Yikes...

... I haven't posted here since November. My longest gap since this blog started. What happened?

Erm, I got fed up. I felt blogs were over - so last decade! so dated! And maybe they are. But does it matter? I also ran out of things to say. I could argue the same things over and over again, but to what end? To no end - so I thought.

Here's a post. This one here. I'll maybe post more. Have this in the meantime:

A handful of recent PCs

The more basic one is in honour of my semi-beloved xkcd.com.

From an e-mail I've just written:

The part where I talk about poetry:

... I'm wondering what your perception of my perception of poetry is... let me write what I think:

1. a poem is made of words;
2. a poem is prompted by an idea-for-a-poem;
3. an idea-for-a-poem is not a poem;
4. an idea-for-a-poem can be, and often is, greater and more fulfilling than the poem it gives birth to - that's why a poet has to practice and get the words right - because a poem is made of words and nothing else.

And why I think there's a confusion:

• we use the word "poetry" to describe perfection and/or beauty;
• I suggest that this is a simile ("it is like the best poetry") that has become a reduced metaphor ("it is poetry") which has got confused with the noun it is;
• similar things can be said of words/phrases such as "symphony", "genius", "work of art", "God", etc.

If I was a semiotician I'd be able to talk about some kind of sign being confused with some kind of signifier or signified bitzenbob or something, but I'm a dimwit when it comes to theory. So I won't even bother

Lots of my ideas about poetry come from a half and one lines in Shakespeare: "...the moon's an arrant thief, / And her pale fire she snatches from the sun." i.e. the poem acts like the moon, a mirror stealing light from the sun of an idea-for-a-poem. I write lots of moon poems and most of them are about stolen light.

And I believed all of this before WS Graham's Collected Poems came into my hands and I read this by him:

"The most difficult thing for me to remember is that a poem is made of words and not of the expanding heart, the overflowing soul, or the sensitive observer. A poem is made of words. It is words in a certain order, good or bad by the significance of its addition to life and not to be judged by any other value put upon it by imagining how or why or by what kind of man it was made."

Final thought: the essence of what an idea-for-a-poem is is worth investigating.

That's kinda why I think what I think.

Cover Versions

I like cover versions... and don't believe first-performed-best-performed. One of the following is much better than the original, thinks I.

Sigh... here comes a rant.

Coleridge in a lecture given in 1811/12:

Verse-makers are not poets; the poet is the one who carries the simplicity of childhood into the powers of manhood; who, with a soul unsubdued by habit, unshackled by custom, contemplates all things with the freshness and the wonder of a child; and, connecting with it the inquisitive powers of riper years adds, as far far as he can find knowledge, admiration; and, where knowledge no longer permits admiration, gladly sinks back again into the childlike feeling of devout wonder.

The poet is not only the man made to solve the riddle of the universe, but he is also the man who feels where it is not solved.

This is not a description of a poet - this is Coleridge's description of a poet he thinks is good. Poetry is an indicator of form, not quality. Poet is a person who makes poems. Poem is a collection of, first-and-foremost, words.

This Romantic idea of Poet = Sage = Mystic = God... still with us and we're not we over it yet. This is why lots of people choose to be poets. For the perceived superiority. Sometimes the arrogance of some poets make me shake my head and go aargh!. In the words of the west of Scotland: ye think yir somthin, but ye know whit? yir nothin. Poets are not better people than you or me - some of them just write good poems.

Now I want them to get back to that job of just writing poems - good and bad and mediocre.

Some PCs - click for bigness

Pleased to meet you...

... won't you guess my name?

So, yesterday I took a half day and went to the GOMA at around 2ish. I sat in the cafe in the basement where the library is. I read my collection of Chatwin's journalism and odds'n'ends. And then in comes someone trailing a purple suitcase on wheels who smiled at me and me at them.

Who was it?

It was JoAnne! (aka'd as Titus The Dog) It's always strange to meet some online person and find out they're exactly like you imagined - but in this case, so much more so. I spent around two very happy hours in her company and laughed packets.

And she almost convinced me to read Moby Dick. (I should maybe have mentioned the fantastic pop-up version of it you get. She may know about this already.)

Collisions from both sides...

Last week I did the 15 Favourite Authors thingummy at Facebook (at Marion's request). My 15 were:

1. Hergé
2. Jorge Luis Borges
3. Bruce Chatwin
4. Ivor Gurney
5. Alice Oswald (and her husband, Peter)
6. Christopher Isherwood
7. George Mackay Brown
8. David Crystal
9. Italo Calvino
10. Georges Perec
11. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
12. Pablo Neruda
13. Douglas Hofstadter (for one book)
14. Graham Greene
15. Ryszard Kapuscinski

I felt a bit bad about their only being one woman there... but then, why should I? If I prefer these writers in the same way as some women might prefer 14 women and 1 man, am I to be thought a lesser human being?

And I'm surprised that Graham Greene made it in there. I think it might be better to turf him out and get Emily Dickinson in in his place.

***

Number 3 on the list - he came quickly. It's Bruce Chatwin. And when I popped into WH Smith the day after to get the TLS who was staring at me from the cover? Yip, Bruce. This photo of him:



He's on the cover of the TLS because a collection of his letters was published a few months back. The book is reviewed , over three pages, by William Dalrymple. He recalls how, aged 21, he met Chatwin and was entranced.

