Squirrel!!!

I love learning new things. I’ve always tried everything I can. At school we had a module called Btec which was related to Blackpool and the Fylde College and we were given the opportunity to sample vocational courses. I LOVED these. I did mechanics, butchery, bakery, computing and a whole load of other things which I enjoyed. I never will forget what a bucket of pigs blood looks like. I plaited bread. I got covered in oil while drowning in a pair of my dad’s overalls.

Unfortunately for me this side of my nature makes me easily distracted by new things. I don’t tend to focus enough in one area because something else has collared my miniscule attention span. I’d much rather experience something new than own something new. Gadgets don’t appeal unless I can do something creative with it. I draw one minute and take photos the next. I try to focus on writing but oooh what’s that over there?

I think of experiencing new things as laying the foundations for writing about lots of things. How can we write if we don’t have even a vague idea of how things work? I’m still learning about myself and the world every day, drinking up the experiences, positive or negative. It’s good fertilizer for the soul as well as for our writing.

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What needst thou have more covering than a man?

"Try it Edward, you'll like it."

The words of a little girl trying to entice her soon-to-be step father to eat her mother's breakfast.  The quote comes from the eighties film which, arguably, destroyed the careers of both Ted Danson and Tom Selleck in one fell swoop (for the purposes of this argument, I don't consider that Steve Guttenberg had a career to destroy at this point) : 3 Men and a Little Lady.

It's not a terribly quotable film but it does, however, contain performances from 3 beautiful and capable actresses: Sheila Hancock, Nancy Travis and the remarkable Fiona Shaw.

The film's premise entails Nancy Travis' character, Sylvia, and her young daughter Mary living with 3 men, one of whom is Mary's father. Now the fact that Sylvia ends up marrying one of these men does not detract from the fact that for the majority of the film (and in the intervening period since the first film in which Mary was a baby), this unconventional cohabitation works out incredibly well.

Sylvia is liberated.  She is able to work, as an actress, in the knowledge that there is always someone at home who loves her daughter and to care for her.  Little Mary has more male attention than the latest Call of Duty release - no inappropriate crushes on older men for her when she grows up.  The men are able to maintain their friendship with each other while assuming the responsibilities of role models and a respectful, platonic relationship with Sylvia.

The film contains a graphic rap scene (yes, they attack the genre with malice aforethought, violence and desperation), a part of which is highlighted below:

Your food-spittin', toilet-trainin' changed our song
We were situated bachelors, fathers-in-waitin'
Rather hang with you than the one he's been dating
Say, Mary, did you wash your face
Say, Mary, did you brush your teeth
Mike be nimble, Peter be quick
Jack bust a rhyme and make it slick
To little lady Mary We say please
Just close your eyes and cop some Z's 

The scene brings back frightening memories of parents and teachers trying to use rap to make things 'cool'.  The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were rapping. Roland Rat was rapping.  It seemed only Count Duckula and Danger Mouse had the integrity to know that it's a shit idea to take something rebellious and edgy and turn it into marshmallow.  The blade's still there and a whole generation of kids grow up with bleeding gums and the sense that when words rhyme there's a sickly moral creeping in between the lines.  To put it into context, this is what Ice T was doing at the same time.

Twenty two years down the line, experience has shown me the fictional nature of the dichotomies which my mind creates.  In my mind a film which contains a shocking, Gorgonzola rap could not also be a super-modern revelation about the myriad of possibilities for cohabitation.  In truth, there is not this or that.  It's always this and/or that.  The term mutually exclusive should be used sparingly as it relates to situations which seldom arise.  Just as two human beings who share wildly differing beliefs are also capable of sharing a burning passion, so, also, poor simplistic poetic form can coexist alongside more insightful philosophy.  

This realization is summed up exemplified in the quote "Try it Edward, you'll like it."  On first glance some things seem a bit odd.  Embrace the odd.  Eat the liver mousse.  Sit through the film entitled 'The [insert abstract noun]'.  Accompany your strange friend to a poetry event (14th September, 6pm, No 5 Cafe, Cedar Square, Blackpool).  Maybe now is not the time for agreeing to an unconventional living arrangement but who's to say where the liver mousse will take you?

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Here's a triolet I made earlier

My first attempt at baking was a disaster. Aged 22, I was making pastry for some pie or other and the pastry just would not form into a ball so that I could roll it out. Cue tears, nigh on hysterics, as time and again the separate crumbs wilfully refused to play ball, literally. I had no-one to tell me, show me how make pastry. (Advice from older self – pull yourself together and rub in a bit more butter or add a bit more water.)

My poor Mum, cook and baker extraordinaire, exhausted by full time work and four kids, never had the time or patience, bless her, to show us the ropes. She was too preoccupied with heaving meals onto the table for the six of us with monotonous regularity to assume the role of a saintly Jamie Oliver on top of everything else.

A few years later, I was churning out the pies, cakes, curries, stews like a good ‘un. This was because I was now experienced. I had tried and failed, then tried again. I had met with triumph and disaster and had treated those two imposters both the same. My love of food knew no bounds and I would have a go at anything, over and over again until I got it right.

 I love everything about food – browsing in food shops, buying it, finding out for myself what goes with what, reading about it, getting bargains, turning disparate ingredients into something delicious – and, of course, eating it.

