tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1165742517886653272024-02-21T14:28:21.266+00:00sonic lipstickPoetry and other Observations
recollected in Relative TranquillityUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger133125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-116574251788665327.post-1705978631598832362017-08-03T17:35:00.000+01:002017-08-03T17:40:18.117+01:00What I've been up to<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Oh dear! It seems to be five years since I last blogged. Forgive me, reader. I think I got too busy with my job. Lecturing isn't what it used to be in terms of thinking and writing time. Where I was, there was a heavy emphasis on teaching and admin. This emphasis got heavier and heavier until I started to suffocate. So about a year ago I left. I miss colleagues and students, but not the overall set-up.<br />
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However, leaving a permanent job is not the most practical approach to living. I know that. 'How brave,' said someone I was chatting to at the end of a book launch (not mine) last year. But it wasn't particularly brave. I hope it wasn't foolhardy either of course. After nearly ten years lecturing at that particular institution I felt strongly that it was time to move on. So I took a sort of leap. But also, I didn't really think I had much choice in the matter. I wasn't happy and the position - well, let's just say it was far from secure. In addition, one only has so much time and I really do want to do more writing. Have to, it feels like.<br />
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Ironically, I ended up taking on so much hourly-paid teaching at three (yes three!) different universities that I was just as run off my feet with lecture-writing, marking and admin as I had been before. Talk about replicating one's familiar prison. Not that I didn't enjoy all the work I did. I learned a lot, filling in the gaps in my knowledge in certain literary periods, and also revisiting texts and times with a fresh group of students. I'm hoping the coming year will be a little more in balance as I concentrate on online teaching with an emphasis on creative writing and poetry in particular (though not exclusively). Specialising at last...<br />
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Anyhow. It's that time of year where there's a sort of lull between academic semesters, and, for me, really the first time in ten years that, not having a faculty post, I'm relatively free of urgent paperwork and rolling meetings. I have other commitments and concerns, but at least work-wise I'm resting and clearing my head a bit. The money's a bit of a worry - but it's worth it just for once.<br />
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I'm taking stock a little bit. Last calendar year, strangely, was all about fiction. I actually have not one, but two novels on the go. Seriously. One's historically-based. A longish draft is finished but it needs much structural revision. You can read some associated work here at the wonderful <a href="http://dappledthings.org/11160/a-sisters-story/">Dappled Things </a>magazine. The second's very different - a sort of satirical crime fiction. I was having enormous fun with it before I started all my various teaching contracts. I'm about a third through but know where it's going, I think. It's always easier to start these projects than finish them of course. But I plan to give them both a good push for the rest of the year.<br />
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I've also slipped back into poetry quite seriously this calendar year so far. It was partly because I didn't have a lot of time in January but wanted to commit to writing something every day (ish) so ended up writing a few lines of poetry every night before falling asleep. It got into a bit of a habit. And some poems seemed to write themselves, which is always a good sign. A new collection is out there waiting for a response - I won't say any more at present. I feel pleased to have got something 'shipped' as the terminology goes.<br />
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Finally I've been experimenting with book creation myself. My last poetry collection, <i>Ink's Wish</i>, sold out in its original Gatehouse edition - this is the collection inspired by Margery Kempe, who I was writing about here a few years ago! So (with Gatehouse's blessing) I've created my own <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07454K6SL/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_x_0dNCzbAHNHGEP#reader_B07454K6SL">ebook version</a>. Then, rather enjoying myself, I made my out-of-print 2003 Stride collection <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lady-Chapel-Poems-Sarah-Law-ebook/dp/B074B9LFFZ/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1501776993&sr=1-1"><i>The Lady Chapel</i> </a>available too. Out for a run the other day I thought I might even put the two together as a double collection - <i>Lady Ink</i>?<br />
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It was interesting typing up and formatting <i>The Lady Chapel</i> especially. I
feel that I am a different person and a different poet now, definitely. But some threads of style and theme are the same. There were lots of poems I was
itching to edit, but I stopped at a few punctuation changes. The poems are what
they are, and I still think they breathe together as a project in their own way.<br />
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I'm not sure it's the done thing culturally for poets to re-publish their own past collections (legally I'm good - I have the copyright for both and neither are published elsewhere any more). Not sure I care though. They're out there, and in a strange way dusting them down and re-launching them via Kindle makes them feel finished all over again, leaving me with a clean slate for further poetry - and that's a good feeling. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-116574251788665327.post-57131176570733126582012-03-24T19:14:00.000+00:002012-03-25T19:24:34.024+01:00Iris Murdoch and Yellow Snails<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Back late from another extremely long day at Stirling for
the Book Cultures, Book Events Cultures. Today we were hearing papers presented
in the <a href="http://dementia.stir.ac.uk/aboutus_irismbuilding">Iris Murdoch Building</a> home of the Dementiant Centre. A monochrome
photograph of Iris Murdoch is framed above the foyer of this building which
sustains a strange kind of balance between the cheerful and the poignant.
Obviously used frequently by groups of the elderly and particularly those
dealing with Alzheimer’s or other dementias, rooms were clearly signed with pictures
and colours – bright yellow toilet doors an example of this. Rooms were set out
for professional or academic conferences while signed with pictures of multiple
chairs and the moniker ‘room’. Colour photos, blown up to picture frame size,
of the elderly, adorn the short hallway. The people photographed appear happy
enough, many obviously enjoying human company and the small gestures of help
such as a touch on the arm or a proffered cup of tea. Here we all gathered for
coffee and sandwiches during lunch and the swift breaks between academic
panels. Beyond the glass panels of the room was an attractive terraced garden
with the most beautiful, though foggy today, view of the surrounding hills and
trees. I took a stroll around and saw a fish pond mosaic inlaid into the
stonework, and then, as though escaped from a nearby children’s playground, a
large yellow snail, and a little further along, a big blue frog. I suppose the
garden is used and enjoyed by the dementia patients and their relatives and
carers. I pondered on how such a space does indeed echo the bright features of
a playground, but with the quiet aura of a settled elderly person rather than
the hectic discoveries of the young. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Some wonderful papers today. Most of the salient points are
already out in the twittersphere as I saw several fierce tweeters at constant
work throughout the panels – indeed I was sitting next to one @pressfuturist –
my friend A. He’s changed too – never used to be such a prolific tweeter,
although always very cyber-savvy. I’ve got lots of notes on most of the papers
so may be blogging reflectively (how old fashioned) from the train tomorrow. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">For now, as a contrast to the peace of the Iris Murdoch
Building's Terrace garden, a delightfully apocalyptic quotation from an excellent
paper given by PhD candidate Rebecca Bowd on the history of book auctions in
eighteenth century Leeds. In the 1690s Ralph Thoresby kept a diary recounting
some of his visits to an early Leeds book auction (the first ever book auction
in England took place in London in 1676). ‘...rest of day at the auction, where
in the evening had like to have been a dismal conclusion, but for the watchful
providence of a merciful Saviour...the main beam breaking, gave so terrible a
thunder-like crack, and the floor yielding below their feet, the people set up
such a hideous noise, apprehending the fall of the whole house, at least the
sinking of the room...’ Luckily Thoresby was able to escape intact and help one
or two others as well. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Reading and
browsing were clearly risky activities in those days.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">We end the day being whisked swiftly from the Iris Murdoch
Building to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.thejunkrooms.co.uk/">The Junk Rooms</a></i>, a restaurant with a great atmosphere and food but rather slower
service. It actually had something of the atmosphere of an old fashioned or
second-hand bookstore itself with shelves of random volumes which provided good
starting points for conversations – or indeed, useful objects to allow a pause
from such conversations. While waiting for starter and mains and feeling increasingly
faint with fatigue and hunger I was being asked by delegate S about my
postgraduate work (so long ago I could barely remember the names of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>novels I’d studied with such close attention
in the British Museum/ British Library reading room (as it then was), but found
myself recommending Natalie Goldberg’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Writing
Down the Bones</i>, a classic of writing-practice-as-meditation, and then, as
the conversation moved on to gender and spirituality, Julian of Norwich’s
Revelations – of course the first woman to write a book in English. ‘All Shall
Be Well,’ I explain. S duly notes this in her notebook and smiles (we are all
still half in conference mode). I feel suddenly emotional but don’t really know
why; the day has gone perfectly well already and I am in good company. Perhaps
it was this message of spiritual comfort that could have gone out to those at
the collapsing book auction room in 1793, and should touch those in the
antechambers of mental confusion, so very different from the clarity of insight
