A fallow blooming

After Ledbury

2010-08-01T11:27:00.000-07:00

I haven’t had time to update since coming back from Ledbury festival and don’t have much time now – but it was wonderful, as always. The high points for me (at least of the readings/events) were Philip Gross, Anne Berkeley, Penelope Shuttle, Mick Wood, Mary O’Donnell, and Martin Figura’s ‘Whistle’ which kept me spellbound for the whole hour.

Time at Ledbury is so much more than the readings though: the opportunity to mix with, and talk with, other poets without the distraction of the ‘day job’ is the main reason I keep going – and the company was fabulous this year (you all know who you are!).

I always take books with me, thinking that I’ll have time to read them when I’m on my own on the campsite but never do and I always buy lots of books while I’m there so I come back with an even higher pile of books waiting for me to have time to read them properly. Being at a festival seems to dampen my overdraft guilt so that I buy books more easily – and it has a knock-on effect in that being there reminds me of books I want to get which I order when I get back while I still have the immersed in poetry feeling.
So, the list of books bought, swapped, or otherwise acquired just in the last month:

Poetry collections and pamphlets

The Ark Builders – Mary O’Connell
Whistle – Martin Figura
The Breakfast Machine – Helen Ivory
Long-Distance Swimmer – Dorothy Molloy
From the Boat – Myra Connell
Mark Granier – Fade Street
The Men from Praga – Anne Berkeley
A Light Song of Light – Kei Miller
The Elephant in the Corner – Aoife Mannix

Other books

Fortinbras at the Fishhouses – George Szirtes
One Art: selected letters of Elizabeth Bishop – (ed) Robert Giroux

Long overdue update

2010-06-17T12:39:00.000-07:00

I hadn't realised it had been so long...
The day job has been taking up far too much time and energy: one person leaving suddenly and a key member of staff being seriously ill and likely to be off for some time yet has left me running around like a blue-arsed fly and turned my brain to mush.

But, off to Bangor for the 'Great Writing' conference in the morning and a whole weekend away from the day job will be very welcome and might, hopefully, charge my creative energies a bit. I am giving a paper which is a creative/academic combination; I've written it but haven't had time to read it through a few times - which I would have preferred so that I could be more fluent and take my eyes from the paper more.

This is the end of my first PhD year and, so far, I have no regrets at all about starting it. The poems are coming - albeit slower and harder than they used to, but needing less revision. I suspect that - unless I were content to keep on churning out the same stuff - the slowing down comes naturally with more experience as the internal editor gets fiercer.

I'm still trying to move in a new direction but it is hard and I have to battle every poem at the moment to prevent them slipping into the same old grooves. I'm aware though, that it may not look like a new direction to anyone else. I was reading a review recently in which the reviewer commented that the poets first book had been what is expected for a first book: childhood memories, personal reflections, poems about family and/or relationships. For me - these themes are a challenge and a new direction. I have always resisted writing in the first person (apart from the usual teenagey angst stuff that was not fit for public consumption) unless in persona and it feels very risky to do so now.

I've been analysing why I find it so uncomfortable and there are a number of reasons:
- a methodist, working class upbringing in which talking about oneself too much was unacceptable
- a feeling of "why should anyone be interested?"
- being a very private person
- how easily women, in particular, are disparagingly called 'confessional'

For the moment, anyway, I find it very difficult to assess these poems myself, although they are being well received by others. I do know that I can't continue writing the same poems as I have been doing: there are some poems in 'Occupation' that I'm very happy with - but feel dissatisfied if I write anything like it now.

So - time to pack a case for the morning and be very glad that I'm off work.

Interesting times (may you live in?)

2010-05-12T14:46:00.000-07:00

To declare my political stance up front: I have been a Lib Dem (and previously Liberal) voter since my first vote. I don’t think it is possible (though I could be wrong) to work with those at the very margins of society and not be left-leaning.