 Here’s a triolet I made earlier:

Balanced Baking

 

Weigh the eggs, butter, sugar and flour

For a perfect Victoria sponge.

All must weigh the same, same power.

Weigh the eggs, butter, sugar and flour

Whisk and fold and blend and now you

Mix with love to a sloppy gunge.

Weigh the eggs, butter, sugar and flour

For a perfect Victoria sponge

 

I think I was a pretty poor mother at the start, too! I was terrified by these beautiful little scraps of humanity, cast upon the ocean of life with me to protect them. I felt inept and ill-equipped to deal with something so momentous. I can remember pleading with my 4 month old (!) son, after I had fed, winded and changed him and still he was shrieking implacably, ‘Please tell me what you want me to do, I’ll do whatever you want.’  (Advice from older self – pull yourself together and take him for a walk.) My Mum was a tremendous help – these were her GRANDCHILDREN. Do not underestimate the power of that statement! In the intervening years, I hope I learned through experience, to be a good Mum myself, from very shaky beginnings. Again, I learned through all the mistakes, the ups and downs, the highs and lows that contribute to experience.

 Then it came my turn to be a Gran and what a revelation that has been. Somehow, I just knew instinctively what to do with them, all the old self-doubt evaporated and I had confidence from the outset with all three of them.

I am down with the kids, oh yes - I can sing JLS and One Direction's (appalling) songs with the best of them! Amelie thinks I’m cool because I write stories, drive a car and make the best broccoli. (????) Harris thinks I’m hilarious because I make him do Glad All Over, with all the gestures and because I pinion his little arms to the floor whilst bellowing ‘Ah One-ay, Ah Two-ay, Ah Three-ay’ like an old-style wrestling referee. Yes, I know it sounds like child abuse, but he chuckles uncontrollably.  Evie likes singing, reading and saying nursery rhymes with me - and loves doing Asda with me. And I have loved every minute of these special new relationships.  

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Hitting headlines.

Good evening,

After something of a strange week in the papers, one story has somehow managed to dominate the news. This week on the blog, we’re looking at ‘experience’, something which our third in line to the throne will know all about.
Yes, Prince Harry has been all over the radio, the internet and the gossip columns. We were drip fed reports of pictures, figured out pretty quickly that we could find it online should we want to and no doubt, TMZ notched up some cracking hits. And yet the British papers weren’t showing it, it all seemed terribly skewed. Well, right up until Murdoch’s lot printed the pictures, the story all seemed terribly exciting, didn’t it. The British media censored, the heir playing with balls, the…

Hang on just a second. What we’re talking about here is a 28 year old fella, who happened to be in his private room, having his photo taken covertly (we’re told against his will). This same photo was all over the internet, having been hyped to high heaven and once it is out, it is out isn’t it. This should have been the end of the tale. Instead, we had the somewhat perverse situation of just one paper deciding to print the pictures, against the media’s own guidelines. Sure, there is an argument that something all over the internet should be freely available in the press but actually, if you step back from the spin, it  is quite a big call to go from the act of searching to the act of showing.  

After all, there is real news out there. The Taliban are still in business, apparently. We’re somehow still in recession, despite spending more on bankers than nurses and in the grand scheme of things, what someone does on their holiday, in their private hotel room, with our without some cavorting little whores is their own business and as a country, we have other worries. It hacked me off as I’m sure you’ve gathered by now. So much so, I’ve knocked up a bit of a poem.

Note: this has intentionally been posted after 9pm UK time… don’t want to be thrusting bad words at children, do I.

Over Exposure.

Harry’s got his cock out

He parties with his schlong

He’s had Pippa in Nazi Cuffs

He’s pulling on a bong

The playboy prince in Paris

The royal in LA
The poolside ginger bastard

Is making Granny grey.

The papers get excited

The Palace goes to ground

5 Live holds a phone in

They really go to town.

And somewhere in amongst all this

great mass of ginger pubic bliss

high powered media mogul pricks

again over exposed us.

Soldiers die in endless wars,

We're overcrowding hospital wards

Our government are drawing swords

But Harry got his cock out.


Thanks for reading, S

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Important Lessons

 by Adam McCance

 This is the second time I have been asked to be guest blogger for the Dead Good Poets and I’m just as underwhelmed as the first time.

I’ve been reliably informed the theme this week is ‘Important Lessons’, a rather vague term which I intend to use something of a circular belief system upon to apply to my current circumstances.

I used to teach. What did I teach, you ask? Children, I say. Those snivelling, snotty-nosed, tiny humans who need constant care and attention yet are lumped into classes of thirty others with only one adult to provide said care and attention.

I loved it.

I just didn’t like the system.

So now, I work in the Emergency Services. I get 50% off at Dominos at all times. If you cannot see the Important Lesson within this tale, you’re either stupid, not fat or both.

Note: Although I find I’m constantly apologising for my length these days, it is appropriate here. In the past seven days, I’ve moved from a city to a town, into a new house and started a new career. And I’ve measured (several times) – I’m definitely average. 