and vision among this weekend’s conference delegates.<o:p></o:p></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-116574251788665327.post-25211808655826286792012-03-23T23:00:00.000+00:002012-03-25T19:15:28.588+01:00Book Cultures<div class="PadderBetweenControlandBody" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 6pt;">
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The end of a very long but fascinating day of the ‘Book
Cultures, Book Events’ conference. I’ve just returned extremely replete from
the first of our conference dinners, which comprised three courses and a finale
of ‘coffee and tablet’ – a description which caused much amusement among our
table, but of course the ‘tablet’ in this context wasn’t a nurofen but a
Scottish speciality which seemed to be mainly sugar with perhaps a malty sort
of butter holding it all together. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I’m in a hotel a little walk away from the conference; a
location I quite like as I can sometimes find such gatherings a little
claustrophobic. Having said that, everyone has been very friendly – especially
one of the organisers who helped me out enormously when I arrived early
desperate to find a pc with powerpoint and an internet connection. The campus
of Stirling reminded me of UEA – lots of green, a beautiful looking lake,
bunnies (!) and buildings with all the usual campus services within walking
distances from each other.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The conference itself has been interesting and thought
provoking so far, in equal measure: how do book events reflect the anxieties
and expectations of social groups and regional communities; how does a book
become a symbolic token of belonging; how does a book spoken aloud forge
connections between strangers; how does a book event look and act when removed
from institutional location and tied in instead to mass media and celebrity
culture? More on individual papers and thoughts in due course – suffice it to
say I took plenty of notes – in a rather nice Paperchase A5 notebook complete
with dividers and plastic pockets, which I now feel a need to fill. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I gave my own presentation today; the last of the final
session before drinks reception and dinner. I hope it went ok: sometimes it’s
hard to tell when you’re standing at the lectern and feeling that odd
time-delay from the sound and gestures of your own performance. Anyway I talked
about locations of encounter with the poetic text, the challenges and aims of
The Facility (London Met’s Centre for Creative Practice as Research) and the
example of our Human Folly event, which allowed us to juxtapose the wonderfully
crafted and culturally engaged collection from guest speaker Andy Brown, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Fool and The Physician</i>, with the
raw, recursive loophole of a documentary about Leah Thorn’s prison inmate
beginner poets. I talked about both poetic ‘texts’ being in the public domain
(one as a book, the other as performed fragments of Susan’s documentary) and
both being examples of work from a ‘restricted field’ (Andy Brown’s in the
sense of Bourdieu’s restricted field principally of highly educated and
creative peers, Leah’s prison poets literally restricted as to their
whereabouts yet holding each group member in peer esteem) and celebrated the
fact that at least for this one night of Human Folly, Leah’s prison inmates
could enter the Academy with their work, courtesy of Susan’s film.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">So tempting to have a drink after all this – wine flowing
freely at the reception, just as it was freely on offer during my indulgently
first-class London-Stirling train journey yesterday. Still, I have managed to
resist. I browsed all the campus shops earlier on and treated myself to some
new multivitamins with Q10 and ginseng – would my twenty-year old self even <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">want</i> to recognise me? Browsing in the
book shop I spotted a new book ‘why we run’ which explores the psychological
aspects of extreme running – and I mean extreme – the author regularly runs
ultras (double the length of a ‘normal’ marathon) and more. Now I am not that
extreme, nor am I ever likely to be. Yet, I did find myself calculating whether
I could possibly get a run in tomorrow, and whether there was a runnable path
round the campus loch which might be worth an early morning circuit...<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>‘Hmmm... You’ve changed,’ commented long term
friend A, also presenting here, when I voiced this idea. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Well, if not running, then perhaps skating. Not in the sense
of the weather taking a freezing turn for the worse; far from it, temperatures
are moderate and the air is light and bright. But looking through my copy of Andy’s
book I came across the wonderful unrhyming sonnet, ‘Clown School’ in which one of
the lessons to learn is ‘to think of yourself as something you could skate on’.
This is just a marvellous line – like a zen koan, I almost grasp its meaning
and then it slides away again. Perhaps not to be too precious over oneself and
one’s aims; to be unafraid to improvise, to skid, to skim, to be dizzy, to get
into flow. But is the presumably frozen surface of the self indicative of a
fragile state of the self? At any rate, one is still encouraged to launch out
and skate. Good advice for creative thinkers, writers, conference goers, and
those about to sleep after long packed days, and dream.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-116574251788665327.post-80045662244490647862012-01-22T09:30:00.000+00:002012-01-22T09:30:32.376+00:00Book Cultures, Book EventsExcited to find my proposal for a paper/ presentation at <a href="http://www.publishing.stir.ac.uk/2011/10/23/book-cultures-book-events-conference">this conference</a> to be held at Stirling University has been accepted! Now to think about when I'm going to write it, given the conference is in March and I start lecturing again in two weeks time...<br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> Facilitating Creative Practice within the Academy</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">My paper explores the role of creative writing as research,
performance and production within the remit of a multi-disciplinary centre for creative
research and creative practice, </span><a href="http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/thefacility/home.cfm"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The Facility</span></a><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">, at
London Metropolitan University. I will present the recent history of The
Facility and take as case studies two events held this year with literature
and/or the book as key component: the Facility Re-Launch (September 2011) and
the Human Folly event (February 2012).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Initially launched as a centre for practice-based research
in the performing arts, The Facility hosted a number of events and seminars in
which the role of practice-based research within the academy was discussed. Focus
was given to the embodied arts such as dance and drama. However, shifts in
thinking and in the University’s structuring in 2010-11 encouraged the Facility
to widen its core remit to include visual and text based creative practice. As
a published poet and <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Senior Lecturer in
Creative Writing and English Literature, I was co-opted onto the steering
committee in Septembet 2011, together with film-making academic Anne Robinson
and original coordinator, dramatist Lucy Richardson. Our new mission is stated
thus:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;">‘The Facility<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i></b>hopes
to inspire, develop, investigate, support, fund, challenge, facilitate and
archive the practice based/practice as research work developed at London Met,
in its locale, nationally and internationally… It<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i></b>will support the
practice as research work which is already happening within the university and
attract and facilitate new work.’</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">And our principle aim, as well as establishing London Met
as a centre for creative excellence, to ‘</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;">develop opportunities in which creative practitioners working in
performance, image, text, sound, object and space may engage in productive
dialogue, exchange ideas and work collaboratively on practice-led research projects’.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;">I will explore how,
in the current academic year, these stated aims have allowed poetry, prose, and
the promotion of new books (as in our guest speaker poet Andy Brown, presenting
his new collection <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Fool and The
Physician</i> this February) to become an integral part of creative research
within the academy, and how location- and time-specific moments of sharing
within the academic community (and interested others) are important not only to
launch a new book as product, but to stimulate cross-disciplinary discussion
over how creativity itself is research-worthy in terms of Higher Education’s
remit (and funding). I hope to show how the production of new and valuable
cultural capital is best facilitated by moments that combine both the ‘present’
of live utterance and the future stability of the published word.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-116574251788665327.post-90387455581036662152012-01-20T21:35:00.000+00:002012-01-20T21:35:05.215+00:00Human Folly at London Met<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfphuJbslMvB-hN05zfxEt2p1l7qc5dLgHhl64ZHAEqxj-MtdN7VUfX0iJdL4FtGEWzUpq9OBMoYmWQPHyq32LBEfV3V5YYCWYY5mCy6zL95bKgaYdvTw1N3h36G7xr4PvNbxbY5uaFFEH/s1600/human+folly+web+image.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="224" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfphuJbslMvB-hN05zfxEt2p1l7qc5dLgHhl64ZHAEqxj-MtdN7VUfX0iJdL4FtGEWzUpq9OBMoYmWQPHyq32LBEfV3V5YYCWYY5mCy6zL95bKgaYdvTw1N3h36G7xr4PvNbxbY5uaFFEH/s320/human+folly+web+image.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-GB</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:EnableOpenTypeKerning/> <w:DontFlipMirrorIndents/> <w:OverrideTableStyleHps/> <w:UseFELayout/> </w:Compatibility> <w:DoNotOptimizeForBrowser/> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/> <m:smallFrac m:val="off"/> <m:dispDef/> <m:lMargin m:val="0"/> <m:rMargin m:val="0"/> <m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/> <m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/> <m:intLim m:val="subSup"/> <m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/> </m:mathPr></w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<div class="MsoNormal">Space Poet has returned to her blog!</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Welcome (back) world. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Let me begin by drawing your attention to a forthcoming event organised by <a href="http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/thefacility/home.cfm">The Facility</a>, London Met’s excellent centre for creative practice as research. I’m on the steering committee now and am really looking forward to this evening. It’s free to attend and the readers and presenters are all excellent, not least our guest poet Andy Brown who will be talking about his new collection <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Fool and the Physician</i>.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I must stress that the title of this blog entry and of the forthcoming event has nothing to do with recent grim announcements concerning redundancies. Although of course one’s mind can all too easily stray towards such unintended allusions. I take no responsibility for that. The event itself will hopefully take our minds off such matters.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-116574251788665327.post-90600503790985990632010-08-23T19:03:00.001+01:002010-08-23T19:07:11.975+01:00Anthology<span class="me">Dictionary.com's definition of anthology</span>: <br />
