Cliché

Although with us all the time, it's just particularly noticeable at New Year, rife in fact if you go looking for it, the cliché - ridden to exhaustion (just like Santa's reindeer) across the columns of myriad newspaper supplements, life-style magazines and online blogs, panting as it pours forth its well-worn platitudes:  'Out with the old, in with the new!', 'No time like the present', 'Make like starting over', 'New Year, New You!' and so forth. Brain disconnected from mouth, you can hardly see its lips move. Pitiful. Time to resolve to put the cliché out to pasture, methinks; (ho ho ho).

As I commented on another blog, I wonder at what point a fine phrase becomes a catch-phrase? By the time that happens, it's already sliding inexorably into overuse and cliché - and yet it started out as a pretty smart and original thing to say before becoming this victim of its own ubiquity. And what makes some fine phrases so wise and resonant that they get elevated to the status of proverbs rather than being bagged and tagged as clichés? It's fascinating the way language works. It's an ever-evolving medium and as the takt of communication speeds up, so the cycle from coining a phrase to mass-circulation to worn-out token becomes ever shorter. Simples; (ho ho ho again).

Anything can become clichéd, a word, a phrase, a metaphor, an idea. It doesn't even have to be language (written or spoken). It can be musical - think Eurovision and those awful song-by-numbers concoctions, or formulaic pop tunes built on tired (sic) and tested riffs. It can also be visual - a lot of the constructs of the original Surrealists like Magritte have become standard fare nowadays (see below); or a fashion accessory such as a beauty-spot, thick, long lashes or bright red lips.


Cliches can be visual 2

Not that I'm dismissing cliché entirely. It serves function as a kind of short-hand in the exchange of ideas and opinions, but over-reliance can lead to a laziness of mind. Originality is a scarce commodity, appreciation of it therefore a curse as well as a blessing. "Imitative anarchy" (as Saul Bellow once described it) both flatters and debases and yet, on balance, "better to accept the inevitability of imitation and then to imitate good things" (from 'Mr. Sammler's Planet'). The moral, if there is one: choose your clichés with care.

Surely our bounden duty as wordsmiths is to challenge trite and lazy expression. Adele has already cleverly concocted a poem out of clichés this week, so I'm swerving, an oblique strategy which seeks to subvert a bunch of over-used lines and by misusing and juxtaposing them in unexpected ways, breath fresh life into flagging phrases. It's a bit of a rushed job (and might be subject to change when I've a chance to reflect) but I hope it works in its own weird way. I've not written a lipstick poem before and briefly toyed with the idea of handwriting it in lipstick and then scanning it in, but as I have neither lipstick nor time, here it is in standard format:

Not No. 7 (avoidance of cliché)
As they mill at the Feast of the Makeover,
anyone feeling like a fish out of lipstick
can splash out to cash in with Ruby Woo
by surely you-know-who...
(or other brands are viable too
like Hellbent, Cherry Lush,
Secret Escort and Slick),
in a wriggling carmine-rash fashion frenzy
of glossed-over puckered-up smackerel.

They giggle as they tinker,
suckers for that 'new look you'.
They dab and smear, they pout like trout,
they're hooked, line and sinker;
but collar-kissable darlings, to be fair,
gasping for air
with not much between the gills,
these mercurial beauties,
to get quite so giddy over bright red lippy.

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

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Resolve - New Horizons

Happy New Year to one and all, let’s see what unfolds in 2018.

When I was younger, much younger and naïve, I looked upon New Year as a new start with everything from the old year forgiven, forgotten and packed away. We wished everyone the best, and still do, always hoping for better times.  Back in the day New Year’s Eve marked the end of a couple of weeks of parties in our pubs. Sometimes my friends and I helped out at a private hotel ran by a family we knew, then joined in with the party until the early hours, looking forward to new beginnings. Fond memories still mentioned forty-odd years later. If only that ‘off with the old, on with the new’ actually worked.

This New Year’s Eve was quiet but pleasant, seeing in the New Year with our daughter, son-in-law to be and our youngest grandson, aged three months. His big brother was in bed. We watched Jools Holland’s Hootenanny and enjoyed a midnight buffet in their warm and cosy lounge then walked back to our house.

Nothing changed with the midnight bells and fireworks. I’m still carrying the illness that has overwhelmed me since before Christmas.  Sore eyes add to my malaise.  My worries and anxieties haven’t miraculously melted away and I’m no closer towards making decisions for the future. What shall I do about work? Do we move or do we stay? I could do with the magic wand I believed existed in my youth. Meanwhile, I wait for recovery and inner strength to help me resolve my issues.

I need a Moody Blues moment.

New Horizons

Well I’ve had dreams enough for one

     And I’ve got love enough for three
     I have my hopes to comfort me

I got my new horizons out to sea. 

