GLASTONBURY TOR WINTER SOLSTICE 2014

This time round I decided to see the new year in by going to Glastonbury Tor instead of Avebury. 
It was a good decision. The sunrise was magnificent- if somewhat cold thanks to a lazy wind. 

Thanks to Ollie for the company and to the shamans who led the ceremony.

If you have never welcomed the new year in by watching the sunrise I urge you to do so next year.
For now Happy Winter Solstice.

SHE HAS THE MAP

I find myself singing the praises of poetry groups once again. I want to thank the Secret Poet's for a very enjoyable and productive evening on Monday.
If you write, in my opinion, you need to be part of a group. It will enhance your writing immeasurably. 
Two redrafted poems this post.

she stops the car

the night is cold

my breath is smoke

the lay-by muddy

mercury sheens the ridged field

surf sound from distant cars

she tells me to look at the moon,

another night, in another place she had said

there is only now

a noisy rickshaw carried us past

a bus stop blanketed by sleeping people

she has the map
I would follow her anywhere

You can see how I have pared the poem down from the last draft. Also how effective it is without the punctuation. You have to take the time and play about with a poem. Most of what you do will not work but that does not matter. 

I also have been redrafting this:

GEORGE ADAMSKI SQUARES HIS CIRCLE

George Adamski's in the Pontiac's back seat.

The driver is from Saturn. Next to George sits

a Venusian, who bigs up the mundane,

claims to love tv and be just like we are.

He feeds the con man a white bread vision,

the solar system as some banal B-movie town.

Old George for his part, keeps silent about

the flying saucer he's building in the garage.

You see, he needs something people will buy into,

when he stands in front of paying audiences.

Even his honest eyes can quite swing it.

So he will make that chicken incubator lampshade fly on film.

The Venusian doesn't care that his world

is a nightmare of green house gasses gone mad.

[That'll come out later,]

Just tell the earthlings what they want to hear and everyone's happy.

Save Amelia Earhart, who is either a housewife 
hitting the highballs at eleven am

or an incomplete set of bones on a Pacific island.

You takes your pick
some realities are more fun than others.

It even has a title! I find that titles either arrive with the poem or take a much longer route. What was bothering me about this poem was the line about the heat lamp housing, I could not get my mouth around it effectively when I read it out loud. It had to go. 
If the words don't feel right in your mouth they need changing.

Here's Alela Diane on KEXP. Until next time.

END OF SPECIES EXAM

 

Today's poem is one that I have been honing at readings over the past eighteen months or so. I am aware that one of my default settings [is it possible to have more than one default setting?] is that unchecked I have a tendency to hector in my poetry. It is not a virtue. 

For example the day I wrote this poem I was reading at an event here in Taunton. I was so pleased with the first, very long version of this poem, that I read it out. About half way through I realised that it was too long-I had revised it many times at this point, but obviously not enough.

Since then I have cut it down dramatically. The origin of the piece was a random idea. I had been reminded of the fact that when at school we would have end of year exams-I am so old, I am pre-pre-SATs. I thought it would be interesting if we had to write an end of species exam. The origin of the poem is that simple.

END of SPECIES EXAM

Now the jig is up, the experiment nearly over, it’s time for the exam. Please answer the following questions as completely as you can. Your answers may be of interest to some future species or a extra-terrestrial life form, if they can be bothered to come so far to see the pig’s ear we’ve made of this place.

The big trek out of Africa- was it worth the effort? Discuss.

Agriculture-what was all that about then? Pay particular attention to the supermarkets and how they set about stuffing both the consumer and the producer. Illustrate your answer with drawings of supermarkets burning.

Answer yes or no. Did you really believe the Tories when they said the NHS was safe in their hands?

List at least three reasons why as a species we believe in ideologies over common sense?

Estimate to the nearest pint how much blood is on Tony Blair’s hands.

State, to the nearest year, when you came to believe that we should pay for our own education. Then comment on the fact that the people who told us we had to pay benefited from free education themselves. Pay particular attention to their moral bankruptcy.

