NaPoWriMo 2014 Day 6: Promethean

The poet Maitreyabandhu said in a talk that Poetry is not therapy and I don't agree with him. I will acknowledge that therapeutic poetry can struggle to be good poetry as we are wrestling with something that we can't quite get to grips with but for me poetry can be exactly the tool for working with those things we don't understand yet. For bringing some light to them.



Promethean


My eyes are on fire.
She must know what she's doing
with the man in her charge.
Attended all legal training.
I don't want to do it.
Where is the line between
politeness and duty?
Stop sticking my nose in.
I don't want to do it.
The establishment is voiceless,
surely with approval?
Risk assessments in place.
Surely?

A silence falls in the room.

An insidious calm, that whispers,

pretend.

Pretend as if it never happened,
that everything is ok.
Until you are silly enough
to turn around.
Fool enough
to see him bound.
What emotion
surges from the sea
of consciousness?

A compassion for another's suffering,
which widens out to all those beings
who find themselves tied?

A fear that we might be next?
That the wheel turns onward
to tear all faculties from us.

The shame of the wrong choice?
That evil can occur this day
if we choose not to act.

Or can we finally stop lying
that people are fixed
and chained to one position.
Acknowledge the truth
that we are a vortex
of all these and more.
Including the part
you choose to abhor
bearing sympathy
for the jailor.
For the meticulous
accounting of events
that lead them there.

NaPoWriMo 2014 Day 5: Blossom

It has been quite a mild winter in the UK and with the sunlight it has brought out the blossom a lot earlier than usual. From the window of the community gym I go to there is a fantastic tree blooming with rich red.


Blossom


Not every ghost is there to warn or haunt us.

See how these play in the newborn sunlight,

speak of when winter couldn't clog your lungs.


Let them invigorate your dormant mysteries.

Escape from the shade of the new moon

to join and share your resplendent beauty.


This dance upon the branches is brief, so

inspire and do not resent the fatal wind.

Live within dreams of the following spring.

NaPoWriMo Day 1: Words

So welcome to Day 1 of NaPoWriMo were poets across the globe are attempting to write a poem a day for the month of April.

It was looking a bit bleak when I hadn't actually spent any time writing during the day but after a particularly good puja at the Buddhist Centre led by Padmavajra this started coalescing in my head, which was cue to dash out the building - inspiration is happening!



Words


Some words reach out to me
like a potter's fingers.
Parting the soft clay of my ribs
so they might shape my heart.

massage aorta
dwell in vena cava
dance between atriums
unfurl
to the quickening pulse
dispelling that tightness
of fear and frustration
so that burdened muscle
can finally relax
my chest opening its tissue
to the beauty that ensues

The same constellation of characters
will not move me twice
but they've marked my rhythm,
the way a ripple never truly leaves a pool.

In defence of performance poetry

A view some people hold of poetry is that it should be held in books, lying in wait for someone to open them and allow their world to unfurl within the mind. However this is only one side of the story as a skilled poet performing their work aloud is capable of verbally launching you on an adrenaline fueled journey one moment while serenading you with language like a symphony the next.

Open mic nights happen all over the globe so why do they lie in relative obscurity? Speaking from England I want to acknowledge a couple of problems

Russian Roulette When you turn up to an open mic night you do not know what you are getting and yes there is a good chance that whatever type of spoken words frustrates you, someone will perform it. There is also an outside chance of something socially awkward happening, like someone holding a lens to a part of their life in a bit too much detail. But much like visiting an art gallery, it is ridiculous to expect that you will like everything, what you are looking for is that diamond amidst the carbon that will linger in your mind for weeks to come. Also the unknown can provide an excitement that is often lost in public media such as films, which conform to public expectations in order to ensure paying customers. There is also a lesson here in that actually, life isn't all about catering to every single desire you may have. Stand witness to its variety.

Being an audience is a skill. A complaint I have heard of open mic nights is that people only turn up to perform and aren't interested in listening to anyone else. In fairness I have been to nights where it has effectively been poets chasing poets but being an audience does not mean being completely removed from the medium portrayed. Everyone has something to teach you whether it is an evocative turn of phrase, a powerful rhythm or a fresh insight. Whether they realise it or not some poets provide an image of what it is like to be them with such clarity, that it is a more open and honest glimpse of the human condition than any textbook will give you. So really stop worrying about what the person next to you is doing; if they are only interested in what they themselves are doing then they've missed the point and their own work will stagnate. Don't forget to applaud either, it can be nerve wracking to take that stage.