"I have been thinking of that first meeting a lot in the past few weeks while reading both Chatwin's letters, and the sometimes markedly hostile reviews the book has generated. For Chatwin's star has faded dramatically since I first met him."

Later:

"... the pendulum of fashion has swung against Chatwin, and it is now decidedly unhip to admire his work. In a recent piece in the Spectator, for example, Philip Hensher dismissed him as "an absurd pseud... a reporter who had the wit to go to some very interesting places... unsystematic and frequently cranky... that very familiar figure, the young man on the make."

But at the end, Dalrymple gives a positive review of the book - and of Chatwin himself.

"Within the last few years, Wilfrid Thesiger, Norman Lewis, Nicolas Bouvier, Ryszard Kapuscinski and Eric Newby have all followed Bruce on their last journey ... Yet of all of these Bruce Chatwin is, for me at least, the greatest talent, and by far the greatest loss."

Quite right. I'm not going to apologise for loving his five little books. Nor for ignoring, hidden deep in the admiration, the fact that I wouldn't have liked him in Real Life.

He just wrote good.

For Nitoo...

... I know she'll like this passage from The Diary of Lady Murasaki (trans. Richard Bowring):

Returning to my room, I looked in at Lady Saisho's door, only to find her asleep. She lay with her head pillowed on a writing box, her face all but hidden by a series of robes - dark red lined with green, purple lined with dark red - over which she had thrown a deep crimson gown of unusually glossy silk. The shape of her forehead was enchanting and so delicate. She looked just like one of those princesses you find depicted in illustrations, I pulled back the sleeve that covered her face,

"You remind me of a fairy-tale princess!" I said.

She looked up with a start.

"You are dreadful!" she said, propping herself up. "Waking people up like that without a thought!"

I remember being struck by the attractive way her face suddenly flushed. So it is that someone normally very beautiful can look even more beautiful than ever on occasions.

As I start typing...

It's 1 minute to National Poetry Day. Woo. Hoo. It would be nice if people who didn't read poetry often would do so because they actually wanted to, not because they felt they "ought to". And therefore wouldn't really need a day to remind them that it exists - there is, after all, no National Prose Day that I'm aware of.

Is anyone looking forward to this? I mean - I've *always* wanted to watch Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson as middle class literary types going for lunch. That may not have been sarcastic enough.

Here are some Poets Cornereds:

More PC

One of them is an oldie... I think I might update and "beautify" some more of my first 120-odd. Any requests?

Musical Poems Recently Loved

Woman in a Mustard Field by Alice Oswald

From love to light my element
was altered when I fled
out of your house to meet the space
that blows around my head

The sun was rude and sensible,
the rivers ran for hours
and whoops I found a mustard field
exploding into flowers;

And I slowly came to sense again
the thousand forms that move
all summer through a living world
that grows without your love.

(That last non-rhyme makes that last non-rhyme jump out at you, no?)

After you speak by Edward Thomas

After you speak
And what you meant
Is plain,
My eyes
Meet yours that mean -
With your cheeks and hair -
Something more wise,
More dark,
And far different,
Even so the lark
Loves dust
And nestles in it
The minute
Before he must
Soar in lone flight
So far,
Like a black star
He seems -
A mote
Of singing dust
Afloat
Above,
That dreams
And sheds no light.
I know your lust
Is love.

(The beaten up lines make those almost-too-hasty rhymes bounce around the head. You have to work to say this one - two readings, at least one of which must be spoken or mouthed, should be sufficient to say it. Oh, and this was written in 1916.)

Sleepe, angry beauty by Thomas Campion

Sleepe , angry beauty, sleep, and feare not me,
For who a sleeping Lyon dares provoke?
It shall suffice me here to sit and see
Those lips shut up that never kindly spoke.
What sight can more content a lovers minde
Then beauty seeming harmlesse, if not kinde?

My words have charm'd her, for secure shee sleepes,
Though guilty much of wrong done to my love;
And in her slumber, see! shee close-ey'd weepes!
Dreames often more then waking passions move.
Pleade, sleepe, my cause, and make her soft like thee,
That shee in peace may wake and pitty mee.

(This one was actually a sung-song - a lute song - from his Third Book of Ayres, 1617ish.)

***

And because I wrote "sung song", try this - it kinda fits:

Song sung blue
Everybody knows one
Song sung blue
Every garden grows one

Me and you are subject to
the blues now and then
But when you take the blues and make a song
You sing them out again

Song sung blue
Weeping like a willow
Song sung blue
Sleeping on my pillow

Funny thing, but you can sing
it with a cry in your voice
And before you know, start to feeling good
You simply got no choice

Song sung blue
Everybody knows one
Song sung blue
Every garden grows one

Poets Cornered - no. 11 & 12

The first one... hmmm... ok, I'll give you this (it's not online):

Orpheus - WH Auden

What does this song hope for? And his moved hands
A little way from the birds, the shy, the delightful?
To be bewildered and happy,
Or most of all the knowledge of life?