Although I have disliked ‘New Labour’, I do recognise they have done many good things that cannot be wiped out by my horror of the Iraq invasion (tax credits have made my life much easier when my daughter was younger). I couldn’t stand Blair and have not had as much of a problem with Brown as some have – I had enough of spin and ‘charisma’ and we need serious people in government not shiny, messianic, orators. Whoever had been in the hot seat when the global recession hit would have found it hard to stay there.

I have a gut-deep, visceral reaction against the conservatives, as many do who lived through the Thatcher years. They stand for so many things I can’t accept and Cameron oozes a sense of entitlement that makes me want to throw the television out of the window.

So, where are we with the coalition? I have been dismayed by some of the vitriol I’ve seen directed at Nick Clegg and I am certainly not joining those – yet – who say they will never vote lib dem again, nor do I feel betrayed, yet.
What choices were available to the Lib Dems?

1. Stay on their own with their 57 seats and watch Cameron try to form a government without majority. This would probably have led to another election before long and probably led to more lib dem losses as voters would probably feel that they had to get behind labour or tory to get a clear outcome.

2. Form a ‘rainbow’ coalition with Labour and the other minority parties : I am sceptical how long that would have lasted, given all the different priorities involved. Clegg did, of course, talk to Labour and we may never know why it didn’t work, but it has been said that some Labour back-benchers were blocking all attempts at compromise to accommodate the lib dems. Joining Labour without getting any of their policies through would mean they ceased to exist.

3. Do as they have done, and try to make a workable coalition without giving up too many of their key objectives.

Whether they have done the right thing for the circumstances, only time will tell but I want to wait and see. If the coalition works, the lib dems get some of their policies through (which they wouldn’t have from their 57 seats) and they get a chance to have the share of government they should have for the proportion of voters they have – if, that is, promises about some form of proportional representation are kept. If the tories renege on the agreements made during the negotiations and the lib dems roll over - then I would feel betrayed. I hope that Clegg and his party (remembering all his MPs have agreed to the coalition) will have the courage of their convictions and walk away if the agreements are broken. At its best, the coalition could be a very good thing, if the lib dems are strong enough to balance and moderate the tories.

Listening to ‘Have I got News for You’ on the car radio tonight, coming home from work, it seems that none of the newspapers’ editors are happy. Nick Clegg seems to be catching most of the blame while many people are ignoring the election results: the politicians went to the country and the country answered ‘we don’t know!’ The overall number of votes being 10m, 8m, and 6m really doesn’t give a mandate to any party and should result in coalition. Coalition works in the Welsh Assembly and in a number of European countries.

I can’t help feeling that the reaction I’m seeing to the situation is a symptom of the polarisation and divisiveness that has been growing, fed by the media, for far too long. It didn’t start with GW Bush – but his ‘You’re with us or against us’ certainly contributed to it. I have been uncomfortable with the black and white, best buddies or arch enemies, tone of public (and personal) discourse for a long time. Life just isn’t that simple; morality, values, ethics, right and wrong, can never be absolute and there seems to be less and less room for subtleties or shades of grey in this sound-bite, tabloid-driven society. It really isn’t necessary to be either to the right of Attila the Hun or a tree-hugging peacenik. In politics, an opposition that is always at the polar opposite on every issue only cements those in power in their positions. If a coalition can achieve some shifts towards real discussion and some shades of grey then it will achieve a lot.

We’ve had strong majority governments, with Thatcher and with Blair, and neither have been great to live with. I am willing to wait and see what an alternative set up could do, while urging the lib dems to ensure it remains a coalition, not a take over from the tories.

St George's Day

2010-04-23T10:56:00.000-07:00

I have been cheered today by seeing some English flags flying for St George's Day; it is past time we reclaimed our national flag from the most bigoted and unpleasant elements of the extreme right. I am English: I carry a British passport but identify as English just as I have friends who identify as Scottish or Welsh while carrying a British Passport. I love England and wouldn't live anywhere else. I value the diversity of its regions and regional voices, traditions and character; I value our countryside from the wild moors and peaks of the north to the green hills and woods of my home Gloucestershire;I love our tolerance of eccentricity; I even love our weather, season after season.

