This is a project that I have been working on with Jonny over the last year. It has a scratch title of 'Gnarly Watkins in Love'. Its the first page but still needs colour and polish. Watch this space.
Too Long to Warrant the Effort
It gets like that sometimes doesn't it? Whether it’s the gym, cooking proper meals, cleaning the windows or visiting your Nan. You leave it so long that it starts to eat away at your thoughts when you've got a few minutes for leisure. I don't mean evening TV leisure. Those minutes on a Saturday when you've got the shopping done and done a few minor jobs around the house. You find you've finished earlier than you planned, so you get the paper, make a cup of tea, maybe take a rich tea biscuit or two and sit down at the kitchen table and expel that sigh of the 'at ease'. You take that first sip and into your mind it nags. You should be doing it. For me it always has my mother’s voice. For me it is writing.
Okay so it has been months and months. There has obviously been good reason. Not just that Pacific, Boardwalk Empire and Breaking Bad are damn good series that deserved taking up my precious time. But the thing about time is that it warps ideas and memories. When the voice comes: You should be writing, I always answer back but it’s not a simple thing. Thing is - it is a simple thing. Writing is just putting some words on paper.
That's what I did this week - I just put some words on paper. I want to share them with you. Not because it is what I warrant as good. But rather to exemplify the idea of the first step can be easy.
I tried to respond to a competition but missed the deadline last Sunday due to a full work load. Excuses excuses my mother is saying and as per usual she is probably right. The basic brief was to write a marine or Qatar's sea history related poem. This is what I have got:
Twenty-seventh day at sea,
Five dead,
Sun above
Smacks sense
From head squashed
Next to head,
With dilapidated bodies
And broken spirits
I step from the mass
With my Siad
Holding my tether
Over the side
And fall through the divide,
The slither of surface
Splitting worlds.
A barrage of bubbles
Stream up my body
And bounce off my nose
And upward into hell
I descend in hope
Trumpeting;
An ear-thumping,
An ear-thumping,
White animal.
Take me from this sea!
That's it - unfinished. I won't over analyse it but the things that sing out to me that need addressing are the opening line, and the second half of the third stanza. I don't even know what the white animal reference was all about. The poem is based on the life of the nineteenth century pearl diver. An incredibly hard life that often ended in an early death if not craziness due to the bends.
On a second foot I believe in responding to with I am thinking and feeling inside and in between writing the above I also came up with the following. It is not good or cute but it is fun.
Big fat mamma
Big fat mamma
You aint having a piece of me
You aint really any no-one
Big fat mamma
Big fat mamma
You aint got a heart
And you aint got no caring
Big at mamma
Big fat mamma
You think if yo self
And y've got nutting sparing
Big fat mamma
Big fat mamma
Your mouth runs away with yer
Using up words that you've stolen
Big fat mamma
Big fat mamma
Your tongue is twisted
Your words are hard
They make people blister
They hit people hard
Big fat mamma
Big fat mamma
She's a big fat mamma
She's a big fat mamma
Manchester
This month saw the publication of a poem that I first wrote about 7 or 8 years ago. It is called Manchester and has been published on the Manchester Libraries website: Manchester Lit List and it can be found here.
The poem was first written as an entry to a BBC radio competition. The winning poem was to be transcribed on the side of a new building that was being erected in Piccadily Gardens. The poem that won was quite bland but the competition involved writing a 50 syllable poem based around the subject of Manchester.
This version is a result of the well used adage to review and edit your own work repeatedly. This is its sixth or seventh revised draft and one that I am quite happy with, particularly as it provoked a response: one person questioning the blue swagger. Personally I was pleased with balance I got in the two stanzas reflecting the two epochs of the city's life. I took my inspiration from a book called Manchester, England by Dave Haslam. A book that I can well recommend.
Manchester
Back then, working class wise,
Cloth capped and carrying,
Transatlantic textile treasure,
King of the world was I.
But now, august architecture tram laced,
Dance crazed capital of culture,
Theatre thronged, gallery graced,
Northern prince with red and blue swagger.
The poem was first written as an entry to a BBC radio competition. The winning poem was to be transcribed on the side of a new building that was being erected in Piccadily Gardens. The poem that won was quite bland but the competition involved writing a 50 syllable poem based around the subject of Manchester.
This version is a result of the well used adage to review and edit your own work repeatedly. This is its sixth or seventh revised draft and one that I am quite happy with, particularly as it provoked a response: one person questioning the blue swagger. Personally I was pleased with balance I got in the two stanzas reflecting the two epochs of the city's life. I took my inspiration from a book called Manchester, England by Dave Haslam. A book that I can well recommend.