But the beautiful are content with the sharp notes of the air;
The warmth is enough. O if winter really
Oppose, if the weak snowflake,
What will the wish, what will the dance do?

3 x Noisy-Pixies + 1 x Quiet-Pixies

I never knew The Pixies made a video for Alec Eiffel - one of the only one songs I know about M'shure Ee-fell.



And here's Planet of Sound on the telly:



Surprisingly sweary at around 0:50, but it is educational - he says so:



I remember in Cuba letting a local guy borrow my mp3 player (the one with the little elephant attached to it that Heather had bought for me in Amsterdam). He listened and listened and eventually said: "When am I going to hear good music?" He had been given some CDs by a previous tourist. He wanted more U2 and the Stereophonics and the Chilli Peppers. I gave him Glen Campbell, My Bloody Valentine and, amongst others, this:

Armenian Miniatures

I was in the Panoptican on High Street last week; I got a little bundle of postcards for £3 - they show, it says, Armenian Miniatures of the 13th and 14th Centuries from the Matendaran Collection, Yerevan.

I like the colours and general oddness of them. Here's one I've scanned - I may scan more.

Russian Fairy Tales and Long-Time-Ago Japan

Yesterday I got a bumper book of Russian folk tales. It's a collection made by Aleksandr Afanasyev in the 1850s/1860s. I'm very curious about the weird folk that he got these stories from... Take the opening of Bukhtan Bukhtanovich:

"In a certain kingdom in a certain land there lived one Bukhtan Bukhtanovich, who had a stove built on pillars in the middle of a field. He lay on the stove in cockroach milk up to his elbows."

There may, of course, be an error in translation there but really, cockroach milk? But as an opening, it seems very Samuel Beckett to me.

Here's another story in total:

The Bladder, the Straw and the Shoes

A bladder, a blade of straw, and a shoe went to chop wood in the forest. They came to a river and did not know how to cross it. The shoe said to the bladder: "Bladder, let us swim across it on you." The bladder said: "No, shoe, let the straw blade instead stretch itself over from shore to shore, and we will walk over it." The blade of straw stretched itself across the water; the shoe walked on it and the straw broke. The shoe fell into the water, and the bladder laughed and laughed until it burst.

Why a bladder, a shoe and a blade of straw? Maybe there are some homophones or rhymes going on in the original Russian. Or maybe they represent a drunk man, a man with one shoe and a thin man? Or maybe it's simply as literal as it appears.

Whatever, the book is good. And of all the folk tale / fairy tale collections I have, this is the weirdest.

(Incidentally, some species of cockroach do produce "milk", I've just checked.)

***

I also got a copy of Lady Murasaki's diary - she lived around the turn of the first millennium in Japan. She wrote The Tale of Genji and was a contemporary (and fellow employee of the Empress Shoshi) of Sei Shonagon - they didn't like one another.

It's full of beautiful little passages (translated by Richard Bowring) and completely browsable. Here's the opening paragraph:

As Autumn advances, the Tsuchimikado mansion looks unutterably beautiful. Every branch on every tree by the lake and each tuft of grass on the banks of the stream takes on its own particular colour, which is intensified by the evening light. The voices in ceaseless recitation of sutras are all the more impressive as they continue throughout the night; in the slowly cooling breeze it is difficult to distinguish them from the endless murmur of the stream.

Later (maybe years later - the passages are undated and I haven't read the introduction yet):

On Autumn evenings, which positively encourage nostalgia, when I go out and sit on the veranda and gaze, I seem to be always conjuring up visions of the past - "and did they praise the beauty of this moon of yore"? Knowing full well that I am inviting the kind of misfortune one should avoid, I become uneasy and move inside a little, while still, of course, continuing to recall the past.

Sigh... I could read things like this all the time and be floppy-hand-on-forehead Romantic. And when reading that, I also imagine a certain Green Room I spent time in in Delhi.

The past is always with us;
this is our misfortune.
The future never is;
worse luck.

***

What does Murasaki say about Sei Shonagon?

Sei Shonagon ... was dreadfully conceited. She thought herself so clever and littered her writings with Chinese characters; but if you examined them closely, they left a lot to be desired. Those who think of themselves as being superior to everyone else in this way will inevitably suffer and come to a bad end, and people who have become so precious that they go out of their way to try and be sensitive in the most unpromising situations, trying to capture every moment of interest, however slight, are bound to look ridiculous and superficial. How can the future turn out well for them?

Ouch... Bloggers and tweeters beware ridicule and superficiality.

Poets Cornered #9 & #10

Five Things

one.
I walked past a rook yesterday morning. It wasn't scared - it stayed solid on the pavement, it's head turning to watch me as I moved along. From as close as I was, I could see that its feathers were giving off an oil-slick purpliness.

two.
I walked out of the GOMA library (and coffee stop) with Magpie yesterday. On one of the racks there was a magazine with Tom Waits on the cover. She, surprisingly, likes Tom Waits. As we climbed the steps and made our way out to Royal Exchange Square I tried to describe the most surreal situation I've ever been in. I've tried to write poems about it, I've told dozens of people - but everyone says: "yeah, and...?" It involves Tom Waits and a spice shop in Morocco.

three.
I saw Bus Stop Girl for the first time in months today. Not only has she stopped going to the bus stop I go to, she's changed the town where she gets off the train. Yikes... I must truly be an awful person. :(

four.
I'm taking a week off work in October - my first thought was to go to Orkney. But then I thought: why not Northumbria? But then, but then... where?! I want somewhere I've never been before... I'm even almost-tempted by a city.

five.
I've been listening to The 1900s a lot over the past few days. I like this one, but there's only a live version on youtube. I've been having crazy thoughts of starting up an acoustic instrumental group - no singing. Ever. I'd call it The Harpo Marx (or Marks, take your pick).