I also value England's ability to absorb and assimilate other cultures because for me, 'English' is not code for 'white'. I was running some race and culture sessions for young people and started trying to make a time-line of migrations and immigrations into and through these islands. I had to give up because it would have stretched twice around the room. We have always had groups of people coming to, and passing through, England: we are truly a mongrel nation and it makes us rich in stories, traditions, and lore.

I was walking early this week and twice met old men walking their old dogs. Stopping to chat for a few minutes, the soft cadences of local accents took me straight back to my grampy, pushing his rickety bike with leeks in the basket and 'mums wrapped in newspaper and tied to the handlebars, after a day scraping a living from his allotment. Sometimes, when people hear I live in Cheltenham, comments are made about it being a wealthy place - and certainly, Gloucestershire has areas of affluence, especially in the picture-postcard Cotswold villages. What people tend to forget though (or not think about)is that anywhere there are people from the wealthiest layers of society, there is inevitably a raft of working people servicing their needs and so it has always been.

Because of this, I get irritated when any hint of being proud to be English is met, from some, with mutters about imperialism. The Empire was a long time ago and it certainly wasn't run by the working classes. The working class English people had it very hard during the times of empire - look at the child labour, the workhouses, the grinding poverty in the cities, the working class martyrs - yet those who can't forgive the faults (which were many) of the Empire behave as if the whole of England were the landowners and aristocracy. The English working class wo/man developed, through years of repression, a bloody-minded independence and pride as well as a mischievous delight in discomfitting their 'betters'. I suspect this is something not seen or recognised by those who haven't seen it up close - but it is something I know and love.

"Abridged" submission call

2010-04-18T11:51:00.000-07:00

I always enjoy receiving a contributor’s copy of a magazine I haven’t seen before (in hard copy, rather than online where I seek them out to submit to) and last week, I got my copy of ‘Abridged’, an arts and poetry magazine which is based in the Verbal Arts centre in Derry, Ireland. It is gorgeous: really beautifully produced and full of interesting, fresh, poetry and artwork/protography. I am delighted to be in it and will be looking at taking out a subscription. In the meantime, they have a new submission call:

"In the world of colour charts and iconic English sheepdogs, Magnolia represents the fence-sitting hue that neither offends or accosts the senses. Adorning the walls of TurnKey packaged homes of first-time buyers or haunting the corners of final destination rest homes of howls and despair, Magnolia stalks us from the cradle to the grave. It is the bastard offspring of white: it is the disgraced sibling of beige. It is nothingness yet it is everywhere. It is Abridged 0 – 21.”

Up to three poems may be submitted with a maximum length approx 100 lines. Art can be up to A4 sized, full colour and should be at least 300 dpi. Submissions may be emailed to abridged@ymail.com or sent by post to: Abridged, c/o Verbal Arts Centre, Stable Lane and Mall Wall, Bishop Street Within, Derry BT48 6PU Closing date for submission is May 21st.

Creativity or discovery

2010-02-19T11:00:00.000-08:00

I have been reading Creativity: Understanding Innovation in Problem Solving, Science, Invention, and the Arts (Weisberg,2006). I am only part way through but his discussions of creativity vs discovery have caught my interest.

I (not unusually) have thought of the arts in terms of creativity and the sciences in terms of discovery; as Weisberg writes: "no Picasso, no Guernica" but great scientific discoveries are discoveries because they tend to be finding, or finding out about, things already in existence.

Weisberg shows though, that it isn't as simple as that - creativity/discovery are not two sides of a divide but two ends of a continuum and this made me think about the act of creation in poetry.

I have no doubt that writing poetry is a creative act and process though sometimes, with those rare 'gift poems', it can feel like discovery. However, writing (whether poetry or anything else) is the only art form that I can think of in which the raw material - language - is used by all of us, all the time, in our everyday existence. Unless we are writing nonsense verse or experimenting with typography and/or nonce words, we don't create the material a poem is made out of. We may find a different way of using a word or phrase, we may find something about the way words work in a certain combination, or play with the way words look on a page, but these things are surely further along the continuum line towards the 'discovery' end.

