I'm lucky. I've always had poetry in my life. Starting with the earliest nursery rhymes and passing through the works of the powerful wordsmiths such as Alfred Noyes and Walter de la Mare, to the poems my mother wrote for myself and my siblings. Poetry has been an ever present force.
Countless years ago, when I was ten, I was bought an encyclopedia of famous people. Amongst the hundreds of entries in it there were also some quotes and, on reading one such quote, an inexplicable interest was triggered. The quote was:
"'Tis strange - but true; for truth is always strange; Stranger than fiction"
I was so taken by this that I read in earnest about the man who had created it. It was a child's encyclopedia so, as you would imagine, great chunks of this man's life were omitted. But, nevertheless, the appeal of Lord Byron's writing had caught me.
Years later, I made the discovery that Dark Lochnagar, a song I loved hearing The Corries sing, was taken from the poem Lachin y Gair by Lord Byron. That I had found an inspiration in this song, without knowing that Byron was the author, only emphasised the appeal his words had for me. The pensiveness and loss (this poem was written far from the mountain it describes and with little hope of returning to it) gave rise to the inspiration that created Day's Dying Glory. I also discovered that the third verse, perhaps the most evocative in writing, had been missed out from the song.
I've learnt a lot more about Lord Byron since then. I recently described him as a man with a questionable moral compass, which I feel might have been a generous description given some of his outrageous behaviour. But it cannot be denied that, as poetry goes, this man was a genius. His use of language to paint settings is second to none, and his meter always matches his story. The three words of his that I have borrowed to name my novel speak with far more imagery than you first anticipate, and the more I consider them, the more I see that they do not just describe a sunset, but a turning point. A turning point in a day, and a turning point in a life.
It would be wrong to imply that Byron's writing was my sole inspiration for this book. I have drawn inspiration from writers including Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte and Ann Radcliffe. As well as these authors, Sir Walter Scott's poetry is made mention, and I am lucky enough to own a first edition of "Ballads and Lyrical Pieces", a book that features in my novel.
But without wanting this comment to turn into an essay (though every year I keep meaning to enter the Keats-Shelley Memorial Association Essay Prize), Byron's poetic legacy clinches top spot for me. When you can extract three words from a writer and have them tell their multifaceted story, that is inspiring writing.
So, what's in a title? A lot more than it seems!
[Day's Dying Glory has been distributed to the libraries listed in our first blog]