Occasionally...

... I have a yearning for 1960s French music. Here are some:

Juliette Gréco:




And the same by Serge Gainsbourg and Phillipe Clay:

Poets Cornered no. 7 & 8

Blogthargia

I've been feeling very blogthargic recently... but I've done some things:

• I've returned to the obscenity of Lathynarn (only 6 and a bit parts left to write!);
• I've been drawn back to Facebook;
• I've been doing silly drawings (see below);
• I've been working on more Poets Cornereds (and wondering whether to redraw some of my old ones in the "new" way;
• I've been strumming my ukulele a lot.

So, not lazy... just blog-lazy.

If you cry, cry only one tear...

A tragic nursery rhyme from the 18th Century. Prepare to cry and sob and weep:

Little Betty Pringle she had a pig,
it was not very little and not very big;
When he was alive he lived in clover,
But now he's dead and that's all over.
Johnny Pringle he sat down and cried,
Betty Pringle she lay down and died;
So there was an end of one, two, three,
Johnny Pringle he,
Betty Pringle she,
And Piggy Wiggy.

(Apparently Robert Southey claimed it was the most unbearably sad thing he heard as a two year old and couldn't listen to the end... I, personally, was more interested in chewing table tops.)

Why oh why oh why oh why oh why___

___ does YouTube insist on recommending things like this to me?!



Does it know nothing about me at all?

I also got this as well... and I kinda like it.

Poets Cornered - no. 6

(I spent a ridiculously long time drawing that fox... before the colour went on some people said it looked like a cat. Hmph. It's based on the origami fox I make. Some people say it's more like a cat in paper as well. Hmph.)

"... a mouse is used to draw."

I got Keith Haring's journals the other day, having chanced upon an entry in the Penguin blog about it. (Almost half price at Amazon if anyone's interested.)

I've not read much so far - just dipped in and out.

Here's something from July 8, 1986:

I was ... interested in the tactile experience of drawing, which is very different on a computer. Time-lapse (and/or spacial displacement) occurs when a "mouse" is used to draw. This displacement of image and action creates a new problem to be solved by the "drawer". The drawer then has the added ability to take the image and manipulate its color, size, and placement. The image becomes a workable entity restricted only by the limitations of the computer program, programmer, and the screen of the monitor itself.

There are endless possibilities to be investigated in this area.

He died 4 years later, long before he got a chance to see things like this.

Poets Cornered - no. 5

It's number 5 by the new numbering...

And so, the next Poets Cornereds...

... are all over at Facebook.

But I think I'll continue to upload them here... they'll maybe be too small to read as is, so please click for largeness.



And why four in two days? Well, I'm starting from scratch at FB, so I needed more than one!

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT (no, really...)

Well, only important if you're interested in developments surrounding Poets Cornered. If you are... read on.

***

Further to yesterday's momentous one-framer, here's something equally momentous: Poets Cornered is moving!

Where to? All the way to Facebook and you can find it by clicking on this lovely link (non-FBers as well - it's open to the world).

It would also be nice if you befriended wee Poughbuoy... aw, shucks - you know you want to.

Many apologies for any perceived and/or unperceived inconvenience/convenience*.

* wherein lies the basis of a tongue twister...

Poets Cornered #127

As suggested... things have changed in the Poets Cornered department.And they will continue to change - 4 panels was always a bit restrictive.

"Women of India: Protected and Progressive"

I was given an old Fodor's Guide to India - I'm sure I saw the date 1968 somewhere in it, but on looking again the only one I can find is 1962.

It's not structured like modern guidebooks - like Lonely Planet or Rough Guide - it's less interested in telling you where you can sleep or eat than it is in telling you about the country. This book is not backpacker friendly.

But it's still interesting. Here, from the Foreword:

This is the first definitive guide book of India in over one hundred years. Since 1859, India has rocketed from a backwater colony into the forefront of the world's leading nations, not only by virtue of her sheer size and power, but even more because of her astonishing political maturity and tenacious allegiance to high moral values in her dealings with the rest of the world.

There's a chapter on the place of women in Indian society - written by Taya Zinkin. Here are a few quotes.

• Indian women - or rather, Hindu women, the ones I shall consider here - have never been subjugated to their husbands, only downtrodden by their mothers-in-law.
  
  
• In her new home the wife's only ally is her husband, whom she is not supposed to meet in public, to whom she is not supposed to speak within earshot of the older members of the family, but whom she meets at night in the throes of passion. The husband knows it is his duty to satisfy his wife ... the woman tries to please her husband while satisfying her own needs. Frigidity is rare in India...
  
