I'm Printing

Let's call it a happy accident that this week's blog theme is imprinting. With some judicious editorial licence, I've chosen to reinterpret it as I'm printing, in recognition of my second poetry collection getting published this week. Of course I'm excited. I hope that's excuse enough to devote today's blog to 'Tangerine '.

Those of you who were at the book launch on a sweltering night in Preston on Wednesday will have heard me explain that tangerine is the colour of happiness. In the foreword to the collection I was a bit more expansive: "It's the colour of happiness and a symbol of good fortune. The world needs a lot of both, right now."  

'Tangerine ' has been two years in the making, It runs to 120 pages and brings together the best poems I've written in the last few years. Naturally, as many and more again didn't get a look in because I like to think I'm quite strict on quality control.

now in print: my second poetry collection 'Tangerine '

Lots of the poems appeared in their original form on the Dead Good Blog, the majority have been road-tested at open mic nights or stanza evenings, and all of them have changed (for the better I hope) as a result of being out in the world for a while. I hope this collection presents and preserves them as their best selves.

I'm primarily a 'page' poet, rather than a 'spoken word' performer, which is why I'm so pleased to have these 90 poems in print for people to enjoy. That said, I do perform my poems, obviously. They are short, mostly one page, sometimes two. 

I recall going to one open mic night and asking what the form was only to be told "everybody gets to do one poem." Because I was a newcomer, I was given the honour of opening. My 30 line poem took less than a minute. I was followed by a succession of spoken word declaimers, ranters and rappers, none of whose poems clocked it at under seven minutes. All fine, just a different aesthetic. I didn't go back.

If I have a 'style', it's what I term contemporary lyricism, meaning the poems have a flowing rhythm built on lots of assonance and internal rhymes, but not so many end rhymes. I've only ever written one poem in rhyming couplets - though it's in this book (and it's about Ken Dodd's Dad's Dog).

There are poems of love enjoyed, lost, regretted, social satire, ecological concern, political commentary, humour, pathos, wild imaginative leaps (plenty of them), madness, murder, music and much more. And yes, there is a poem about tangerines, which has given the collection it title.

cover art and design by myself

'Tangerine ' is published by Three Piers Publishing, is only available in physical book form (because I don't much like e-books) and is not available on Amazon because Jeff Bezos is quite wealthy enough. 

So until I can get it into bookshops (if ever I manage that), it's only available from me, priced £10 - plus postage if you're not local to Blackpool. And what's £10 these days? It's a pint-and-a-half of beer.

Of course, I hope you'd like a copy (autographed at no extra cost). I accept payment by online bank transfer or PayPal. Email me at: steveg.rowland@btinternet.com and we'll work something out.

And if you run a poetry night (in person or online) I'd be happy to get a promotional spot if possible.

There's no fresh poem from me this week, as I don't want to detract from the new publication.

Thanks as ever for reading, and thanks for your support S ;-)

Read More

Imprint - It's only words

When I was considering what to include in this blog on the theme of imprint, several things crossed my mind.

The scars left on my face by falling off my bicycle head first and skidding onto a tarmac carpark as it tore into my skin. (After 60 years I still have one scar beneath my right nostril and a piece of stone in my lower lip.)

No, not gruesome memories like that one. Words often leave a more profound impact. 

While I was recovering in hospital with concussion following the afore-mentioned accident, my dance partner (then a girl called Lynn Jones) came to visit with her parents. Without any sympathy for my situation, my scabby face and broken teeth, she pointed at me and declared "That's what you get for telling lies!"

I was terribly upset by this and when I told my dad he reassured me that I need never see her again. He arranged for a visit to Blackpool Tower during the British Junior Dance Festival. There we met a friend of his, former Ballroom World Champion Eric Lashbrook. He took me twice around the floor and told my dad he would be in touch. 

A few weeks later he arranged a 'try out' for me with a boy partner and within months we were successfully admitted to the British Juvenile Team for a trip to compete in Switzerland. But for Lynn's dreadful words, none of my dancing success would ever have happened.