After spending perhaps a bit too much time on the pitfalls, I need to get back to the defending, why should you seek out performance poetry? It's that human connection, it's hearing something crafted into life by breath, passion and dreams. There are no doubts about interpretation, pronunciation or rhythm the poet is here to directly inject their vision.

As a result the poetry is immediate, sharp as a scalpel, attuned with the present and designed for impact in a way that the written word can lose.

If you don't believe me then witness this fantastic piece by Marshall Soulful Jones
http://wimp.com/uploadedhug/

So what are you waiting for? Get out there and see some performance poetry and if you are based in Sheffield I can recommend looking out for Wordlife, The Shipping Forecast, ROMP, Slam Bam Thank You Ma'am and Speakeasy.

Forget Coal - Ifor Thomas

After discussing this with some friends I thought a need to spread the word of this excellent poem from 'Stalking Paloma'

Forget Coal - Ifor Thomas

Forget coal, yea really forget coal
(I've forgotten already - what is coal?)
Forget zinc and tin and definitely steel.
Steel doesn't exist any more
not in Wales anyway.
Who cares - who needs it?
And while you are at it
forget washing machines
plane wings and slim-line TVs.
That's not the future.
That's not where Wales is.
It's not where Merthyr is.
Not even where Llanrst is.
(I've not put that in to rhyme with Proust.
That ain't where this is going.
We don't meed any intellectual literary bullshit.
Not now, not any more)

The future
It's all about big zins, big cabs
and big, big concepts...

Think
          Applets for a variety of emerging iPlatforms
Think
           Start-ups that provide hosting
           for micro-packages that skim information
           for cheese heads
Think
           Honking away on a widget that that will
           fuse users' ganglia to the cortex of the
           digital brain stem.

The business of Wales, is not business.
It's monetizing what is in our heads,
that leaves a lot of room for wusses
like me, and you too.

Get with the program!

I've heard it argued that good poetry, the stuff that will be remembered, captures the spirit of the age and I think this piece not only does that but sets a challenge for poetry to come.

Ifor starts by invoking the industries of wales like pagan gods and ordering you to forget them, as there time in Wales has been and gone. Hinting at how the nature of our globe in that what is forgotten is thriving elsewhere. How instantaneous provision of knowledge means we don't need to remember beyond the present.

The line we don't need any of this literary bullshit, not only speaks of the cult of celebrity evolving through mediums such as reality TV and social networking that is more interested in how people inhabit their world rather than what they make from it and also suggests the time for flowery language and pomp is over in this technological age.

The production of ridiculous jargon like cheese heads, not only makes us laugh but raises the question of how our language is going to change. Did anyone expect Tweeting to become a regularly used verb?

The real challenge however is the final stanza; we aren't concerned with business anymore, it is about monetizing what is in our heads. There are more and more stories emerging about e-commerce, whether it is people making their fortune designing apps for phones or becoming advertising affiliates. High Street stores such as HMV are going into administration because they can't compete with the lure and power of the online retailers. Even sociology is looking to jump in on the act, trying to suggest that the latest generation should be renamed Generation C for their obssessive desire for content and to connect with others in the online world.

However you look at it the shape of our world is changing rapidly and poets need to 'get with the program' and evolve or be lost behind youtube videos, online gaming and twitter feeds.

Wodwo by Ted Hughes

A happy new year to you all! I wanted to start with a personal favourite of mine which suits the liminal nature of early January.

Wodwo - Ted Hughes

What am I? Nosing here, turning leaves over
Following a faint stain on the air to the river’s edge
I enter water. Who am I to split
The glassy grain of water looking upward I see the bed
Of the river above me upside down very clear
What am I doing here in mid-air? Why do I find
this frog so interesting as I inspect its most secret
interior and make it my own? Do these weeds
know me and name me to each other have they
seen me before do I fit in their world? I seem
separate from the ground and not rooted but dropped
out of nothing casually I’ve no threads
fastening me to anything I can go anywhere
I seem to have been given the freedom
of this place what am I then? And picking
bits of bark off this rotten stump gives me
no pleasure and it’s no use so why do I do it
me and doing that have coincided very queerly
But what shall I be called am I the first
have I an owner what shape am I what
shape am I am I huge if I go
to the end on this way past these trees and past these trees
till I get tired that’s touching one wall of me
for the moment if I sit still how everything
stops to watch me I suppose I am the exact centre
but there’s all this what is it roots
roots roots roots and here’s the water
again very queer but I’ll go on looking

A Wodwo is a 'wild man' and Hughes perfectly captures a being that finds itself thrust into life with only a desire to understand itself.