But I’m never going to lose your precious gift

It will always be that way

‘Cos I know I’m going to find my own peace of mind

Someday. 

Where is this place that we have found?

Nobody knows where we are bound

I long to hear, I need to see

‘Cos I’ve shed tears too many for me. 

On the wind soaring free

Spread your wings

I’m beginning to see

Out of mind, far from view

Beyond the reach of a nightmare come true. 

Justin Hayward, (from Seventh Sojourn, 1972) 

Thanks for reading, Pam x 

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Psychic Sheilagh's Prediction for 2015

A new year, a new beginning, a fresh start, a resolve that things are going to be better. How many times do we make new year resolutions, only to see them evaporate by – well, January 2? We mean well, of course, and this year is really, really going to be different – until reality sets in and we lapse into our usual way of being, for we are human, with all our misfires and lapsed good intentions.

For years I have had but one  new year resolution. It is to ‘Do It Now’. For an Olympic class, nay world champion, procrastinator such as me, this is a big ask and it is therefore a resolution doomed to failure.  This year, rather than set myself up for the customary disappointment in myself, I resolved to make no resolutions whatsoever. Will my year be worse because of this wilful refusal to join the resolution game? I don’t think so. It will pan out just as it would have done anyway.

I suppose I have a pretty jaundiced view of the concept of ‘good’ years and ‘bad’ years and the hope that ‘next year’ will be different.  Some people seem to designate whole years in this fashion, based on a single good or bad experience that assumes an overweaning importance over all others. In truth, life is a continuum of events, feelings and experiences, extremes of enjoyment and misery and every nuance in between. If there’s one thing I have learned, it is that nothing good lasts for ever - and nor does anything bad.

So, here is Psychic Sheilagh’s prediction for 2015 for all of us – more of the same. Different combinations, maybe, of contentment and unhappiness, highs and lows; much to enjoy as well as, inevitably, some regrets; plenty of humdrum routine, leavened by an ace party here, a child’s hug there, a good footie result, a great book; relationships will break up and make up; and change can be made at any time, not just at the turn of the year. Enjoy it all, accept it for what it is – life.

Here’s an untitled poem I found, by Ellen Wheeler Wilcox, on the new year:

What can be said in New Year rhymes,
That's not been said a thousand times?
The new years come, the old years go,
We know we dream, we dream we know.
We rise up laughing with the light,
We lie down weeping with the night.
We hug the world until it stings,
We curse it then and sigh for wings.
We live, we love, we woo, we wed,
We wreathe our prides, we sheet our dead.
We laugh, we weep, we hope, we fear,
And that's the burden of a year.

Thank you for reading,

Sheilagh

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In a Stew

Winter has long been my favourite season of the year, bringing as it does, ideally, those cold, crisp, sunny days when it is a pleasure to walk in a healthy atmosphere, hot breath colliding with frosty air to form life-confirming puffs of steam. Winter also brings the enchantment of Christmas, cosy nights in, hatches batoned, cocoa, jumpers, scarves and gloves, sherry, port, football (hmm, maybe not this season), hot toddies, furry boot slippers. And root vegetables – lots of them.

Parsnips, carrots, swedes, turnips, Jerusalem artichokes, celeriac, beetroots, ginger, sweet potatoes – these gnarled and unlovely jewels of the earth add depth and nutrition to our winter diet. Parsnip soup, spiced with cumin, coriander, cardamon and ginger; a melting gratin of layered potatoes, onions, garlic and cream; Jerusalem artichokes sliced into a stew to add an interesting smokiness; beetroots roasted with onions, garlic, cinnamon, allspice, olive oil; buttery celeriac mash; carrots and swedes mashed together with butter and parsley; a simple casserole of all of the above, with herbs and vegetable stock, simmered low and long to bring out the sweetness of the roots; a mellow mixture of roughly cubed vegetables roasted slowly in olive oil, basil, oregano.

I’m romanticising, of course, for we can buy sanitised, scrubbed up versions of these vegetables all the year round at the supermarket. But I hark back to my years as an allotmenteer, when the roots grew in profusion ready for harvesting in the winter months. There was something right and proper about hauling them from the ground in the winter months, ugly and filthy with soil (them and me!), to lug them home for a good scrub and transformation into something delicious.

It is New Year’s Eve and a time when we look back reflectively, as well as forward optimistically. I am thinking today with sadness, affection and gratitude, of all the people who have shaped my life and are no longer with us – my roots, in other words. Our roots are what equip us to go forward in life and I will at least start the new year in a hopeful frame of mind. I wish you all a happy, creative, satisfying year ahead.

To end, here is a poem about vegetables that amused me.