In my teens, my elderly Auntie Effie (short for Ethel) took herself off on a solo trip to Paris, very brave for a woman of 70-plus. She had a career as head corsetter in a local department store and had married late in life. Her husband had recently died. 

She once told me that people place on you half the value you place on yourself. That left an imprint too. Never undervalue your own worth.

My poem today is based on factual personal experience and the lasting imprint of the power of words. My motto is: Always think before you speak.

Imprint

That was the day
the day I decided I’d had enough
the day I chose to leave

I put the children in the car
he took them out again
pushed them back into the house

I tried to get them back
he blocked me
he slammed the door on my arm

He grabbed me
he lifted me up
he threw me at the copper beech

The neighbour was concerned
he called the police
an officer drove me to hospital

He said “think about it overnight
a man’s reputation
is at stake”

The bruise shaped like the door lock
would fade in time
I would be fine

But those misogynistic words
will always remain
a permanent imprint in my mind

Adele V Robinson

Read More

Imprinting

When I glanced at the word imprinting as a topic I was very enthusiastic. I could look into various types of publishing and/or printing and it so happens that yesterday my friend and I were shown how to make a small notebook using paper that had a watermark and finding out about those would be so interesting as well.

Unfortunately, when I started looking into what imprinting is I soon discovered that imprinting is different to an imprint. I’ll take the Chambers definition:

Imprinting: a learning process in young animals in which their social preferences become restricted to their own species or a substitute for this.

‘Imprinting according to the Wildlife Centre of Virginia is a form of learning in which an animal gains its sense of species identification. Birds do not automatically know what they are when they hatch – they imprint on their parents during a critical period of development. After imprinting, they will identify with that species for life. (A bit like football teams?)

imprinting i

Imprinting for wild birds is crucial to their immediate and long-term survival. For example, precocial (word of the week) baby birds (such as ducks, geese, and turkeys) begin the process of imprinting shortly after hatching so that they follow the appropriate adult, providing them with safety.

Imprinting allows baby birds to understand appropriate behaviours and vocalizations for their species, and helps them visually identify with other members of their species so they choose appropriate mates later in life.

The timing of the imprinting stage varies from species to species, and some species of birds are more susceptible to imprinting inappropriately on human caregivers for reasons not fully understood.’

It was first reported in domestic chickens, by Sir Thomas More in 1516 as described in his treatise Utopia, 350 years earlier than by the 19th-century amateur biologist Douglas Spalding. It was rediscovered by ethologist Oskar Heinroth, and studied extensively and popularized by Konrad Lorenz working with greylag geese.

Lorenz demonstrated how incubator-hatched geese would imprint on the first suitable moving stimulus they saw within what he called a "critical period" between 13 and 16 hours shortly after hatching. For example, the goslings would imprint on Lorenz himself (to be more specific, on his wading boots), and he is often depicted being followed by a gaggle of geese who had imprinted on him. Lorenz also found that the geese could imprint on inanimate objects. In one notable experiment, they followed a box placed on a model train in circles around the track.

imprinting ii

In human–computer interaction, baby duck syndrome denotes the tendency for computer users to ‘imprint’ on the first system they learn, then judge other systems by their similarity to that first system. The result is that ‘users generally prefer systems similar to those they learned on and dislike unfamiliar systems’. The issue may present itself relatively early in a computer user's experience, and it has been observed to impede education of students in new software systems or user interfaces.

I love the name of this syndrome.

I can’t find an appropriate poem to fit the bill and I do like the following by one of my heroes Walt Whitman.

ONCE I pass'd through a populous city, imprinting my brain, for

         future use, with its shows, architecture, customs, and

         traditions;

Yet now, of all that city, I remember only a woman I casually met

         there, who detain'd me for love of me;

Day by day and night by night we were together,--All else has long

         been forgotten by me;

I remember, I say, only that woman who passionately clung to me;

Again we wander--we love--we separate again;

Again she holds me by the hand--I must not go!

I see her close beside me, with silent lips, sad and tremulous.

From the 1860 edition of  'Leaves of Grass '.

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.