The Wodwo is open and inquisitive, very much enthralled and excited by the nature around him but finding itself distinct from its surroundings and very self focused. It enjoys inspecting the secret interior of the frog but does not show empathy or understanding of the death it implies. I may be reading too deeply but I wonder if Hughes is trying to suggest that we need the contact of beings similar to our own to understand that we all share the same feelings and experiences.

The rhythm of the poem is jerky and constantly changing, mimicking the lurches and pauses in the creature's investigations and the I love the furiousness at the end of repeating the word 'roots' over and over like more and more questions bursting into its mind. The haphazard nature of the grammar and line endings fuelling this sense of the Wodwo's experimentation.

It is the Wodwo's constant questioning of its own existence, seeking feedback from his surroundings and questioning further, that really strikes me about this poem. I feel like we are all Wodwos in a way, trying to uncover our own meaning and every time I read this poem I find myself asking the same questions but finding different answers.

'I seem to have been given the freedom of this place what am I then?'

I read this line once and felt it was a challenge; if I have this freedom, what am I doing with it? What purpose can I shape for myself? Whereas reading it through today I am constantly drawn to the word 'seems' and how illusory are perceived dominance over our surroundings is.

As we stand on the border of a new year it is a tradition to make resolutions, particularly around how we would like to change. This time however I recommend asking yourself the same questions as the Wodwo - What am I? Nosing here, who am I to split the glassy grain of water? - and if you find an answer ask yourself if your ethics and actions embody that answer? Then you may find you don't have resolutions anymore but focus, urgency and drive.

Don Paterson - The Lie

So the third and final of my Lyric festival blog posts is about Don Paterson. He has a sort of melancholic/haunted look in his eyes like he knows the world is going to dump seething piles of excrement upon him and he can't do anything about it but is otherwise a very charismatic man. It was also quite interesting in that in any blurb about him they always make a passing reference to his desire to be a jazz musician which I hadn't given much thought to until he kept taking breaks in his performance to play an acoustic guitar along with a humerous aside about vasaline...

His poems were as high quality as I was hoping, the unexpected gem was when he explained that he had challenged himself to write a series of sonnets this year and read one that he had written about the TV show House! It had a rather epic feel, referring to him as the 'crippled god' although I may be biased by my love of the show..

The best he read that I can actually find the words to however is this...

Don Paterson - The Lie

As was my custom, I’d risen a full hour
before the house had woken to make sure
that everything was in order with The Lie,
his drip changed and his shackles all secure.

I was by then so practiced in this chore
I’d counted maybe thirteen years or more
since last I’d felt the urge to meet his eye.
Such, I liked to think, was our rapport.

I was at full stretch to test some ligature
when I must have caught a ragged thread, and tore
his gag away; though as he made no cry,
I kept on with my checking as before.

Why do you call me The Lie? he said. I swore:
it was a child’s voice. I looked up from the floor.
The dark had turned his eyes to milk and sky
and his arms and legs were all one scarlet sore.

He was a boy of maybe three or four.
His straps and chains were all the things he wore.
Knowing I could make him no reply
I took the gag before he could say more

and put it back as tight as it would tie
and locked the door and locked the door and locked the door

The ritual is a great way of opening as it frames the way we approach a lie - as something that requires maintenance. It makes me think of Don Draper in Mad Men constantly working to hide the fact that he isn't who he says he is and removing all traces of evidence(As an aside Don Paterson said that he had been watching Mad Men and one of his conclusions was that Don was the one person everyone wished they were - I completely disagree but that is another rant).

I particularly like the fact that the lie is a child, because it shows a sense of innocence. In all honesty it is we that confer importance, whether white or dread, upon a lie and is meaningless and unknowing in itself which makes it seem all the more fitting.

The fact that it questions him, perhaps a metaphor for the why our lies question our identity. Why do we feel a need to support the lie? What does it tell us about ourselves? What we need to hide or more importantly protect? But then again the point we often don't attempt to confront the lie we hide from it and lock the door and lock the door and lock the door.

The final line that is ace with its furious repetition, like scouring skin with soap until it is raw to get some unseen dirt out. It also manages to maintain the rhyme scheme which I am pretending isn't there...

Carol Ann Duffy - Cold

The second of my three part Sheffield Lyric Festival update is about Carol Ann Duffy and I have to say I was rather disappointed.

