The Blue Book has it's first review on the Leilanie Stewart blog.
It's a very fair review.
I am happy.
The Blue Book is available from Amazon, £1.84
Showing posts with label the blue book. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the blue book. Show all posts
18/03/2014
10/03/2014
Enjoyment
If #poetry is #painting with words, how vivid should the colours be, and should the brushstrokes show?
This question has always been somewhat of a puzzle. Personally I have always been a slave master with words. No, that is not the right phrase, as anyone with a passing knowledge of slavery knows that the moral objection comes not from human bondage, but the economic wastage of labour, Therefore my words are not slaves, they are more like cubicle contractors, always online and available, perpetually networking.
Why use one word, when the same word can have three meanings? Do three jobs if you will.
The whores shoe above the door
was lucky for him but not for her,
wet, limp, stocking home,
slanket snug, a bite of flake.
Bolly pink, to light the way,
roses red, candy, grasps the stay
held up for atom blasted dish,
cellophane, well sauced neck.
Their cells re-connect: with coloured fangs,
nice chicken, pings, as love songs
carry plates to knees,
Ikea rug, rice drops fly.
Unshooed haw frost spores the door.
Yays to the right, into her
life of Hartley's jam, headland spread,
diet days, two bars on.
There you have it.
A poem inspired by Sir John Betjamin, and standing behind a man at the check out self consciously buying champagne and roses.
A simple tale of love gone awry, apology offered, and accepted. That revolves around the word 'grasps'.
At which point I shall burn my bra, don a boiler suit and ask you to hear me roar.
Why is it that a woman who 'gives herself' to a man is a whore?
Ok, I perhaps don't help this misogynist tendency by offering a hostage to fortune in the aural pun of the first line. It doesn't take a great deal to encourage the numpties.
But it is curious.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cue random picture to decorate the facebooks....
This question has always been somewhat of a puzzle. Personally I have always been a slave master with words. No, that is not the right phrase, as anyone with a passing knowledge of slavery knows that the moral objection comes not from human bondage, but the economic wastage of labour, Therefore my words are not slaves, they are more like cubicle contractors, always online and available, perpetually networking.
Why use one word, when the same word can have three meanings? Do three jobs if you will.
The whores shoe above the door
was lucky for him but not for her,
wet, limp, stocking home,
slanket snug, a bite of flake.
Bolly pink, to light the way,
roses red, candy, grasps the stay
held up for atom blasted dish,
cellophane, well sauced neck.
Their cells re-connect: with coloured fangs,
nice chicken, pings, as love songs
carry plates to knees,
Ikea rug, rice drops fly.
Unshooed haw frost spores the door.
Yays to the right, into her
life of Hartley's jam, headland spread,
diet days, two bars on.
There you have it.
A poem inspired by Sir John Betjamin, and standing behind a man at the check out self consciously buying champagne and roses.
A simple tale of love gone awry, apology offered, and accepted. That revolves around the word 'grasps'.
At which point I shall burn my bra, don a boiler suit and ask you to hear me roar.
Why is it that a woman who 'gives herself' to a man is a whore?
Ok, I perhaps don't help this misogynist tendency by offering a hostage to fortune in the aural pun of the first line. It doesn't take a great deal to encourage the numpties.
But it is curious.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cue random picture to decorate the facebooks....
09/03/2014
Wimmin
#poetry
'Yes thanks I'll speak tomorrow' - sorry that was twitter wanting to know if I knew any of these people.
Mission accomplished.
My wittering on about poetry over the past week or so, and reading poems I have found to her, has provoked the missus into writing again. Obviously having internal gonads, the offer to share it with me was accompanied by, 'only if you've got time/have your coffee/if it's not very good etc'. Whereas, I, who was once female, but now have my gonads on the outside demand she miss the high score on Candy Crush when sharing creation.
Speaking of which.
Just You Wait
I’m glad I’m not a woman,
I couldn’t bare the self obsession,
The checking out of other women
To enforce conformity and not catch me out.
That whole desirability thing,
The pecking order.
The letting him beat you up
Because he looks good on your arm,
Or you can’t get anybody else,
Or both,
Or neither,
Or whatever.
Put up or shut up, carry your load,
Gotta beat the body clock,
Cook tea,
Get up three hours before work
In order to leave for work looking like you aren’t wearing make up.
All the hidden signalling.
Having to put up with men.
Not feeling safe on the streets,
Not being safe on the streets,
Or behind the wheel of a car.
And all that baby stuff
What is that all about?
And then the slow emotional strangulation
Of it not understanding you,
Or you it,
And then crying for days
When it goes off to make a mess of it’s life,
Because they won’t listen,
No one does.
Still if you keep looking pretty
And above all smile.
Ok, I understand, that for reasons of gonad placement, I am not allowed to say such things. But in fairness, I haven't. I am just repeating things women have said to me with the odd 'SEXIST' joke thrown in.
