went on to co-found the Choric School, previously known as the Clarissa Club, with Hester Sainsbury, another student of Morris, and the poet John Rodker; “Dillon introduced into the performances a modernity and in a sense a strenuousness that till then they had not possessed. By a modernity I mean particularly a spontaneity and an élan… a perfection and simplicity and compactness.” (Rodker, The Drama, 1916)

“I could not make much of [their] cadence until one evening… Miss Sainsbury and her company, including Miss Dillon, came in at the end of the hall and danced out their poems. I then understood the curious breaks and pauses, the elaborate system of dots and dashes with which this new group is wont to adorn its verses… Remembering how great an effect… dance songs… have had on our European metric and poesy, I was at once interested and excited by the possibility which their work has, a possibility of reanimating our verse… Many hold that poetry was associated with dancing before people tried to wed words with music. At any rate the dance basis is fundamental in much early poetry.” (Ezra Pound, ‘Forward to the Choric School’, Others, 1915)

Painting of Dillon by Augustus John (Land & Water, 1918).

    
              —: After Kathleen Dillon :—
                          by Dick Whyte

       why dance
       like no-one's watching

       when we can
       dance
       together?

       eyes everywhere
       but
       in the sky
     

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