  
• To imagine that the wife is downtrodden is mistaken.
  
  
• What is holding India back is the fact that so many of the women are still not educated because of the old prejudice against sending girls to school and because of the influence of Islamic culture on much of Northern India, where to this day women are more than shy. Mr Nehru once told me that if he could have his way he would arrange for women alone to be educated throughout the sub-continent; in that way he could make the whole country literate for the mothers would teach their sons and the sisters their brothers and shame them into emulation.
  
  
• As more women earn an independent income, so the pressure on them to marry, or indeed to stay married to an unsuitable partner, goes down.
  
  
• Far from being shy and retiring, Indian women are made of steel ... Take for example the case of most unmarried working women; they have had to put up with an epic fight to preserve their freedom, for in India, socially, there is no room for spinsters. Yet there is an increasing number of unmarried women who earn both their own livelihood and the respect of men. This, in a world where only prostitutes used to remain single, represents a major achievement. Indian society has grown to make room for them, whether it is a Director of All India Radio or a Governor of a State, or the welfare officer in a factory, or a poultry farmer; all, in their quiet way, have helped to emancipate women by refusing to get married merely for marriage's sake.

Compare this from the 2009 Lonely Planet for India:

For the urban, middle-class woman, life is materially comfortable, but pressures still exist. Broadly speaking, she is far more likely to receive a tertiary education, but once married is still usually expected to 'fit in' with her in-laws and be a homemaker above all else. Like her village counterpart, if she fails to live up to expectations - even if it's just not being able to produce a grandson - the consequences can sometimes be dire...

The future's bright, the future's less straight-lined

Some of you may have noticed a lack of Poughbouy. My last Poets Cornered was posted on the 26th June.

Since then I've been doing other sorts of visual things - first there was my poet-face t-shirts/posters/postcards, now there's my imaginary film posters. What I've actually been doing is learning how to draw in a different way. I like this new way of drawing. Prompted by Nit this morning, I've been at work on an update to our favourite poetry comic strip character.

Here is Old Poughbuoy confused and confuzzled by New Poughbuoy who is likewise:

He'll be back soon - other things will change as well.

Meme-a-licious

I know, I know, I know... I've said it before: I hate the word "meme". It was, it appears, invented by Richard Dawkins - that angry wee man.

But Titou le Chien passed the following on. Please go here to read what she has to say.

***

1. Why did you start blogging?

Because Nitoo suggested it... My first post (on my first blog) was back on the 27th May 2005 - post title: "Should I do this or not?" I wrote:

Mmm... what am I to do? If I choose to start a blog I need something to blog about... And that raises this question: do I post my poems? I've objected elsewhere to doing that online.

Why should this be different?

I had stopped going to MSN poetry communities - I had increasingly found them to be nasty little places full of spite and bitterness. Personalities were there to attack and be attacked; poetry was of secondary importance. I got tired of it all... and then got tired of writing. It was then I coined my sceptical quatrain:

"Any fool can get published,"
the wise man sat and said.
"But the clever part of writing
is this: to have your work read."

Nit started her blog, then I started mine. It took a long, long time for me to realise what I wanted a blog to be (like Sei Shonagon's Pillow Book, essentially) but I persevered and practised and finally I came to realise that blogs are most definitely not essays online. I continued - and continue - because I like the ramshackle of subjects, videos, pictures and links.

[And I now find myself asking what the future of blogging is... I mentioned this to Nit a few weeks ago: blogs seem *so* last decade. What do personal blogs add to the world? Are they all destined to fizzle out in the next few years?]


2. If you could travel anywhere in the world with no restriction of costs, where would it be and why?

It's a big world, baby.

Like Titou, an area of Africa. But for me it would be West Africa: Mali, Niger, Ghana, etc., etc. That big expanse that Mungo Park took himself to. Here's a map of where he went.

But that's not everywhere I'd go, of course - there's East Africa, Ethiopia. There's South America - the Altiplano, the Andes. There's back to India - I saw virtually none of it.

I want to see flat expanses and I want to see mountains.


3. Did you have a teacher in school that had a great influence on your life? If so, what?

Mrs Anderton - my English teacher when I was in 3rd and 4th year at school. I wrote to her in late 2008 to tell her how much her teaching of poetry meant to me. Part of her reply:

"I hope that I have touched a chord with many young people: that is what has kept me doing this job for so many years and I am truly grateful for some affirmation of that. You have made my day!!"

And also Mr Armstrong my maths teacher all through High School - his attempt to demonstrate the beauty of mathematics to a class of cynical 16-year-olds may have failed on the rest, but it worked on me.


4. If you could spend the day with a famous person, who would it be, and what would you do?

Now there's a question... I've never been one to idol worship. But I'd like to go the pub with Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips, Bjork and the resurrected spirit of Harpo Marx. We'd play I Spy and then go for a curry.


5. Toilet paper – over or under?

I'm presuming that this in reference to how it is put on the holder? If so, the loose part of the roll hangs against the wall. It looks neater.


6. Name one thing in your life that you would do over if possible.

There are so, so many things... I have lots of regrets - on occasion, I think my life 'til now has been one big mistake. One event in particular jumps to mind. But I don't want to talk about it.