The first reason is that the main part of a poetry performance is the Poet's ability to bring you in. When I saw Paul Muldoon, none of the poems he read particularly spoke to me but he had such a warm and welcoming body language with a soothing voice that he made me feel like I was part of an experience. Carol Ann Duffy on the other hand is very difficult to connect with as although the words she used were warm and friendly her voice was very terse and her body language very cloed and negative. She looked as if she should be standing on a cliff while storms rage around her and pounding rain attempts to make even the slightest impression on her stony face.

The second reason is that there appears to be two types of Carol Ann Duffy poems. They are either, dark visceral things pregnant with meaning or quite naff lists. She read a lot of these lists and although I'm sure there are a lot of people who appreciate them, otherwise she would not be a successful poet, but hearing her do things such as reel off a list of pub names made me yawn.

The best poem she read that day was one of the former and was called Cold.

Carol Ann Duffy - Cold

It felt so cold, the snowball which wept in my hands,
and when I rolled it along in the snow, it grew
till I could sit on it, looking back at the house,
where it was cold when I woke in my room, the windows
blind with ice, my breath undressing itself on the air.
Cold, too, embracing the torso of snow which I lifted up
in my arms to build a snowman, my toes, burning, cold
in my winter boots; my mother’s voice calling me in
from the cold. And her hands were cold from peeling
then dipping potatoes into a bowl, stopping to cup
her daughter’s face, a kiss for both cold cheeks, my cold nose.
But nothing so cold as the February night I opened the door
in the Chapel of Rest where my mother lay, neither young, nor old,
where my lips, returning her kiss to her brow, knew the meaning of cold.

The power to this hangs in the last three lines. As through all the constant mention of 'Cold' in a full range of senses, the sight of it, the feel of it and the simple matter of being told you are it reinforces the assumption that you would know what it is. But the revelation of its true meaning only becoming apparent at her Mother's deathbed, like the earth opening up below her feet to allow a sensation to rush it and consume her to the core, that's power.

Perhaps the list poems are required in a performance to make notes like this stand out?

Simon Armitage - The Christening

As always I find time quite a scary thing in that I have been meaning to write a trio of posts about Sheffield's Lyric Festival which took place in May and it is now already July. *shiver* but I am going to set myself a challenge dear readers to give you an update once a week! Bets are now on to see if I actually manage it...

So the Sheffield Lyric Festival, snuck up on me because it was a series of really brilliant, free events organised by Sheffield University and the advertising for it was appalling. If it hadn't been mentioned in passing by someone at a writing day I wouldn't have realised it happened!

Complaint aside, the first event I went to was the inaugural lecture of Simon Armitage. It was called the slim volume and the idiot lantern and was billed as a discussion about the relationship between poetry and TV but was essentially Simon talking about his career history and the half poetry half documentaries he'd done.

Now I never used to like Simon Armitage, his stuff I had seen on the written page had never worked for me and I had seen some of his poetry documentaries - namely porn the musical - and I though they were rubbish. Still do in fact and they had me thinking for a long time that all of his work was an 'I am a (insert long word that has nothing to do with anything)'.

However all this changed when I actually saw him perform live at Sheffield's Off The Shelf festival 2010. So I'm not going to get you to read his work, I won't you to click on the following link for the The Christening being read at another festival.

http://vimeo.com/2054023

When I read this poem I thought it was crap and just couldn't get on with the juxtaposition of Whale facts and slices of pop culture. it jarred and forced me out of the piece but listening to him read it, the work flows naturally. I can appreciate that it is a single voice and so his thought about the Green Party and the fact his song his available on compact disc suddenly becomes not just humorous but an obvious thing for a whale to comment on. There is a certain magic in his voice the page can't capture.

So my advice if you're wanting to encounter Armitage and really appreciate - don't read him, go listen to him. Be warned you may end up being converted...

Gooogle by Adam O'Riordan

Ok ladies and gentleman we are going to break from the usual text based format to include a You Tube link! I'm not sure if anyone else has noticed but whenever someone assumes the mantle/guise/pretention of poet they develop 'Poet's Voice'. I know I'm afflicted and Adam is a definite example of what I mean...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ogVYJI86yE

At a poetry business writing day I produced a poem about the internet which I decided to workshop and one of the attendees recommended I hunt down this poem. As a result when I first heard it I didn't like the second half, my mind was more interested in the men interacting with the internet but after listening to it a second time I can see the homecoming queens as part of their journey - that it is not about them but the men's desire for what they meant and still mean to them.

