I appear to be writing simple, self-explanatory poems at the moment. It is not part of some strategy merely what is bubbling to the surface. This poem is no exception.
My Day
scratching
the parking permit
I
have to ask Ollie the date
and
it turns out
you’re
one hundred today
the
sun still shines
for
now the world goes on
later
as darkness falls
I
will cross Dartmoor
then
I will read
how
the sea is turning to acid
later
still I will toast you
in
clear cold water
You can read about the changing state of our oceans here. The poem is essentially reportage. I wrote it at the end of the day when I was reflecting back on the day's events.
Here's Offa Rex singing The Blackleg Miner. I only heard the album recently, my Decemberists radar must have malfunctioned when the album came out. The song is from the North-East and I first heard Steeleye Span singing it on their debut album. It was made popular by Louis Killen.
Happy shortest day. For me this day has special significance, it feels like the start of the new year. More correfoc photographs this post. I am a sucker for fireworks. An observational poem.
lone man in a car
stopped
at traffic lights
listen
to his music blare
disturb
the day
the
bass beats at my chest
he
looks calm almost bored
amber
to green
he
pulls away
takes
his party with him
As with the last post a pretty straight forward poem. There is something to be said for just writing what you see. The main work comes with the revisions. It's always worth playing about with spacing and exactly where you end lines, carrying an idea onto the next line can alter the pace of the poem.
I came across this concert of Bob Marley from 1979. It's superb. Happy listening.
I'm late posting this week due to the festive season and a trip to Widnes to see family. The photographs are from the Gracia correfoc in Barcelona. It's a celebration of the local saint and I love the bustle and the fireworks. Great fun. A brief poem.
omen
emotions
that turn on a sixpence
boredom
to anger in three seconds flat
life
must be a tricky, a high wire act
coping
with a hair trigger like that
and
i’m wondering
when
my time will come
you
can only look down the barrel of her rage
so
many times before it goes off in your face
I honestly have not got much to say about it as I think it speaks for itself. A good exercise is to just write for a two minutes without stopping and your critical self turned off. Don't reflect on what you are writing just do it and aim to fill at least two sides of paper. Once you have done so then you can flick the switch and engage your critical facilities and try to make something out of your words. It usually yields something.
I'm still in a Leonard Cohen listening space and here he is.
Recently we have started to have our milk delivered in milk bottles just like we used to have in the olden days. Last weekend we were away and decided to put the milk bottles into the freezer. This first prose poem explains why you cannot do that.
I did not realise you cannot
freeze milk in a bottle because milk is at least 85% water which
expands as it freezes cracking the glass and pushing off the foil top
in a frozen explosion
It's one of those poems which are inspired by an image but that do not transcend their connection to that image. I occasionally will use an image to provoke a poem. It can be an effective workshop prompt. However the words usually need to be supported by the image, as in this case.
Sheila’s Poem
1.12.18.
as
brittle as bone china
ever
more fragile
she
tells me what she sees
it
is not my reality
I
welcome her words
attempt
to see her reality
I’ve
known her half my lifetime
so
I can follow the clues
gently
we talk
until
head bowed seamlessly
she
slips into sleep
and
the magazine falls from her
hand
Since I returned from Barcelona I've been listening to a lot of Leonard Cohen. Here he is singing Famous Blue Raincoat, the picture quality isn't brilliant but the music!
A poem I was moved to write by something I observed at the Sidecar gig. No matter how absorbed in the music I am part of me is still taking in my environment and watching Ryley Walker at Sidecar the other night I was aware of two people arguing to my left. That is the genesis of this post's poem.
Blink
and miss it beauty
the
kind that winds you in
falls,
lifts, time changes,
a
labyrinth in sound.
She
moves, eyes closed,
spins
on the spot, amazed,
almost
synchronised
but
here’s the Minotaur,
patience
paper thin,
as
you can tell by his face.
She
flees through the maze of people.
They
will stand by a wall
and
she will talk and he will listen
as
the gig ends without them.
He
buys her a tour shirt
some
kind of peace offering,
to
paper over the cracks only they know.
I
am standing behind him
in
the merchandising queue thinking
it’s too little, too late.
The photographs are of murals in Vic, Catalunya.
On Wednesday I went to Bristol, to the Fleece to see Ryley Walker again. If anything he was even better than last time. Here's some footage of him playing Roundabout, sterling stuff.
I was in Barcelona last week. I went to visit friends and see Ryley Walker at Sidecar, a little club on Placa Reial. On the Thursday the heavens opened and it poured down. The first poem was written after it had stopped.
Barcelona 15.11.18.
it
feels as if the sky has broken as our car surfs through the downpour
raindrops
the size of dinner
plates
splatter the road
the
traffic lights fail
as
lightening cracks overhead
Old
Testament weather you proclaim
and
it is difficult to disagree.