Read More

Imprinting - Twilight

I was unfamiliar with the term ‘imprinting’ when I read the Twilight series of novels by Stephenie Meyer. I understood it to be a strong infatuation, but it was more than that in the story setting of a supernatural fantasy world. I wanted to know what the teenaged and young adults were reading and raving about. This was a long time ago, when my daughter was fourteen or fifteen years old. The film versions quickly hit the cinema and helped to raise the profile of lead actor, Robert Pattinson. He was an attractive vampire.

Quoting from online information,

“In Twilight, imprinting is a supernatural, involuntary soulmate bond that occurs exclusively among the Quileute shape-shifters. Where a wolf first phases, they may instantly imprint on someone, completely overriding their own free will and severing previous attachments.”

Character Jacob, a wolf, attempts to explain imprinting to character, Bella, wife of vampire. He has previously been in love with Bella, but now is imprinting on her new born daughter, Renesmee,

“It’s not like love at first sight, really it’s more like…gravity moves…suddenly. It’s not the earth holding you here anymore. She does. You become whatever she needs you to be, whether that’s a protector, or a lover, or a friend.”

 The books gave me an insight into what some impressionable teenagers were reading and watching. As usual with me, I preferred the novels to the films. Imprinting, up to now, isn’t a word in my regular use.

I thought of imprinting as being a family likeness, the way we take after our parents in looks and traits. I met a little girl years ago when I first worked in a school. She was four or five years old and an absolute carbon copy of a girl I had known when I was a child in another town. Many years passed and the little girl was grown up when I discovered that her mother was the girl from my childhood.

I found this poem,

 Imprinting Stare

I sit upon the earthen floor,
Staring up at my first vision.
My true emotion revealed.
But as I imprint,
I am torn away
My delicate eyes burnt beyond the
Purpose of pain.

I am the butterfly,
Waiting to pervade the shell of my cocoon.
I am the spider,
Waiting with omnipotent patience,
To drink my fill.
I am the serpent,
Cursed with the destiny to slide among
The lowest beings.

But most of all,
I am Human,
Blessed with emotion, Cursed with Heartache,
I learn, live and love.
I am Man.
And I shall arise again.

Stuart Logan.

Thanks for reading, Pam x

Read More

Imprinting

It was the late 1960s. I had recently moved to Riverside, a western suburb of Chicago. I was six years old, in the first grade and innocent. My classmate Jim S. was smart and funny and he was my first love. He would walk me home from school through the park where as I recall we had an awkward kiss. 

Jim lived not far from me in an extraordinary house. Even though I was very young, I knew that the house was something special (as was Jim). The stained glass was beautiful, the built-in furniture unusual and I remember playing inside on the bridge which you can see in the photo.

Image from the YouTube film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJG_RnsPcoQ

Jim’s home was The Avery Coonley House designed by Frank Lloyd Wright who had been inspired by the Midwestern flat landscape of the prairies. The Prairie style residence was originally built for Avery Coonley, a Chicago Industrialist and his wife Queene in 1907. 

The estate included the house, a Coach House and Gardener’s Cottage along with the surrounding gardens and a lily pond (turned into a swimming pool and later turned back into a lily pond to reflect the original design). 

Within the interior, Wright included furnishings to ‘be part of the building itself’. Wright once stated:
      In Organic Architecture…, it is quite impossible to consider the building as one thing, its
      furnishings another and its setting and environment still another. The Spirit in which
      these buildings are conceived sees all these together at work as one thing…The very
      chairs and tables, cabinets and even musical instruments, where practicable, are of
      the building itself, never fixtures upon it…
Frank Lloyd Wright, preface to ‘Ausgefuhrte Bauten und Entwurfe’, 1910

In the 1950s the estate was divided into five properties. The Main Public Wing is the part Jim and his family lived in. In 1970 the house was declared a National Historic Landmark. 

Both Jim and the house have been forever imprinted on my mind. I have appreciated Jim’s early friendship and the gift he gave me in experiencing his world. Such bliss.

On Coming of Age

My eyes caught you my Love, my heart consigned
to one object of beauty, do or die.
Forever you, imprinted on my mind.