In a way, I find it reassuring that discovery is (or can be) part of creativity. I feel it validates some of the tools and tricks I use to access my process.

Maybe this interests no-one else but me but writing it out helps me think about it.

Translating as palimpsest

2010-02-13T08:29:00.000-08:00

One of the modules on my MA was 'Translation and adaptation'. I don't have any other languages fluently enough for translating so I was pleased to find that working from literal translations was acceptable because there was a project I really wanted to do. I had heard, through someone who regularly attends 'Buzzwords', of the French trench newspapers of WWI and the poetry printed in them. It was WWI poetry from Sassoon and Owen that first got me into poetry from school so these intrigued me; we know so little of other nations' war poetry. When I started to look into it, I found the poems incredibly moving because they were ordinary soldiers, trying to make sense of the hell they were in through poetry. I was very aware of the emotional burden and responsibility of doing anything with the poems: many of the men who wrote them would not have survived the trenches and the appalling circumstances they were living in makes the existence of the trench newspapers a truly amazing testament of the human impulse to be heard.

I don't want to recap the whole project here but I loved doing it and found the experience deepened my understanding both of that history and of creative motivation. I am delighted that the project now has a new life beyond the university archive as it has been made into an internet radio programme. If you're interested, you can listen to it here: Trench Poetry from WWI

Reading the layers

2010-01-30T09:03:00.000-08:00

I am beyond thrilled with the new review of 'Occupation', by Barbara Smith, up at Todd Swift's 'Eyewear'.

I would enjoy the review if it were about someone else's book; it is a real pleasure to see such attentive reading; the sort of reader I am sure every poet wants.

It made me think about layers; writing them and reading them. I'm aware of writing on three levels: the surface level, which I am aware some readers will stay at; the first sub-text level, which I hope most readers will find and understand; and the deepest level where I may plant allusions, connections and references that I expect only a rare reader to follow.

Once a poem is published, it is out there and I have no rights or expectations about how it is read - so each level in the poem has to be satisfying to me in some way. If someone appreciates a poem at the surface level and goes no deeper, then so be it, I am content that the poem had something to say to them, even if it is not as much as it could say.

When someone reads as well as Barbara did for this review though - it is a real gift and literally priceless.

Snow days

2010-01-09T03:45:00.001-08:00

Three days after most of the snowfall and we've had no wind so every tiny twig has its burden of snow. This picture is an old railway cutting I walk most days - it is so pretty at the moment it doesn't look real - but more than the prettiness, the quality of the silence is like no other time. It makes me realise how much sound there usually is - even away from roads and people.

Yule

2009-12-24T13:23:00.000-08:00

All the blessings of the season to everyone, and a wonderful year to come.

Living Yule

I was there, when men squatted on haunches
to chip flint and weave webs of belief
from seasons and circles of death and growth.
The stink of boar-grease stiffening my braid
and blue whorls whispering under my skin
offered hope that darkness could end.

I put on homespun robes and tonsured my head
to walk the years when dogma stalked faith;
smoothing old ways and old faces to new shapes,
nudging builders to find safe spaces in stone arches.
Heedless of changed names for the turns of the year,
I watched the ploughman bury cakes for first cut,
crooned the song of seasons round to seed-time.

I’ve paced the years’ life and I am still here to die
ever again. Hide me beneath plastic and tinsel,
dress me in red, fatten my cheeks, disinfect my story;
the scent of old circles clings to the shade of man.

Books of the year

2009-12-03T11:11:00.000-08:00

It's that time when newspapers, radio stations et al ask various talking heads to nominate their books of the year. There is a far better alternative for poets at Michelle McGrane's blog Peony Moon.