Manchester
Back then, working class wise,
Cloth capped and carrying,
Transatlantic textile treasure,
King of the world was I.
But now, august architecture tram laced,
Dance crazed capital of culture,
Theatre thronged, gallery graced,
Northern prince with red and blue swagger.
Les Murry - Poet Genius and Football Commentator?
I thought I was an atheist until I came across Les Murry. I then thought that he had to be a god in being both a football commentator in Oz as well as a fantastic poet. Then I realised there were two Les Murrys in Oz. This left how wonderful and accessible I find Les Murry.
To begin with Murry uses colour so that the images blossom in your mind. He is the sort of poet that is both dexterous without needing to create puzzles. His writing works on many levels but for me the first and most important level is the simplest. I like to get something out of a poem on the first reading. Yes I love to reread and reread poems getting more each time but the first read matters to me. I dis-guard books within 100 pages if it is not pulling me in, I turn the television over if I am not swayed by characters dialogue, I've left the cinema before the end of a film.
Take Murry's poem performance dealing with a single night. He uses the metaphor of a firework display to compare to a night out. I can see the rocket that 'wriggled up and shot/ darkness with a parasol of brilliants' and further the 'para-flares spot-welding heaven' is a wonderful panoramic image in one line.
Murry uses colour simply but effectively. How do you describe glowing embers? In Late Summer Fires he talks about red-black wounds.
My ember photograph from the summer in Czech.
How do you capture the baking heat that leads to drought in Australia? He talks of the light in the 'white of the drought'.
I think Murry appeals to my visual learning style. Maybe it's that he doesn't try to be cryptic in his message. I get it when I read it. I don't need to decipher it through ten readings. I don't have a literary background in my education (an A-level in Eccles doesn't really count for squat) and don't have peerless peers to debate denouement and subtlety. Have a look - Les Murry is one of the most accessible poets around today.
Read him here at: http://www.lesmurray.org/pm_pf.htm
To begin with Murry uses colour so that the images blossom in your mind. He is the sort of poet that is both dexterous without needing to create puzzles. His writing works on many levels but for me the first and most important level is the simplest. I like to get something out of a poem on the first reading. Yes I love to reread and reread poems getting more each time but the first read matters to me. I dis-guard books within 100 pages if it is not pulling me in, I turn the television over if I am not swayed by characters dialogue, I've left the cinema before the end of a film.
Take Murry's poem performance dealing with a single night. He uses the metaphor of a firework display to compare to a night out. I can see the rocket that 'wriggled up and shot/ darkness with a parasol of brilliants' and further the 'para-flares spot-welding heaven' is a wonderful panoramic image in one line.
Murry uses colour simply but effectively. How do you describe glowing embers? In Late Summer Fires he talks about red-black wounds.
How do you capture the baking heat that leads to drought in Australia? He talks of the light in the 'white of the drought'.
I think Murry appeals to my visual learning style. Maybe it's that he doesn't try to be cryptic in his message. I get it when I read it. I don't need to decipher it through ten readings. I don't have a literary background in my education (an A-level in Eccles doesn't really count for squat) and don't have peerless peers to debate denouement and subtlety. Have a look - Les Murry is one of the most accessible poets around today.
Read him here at: http://www.lesmurray.org/pm_pf.htm
What is Poetry?
Whilst teaching in England I found that poetry and poetry teaching was generally a well enjoyed part of the curriculum. Like any discipline some teachers saw it as a strength and some saw it as their weakness but schools on the whole studied and experienced poetry to quite high standards. Here in Doha, I have found that the common place opinion of poetry is that it is not a useful part of the English language. So what is poetry? Where does it come from? What are its roots?
I am not looking for a definition. This just contemplates its place in today's society. At the end of this article you'll find a poll and I would be really interested in your opinions. Just tick a box and click vote.
We know that poetry expresses emotion, particularly the emotions of love, lust and longing. "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day" being a chat up line that I feel is well under used. Poetry often overly complicates description of thoughts, feelings and situations- doesn't it? Hmm let's see. It is not just a stereotype that it is often associated with angst ridden young men. Although when you peruse the blogs of today, you will see that it is often dominated by women expressing their angst, ire and melancholy at loneliness, being misunderstood and under appreciated. But poetry is the lost art. It does not have a presence in modern popular culture. Or I should say that it doesn't have a presence with the denomination or labelling as poetry. (I'll come to that later.)
The earliest form of Poetry can be seen in commentries by Aristotle. He spoke about poetics and rhetoric in a similar fashion. Poetry was a means of bringing talk to life. It added drama or created mood or tension for a tradgedy. He felt that poetry was a way of imitating real events. Therefore ealry poetry focused on rhythm (as is the main focus today), and verse form and rhyme came much later.