I see you for you, nature has designed
perfection and thus, I cannot deny
my eyes caught you my Love, my heart consigned

to one and only one, the you enshrined
within a hopeful soul entwined belie.
Forever you, imprinted on my mind

despite when faces wrinkle, time unkind
I will return to this to sanctify.
My eyes caught you my Love, my heart consigned

to keep you close and ne’er leave you behind
in memory angelic butterfly
forever you, imprinted on my mind.

Fluttering wings inside my brain outlined
passion to live immortal till I fly.
My eyes caught you my Love, my heart consigned.
Forever you, imprinted on my mind.

Thank you for reading.

Kate

J

P.S. Another Jim moved into the Avery Coonley house a bit later, Jim Dublinski. The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation wrote an article in 2022 about Jim D’s experience living within Wright’s fascinating creative space. Well worth a read. https://franklloydwright.org/growing-up-wright/

Read More

Celebrity

Some call it popularity, some call it celebrity, some call it fame. They are all pretty much the same thing, aren't they? And wasn't it Andy Warhol who first said "In the future, everyone will be world famous for fifteen minutes"? Well no, not quite. Let me unpack it for you, as the trendies say nowadays.

True, that quote did appear back in 1968 in a catalogue for a Warhol exhibition at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm. It had also appeared after a fashion a year earlier in a 1967 Time magazine article about artistic trends in the Sixties: "Whole new schools of painting seem to charge through the art scene with the speed of an express train, causing Pop Artist Andy Warhol to predict the day 'when everyone will be famous for 15 minutes'." 

Andy Warhol

However, there are other claimants. Art critic Blake Gopnik suggests it could have been the Swede Pontus Hultén, curator of the afore-mentioned Moderna Museet, who actually coined the phrase. Then there are some who think it originated with New York painter Larry Rivers, habitué of the Chelsea hotel and godfather of Pop Art. Others still credit the photographer Nat Finkelstein, including Finkelstein himself, who insisted that he made the remark during a photoshoot with Warhol in 1966. In reply to a comment Warhol made about everyone just wanting to be famous, the photograph is supposed to have quipped, "Yeah, for about fifteen minutes, Andy."

Regardless of the truth (or otherwise) of any of the above, Warhol by popular consensus has come to be the 'owner' of the quote - even though he seemed to deny responsibility in a 1980 interview. But unpack a little more from the annals of yesteryear and you'll find that it was an expression in use in France at least a century earlier.

The phrase "quart-d'heure de popularité" (fifteen minutes of popularity) appeared in 1821, in 'Histoire de l'Assemblée Constituante ' by Charles Lacretelle. And then there was Alphonse Daudet, who in 1879 in an article about the recently deceased journalist Jean Hippolyte Auguste Delaunay de Villemessant, used the variant "quart-d'heure de célébrité" (fifteen minutes of fame). I quote: "de braves garçons [...] ont eu, pour une heureuse trouvaille de quinze lignes, leur quart-d'heure de célébrité"; "some young fellows have had [...] thanks to fifteen cleverly-written lines, their fifteen minutes of fame".

Et voila! Popularity, celebrity, fame are all pretty much the same thing, the words interchangeable even in translation. And the rather dismissive implication all through is that they are also fleeting accolades, here and gone just like their objects. That quarter-hour though. Fifteen minutes sounds better.

Slightly ironic then that Warhol should have managed to be famous, celebrated and popular for decades, as have been many of the figures he chose to depict in his iconic pop art paintings, the likes of Marilyn Monroe, Jacky Kennedy, Mao Tse Tung, Elvis Pressley, Mick Jagger and Elizabeth Taylor.

Liz Taylor by Andy Warhol

The Hippocratic aphorism "Ὁ βίος βραχύς, ἡ δὲ τέχνη μακρή" that we know most commonly in its inverted and translated Latin form as "Ars longa, vita brevis" was supposed to mean art takes time but life is short, i.e. it takes a long time to acquire artistic skill and a lifetime is hardly enough. Maybe since the Pop Art Sixties  it has started to be interpreted somewhat differently in the sense that life is short but art endures. 

It's almost as though Warhol has pulled a trick on us in using the Pop Art medium (trashy, immediate, mass-produced, disposable) to confer on his celebrities a kind of lasting fame through the act of painting them.