7. Tell about your pets – if any.

I have none. Haven't had one since I was a student - a dog that was put down for biting (and hospitalising my mother - she nearly had her arm amputated). He was called Jackie.


8. Do you live in a small town or a large town.

I stay in a village of between 2 and 3 thousand people. Some suggest that it's a small town - but we have a Spar, a bank that opens two days a week, a butchers, a bakers, one church and one chapel. We're a village.

Another two of these...

With thanks to The Watercats for suggesting these posters aren't tedious after all. :)

Oh, the pains of unknowing!

My last two imaginary film covers for a bit...

This could get boring very quickly. :os

Scott Pilgrim

I went to see Scott Pilgrim vs The World with Margaret yesterday. I think we were the oldest people in the audience.

It's directed by Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Spaced) and I very much enjoyed it - it's silly and noisy and smart and so packed with imagination that I was dumbstruck at several parts. However I also recognise that many people will hate it. I want to read the comic books it's based on now as well.

Here's an old (11 year old) song from the soundtrack:



And the title - If We Can Land A Man On The Moon, Surely I Can Win Your Heart - is a perfectly good and logical argument, no?

What do mathematicians know about the English language?!

Here's that numbers guy Tom Lehrer telling us how to change adjectives into adverbs.



And now all about silent Es...



(These were done for an American kids programme called The Electric Company.)

More imaginary film posters

This is obviously how I'm going to be wasting my life for the next few weeks...

Beautiful and floaty

All those poems in a row...

... I meant to write about my writing marathon during the week. I didn't. Why? Because it probably doesn't matter that much to me... I wrote what I did, then I stopped. Last year I said I wouldn't run the marathon again. I also said that it was a fairly easy thing to do. One of them was a lie.

But I'll write something.

***

This year, for the sake of ease and consistency, I chose to write with a theme - the theme was "India" in all its dirty, peacocking glory.

And what a variety I wrote... This year was very much a game, you see. How much can I do with one theme? And with a theme that is essentially only three weeks of my life.

I wrote sonnets and nursery rhymes; alliterative verse and blues; sound poems and nonsense; mysterious poems and stupid ones; hindi poems and ex-colonial ones.

One person is generally missing from them all... me. The exception to that is day 17

Poem written in Amritsar beneath one reckless fan and one ruthless gecko when I was quite, quite quiet and quite, quite alone

I've got a heart
on proof - and see:
it beats like so;

and whatever even
then and though
it beats it breaks

has broken, is broke
and may not again
might not, p'raps not

beat a rattle
to households again -
but no, it's true...

my heart lives on proof
and does its thing
through and through.

But that's the only place the Real Me appears. Harpo Marx careering through Amritsar is possibly a cipher for me, as is the person who wrote a letter to Captain Haddock; I might be that Leh Palace Ghost with its watering eye. And am I that person on the More Plains who almost gets pickpocketed by the boy I had just offered a mango and a sandwich to? Maybe, maybe.. But it doesn't matter if I am or not. These are poems. They are not the same as reality.

***

Nitoo also completed her 31 poems and wrote about the act of writing them at Facebook. I want to steal something she sad in response to a comment about her use of "ornate" language and "literary wordplay".

She said:

I do it for several reasons.

a) The sheer aural quality of poetry is something I feel strongly about.

b) I react almost physically to the pure play of sounds.

c) I think many poets ignore this very important element in their writing, thereby deadening and blunting their poetic edge.

d) It is my way of engaging not only with verbal acoustics and acrobatics, but also with language (and its purity and meaning/lessness).

e) Unlike some Indian poets, English is not my first language and I bring from my own language a history of soundscapes slightly different from the styles present in English.

(f) Lastly, one of my (frivolous, perhaps) reasons for this “baroque” wordplay is the definite sense that I can do with it (English) what I want. Language can become simply sounds; beautiful, affecting, yet strangely indifferent.

Point (b) is one I feel so much and I wish most people did as well. In the same way that the hairs go up on the back of my neck at certain passages of music it happens with beautiful passages of words.

Point (c) - a poet who isn't interested in what their poem sounds like and who only care about what it says... well, I'll be ruthless, they're of little interest to me.

(Note to self: I need to write something about the physicality of music, both when making it and when hearing it.)

I'd add a couple of things (that come from what she said):

1) Poetic language is not the same as the language we speak every day - it can't be, otherwise everything would be poetry and then "being poetry" would mean nothing. As such, we have to look for what poetic languages there are out there.

2) WS Graham asked what language is using us for - I'd say that a poet should be in charge of their language. It's a very complicated musical instrument that poets need to practice with. And once practiced, you can play the harp like Harpo. Each string is a poetic phrase, each finger a way of speaking it:

August 31st / Titles

For the past month I've been doing what Nit has called "POETRIFYING FOR A MONTH". Every day in August we've each written a poem - her's are here, mine are there.

I'll write more about the exercise tomorrow as it's late and I had dinner with Mel and wrote the final poem after she'd left and I drank some hot chocolate. (We were at Mono on King Street... nice music shop in there, and - rather disconcertingly - Trans Europe Express playing as we ate.)