Nuclear power, who did you really expect to clean up all the crap?

Offer at least three reasons for the fact that the cabinet look so smug when the number of food banks in this country is rising.

And finally, why did we allow them to get away with it for so long?

What do you think? What questions would you want to ask us as a species? I am aware that mine are very culture specific- but then I was socially constructed here not elsewhere.

I leave you with the wonderful Mountain Goats live at Newport in 2013, energy and such amazing lyrics.

JENNY HILL: GUEST BLOGGER

I am so pleased to be able to present to you Jenny Hill's guest blog. Jenny is a member of Juncture 25 and as well as being a talented poet, has begun to write a wonderful blog about her trip to India. You can read it here.I am going to let Jenny speak for herself.

They say that India gets under your skin. That it will lie low in your memory for a while, then slowly begin to tug at you, easing itself into your conscious mind until it becomes imperative that you return. I know of one man who has gone back twice a year, for eight years, and is currently planning his next trip.

Before we went, I fully expected to fall in love with India. After all, my family had lived there for generations – it was my great-great grandfathers who went out there in the mid 19^th century, married out there, had children out there, worked there and died there, as did their children and their children’s children, right up until my father left in 1935. Surely, I believed, I would find a connection with the country and the people, a reason why it had beguiled so many of my ancestors.

I loved it – don’t get me wrong. The people we met were, by and large, the gentlest, friendliest, kindest people I have ever come across. The country in the North-East was spectacular. But there was no connection. I had expected to belong, and I didn’t. I left, thinking I could draw a line under that part of my history. It was done.

I was wrong. Already I am beginning to yearn for India. For the smiling people of Kurseong and the gentle people of Gangtok, shaking my hand, taking my photograph. For the monasteries and prayer flags. For the clarity of the air and the way the clouds swirled over the foothills of the Himalaya. For the mountains themselves – at dawn, at dusk, revealing glimpses of impossible peaks through the cloud or clear and sharp and magnificent.

I want to walk again in the places where my father and my father’s father walked. To look down on the backs of eagles as they glide on the thermal currents. I have to explore the plains, the vast river deltas, to picnic on the Rangpo and see Changu Lake covered in ice and snow. I want to follow the journeys my grandfather made as he went about his work in Sikkim.

I long to sit and look at the foothills, to breathe in the shape of them swathed in acres of tea gardens. I could do nothing quite easily there, except look and sigh, then look and sigh some more.   

I find I am missing the crazy driving on impossible roads that make your teeth chatter for hours after your journey is over. Incredibly I miss the streams full of litter – England is so clean - and even the sheer numbers of people in Kolkata, the dirt and the smells are beginning to exert a strange, compulsive yearning.

I have, to all intents and purposes, gone back to who I used to be before I went to India, but deep within me something has changed.

India is calling me. I will have to go.

Thanks Jenny.

WORKSHOP 7

Today's post comes from a Juncture 25 workshop. We meet twice a month and the second meeting is always a workshop. This time Gram Davies led us in an exercise he'd seen used by poet Kei Miller. 
The task was to write a number of random words on individual pieces of paper, then to swap them with the other poets, who wrote definitions on other pieces of paper. The idea was to have a list of words and juxtaposed definitions. We then had 45 minutes to turn this material into a poem.

I decided to try and write a poem using the definitions. here is a further revised draft.

When this life is not as you wished

and a shadow hangs heavy over your heart,

let me be your signpost. For

don't we all not sparkle brighter than

this light that falls upon us?

Please don't let this combination of skin, blood and bone fool you.

We are a fabulous idea shaken from the brow of God.

We are incandescent,

as bright as the stars that bequeathed us are atoms.  

This is the draft from the workshop. The words in italics were the ones I lifted from the exercise.

When this life is not what you wished for

and a shadow hangs over your heart,

then you live a life of dread.

I will be your signpost, point you in the right direction

for do we not sparkle brighter than the light that falls on us?

Are we not fabulous ideas shaken from the brow of God?