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Advice to the Millennium Generation

 by Ashley Lister 

 In 1927 the American writer Max Ehrmann wrote Desiderata – a tone poem that offered words of wisdom intended to lead to happiness. A similar piece, written as a column for the Chicago Tribune, was produced in 1998 by a journalist called Mary Schmich. A version of Schmich’s column, which was originally entitled, Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young, was recorded by Baz Lurmann under the title Feel Free to Wear Sun Screen.

And, whilst those works have influenced the style of this piece, I should also add that it’s been more heavily influenced by advice from teaching colleagues.

Advice to the Millennium Generation

1 – Boys. Pull your trousers up. I don’t want to look at your underpants. Or your backsides. It’s a symptom of a sad society when young men have forgotten how to properly operate a pair of trousers.

2 – Girls. Stop being orange. Only oompah loompas, the tango man and David Dickinson are supposed to be orange. If God had wanted you to be that colour you would have been born in Chernobyl.

3 – All students. Bring a pen to the classroom. This is not rocket surgery. You’re in a classroom. There is paper and there might be learning. There’s a strong chance you might need to write something down and – unlike you – a pen might prove useful.

4 – Boys. Don’t mumble. If you’re asking a question I need to hear it before I can answer. That’s the way these vocal exchanges work away from the role playing games on your XBox.

5 – Girls. Don’t mumble. If you’re answering a question the chances are you’re wrong. But at least let me hear what you’re saying so I can laugh about it later and share your inanities with colleagues in the staffroom.

6 – All students. Bathe. Wash. Shower. And don’t just do this once a term. Do it regularly. And do something more than spraying two cans of Lynx Africa at the most pungent parts of your anatomy.

7 – All Students. For the love of God: please don’t breed. Ever since the Baby Boomers, each subsequent generation has been part of humanity’s downward spiral. If the urge to breed does come upon you, either sniff your partner, look at its orange colour, listen to it mumbling, or notice that it’s walking with its pants round its ankles. Surely these observations will be enough to deter you all from breeding.

8 – All Students. Follow the example of your elders and always show respect and tolerance.

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Editing the Great Writers #4

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No sooner knew the reason but they sought the remedy.

I'm missing kisses at the moment.  Therefore, I'm thinking about kisses often.  The thought of kissing distracts me regularly.  I'm becoming obsessive.  Until recently I had kisses on tap.  Mine for the taking at any time.  Now I'm reduced to remembering kisses, dwelling on kisses past.  Longing for kisses.  Pining for kisses.  (I did mention I'm becoming obsessive)  With this in mind, I've combined obsession and theme to produce a poem:


What I have learned about kissing

That it's better approached gingerly, like a nervous mammal
That pheremones pass between us, suggestive of immortality
That crossing the streams does not end the universe
That breath can be swapped only so long before dizziness
That trumpet players' lips are more prone to dryness
That sometimes the mouth becomes all that exists
That breathing is less important than commitment to the kiss
That lip-reading means knowing a murmer's purpose
That the moment before connection should be prolonged indefinitely
That the best kisses feel like both home and adventure
That teeth don't matter
That hands should be actively engaged
That eyes can be open but ought to be closed
That busy supermarkets spark memorable kisses
That kisses should occur whenever they are considered.

 

This is the second poem about kisses I've written.  The first I wrote when I was 18.  I don't remember it all and I'm not sure I have a copy but it started like this:

My kisses are not thoughtless gifts.

Nor are my caresses to be taken lightly

Though lightly they were given

As gently I traced the tracks of your smile

On your lips and beyond.

So maybe I've always been a little obsessed by kisses.  I suppose if you're going to be distracted by something, considering kissing's not a bad way to pass the time.  

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London’s Burning - Plus Ça Change

By Sheilagh Dyson

Important lessons….lessons learned……using the experience of past mistakes to create a better future…..we humans are not very good at that. Whether we’re returning for the umpteenth time to an abusive partner, starting smoking again after giving up for years, lending money once more to someone we know will never pay it back, renewing our season ticket, aware that it will mean another season of frustration and anguish, we never seem to learn, though we often mean to. Really, really mean to!

            That’s on a personal level – we are incurable optimists, desperately willing hope or love to triumph over cold-eyed experience, over and over again. It’s an endearing trait in our psyche in a way – this failure to learn from the past, in the fond, baseless hope that things will be better next time.

But what of governments – those whose responsibility it is to learn from past errors and misjudgements, to see where things are going wrong and put them right, to analyse issues in a historical context and, when awful lessons from history threaten to repeat themselves, to do something for the benefit of all and draw back from the brink. The signs are not good.

Here’s a poem about London, written by William Blake in 1792. It is a vehement invective against the exploitation of ordinary people by a corrupt system of early capitalism that owned the very streets and river of London, where poverty and disease were rife and riots were considered imminent.

 William Blake

London

by William Blake

I wander thro’ each charter’d street,
Near where the charter’d Thames does flow,
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every Man,
In every Infant’s cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forg’d manacles I hear.

How the Chimney-sweeper’s cry
Every black'ning Church appalls;
And the hapless Soldier’s sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls.

But most thro’ midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlot’s curse
Blasts the new-born Infant’s tear
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.

