Travel - I'm Not Backpacking

When I was young, going on travels and planning adventures was the most exciting thing. I bought a new, top-of-the-range, holdall style bag for a trip to Europe. It was expensive, but it was within the specifications for airline hand luggage and was perfect for my needs. I was travelling light for an expected stay of a couple of weeks. Returning home, after my visit which was mainly sight-seeing but I did some shopping here and there, I surprised myself with how much stuff I could squeeze in, including 500g of knitting yarn – irresistible – from a local market somewhere in rural Switzerland.  It is forty-odd years ago and that well-travelled, well-used bag still looks like new and is taken with us on nearly every holiday.

On a warm, clear evening in North West Scotland, we sat outside our cottage watching the summer sunset and looking over The Minch beyond the coast of Skye to the Isle of Lewis, visible on the horizon. A future trip would have to be the Outer Hebrides and eventually, it was.

With a car suitable for the journey and the amount of travelling we expected to do, we packed it with everything we thought we’d need and more. We had enough supplies of tinned food and drinking water to last a couple of days if it should be needed. We always support local economy wherever we go, so main groceries would be bought on the islands, but we needed to be prepared for any ferry delays and shops closed on Sundays. Home for the first week was a renovated crofter’s cottage on South Uist. Our second week was a chalet on the Isle of Harris. I can’t tell you how amazing it was. I urge you to go and see, feel and breathe it all. Every turned corner introduced another breath-taking view of a different world. The following year we returned, this time to the Isle of Barra at the southern end of the archipelago.  

I like to be coastal, ideally within sight and sound of the sea. There’s something soothing about the gentle rhythm of an incoming tide, or hearing waves crashing on rocks. We’ve sat near Corbiere Lighthouse on Jersey watching how fast the sea covers the causeway and clears it again just as quickly. Another trip is planned for next year.

Meanwhile, we’ll go wherever the fancy takes us either in our caravan to pastures new, or to stay at a fabulous place we found in Shropshire, or the lodges we love in Dumfries and Galloway. We will travel while we can.

My Haiku,

My trusty holdall
With passport in my pocket,
On an adventure.

Corbiere Lighthouse
Majestically rising
Above ragged rocks.

Pack things in the car
For any situation.
Don’t forget the dog.

Swoon at the beauty
Of the natural landscape,
Outer Hebrides.

PMW 2024

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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A Very Noisy Blog

by Colin Davies



When I offered to write a blog for the Blakpool Dead Good Poets Society, they said ‘yes please’. Cool, I thought. Then they said, ‘can you write one about poetry and sound?’

I, of course, agreed. Then I got to thinking about it. You see, I used to work with sound, I was a hi-fi salesman. Esoteric equipment with values beyond most peoples means with the soul purpose of delivering the ultimate sound to the audiences ear.

So suddenly I wasn’t thinking about the onomatopoeia values of words to add a sense of drama or sound scape to an action of literally painted vista. I was thinking about sound itself, the essence of noise and rhythm, muisc.

I found myself considering such songs as Joe le Taxi, Vanessa Chantal Paradis 1987 hit. I don’t speak French, I also don’t understand it being spoken to me, yet the sound of the words, the tone of her voice, with the rhythm made it a pleasant experience to hear.

This lead me to look at other words where the sound was more important than the meaning. Disney has a couple of very good example with ‘Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’ and ‘Hakuna Matata’

Just the sound of these words is enough to convey an idea. You don’t need a meaning, just a pleasing sound.

I decided to type in the words ‘Sound Poem’ into Google and found this entry in Wikipedia.

“Sound poetry is an artistic form bridging between literary and musical composition, in which the phonetic aspects of human speech are foregrounded instead of more conventional semantic and syntactic values; "verse without words". By definition, sound poetry is intended primarily for performance.”

This got me thinking again. I can see that there is much discussion over this form, this discipline, this school of writing and yet I find the idea so simple, liberating and fun.

Spike Milligan would touch on this style is some of his writing. ‘In the land of the Bumbly Boo’ and the ‘Ying Tang Song’ have wonderful sounds that aren’t describing anything as such, just being noises.

So to me a Sound Poem is one that just allows the audio aspects of the words to be the focus. It could be a language you don’t understand, or some invented words that are put together for the Phonetic flow that they deliver to the listener. Which ever way you look at it, writing in pure sound may look easy but it requires a certain focus to find the most important element of such a piece of work, the rhythm.

If you set about writing such a verse, and you negate the rhythm, the outcome can be nothing more that a random set of letters, characters thrown on a page. By placing a structure over the top and sticking strictly to the time signature, you can create something that can touch people on a level beyond mere words, and influence then on a higher plane than any music.

These hypnotic lines entrance and entertain. They completely and utterly allow the audience to superimpose their own meaning, attach their own emotional bond, it becomes theirs and theirs alone.

So, by taking all this on aboard, I present to you a sound poem from my heart, to yours.

What’s out there?

Chicka chicka chook
Lokra nonti sood
Blimble lushby kethtra ong
woota, homthga, jaykma, tong



Colin presents the Listen Me Alice show on Impact Radio every Sunday night from 10pm.

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A Recipe for Sound

I would describe myself as a page poet. By this, I mean that my poems work better on the page than they do at a microphone. I am not a performance poet and, more importantly, I don’t aspire to be one. I’m instinctively shy and just convincing myself to stand in front of a room full of people is challenging, then asking me to read poetry is even more difficult. But I do it. I stand at the microphone and read my page poems. I do it because it’s always good to do something that frightens you – throws you outside of your comfort zone – and when you survive, it makes you realise that you can be stronger than your greatest fears.

I’m a page poet that likes sound. That cares as much about how my poetry sounds as the way it looks on the page. I don’t just look, but I listen as well. I read aloud as I’m writing, feeling the lines rolling off my tongue and changing anything that doesn’t ‘sound right’. However, regardless of how much I like sound, it needs to work in conjunction with the overall meaning. It can add strength and emphasis to a poem. But on its own it will never add the depth and the multitude of layers that I love within poetry.

I can use sound to give a poem a specific feeling. I can manipulate assonance or alliteration, not only to accentuate a line but, also, to impart harshness or softness. If I consider syllables – stressed and unstressed – and place them in a given order, then I can create rhythm. If I use a string of monosyllabic lexemes in short lines, then I can create the illusion of speed, haste, panic. Therefore, I would argue that sound is as important to poetry as a line break – although probably not as important as the connotative meaning of individual words.

Recently, my mind (usually in the early hours of the morning) has been thinking about a new analogy for poetry. Like a simile it can allow you to think about things in a different way, and this can often enable you discover something new, something that you hadn’t considered before...

Poetry is like cookery. You start off by following recipes, weighing everything out and following each step. Then once you’ve mastered the basics you begin to experiment: taking what you’ve learnt from the recipes and applying it to something new. You learn the rules before you start to break them.

Cookery is about balancing ingredients, while poetry is about balancing words – with all their meaning, sound and power. If you get the balance wrong, it creates something that is inedible. For instance, it doesn’t matter how much you love spices, with all their autumnal colours and vibrant scents, if they’re used without a degree of skill then you’ll create something that fails to function as a meal. The very same philosophy is applicable to sound. It doesn’t matter how much you love sound, if you don’t achieve the right balance with poetry’s other ingredients then ultimately the poem will fail to fulfil its full potential.

Poets should be aware of sound, should employ sound techniques, and should care about the overall sound of their poem. But, equally, sound should be used like a spice: with care and caution.

Thank you for reading,
Lar

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