The imagery is fantastic in this piece, men being described as Geishas not only conjures an idea of devotion and unnatural beauty but removes them from their archetypal dominant position. Describing the movement of their fingers as crickets is a beautiful way to capture the sound of keys being tapped. There is also a lot of effective dual imagery; stoking engines provides both that mental imagine of driving the metaphorical engine that is these mens' desires and fuelling the search engines where their obsessions are cast.

The best example of this duality is the final line as although at first it seems a bit cliche and tangential the more I think of it the more I find it extremely clever as he combines seamlessly the real and the intangible. At once the line is both a sign that these men have been searching lost loves so long that the dawn has arrived and that on this day there is an interesting development within the sky while on a more fantastic sense it is as if the Roman goddess of love her self has entered to bear witness to her lonely disciples and reinforcing the overarching them of a yearning for a lover.

What Were They Like? - Denise Levertov

I was at the January writing day held by the Poetry Business and one of the writing exercises was to produce a poem in the style of the following.

What Were They Like? - Denise Levertov

1) Did the people of Viet Nam
use lanterns of stone?
2) Did they hold ceremonies
to reverence the opening of buds?
3) Were they inclined to quiet laughter?
4) Did they use bone and ivory,
jade and silver, for ornament?
5) Had they an epic poem?
6) Did they distinguish between speech and singing?

1) Sir, their light hearts turned to stone.
2) It is not remembered whether in gardens
stone gardens illumined pleasant ways.
Perhaps they gathered once to delight in blossom,
but after their children were killed
there were no more buds.
3) Sir, laughter is bitter to the burned mouth.
4) A dream ago, perhaps. Ornament is for joy.
All the bones were charred.
5) it is not remembered. Remember,
most were peasants; their life
was in rice and bamboo.
When peaceful clouds were reflected in the paddies
and the water buffalo stepped surely along terraces,
maybe fathers told their sons old tales.
When bombs smashed those mirrors
there was time only to scream.
6) There is an echo yet
of their speech which was like a song.
It was reported their singing resembled
the flight of moths in moonlight.
Who can say? It is silent now.

This is an utterly brilliant anti-war piece, especially as it does not specifically mention the war, who the aggressors are or the cause for it. It creates a brilliant dialogue in your head between the poet telling you what has been done to the Vietnamese and your own thoughts and understanding of the war. This flicking from one to another mirrors exactly what you do on the page as you match question to response.

What really shines though is the sheer sorrow that something beautiful has been taken from the world; the poem forces you to embrace the loss. Especially with such ugly lines as 'Sir, laughter is bitter to the burned mouth.'


So the piece I produced from this writing exercise is below, inspired by the fact that a few music venues in Sheffield seem to have closed recently. It pales in comparison but if one does not practice they cannot improve. There was a silence after I read this and I'm not sure if its because I hit the spot or everyone was unimpressed.

The Quiet Death of Live Music - Martin Collins

1) What happened to the musicians?
2) What happened to the concerts?
3) What happened to the venues?

1) Everyone loved them for their sound.
Peoples dreams rose on their notes
but no one would pay them.
so they were forced into day jobs
and played outros to the crescent moon.
2) There were always those who would not pay.
There were always who would not go out.
but then there was a new breed,
wanting to see the world only throuh a screen,
so the concerts grew empty.
3) The venues went to extremes.
They put on bands for free even though it cost.
hoping people would buy drinks which they would not.
They gambled on expensive bands, charging high door prices
and hoping the expenditure would pay off.
Either way, eventually they died.

Uroborus - Opportunity to showcase artisitic/writing talents!

Uroborus is most commonly seen as a serpent locked in a constant cycle of eating its own tail. The image is used to represent the eternity of nature, creation being consumed by destruction only to bloom once more into the infinite.

Art is equally cyclical and as the greats of our time rise, they are destined to fall and be replaced by others.

I intend to produce an A5 journal under the guise of Oroborus showcasing new creative talents and in order to help each one rise, all contributors will be asked for a brief bio and some form of contact details (whether it be a website, email address or twitter).

This journal will not only be for people to get more of their work out there, but to also have the opportunity for interested parties to contact them about it.

So, if you want to take part then I will gratefully accept submissions on any subject to the e-mail address erranttentacles [AT] googlemail.com in the following formats:

Poems
Short Stories
Commentary
Artwork
Photography
Comics

Please keep in mind that everything needs to be able to fit on A5 pages, maximum submission lengths for written work is 2 pages, for comics 4 pages and artwork 2 but bear in mind only the cover and its inside will be printed in colour so once those 4 have been taken up only black and white submissions can be taken for the inside.