Michelle has asked poets to suggest their three favourite poetry books (published in 2009) and she has had such a great response that it is running to eight posts. It is a real delight and education to see what others are reading and enjoying, and such a treat to see small presses getting a fair proportion of recommendations. It's also disheartening, in a way, to see my wish-list grow to such a length that I'll never catch up with it.

It is terribly hard to choose just three and, for my own choices, I decided to choose very quickly. I knew that if I took more time I would never reach a decision but would vacillate between the many books I have bought, borrowed and enjoyed this year. I chose those books that came to mind as soon as the question was asked and those I have gone back to again and again to read poems that have stayed with me.

My choices:
The Clockwork Gift by Claire Crowther (Shearsman Books)
I love The Clockwork Gift for its fresh language and startling leaps of imagination. Claire's writing is controlled and crafted but her over-arching theme of grandmothers is approached from every angle possible as well as from angles I wouldn't have dreamt of. I am really thrilled for her to see it feature in so many poets' 'best three'; at times the poetry made me exclaim out loud in delight at its leaps and twists and turns.

Bundle o’Tinder by Rose Kelleher (Waywiser Press)
Bundle o’Tinder is a collection that could be labelled as formalist - but for me, that doesn't come close to describing it. Rose's skill in meter and rhyme is formidable, and leaves me in awe, but if anyone thinks that received form is restricting or formulaic, get this book and be astonished at what can be done. She has a light touch and and quirky sensibility as well as craft; her language is sinuous and delightful (in the true sense of the word), and she demonstrates a truly original imagination.

Chora New and Selected poems by Nigel McLoughlin (Templar Poetry)
I have to admit that I hesitated before naming this one: not because of any lack in the book itself but because Nigel was my course leader on my MA and is my PhD supervisor and I am aware that choosing his book could look like sycophancy. I only hesitated briefly though because I don't see any sense in not recommending a good book because of what some unseen reader might think - and I did choose to do the MA at Gloucestershire because I liked Nigel's work so liking this book isn't really surprising.
If I had to pick just one quality to describe Chora, it would be musicality; Nigel's use of sound is superb and often leaves me envious. He ranges across a variety of themes but his relationship to landscape and his delight in humanity (especially family) is ever present. The joy in language and its possibilities is always evident in the poems and the images memorable. There is a touch of magic - of the bog-dancer - throughout this book and it draws me back time and time again.

There are so many more books I could have chosen - but have no second thoughts about choosing, and recommending, any one of these three.

Graduation, Derwent and beyond

2009-11-26T13:12:00.000-08:00

I graduated last Thursday so I now have an M.A. with distinction! This is not what I expected when I started the course: my previous formal education is quite scant and I don't have a first degree or even 'A' levels. I started the MA because I had been working at my poetry on my own for a few years and was getting a few journal publications but felt I was plateau-ing and wanted some input to shift up a gear. I was also attracted to this particular MA because it is Creative and Critical Writing and I felt the critical writing part might fill in some gaps for me in essay writing, reviewing etc. I wasn't sure how I would cope with the more academic parts but I do quite a bit of bid-writing, reports and so on at work so thought at least I could put something together that would read reasonably well even if it only scraped through.

What I didn't expect was just how much I would love every minute of it. I am so glad that I did part-time; full-time would have been over much too quickly for me. So, because I have been enjoying myself too much to stop, I have started a PhD and if anyone is looking at MA courses I can heartily recommend University of Gloucestershire (course leader is Nigel McLoughlin).

After I'd done the formal cap-and-gown graduation thing, I also had to go to the prize giving as I had won the Bible Society (heh!) post-graduate creative writing prize. This was for poetry or prose rewriting of a bible story and - while we were assured it didn't have to be pro-bible - I didn't expect mine to be favoured. I always loathed the Abraham and Isaac story (man almost cuts his son's throat to prove his faith) and this was my take on it:

Sarah talks to the Social Worker

If I’d known what he was thinking
I’d never have let him go.
Some Father-Son time, he said.
A bit of quality time, me and my son
and the mountain, he said.

