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Offerings for National Poetry Day

Seymour, 3 Comments

I couldn’t let this moment pass without a tip of the hat towards National Poetry Day.

I have found giving myself a limited 20 minutes on the clock, writing to a prompt, really helps me to focus and can give pleasing results … see/hear below:

Small

There’s this pebble that makes me feel small
But I can hold it in my palm
Broken, sheerly like a miniature cliff
Inlaid with lines, pencil fine
By spirit-level silty seas, advancing, retiring, layering
Then waiting
Then squeezed, tectonic tight
Then baked in earth’s belly and uncovered
By archaeologist’s brushes of
Wind and water
Shorn by ice and rolled in the tide
Like dough
It’s just those lines, no thicker than a fingernail
Each a few thousand years deep
That make me feel
Small

 

Speak

Eyes speak
In accents deep set or bulging, narrow or wide, turned up or down
With lumen whites for a larynx, elastic lids for vocal cords
Blinking like a cursor
Pupil and iris for tongue and teeth

Eyebrows speak
Punctuation marks, up or down at the end of sentences
Or hovering for emphasis

Hands speak
In accents fine or rough, round and knobbled, flecked like bark
Or medieval tones of lily white
They have ten inflections, each topped by a nail
Their salute is mightier than the sword
Speaking without boundaries of language
Forceful words seldom misinterpreted

Feet speak
They even vote and carry on political campaigns
With the whole entourage of body

Which speaks
All at once achatter
Often contradictory

Mouths?
Oh, no
Mouths
Almost never speak

What’s all the fuss about the brothers Grimm?

Seymour, , , , 3 Comments
Grimm Brothers
Grimm Brothers (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I have been labouring my way through the complete tales of the brothers Grimm, on and off, for the last three years. At first, there were curious and enchanting moments but, I have to admit, it has felt more ‘uphill’ recently. I’m not sure how to understand the resurgence of interest in Will and Jake’s collection. There has been a popular TV series and a couple of movies have tried to reclaim the tales for the dark side, after years of disneyfication; Philip Pullman has turned his pen to them, and several others have delighted in re-working them for the ‘Potter, Buffy and Twilight’ generation.

Having almost finished reading the complete works, I have my own take on the oeuvre.

When the brothers rolled into a village on their collecting expeditions, I reckon that the locals thought it would be a jolly jape to ply them with schnapps and treat them to lengthy, extemporized tales that endlessly recombined a basket of popular motifs in spirals of fantasy. These plot lines were not authentically handed down through the generations until they were captured and immortalised with pen and ink; they were made upon the spot, like the rambling narratives that children play out in the tree house and at the bottom of the garden or the anecdotes of a boozy uncle who can’t remember the end from the beginning.

For example, here is the tale of the Three Black Princesses. It is wryly amusing for the fact that it barely goes anywhere, it is clearly unfinished and there are some serious issues with overall coherence. I hope my rendition is faithful to the original.

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Going Public with Two More Audio Poems: some desolation and some adoration

Seymour, , 1 Comment

Encouraged in no small way by Xe Sands, the curator of weekly audio gems at Going Public and one of the great cheerleaders among my online fellowship of creatives, I have been experimenting with sharing my poetry out loud. I have always written more for the ear than the eye, so it seems an appropriate medium for putting it out there.

For this week’s offering, I have picked a couple of poems scribbled in my teens and recently re-worked.

The first poem (Empty House) is what comes out when you read a lot of Craig Raine, you feel as if the whole world is against you and one day you come home to an empty house.

The second poem (Silver Story) is what comes out when you read a lot of the Elizabethans, you spend your weekends in your silversmithing workshop and one day you meet a beautiful woman.

More of my poetry postings can be found here.
More audio goodies can be found here.

Going Public with Thomas Carlyle: “Know Thy Work”

Seymour, , , , , 7 Comments

Thomas Carlyle

I like Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881). He’s one of my rugged 19th Century romantic existentialist individualists. I don’t buy the whole package of his thought (women never seem to get a mention, for instance), but he can be forgiven for being a man of his time as much as I will need to be if any of my thoughts survive me.

Apart from anything else, Carlyle wrote 21 volumes of the history of Freidrich II of Prussia; and he didn’t even have the Internet! This suggests that he had one thing nailed: he knew how to knuckle down and get on with his work – probably because he didn’t have the Internet.

So, as my contribution this week to the #GoingPublic audio project, here is an excerpt from Book III of  Carlyle’s “Past and Present” that gives us a clue about the root of his productivity, his attitude to work. It amuses me, the way he dismisses “Know Thyself” with a disdainful sweep of his hand and then goes on to expound “Know Thy Work” with increasingly dizzy conceits. But I also find it invigorating. How about you?

The full text is available here.

Check out a wealth of other great audio clips from the Going Public Project.