Do not be fooled by this combination of skin, blood and muscle,

we were created from the condensation of water at great heights.

We are incandescent, as bright as the stars that gave us these atoms.

It illustrates, I think, the power of revision. Yes, I know, I harp on about the importance of revision all the time.

I leave you with Kai Miller.

LIFE CHANGING EVENT

One poem again this post, and it's a work in progress. I'd be interested to know what you make of it.

reflection on a bad second marriage

think of it as a plane crash or a train wreck

any image where two complex mechanisms collide head on

no one will die but expect damage

do not underestimate it

this is a life changing event

you will be alone in the detritus

or if especially unlucky

the other will attempt to cling and suck out your life

you must devise your own escape method

find a path through the debris

you will get out eventually

try to do so with dignity

remember you need never visit this source of misery again

not even to write a poem

Here is the Albion Country Band-in their first and best incarnation.

On a less jaded note here's Liz Lawrence's video of the Bedroom Hero tour- the gimlet eyed amongst you may fleetingly clock me amidst the cast of thousands.

TO RESUME ANOTHER'S LIFE

A small poem I have just completed- well the latest draft. it needs a little more work.

I hide crouched in a toilet cubicle until you

lock the doors, secure the building,

and return to wherever it is you came from.

Solitary now, I will wander,

my chance to view each room as they should be beheld,

clear, silent, with moonlight silvering the floors.

Burglar alarm silent I creep across the parquet,

socks shining a trail none will notice.

All this I explore until dawn brings cleaners

sleepy from dreams of better times

[when they could remain in their beds].

As they enter, I slip out, to resume someone else's life

It came quite quickly last night and I spent part of the morning trying to get it into a coherent form.

Here's a revised version of a poem from a a few posts back.

George Adamski's in the Pontiac's back seat,

the driver is from Saturn, next to George sits

a Venusian, who bigs up the mundane, claims

to love tv and be just like we are.

He feeds the con man a white bread vision, the solar system

as some banal B-movie town.

Old George for his part, keeps silent about

the flying saucer he's building in the garage.

You see, he needs something people will buy in to,

when he stands in front of paying audiences,

not even his honest eyes can quite swing it.

So he will make that chicken incubator heat

lamp housing fly on film. The Venusian

doesn't care that his world is a nightmare of

green house gasses gone made. That'll come out later,

-just tell the earthlings what they want to hear

and everyone's happy, save Amelia Earhart. Who is either

a housewife hitting the highballs at eleven am. Or

an incomplete set of bones on a Pacific island.

You takes your pick-some realities are much more fun than others.

I leave you with the wonderful Kevin Ayers from 1972. 

HE NAVIGATES ETERNITY

A couple of small poems this post. 

save for the red tail light of a vehicle

an unmeasurable distance in front

the rain has washed all colour from his world

he had to run to the car in the downpour

his hair is now the tincture of the spray

and his shirt a flood damaged watercolour

sky and motorway merged some time ago

this journey will not end

he navigates eternity

I took the idea from something my wife said as we drove in the rain. I am not sure it is complete

Here is the watch.
And here is the poem.

surprise

my analogue watch

much repaired

made in russia

by chance

this once

mirrors the digital time projected on to the wall

it will not last

gears and entropy

will for it and for me

It probably fits into the sequence I have been writing for the past couple of years about returning to my old university. 

Here is Anna Terheim and Calexico

AN EEL IN MURKY WATER

A poem about tragedy. I have been thinking about Shakespeare and how he skilfully allows us to see the flaws inherent in his characters and how over the course of the play it seems inevitable that the character will act on those flaws. Perhaps I know the plays too well, but this is how I see the tragedies.
I got to thinking about this and this post's poem deals with the idea.

Shakespeare was right, the old bastard

knew a thing or two about people.

Problem was I could never cut through those

words until it was too late.

When I did him at school, too briefly, meaning

was an eel slipping through green fronds in murky water.

Even A-level left me unmoved- so your man has left you,

there are plenty more, just go out and find one.

