Handwriting

When was the last time you received in the post a handwritten letter from another person? Or when did you last write a handwritten letter to anyone else? With the advent of digital communication, emails, texts, electronic messages etc, there is now little need or requirement to do so.

I do receive one handwritten letter about 4 times a year. This is from a friend who is a Luddite and refuses to have the internet or engage in any form of digital communication. He is also fairly deaf, so speaking via a landline is tricky. His only means of regular communication with me, therefore, is to hand write a letter. I respond by mail, but always type mine, as my handwriting is not the easiest to read.

Will handwriting thus become a thing of the past, if it hasn’t done already?  I hear via teacher relatives and friends and have seen from my own involvement in schools over the years, that some children find it far easier to use their fingers and thumbs to handle and control electronic devices than they do to use a pen or a pencil.

If handwriting is uncommon today, then obviously in the past, it was the main way of communication. I buy and sell antiquarian books and I love thumbing through books and seeing inside different notes and writings from people. It can be a shopping list, a diary piece, a love note, a comment on the book, or just someone’s thoughts on life or their day.

The writing is often beautifully crafted and neatly expressed. Handwriting in years past was an art in itself, with copperplate style and pen and ink.

Handwriting can have more personal or sentimental links too.  In our family, we do not have  many photographs and so written memories are very important reminders of who a person was. I have a diary of a relative’s journey through the Lake District in the early 1900’s, which makes fascinating reading and gives a thoughtful insight into their lives at that time.

The main memory I have of my father is due to his handwritten talks and notes that he left and to which I sometimes refer when I give talks of my own, or when I am drawn to thinking about him.

Handwriting has and always will have an important place in my life, but I wonder what place it has in yours and whether it will have any place in future generations?

In honour of the theme of writing I am including a favourite poem by Seamus Heaney:


Digging

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.

My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner’s bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it.

Thank you for reading, David.

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What we below could not see

A guest post by David Riley

What’s the best poetry about spring? I’ll tell you, it’s my job to pontificate. It’s when humans are, at most, at the edge of things. Take Seamus Heaney’s Rite of Spring, for example. Spring is there and does better than people can, who can only imitate its liberating effects.

Even more, people can be removed from things, as Ted Hughes does in The River in March. His river is an elemental force, it might even be a deity in itself. In Heaney and Hughes there are things the river and Spring can be and do - they don’t stand for something, they are something.

Wordsworth knew it too - his daffodils are beauty on a hillside, whether there are people there to see it or not.

Jane Hirschfield is excellent at showing how nature is really something other. We may dress it up and give it names, develop amnesia every year when the same seasons come around and trot out our same banalities but it is that something of itself, beyond us, that she shows.

Edward Thomas in his many meditations on nature sometimes links human activity and the seasons. At other times, he urges us to take a step back or rather to another position altogether, where we might see nature as other creatures do. Read his Thaw. See what you think. 

Rooks are back again by Alexei Kondratyevich Savrasov

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It sits in the middle and knows

On Saturday, we Dead Good Poets met for our monthly workshop.  After a fun word game which involved coming up with the most inventive similes (I failed but not miserably as I now have lots of stolen similes - mwah ha ha), David Riley read an excerpt from Seamus Heaney's Seeing Things (XVIII).  The excerpt was written in tercets with a little internal rhyme and, if memory serves, contained ten syllables per line.  The aspect of the poetry which we all observed was the way Heaney managed to allude to magic throughout his narrative of a visiting rope seller without ever overtly naming it.  The devil was very much in the details. 

For our main writing exercise, we set about trying to write short poems in a similar style to Heaney's, i.e. we would have a list of things to include but we should never name them, rather use the details to allude to their existence.  To this end we started by making lists.  I asked everyone to give me one fictional character, location, object and type of magic.  Here are the results:

Fictional characters

• Mr Pickwick
• Batman
• James Bond
• Raffles (the gentleman thief)
• Willy Wonka
• Mr Rochester
• Madame Bovary
• Heathcliffe
• Miss Marple

Locations

• Blackpool
• Hogwarts
• Hawaii
• Andromeda
• Canada
• Glasgow
• The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
• Coney Island
• London

Object

• Chainsaw
• Blue John Stone
• Paintbrush
• Dagger
• Football
• Cigarette Lighter
• Fish Tank
• Book
• Quill

Type of Magic

• Witchcraft
• Black Magic
• Close Up Magic
• Numerology
• Necromancy
• Conjuring
• Wizardry
• Kaballah
• Tarot

As I then distributed these in order this meant that someone had to write a poem about a gentleman thief with a dagger on Andromeda using numerology.  Someone else was forced to write a poem about James Bond in Hawaii with a paint brush and close up magic.  Everyone rose to the challenge magnificently, weaving the details in with humour (references to the insertion of a three inch Harris had us in stitches) and beauty (the blood red maple leaves in the Willy Wonka necromancy poem were especially vivid).

There was some talk that I had rigged this challenge as I ended up writing about Miss Marple in London with a quill and tarot.  It does seem a particularly favourable set when compared to Batman at Hogwarts with a piece of Blue John and black magic but the poem which that latter set instigated was so creative that I think I might have preferred something more challenging. 

As I'm not going to be at the open mic event on Friday, I thought I'd share my effort from the workshop.  If you would like to use this exercise to create some poetry, please do.  We'd love to read your work in the comments box.


Divine Mystery

In Whitechapel, hell clings to brick and stone
Grim residue like smog that never lifts
Blue populace wades, ankle deep in death

Behind a window's bubble-spotted eyes
Bone-handled orphans rest in caskets lined
With velvet.  Feathered pens and vessels, cracked.