I was intending to use it as an example of the poetry of hate, that sermon will have to wait for another day. The piece does contain some of the required elements, it is anti-kitsch and grotesque, Yet lacks the vital ingredient of inviting the reader to revel in their dislike. Instead, it just invites the reader to hate the poem.
Well actually the V-effect is intended to encourage critical thought.
But....
On a similar subject, and as an aside, I am finding the whole business of selling stuff rather interesting.
Well, it's not so much the selling, that is pretty much your standard back-biting and bile that goes with any selling job. What intrigues me is the conversation at the periphery.
For example, 'where you meant to be a writer?' This question started a rather dull but lengthy conversation of the usual e-peening variety, with the implication that secretly they were Robert Redford in All The Presidents Men (the meme of journalism, the noble art, apparently will not die). Me, being Puck, left a witty comment referencing Ed Reardon. Oh, I know, satire is defined as trolling on the interwebz, especially in threads populated with schoolteacher types.
The question is absurd. You may well have fate's bindi, marking you out to reach the summit of the Amazon smut chart but you are still writing for wankers.
Who are you writing for? Is perhaps more relevant. And the answer is often surprising.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cue random picture to deck the Facebooks with jolliness....
'Yes thanks I'll speak tomorrow' - sorry that was twitter wanting to know if I knew any of these people.
Mission accomplished.
My wittering on about poetry over the past week or so, and reading poems I have found to her, has provoked the missus into writing again. Obviously having internal gonads, the offer to share it with me was accompanied by, 'only if you've got time/have your coffee/if it's not very good etc'. Whereas, I, who was once female, but now have my gonads on the outside demand she miss the high score on Candy Crush when sharing creation.
Speaking of which.
Just You Wait
I’m glad I’m not a woman,
I couldn’t bare the self obsession,
The checking out of other women
To enforce conformity and not catch me out.
That whole desirability thing,
The pecking order.
The letting him beat you up
Because he looks good on your arm,
Or you can’t get anybody else,
Or both,
Or neither,
Or whatever.
Put up or shut up, carry your load,
Gotta beat the body clock,
Cook tea,
Get up three hours before work
In order to leave for work looking like you aren’t wearing make up.
All the hidden signalling.
Having to put up with men.
Not feeling safe on the streets,
Not being safe on the streets,
Or behind the wheel of a car.
And all that baby stuff
What is that all about?
And then the slow emotional strangulation
Of it not understanding you,
Or you it,
And then crying for days
When it goes off to make a mess of it’s life,
Because they won’t listen,
No one does.
Still if you keep looking pretty
And above all smile.
Ok, I understand, that for reasons of gonad placement, I am not allowed to say such things. But in fairness, I haven't. I am just repeating things women have said to me with the odd 'SEXIST' joke thrown in.
I was intending to use it as an example of the poetry of hate, that sermon will have to wait for another day. The piece does contain some of the required elements, it is anti-kitsch and grotesque, Yet lacks the vital ingredient of inviting the reader to revel in their dislike. Instead, it just invites the reader to hate the poem.
Well actually the V-effect is intended to encourage critical thought.
But....
On a similar subject, and as an aside, I am finding the whole business of selling stuff rather interesting.
Well, it's not so much the selling, that is pretty much your standard back-biting and bile that goes with any selling job. What intrigues me is the conversation at the periphery.
For example, 'where you meant to be a writer?' This question started a rather dull but lengthy conversation of the usual e-peening variety, with the implication that secretly they were Robert Redford in All The Presidents Men (the meme of journalism, the noble art, apparently will not die). Me, being Puck, left a witty comment referencing Ed Reardon. Oh, I know, satire is defined as trolling on the interwebz, especially in threads populated with schoolteacher types.
The question is absurd. You may well have fate's bindi, marking you out to reach the summit of the Amazon smut chart but you are still writing for wankers.
Who are you writing for? Is perhaps more relevant. And the answer is often surprising.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cue random picture to deck the Facebooks with jolliness....
08/03/2014
Ujule
#Experimental #poetry - it's a bit ooooh, it's a bit ah, it's a bit eeeeeek, it's a bit meh. ... it's a bit FISH, it's a bit clap your hands, it's a bit rattle your jewels, it's a bit meh..... it's a bit children's entertainer....
Right, that's the twitters dealt with.....
I spent my teenage years enthralled by tales of happenings, enamoured by the work of Craig, in love with the Birth of Narcissus, and chortling to the Cheese Shop sketch. In a fit of youthful hubris I wrote half a scene for a reworking of Hamlet, in which the actors erupt form the stage and take the audience hostage; complete with pyrotechnics and fake blood. The ultimate revenge tragedy you might say. A one night only experience to set my name alongside Stravinsky.
Of course I had overlooked that the audience at the Rite of Spring were rioting to get onto the stage. And the reality of Brecht breaking out of the proscenium arch was that his revolutionary theatre marched, banners waving, straight into kitsch of school drama classes.