<div class="body">1630s, from L. <span class="foreign">anthologia</span>, from Gk. <span class="foreign">anthologia</span> "flower-gathering," from <span class="foreign">anthos</span> "a flower" (anther) + <span class="foreign">logia</span> "collection, collecting," from <span class="foreign">legein</span> "gather". Modern sense (which emerged in Late Gk.) is metaphoric, "flowers" of verse, small poems by various writers gathered together.</div><div class="body"></div><div class="body">Students often get confused by the difference between single-author poetry collections and often more substantial anthologies of contemporary poetry. But 'small poems by various writers gathered together' has a certain resonance to it. It reminds me, in its cadence and final word, of Johnson's definition of metaphysical poetry as 'heterogenous ideas...yoked by violence together'. One expects both variety and a certain amount of surprise and discovery. Why small poems though? I suppose the dominance of the lyric poem is still an established fact in contemporary English language poetry, and has been for the last hundred years or so (still there are plenty of long poems and sequences to challenge this generalisation). Look through the <i>Norton Anthology of Poetry</i> to find plenty of long poems by the many poets writing pre-twentieth century. </div><div class="body"><br />
</div><div class="body">A reader new to poetry might think that there will automatically be a good variety in anthologies. But it's been interesting reviewing US and UK twentieth century 'gatherings', which is when the importance of the anthology really took precedent. No anthology is without its bias, even if it's the general lyric outlook of Palgrave's <i>Golden Treasury</i> which arguably started the vogue for anthologies towards the end of the nineteenth century. On into the twentieth century traditional Georgian and modernist Imagist anthologies vied for supremacy, with (as far as I know) only D. H. Lawrence getting published in both camps. After the Second World War Robert Conquest's edited <i>New Lines</i>, presenting the 'Movement' poets with their formal conservatism and deliberate turning away from visionary oratory (that was the realm of the 'New Apocalypse' of the forties, inspired by Dylan Thomas and others). Then A. Alvarez published <i>The New Poetry</i> twice - the second time foregrounding Plath, who had recently committed suicide. Alvarez was much more interested in potential, innovation, and the influence of the US poets. And so the story goes. </div><div class="body"><br />
</div><div class="body">Peter Childs has quite a useful summary (more detailed than the above) in his introductory section of <i>The Twentieth Century in Poetry</i>. He goes up to the Bloodaxe volume also named <i>The New Poetry</i>, edited by Michael Hulse, David Kennedy and David Morley and claims it to be 'curiously homogenising in its introductory remarks, claiming a new cohesiveness and the end of 'British poetry's tribal divisions'. I remember this anthology's publication; I guess it was the first one I bought as a 'gathering' of 'contemporary poetry'; for interest and creative investment rather than study. I remember sitting reading it in a Cambridge cafe and being quite excited to witness what felt like a poetic 'moment' of significance. I suppose that's what the publication of a substantial anthology does feel like. </div><div class="body"><br />
</div><div class="body">Childs concludes his survey by remarking that 'the clearest message...should be that anthologists have reacted against each other - that each widely accepted and adopted collection...has sought to challenge the view of poetry advocated by a previous editor.' Interestingly, 'New' remains the most common adjective in poetry anthologies, while 'influential twentieth-century anthologies have generally been those that choose a small selection of emergent poets and argue that they constitute a new generation or a shift in poetic sensibility' .</div><div class="body"><br />
</div><div class="body">Perhaps two shifts could be noted in the early anthologies of the twenty-first century. But perhaps not - it's too early to tell, really. But it seems that the interest in and usefulness of the focused anthology is still strong: I'm interested in women poets so it's been great to have Deryn Rees-Jones' Bloodaxe anthology <i>Modern Women Poets</i> and even more interesting to have the contemporary take on modern experimental women writers in Carrie Etter's <i>Infinite Difference: Other Poetries by UK Women Poets</i>. In fact I'm really looking forward to the <a href="http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/find/literature-spoken-word/tickets/what-every-woman-would-carry-womens-poetry-anthologies-54125">discussion</a> at the South Bank Centre on women's poetry anthologies on September 1st next week. </div><div class="body"><br />
</div><div class="body">But secondly, heralded possibly by the 1993 <i>New Poetry</i> claim to an end to tribal division, there is an interest less in spearheading a new movement or poetic grouping, more a sense of connections to be made within diversity. I know I'm hopping continents here, but I picked up a new Norton anthology in City Lights when we were in San Francisco last month: <i>American Hybrid: A Norton Anthology of New Poetry</i> where, as well as some lengthy representations of fantastic poets, there is a great emphasis on connection and (of course) hybridity rather than division, particularly the old binary division between traditional and experimental. Cole Swenson defines this new connectivity between old divisions as 'lines of pursuit that operate in a rhizomatic rather than arboreal fashion, leading ever outward':</div><div class="body"><br />
</div><div class="body"><br />
'The rhizome is an appropriate model, not only for new Internet publications but for the current world of contemporary poetry as a whole. The two-camp model, with its parallel hierarchies, is increasingly giving way to a more laterally ordered network composed of nodes that branch outward toward smaller nodes, which themselves branch outward in an intricate and ever-changing structure of exchange and influence. Some nodes may be extremely experimental, and some extremely conservative, but many of them are true intersections of these extremes, so that the previous adjectives - well-made, decorous, traditional, formal, and refined, as well as spontaneous, immediate, bardic, irrational, translogical, open-ended, and ambiguous - all still apply, but in new combinations.' (Cole Swenson's introduction)</div><div class="body"><br />
</div><div class="body">This sounds rather wonderful. Swenson cites multiculturalism, gender equality, and new technologies as all helping to develop this new sort of poetic connection. Again I think it is too early to tell whether this really is a shift towards generosity of readership and poetic community or some kind of new grouping, after all. </div><div class="body"><br />
</div><div class="body">Back in the UK, <i>Identity Parade</i> is a substantial anthology published by Bloodaxe this year. It really is substantial: 84 poets, and 'probably for the first time in any major poetry anthology, more women writers than men are featured'. I'm in it and absolutely delighted to be so. Of course many good poets who could be in it aren't, and there have been points of contention over some of the stipulated 'criteria'; but, ultimately editor Roddy Lumsden had to make his choices. His lucid and practical introduction (he discusses his own processes of choosing poets for the anthology) is quite humble in comparison with other anthology intros which serve more manifesto-like purposes. Lumsden presents 'the pluralist now' and is less concerned than Swenson to find optimistic lateral connections in the contemporary media age. Indeed, he is disinclined to find connections: </div><div class="body"><br />
</div><div class="body">'The predominant social and cultural phenomena of the 1990s and 2000s have been diversity and information overload. We no longer watch the same handful of television channels, hear the same limited news, listen to the same clutch of bands, visit predictable tourist destinations; in our trouser pockets, most of us carry the colossal almanac that is the internet... though critics and academics will seek - and find - traits and trends in the larger bodies of work represented here, this might well be the generation of poets least driven by movements, fashions, conceptual and stylistic sharing.' (Lumsden's introduction to <i>Identity Parade</i>)</div><div class="body"></div><div class="body">Time will tell; a combination of both Swenson and Lumsden might be the best way to preface the contemporary poetry world. Is it a world, a forest, a matrix (a hall of mirrors?) : impossible to be honestly definitive of one's own time, but very much possible to engage with and enjoy it, however necessarily incomplete that engagement might be, however much of a work in progress. </div><div class="body"><br />
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</div><div class="body"></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-116574251788665327.post-39643682021544816412010-08-22T18:23:00.007+01:002010-08-23T14:22:10.641+01:00Margery's MirrorKeeping up with my reading. I'm on Clarissa Atkinson's<i> Mystic and Pilgrim: The Book and the World of Margery Kempe</i>. The introduction is particularly interesting as I'm still lecturing on the Autobiography module at work and always on the look out for new insights. Atkinson, rightly noticing that Margery Kempe by some measures at least wrote (well, dictated) the first autobiography in the English language, makes a connection between the development of this genre and the introduction of 'accurate' silver-backed mirrors into society, enabling the recognition of an individual self and thus the ability to speak and write about the individual, albeit in the language of medieval alterity, the language of medieval religion and spirituality. Atkinson actually quotes another critic, Georges Gusdorf:<br />
<br />