Here's the first draft of a new poem (a work in progress) for today's theme.

15 Minutes

Who was it first declared

"Fame is a whore"?

It could have been 

one of the dramatic Elizabethans

or a cynical wit of a Metaphysical

or Oscar Wilde even.

We just don't know. 

The recording angel 

was a bit hit and miss that day, 

mind probably elsewhere. 

On what to have for tea for instance, 

supposing recording angels need to eat. 

Or maybe stealing a sneaky

quarter of an hour

away from what (s)he considered 

the frankly thankless task 

of keeping score regarding

catchy things people say

for posterity,

simply to snort a few crystal lines

in the lavatory.

Whatever the excuse 

for this unfortunate lacuna,

clearly some perceptive soul

had got it spot on

only to suffer the devastating irony

of their name and hence claim to fame

getting missed along the way.

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

Read More

Celebrity

I think that the most famous celebrity I’ve ever met was Seamus Heaney. He was coming out of a newsagent in Hay-on-Wye as I was going in. He said “Good Morning” and I said “It is” and we went our different ways. I like to think that was an important milestone in our careers.

But how do you measure celebrity? I’m fairly sure that if I went into Madame Tussaud’s then I would not see a model of Heaney or any other famous poet. Actually I have no idea who I would see in the establishment. Let’s take a look at the place.

She was born as Marie Grosholtz in 1761 in Strasbourg and she was taught wax modelling whilst a child. She moved to Paris and created her first wax sculpture, of Voltaire, in 1777. At 17 she became art tutor to the sister of King Louis XVI. During the Revolution, she made models of many prominent victims.

For the 33 years she travelled Europe with her wax collection until she married François Tussaud in 1795, took his surname, and renamed her show as Madame Tussaud's. In 1802, she accepted an invitation from lantern and phantasmagoria pioneer Paul Philidor to exhibit her work alongside his show at the Lyceum Theatre, London.

Madame Tussaud (the original)

Complaining that Philidor failed to promote her, Tussaud then decided to go into business alone. Unable to return to France because of the Napoleonic Wars, she travelled throughout Great Britain and Ireland exhibiting her collection and made her home in London.

By 1835, Marie Tussaud had settled down in Baker Street and opened a museum. Londoners flocked to see the likes of Nelson and Sir Walter Scott, but the highlight was undoubtedly the Chamber of Horrors, where Tussaud displayed models of murderers.

Charles Dickens hailed the museum as one of London's most popular entertainments, writing in All the Year Round: "Madame Tussaud's is something more than an exhibition, it is an institution". A waxwork of Dickens appeared at the museum in 1873, three years after his death.

Some sculptures still exist that were made by Marie Tussaud herself. The gallery originally contained some 400 different figures, but fire damage in 1925 coupled with bombs during the Blitz on London in 1941, severely damaged most of such older models. The casts themselves have survived, allowing the historical waxworks to be remade, and these can be seen in the museum's history exhibit.

the Planetarium and Madame Tussaud's in Baker Street

In 1978, Madame Tussaud’s was acquired by S. Pearson and Son and since then has been sold and resold a number of times in financial ways that completely baffle me.

It has also been massively expanded. There are exhibitions in twenty cities all around the world. Including Blackpool. There are about 80 models there compared to over 150 in London, mind you, the queues I’ve seen outside the Baker Street site are usually enormous.

Adult tickets to Madame Tussauds London start at £27 when booked online in advance, while walk-up tickets cost £39. To get the best deal, it is highly recommended to pre-book your timed entry, as same-day tickets are significantly more expensive and subject to availability.

There are actually a few poets scattered around those cities. Bertolt Brecht and Günter Grass at Madame Tussaud’s Berlin. Banjo Paterson & Henry Lawson in the history zone at Madame Tussauds Sydney. And, of course, William Shakespeare just about everywhere. But have you seen the model?

The poem "At Madame Tussaud's" by Canadian poet Frederick George Scott was published in 1888. It originally appeared as part of his early collection titled 'The Soul's Quest, and Other Poems '.