No, I didn’t throw him out
straight away; I didn’t know
what happened. Isaac was quiet,
started bed-wetting.
I thought it was bullying at school,
maybe, or worry about tests.

When the nightmares started,
I couldn’t understand what he meant.
I wondered if thugs had moved
into the area, worried about knives
and gangs.

Once I understood,
his father’s bags were packed
and on the doorstep before
he got home from work.

He’s got a nerve to complain
about supervised visits.
He isn’t the one left holding
a screaming child
whose nights are sharp
with the raised knife, the gleam
in his father’s eye, the blood
of that poor lamb.

It seems odd to me, a self-confessed heathen, to get a bible society prize, but I was delighted to get the cheque that came with it as it allowed me to go to Derwent Poetry Festival without worrying about the cost.

I had planned to go to Derwent anyway, and was reading there, but the extra cash meant I could stay somewhere nice (where Byron once stayed and scratched a poem on a windowpane). I drove up the day after graduation and was happy to see Pat Winslow read on the first evening as well as seeing the Templar pamphlet presentations.
The next day was full of poetry. The setting at Matlock Bath is lovely and I wished I'd had more time off booked to stay there a bit longer so I could walk and explore the area. The venue, in a restored cotton mill (now a shopping centre and museum) was quirky and just right. I really enjoyed all the pamphlet competition winners' readings: Paul Maddern, David Morley, Nuala Ní Chonchúir and Dawn Wood and came home with all the pamphlets to read. Each one of them is a worthy winner; I had only heard David Morley read before and was so pleased to be introduced to the work of the other three. As well as these, other highlights for me were Jane Wier's reading from Walking the Block and the evening reading from Nigel McLoughlin and Maggie O’Dwyer . I have heard Nigel before, of course, but always enjoy his readings - his latest book, Chora is amongst my current favourites. I didn't know Maggie O'Dwyer's work though, and was delighted to discover it (and another pamphlet added to the pile by my bed).

I was very sorry that I couldn't stay for the Sunday readings as there were poets there I would really like to have heard such as Angela Cleland and Katrina Naomi but I had to get back before the kennels closed at lunchtime to collect the golden boy.

Tuesday was another poetry day as I was reading as guest at Jacqui Rowe's 'Poetry Bites': the venue was lovely and very full with an audience who were warm and attentive (and I sold a couple of books). I usually enjoy driving at night but the storms on the motorway coming home were pretty bad and I had to battle the wind to keep the car in a straight line.

So, a full, tiring, but thoroughly wonderful few days. I'm back to the day-job now but the saturation in poetry helped my dry spell and I wrote a poem I'm quite pleased with after the weekend. I have written other things recently, but this is the first for a while where it has felt right instead of laboured and awkward.

I really must try and update this more often....

.

Eye, eye, I

2009-11-01T02:15:00.000-08:00

Your eye is no eye but an exit wound

This line is from 'Phantom', Don Paterson's elegy for Michael Donaghy in his new collection 'Rain'

It is occupying my thoughts a great deal and hearing the line, in thought, rather than reading it on the page inevitably foregrounds the connection between eye and I, which sets off further layers of meaning to turn over and prod at.

Last time I fixated on a line of poetry this way, it was John Burnside's No-one invents an absence (From the book 'Gift Songs'); it is slippery to think about and the more I thought about it, the more amorphous it became. It sqautted in my hind brain like a toad in a cellar for about 4 months and I couldn't think about anything else but it did generate a series of poems.

But I need time to think; I am in the middle of a round of funding bid writing at work and that tends to get in the way of poetry as it takes language in a different direction. When work is demanding in other ways - for instance working with a very challenging group of young people - it doesn't get in the way of poetry even though it is absorbing and draining. But bid-writing, I suppose because it is writing rather than verbal, seems to suck up my words like a black hole. I could do with taking some time off but have leave booked for other things (Derwent Poetry Festival, reading at Poetry Bites, graduation day for my MA). I also have interviews to get done for Iota, papers I need to write for conferences and journals, and work to do towards a new litfest I'm involved in next spring.