'Literary historians and critics vary widely in their opinions as to when and under what circumstances "real" autobiography first appeared. Georges Gusdorf ties its beginnings to the invention of the mirror, which he says "would seem to have disrupted human experience, especially from that moment when the mediocre metal plates that were used in antiquity gave way at the end of the Middle Ages to silver-backed mirrors produced by Venetian technique. From that moment, the image in the mirror became a part of the scene of life..." The mirror image complemented Renaissance anthropology, stimulated the new art of self-portrait, and permitted people to see themselves as unique beings. In relation to autobiography it worked, on the one hand, to revitalize the Christian tradition of confession...and on the other hand, by stimulating attention to the individual, the mirror image helped to turn autobiographers away from the "deforming" theological image in which every subject is first a creature - and a sinner. The medieval world view had to break down before "man could have any interest in seeing himself as he is without any taint of the transcendent" '<br />
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Of course as Atkinson points out, Margery's book is very much concerned with the idea that its subject is a 'creature' and one significantly tainted first with mental distress and breakdown, and subsequently with the transcendent. 'Most critics assign the beginnings of 'real' autobiography to a date later than the end of the Middle Ages,' she comments. Yet perhaps the fifteenth-century <i>Book of Margery Kempe</i> does mark a significant transitional state when the sense of an individual reflected through language and text begins to emerge. Furthermore Margery sees herself as 'ordained to be a mirror'; boldly and uncomfortably pointing out the faults of her contemporaries and fellow pilgrims. She is also, because of the diverse interpretive communities and developing readership of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, something of a mirror to us, reflecting our own interests and ways of reading. She is not the first mystic to use the imagery of mirrors - the early fourteenth-century 'Mirror of Simple Souls' is a particularly interesting earlier text, particularly because it was initially condemned as heretical before being 'adopted' as a legitimate treatise of spiritual guidance. But still - the time and trends in Margery's book are unique and perhaps even mark the beginnings of a cultural 'mirror stage', the psychoanalytical term for the beginnings of the sense of a complete individual self (Lacan places it at about age two) and at the same time a sense of separation, even alienation, from self and others. <br />
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It would be fascinating, as I was discussing with a colleague in the pub a couple of nights ago, to read a cultural history of mirrors. I wonder if such a text is available but I don't know of it? Would there be gender implications of mirror use as well as social and generational ones (almost certainly)? Silver and exact, as Plath writes in her mirror poem, the mirror would make a compelling and still relevant focus for all sorts of psychological, spiritual and cultural concerns.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-116574251788665327.post-35118239248737758752010-08-16T22:35:00.000+01:002010-08-16T22:35:35.287+01:00Nemerov, a poet of Margery KempeI've been wondering whether any modern poets have tackled Margery Kempe. Plenty of poems have been written about Julian; she seems to inspire quite a few meditations in the genre, many of which are beautiful and some quite linguistically challenging too. <i>Literature and Theology</i> magazine are (fingers crossed) publishing an extended article of my conference paper from last year on this topic. But Margery - could her agitated witness prompt the measured lines of formal or accessible poetry?<br />
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I was pleased to track down <a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=4968">Howard Nemerov</a>'s poem 'A Poem of Margery Kempe' today. I found a reference to it towards the end of Mitchell's book, where she notes that 'In the thirty-two short lines of the poem, the self-consciousness of Kempe is emphasised through eleven uses of the pronoun 'I', and twelve occurrences of 'me' or 'my'. And so it does - plus the repeated refrain, 'Alas! that ever I did sin,/ It is full merry in heaven'. These are words taken direct from Margery's text, and they're worthy of a refrain, I think: surprising, memorable, honest and uplifting. Nemerov's Kempe poem is from his second, 1947 collection, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Guide-Ruins-Howard-Nemerov/dp/B000NUSOR8?ie=UTF8&tag=soniclipstick-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">Guide to the Ruins</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=soniclipstick-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=B000NUSOR8" style="border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important; padding: 0px ! important;" width="1" />, which critic Milton Crane says "is the work of an original and sensitive mind, alive to the thousand anxieties and agonies of our age." Kempe's voice in the poem, a sort of dramatic monologue without an immediate interlocutor, is certainly strong, yet intensely troubled too, vulnerable to self-fracturing:<br />
<br />
I creature being mad<br />
They locked me in my room<br />
Where, bound upon the bed<br />
With smiling Satan there<br />
I would have broke my side<br />
And given my heart to God.<br />
Men said it was pride<br />
Brought me to that despair.<br />
<br />
<i>Alas! That ever I did sin,</i><br />
<i>It is full merry in heaven </i><br />
<br />
<br />
The poem is simply written but formally, if discretely, contained, as was Nemerov's style, certainly in this volume. There is a sort of mimicking of the simplicity of medieval devotional verse too. The refrain is a ray of something - I was going to write unruliness, but that's not quite right - of persistent joy and simplicity despite the distress of the poem's speaking subject and perhaps also of its time of writing. 'Crying out odd and even', as the final verse ends.<br />
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Hopefully I'll track down some more Margery poems, but this one has given pause for thought. Nemerov was a substantial poet, and one about whom I know relatively little thus far. But he himself was happy to speak about the creativity afforded by relative ignorance; talking about the poetic process, "It's like a fairy tale. You're allowed to do it as long as you don't know too much about it." Nevertheless I get the feeling that the earliest published editions of Margery's book must have struck a chord, or a dischord, or a sort of melody.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-116574251788665327.post-28138652083100102592010-08-15T20:10:00.000+01:002010-08-15T20:10:48.298+01:00FountainsWhy are apparitions of the Virgin Mary so often associated with the discovery of fountains, springs, unexpected underground streams? A priest at the Anglican Shrine at Walsingham pointed this out yesterday, citing the memorable depiction of Jennifer Jones as Bernadette Soubirous, scrabbling in the dirt at Lourdes, digging for water as 'The Lady' had instructed her to, watched by a mocking and sceptical crowd. Something to do with fertility of earth and body, perhaps, and sacred, healing, magical qualities attached the springs so found. Water is traditionally a feminine element, fluid and unstructured, compared to the more predictable structures of stone and brick of which churches are usually constructed. It must indeed have been a disturbing discovery to find a spring under the foundations of the reconstructed Anglican shrine here, at the beginning of the last century. Not the sort of elemental foundations on which to form a firm church. Or perhaps, just the opposite. Anyway Walsingham is one of the very few sacred sites, especially in the UK, where you can attend and participate in a religious 'sprinkling' of Holy Water, descending down stone steps to the origin of the spring, to receive silver ladles of water, then ascending again, with a gentle fountain playing all the while outside.<br />
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Just from sheer coincidence I managed to walk out of the second-hand bookshop here with a copy of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Eleven-British-Poets-Michael-Schmidt/dp/0415039932?ie=UTF8&tag=soniclipstick-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">Eleven British Poets: An Anthology</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=soniclipstick-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=0415039932" style="border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important; padding: 0px ! important;" width="1" /> edited by Michael Schmidt in the 1980s, where the last ethos of Movement Poets sit alongside Heaney and Hughes. Elizabeth Jennings is the only woman poet. Well, perhaps not so much a coincidence, considering the lectures I'll be writing in the new academic year. But I opened the volume on Jennings' poem 'Fountain' which according to the notes, was her favourite out of her own poems. Here's the last verse:<br />
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Observe it there - the fountain, too fast for shadows,<br />
Too wild for the lights which illuminate it to hold,<br />
Even a moment, an ounce of water back;<br />
Stare at such prodigality and consider<br />
It is the elegance here, it is the taming,<br />
The keeping fast in a thousand flowering sprays,<br />
That build this energy up but lets the watchers<br />
See in that sress an image of utter calm,<br />
A stillness there. It is how we must have felt<br />
Once at the edge of some perpetual stream<br />
Fearful of touching, bringing no thirst at all,<br />
Panicked by no perception of ourselves<br />
But drawing the water down to the deepest wonder.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-116574251788665327.post-71206393892882588172010-08-13T21:57:00.002+01:002010-08-23T20:29:51.156+01:00Hope and FaithOn travels myself in a minor way this weekend as Mum and I go to <a href="http://www.walsingham.org.uk/">Walsingham</a> , 'England's Nazareth', as we generally do mid August. I've taken a couple of books with me, the first of which is Marea Mitchell's essentially cultural materialist account of <i>The Book of Margery Kempe</i>.<br />
<br />
<iframe align="left" class=" firsylfngxuaawidpfqx firsylfngxuaawidpfqx" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=soniclipstick-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=0820474517&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe> Fascinating in that Mitchell concerns herself not only with Margery and what she says (or dictates) in what is still known as the first autobiography in the English language, but also with its cultural reception and indeed how the discovery of Margery's complete text in 1934 led to the difficult and sometimes acrimonious production of the first published scholarly version of the text by Sandford Leech and his one-time mentor, Hope Emily Allen.<br />
<br />