A desk, marked deep and faded as the day
Is strewn with cups and wands, lovers and wheels
A form, ancient and present, points to change.

Her fingers at the deck, old woman smiles
Reeking of gin and smoke, wrapped tight in tweed
A body's surfaced and she knows the hand.

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Key facts and the passing of a great.

So the devil is in the detail, isn't it.
We have been born as an age of analysts, critical thinkers, quantum philosophers and forensic detectives. A vast age of improvement, always learning from what has been before us. In such a time, you'd think we would relish the little details more.
This week, we mark the passing of Seamus Heaney- the poet most famous for 'Digging'- taught across the land to teenagers clutching for an understanding.
"Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun."
Those are the opening lines to Heaney's legacy- from his own poem that both teaches us to relish the lessons of our ancestors whilst voicing our quest to at least follow up their footsteps.
With that in mind, we should cast our thoughts to World War I. Remember how the assasination of a little known Archduke Indie Band led to carnage as old allegiances stood their ground? From that 'great' and bloody war came Wilfred Owen's "shrill, demented choirs or wailing shells" (Anthem for Doomed Youth, 1917). The lessons had to be learned.
Move forwards a generation- and in a post war age the former bad guys aren't allowed any weapons. Or navy. Or most things, in fact. They got them, with mainstream car manufacturers of today even producing tanks in the process.
In the second world war that followed, millions of people perished at the hands of a tyrant with no qualms about chemical weapons. Never mind mustard gas. Never mind international outrage. How he got them and why appeasement ever allowed things to get that far was a lesson that had to be learned. No amount of theorising can bring those people back and the world was supposed to have grown.
Why then, in such an age of 'terror' and 'vigilance' are we still allowing this to happen. Is there a different value on a Jewish life to a Kurdish life; a Palestinian life; a Syrian life?
Of course, war is not something that should ever be rushed into and after recent brushes with weapons intelligence, it is as important as ever to have the key facts straight before charging in. What is unacceptable, however, is the politicising and deliberating over immediate intervention. Currently, a man with a recent record of using chemical weapons against his own people is accused of again doing just that.
Inspectors will have no further certainty in three weeks when the report comes than they already have, though. There will be no way of proving who launched these attacks- hidden by a legion of winks and signals by a cowardly puppet master, the hard evidence cleared on the wind- but in a room full of bodies with gunshot wounds, you'd arrest the man with the gun, wouldn't you?
There must be an intervention because enough is enough. There needs to be no other reason in my eyes- everybody knows the rules and so any violation towards defenceless men, women and children must be reprehended by humanity itself.
If it does come to war- and I sincerely hope that in a world again allied-up and hankering at a change it doesn't come to that- it must be remembered what exactly the purpose is. We all have belief systems- whether based on Gods, morality or ancient rules long since considered compulsory- but whatever spurs those on, it comes down to simply whether you can have any force for good or not.
I'm not much of a fighter. I'm not much of a killer either, being a vegan, but since I read 'Digging', I write.
It is important in an age of mis-information that as a society we record the facts- the key details from the ground in whatever walk of life. From the diaries of Anne Frank through to Heaney's sectarian detail we learn that history does not have to be written only by the winners and we all have a part to play in recording the nitty gritty, the key issues that affect us.
As I said, I'm not much of a fighter but "between my finger and my thumb the squat pen rests. I'll dig with it".

Thanks for reading,
S.

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Favourite Poems

The arrival of October brings with it a familiar set of emotions for me as a writer. I remember the cold night nearly two years ago, when a quiet Lara spent an evening nudging me in an audacious attempt to flirt. I also remember being hooked on the idea of poetry, properly hooked.

That memorable evening was, I have to say, all thanks to WordPool. I have tried to be involved with this more than once, offered up suggestions and been conveniently shelved twice. I’ll brush over any positive mentions of Blackpool Council then- forget them, fools, it can’t be done here!

That though, is exactly what gets my goat. I always liked poetry. I never thought I would write it. It was this group, or an association with it, that got me in that night. I remember turning up at The Brick Theatre, reading some drivel I’d written to respond to ‘A Favourite Poem’ and going on to the Grand later. A great day, looking back.

That was National Poetry Day, 2009. I remember responding to something from Felix Dennis’ Homeless in My Heart (a book primarily bought for the wonderful pictures that accompany the writing), having a stab at responding to Heaney’s Digging (everyone’s favourite poem from my class at school- it was taught really well) and, later in the week, getting really drunk and attempting a response to Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky, complete with swishing sword actions and arm waving.

They were my favourite poems back then. They are still some of my favourites now, amongst a bookshelf of others, though thinking on, I don’t recall reading these three gems for a well over a year. I hear them all the time- their rhythmic lines etched into my head somewhere down the line- and for that, I love poetry.

I could never recite a few lines of my favourite novels for someone. Ask about a bit of poetry though and I’m sure something would pop into my head. I can keep my favourite poems with me wherever I go and have even found myself acting in their advice before now (‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’ coming to mind more than once in the company of women).

Really though, it is always an emotional hook that drags me in. It is not always a masterpiece, not always a snappy rhyme and not always a name I’d previously heard. I like the way you can be hooked on a moment though- and that the thought will stay with you for hours. If I had to name something as an absolute favourite- the most memorable poem, the one that made me cry, the one I stumbled across in an Anthology... Ian McMillan’s wonderful response to William Carlos Williams’ ‘The Red Wheelbarrow’. Have a read of this, I can see no better ending.

The Green Wheelbarrow (scroll down a little)

Thanks for reading, S.

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