 

And now, here’s one written in 2012, in the aftermath of – oh yes, the London riots. Against a backdrop of austerity for most (but not others), increasing inequality of opportunity, rampant privatisation, cuts in benefits for the poorest, burgeoning salaries and bonuses for the favoured few, diminishing  hope for young people,  Monty Grant wrote this heartfelt plea:

LONDON RIOTS

Austerity twists in the lock;
The wringing click, click;
The finality, turning the key.
Open your hearts to the
Cries of inequality.
Can’t you smell in the air
The stench of confinement?
Authority slams the door
Of poverty’s cage,
Full to capacity with our
Forgotten children.

Jailer, we’re dying in here
Why am I wearing this crown of thorns?
Don’t use authority’s spear
Just talk to us blood
Dispense the confusion
Do we not have a heart?
Are we not human?
Give us the freedom we need
To make a contribution.
Too late man, you’re too far removed
We’re at breaking point
And you too numb to be moved.
I raise my shield, I’m breaking out
You ain’t listening, you can’t hear our shout,
Well hear this mother fucker
Put this fire out.
Listen to the breaking glass,
It ain’t the answer,
But you too detached to ask.

The punishment should be severe;
We will take a no tolerance approach
To these animals.
If you have caused damage,
Let fires rage,
Attacked the property of others,
We will find you,
You will be evicted from your homes,
You will be incarcerated,
You will be ostracized.

Thanks for nothin, Tory scum,
You can’t comprehend the damage you’ve done;
You lit the fire, not me, not my brothers.
You can’t govern with lies,
You should have saved our mothers,
Years before now, a generation lost,
There’s people’s lives at stake, look at the cost.
Westminster is where you reside;
In your palace you and your type can hide.
Don’t presume you can plan my life,
I want to be free to live full of pride.
Where do we go from here?
We need a dialogue,
Lend me your ear.
We’re calm for now, suppressed,
But we will rise, we will not rest.

It’s got a bit of a rap rhythm going on, but is Grant saying anything very different to Blake, MORE THAN TWO CENTURIES AGO?

            And what has happened since 2011? Has anyone in government even tried to understand why thousands of young people in our country resorted to such ugly measures last year? No, the market still rules; more cuts in benefits; no Plan B; more and more privatisation (private good, public bad, despite all the evidence); libraries run by volunteers, if at all; ethnic cleansing of poor people from affluent areas; the demonisation of working class people – same old, same old.

And there’s still no attempt to understand why so many young people on a few fateful nights last year wrought havoc, went late night shopping without a card, challenged the normal order of life, risked prison and unemployability. They had nothing to lose, that’s why. Because they have no prospects, no stake in a society that offers them a distorted set of values and feeds them a steady diet of trivia, ‘celebrity’, X Factor and ‘designer labels’ by way of aspiration.

            Will we never learn?

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Making the most of it.

The football season is back upon us. To the delight of terraces up and down the land, three lonely months spent twiddling thumbs and watching fringe sports can now officially be called to an end, bringing with it all the energy a new campaign offers. Conversation can default back to sport, brushing away all other emotions as we unite behind common ground for one afternoon a week and spend the other six days arguing about the rest of the league.

Okay, so not everybody will be talking football all of the time. Millions of people couldn't give two hoots. I don't like those people- they're one dimensional, closed. And they don't like football.
There are important lessons to be taken from all of the madness. We will see people embrace positivity and the real difference it can make to their lives. There will be moments of glory, moments of failure and with each of those, we will inevitably examine our own perspectives on things. And then there will be the headlines.
We'll have further reliance upon technology. We'll no doubt have another chance to try and tackle society and racism. There will be sex, drugs, rock and roll. Mental health will come up again. There hopefully won't be another Muamba issue but, if there is, people will be moved and people will question.

Football doesn't have to be just one sided. It isn't a marmite thing, it is something for everyone to enjoy. Spain don't play like Morecambe just as McGough doesn't write like Zepheniah- but, like poetry, there'll be a surprise and enjoyment there for each of us.
Anyone still questioning the cause can always take to their pens, stop reading internet articles and do something else, of course. Shortly after minnows Southampton took an opening day defeat at Manchester City, champions, I couldn't help think back to that short stint Blackpool (my team) spent in the glory days.

Enjoy the poem, and thanks for reading, S.


Giants Away.

Another big decision
Another massive game
Another start, another season
Everything the same.

The ref will always blunder
Defenders will pose as statues
You'll wonder, did he spring that trap
Or play by different rules.

Don't let your heads be beaten
Don't let it spoil your day
Sometime you'll stick em, fair and square
It tastes sweeter that way.

For the big clubs pay the bills son
Keep watching, you will see
It is worth it in the long run
To be covered on TV.

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Poetic Form and other ‘arse-dribble’…

By Jennifer Lane

“If poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree, then it had better not come at all”. John Keats said that, I’ll have you know. Or if you’re a closet fan of Hollywood biopics, it was uttered by a wispy Ben Whishaw. Whilst this is all very lovely, foppish, and just-lay-me-on-the-divan, it’s not always practical advice for everyday life. Keats probably never tried navigating Manchester town centre or working nine-to-five selling men’s knitwear. I’m sure he had too many clouds to gawp at.

We don’t all have the time to be lolling around, inspired; where every spilt dribble of espresso has an extra level of meaning. Whilst I’d love to be traipsing through bluebells (or even some realistic Astroturf), there aren’t many of us who can say we have a spare moment in the day.