Allen's life is clearly fascinating in itself. An American born 'Independent Scholar' and apparently a distant cousin of Evelyn Underhill, Allen's parents were for some time members of the idealistic <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oneida_Community">Oneida </a>community, and Allen possibly carried some of its collaborative, frank-speaking ethos throughout her scholarly life, despite her claim to be a 'Christian agnostic'. Without the clear categorisations, commissions and deadlines of tertiary education, it seems as though Allen was in some ways ahead of her time in blending textual research with social, historical and cultural context. She was a medieval scholar and a feminist too, and felt that Margery Kempe offered ample opportunity for her wide field of academic interests. During and after her collaboration on the initial text, she claimed to be pouring her scholarship into a second publication which would be 'the synthesis of Margery the mystic and the woman'. As Mitchell writes:<br />
<br />
It is not surprising that The Book of Margery Kempe lent itself so much to her imagination, given her belief that the Book needed both literary and historical perspective, and an understanding of the connections between the mystical and the social. In 1949 she wrote to Mabel Day of her 'wide ranging desire to make it my magnum opus - in which at least all the absorptions of my various incarnations coalesce, even though not all the methods''.<br />
<br />
Grand ambitions indeed. Alas, this volume never saw completion. Allen was a meticulous scholar as well as a wide-ranging one and perhaps never felt she had followed up enough leads, drawn all the threads together. Perhaps she lacked the necessary institutional support or, in a strange way, the confidence to complete. She had to be content with having set together many dry bones for a future researcher to flesh out into a living work. And this has still not been done. <br />
<br />
Allen was not solely a dryasdust scholar, however, despite the reproduction in Mitchell's book of a formal photographic portrait where she looks both staid and skeletal. She had a strong informal web of contacts, many of whom were women and two of whom, Joan Wake and Dorothy Ellis, were also strong independent scholars. They compared themselves to the three anchoresses to whom the thirteenth century Ancrene Riwle was addressed, but they bickered and conforted and advised each other in the way of many intense friendships between women. Does Mitchell dwell too much on the gossipy details of their volumous correspondence? Maybe; but the mixture of concerns in their letters does reflect the wide horizons of unofficial female writing of that and perhaps any time. I loved the conclusion of chapter 3, where Mitchell documents a particular evening in which Allen, Wake and some other women celebrated publication of their books by holding a bonfire of their proofs and notes. 'The image of Allen and her friends singing and dancing around the fire, celebrating their intellectual productivity, is an image to set alongside the formal presentation,' observes Mitchell. Fortunately there are no witchcraft trials these days. Anyway the stage is set for the rest of Margery's textual history in recent decades, and a strange sense of unruliness sits appropriately alongside her religious revelations.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-116574251788665327.post-33423196497168554962010-07-14T10:43:00.001+01:002010-08-05T11:05:42.264+01:00Muir WoodsWe have been in San Francisco for a couple of nights; seriously not enough time to explore the city, but enough to get a sense of its vibrancy. Today a trip away from cities and commercialism in order to see the giant redwoods in Muir woods. The light was wonderful - and at one point we saw a fawn who seemed totally unconcerned with human presence. Thanks to K who took these photos and suggested the visit in the first place.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-uRls7fUCdTi0IM_Dg-e8pfv_hWc-dXJJaoWPHNG9IAoXnILBtyBMyumzsI96WmPhfPcQLX1aGeTkcIS1QdPR3H8uO744ZAABxT9Qz7jwsqVBsCzKjyqFmjkjZRZgfbg876lDDxQgrNGH/s1600/IMGP0938.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-uRls7fUCdTi0IM_Dg-e8pfv_hWc-dXJJaoWPHNG9IAoXnILBtyBMyumzsI96WmPhfPcQLX1aGeTkcIS1QdPR3H8uO744ZAABxT9Qz7jwsqVBsCzKjyqFmjkjZRZgfbg876lDDxQgrNGH/s320/IMGP0938.JPG" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP3Zs_duQq56GoF_wuiSjh4TSar5SOuo9Yjrx38gyilGjfsozMbZ7V0ki3WB1QMR6Js5QrlvN3mcXT1yul6LA6x2Q-D7osJ2rz1eXb3TL75R3kq3lYCpujNWZ1QNAtMyy9lgN82jYuIP8C/s1600/IMGP0928.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP3Zs_duQq56GoF_wuiSjh4TSar5SOuo9Yjrx38gyilGjfsozMbZ7V0ki3WB1QMR6Js5QrlvN3mcXT1yul6LA6x2Q-D7osJ2rz1eXb3TL75R3kq3lYCpujNWZ1QNAtMyy9lgN82jYuIP8C/s320/IMGP0928.JPG" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzDOrlhRLy5TvaX0xiqjjjF5dcAy4rW3vOtwyytQZ6kRDw6hQDAxeqdyFthVKj_5_B9b_TIpv8cxiV4PJLz6trcAfjFcdmrZcTHvCs31SvHcC7S6CJP9zMCiRyDvkUWpECVuAOjVFFDXDx/s1600/IMGP0897.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzDOrlhRLy5TvaX0xiqjjjF5dcAy4rW3vOtwyytQZ6kRDw6hQDAxeqdyFthVKj_5_B9b_TIpv8cxiV4PJLz6trcAfjFcdmrZcTHvCs31SvHcC7S6CJP9zMCiRyDvkUWpECVuAOjVFFDXDx/s320/IMGP0897.JPG" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEik3Dlhwm1nyQW859XOlz66Fr6jmY2TuGP3eVJIAr8dH9E0l2jWxAoc9txMUVAceVvBWhgwCttLfWF0C-r8-9AVkyjfo_JhFXU-QGkCLDkh1G8EzKR0Cmul6VSYpl3XZCJNgdEGFo2fIK3b/s1600/IMGP0895.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEik3Dlhwm1nyQW859XOlz66Fr6jmY2TuGP3eVJIAr8dH9E0l2jWxAoc9txMUVAceVvBWhgwCttLfWF0C-r8-9AVkyjfo_JhFXU-QGkCLDkh1G8EzKR0Cmul6VSYpl3XZCJNgdEGFo2fIK3b/s320/IMGP0895.JPG" /></a></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-116574251788665327.post-68057781729281675972010-07-09T19:16:00.004+01:002010-08-03T10:49:42.181+01:00Capybaras in San Diego<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjOSxP8kcmKvxmqzK3eAQi5v8xnWTtW9Jiwiw_VVzBKqpEojr_tpquoe-P_X1tXMSXu-fHFdxceb65Xx8lKeh3jVLzYPKIAZEk7WcWQ0E0Di1GGW4f25jVEsrnVi3NBylYspuQow8Zz7J7/s1600/IMGP0858.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjOSxP8kcmKvxmqzK3eAQi5v8xnWTtW9Jiwiw_VVzBKqpEojr_tpquoe-P_X1tXMSXu-fHFdxceb65Xx8lKeh3jVLzYPKIAZEk7WcWQ0E0Di1GGW4f25jVEsrnVi3NBylYspuQow8Zz7J7/s320/IMGP0858.JPG" /></a></div><br />
Celebrated completion of the Contemporary Women Writer's Network conference by visiting San Diego Zoo; here I am reacquainting myself with the capybaras, cute and wondrous creatures rather like huge guineapigs (to my untrained eyes anyway). I am sure I made friends with a Capybara when I was young, and was allowed to get up close and stroke one at some sort of Norfolk wildlife reserve. Most children love animals and (barring big dogs of course) I was no exception. Lovely to come into their uncomplicated presence again after all the (equally wonderful but highly verbal) interaction at the conference. Inevitably one has mixed feelings about observing animals in captivity; some animals seem more confined by their cages, whether psychological or actual, than others; but at least S D zoo is very conscious of conservation and the need to protect endangered species.<br />
<br />
According to Wiki P, 'During midday, as temperatures increase, Capybaras wallow in water and graze in late afternoons and early evenings when it is cooler. They sleep little, usually dozing off and on throughout the day and grazing into and through the night'. Well I guess they were having a sleepy stage at this time on a July afternoon.<br />
<br />
<br />
From Denise Levertov's poem, 'Come into Animal Presence':<br />
<br />
What is this joy? That no animal<br />
falters, but knows what it must do?<br />
That the snake has no blemish<br />
That the rabbit inspects his strange surroundings<br />
in white star-silence? The llama<br />
rests in dignity, the armadillo<br />
has some intention to pursue in the palm-forest.<br />
Those who were sacred have remained so,<br />
holiness does not dissolve, it is a presence<br />
of bronze, only the sight that saw it<br />
faltered and turned from it.<br />
An old joy returns in holy presence.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-116574251788665327.post-63623042424624601782010-07-07T20:00:00.020+01:002010-08-03T10:01:03.245+01:00Contemporary Women Writers Network: San Diego Conference<a href="http://cwwn.sdsu.edu/">Conference</a> first day in San Diego. Excellent opening lecture by Susan Stanford Friedman which highlighted the importance of looking at the influence of religion and spirituality on contemporary women writers.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Beginning of my paper...<br />
<br />
<br />
A woman must have money and a room of her own,” declared Virginia Woolf, “if she is to write fiction”. In 1928 Woolf felt that “nobody cared a straw... for the future of fiction, the death of poetry or the development by the average woman of a prose style completely expressive of her mind.” In her famous essay she concludes that the “bluestocking with an itch for scribbling” must indeed have a room of her own, and money (“£500 a year” in 1928); earned, if and as necessary. But <i>A Room of One's Own</i> was not merely a practical strategic plan. It was a speculative enquiry as to the nature of a woman's prose writing, which, curiously, is compared to poetry: “some new vehicle for the poetry in her” ; a female prose which defies straightforward generic categorisation and runs its own non-linear course. <br />
<br />
Times have changed. And although the need for a secure location and adequate material provision are still highly advisable for the sustained composition of the lengthy (novel-length) text, opportunities for publication and self-publication are myriad. The internet has created spaces for self-expression and discussion; it has opened up an almost infinite domain for newly created texts. Today it is a laptop and a blog spot that a woman needs in order for her itch for public scribbling to be satisfied. Time itself has become a precious commodity: it is free to blog, but requires a temporal commitment. ... Do blogging and poetic composition constitute a beneficial dynamic for the woman poet: a synergy for the poetry that is in her?<br />
<br />
The classic description for a blog is (from Rebecca Blood in <i>we've got blog</i> “a frequently updated webpage with dated entries, new ones placed on top” (Blood ix). These dated entries may, suggests Blood, typically offer “daily stories, impassioned reactions, mundane details, and miscellanea”. Images (still and moving) are also important, as are links and comments. But the core criteria offered by Blood are very similar to the page-bound journal, traditionally, though not exclusively, a female domain. “Often denied a voice in the public realm and the possibility of publication, women have kept diaries in order to communicate with themselves, to explore the meaning of their lives, and to give form to their creative impulses” write Marlene Schiwy and Marion Woodman in <i>Voice of Her Own: Women and the Journal Writing Journey</i>. This is not to deny the publication of women writer's journals by Anais Nin or May Sarton, which the authors acknowledge. They compare the structure of the journal, published or private to that of a spiral. Furthermore, “every now and then – the pattern emerges and things shimmer” they conclude (308). This shimmering of an emergent literary gem is reminiscent of Virginia Woolf's own journalling practice of writing haphazardly to review later, seeking out the invaluable “diamonds of the dust heap” of the daily text, perhaps to be set later in an appropriate narrative chain. This is certainly one way to run a writers' journal. But there are additional pleasures to be derived from the reading of a whole text; an unedited writer's diary which comprises a palimpsest of micro-texts that add another dimension to the depiction of the writer herself. Sometimes it is the juxtapositions themselves which form the angle of readerly fascination. Sometimes comic, sometimes poignant, such journals can be more revealing by way of a stitched-together record than would the smooth curve of a polished biography. So we have Dorothy Wordsworth, who famously first recorded the famous flash of Wordsworthian daffodils, amongst the practicalities of her life with William. She reads Shakespeare, she shells peas. When William marries she quietly records her retreat to bed with a headache. <br />