This next one I wrote on the train travelling south down the coast to visit friends for the day.
and
there is always some bloke
man
spread and bellowing telling his friends he’s on the train
convinced
he’s the Samuel Pepys of the digital age
as
he relates in mind numbing detail the
contents of his sandwich
we
slowly progress towards the point when he will say
that
he will be with
them in a minute because he can see the platform
as
he departs a strange silence will fall until
another
observant male informs
the carriage that he is on a train
Originally it was a prose poem but when I came to type it up it seemed to sit better on the page as free verse. It may change yet. I shall leave you with some Ryley Walker. Sadly there is no footage from Sidecar, but here's some from Madrid.
A couple of observational poems this post. The first is of a scene I passed by one morning. two women smoke first fags of the day stand by their car's open doors near a care home whose uniforms they wear it is not yet seven am they savour each second The second relate to my first visit to Barcelona many years ago
Barcelona one cold sleet February our breath smoke in chilled rented room so we stay out as long as we can haunt shopping malls free exhibitions original language cinemas but end up walking cold streets each morning finds us entwined reluctant to leave the warm bed I leave you with The Decemberists Rox in The Box. They were good last Thursday. I love the way they weave The Princess Royal, a Morris tune into the song.
At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918 a war ended that had lasted for over four years and caused the death of somewhere between 15 to 18 million humans. I have never been able to comprehend the numbers and it is difficult to grasp the consequences. It is clear that the mishandling of the situation led to the creation of a set of circumstances that ignited the Second World War and caused even more people to loose their lives. We expect superhuman acts by our armed services, but we do not offer them the support they deserve when they return. This post's poem arises from conversations I have had with a friend who fought in the Falklands War aged seventeen. At the Battle of Goose Green he was an untested told sniper by his sergeant that it was either one of theirs or two of ours.
For Colin
He is still paying our bill,
you
can see it in his eyes,
Goose
Green to Belfast
and
more places in between
than
you could point out on a map.
How
does a man who cares
steer
his heart through such times?
Focus
on the practical,
strip
and reassemble what you can
with
eyes closed in the dark
and
repeat for Queen and country.
Part
of him is always there
reflecting
on what they told him that cold island,
the
stark choice: the target or two of ours.
In
the blackness of this sleepless night
he
hears those words again:
two
of ours or him.
An equation with
only one solution.
There is a cost to war that is different for each individual and it has been so since the time of Odysseus. We can never know the consequences of our actions until afterwards.
One song that has, I feel, honestly attempted to describe the whole experience is I Was Only 19 and I would like to leave you with John Schumann talking about the circumstances that led him to write it.
I wrote this poem rather quickly, but I am not saying it is finished, rather I present it as a work in progress.
The sea runs colder,
longer,
deeper,
he
dives for a pearl
he
does not want but needs.
Spies
the enigmatic shell,
wrestles
it loose,
then
rises too cold for hope.
The
point of his father’s knife
releases
the secret,
opalescent
in sunlight.
A
rare beauty he will be cheated out of,
perhaps
he will be left just enough.
This
sort of thing happens
once
in a lifetime,
if
you are lucky.
The poem wrote itself, as they occasionally do. I suppose I was thinking of the parable of the pearl of great value but not on a conscious level. On Sunday I saw Brain Patten read. As always he was superb. He has a new collection out The Book of Upside Down Thinking, which was inspired by the Sufi tradition of teaching tales. Brian brings his humanity and humour to their retelling. It really is a rich and reflective read. It is worth checking out Brian's new website, there are some poems from the book for you to read and a host of other excellent work.
Here's Brain reading.
I can't go though this post without playing Judee Sill's The Pearl.
A poem inspired by observing a lecture this post. I decided to attempt to write as clear an account of the session as I could. It is an interesting exercise to simply record what you see. I find that as I do so the meaning of the poem becomes clear, by this I mean the shape and purpose of the poem reveal themselves.
Research Methods in the Sports Hall
they
are required to sprint
between
the pairs of tripods
which
record their times
he
gives them brief tips
before
they repeat their runs
data
is collected
half
the university away
so
far it is all abstract actions
unconnected
calculations
this
is still the second year
Making yourself write about what you see can be a useful exercise. It is one I use when I am in a new environment. You can never write enough, practice really does make perfect.
I'm seeing the Decemebrists next month. I've managed to see them every tour but one-when they cancelled the day I was due to see them in Bristol. I have to confess I have found their later albums rather hit and miss. I feel the songs are more sketches than complete works and that they have come to rely on slick productions to paper over the cracks. That said they are usually a good live band. I leave you with January Hymn from The King Is Dead.
No mention of The Decemebrists is complete with their most amazing song.
The photograph is of the turbine hall in Tate Modern. The ceiling is 35m [115 ft]. Every time I visit I am reminded of the turbine hall of the power station at Castner-Kellner Works in Runcorn. I mention this because it features in this poem.
