Oh, What A Night - The Best Times

Oh, what a night, what a theme! I've many to choose from, here's a few.

The first thing to spring to mind is all the Moody Blues concerts I’ve been to. I tried to count it up but it’s impossible.  On every UK tour for nearly twenty years, I have attended two or three concerts at least, out of a probable eight, depending on location. We’ve wrapped holidays and mini-breaks around concert dates. I longed to see them at the Royal Albert Hall, where I knew the acoustics would be perfect for their music. I was ecstatic to eventually make it in 2006 and went to two of their three concerts. The experience was everything I’d hoped for. On the second night, my daughter and I managed to place ourselves in front of the stage, with many others dancing and singing through the encore. It was worth having to stay in the grottiest of shabby back street hotels. We live and learn. A couple of years later we stayed in a lovely hotel in Blackheath when we went to see the Moodies at the 02. Not my favourite venue, but the hotel was great.

I like football. I grew up in a family devoted to Manchester United, so it was bound to rub off. My maternal grandfather, a licensee in Sale when I was small, had mates connected to the club. I remember the sadness in the family when the Munich air crash happened, though I was too young to fully understand. Years later we took our children on a tour of MUFC and I spent ages in the museum learning about the Busby Babes. In 2006 there was an opportunity to go to a match. Burton Albion were coming to Old Trafford for a mid-week, evening FA cup replay. Tickets went on open sale. I can’t remember how much it cost for our family of four to have the best seats possible, on the centre-line above the dugout, and pre-booked pre-paid disabled parking, but I know it was a very expensive family night out. It was worth every penny. Our son, who was about fifteen, had the time of his life. Our daughter amused everyone around us by asking me if it was ‘live’. It was a 5-0 win to United. It took hours to get out of the car park and start our journey home. A very late school night, but a great time was had by us all. Sometimes you need a treat.

Going to see John Cooper Clarke was a treat indeed. I’ve loved his poetry since he first came on the scene as a ‘punk poet’, so clever, so observant, telling it like it is with no words wasted. I bought tickets as soon as they went on sale at the Kendal Brewery Arts Centre. We had pizza in the Vats Bar then took our front row seats in the theatre. The first half of the event was my introduction to Manchester poet, Mike Garry, who held me spellbound and spoke my language, quite literally as he comes from the same part of Manchester as I do. Afterwards, I bought a copy of his book, which he signed for me as we chatted. John Cooper Clarke was amazing and kept going and going, despite not being fully recovered from a recent illness. It was just brilliant to hear the poems I knew and loved so well being performed live by the poet. Oh, what a night!

 

 

Oh, what a night at the Royal Albert Hall

On a wonderful Moody Blues tour,

When we danced and sang, right up close to the stage,

Joining in with their final encore.

 

Oh, what a night at Old Trafford Cricket Ground,

Simply Red in July, ’92.

‘Holding Back the Years’ always has me in tears.

Dreams of the future were coming true.

 

Oh, what a night at Old Trafford Football Ground,

Our fam’ly supporting United.

Fortunes for tickets, but the thrill of the match

And victory made us delighted.

 

Oh, what a night in Kendal, John Cooper Clarke,

The Bard of Salford, great to be heard,

And Manchester’s Mike Garry blew me away

As I hung on to his every word.

 

PMW 2019

 

Thanks for reading, Pam x 

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The 'Sleeping' Poet

The poet exists in two states: awake and ‘asleep’, and these two conditions are influenced/ determined by a singular act, or rather the lack of it.  If a poet is not writing is she still a poet?  Is a difference present; is she different when she is writing to when she is not?

I don’t think I could live without it.  It’s like water or bread or something absolutely essential to me.  I find myself absolutely fulfilled when I have written a poem, when I am writing one...  Having written one, well then, you fall away very rapidly from having been a poet to becoming a sort of poet in rest.

(From an interview with Sylvia Plath)

On a grammatical level, the difference is caused by the verb usage: the poet is writing a poem or the poet has written a poem.  The latter utterance, with its past tense transitive verb, does not comment upon a current activity, but rather an activity that has since lapsed.  However, to state that one is ‘writing’ would mean that the present participle is in application, and thus is very much active.  Therefore, the poet fluctuates from past to present, ‘sleeping’ to awake, and it is writing that stirs her into full consciousness. 

However, fullness is lost when the pen slips from her grip – a semi half-life envelops her and her finger is pierced by a needle; the same sharpness and severity as that found upon the spinning wheel – sending her hand into a motionless sleep.  The poet is no longer directly engaged in writing, her present has fallen suddenly and sadly into the past – and she wonders, will she stay there?  Questioning if she will ever find writing again, or whether she will merely remember the poems she once wrote.