<br />
Unless a diary is specifically created for publication, the traditional journal is a womb-like place of gestation, where ideas and literary gestures of the self may in due course emerge. But if a woman wants a room in which to write, why shouldn't that room have a window? A window is a rich resource. The dweller within looks out, is able to see, and connect with the wider world. The visitor or passer-by can look in. The window connects. But it also protects and implies the possibility of retreat. If I am looking through a window, I am not standing on the open road. If I am blogging, I have agency over the presentation of my thoughts and material and I have the opportunity for readership and communication. But I can draw the curtains whenever I wish. Quite literally, a blogger is often an individual writing in her room, the laptop screen providing a visual echo of a window onto the world and a practical window in terms of providing information and communication. Conversely, the blog site itself can become the room to which she can retreat and be with her thoughts. It is her virtual, if not her secret, room: other-dimensional.<br />
<br />
This idea of the blog site as the virtual extra room is one I first considered after listening to the podcast (edited from the 2009 Aldeburgh poetry festival) online at <a href="http://www.thepoetrytrust.org/poetry-channel/archive/">The Poetry Trust on “The Female Poem”</a>. Poet Annie Freud mentions the “secret room”: “what woman does not dream of discovering a secret room in her house?” While such a room signifies female interiority it also indicates, I believe, the ability to inhabit creatively a virtual space, relatively independent of life's other practical obligations. This essay will look, through their online windows, at the rooms which different women bloggers furnish and inhabit...<br />
<br />
The essay is currently being considered for publication so I'll stop there, but I had a great afternoon - only enhanced in excitement by an earthquake measuring 5.5 when resting afterwards in the hotel room! Still I survived for some excellent cocktails and dinner with accompanying jazz in the Gaslamp district afterwards.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-116574251788665327.post-14051889874754706102010-06-09T23:53:00.001+01:002010-06-09T23:54:39.721+01:00Correspondence at 'The Facility'<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzvZ0yH03zoDhD9JtshyqLQJ7FR0W5lIl9imXTifzjKGtPIEtavW-EFbnBWbLTOnyCK5CpMbJv0VBJFbaHUQEP7l7hyphenhyphenbIa-MKkKpsJ4EEx3MJEGlhDounpR-8UVDBkFhJHfQXFV2ZCk-Jf/s1600/Correspondence+Image1.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzvZ0yH03zoDhD9JtshyqLQJ7FR0W5lIl9imXTifzjKGtPIEtavW-EFbnBWbLTOnyCK5CpMbJv0VBJFbaHUQEP7l7hyphenhyphenbIa-MKkKpsJ4EEx3MJEGlhDounpR-8UVDBkFhJHfQXFV2ZCk-Jf/s320/Correspondence+Image1.bmp" /></a></div><br />
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<br />
Just a brief posting to say there's <a href="http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/thefacility/events/correspondence.cfm">a weekend of creative practice</a> coming up at London Met's 'Facility', the University's highly successful performing arts venue and organisation. There will be lots of site-specific and general performance, art, text and readings; I'll be doing an hour long slot of poetry reading and discussion with colleague and poet Briar Wood on the Saturday. Looking forward to that and to the private view the evening before of course! 'Weekend' comprising Friday and Saturday of 25-26th June; marking will be over and hopefully a creative summer ahead.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-116574251788665327.post-49883801553696270922010-06-09T23:29:00.001+01:002010-06-09T23:37:23.854+01:00Margery Kempe is the future!Apologies for the prolonged absence - I'm afraid work just got too much. Teaching is finished now but marking continues at full force, with the added pressures and pleasures of external examining for a couple of other London University MAs. The days are long and deadlines loom.<br />
<br />
However, my spirits have been greatly lifted this evening by the unexpected news that I've been granted some RAE teaching relief next year (one module per semester) in order to develop a critical and creative piece about Margery Kempe, medieval visionary and slightly younger contemporary of Julian of Norwich, and arguably the first woman to write her autobiography in English (in contrast to Julian who put very little biographical detail in her <i>Revelations</i>). I'm already working towards a set of poems and songs to be put to music next year so put in a bid to expand this into a possible collection with a critical essay along side. I really didn't expect to be awarded anything though (all that funny religious stuff isn't always what a modern university hankers after in its research staff). So this was a great piece of news to receive, and timely too; I think I'll just have enough energy to get through my tasks this month now!<br />
<br />
So no doubt I'll be blogging Margery over the coming months. Here are a couple of draft pieces as a start. And nice to be posting again.<br />
<br />
<br />
wrench of a blood bath melon,<br />
the baby, the baby, the baby <br />
croons in her cradle, the pain<br />
it will fade, all the look of <br />
solid gold but empty tin -<br />
<br />
that's my heart, a resounding<br />
hollow, an ache that stains,<br />
a rag-tag rattle. O I am damned,<br />
the furnace of the future is<br />
annihilating me. Pray God<br />
<br />
to make an end, to cut the <br />
lively cord. To sound out nothing.<br />
<br />
He comes when I am least expecting,<br />
body and soul crescent moons,<br />
swatched wands. He sits,<br />
a purple blood-of-lent garment<br />
swathing the body. My daughter,<br />
My Daughter, why then<br />
have you forsaken me, when I<br />
have never left you. Thus his words<br />
not argument, but balm on brow - <br />
a fuller sphere than any of my tears,<br />
<br />
no caustic salt - just blood,<br />
milk, sustenance of water.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
And this one is for the song cycle so a bit different. My first go at a rhyming pantoum in fact...<br />
<br />
How can I begin to tell<br />
What the voices sang to me<br />
Words that rang the time like bells<br />
Silver rain from golden trees,<br />
<br />
<br />
What the voices sang. To me<br />
each whisper was an answered prayer.<br />
Silver rain from golden trees<br />
And heaven was a forest there.<br />
<br />
<br />
Each whisper was an answer. Prayer<br />
had never felt like this before<br />
and heaven was a forest. There<br />
was grace resolving every flaw.<br />
<br />
<br />
I'd never felt this light before<br />
the rapture ripped my mind apart<br />
was grace resolving every flaw?<br />
I held my breath. He blessed my heart.<br />
<br />
<br />
The rapture ripped my mind apart<br />
with words that rang the time like bells<br />
I held my breath. He blessed my heart<br />
and now I can begin to tell.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-116574251788665327.post-67643115073215859962010-04-22T23:35:00.001+01:002010-06-09T23:36:24.444+01:00Duffy's PastoralDuffy has written a poem in response to the extraordinary ash cloud from an Icelandic Volcano. The overhead flights may have started again as I write, but the extraordinary days long respite from aeroplane noise, otherwise so utterly relentless, has inspired Duffy's poem 'Silver Lining' .<br />
<br />
It's a nice poem, humble enough to acknowledge its own selfish perspective, but taking that moment of respite from the modern world which the brief absence of flight paths symbolises, and making of it something of a modern day pastoral poem, with its nostalgic look back to past times, when the rural idyll of an unspoilt land was seen as a kind of golden age, of birdsong and literary flourishing.<br />
<br />
'I could write my childhood there,' suggests Duffy - there on the blank slate of our suddenly silent airspace. Duffy, in the vein of a Romantic writer appropriating pastoral concenrs, could inscribe a mythical personal past, a pure clean open air childhood, onto nature itself, typified by the clear wide open skies.<br />
<br />
'Britain's birds/ sing in this spring' she observes, linking them back to the birds singing in the bare ruined choirs of Shakespeare's sonnet 73, and the birds of the early twentieth century, singing from Oxfordshire to Gloucestershire in Edward Thomas's 'Adlestrop', itself a nostalgic poem. Isn't it peaceful, the poem (Duffy's, but also Thomas's) says: this is the nourishing, creative silence of a past time, and the backdrop of past poetry. The flight ban offers a sudden resurgence of poetic possibility, due to the silence it offers. Yet of course this is all a fairly artificial analogy if one starts to think again about the massive problems all this has caused both to business and individuals. But the pastoral was never a realist mode. We know there's ash up there, but it's not much mentioned in the main body of this poem.<br />
<br />
And of course we all hanker for a bit of space and peace, a retreat from the busy world. The poem should have resonance on this level for everyone. <br />
<br />
But what do we do with that respite when the flights have started up again? Perhaps like a poem itself, it needs to be remembered for its own sake, and the alternative histories and possibilities it offers.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-116574251788665327.post-65736531156848062512010-04-05T23:13:00.000+01:002010-04-05T23:13:28.709+01:00Bloodsucking Poets<div class="post-header"> </div>I caught up on Radio 4's 'Suckers! Poet and Parasite' which made some interesting links between poets and poems which have taken parasites and bloodsuckers for their subject. Paul Farley cast an entertaining (mostquito) net over the haul, which touched on Ovid but looked in depth at Donne's 'The Flea' (that marvellous metaphysical seduction poem), Wordsworth's 'Resolution and Independence' (celebrating the Leech Gatherer in all his steadfastness and quiet strength) and the lice ridden world of Rimbaud and Verlaine (Verlaine used to keep lice about his person in oder to throw them at members of the clergy should the opportunity arise). An interesting query whether all this figurative use of bloodsucking led to the burgeoning of vampire mythologies. Then to Lawrence's marvellous Mosquito poem itself, and on to contemporaries Susan Wicks, whose poem to head lice is almost a love poem as her speaker discovers the hidden 'pearls' on her child's scalp, and Anthony Dunn who has an entire collection gathered under the title 'Bugs'.<br />