At Madame Tussaud's

I stood in that strange show, the other day,
On Baker Street, where all the famous men,
Fair dames, and murderers come to life again,
With clockwork breast and face of mimic clay,
To scare the young. Thrice in the long display,

Blundering, I thought wax flesh, then, with surprise
At being deceived, I turned with cautious eyes
And took for wax all those that thronged my way.
So in this age, methinks, when in the light
Of fuller knowledge, forms that men have reared

And worshipped turn to dust, too hasty youths,
Shunning the whirlpool jaws of credulous sight,
Rush towards a Scylla far more to be feared,
And take for shadows all too living truths.

                                                Frederick George Scott

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.

Read More

Lancashire Dead Good Poets' July Open Mic Night

Summer's here, and coming soon is our July open mic night on zoom...

You're most welcome to join us, either to read or just to listen in, wherever in the country or the world you happen to be. Kindly email: deadgoodpoets@hotmail.co.uk to book a slot.

Steve ;-)

Read More

Barnacles

Barnacles. Not a very sexy topic, I think we can all agree. They are just like carbuncles (almost a pseudo-anagram) on the surface of any object that spends long enough under seawater: boats, breakwaters, rocks, wrecks, even submarines, turtles and whales.

By the way, in a quick digression, scientists have just discovered an enormous 'whale graveyard' in the Diamantina fracture, four miles down at the bottom of the Indian Ocean. The graveyard is about  745 miles long and contains fossilised whale skeletal remains dating as far back as 5 million years ago, including several now-extinct species, as well as recent and currently decomposing bodies. Amazing or what?

Back to barnacles. Not very sexy, as I was saying, but tenacious little beggars. They've been around some 300 million years - i.e. way before there were boats or breakwaters to stick onto, so it must have been rocks, turtles and the occasional whale in those far off millennia. They are crustacea and there are are some 2,000 different species of them. They are exclusively marine invertebrates, less fanciful cousins of the crab and the lobster and nothing like limpets, which are molluscs.

Barnacles live mainly in shallow and tidal waters and are sessile (my word of the week) meaning they have no natural mobility, excepting during the larval stage, when they are busily floating around looking for a suitable surface to adhere to. Once they've found their spot, they secrete a water-resistant glue from glands in their heads, stick themselves head-first to their chosen substrate, and that's it, cemented in place for life, often upside down. Many species are hermaphroditic, and it only takes one to start a colony!

Mariners hate them, because barnacle colonies can form weighty encrustations on the hulls of boats, giving rise to what's called hydrodynamic drag, increased weight and reduced sailing efficiency. The only remedy is to scrape them off in dry dock, a laborious process.

a boat's bottom weighed down by barnacles

By the way, too many of them encrusting the shell of a sea turtle can make life difficult for the turtle as well, the extra weight, the increased drag, so animal conservationists often intervene to de-barnacle badly affected creatures by scraping the blighters off.

The most common barnacles have their own hard outer carapace or shell, made up of six calcareous plates which protect the organism inside. They open up to feed, waving their feathery legs around as in the diagram below to entrap floating plankton and pull their prey down into their shells. They are heartless creatures, literally it appears. They have stomachs, guts, an anus but no heart that anyone has been able to find, and no brain to speak of. They are just eating, shitting and reproducing automatons, serving no useful purpose as far as I can see.

a barnacle opening up to feed

And yes, reproduction. I've said barnacles are not very sexy. However, because they can't move around once glued in place, if they want to mate they have to be able to penetrate the nearest barnacle, which may be quite some distance away. As a result, barnacles have the largest (i.e. longest) penis in relation to body size of any animal. If you take nothing else away from this blog, take that surprising fact. It may come in useful one quiz night. 

I don't have anything more of interest to say on the subject.

an anchor's flukes encrusted with barnacles

Usually I find myself posting these blogs quite late on a Saturday, sometimes only just before midnight, but I've set myself a deadline of 10:30pm because I plan to watch Morocco in their opening world cup fixture against Brazil and that kicks off at 11:00 pm. 

I haven't written an acrostic poem in a while, so thought I'd give it a try this evening.