Today Poetry is a global art form. Aristotles Poetics was appreciated in the Middle East and Poetry is held in high esteem within that culture today.We all know the petite but wonderful Haiku of the Japanese. The common English form of haiku being a seventeen syllable, three line 5-7-5. From norse Kennings (that replace a normal noun with a colourful metaphor) to shorter poems intended to be sung developed by the Greeks: from the word Lyre comes Lyrics.
Lyrics and song is a whole new debate: Can modern song lysics be considered poetry? I will deal with my thoughts on that on another occassion.
So what do I think Poetry is today? Poetry paints ideas and moments in words. It does so with care and precision. But what value does this have? Value! I remember the birth of modern pop culture. It started with video killing the radio star. And then a largesse gave us Dire Straight's Money For Nothing and gone was the pedestrian pace of yesteryear and in blew the modern pop era. The MTV era. The frantic, in yer face, 100 mile an hour, soundbite, tweet and your out of here era. I have to say as a young man I loved it as any generation loves something new. Then there is real life and by that I mean quality real life. As a society we no longer stop to smell the trees. We didn't absorb or fawn over natures' ambiences. We tick off - been there done that (got the t-shirt) had a niiice day. But to really slow down. Oh no. We don't do that. We love to take a book on holiday and lose ourselves in that. But that's not appreciation of what's around us. That's us escaping our own deep thought because they go so fast we can't handle them anymore. We can't turn them off so we distract them. We love to turn up the music or even step into those bubble, ex-pat, pseudo societies. Anything that avoids connecting. Never mind all those kids and teens blissed in their video games, we as adults are no different.
So what has that got to do with the price of cod and fish at the Laurel and Hardy chippy in Patricroft? Sorry I meant to say what has that to do with poetry? Well. Everything. Poetry are those moments that we miss. Poetry captures those moments between seconds that mean so much. Poetry captures what that glance means, not just the glance. Poetry divides the atom of the moment into glorious pieces. Poetry is the appreciation of the moment.
I'll leave it to Larkin:
What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in:
Where can we live but days?
Although Larkin can't help but add an after thought to step out of this celebration of life:
Ah, solving that question
Brings the priest and the doctor
In their long coats
Running over the fields.
Days
by Philip Larkin
Question - Does Poetry matter to you?
I am not looking for a definition. This just contemplates its place in today's society. At the end of this article you'll find a poll and I would be really interested in your opinions. Just tick a box and click vote.
We know that poetry expresses emotion, particularly the emotions of love, lust and longing. "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day" being a chat up line that I feel is well under used. Poetry often overly complicates description of thoughts, feelings and situations- doesn't it? Hmm let's see. It is not just a stereotype that it is often associated with angst ridden young men. Although when you peruse the blogs of today, you will see that it is often dominated by women expressing their angst, ire and melancholy at loneliness, being misunderstood and under appreciated. But poetry is the lost art. It does not have a presence in modern popular culture. Or I should say that it doesn't have a presence with the denomination or labelling as poetry. (I'll come to that later.)
The earliest form of Poetry can be seen in commentries by Aristotle. He spoke about poetics and rhetoric in a similar fashion. Poetry was a means of bringing talk to life. It added drama or created mood or tension for a tradgedy. He felt that poetry was a way of imitating real events. Therefore ealry poetry focused on rhythm (as is the main focus today), and verse form and rhyme came much later.
Today Poetry is a global art form. Aristotles Poetics was appreciated in the Middle East and Poetry is held in high esteem within that culture today.We all know the petite but wonderful Haiku of the Japanese. The common English form of haiku being a seventeen syllable, three line 5-7-5. From norse Kennings (that replace a normal noun with a colourful metaphor) to shorter poems intended to be sung developed by the Greeks: from the word Lyre comes Lyrics.
Lyrics and song is a whole new debate: Can modern song lysics be considered poetry? I will deal with my thoughts on that on another occassion.
So what do I think Poetry is today? Poetry paints ideas and moments in words. It does so with care and precision. But what value does this have? Value! I remember the birth of modern pop culture. It started with video killing the radio star. And then a largesse gave us Dire Straight's Money For Nothing and gone was the pedestrian pace of yesteryear and in blew the modern pop era. The MTV era. The frantic, in yer face, 100 mile an hour, soundbite, tweet and your out of here era. I have to say as a young man I loved it as any generation loves something new. Then there is real life and by that I mean quality real life. As a society we no longer stop to smell the trees. We didn't absorb or fawn over natures' ambiences. We tick off - been there done that (got the t-shirt) had a niiice day. But to really slow down. Oh no. We don't do that. We love to take a book on holiday and lose ourselves in that. But that's not appreciation of what's around us. That's us escaping our own deep thought because they go so fast we can't handle them anymore. We can't turn them off so we distract them. We love to turn up the music or even step into those bubble, ex-pat, pseudo societies. Anything that avoids connecting. Never mind all those kids and teens blissed in their video games, we as adults are no different.