<br />
Some discussion of whether the poet is like a parasite him or herself - or, rather, and more dignified, like the leech gatherer, seeking his curative harvest in patience and faith. How far is the poem itself like a parasite too I wonder - something nagging and irritating and biting at the skin of one's consciousness until it's squashed or swatted away or able to drink to its full:<br />
<br />
<table cellspacing="0"><tbody>
<tr><td valign="TOP">Queer, how you stalk and prowl the air</td> </tr>
<tr> <td valign="TOP">In circles and evasions, enveloping me,</td> </tr>
<tr> <td valign="TOP">Ghoul on wings</td> </tr>
<tr> <td valign="TOP">Winged Victory.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
Of course you may be the sort of person who is oblivious to the itching or whom the parasites are simply not attracted. Or perhaps your blood is particularly sweet to these inexplicable, almost microscopic creatures and they will come sometimes singly, sometimes in swarms, not willing to leave you alone.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-116574251788665327.post-58066734172508208552010-03-20T23:57:00.001+00:002010-03-20T23:57:08.564+00:00Behind Closed Doors<span xmlns=''><p>It's OK – nothing to do with Peter Andre and his unfortunate single. But two interests I've been following through this week – time permitting. Firstly 'In Treatment', the HBO series starring Gabriel Byrne and Dianne Wiest as beleaguered therapists. Byrne (Paul Weston) is the central character and most of the weekly episodes present a somewhat truncated but authentic sounding session between various clients and himself. Fridays see Weston in therapy himself as he consults Gina (Wiest) who has a part supervisory, part therapist role in his always challenging professional and increasingly fractured personal life. <br /></p><p>I'm way behind with the series. I recorded a lot towards the end of last year and have only recently caught up. Sky Arts is replaying episodes rather than showing the latest season, but that's ok. I'll probably stick with it now. Why is it so compelling though? I think twofold reasons. The first is that as humans we are naturally inquisitive, nosey to the point of gossip, about other people's lives, especially when in difficulty, especially their 'private lives'. This series allows us to follow the events and emotional responses to a variety of humans facing individual but also universal human situations. So we get, each with their individual session, a couple locked in what seems like irresolvable conflict, an abused, anorexic teenager, an amorous young female client, a screwed up military guy (taken advantage of by amorous female client), and Paul himself, whose marriage is desperately fractured. All these clients have narratives and backstories which could themselves be a subject for a show. As it is we overhear them in confession. <br /></p><p>And it's more than this, too: the therapeutic space, which has to a large extent taken up the role of the 'confessional' in that clients can own up to and lay down the burden of their guilt and anxieties, is a private, secret, magical space where healing and reconciliation is reputed to take place. It, like the confessional, is bound by confidentiality, by strict ethical considerations. These can be abused of course (Paul is tempted on occasion). But the therapist by profession must seek to bring his or her client to some sort of illumination about the world from which they have emerged or which they have constructed about themselves. Because it is such a private space, and because it is a space in which something can 'happen', we want to be privy to its contents, and to see behind closed doors. This series addresses that need and although some of the conversations seem clumsy and inferences flagged up unnecessarily heavily, it is still a compelling and I think quite authentic depiction of psychoanalytic discourse. I suspect that not all therapists will offer the moment of 'theoretical insight' we see here quite so frequently. But the intense quality of listening offered by these TV therapists is impressive, and would be a privilege to experience.<br /></p><p>Secondly, a different set of closed doors. I read with interest in the Evening Standard K- brought home on Thursday about a forthcoming film ('No Greater Love') set in the Carmelite Convent in Notting Hill. The Carmelites are a strictly enclosed religious order with fully professed members rarely if ever leaving their community house, and communicating with members of the outside world through a parlour grille. It took ten years of persuasion and negotiation for this documentary film to be given the go ahead. I will see it with some awe and some curiosity too when it's released in April. I saw the 2006 film documentary 'Into Great Silence' on the (male monastic) Carthusian Order so know there are precedents, but the Carmelites have always been of particular resonance to me (St Therese entered the Lisieux Carmel at the age of 15, dying there nine years later). Documentary maker Michael Whyte has captured moments of 'whimsy' (perhaps just of pragmatism and life) along the lines of a nun ordering groceries online – but the real interest of the film will be in finding out what rewards the nuns feel they have experienced for such a life of commitment and apparent deprivation. Another kind of intense listening must take place (though who is listening and who speaking during the great hours of prayer?). As Prioress Sister Mary explains, in such a life, 'You're brought face to face with yourself – that's the hardest thing'. And indeed it must be. Precious few distractions and only an intense listening silence which another nun describes as 'something that's full of life'. No therapist then – just silence and the self and the secret listening of the cosmos. Perhaps there are connections between the two sets of closed doors and the offer of small and large screen to reveal, while retaining respect. </p></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-116574251788665327.post-862508076260285882010-03-17T22:29:00.001+00:002010-03-17T22:29:49.749+00:00Poems with unlikely inspiration #2<span xmlns=''><p>Charlie's heart's<br/>a fluttering dove<br/><br/>over their heads<br/>a vast white sheet<br/><br/>the man and his bird<br/>have pecked at intention<br/><br/>nested the shreds. Now,<br/>seasoned stickler, you're<br/><br/>more of an injured party<br/>like the rest of us in here.<br/><br/>Pass the glassy bottles,<br/>make the bed (the billow<br/><br/>of its giant wing) a star<br/>is named for you, a star<br/><br/>is a peck of divinity<br/>whether you are -</p></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-116574251788665327.post-76945151100878394942010-03-16T22:13:00.001+00:002010-03-16T22:13:30.852+00:00Poems with unlikely inspiration #1<span xmlns=''><p><br /> </p><p><br/>In another place, this dreamy world<br/>your space is vast -<br/><br/>an empty office where<br/>the desk is large enough to lie on<br/><br/>and someone to bring you coffee, lists,<br/>dispose of your unwelcome gifts,<br/><br/>field the play of the working day.<br/>You have to do some surgery,<br/><br/>discover an arrythmia, your knife<br/>gripped over a patient chest.<br/><br/>This is a place where you can't choose<br/>the music. Hats off to holistic ways.<br/><br/>An old flame visits but you have a new.<br/>He asks you to come back.<br/>He makes you laugh.<br/><br/>Here we don't have little kingdoms,<br/>We follow the rules. <br/> You wait, at night,<br/><br/>for your own face to rise, a pearly moon<br/>buoyant against the great dark panes.</p></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-116574251788665327.post-23614777573482521092010-03-15T21:55:00.001+00:002010-03-15T21:55:52.905+00:00A poem for our fidgety cat, approaching his first birthday<span xmlns=''><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>Blitzen in the night, scratching<br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>the duvet, then my arm and on<br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>to the top of my head, a feline<br /></span></p><p> <br /> </p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>comb and drag with his insistent<br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>claws. I'm pulled alright, into dawn,<br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>or the pre-dawn gloom, where lie<br /></span></p><p> <br /> </p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>only inert bodies in a cool room,<br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>one sleeping cat, and then this other<br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>high-strung being terribly set<br /></span></p><p> <br /> </p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>on waking the great warm <br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>presence he knows, any way how<br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>approval or pats or shoves right off<br /></span></p><p> <br /> </p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>onto cluttered floors won't matter:<br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>he has to summon me, he's not sure why.<br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>I stumble through to a cold floored<br /></span></p><p> <br /> </p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>kitchen, offer him a pouch of food.<br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>Blitzen, crooning, flumps to ground,<br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>rolls around, looks at me<br /></span></p><p> <br /> </p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>with indecipherable green-gold eyes.<br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>I look at him. He watches me. We wait.<br /></span></p></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-116574251788665327.post-19960878980662022622010-03-14T20:44:00.001+00:002010-03-14T20:44:17.086+00:00Picking up Speed<span xmlns=''><p>I clearly need to pick up speed with blogging. All is well but I've had a lot of work on. I keep picking up interesting little facts which might be extrapolated into a blog post, were there time, but there hasn't been recently. Such thoughts have a sort of half-life in the mind which sometimes allows them to mutate into something richer and stranger and sometimes causes them to evaporate back into the intellectual ether. We'll see. Meanwhile, in an effort to keep up with at least some discipline in writing poetry, I've got a non-shared google document on the go and jot down poem ideas in ten-minute bursts. This poem comes from one of those – I've been writing a lecture on Confessional poets, including archetypal Confessional (by her own admission the ONLY Confessional) Anne Sexton...