Your eye is no eye but an exit wound is demanding my focus and attention and I know from experience that I need to listen so I will have to book some evenings: not take work home, unplug the phone and hope for no family crises or demands.

Busy poetry times

2009-10-25T11:53:00.000-07:00

Time slips away far too quickly; weeks and months just slide by when I'm not looking. There have been busy poetry times though, which is always good. Last week was Cheltenham Literature Festival and it somehow snuck up on me because I was horrifically busy at work so I didn't get any tickets before it started;I also couldn't spare the time to take any time off to go to daytime events. This isn't a big deal though,as what I most like to get to is the free 'poetry cafe' in the afternoons and I got to all five of them.

So - Monday was Sonia Hendy-Isaac and Polly Clark; Tuesday was Claire Pollard and Joe Dunthorne promoting the 'Voice Recognition' anthology; Wednesday was to have been Nigel McLoughlin and Imtiaz Dharker but Imtiaz Dharker had to pull out and I was delighted to be asked to substitute. I read in the Poetry Cafe last year and enjoy it: the audience are attentive and serious about poetry and it's always nice to get the book into the festival bookshop. As it was a 'bonus' reading, I gave my corona - Lïr - its first public outing. It went well, I think, and I appreciated the chance to try it out.
Thursday was George Szirtes and Roddy Lumsden (who was substituting for an unwell Peter Porter) and Friday was Don Paterson and Owen Sheers. I bought a number of books, some of which I haven't had time to open yet but am loving Paterson's 'Rain' and Szirtes's 'The Burning of the Books'

This week I've been up to Liverpool to read at The Dead Good Poets Society. I stayed with Colin Watts and his wife in their lovely home and enjoyed reading to a small (but attentive and perfectly formed) audience. I've never been to Liverpool before so had a tourist morning before I drove home and was glad to have seen the Liver Birds and Albert dock.

My reading and thinking continues as I try to solidify my PhD direction. I am deep into Arthur Koestler's' The Act of Creation and finding connections with all sorts of other things I've read as well as finding the first stirrings of poem sparks from it (glory be!)

Seasonal clichés

2009-09-13T05:34:00.000-07:00

These early autumn mornings are stunning. The bite in the air at 6.30am is very welcome after the humidity of summer and the air is clearer - my morning walks feel like soaring. Damsons, crab-apples, blackberries, hips and haws bejewel the hedges: there is something deeply satisfying about picking fruit at this time of year. As I pick my apples and pack the blemish-free ones for store, my inner hunter-gatherer is content.

And yet, and yet.. it is impossible to avoid thoughts of mortality as another year turns. The ageing nettles straggle and bow over the path, the rattling seed-heads cling to the brown stems of the cow-parsley and the first yellowing fallen leaves scatter on every path, cluster in the grass verges. The years turn all too quickly and this year, especially, having lost dear ones I am aware that I have fewer years to live than I have already lived. I'm greedy and want much, much more.

I'm unconvinced there is a poem left to write about autumn and mortality - it's been done too well, too many times. Yet clichés are clichés for a reason; in this case because the connections are inescapable.

The years turn and turn, and so do we.

Benign neglect

2009-09-09T12:10:00.000-07:00

Nothing is happening... and yet there is a faint tickle in my hind brain. Is it a poem? I don't know yet but it tastes like a poem - or more accurately, it is only yet like the fleeting taste that passes across my tongue when a memory is triggered. The sort of fleeting taste that is like the sudden hint of long-roasted dinner brought to mouth by a certain quality of dull winter light on a Sunday afternoon.

Poems taste like iron; they taste like blood smells. The taste comes first; later there is a sense of the sound by which I don't mean meter or the shapes of words but just a sense of how a line rises and falls, quickens and slows. After these I can start to look for the words that fit.