There aren’t many words
To rhyme with ‘vegetable’
That aren’t either laughable
or barely acceptable.
But finding those most suitable
Is fast becoming pretty insurmountable
(and, to be honest, a tad cerebral)
A vegetable
Is honest and dependable
Verging on the comfortable
And incontestably respectable.
Presentable in most receptacles
Never indigestible
But with all the potential to be absolutely delectable.
Its a shame there aren’t any words
To rhyme with ‘vegetable’
As this poem could really be incredible!

V. Robinson

Thank you for reading,

Sheilagh

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52 Poems in the Future

As a child the future was something that could be cut out of the Argos catalogue and stuck inside a cardboard dream house. It was wishing to be older so I could play ‘proper’ Scrabble rather than Junior Scrabble. It was longing to be taller so I could ride the bigger rides.  Then, as a teenager, the future became more difficult to define and harder to decide upon. Cardboard boxes and one-dimensional paper objects didn’t seem as important; I was capable of beating my Nan at ‘proper’ Scrabble, and I was tall enough to wish I was shorter.

From those uncertain years of adolescence until now, my relationship with the future has always been a reluctant one – a concept I’d much rather keep at a distance. As a consequence I’m not very fond of New Year’s Eve (everyone looking forward, celebrating) and in response I rarely make resolutions for the year ahead.

However, after experiencing a twelve month drought with my poetry, I started to consider making a writing plan for 2014 – something that meant fewer blank pages, less fear, greater awareness and a rebuilding of confidence. And so when I saw Jo Bell’s latest poetry project  on my news feed yesterday morning it was like an elbow in my side, reminding me I’d failed to create a poetry resolution and that this year could end up being as wordless as the last. Thus, I have decided to attempt the 52 project, where the idea is to write a poem a week (with the aid of weekly blog posts) for a whole year, and hopefully this time next year I’ll have something rather than nothing.

Thank you for reading and please feel free to share your 2014 writing resolutions below.

Lara 

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Missing Deadlines

When I finished my MA, last year, I was looking forward to the freedom. I’d spent a total of five years studying (three years undergrad and two years post-grad) without a break, and there was something quite romantic and soothing about the idea of a time without deadlines.

I imagined I would use my freed up hours to work on a poetry pamphlet, read more of the fiction I’d side-lined in favour of poetry, take walks to the park and along the beach, spend more time sitting in coffee shops people watching and writing, and finally stop delaying sending out my poems to poetry magazines. But three months later I have slipped into 2013, and many of the things that I thought I’d have time to do haven’t been recognised. So often what we are capable of imagining is far easier than what we are able to implement in reality. We are predisposed (as writers and human beings) to make excuses: the laundry needs doing, the house needs cleaning, a day of work has left me too tired, I don’t feel creative enough to write (so I’ll watch some shite TV programme instead). It turns out the deadlines I looked forward to losing were actually the very thing that offered structure, told the excuses to f**k off, and forced me to prioritise what was important to me. Without them I just bob on life’s turbulent waves, riding time out without really using it.

Therefore, for me, 2013 will be about using my spare time more effectively. Questioning the excuses when they spill effortlessly from my mouth, and making what I actually want, actually happen.

Thank you for reading,

Lara 

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The bitch hit me with a toaster!

Upon inspection of my kitchen, I found an abundance of spirits of the past (3 year old Advocaat and empty bottles) and spirits of the future (desire for spirits) but only one spirit of the present (Whisky).  Given this sorrowful state of affairs, I have decided to use an imaginary alchemical procedure to conjure up a whimsical collection of Christmas Spirits.  I say whimsical, some of these concoctions are quite terrifying; imagine waking to find the Eggnog Gnome sitting on your pillow.  It's also a possibility that this list is not made up but is in fact an accurate representation of what passes for humanity in Talbot Square on New Year's Eve. 

The only way you will know the truth is by printing this list and taking it to a bar.  Buy a measure of everything on the list and drink your way to the end.  When you get out of hospital, please share your findings using the comments form below.

Festive Spirits

Amaretto Angel

Baileys Banshee

Beer Boggarts 

Benedictine Bugbear

Brandy Brownie

Campari Cockatrice

Cider Siren

Cointreau Cu Sith

Creme de menthe Chimaera

Drambuie Dragon

Eggnog Gnomes

Gin Grim

Grand Marnier Gremlin

Lager Lubber Fiend

Mead Magog

Mezcal Mermaid

Port Poltergeist

Rum Revenant

Tequila Troll

Sake Seko

Sangria Satyr

Stout Cyclops

Ouzo Undead

Unicum Unicorn

Vermouth Valkyrie 

Vodka Vampire

Whisky Will-o'-the-Wisp

Wine Wyrm

Absinthe Fairy

 

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