All this time I was stoking the fires

of my own downfall, not that I saw it like that.

These days I read read the plays, make sense

of that language, feel for the predicaments the people find themselves in,

all much to late to be of any use to me.

Only the one poem this time. I am feeling that I have been in a fallow period. What I have written I have not been sure about. The other night at a Juncture 25 meeting we were saying that it is only artists who get blocks. the baker and the plumber never do.

Here's the Mountain Goats:

HE SCUTTLED HIMSELF

As I mentioned last post I have a couple of poems that are in a different style to how I usually write. Here is one of them.

How did Nemo feel? No, not James Mason,

and let's face it, Walt didn't even trust men with beards, so

he was never going to be faithful to the book,

forget Herbert Lom, banish all those terribly European images from your head.

I meant the real Captain Nemo, the one who had mastered electrical engineering,

not Walt's trite mushroom cloud that ends his version.

The Nemo who had watched his world ripped apart

and after sinking ships failed to end the arms trade,

scuttled himself. Only to pop up again

as the easy answer to the corner

Verne had written himself into, as altruistic as ever.

You have to wonder why he kept trying to save us,

we don't seem to be trying that hard ourselves.

The actors I name all played Captain Nemo in films. The poem came from a line that appeared in my head one day recently How did Nemo feel? I did not know how the poem would end until it ended. 

I think it could be clearer but I wanted to get it out into the world now in the hope that I can come back to it with clear eyes.

BIG UP THE MUNDANE

For once I get the right photo for the post. 

If each thing we write, every poem or story, is a piece of jigsaw that tells of our experience, our influences, of how we connect different things up to make something hopefully unique and interesting, then I am not sure where this poem fits. I've been toying with a number of ideas recently. I was struck by reading about the dubious flying saucer expert George Adamski repeatedly meeting aliens [who looked just like you and me] in Los Angeles in the early 1950's. I just love the way he made each planet in the solar system sound so homely, like small town America. 

George Adamski's in the Pontiac's back seat,

the driver is from Saturn, next to George sits

a Venusian, who bigs up the mundane, claims

to like tv and respect the institution of marriage.

He feeds the con man a white bread vision, the solar system

as some banal B-movie town, where everyone smiles.

Old George for his part, keeps silent about

the flying saucer he's building in the garage.

You see, he needs proof, something people will believe in.

When he stands in front of paying audiences,

not even his honest eyes can quite swing it.

So that chicken incubator heat lamp housing

will be made to fly on film. The Venusian

doesn't care that his world is a nightmare of

green house gasses gone made. That'll come out later,

[after people stop seeing Adamski-type ufos]

-just tell the earthlings what they want to hear

and everyone's happy, save Amelia Earhart. Who is either

a bored housewife hitting the highballs at eleven am. Or

an incomplete set of bones on a Pacific island.

You takes your pick -some realities are more fun than others.

This is the saucer

Here's another view

There is much to be said about Amelia Earhart and the mystery that sounds her death. You can read about it here

Amelia at the controls of Electra

Here's a photo of her in front of Electra, the plane she disappeared in. I've taken all the black and white photographs from on line- I hope there is no infringement of copyright.

I have to leave you with Plainsong and The True Story of Amelia Earhart.

TAUNTON BOOK FAIR

Juncture 25 will be reading at the Taunton Book Fair at 2pm on the 8th November. The day is shaping up to being a wonderful event. Why not come down to Taunton and hear us read!

Here's a link to the Book Fair.

MERCURY SHEENS THE RIDGED FIELD

 I continue with my run of inappropriate photographs that do not enhance the post. I think I took the above in Bath this April.

A couple of poems this week that I think are in transit. The first fuses two separate evenings. 

She stops the car, the night is cold, the lay-by muddy, my breath smoke. She tells me to look at the moon, mercury sheens the ridged field, surf sound from distant cars. We should all see the moon when it is full.

Another night, in another place she had said: There is only now, be in this moment. A noisy rickshaw carried us past a bus stop blanketed by sleeping people, sodium glare washed out the stars.