Some might say that if you’re a poet in the busy busyness of the world, poetic form seems like a blessing.

Structure! Rhyming couplets! Enjambment! Just hook them to my veins! Having someone tell you how to formulate a poem can seem as straightforward as following the list for the weekly shop. You just have to fill in the blanks… right?

In his book, “The Ode Less Travelled”, Stephen Fry ordered legions of budding writers to embrace iambic pentameter: to take it into their bosoms and caress it like a slightly neglected, yet still loveable Labrador. But no, Stephen, no. As much as I am subject to your theatrical charms, I just can’t do it. Iambic pentameter is inarguably very impressive, and was extremely popular… about four-hundred years ago. But forcing language into this strict prescribed mould makes for stilted reading and some wincingly bad rhymes. Its painful de-dum-de-dums make me think of a Year Five literacy class, minus the promise of Play Doh.

John Donne always said that words “fetter’d in verse” are enhanced in meaning. But sometimes focusing too much on structure can leave the real meanings bedraggled and forgotten.

 

I am a massive fan of free-verse. I find it endlessly creative, thought-provoking and just a little bit fabulous. Mr Fry intervenes once more and labels it “arse-dribble” (a phrase which I do find a lexical dream); but this seems to be missing a point. Free verse gives free-reign to the imagination, and hey, if I want to use that twenty-seven syllable line, I bloomin’ well will!

Poetry has evolved away from the forced verse of Tudor courts. Although classic poetic form can still be appreciated in hushed gallery awe, throwing off a rigid format can give a poet more space to breathe. People are not structured – our lives are busy: overflowing. Maybe our poetry should be too.

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The Septolet

 By Ashley Lister

 I’ll keep my linguistic straitjacket short here. Rhyme is too strongly associated with childish verses - and consequently loses much of its literary gravitas. Syllable based poetry becomes complicated by the inconvenience of morae, diphthongs and triphthongs (as well as the vagaries of pronunciation). And so, I’ve gone for something short and sweet with my contribution to this week’s excursion into poetic forms. I’ve elected to tackle the septolet.

BlackBerrying

Nobody on the

phone,

contact your provider.

BlackBerries and

BlackBerries

nothing, nothing

but BlackBerries.

The septolet has fourteen words. It is broken between two stanzas that make up the fourteen words. Each stanza can have seven words but that is not an essential requirement. The division can take place where the poet decides. 

The Library

Chasing

words with

one finger.

Feeling lines;

smelling pages;

savouring books;

seeing, hearing: reading.

Both stanzas of the septolet deal with the same thought. Ultimately they create a picture. Please take a shot at contributing a septolet to the comments box below.

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Poetic Structure

Poetic structure. Is it a;



Rigid, unyealding, forced.

Or is it a;

Immediately recognisable as a particular form, but each one unique and beautiful.



I really don't know the answer, I don't think I'm qualified to judge as I don't write a great deal of poetry. But I know the debate will rage onwards. What do you think?

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Here Kitty, Kitty...

For me, the most wonderful thing about poetic form is the ability to abandon it.  To know that your words slip off the tongue but refuse to rhyme.  To know that they look like a poem on the page but that their metre is rebellious, out of sync.  To know that there's a thread tying the language together which doesn't have a name, which has been created specially for this poem, because it fits.  

Limericks work when you want to have fun with ideas:

There was an old woman whose cake

Was a hit at the Veganfest Bake

When they pressed for the key

To her sticky green treats

She revealed jars of 'jus de grass snake'.

Villanelles are inextricably linked to villains in my mind (due to an obvious lack of imagination).  The repetition is fab if you have a cracking line that you're really proud of and want to share again and again and again:

Richard III

Rude ragged nurse blurs inky star to smear

Numb, sobbing Liz disrupts conjecture’s thrust

Dick bores through swells of corpses clutching Lear.

Drunk Clarence sings of regal mutineers

Mad Margaret taints each act with bitter rust

Dick bores through swells of corpses clutching Lear.

Round bishop calls for berries, feigning cheer

A messy end awaits his fruitless lust

Rude ragged nurse blurs inky star to smear

York's setting sun yields to a frost-tipped spear

Brash, gnashing boar's impatient dash through dust

Rude ragged nurse blurs inky star to smear

Brave Billie frames Dread Dickie; motives clear

Spiced nest retains wet seal for lack of trust

Dick bores through swells of corpses clutching Lear.

No pony for the king who perseveres

Bloodline of John of Gaunt smeared with mistrust

Rude ragged nurse blurs inky star to smear

Dick bores through swells of corpses clutching Lear.

But these poems don't speak in the same way my free verse speaks.  They are tied down.  The ideas chase the shapes rather than the other way round.  Which is why I love to pervert form, to know it and then abandon it - with abandon:

Fat Cat Demands

Every day he must feast on the fishes, consume the cream,

or small corpses will be written on the doorstep:

a head, a limb

a baby, a foetus.

Veiled threats scribbled in net curtains with claws.

Damp stains in the corner that soap won’t shift.

pivotal puss

penned population

Selfish Kitty – too vital to die, too big to break:

Roll him down the steps of St Paul’s and he purrs,

The cat got the cream and came back for the herd.