SPACES
Sideways
through
a letterbox in the earth,
then
crawl on your stomach
and
dive through a sump of dark water,
to
emerge where? Don’t
ask me.
I
failed the first task.
When
slithering into the fissure
the
weight of the world was compressing
I
was backing out apologising.
Extremes
are not for me,
neither
the confines of the cave
or
the naked space of free air.
You
see ten years or more before,
when
I was first an apprentice,
I
had to climb the cold metal ladder of the turbine hall
to
inspect the integrity of the overhead cranes,
but
when I emerged on to that tiny platform,
a
speck in the industrial immensity,
I
could do nothing but wait to be guided down.
These
are not my worlds.
Perhaps
the secret of any life
is
to find the places where you can thrive,
there
is always another life after this,
and
an infinity of lessons to be learned
each
successive incarnation.
I am not sure how the poem came to me. I had an idea for the first line and let it percolate for couple of days before I attempted to write it down. This is a method I seem to be using at the moment. The view from the ceiling of the turbine hall stays with me, all that space...
Recently I happened to hear Steve Goodman for the first time in years. There were a couple of songs on the end of a CD-R. I had forgotten what a good songwriter he was. Here's Banana Republic. I think the lyric is superb, transposing words and tune in the chorus is a work of genius.
I saw him at the July Wakes Festival in 1976, he was a guest of John Prine. It was a standout performance. His most famous song is City of New Orleans but here's Yellow Coat from his first album. It is such a subtle song.
I have been doing some travelling recently. I visited Porto and I sat in a square and wrote this poem.
Gaia
Crossed
cranes over the cash and carry
-
a dull red building to the right hand side
of
the equally unimpressive municipal office,
with
five trees in front of it and a kiosk.
The wide selection of magazines flap in the breeze.
This
square is a space for passing through,
not
a place to stop as I have done.
I
am sat at a table with a beer
watching
other people’s lives unfold,
it’s
just that type of day.
Gaia is the area across the city from the old town. As I was saying last post it is a useful exercise to sit somewhere quietly and write what you see. This next poem wrote itself.
the day before we sold the family home
me
and my sister
walked
through each room one final time
in
the name of thoroughness
I
stepped into the loft
and
found a slice of the 1970’s
packed
away in boxes
we
walked back to her house
arms
full of more than memories
Thinking of the 1970s here's John Martyn with I Couldn't Love You More.
I was at Finisterre in Spain a couple of weeks ago. My guide book informed me it was the western most point of Europe, so I walked to the lighthouse to see. I wrote this poem while I was looking at the scene.
the western most point of europe
for
some people once the end of the world but not today
three
coaches and sixty one cars
have
disgorged the crowd that I walk into
the
lighthouse is long since redundant
and
not as popular as the gift shop
people
clamber over the rocks
as
far west as they can go
brandish
selfie sticks
then
smile in the camera click
It can be interesting exercise to write what you see in a new environment. I have done it on a number of occasions, this being one of them. I shall put up another next week.
The graffiti on the left hand side of this monument made me laugh. I was listening to Midlake the other and realised that it is seven years this month since I saw them at End of The Road.
They are sorely missed, especially Tim Smith. Until next time.
I was in an airport last week flying to Madrid. Airports, these days, are non-smoking zones-thankfully. As I was sat having a drink my eye was caught by the furtive actions of a man at a nearby table. He was vaping from an e-cigarette. He inspired this poem.
In the Airport Bar
with
stealth he draws on the silver tube
suckles
the comforting vapour
his
furtive eyes alert me
to
his transgression
exhaling
is more problematic
a
shallow breath of steam
pity
and annoyance mingle in my head
I
keep my my addictions in line
iron
hand on their necks
for
now
People watching can be lead to some interesting poems. Here is a revision. Thanks to the Secret Poets for their constructive feedback.
Poem for C
Given
the economies
of
supermarket squash
and
the cheapest of vodkas,
it
had always been
how
much could he drink,
in
the shortest amount of time,
to
keep ahead of blacking out,
to
avoid the grey dawns
when
monochromatic migraine
immobilised
him in a space
where
he could do nothing
but
relive it all over again.
I
met him in the fragile truce of sobriety
he
called his jigsaw days.
He
placed his pieces
into
shapes that just might work,
into
patterns that had eluded him on the drink.
Some
events, he confided, never end,
so
you have to find different ways of getting on with it.
You can read the first version here. What has gone is the tongue twisting description of the hangover. Though to be honest I have read the poem at a number of events and I managed to deliver them without slipping up. But less is definitely more. If you can find a group or a person you trust to offer constructive feedback you work will improve immeasurably. I played Fairport Convention's second album recently, it's an old favourite, here's Book Song.