So what has that got to do with the price of cod and fish at the Laurel and Hardy chippy in Patricroft? Sorry I meant to say what has that to do with poetry? Well. Everything. Poetry are those moments that we miss. Poetry captures those moments between seconds that mean so much. Poetry captures what that glance means, not just the glance. Poetry divides the atom of the moment into glorious pieces. Poetry is the appreciation of the moment.
I'll leave it to Larkin:
What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in:
Where can we live but days?
Although Larkin can't help but add an after thought to step out of this celebration of life:
Ah, solving that question
Brings the priest and the doctor
In their long coats
Running over the fields.
Days
by Philip Larkin
Question - Does Poetry matter to you?
Top of the Pile: What I'm Reading Now #4
As well as writing a blog, I recognise the importance of immersing myself in what other people are saying. Over the last few weeks I have read a number of blogs that I just thought 'That's great.' So here is one from Caroline Mary Crew in which the poem at the bottom - Hüm (noun) really took me to Pennines. Okay in actual fact the poem is about the Shetlands but the weather and culture push through. I particularly loved the image of blustering a deal with the faerie in the fourth stanza. It's full of action and colour.
(For Bo)
Twilight, gloaming;
to walk blind
against the wind;
to be abject; lick snot
and rain from the top lip
like a sick calf.
To be blinded by rain
from the north.
To be blinded
by westerly rain.
To walk uphill
into a tarry peatcut
and bluster a deal
with the Trowes.
To cross the bull's field
in the dark.
To pass in the dark
a gate of hollow bars
inside which the wind is broaling.
To pass in the dark
a byre like a rotten walnut.
To not know the gate
till you run up against it.
Notes:
broal: cry of a cow or other animal; to cry as in pain
hüm: twilight; gloaming
trow: a mischievous fairy
Top of the Pile: What I'm Reading Now #4
Hüm (noun) by Jen Hadfield
(For Bo)
Twilight, gloaming;
to walk blind
against the wind;
to be abject; lick snot
and rain from the top lip
like a sick calf.
To be blinded by rain
from the north.
To be blinded
by westerly rain.
To walk uphill
into a tarry peatcut
and bluster a deal
with the Trowes.
To cross the bull's field
in the dark.
To pass in the dark
a gate of hollow bars
inside which the wind is broaling.
To pass in the dark
a byre like a rotten walnut.
To not know the gate
till you run up against it.
Notes:
broal: cry of a cow or other animal; to cry as in pain
hüm: twilight; gloaming
trow: a mischievous fairy
Top of the Pile: What I'm Reading Now #4
The Aisle 16 Poetry Collective
The Aisle 16 collective are a group of young performers, writers, bloggers and poets. They collaborate on projects together and support each other in their writing endeavours. It was John Osborne that first caught my attention with his world cup poems. Brave I thought. Then I thought, no perhaps naive. But I too climbed back on the broken rocking horse that was supporting England and Osborne's poems added a dimension to that same experience.
wingers like tourists in central London
maps folded out
asking for directions
to Buckin Ham Palace.
The England Team - John Osborne
Whilst his narrative poems meander and show insight they often capture the familiarity and mundaneness of everyday English life.
Similarly Joe Dunthorne touches on the personal weaknesses that we all share, particularly in this modern egotistical world.
Although in terms of funny, I have to give it to Chris Hicks who is far closer to stand up than preformance poetry. Although isn't 'stand up' just poetry in motion.
Definitely worth keeping your eye on them - think they would make a great evening's trip out. Just another reason for me to miss England.
wingers like tourists in central London
maps folded out
asking for directions
to Buckin Ham Palace.
The England Team - John Osborne
Whilst his narrative poems meander and show insight they often capture the familiarity and mundaneness of everyday English life.
Similarly Joe Dunthorne touches on the personal weaknesses that we all share, particularly in this modern egotistical world.
Although in terms of funny, I have to give it to Chris Hicks who is far closer to stand up than preformance poetry. Although isn't 'stand up' just poetry in motion.
Definitely worth keeping your eye on them - think they would make a great evening's trip out. Just another reason for me to miss England.
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