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Bring on the fighting kids

Nicola Adams

By Sheilagh Dyson

Desperately casting round for something to write in this week’s post, I gratefully received this gift from Carol Ann Duffy via Saturday’s Guardian. I was at the time feeling exhausted, elated, proud, angry, heartened, depressed, exhilarated, overjoyed, resentful, comforted from three magical days remorselessly tramping round London and the Olympic stadium and park. I had seen the mighty Mo run in the 5000 metre heats. I had heard the stadium crowd cheer to the rafters every British competitor – and reserve the warmest applause of all for Sarah Attar and Waroud Sawalha, Muslim women running for Saudi Arabia and Palestine respectively, both finishing last in their 800 metre heats – but both there, competing, representing their countries with pride. I had enjoyed the thoughtful, exuberant planting of wild flowers all around the Olympic Park and the serene canalside walk in the shadow of the Stadium. I had revelled in the comradeship of a shared experience, the smiles, the tumult of humankind, united in a maelstrom of celebration.

I needed someone to sum it all up for me – the joy of the sporting competition; the anger at the fur coat no knickers juxtaposition of the money lavished on the ‘Greatest Show on Earth’ with the shrinking number of playing fields and sporting facilities for ordinary kids in our country; the euphoria at another medal hard-won with years of sheer grind and dedication; the contemptible ease with which the money men have made ordinary people pay the full price, take all the blame for the spivs and crooks who litter the financial markets and play roulette with our lives; the renewed pride in being a member of one race, the human race; the unexpected feeling of being proud to be British (but not xenophobic), able to wave a Union Flag without feeling queasy about its hijacked connotations.

Lacking the energy and wit myself and with all these contradictions churning around in my punch drunk brain, I was relieved to find, of course, a poet to put it all into good humoured, rational perspective, to make some sense of the wonder and frustration of the last two glorious weeks. (This is why Carol Ann Duffy is the Poet Laureate and I am a student on the first rung of the ladder!)

I think her poem admirably captures a moment, a mood, a spirit, a defiance and I love it. It also exhorts us to reject the craven, weasel words of the government and to take back the power from those who have ruthlessly grabbed it from us to shore up their own undiminished wealth and privilege. The fighting kids will show us the way – hooray.

Translating the British, 2012, by Carol Ann Duffy



A summer of rain, then a gap in the clouds

and The Queen jumped from the sky

to the cheering crowds.

We speak Shakespeare here,

a hundred tongues, one-voiced; the moon bronze or silver,

sun gold, from Cardiff to Edinburgh

by way of London Town,

on the Giant's Causeway;

we say we want to be who we truly are,

now, we roar it. Welcome to us.

We've had our pockets picked,

the soft, white hands of bankers,

bold as brass, filching our gold, our silver;

we want it back.

We are Mo Farah lifting the 10,000 metres gold.

We want new running-tracks in his name.

For Jessica Ennis, the same; for the Brownlee brothers,

Rutherford, Ohuruogu, Whitlock, Tweddle,

for every medal earned,

we want school playing fields returned.

Enough of the soundbite abstract nouns,

austerity, policy, legacy, of tightening metaphorical belts;

we got on our real bikes,

for we are Bradley Wiggins,

side-burned, Mod, god;

we are Sir Chris Hoy,

Laura Trott, Victoria Pendleton, Kenny, Hindes,

Clancy, Burke, Kennaugh and Geraint Thomas,

Olympian names.

We want more cycle lanes.

Or we saddled our steed,

or we paddled our own canoe,

or we rowed in an eight or a four or a two;

our names, Glover and Stanning; Baillie and Stott;

Adlington, Ainslie, Wilson, Murray,

Valegro (Dujardin's horse).

We saw what we did. We are Nicola Adams and Jade Jones,

bring on the fighting kids.

We sense new weather.

We are on our marks. We are all in this together.

           

So, is that an example of free verse? Blank verse? Who cares - I’m on my hols from college and not in the business of stylistic analysis just at the minute! The poetic form doesn’t really matter, if I enjoy the language and emotion of a poem. Increasingly, poets tend to agree. Ezra Pound, writing in 1916, said ‘To create a new rhythm – as the expression of new moods – and not to copy the old rhythms, which merely echo old moods. We do not insist upon ‘free-verse’ as the only method of writing poetry. We fight for it as a principle of liberty.  We believe that the individuality of a poet may often be better expressed in free-verse than in conventional form. In poetry a new cadence means a new idea.’  In other words, it is down to the poet how they wish to express what they want to say, in the form they want to say it. And that is the strength and beauty of poetry precisely.



Woroud Sawalha

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Turning them Loose.

This week on the Dead Good Blog, we’ll be looking at that age old audience splitter, Poetic Forms.  It is a subject I’ve seen light fires on message boards, bringing the radicals out with the Caps Lock and the traditionalists quoting their stanzas. I’ll be interested to see what comes up this week.

I’m prone to shifting myself. As a writer, I have at times scuttled across the corridors to the rogue side and unleashed some free pieces on the world. Other times, usually the more reserved and considered moments, I have sought sanctitude in the constriction that comes with form- the tried and tested, universally respected method. I’ll remind you here, amidst  all this that the word at the top was shifting, it was definitely F in there.