In some respects, when she is not writing, she becomes a victim of the past; a Sleeping Beauty trapped and devalued by the singular past tense form of the verb to be.  And during these moments there is no third person singular present tense, no knight on white horse, no ‘magic’ that sees words transposing themselves upon paper, and no complete self.  She was a poet, but what or who is she now?  An empty bottle that had its purpose drained by fear...  If there is no poet there is no poem, and what becomes of the poem’s identity?  A transparent bottle smashed – void of contents and form...  And without the poem there is no poet.  Each relies upon the other; the poet and poem must co-exist, and the loss of one is a wound which will markedly impact on what remains.

She makes a prediction with a negative modal auxiliary and foresees that she won’t be a poet; her future won’t be poetry and the slumbering figure will never wake onto yellow paper – ever again.  But she has not died, she is merely ‘sleeping’, and in the dreams and nightmares of her mind ideas still formulate, thinking still deviates and manipulates, and she hears a pen weeping for its owner.  Thus, the mind of a poet still remains...

*          *          *

Self-doubt is the apple and perfectionism its poison.  She cannot be a poet because she cannot believe it, and she cannot write poetry (again) because it will never be what the previous poem was.  There is a voice whose tones drone with improbability, and spit with impossible conclusions...

However, she probably would not alter the day – a distant, long ago time in her childhood – when an apple pip was planted and which eventually became a tree that bore one poisoned apple.  There were times when she had wished that she could chop the tree down, and send the solitary apple falling from the branches like the giant from the beanstalk.  But would she be the same person without it?  Perhaps she would not have needed writing, and even if they had still found each other the poem would inevitably be unrecognisable.

And your doubt can become a good quality if you train it.  It must become knowing, it must become criticism.  Ask it, whenever it wants to spoil something for you, why something is ugly, demand proof from it, test it, and you will find it perhaps bewildered and embarrassed, perhaps also protesting.  But don’t give in, insist on arguments, and act in this way, attentive and persistent, every single time, and the day will come when, instead of being a destroyer, it will become one of your best workers – perhaps the most intelligent of all the ones that are building your life.  (Letters to A Young Poet, R. M.Rilke)

If I didn’t write I would always be ‘asleep’ –

                                                       never knowing what it means, or is like, to be awake

Thank you for reading,

Lara

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Years from now...

Good Afternoon folks.

This week's theme is Sci-Fi which, I'll admit, has been a struggle. Not only was I up at 5.30am today trying to write something- I realised about an hour before work that I promised you all a poem.

Until that point I had drawn a picture of the pope shooting a bazooka into the sky (with a cross and swastika on his tunic) and made a surreal news feed idea about him shooting down an American satellite. This all came from a piece I read the other day about the Church of England threatening to cut their huge investment stakes in our internet providers. In the wake of the Jo Yeates murder trial- this made the headlines in some papers and it got me thinking- do they really believe censorship is going to change people's behaviour. In the wake of all the troubles we have in the world, can they not see that there may be slightly more outside influences on us than extreme porn and some propoganda. Anyway, I thought maybe the nightmare dream of a future in which the Church calls on its power to rule was worrying enough- and the idea for my promised poem eventually surfaced.

Influenced

A poll commissioned for TV

with texts all charged at 20p

sent shudders through the soul of me

The thought of Intervention.

Was it this dystopian dream

that shook me as I slept, or screen

after screen of trailed gun fire

on an unwatched streaming news.

How paranoid must the Church be

to invest in our ISPs

to block our viewing on TV

in case we do discover,

that what goes on behind our backs

the endless terrorist attacks

are not about who's white or black

but through misinformation.

So those who claim a right divine

and see the other ivory shrines

collapse under the weight of minds

in Middle East uprisings

they seek to censor truth rebuked

to deny nudity from youth

to confiscate and take away

then masturbate upon it.

We make decisions every day

on what to hear and what to say

the violence will not go away

if we don't see more pictures.

The blind man plays no violent games

reads no news feeds of children maimed

but still won't call out Jesus' name

for fear of dark inside him.

He sees the things we do not see

and looks inside for sanctity

believes in what he knows to be

and with that feels empowered.

Thanks for reading guys. A little rushed but I couldn't let you all down- a slightly more polished version of this will be read on Friday at the event. Speak soon, S.

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The Ritual.

For reasons unknown, the theme this week is Ghost Stories. Well, it is coming up to the end of October- ghouls are a big thing this season and vampires are just so, whatever. Honestly, if I hear another schoolgirl swooning over bloody Cedric Diggory (whom is still dead, by the way... Vampire my arse.) I'll probably lose it.