But I'll leave you with the titles of my 31 poems... For a poem, a title can essentially be regarded as the first line - so much so, of course, that in lots of cases the first line is the title.

Another kind of title for a poem is one that can be regarded as meta-information - it tells you something beyond what the poem will choose to tell you. I tend to prefer these types of titles.

I usually spend a fair amount of time thinking of titles.

1. Phyang Festival, 9th July 2010
2. Ladakhi Stones
3. The ex-colonialist examines a pile of Ladakhi stones
4. Looking for a copy of “Indian Hill Birds” (OUP, 1949) by Sálim Ali
5. The ice rink in Leh
6. Skimming stones
7. Antediluvian Leh
8. An Anglo Saxon Song: “White Button from Indraprastha College for Women”
9. The ex-colonialist to his long-lost native lover
10. A letter to Captain Haddock
11. Himalayan Lathynarn
12. Road Worker Blues
13. “Ode to the Delhi Metro”
14. My first poem in Hindi
15. The ex-colonialist picks up an Indian child’s Abecedary
16. Shonagh demonstrates the centre of Wheel of Dharma to me...
17. Poem written in Amritsar beneath one reckless fan and one ruthless gecko when I was quite, quite quiet and quite, quite alone
18. Harpo Marx: Lost in Amritsar
19. Leh Palace Ghost
20. Dogs of Leh
21. Plateau
22. Salesman, Manali
23. Prayer for rock balancing, heard in Likir Gompa
24. Photographs near Pang
25. The Indus Valley Explodes for Kiran
26. Brother Peacock watches a Scotsman and prepares to stone the sky
27. I am a boy in Alchi
28. Foothill Crow:
29. There is always realisation
30. Review: Mōra /Mōranī (2010)
31. Leaving Ladakh

Posters

Following on from my post about Saul Bass the other day, I thought I'd attempt my own 1950/60s style film posters in that stylish style.

The first one has several similarities to one of the Bass originals.

The films are, of course, made up. But I'd imagine everyone knows the stories they tell.

Don't think once, twice, thrice, ...

... fourice? "Fourtimes" sounds so awkward. Hmmph... the English language fails us again! Anyway, here we have covers of Dylan's Don't Think Twice, It's All Right...


Elvis:



Helen Cornelius:




Nick Drake:



Johnny Cash:



Sophie Madeleine:



And the only place I can find the original on youtube - end of Season One of Mad Men. 50 seconds of it.

Saul Bass

I've been looking at lots of film posters by Saul Bass...

I love the simplicity of the designs - the audacity even. Remember that there'd be lots of cutting out and gluing and inking and stencilling for these posters which would make them time-consuming to construct.

This is something that could be done in minutes today... Given that, with all the wonders of technology, would a modern film studio be happy with something as basic as these?

(My favourite thing is the refusal in lots of his work to go straight, the refusal to have right angles or to line things up. He operates two foot to the left...)

Bitzenbobs (being six 14-liners)

From the John Kinsella book I got on Sunday:

the insulation of the new york sonnet by John Kinsella
(for Noel Sheridan)

I don't know if there's such a thing
as the new york sonnet, and I can't find
out until I get my copy of Denby back
from a guy who shot through to Carnarvon
at short notice. It's not likely that
tracking stations, bananas, racism, and
the Gascoyne River are going to yield
a response, but Denby, to whom you handed
a cup of tears some years ago in a film
that was rumoured to be a sonnet in itself,
holds the answer, not so much in the dance
of language, but in his collecting insulators
from the tops of power pylons and giving them
as tokens of gratitude to his closest friends.

***

From a book I got signed in Delhi:

When I went over to the other side by Nitoo Das

I think it was you
I saw crouching behind
that leaky amaltas tree.

You were doubled
over with want
and never saw me

dribble my love onto your face.

You just swayed
and flailed, ignored my nipple-
clamps, my elk-cracker kisses

and smelt the bristly
yellow of hawks

aching
in the dark.

***

From my recently acquired book of nonsense verse:

Sonnet Found in a Deserted Mad-House by Anon

Oh that my soul a marrow-bone might seize!
For the old egg of my desire is broken,
Spilled is the pearly white and spilled the yolk, and
As the mild melancholy contents grease
My path the shorn lamb baas like bumblebees.
Time's trashy purse is a taken token
Or like a thrilling recitation, spoken
By mournfu; mouths filled full of mirth and cheese.

And yet, why should I clasp the earthen urn?
Or find the frittered fig that felt the fast?
Or choose to chase the cheese around the urn?
Or swallow any pill from out the past?
Ah, no Love, not while your hot kisses burn
Like a potato riding on the blast.

***

From Adrian Mitchell's Heart on the Left - Poems 1953-1984:

The Institution by Adrian Mitchell

The crazy talkers in my head
Steal lights and moments when they can;
Beat at the windows to be fed
Or listen to the sounds of rain.
They stroll, they shout at passing Man,
And in extremes they form a a plan
To drown at night, or catch a train.

Simple as glass, they wander through
The colours of my twenty years
Singing and whispering the true
And false of all my private cares;
Inflated songs that shrink to fears.
My chest is thick, so no one hears
The lovely mute who kicks and tears...