Barnacles

Briny little beggars,  sessile too.  Moored  headfast for life, stuck to their spot,
A seaside breakwater, a rock, or if  they're lucky a ship's hull, perhaps a whale,
Rare opportunity to get around, see a bit of the world, except they've no eyes.
No heart either, for that matter, briny little beggars from Carboniferous times,
Aquatic automata  made to eat, shit, reproduce without advance for millennia.
Clam up  at low tide, though they're not clams  but simple, stubborn crustacea
Look a bit volcanic, then opening up like Tracy Island,  waving those tentacles 
Enticingly to fill their stomachs with passing  plankton and tiny marine debris.
Surprising fact: their penis in ratio to body size, largest in the animal kingdom. 

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

Read More

Barnacles

What with celebrating some significant birthdays (including mine) and the opening of a new bridge then time has been a bit of a problem this week. Especially when it came to examining the topic of Barnacles. I know nothing about barnacles except that they stick to the bottom of boats and the skin of whales.

barnacles

With that in mind I’m making no apologies (well, a small one) for taking the following information virtually direct from a web site called AskNature. It states that:

‘We exist to encourage everyone, everywhere to have a direct experience with nature that is founded on respect and curiosity. We have designed this tool to provide guidance to students, educators, engineers, scientists, designers, artists, naturalists, and those from yet to be defined disciplines. Our hope is that this is a homecoming for anyone on a journey to make the future better for all of our planetary neighbours. This page was produced in part with the assistance of AI, which is allowing us to greatly expand the volume of content available on AskNature. All of the content has been reviewed for accuracy and appropriateness by human editors. To provide feedback or to get involved with the project, contact us. Last Updated January 30, 2025’

Introduction:
Barnacle larvae, the juvenile stage of these familiar marine crustaceans, exhibit a remarkable ability to permanently adhere to underwater surfaces. Found in oceans worldwide, barnacles attach to rocks, ship hulls, and other structures, often forming dense colonies. Their adhesive is one of nature’s most durable underwater glues, capable of withstanding harsh conditions like strong currents and waves. The mechanism behind this adhesion lies in a sophisticated interplay between lipids (fat-like molecules) and proteins, creating a permanent bond that is strong and versatile.

The Strategy:
Barnacle larvae use their adhesive to secure themselves to surfaces when they settle into a permanent home. This process begins with the secretion of a complex mixture of biological materials including proteins, which form the structural framework of the glue, and lipids, which play a supportive but equally essential role.

barnacle adhesion

The proteins in the adhesive are responsible for forming strong bonds with the surface and with each other. These molecules have unique properties that allow them to stick even in wet environments, where water typically weakens adhesives. The lipids serve to create a waterproof barrier on the surface, helping the proteins adhere by repelling water and ensuring that the glue remains intact over time. Together, these components work synergistically to produce a bond that is both strong and highly resistant to environmental wear.

The barnacles’ strategy is especially effective because the adhesive is self-organizing. As the larvae secrete the adhesive, the lipids and proteins automatically arrange themselves into layers, with lipids coating the surface first, followed by proteins that solidify the bond. This layered structure maximizes durability and adhesion while maintaining flexibility to adapt to different surface textures.

The Potential:
The barnacle larvae’s adhesive offers inspiration for developing advanced, environmentally friendly glues that work in wet conditions or underwater. Such adhesives could revolutionize industries like construction, medicine, and marine technology. For example, medical adhesives inspired by this strategy have been used to expedite wound healing, providing strong, biocompatible bonds under varied conditions.

Well, I found that really interesting. The above is about the future so for the poem I’ll go to the past with this poem by Sidney Lanier.

Barnacles

My soul is sailing through the sea,
But the Past is heavy and hindereth me.
The Past hath crusted cumbrous shells
That hold the flesh of cold sea-mells
About my soul.
The huge waves wash, the high waves roll,
Each barnacle clingeth and worketh dole
And hindereth me from sailing!

Old Past let go, and drop i' the sea
Till fathomless waters cover thee!
For I am living but thou art dead;
Thou drawest back, I strive ahead
The Day to find.
Thy shells unbind! Night comes behind,
I needs must hurry with the wind
And trim me best for sailing.

                                    Sidney Lanier, 1867

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.

Read More