This being a 'poetry blog' though, I decided to go with my newly refreshed enthusiasm (thanks, Lancaster LitFest) and write something new. Trawling the mind for childhood memories- the ones I feel are always the scariest, the one moment of fear I remember most from those days is quite clear still- waking up to catch children being dragged through a door on TV (I believe, Poltergeist). I was sleeping out, away from home at a friend's house over the way.

I was quite surprised it was a different story that came from within me then. I spent a lot of years in the Scouts as a kid, learnt a lot about myself in the process but, like all the other kids, was only really there for the holidays. A few mates, some tents and several liberated miniature spirit bottles did me for a weekend just nicely, thank you very much. Some of the memories, it seems, weren't quite as jolly. I hope you enjoy the poem.

The Ritual

Trudging with socks sodden from the track

we smelt the air- caught ear of crackling wood over

bleating sheep and rushed towards flickering light.

It was there, with Pendle Hill still fresh in mind

you showed your stripes- pulled rank and asked,

Do you believe in ghost stories.

Our legs trembled below fire flushed faces

as marshmallows bloomed and dripped their mess

into the spitting hearth. You snapped.

On the tops things change- new variables

with every breath of the wind. You must obey.

Do as you are told, pull together.

That was the night he danced.

Took to the pole for tuck shop

twenty-ps he gathered, cap in hand.

And boy, did he dance. Shed his shell

crab like as he scuttled fleshy and nude-

woggle half covering his pubescent penis.

We soon saw his face- caught it in the torch

as you hoisted damp pants up the flagpole.

I'd never seen a ghost before-

and we just sat there, trembling.

Thanks for reading, S.

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The Poem and the Poet: Inspired Beginnings & Unknown Ends

This week I’m cheating! Due to feeling tired, overworked and a little stressed, I’ve decided to post something I wrote 2 years ago. The piece I’ve chosen is taken from my undergraduate dissertation, which attempted to blend the creative with the academic through Poetics – and argued against the assumption that Creative Writing is a ‘soft option’.

The Poem and the Poet: Inspired Beginnings & Unknown Ends

The Poet does not know how the poem will look; she has no expectation or assumption. She lets the poem be what it wants to be - not forcing it into being.

It should be of the pleasure of a poem itself to tell how it can. The figure a poem makes. [...] It begins in delight, it inclines to the impulse, it assumes direction with the first line laid down, it runs a course of lucky events, and ends in a clarification of life – not necessarily a great clarification, [...] but in a momentary stay against confusion. It has denouement. It has an outcome that though unforeseen was predestined from the first image of the original mood – and indeed from the very mood. It is but a trick poem and no poem at all if the best of it was thought of first and saved for last. It finds its own name as it goes and discovers the best waiting for it in some final phrase at once wise and sad.
(Robert Frost, 'The Figure a Poem Makes', 1939)*

On paper it begins to exist with the first line. The poem is no longer a mere idea that might get lost in a crowd of life’s distractions, or a thought that gets thrown hastily into one of mind’s drawers and never retrieved. It moves from a condition of abstraction – memory, thought, feeling, imagination, creativity – and adopts a physical, more permanent form. The abstract is transformed by a line of words, making it more difficult to lose or forget that moment of “delight”. The first line is powerful; it is the beginning that will lead the Poet to an end, and it is the tone – the voice – that the poem speaks and will continue to speak on each consecutive line.

And just “Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting” (Frost, 1939); the first line is the hand that places the ice on the stove and enables the melting to occur.

The Poet does not plan the poem’s line breaks by counting syllables; a line is not a stack of pennies and a verse is not a collection of five and seven pence towers. At times there is no need to count out value because the poem holds the potential to subconsciously calculate its own worth... If it is given the autonomy to do so.

The Poet does not dictate a rhyme upon the poem’s ends in order to form a scheme of alphabetical echoes.

“a-a-b-b-c-c-d-d-e-e...” does not drone or befell the form today...

...it did not want to. Thus, she applied no pressure.

The Poet is not dictator but writer. She listens to thought, to idea, to words, to sound. She is not a prophet but a messenger, who cannot see the end nor predict it. She is the owner of a pen, and its metal surface is void of apparitions that depict the future or foresee the unknown. The Poet surrenders to the now and accepts that the next cannot be hypothesised about, but rather she must write towards it. With each line and passing verse the unseen end steps closer to being visible – to the state of now – and eventually, the Poet falls upon it...

...THE END.

Thank you for reading,
Lar

_________________
* In: Gioia, D., Mason, D. & Schoerke, M. eds. Twentieth-Century American Poetics: Poets on the Art of Poetry. (New York: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, p.11-12)

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