So, what bus are we all on with this? Can we be on both or do they lead to inevitably separate destinations. I suppose, as both a writer and a person we tend to have our moments. I know that I myself will always try and have at least an idea where I am going with a piece, try and crimp the contents to fit the required space.

I find a fixed form can help, sometimes offer inspiration and if you are going to take this method, there is often a library of reading material to pick at whilst you await the Eureka moment. That said, if I could give anyone a bit of advice it is to have the confidence in yourself to just break one loose now and again. Give it a good old grinding down and see how it looks. It might just be the best decision you ever make. It could just be dog but you’ll never know if you don’t try.

Keep on writing,
S.

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Editing the Great Writers #3

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Warning – May Contain Nudity

 by Ashley Lister  

No. I said 'the knight is getting longer.'

 This painting, The Knight Errant by John Millais, has been cited as a typical example of Pre-Raphaelite artwork. It appears to show a goodly knight rescuing a relieved damsel who has been tied to a tree.

Or maybe it shows a wicked knight binding a damsel to a tree with the intent of making her more distressed?

Or maybe it shows a pair of 1870s LARP (Live Action Role-Play) enthusiasts reliving a scene from a bawdy Arthurian legend and preparing to bang like an outhouse door in a thunderstorm?

If that painting failed to work for you, look at this one: Déjeuner sur l’Herbe from Édouard Manet. Manet was a leading figure of the impressionists and this scene is one of his better known pieces. But what are we looking at?

Strippergram? An unwitting indictment on the naked nature and exposed sexuality of a woman’s status in 1863? Or is it simply an excuse to show side-boob and a dapper hat?

Go on! Pull my finger!

And then there’s this ‘Where’s Wally’ contribution from the sixteenth century Dutch legend Hieronymus Bosch: The Garden of Earthly Delights. If art is supposed to ask questions, the first letters that spring to my mind are WTF?

Wally had discovered the secret to true anonymity involved being naked on some surreal level of hell.

One of the things I’ve always enjoyed doing with creative writing lessons is setting ekphrastic sessions. We invariably start such exercises by examining a piece of art, (such as Millais’s Knight Errant) and then suggest motives and backstory to see if the logic works. Or we could tell the story of Manet’s Déjeuner sur l’Herbe from the perspective of any of the characters in the scene, adding a new dimension to the visual. Or we could even try to narrate a logic for Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights so that it either makes some sense, or provides an expected sense of disquiet to match the pre-surrealism content.

But I’m aware we don’t have time for such exercises here. 

So, instead, I look forward to reading the best caption for this Caravaggio: Judith Beheading Holofernes. As always, I look forward to reading anything that is aimed at a warped sense of humour.

Judith realised she was going to fail the hairdressing practical again.

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Ekfaceywhat?

This week’s theme of ekphrasis made me wonder, if various forms of art including painting, sculptures or dance can be distilled into a poem or piece of prose, can it be reversed? Can a poem inspire a painting or music? Does reverse ekphrasis exist?

I think yes. What else can the illustrated covers of novels be but an artist’s or designer’s portrayal of the text within?

I recently illustrated the cover of a book of poetry for Ashley Lister. I took one of his funniest poems included in the text and I attempted to condense the humour and character of the poem into one image. I shan’t post the poem here because it isn’t my place to do so, but the character narrating the poem was in love with a blow up doll, and it was very funny. This example of reverse-ekphrasis was just my take on his poem, and I tried to express the humour in the style of drawing I used (cartoon style, I can draw properly believe it or not) and in the scene in the poem I used. I chose to include a character that would see the main character how we see him, slightly amused, confused and a little judgemental but I exaggerated her. None of this was a conscious decision, it just seemed the right thing and I went with it.

Ashley was happy with the result I hope, and so maybe I captured it in the right way. Someone else would of course interpret the poem in another way and would have illustrated it completely differently. But I suppose ekphrasis is personal to the point of view of the interpreter. That’s my take on ekphrasis anyway. If it sums up the views of many then you’re on to a winner.

Linky to Ashley's book here

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Paul Young's Happy Place

I have constructed a pome based on the pictures used by Standard in yesterday's post.  I think it might accurately reflect the combination of his perplexion and my ennui. 


Wherever I lay my hat

mammalian flight case goes to battle - with only a walnut for a brain

reflects on the sheen of a young Roger Moore, thinking
Brylcreem might just be step 3 of a plan that it stole
from the Internet
memed to extremes, tweaked, wiki'd and tweeted
stolen like screams beneath Norwegian noses
causing the lice to parade in pomade
tank-top dancers
scratch as nymphs screw til they're squillions
skewer and suck through sub-dermal canals
blood utopia riptides
valves vibrating vodka
to darkness (Pig's likeness)
arch anthropods pissed as the head
with the hat



Fun fact for the day: just as some immature insects are called nymphs, the immature water-dwelling insects such as mayflies and damselflies are known as naiads, after the Greek mythological water nymphs. 

I think we can all see the resemblance between a mayfly naiad and a Greek naiad.

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Ekphrastic? Search me - I'm just an English student.

