Reflect

 

Our summer didn’t turn out as we hoped. One thing after another put obstacles in the way of our plans, but we were fortunate enough to salvage one pre-booked break away by changing location. We’ve had plenty of time to reflect on the situations we’ve faced, and looking ahead, think about what to do next. We’ll take what comes and do our best to keep a positive outlook.

Saturday put a smile on my face. It wasn’t just Blackpool F.C.’s 4-0 win placing them at the top of the League One table, it was the return and involvement of the player in the number 12 shirt, Jerry Yates. His signature song, ‘Spirit in the Sky’ never sounded better. If you’re reading this, Jerry, - you never know – welcome home.

Sylvia Plath’s only novel, The Bell Jar stayed untouched on my ‘awaiting reading’ shelf for months before I decided it was time. Things I’d read about her unnerved me and yet I felt compelled to read her work. I wanted to know. I wanted to understand and reflect on the complexities of her life. I found it to be a great read. I took it slowly, to process carefully and often stopped reading to reflect on what she, or her main character, Esther Greenwood was doing. I found this poem,

Mirror

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful,
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.

Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

Sylvia Plath (1932 – 1963)

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Rare Earth - Learn These Elements

Every day is a school day and this morning I’ve buried myself in the equivalent of Double Science – not a favourite subject unless we’re doing biology and anatomy - with a teacher going too fast for me to keep up with. I’m still digging my way out of a pile of seventeen elements I hadn’t heard of before and probably won’t remember. There are some unpronounceable names and I wonder who dreams them up. I won’t list them, they are easy enough to look up. There’s no need to test me, by the way, the knowledge, or some of it, is retained.

Rare Earth Elements, known as REE or Rare Earth Metals,  “are a group of elements widely used in high-tech goods and low carbon technologies. China produces 95-97% of the world supply, but is reducing exports and increasing prices to foreign customers. The direct impact of these restrictions to the UK economy is currently limited as it only has a small rare earth processing industry. However, a consistent supply is of future strategic as well as economic importance to the UK. Alternative sources are expected to become available from USA and Australia by 2014, predicted to meet the anticipated global non-Chinese demand.” Quoted from Parliament information, dated 2014.

In 2020, a site in Hull was chosen as the proposed location for the UK’s first plant to process rare earth materials. Saltend Chemicals Park was given the go-ahead earlier this year and would create 100+ jobs. This is expected to be safe and not have a negative impact on the environment.

Recent research in the US has found that REEs are finding their way into Colorado water supplies which is considered dangerous, even at low levels. From what I read, it is down to global warming and this is due to mining, not processing.

Quoted from USA account of the situation earlier this year, “In the mountainous regions of the western US, historic mining has led to acid mine drainage, i.e. the run-off produced when water comes in contact with exposed rocks containing sulphur-bearing minerals that react with water and air to form sulphuric acid and dissolved iron. This acidic run-off dissolves heavy metals including copper, lead and mercury which in turn pollute ground and surface water. Acid mine drainage is the main cause of polluted water in the US with devastating effects on biological activity in many streams. In this new study, researchers have shown that the same processes mean more heavy metals are finding their way into streams and are also acting on rare earth elements. By making measurements in Snake River in Summit County Colorado, the researchers found concentrations of REE that were several orders of magnitude higher than is typical for surface waters in this region. They also found that increases in REE in the Snake River corresponded to warming summer air temperatures, demonstrating that climate change will likely continue to exacerbate this effect in the years to come.”

Phew! That was a hard lesson and I’m more than happy to be back with daytime tv. I’d better learn these REE names, just in case I’m on Pointless, or playing along at home. To make it easier, they all end in ‘ium’.

This poem by Sam Illingworth, was inspired by the described research.

Rare Earth Water

Cascading carelessly
Past weathered ore
You slither into view
Against the levee’s edge.
Sparkling waters that
Blister in the warming sun,
Their see-through hues
A deceitful abstraction
For what lies beneath,
Refracted in the scattered light
Your provenance unwinds,
As the filthy discharge
Of a thousand
Discarded cell phones
Drifts downstream.
The rarity of extraction
Tempered by the
Ubiquity of release.

Thanks for reading, Pam x

(Photo is Saltend Chemicals Park, Hull)

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Elephants - Jumbo Jet

 

My recent travels have taken me to Cheshire, Yorkshire and Scotland over the last five or six weeks. Most of it has been during some of the warmest summer weather and at each location  I’ve benefitted from the comfort of my long, loose-fitting, printed skirts. I’m not really one for wearing a skirt but I’ll make an exception to stay cool. I don’t like to get dressed up either, so these are perfect with a tee-shirt.  The appeal, besides the easy-wear, easy-travel fabric is the print of decorated elephants creating a circular pattern.  Yesterday I added to my collection when I couldn’t resist an elephant-print dress in a sale.  This was me not supposed to be buying for myself but life’s too short.