She has the map, I would follow her anywhere.

I have been playing about with the shape/form of the poem and at the moment I think it works best as a prose poem. Watch this space

The second is an altogether different kettle of words. It comes from an event many years ago and I think I have invented a word: enambered, to describe the feeling of being totally stuck somewhere. If you have invented this word in the past, my apologies.

In The Museum of Past Hurts

You would polish every twisted set of tragic thoughts,

concerned that each did not lose it's value.

It was imperative, you told me, to study

every piece at the correct time, if you

were to fully feel it's impact. There was no other way you

could possibly remain enambered in misery.

So, with scrupulous precision, you rewrote exhibit titles,

the better to keep you stuck.

I only went the once, your guest, it was not to my taste,

like that discordant serious music you listened to,only with more blood.

You had dragged that ediffice with you throughout your life.

I sensed there was pride in your curatorship, after all

that museum was all you had.

This week I have been listening to Shelagh McDonald's second lp Stargazer and I think that this is the best track.

While looking for it on Youtube I came across this French tv recording of Bridget St. John from 1970. The sound could be better but what the hell...

IT ENDS HERE

I've noticed recently that there is an increasing lack of continuity between the photos and the content of the post. I have decided not to worry about this. It would be aesthetically pleasing if they mirrored each other but seems increasingly less possible. The robot should figure in a post about The Tempest, via Forbidden Planet, but sadly does not. 

I wrote this poem two years ago. I had been talking to a man who had served in Afghanistan and he had shown me some footage. The images circled in my head for what felt like a long time, before they coalesced into this poem.

Helmand Province 2010

For Sam Ryder

Between two mud walls that demarcate

public road from private fields,

on a highway to there and back again,

three men crouch, part the dry earth,

plant their secret hatred,

imagine its savage flowering

that would soak the soil with blood.

They have prayed for this moment,

three hearts intent on mayhem.

Through the eye of a spy drone,

distance grants perspective.

Listen, it comes down to this:

three figures in a landscape,

two AK47’s, one IED.

Gift to each of these characters

a back story that suits your position,

for the mortar has their range,

the ordnance falls.

It ends here.

I think those who perpetuate violence must be stopped before they can harm others but in doing so we put a burden on those we ask to protect society. We leave them with that burden and we, as a society, are often unwilling to recognise this, let alone to help them with. As John Donne wrote: Any man's death diminishes me. We see it after any war, the last battle is the coming home. Odysseus knew this and it has been true since. John Schumann when I interviewed him highlighted the issues facing Australians returning from Vietnam. They have not changed, we need to offer those who do protect us the support they need. I  think we fail them.

I am leaving you with There was a Man by Pearls Before Swine, from their anti-war masterpiece Balaclava. 

PAUL MORTIMER A POET TO WATCH

 

I have been following poet Paul Mortimer for a number of years now and his work just keeps on getting better and better. He has such a deft touch and is overflowing with ideas. Paul is a member of Juncture 25 and contributes to a number of on-line groups. His own blog welshstream is always well worth a read. I await the release of his first collection which hopefully will not be long. Anyway let's hear from the man...

What got you writing in the first place?

I’m not sure anything in particular got me writing. I think it was something I was born with! That sounds really pretentious, but I don’t mean it to be. My mum was an avid reader and always used to read to me apparently when I was small so by the time I started school I could already read. I still ‘eat up’ books. When I was young I used to write a lot of short stories. Again my mum told me these things. I had two bouts of amnesia, one when I was 5 and another at the age of 10, so sadly I have no real memory of my boyhood years. At the age of 17 I became a journalist and spent the next 42 years writing news and sport so when I retired at 60 I decided to write for me and poetry was my main outlet, though I’d written no poetry apart from a few pieces when I was in my late teens. I took an OU short course in poetry writing, which was absolutely brilliant, and I suppose that was the trigger.

Who influences you?