But for now, there is just a tickle and a hint of taste and it's skittish: if I examine it, it may vanish. Is this superstition? Maybe, I don't know. It is like a nervous kitten that might approach and sniff at your hand if you don't look at it or make any sudden movements. I have to acknowledge it though, and leave it some sort of still space for it to thrive; I have to know that it's there and not crowd it out with writing I have to do for work or thinking about a paper that needs writing.

The vet I go to favours what he calls 'benign neglect' in some situations: he means to wait, watch, and don't interfere - let an illness run its course unless intervention is clearly needed. It occurs to me that benign neglect is what I have to do at this stage.

Part of me is also fascinated by the way this happens and I want to track the process if I can do so without interfering in it. Yet it is true that observing causes change by the presence of the observer.

Kittens and vets, tastes and smells; these seem odd ways to write about process and maybe unbearably twee - yet theoretical language about creative process feels too cold and mechanical. In reality, I don't have the language to talk about this part of the process because it is a wordless genesis; this seems very odd, that what may result in a thing made of language should start for me without words.

In the meantime, it may be a poem... trust the process, trust the process

Dry spell

2009-08-16T11:38:00.000-07:00

The book release and completing my dissertation has left me poem-dry. I am in that I don't have another poem in me frame of mind, which I loathe. The dissertation isn't due in for another three weeks and I finished it at the end of July but I keep on fiddling with it - titivating the layout and changing odd words. I think it's displacement activity; once I hand it in, I'll have to get myself in gear and start writing again - somehow.

I know it will come back, it always does. Usually, poems return slowly with just a hint or a taste of one long before any words come back. In the meantime though, I have a sense of mentally flailing around, looking for anything that might trigger the start of the process.

I can do the exercises, keep on writing something, responding to online challenges and themes - but actually, I suspect my best work has usually come from quiet periods. Maybe all that is needed is to be open to the possibility of a poem forming, maybe I need a fallow period after working flat out for a couple of years.

It's easier said than done to accept it though...

dreaming of reading

2009-08-08T13:39:00.000-07:00

I had a very odd dream last night.
I was reading - at a festival I think; I was reading the poem 'First things' and was about three-quarters through when someone in the audience stood up and finished it. They were reading it from the book. This was someone I knew, though not well, and I didn't think (in the dream) that he read it very well.

I found my reaction odd in the dream; I wasn't annoyed that someone had interrupted and taken over that way - I was partly pleased he liked the poem enough to want to do that, and partly sad that he didn't read it better.

On reflection, I wonder if this is to do with some stuff I have been thinking about to do with audience and my process; I often feel a poem isn't finished until it meets an audience. I know that reading a poem to an audience (however small) is different to reading it out loud to myself. The awareness of another consciousness engaging with the poem allows me to step into a different relationship with it, gives me a new perspective on it.

More to think about...

Tell the bees

2009-08-05T14:47:00.000-07:00

There is an old tradition that, when there is a death in the house, you have to tell the bees - whisper the news into the beehive, or they will take offence and leave.

In May a very close, very dear friend died suddenly, without illness or warning. I couldn't, and can't, write about her directly but for several days following her death, some bees presented me with a metaphor on my morning walks.

Tell the Bees

Something has plundered the bees' nest.
At the wall's foot, lichened brick
used to meld into a tangle of moss and ivy:
a ragged tear bleeds earth over the path.
Bees tread circles on the spilled soil,
wings quivering, shifting soil from place
to place and back again.

Each day I pass, I see them working;
fragments of moss, scatters of dry grass,
pulled in to cover the wound.

The sun has faded bare earth,
shrivelled exposed roots;
ivy leans over the edge of the hole,
blending into the dusty green
of the bees' repairs.

This is it

2009-08-04T10:30:00.000-07:00

I finally caved and started a blog. I have only found time to work out how to do this because I've finished the MA dissertation early and I am very doubtful that I'll find the time and/or inclination to keep it up, but we'll see. It may be useful when I start the PhD as a way to work through things I'm reading and thinking about.
For now though, it's just an experiment.