Tango by Isabel Hermano

by Sheilagh Dyson

If there’s ever a word calculated to send me blinking and incredulous to the dictionary it’s ‘ekphrastic’. Even the spell check on my laptop throws it up as a spelling mistake. This last year has been a salutary one for me. I thought I knew a thing or two about the English language, oh yes, and had a pretty wide vocabulary. You weren’t going to catch me out with words I didn’t understand – it’s English, for goodness sake. A year on, ashen-faced and gibbering, I find I’ve had to learn a whole new language that I didn’t know existed. It’s as if I left school, fell asleep for half a century and awoke to an alien way of describing features of the language, my language.

My ignorance knew no bounds – I’ve had to learn to trot out synecdoche, metonymy, intertextuality, hyponymy, deixis, homophony, polysemy, neologism, exophoric, anaphoric, cataphoric and the like, as if I knew what I was talking about. And there was me thinking that ‘oxymoron’ would be as complicated as it would get!  We haven’t even ‘done’ ekphrastic yet, hence my rush to the Dictionary of Stylistics, as I so often have to do nowadays.

  But I digress…….so now I know. Ekphrasis, put simply, is the distillation into words of a piece of art or music. It can be in the form of poetry or prose. Is it even possible to accomplish, given that a painting, sculpture or photograph has an obvious immediate visual appeal? How can mere words come close to conveying the visual information, the beauty of an image? Or the emotion of a piece of music?

Judge for yourself. Here are two ekphrastic poems, one inspired by maybe the best known painting in the world, the other by a less well known painting, which was a birthday present from the artist to the poet. I think both beautifully reflect in words and capture the spirit of their respective inspirations.

La Giaconda by Michael Fields is an unusual interpretation of the famous and much speculated upon smile and demeanour of the Mona Lisa. She's mean! Michael Fields is the pseudonym of Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper, an aunt and niece who lived together as lovers and collaborated in writing poetry. In the preface to their second poetry collection, Sight and Song, their intention was made clear. It was to ‘translate into verse what the lines and colours of certain chosen pictures sing in themselves; to express not so much what these pictures are to the poet, but rather what poetry they objectively incarnate.’

La Gioconda by Leonardo da Vinci

La Gioconda

Historic, side-long, implicating eyes;
A smile of velvet's lustre on the cheek;
Calm lips the smile leads upward; hand that lies
Glowing and soft, the patience in its rest
Of cruelty that waits and does not seek
For prey; a dusky forehead and a breast
Where twilight touches ripeness amorously:
Behind her, crystal rocks, a sea and skies
Of evanescent blue on cloud and creek;
Landscape that shines suppressive of its zest
For those vicissitudes by which men die.

Michael Fields

‘Drunken Tango on the Floor’ by Karima Hoisan is an exuberant response to a painting entitled ‘Tango’ given to her by the artist, Isabel Hermano. Isabel's painting was inspired both by seeing a couple dancing a ‘perfect and almost out of control tango that cleared the dance floor until they were the only ones on it’ and by the classical tango music of Astor Piazzolla.

Drunken Tango on the Floor

Inspired by the painting “Tango” by Isabel Hermano
For Isabel Hermano the artist

Their colored inks were spilled not poured
as they danced three long- steps across a tiled floor.
Those tango winds rippled the accordion,
arm dropping
to a dip,
he left teeth marks upon her wrist,
wild eyed,
he grabbed a stolen kiss

Then she was just a drunken ripped tornado
that descended into a deep and purple haze
stirred into fruity caramel and sprinkled with nut glaze.

He danced her heels over headdress
then reeled her in so extra tight,
there was not a doubt she was liquid on love
and would turn into a two-four- one step-puddle
at his feet,
before the clock struck midnight.

It was when the cold and hot of him and her
met across a room,
and tangled in a tango
that melted legs off the piano
incinerating the vinyl table tops.

They became another pair of drunken lovers
scuffing up the floor,
he twirled her and over-wound her,
barred the windows and the doors.
They were free-forming into toffee,
tossing all caution to the whores.
He could have melted that city down,
before their dance was on its second round,
while all the other ladies paled on sight.
She was a supernatural-counter-clockwise-thing,
held only to the ground by perfect timing,
taut arms, and a tightly, tethered lead-string.

They stumbled in and out of grace,
her fast breath gently blowing through his face,
hips matched in perfect sync,
the patrons mute and slack-jawed in silk and lace.
There was not an inch of room for all the rest…
so they cleared out to the bar instead,
like a twister through tornado alley,
her hot spot riding up his leg.
They were frosting on the dance floor,
spreading out to cover more,
if you’d lit a match they’d have lit on fire,
ninety- proof of alcoholic love,
calves and pelvis riding on a two-backed dancing storm
descending from the nimbus clouds above.

Flames of flamboyant dance moves,
she was his bull and he rode her in red,
there was not an inch of room for other couples,
so they cleared the bar and fled.
He snapped his cape, and cracked his whip,
until she full-out bent her knee,
as he pressed her tighter to his will,
for the tango-dancing world to see.

It was when the cold and hot
of him and her
met across a room and tangled in a tango,
that melted legs off the piano,
incinerating the vinyl table tops.

They became another pair of drunken lovers
scuffing up the floor
he twirled her and over-wound her,
barred the windows and the doors.
He danced her heels over headdress
then reeled her in so tight,
there was not a doubt she was drunk on love
and would turn into a two-four-one-step puddle
at his feet,
before the clock struck midnight.

Karima Hoisan

Ektastic!!

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