The aim is to have the first edition out by June and a website will be created to coincide with the release. From then on it will be quarterly.

Disclaimer time>
I'm afraid I cannot guarantee that all submissions will be included in the publication but you will be informed whether your work is included or not.
Unfortunately I cannot promise feedback either due to time constraints.
Copyright of all work remains with the creator.

George Eadon Deakin - Monuments For Hollow Souls

So there is much rejoicing in the Northern Oak camp as our new album, Monuments has been released and is available to buy from music.northernoak.co.uk

One of the influences for the album has been the Victorian scholar, George Eadon Deakin and a brief biography can be found on the inside of the CD case should you chose to buy a physical copy of the album. In his honour there is a secret twelfth track, a recording of one of Deakin's most famous works; 'Monuments for Hollow Souls'.

The poem is dedicated to his wife Arabelle who died of Scarlet Fever at a relatively young age and captures just how dramatically the event changed his character. The misery of her loss rotting his soul completely and giving birth to a pure loathing of humanity.

His choice of literature to reference, Milton's Paradise Lost and Darwin's Origin of the Species, would have been popular at the time but I wonder if the fact both question the nature of God (whether intentionally or not) were intentional. Mirroring his own questions about his faith in the power or indeed the existence of a deity. It is rumoured, based on those final lines, that Deakin committed suicide after completing this but we have no way of knowing whether he took his own life.

Its a stark, misanthropic piece. Right up my street really...

Monuments For Hollow Souls - George Eadon Deakin

As Eve sustained on rib of man,
So shall my wife subsist on blood.
My fingers writing endless praise
To that angelic countenance
Of high virtue and scarlet heart.
When fever took you from my side
My Heaven split asunder. A
Foul caesura of my will,
Allowing rot to set within.
Diseasing my vision so I
See Pandamonium’s vile truth.
The loathsome nature of mankind
Before your purity of voice.
How dare they keep on breeding twist-
-ed progeny for work houses
And other faecal pits of flesh?
For those that understand as I
These works will serve as stern allies
My monuments for hollow souls.
My gift to a world putrid without
Her light. I am prepared now, bear-
-ing poisoned words with which to greet
My maker such a scene that I
Wonder if Darwin would permit

Abby Brown - Backbiting

Route 57 is an online publication featuring the works of Sheffield University students and in the most recent edition there is this piece by the lovely Abby Brown.

Backbiting

She was already his as you dwelled
staring in one hand-mirror – gloomy blue.
With a dusty frame and a blueberry sheen
it reflected your filth, bedeviled your face,
making you just as blue as the glass it encased.
There were tinges of green locked
in your fleshy seams when
she bit her bottom lip and
he half-smiled. You saw and exhaled
jade sneezes from your emulous glare
your fingers curling, revolted
as the mirror gloated, bearing
your chubby eyes and bulky reflection.
Not her pastel lips, perfect for his
oaky eyes and coaly 80's hair
smelling of burnt sage and honey.

An issue of the poem that may divide opinion is the character referred to throughout. Personally I like the fact that I don't know who it is and that they are steadily revealed in descriptions through out the poem, it adds an air of mystery which draws you on (made me think of the evil queen in Snow White). However, from previous experience, it can stop some people from identifying with the poem. I would like to see more of this character though, who they are and how they proceed now those two are together.

Sound wise, it is extremely enjoyable to read with words like 'emulous' and 'fleshy seams' being very satisfying to read (The psychology graduate in me wonders if its shapes it makes your mouth form. Supposedly if you force someone to smile they will feel happier after time, whether that's down to chemical releases or cognitive disonance who can say..) and there are rhymes embedded in text which give a pleasant sound without the sledgehammer approach that most rhyme uses. There's also very good use of senses with the physical sneezing, the clear visual descriptions ('oaky eyes' is quite a unique and evocative one) and the smells such as his hair which give a lot of depth.

I confess though, I have no clue what the title is about! Something I will have to ask Miss Brown...

Speak Easy @ Sheffield Hallam Hubs 28/9/10

SO I tonight I 'performed' at Speak Easy at the Hallam Hubs. A spoken word night for which the full details can be found on their Facebook page
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=109264991400&ref=ts

It always strikes me as a bit strange that I can happily go and scream my head off as part of Northern Oak and yet the half hour wait for my turn had me wanting to vomit. I have a good idea why, the fact its just me on the stage without 5 outstanding individuals by my side, that it's blindingly obvious what I'm saying and I don't know the crowd so have no idea how I will be received.

Either way practice will make perfect and I'll be a King of Carnival Creation before long...

