{"id":14588,"date":"2014-05-20T11:00:14","date_gmt":"2014-05-20T10:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/?p=14588"},"modified":"2016-12-13T12:19:40","modified_gmt":"2016-12-13T12:19:40","slug":"one-hundred-years-on-adlestrop-train-commemorates-the-evocative-edward-thomas-poem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/one-hundred-years-on-adlestrop-train-commemorates-the-evocative-edward-thomas-poem\/","title":{"rendered":"One hundred years on, a special Adlestrop train commemorates the evocative Edward Thomas poem"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"One<\/p>\n

Exactly one hundred years since\u00a0Edward Thomas was inspired to write his evocative poem about a summer steam train stopping at a deserted station in the Cotswolds, a special train has been scheduled to commemorate the occasion.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"One<\/p>\n

On Midsummer\u2019s Day, the 24th of June 1914, \u00a0the poet Edward Thomas made a\u00a0\u00a0journey from London to Ledbury on a steam train which stopped at\u00a0Adlestrop, a\u00a0tiny settlement on the border between Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire.<\/p>\n

The Lambeth-born, Anglo Welsh poet later recalled the sights and sounds of that hot summer afternoon in a rather wonderful short poem\u00a0called ‘Adlestrop’.<\/p>\n

Adlestrop by Edward Thomas<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes. I remember Adlestrop\u2014
\nThe name, because one afternoon
\nOf heat the express-train drew up there
\nUnwontedly. It was late June.<\/p>\n

The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
\nNo one left and no one came
\nOn the bare platform. What I saw
\nWas Adlestrop\u2014only the name<\/p>\n

And willows, willow-herb, and grass,
\nAnd meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,
\nNo whit less still and lonely fair
\nThan the high cloudlets in the sky.<\/p>\n

And for that minute a blackbird sang
\nClose by, and round him, mistier,
\nFarther and farther, all the birds
\nOf Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"One<\/p>\n

Although\u00a0Thomas (born 1878) had been scraping\u00a0a living\u00a0as a book reviewer, writer and author since leaving school, he only took to writing poetry in\u00a01914, and proved a prolific writer until his death on the battlefields of France three years later.<\/p>\n

\"One<\/p>\n

[Adlestrop station, 1933]<\/p>\n

Subsequently praised as being\u00a0one of England’s most important poets by prominent critics and authors such as Walter de la Mare, Aldous Huxley, Peter Sacks, Seamus Heaney, and Edna Longley, Thomas’s work was described by\u00a0Andrew Motion as occupying\u00a0“a crucial place in the development of twentieth-century poetry.”<\/p>\n

On 11 November 1985, Thomas was among 16 Great War poets commemorated on a slate stone unveiled in Westminster Abbey’s Poet’s Corner. The inscription, written by fellow Great War poet Wilfred Owen, reads: “My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity.”<\/p>\n

Further reading:\u00a0<\/strong>
\nEdward Thomas feature<\/a> [Guardian]
\nEdward Thomas’s poems<\/a>\u00a0[Poemhunter]
\nEdward Thomas<\/a> [Wikipedia]<\/p>\n

\"One<\/p>\n

Site of Adelstrop station site in 2008 [—<\/a>]<\/em><\/p>\n

To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the poem, an\u00a0Adlestrop Centenary Special train will leave Oxford on the 24th June and stop at the site of the old station for about 15 minutes for the reading of the Edward Thomas\u00a0poem.<\/p>\n

For more info and booking details click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Exactly one hundred years since\u00a0Edward Thomas was inspired to write his evocative poem about a summer steam train stopping at a deserted station in the Cotswolds, a special train has … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14589,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[193,16,198],"tags":[854,855,856,857],"class_list":["post-14588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-places","category-wales","category-wales-places","tag-adlestrop","tag-edward-thomas","tag-poem","tag-poetry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/addlestrop-station-1.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pQI7P-3Ni","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14588"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14588\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17451,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14588\/revisions\/17451"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}