This week’s title is nicked from a song by BridgetSt John, and comes from the album Songs For the Gentleman. I have been listening to a lot of music this week-most
of it live. We spent last weekend in Cornwall at a campsite that prides itself
on presenting good music.
We also saw John Grant’s tour on Tuesday in Bath. And to round off a week of quality music, Brooke Sharkey played a stunning house gig on Wednesday evening. What a voice and what a band. I was blown away. She is touring at this month and you owe it to yourself to go and see her live.
First poem-two versions. The first spaced out,
the second more compressed.
observations on a late lecture
9.03am
grey
tuesday
morning
the group arrive in gobbets
spat from warm beds
across the frozen grass
they fill the spaces as
computer refuses to talk to projector
today begins late
observations on a late lecture
9.03am grey Tuesday morning
the group arrive in gobbets
spat from warm beds, across the frozen grass
they fill the seats as
computer refuses to talk to projector
today begins late
Let me know what you think.
This second one is more of a reflection.
An accretion of zero and one
translates to words on a screen
as ephemeral, almost, as the thoughts
that lead you to stand in front of this class.
Lungs concertina, provide a plastic stream of air
that is malleable in the mouth.
The fleeting sounds bounce off the walls
prompt the students to write,
provokes further atolls of ones and zeros.
I wanted to focus on a cycle-we store our ideas
and information as a sequence of ones and zeros, we read them out by
manipulating a flow of air with our mouth and tongue, the sounds we make move
the molecules of air. Then others hear what we say and store them as a sequence
of ones and zeros on a computer.
This last one is an old poem.
the metaphor for our relationship would have to
be a cheap transistor radio all brittle plastic bad wiring and an inability to
stay on station you could hear the encroaching static crackle robbing either of
us of any real rest in the end I got earache and switched the damn thing off
only to discover that with the right poisoned atmospheric conditions I can
still pick up your contempt like tinnitus or a bad tooth
Have a good weekend.
Yaay!! The unpoetical knows-nothing novelist comments out of ignorance: First poem, second version, last line separated.....???
ReplyDeleteHi Carol-it is seoerated. Glad you like them.
DeleteI like the way the un-compressed poem lets the reader come up with impressions of each of the words (9.30am, Tuesday, etc.) and then put them together at the end of the stanza. Though the compressed gives more of a rushed feeling which might fit more the description of a late lecture.
ReplyDeleteYes i was thinking that- space can give a sense of, well, space. The lecture wasn't particularly rushed but I wanted to capture a moment,
Delete