The first poem was written in the lunchtime of a Poetry Business writing day and the second is an idea I had on a trip to Chester in March, which I finally finished today.


Waiting for the ambulance

Everything is grainy and monochrome
like silent films from closed picture houses
so it’s fitting her begging tongue
can’t be heard over the crash of blood
hurtling toward erratic bellow lungs
forcing a birdcage of ribs to rise

shattered arm winds toward her
she grabs the barely raised hand
a tight knit of white knuckles
the connection that serves as axiom:
there is truth in everything

hold on...







Drive through Snake Pass



I gaze out the passenger window
into the plunging valley.
Wondering if I could
dispel those forces
that hold me together.
Skin would be lost to the winds
only to be caught in a tree,
fluttering in vain attempts to escape.
Blood would drain into the soil
returning as vibrant flora.
Organs falling and splattering
like unfortunate creatures
embedded in the road
‘til only my bones remain.

Bones covered in tiny chips and fractures
that reveal my past with rugged honesty.
Untainted by the distortions of memory.

I imagine my soul,
the vortex within them,
forcing to their surface
in flowing emerald script
the facts of my nature I try to deny.
What this body is truly capable of.
Guiding strands of promising futures.
Answers I yearn to witness...

but even if this were possible;
my eyes would have been lost as well.
So this whole exercise
would be futile.

The Wearer by Colette Bryce

The Wearer by Colette Bryce

Here is my necklace, blister
pearls, a single garnet
for the eye, diamond sparks,
but where am I?

This loop contained a laugh,
a pulse, a throat
that arched perhaps
in love, perhaps
disdain, that warmed
this chain and knew
itself as beautiful.

Whoosh… life! A peacock tail
can stop a clock, can shock
a room to silence.
Oh I played that game,
observed the trembling
hands of men pause
above my breasts. Exquisite,
they would murmur then.

Feast your eyes, look
for me. You'll find
my books, my silverware,
my gowns, the flute
that held my wine, the fork
that carried food
to my full lips.
The set, the props, and this,

this… my vanity, that loved
the gaze that looked
at me, that bloomed
like any peacock tail
at the soft words
of a lover, who whispered
that my teeth were pearls,
my ear a shell, mother-
of-pearl, that sapphires
were my eyes

but where am I?

This is an absolute whirlwind of a poem I love it. The constant line breaks and punctuation forces you to read it quickly and its that speed which makes that final line seem so much more shocking a stop. Like a train derailing.

My one complaint though is that I don't think the line 'but where am I' should have been in the first stanza, I think it would have been better for it to appear as a surprise at the end.

With regard to the content itself I doubt you really need me to explain the fact that it is a comment on the materialistic world in which the wearer inhabits and that the person is second to the necklace, the only way the lovers can describe her is by likening parts of her to the jewellery. Her actual physical nature is lost beneath the pearls the plaintive question of where am I? borders on rhetorical as she knows, nowhere to be found...

[untitled] by Rufinus

There are days when I'm plodding along, minding my own business, when I encounter a poem which really astounds me with the ability to make me think of something in a different light. Describing it in such a beautiful way that it appears a marvel.

Here below is Exhbit N, which as a whole isn't especially good but...

[untitled] by Rufinus

How could I have known
Kythereia was in her bath,
her lovely hands letting
her hair laugh about her throat.

May she, my queen, have mercy-
my eyes saw what was not meant for me.
Her unspeakable beauty, her graces
have shamed even the Goddess.


Her hair laugh about her throat, as soon as I read this my mind was set alight. What a stunning way to describe hair? I would never have though of it laughing but now I can imagine hair moving gently around her neck as if each strand is playing with the other, it has such a positive feel and makes the mental picture of an attractive nubile lady naked in the bath come all the more alive.

It's great to find little treasures like this.

Affectation by Martin Collins

AFFECTATION

You can find me amidst the plaguescapes.
Beneath the bilious clouds
trapped by foetid air.
Drowning in eruptions
Wens, blisters, tumours, phagadaenas

I know their banal gossip,
Questioning my choice to remain.
The thought makes me expel smoke from my maw
like a daemonic engine releasing rage.

The burning inside tells me this is home,
I do not need to hide who I am.
There’s one thing that won’t infect me here,
their affectation.