I like elephants. I haven’t got a problem with their trunks up or down, facing doors inwards or outwards, or any other associated superstitions. My grandmother is probably wagging her finger at me from the after-life. Birds are surely worse, aren’t they, Nanna?

Elephants crossing the promenade used to be a pleasing feature of my drive to work in the summer. In those days I lived in South Shore and worked in North Shore. My preferred route, in my Austin A40 a long time ago, was to get on to the front at Harrowside and enjoy the sea views all the way up. I tried to time it in order to reach Central Promenade when the circus elephants were being escorted out of Blackpool Tower for a walk on the beach and a dip in the sea, depending on the tide. Many times I queued as they plodded across the road, trunk to tail, enormous and magnificent, and wished I was in the first car.

Information from WWF websites: Both African and Indian elephants are classed as endangered species. Illegal activity in poaching and ivory trading goes on and for African elephants there has been a loss of natural habitat due to the expansion of the human population and land being used for agriculture. The WWF is working towards preventing both these situations from worsening. 

To end on a lighter note, I found this poem by Spike Milligan,

 

Jumbo Jet  

 I saw a little elephant standing in my garden,

     I said ‘You don’t belong in here,’ he said ‘I beg your pardon?’,
     I said ‘This place is England, what are you doing here?’,
     He said ‘Ah, then I must be lost’ and then ‘Oh dear, oh dear’.

‘I should be back in Africa, on Saranghetti’s Plain’,

     ‘Pray, where is the nearest station where I can catch a train?’.
    He caught the bus to Finchley and then to Mincing Lane,
    And over the Embankment, where he got lost, again.

The police they put him in a cell, but it was far too small,

     So they tied him to a lamp-post and he slept against the wall.
     But as the policemen lay sleeping by the twinkling light of dawn,
     The lamp-post and the wall were there, but the elephant was gone!

So if you see an elephant, in a Jumbo Jet,

     You can be sure that Africa’s the place he’s trying to get!

Spike Milligan  (1918-2002)

 

 

Thanks for reading, Pam x

 

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My Five Favourite Places to Write

When people find out that I’m doing an M.A. in Creative Writing, I tend to get asked the same sorts of questions. With naivety they’ll say, “So you want to be the next J. K. Rowling?” My unvoiced response is a long drawn out sigh followed by: Is that the only writer you are capable of naming? However, fearful of offending, I just shrug my shoulders and say, not really. Once they discover that I write poetry, they have a wealth of other questions to ask. “Do people still read poetry?” Yes. “Aren’t poets a bit crazy?” Not all of them. “Do you lock yourself away from the world and just write all the time?” No.

This week’s theme is ‘Location/Environment and Writing’ and, therefore, I thought I’d attempt to dispel the myth that poets are reclusive (slightly agoraphobic) creatures who sever all connections with the outside world. Yes, I like to shut the world out at times. Yes, I like my own company. And yes, I quite like solitude. But, I also like the outside world. I like the freshness of it – the way it changes. I like the ideas it contains.

With that in mind, I thought I would share my five favourite places to write:

1. On the floor
   Despite having two desk, I always end up sat cross-legged on the floor. I like the space. I like being able to spread my drafts out. I like feeling grounded. I like being able to reach my poetry bookcase without having to move.
   
   
2. At Barista
   A small coffee shop down Birley Street (Blackpool) that is only a short walk from my house.
   I go here when I need a change of surroundings. When my flat starts to feel like it's suffocating my mind. When my ideas have decided to hide from me. When I'm looking for something, this is the first place I look.
   
   
3. At the Allotment
   Occasionally, I need a break from the modern world. I need to disconnect from technology. I need to walk away from the distractions of Facebook and Twitter.
   I don't always write when I'm here. Sometimes I just think - weeding and thinking. And recently, it has been this environment that has inspired many of the poems that I'm currently writing.
   
   
4. On the tube/train
   I don't get to write on the tube/train very much at present. But when I lived in London, riding the tube offered an unlimited source of ideas. The rhythm was soothing. The people kept changing. There was always a new fragment of overheard conversation to jot down.
   
   
5. Somewhere pretty
   It might be a quiet spot on the beach, a walk up Nicky Nook (Scorton), or somewhere in the Lakes. It doesn't really matter as long as nature is the dominate force. Yes, it does sound clichéd. But in reality, these types of places allow my mind to feel free and calm. I can leave the stresses of life behind, and as a result my writing feels more able to write itself into existence.

Where are your favourite places to write?

Thank you for reading,
Lar

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