***

From Edwin Morgan's Sonnets from Scotland:

On Jupiter by Edwin Morgan

Scotland was found on Jupiter. That's true.
We lost all track of time, but there it was.
No one told us its origins, its cause.
A simulacrum, a dissolving view?
It seemed as solid as a terrier
shaking itself dry from a brisk black swim
in the reservoir of Jupiter's grim
crimson trustless eye. No soul-ferrier
guarded the swampy waves. Any gods there,
if they had made the ting in play, were gone,
and if the land had launched its life out
among the echoes of inhuman air,
its launchers were asleep, or had withdrawn,
throwing their stick into a sea of doubt.

***

From Rebecca Elson's A Responsibility to Awe:

Telescopes by Rebecca Elson

Those few brave pilgrims
Standing white robed
At the edge
Of earth and sky
On their mountain
In the thin, dry air,
For all their altitude
No nearer, really, the stars.

But hopeful
And so patient,
High above the traffic
Of the lowlands, tracking
The minutiae if the Universe
Attentive to a different light.

Something noisy to waken up the neighbours...

It's in two parts because it's so long. I got judged for this last week. In the office, Gordon and I were discussing long songs. I said I'd come up with a list of songs I like that are over 10 minutes long. No, wait... I said. There should be 11 - because it's more than 10.

I made that list, took it in, he took it home to his children. Oh, they apparently said. He likes Mogwai.

I lost all credibility in their eyes.





PS for those interested... Here are my 11 songs with timings.

Fela Kuti - Gentleman - 14:41
Yo La Tengo - Night Falls on Hoboken - 17:40
Franco & OK Jazz - Mario - 14:20
Dexy's Midnight Runners - This is What She's Like - 12:22
Isaac Hayes - Walk on By - 12:03
Television - Marquee Moon - 10:39
Sigur Ros - Viðrar vel til loftárása - 10:11
Stereolab - Jenny Ondioline - 18:08
Spiritualized - Cop Shoot Cop - 17:11
Tom Waits - Sins of My Father - 10:35
Mogwai - Mogwai Fear Satan - 16:19

Ridiculous

I stole a view of this from Nit's on facebook...

This is the most ludicrous piece of cinema I've seen in a long time. And it's great. :)

Some very old poems for Rachel

I recently got Pure Pagan: seven centuries of Greek poems and fragments. Translated by Burton Raffel. They're all from BC.

Here are a few:

Lover's Dialogue by Anon

He: Hello, pretty one.
She: Hello.
He: Who walks ahead of you?
She: None of your business.
He: But I have business in mind.
She: My mistress.
He: Is there any hope?
She: For what?
He: One night.
She: How much can you pay her?
He: Gold.
She: There's hope.
He: Here's what I have.
She: That's all? Forget it. She charges more for hope.



Grouse by Callimachus

I hate poems that go on and on and on.
I hate roads where everyone walks.
I loathe wandering lovers,
nor will I drink from just any well.
I detest everything common.
Oh, you're handsome, Lysus, you're very handsome.
But even as Echo says it again, I hear:
"He belongs to someone else."


Old Age by Menecrates

We all pray for it
Before it comes,
Then blame it
When it arrives.
Old age is a debt
We like to be owed,
Not one we like to collect.


A Girl's Speech by Philodemus

You moan, miserable. You gawk,
You're jealous, you kiss me, you paw me.
How loverlike. And then I say: "I'm here!"
And you flop like a fish instead of a lover.


Try Singing by Alkman

For feasts
For feasting
For eating with men
Try singing as you eat.

Girl with a frog hooded jacket + Book buy

Yesterday, I wentclimbed halfway up Ben Ledi with Rhoda. Why halfway? Because the clouds were low, we could see no summit, the path was disappearing into the mist and rain. It's not a big hill, the path's ok and not steep. No problem making it to the top.

But there's no joy in getting to a summit and not seeing anything, I said.

Eventually she said: Ok, Ok, let's get a sticky bun in Callander.

On the way down we met a group of 3 women and one girl aged about 8 coming up. She had a rock.

I'm looking for somewhere to hide my rock, she said very confidently. She wanted to keep it and take it home, but was advised not to carry it up the hill. She thought someone might steal it.

The person presumed to be her mother smiled a hello at us.

The best place, I said, to hide something is in the open - in full view. Then people won't think it's valuable.

She thought about this with head to one side, then nodded.

You could keep it on this big rock here, I said, pointing at a large boulder by the path. She put it right in the middle.

Thank you very much for your help! she shouted at us from 4 foot away.

We all said goodbye and they went up to the clouds and we went down to the wet carpark.

***

In a tatty "antiques" shop in Callendar I got a Bloodaxe book for £1: John Kinsella, Poems 1980-1994.

Never knowingly read anything by him. This isn't the picture on the back, but it's similar. He smiles a lot, it seems.



And I've leafed through, but not read much.

Man in a Shed

YouTube recommendation for today.



This was the first Nick Drake song I ever learned to play on the guitar... I prefer this version to the final album version.

P.S. For those who may not believe it (some don't) this was recorded live with just Nick accompanying himself on guitar i.e. there is only one guitar playing. Some folk insist there are two - likewise with this song. Only one guitar, honest!