This was written in the lunch break of a Poetry Business writing day just before I took it into the afternoon workshop (it would appear one works best under pressure..). The inspiration was that all the poems I had written in the morning session were based on reality or personal experience and nothing imaginary. So my personal challenge was to write something fantastic for which I invented a person and/or creature living a self-imposed exodus in some inhospitable terrain, which I dubbed the plaguescapes (I think that name is probably a product of The Locust album title Plague Soundscapes. Note me using the lower case suggesting it is something that can occur in multiple places, not a singular event...I'll stop babbling now).

The title is my joke upon the voice of the poem as although he claims he will never suffer from affectation like those he detests, by his very nature he is affected to do what he does. However the fact the voice is not fleshed out or given identity a few of the people at the workshop stumbled on this and couldn't engage with the poem without knowing who was speaking.

As a result, I'm not entirely sure if its finished in this format, by which I don't know if I am going to change the poem so that is feels stronger and more effective as a stand alone poem to deal with issues of 'Who is the voice?' or make it part of a series... more importantly whether one has the time...

The Donkey's Delirium - Martin Collins

The Donkey's Delirium

The stage sees countless men and countless Pucks
find their delight debasing other souls.
They laugh as cruel children do at violence.
I’m not as dense as my visage suggests,
her faerie beauty beyond this actor
playing a farce so inconsequential
but why must I embrace my wretched fate?
When I can kiss her pale and perfect form...
Why cannot I dream this midsummer night,
that this moment will stretch on eternal
and I shall not afear the coming wake
until the Dawn’s fingers do sear my skin.


So through the wonders of Facebook this group was found
http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=109264991400&ref=ts
A monthly spoken word night at the Hallam Hubs and tonight was their last one before taking a break for the summer. The theme was Midsummer's Nights Dream (although nobody really followed it) and despite having well over a week to prepare it I furiously scribbled this in 45 minutes before heading down.

I wish I could understand why if I have plenty of time I can produce nothing but shitty half-arsed lines and yet when the deadline is about to rape I'm suddenly full of inspiration. There's been a couple of Northern Oak songs where I've been hitting my head against a brick wall then suddenly wrote all the lyrics the night before a practice. I know the ideas sort of gestate in my head beforehand, I'd had been toying with writing something about the relationship between Titania and Nick Bottom before I sat down to write but still it turned out a lot better than expected.

I hope you like it, it got a decent cheer which was good enough for me! The quality of the performances were all good but not scary like the quality of some of the poems taken to the Poetry Business writing workshop. My favourite was a guy who turned World War 2 into a football commentary!

Now to put more time and effort into setting up my own spoken word night like I have been planning...

The Lower Jaw Trick - Simon Currie

So I remembered literally a couple of days before the event that there was a Poetry Business writing workshop on last Saturday so I decided to bite the bullet, book a place and pay the man. I'm glad I did as I actually had a brilliant session and wrote more in a matter of hours than I've been able to make myself in months. I will be sure to put some of it up on here once I've type them up.

The first half of the day was writing exercises and the second half was a writing workshop. All the poems brought along were of a great quality but one of them really stood out to me, so I'm going to type it up here and hope that he does not mind...

The Lower Jaw Trick - Simon Currie

That move, accomplished only once,
when, comfortably seated, shot-gun cocked,
cartridge loaded, muzzle in your mouth,
you pull the trigger with a big toe (either will do).
My son, who knows about such things, tells me
it takes off all your head above the lower jaw.

The sound will bring anyone in earshot
to find a colourful scene:
blood and brains up the wall,
you, sat on your chair insensate,
natty moustache gone forever,
the smile wiped off your face.

The nearest I have got to such a sight
is when my mother took me to visit an aunt
whose pressure cooker had blown up,
a grain of barley stuck in the safety valve.
Walls and ceiling were draped in fronds of leek,
a pattern William Morris would have died for.



Just the look of it is macabre with the three verses of 6 line and as you read the initial verse you are immediately filled with dread at where the poem is going to take you. So when the ending does arrive its so unexpected, bizarre and comical. We all burst out laughing when he finished reading it although I wonder if some of us were laughing in relief that he chose a lighter ending.

It's how we as the reader change after finishing the poem. Go back and read it again, now you knowing where the poem is going you suddenly notice all the lighter touches more like the natty moustache. With no suicide impending in the 18 lines you are able to remove yourself from the subject matter and take a more objective view, the whole thing stops being so sinister.

It is so clever.

There was a discussion of whether he should include 'my son' on line 5, the lady hosting the workshop thought that it threw up uncomfortable questions about the son and his relation to suicide. However I argued that it should be kept purely because of how much more detached it makes the poem. It leaves me imagining him discussing the subject matter over the dinner table with his son and the funnier thing is that people generally do....