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.

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.

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...

Untitled 3/5/10 - Martin Collins

We would go to stately homes and grand summer houses
in whichever country, whenever the opportunity. Wander
through more rooms than you could ever need. Marvel
at all the fountains, fixtures and furniture
decorated in decadent details.
It always made me want to vomit.
Someone owning such grand structures for mere months
while generations of families huddle together
in tiny terraced houses.
Regardless
there is still some part of me
that would like, in later life,
to take tea in the drawing room
and as light streams through
impossibly large curtains,
act like it was worth it in the end
-M. Collins 3/5/2010

Of the poems I wrote at the workshop, this is my favourite which has been slightly edited since then. The exercise had been to think of a place that we wanted to be with Sebastian Barker's 'In the Heart of Hackney' as an example to inspire us. I'm really struggling with a title though, all I can think of now is 'The loathsome frivolity of the larger home.' however that warns the reader what my opinion is and I want the line "It always made me want to vomit." to be unexpected. It certainly elicited the desired surprise and laughter from the other people at the workshop without such a title.

One thing I noticed about my writing after doing a number of exercises in a row is that I have a penchant for taking the first person and being very autobiographical. It not only makes me worry about my own self-absorption but that I may be misinterpreted when I write something that isn't about me in the first person. Perhaps I'm worried that I have written about myself and just don't want to accept it? Ho-hum.