That’s a very big question. I prefer to use the word impress rather than influence as that can indicate certain poets’ styles steer mine and I like to think I go my own way! There’s a huge range of poets I enjoy, I just love reading the stuff. I’d only be touching the tip of those who impress me but they include Derek Walcott, Simon Armitage, Ted Hughes, Charles Bukowski, Nick Laird, Helen Dunmore, August Kleinzahler, Thom Gunn, Hugo Williams, Michael Donaghy …. I really need to stop there! I also subscribe to about four poetry magazines and love discovering new work and poets. And don’t get me started on authors…..

I love the blog, how would you describe it?

Fun. I just love putting stuff out there and seeing what responses come back. It really started when I hooked into a sort of online poetry forum called dversepoets and I needed a blog to link into their tri-weekly workshop-type of events. The poets are from all over the world so I initially used it for putting up poems created through the workshops. I use it for other work as well now.

What other mediums do you use and why?

I think the internet has been brilliant for poetry. It opens up a whole world of talent out there you would never otherwise tap into or come across. To be honest the stuff that gets published or wins competitions is only a tiny fraction of the excellent poetry being produced. Since the blog I’ve branched out with a Facebook poetry page and Twitter – that one for micro-poetry which I love writing. I think 40 plus years writing newspaper headlines that capture the essence of a story have helped me, don’t you think?

Where do you get the ideas from?

As a journalist you always had to be inquisitive and tuned in to life and that’s where I find my poetry. Absolutely anything can trigger off ideas. I never actually go looking for them. For instance on a walk across Dartmoor recently I came across a sheep spine and came up with a poem on the spot. It’s actually turned out to be one of my favourites. I think having always been an imaginative person has helped me see poems in all sorts of places. The only ‘forced’ poetry comes mostly through the monthly workshops we do at Juncture 25 and I love those. Its brilliant being put on the spot and having to deliver something in about 40 minutes. You go places with your mind that you wouldn’t otherwise.

Free verse or form-which does it for you?

Free verse. In the OU course we obviously had to do form which was excellent discipline. I do struggle with things like villanelles and sonnets. I’m always left feeling that I’m forcing a poem in a direction I don’t want to take it. But that’s just me. I enjoy reading form poetry.

What's in the pipeline?

The main thing is a novel which gets launched on October 18. Called Ravenhart it is a crime fantasy. There’s a thing called National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). You basically just have to writ 50,000 words in four weeks and I had this idea bobbling about so though I’d give it a shot. That was two years ago and it seemed to come together quite well so I spent some time working on it afterwards and now here we are! It’s very exciting. What’s even more exciting is that a Belfast publishing company is showing interest in publishing a poetry collection. That would really be a big thing for me. Finally I have another little fun project on the go called Defacing Dickens. I bought several old Dickens novels from a charity shop and am making what I call art poems by linking particular words on a page. (I’ve sent you an illustration if that helps!)

If you were interviewing yourself-what question would you ask?

If you weren’t writing poetry what would you do: Read it! Poetry is such a wonderful form of literature that says so much in so few words and still leaves huge spaces for your mind to fill in.

If you were a book what book would you be and why?

Poucher’s The Welsh Peaks. It was my dad’s book - I have it now - and is a little old black and white guide to the mountains of north Wales where we both come from. He took me climbing with him from the age of 11. Snowdonia is a hugely evocative place for me; I can smell the rain, moss and granite whenever I think about the place. I suppose it’s a sort of spiritual home for me really (not in the religious sense) and there is a great sense of freedom you feel when climbing or walking the ridges. And in a way that captures the essence of poetry for me. The ability to break free and capture something different or special with words.

SHEEP SPINE

Life and death

bleached on this peaty moonscape.

Here it is elemental.

Moor and sun,

a harsh unforgiving beauty.

Knuckle on knuckle.

Each notch etched clear

in its whiteness.

No wool.

No flesh.

No muscle.

Picked clean.

Purity laid bare.

Simplicity of structure in

the chaos of wilderness.

This is where it all ends.

Bone and earth.

Thanks Paul. You can listen to Paul reading Sheep Spine here.