<br /></p><p>The language of ellispes<br/>is one she understands<br/><br/>her spell in the madhouse<br/>had her choking on art<br/><br/>and the bland intervention<br/>of 'doctors' who preferred <br/><br/>an unadulterated string<br/>of words. Take with water<br/><br/>for a swilling of remorse<br/>like the undertaker's daughter<br/><br/>who you saw, in a waking<br/>sort of dream. Bed next to yours.<br/><br/>The full strength capsules<br/>hang around her throat<br/><br/>making it all look pretty...<br/>I join the dots you wrote.</p></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-116574251788665327.post-68606895293767203362010-02-01T10:02:00.001+00:002010-02-01T10:02:54.752+00:00Pages from a Notebook<span xmlns=''><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>There will be a time when the above title seems distinctly anachronistic; perhaps such a time has already arrived. However I was browsing the seminal New American Poetry 1945-60 anthology this morning, and came across Robert Duncan's notes on poetics with this title. Two sections I particularly liked:<br /></span></p><p><br /> </p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>Under the subheading 'On Quality and Poems: A longing grows to return to the open composition in which the accidents and imperfections of speech might awake intimations of human being. He searches for quality like a jeweler - and he is dependent one suspects on whether his emotion (which he polishes) is a diamond or not. That is, he would attempt to cut any stone diamond-wise, to force his emotion to the test. He would discover much if he also would cut paper-crowns or scatter the pebbles and litter of a mind wherever he goes.' Duncan embracing the shifts and flux of human sensation and perception and finding room for them in his poetic jewellery. Still, there is always a place for a diamond...<br /></span></p><p><br /> </p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>Second, in 'On the Secret Doctrine': Why should one's art then be an achievement? Why not, more, an adventure? On one hand one produces only what one knows. Well, what else can one accomplish. The thrill is just that one did not know one knew it. But now I like to wander about in my work, writing so rapidly that I might overlook manipulations and design; the poetic experience advancing as far as one can (as far as one dares) toward an adventure. All design here is a recovery if it belongs to ones art; a discovery if it belongs to ones adventuring courage.'<br /></span></p><p><br /> </p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>Pioneering spirit here clearly, and another dig at the tight, sometimes constrictive poetics of the New Critics and other conservative/ formalist schools. But isn't there a wonderful grain of truth in that idea that the thrill of writing with what feels like a sudden electric authenticity is that you are writing 'what one knows' and 'did not know one knew it'. The discovery/ adventure metaphor is very apt here, though other writers (Stephen King) talk about uncovering, recovery, like wonderful excavation of a fossil, something buried deep in the individual or collective psyche. The inward spiral of psychic archaeology superimposed over the more linear trajectory of the journey then. Gem mining. I get the feeling that Duncan isn't so keen on using the precision instruments though (or at least, not to admit to) but more of the hope that this following a lead will lead to a lucky strike. There are drawbacks to too carefree an approach of course, but such an attitude is liberating in that it gives one permission to make mistakes and take risks as they are all part of the process of finding a voice. The new voice you might already have...<br /></span></p></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-116574251788665327.post-62147080756583954222010-01-30T23:58:00.001+00:002010-01-30T23:58:27.470+00:00Sunshine Cleaning<span xmlns=''><p>We watched Sunshine Cleaning on FilmFlex this evening, one of those quirky indie films that balance humour and trauma in eccentric combinations, with a handful of eccentric characters thrown into the mix. The central metaphor was one of an occupation that seems to offer little potential for philosophy or romanticising: cleaning up domestic residencies after bloody crime scenes. The two sisters (played by Emily Blunt and Amy Adams) who set up business are desperate for money (Rose is a single mum) and a sense of purpose and are pretty horrifyingly amateur at first: they attend their first bloody house in casual jeans etc. 'Aren't they supposed to wear protective clothing?' I asked K-, having seen too many episodes of Silent Witness. It turns out they should indeed, and be certified to deal with bio-hazardous material and blood borne pathogens too. <br /></p><p>This is all interesting in the field of research of course but where's the poetry in it? The sisters get professional, get a van, give their business the unlikely name of Sunshine Cleaning (you know it's not going to last). Older sister in particular starts to realise the resonance of the job – they are called in to any and every individual circumstance, but always a loss, a trauma; the sisters are able to if not make things right again, at least begin to make things better, and be a force for some sort of healing and closure from the raw wound of immediate personal trauma. 'In some small way, we help'. That's the essence of the offering, as Anglican mystic Evelyn Underhill once said in a novel about an artist, rather than a cleaner, but even so... There is also a persistent sense in this movie of bad being transmuted into good; not only in the physical transformation of the professional cleanup but also (uncomfortably) of other people's disaster providing work ('It's a growth industry')for the sisters, and in a subsidiary scene, Rose's seven year old son who has been called a 'bastard' is told that it will be his 'free ticket to cool' in the near future, taking the taunt and subverting it into empowerment.<br /></p><p>Turns out that Rose and Nora need (to) help themselves, to come to terms with their mother's suicide when they were still children; and another level of resonance is to do with their opening the door and going in to allow light and mutual help onto their still traumatised psyches. Interestingly they have a sort of emotional show down in a public bathroom, as though borrowing the cleansing element of that room which is its major psychoanalytic/ dream symbolism. It's a Ladies room as well, just as cleaning is traditionally a woman's job: is this a woman's movie, about re establishing both severed maternal lineage and emotional independence? It's certainly not a conventional romance. The only decent love interest by the end of the film is a one-armed shop keeper, but he seems a lot more sympathetic than the two timing husband Rose is dallying with at the start. Not being a Hollywood blockbuster, a lot is allowed to be left without explicit resolution. Each character experiences some sort of shift or personal insight but none reach the end of their personal journeys; like a short story, there is a change but not an overly heavy conclusion. <br /></p><p>The central metaphor of the job does resurface at the end, after Norah has gone off on her road trip and their father steps up to support his other daughter's projects. They have a different company name and the strapline 'Cleaning Professionally Since 1963' on the newly painted van. 'It's a business lie,' says the father. 'It reassures people.' Well indeed. We like continuity, it shores us up against crisis; but crisis is often the real opportunity for both bad and good.</p></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-116574251788665327.post-1663392845168087292010-01-28T23:26:00.001+00:002010-01-28T23:26:41.158+00:00Objectivism in the afternoon<span xmlns=''><p>I spent a lot of this afternoon waiting in Haringey Council offices for a booklet of parking permits; friend S is visiting tomorrow night and I left various things to do until the last minute, foolishly. I always feel guilty if I'm not working during working hours, no matter how many extra hours I've been putting in at night or over weekends. But according to today's Daily Wail, in an article written by Lionel Shriver, most women feel guilty all the time because of just about anything, so I suppose I'm fitting the mould there. It's horrible to feel tense though, counting the hours and the minutes. I had over an hour waiting in there and by the end of it lacked the good grace even to smile at a couple of small children running round and clearly wanting my attention for some reason. I kept my eyes down on the form I had to fill in. <br /></p><p>The rest of the time I told myself to make the best of things so another American Poetry book of essays out of my bag and read. Objectivism, mainly situated in Thirties America, is located a bit earlier than the period I'm lecturing on but I'm attempting to fill in the gaps in my literary history there as well as use the awkward gaps of half-available time. This on the Objectivists from Christopher Beech: The Objectivists ...used the idea of sincerity as an ethical or political directive...For them, sincerity connoted a commitment to their social and political situation.' He explains further by showing that poet George Oppen claimed the Objectivist poetic of sincerity could be opposed to traditional post-Romantic poetics, primarily for the 'delectation of the reader,' and the poem should convey nothing extraneous to 'the poet's attempt to find his place in the world'. It was the truthfulness of the poet's language that would be the ultimate test of his sincerity: 'there is a moment, an actual time, when you believe something to be true, and you construct a meaning from these moments of conviction' .<br /></p><p>I thought about this: 'moments of conviction'. It makes everything seems very simple. Even if the moments of conviction don't last without erosions or mutations engendered by changing situations and the passing of time, I like the clarity of poetic vocation suggested by such an injunction. A sort of micro-manifesto. Can it be translated to the twenty-first century, well into (beyond?) the post modern age where certainty and sincerity are routinely shied away from, mocked, at best subverted? Does the women's perspective (guilt ridden as it is) attest to a different place, a lack or multitude of places in the world? Or are these moments of conviction philosophical adjuncts to Wordsworth's spots of time, where imagination and perception of nature are interfused in moments of lingering clarity.<br /></p><p>This all opens up examination of what makes a 'sincere' poem too. Should all poems be sincere – or can they just be linguistic play. Well ideally they should be both, I would assume...Finally, is there any connection to the 'art of blogging' (which I have so sadly neglected of late – more guilt) in that it should be possible to find 'moments of conviction' in individual posts which go towards construction of some sort of meaning, unknown at the time and perhaps always to the blogger herself.<br /></p><p><br /> </p><p><br /> </p></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0