Thus when I discovered google translate I was rather excited. Unfortunately, the tool is not as useful as it once was, due to linguists and literalists making it fit for purpose. Back in the day, it was the perfect surrealist thesaurus. Type in a phrase, translate it into French, convert it back English, and receive something best described as 'you know what they meant'. If the result was not quite right, repeat the process, in German, or Serbian, or Chinese, the possibility was endless.
At some point in the process, I returned to the poems I had written in runes. These you may recall, used runes to mask the content from the prying, and possibly mocking, eyes of coworkers. Yet, runes have a meaning in and of themselves.
Love
Ice: ansus mannez :
Sowelu ewaz largo feyu largo ewaz sowelu sowelu
northaz ewaz sowelu sowelu :
wunju hagalaz ewaz northaz:
ansus largo largo :
raido ewaz teewahz ur raido northaz sowelu :
teewahz othillo :
mannez ewaz ::
Be still : know yourself :
Move to the light and grow fat : grow with life :
For the light of the double sun is your guide :
Find joy in adversity and your need for truth :
Let talk flow : for wisdom is achieved in defeating weakness :
Vanquish loneliness and stay true to your quest :
Ice : ansus mannez :
Ken othillo northaz sowelu teewahz ansus northaz ken yerah :
Othillo feyu : largo ice geebu hagalaz teewahz sowelu :
Ewaz wunju
Ewaz raido :
Ken hagalaz ansus northaz geebu ice ing ::
Be still : know yourself :
In loneliness we understand the need for others :
The need to converse and find new insight :
Only stunted riches lie within : as winter
turns to bring the growth of spring :
The path of happiness and knowledge
is beset with hardship and doubt :
Ice : ansus mannez :
Ansus largo largo :
Ansus northaz dagu :
Northaz othillo thuraz ice ing ::
Be still : know yourself :
Let words flow as water : transform with words
your inner needs : you are but one : together
we become the wings of the butterfly :
The poem obviously has V-effect. The reader is subconsciously repelled, and may consciously declare that it is self indulgent bullshit. This reaction reinforced by the title. It meets none of the expectations of a chocolate box love poem, nor does it fit into the genre of angsty self help - though there are invitations towards New Age self discovery.
At it's heart is a three line riddle, which can be read as an acrostic.
The translation of the runes, my interpretation, are literal - as much as any oracle materials can be literal.
Not that the poem needs interpretation. It can just be read as it is, and the runic elements treated as a meditative mantra.
I am, and still am, a little dubious of the 'the double sun'. But one cannot deal with the runic occult on any serious level without running into moral issues of the mid twentieth century. However, the swastika has an ancient history. It is doubtful if the person who went up the moor I see from my window, two and half thousand years ago, carved the swastika stone as a statement of grievance over the 18th century partition of Poland or the Napoleonic laws of religious toleration.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Cue random photo to make the Facebooks look jazzy....
Right, that's the twitters dealt with.....
I spent my teenage years enthralled by tales of happenings, enamoured by the work of Craig, in love with the Birth of Narcissus, and chortling to the Cheese Shop sketch. In a fit of youthful hubris I wrote half a scene for a reworking of Hamlet, in which the actors erupt form the stage and take the audience hostage; complete with pyrotechnics and fake blood. The ultimate revenge tragedy you might say. A one night only experience to set my name alongside Stravinsky.
Of course I had overlooked that the audience at the Rite of Spring were rioting to get onto the stage. And the reality of Brecht breaking out of the proscenium arch was that his revolutionary theatre marched, banners waving, straight into kitsch of school drama classes.
Thus when I discovered google translate I was rather excited. Unfortunately, the tool is not as useful as it once was, due to linguists and literalists making it fit for purpose. Back in the day, it was the perfect surrealist thesaurus. Type in a phrase, translate it into French, convert it back English, and receive something best described as 'you know what they meant'. If the result was not quite right, repeat the process, in German, or Serbian, or Chinese, the possibility was endless.
At some point in the process, I returned to the poems I had written in runes. These you may recall, used runes to mask the content from the prying, and possibly mocking, eyes of coworkers. Yet, runes have a meaning in and of themselves.
Love
Ice: ansus mannez :
Sowelu ewaz largo feyu largo ewaz sowelu sowelu
northaz ewaz sowelu sowelu :
wunju hagalaz ewaz northaz:
ansus largo largo :
raido ewaz teewahz ur raido northaz sowelu :
teewahz othillo :
mannez ewaz ::
Be still : know yourself :
Move to the light and grow fat : grow with life :
For the light of the double sun is your guide :
Find joy in adversity and your need for truth :
Let talk flow : for wisdom is achieved in defeating weakness :
Vanquish loneliness and stay true to your quest :
Ice : ansus mannez :
Ken othillo northaz sowelu teewahz ansus northaz ken yerah :
Othillo feyu : largo ice geebu hagalaz teewahz sowelu :
Ewaz wunju
Ewaz raido :
Ken hagalaz ansus northaz geebu ice ing ::
Be still : know yourself :
In loneliness we understand the need for others :
The need to converse and find new insight :
Only stunted riches lie within : as winter
turns to bring the growth of spring :
The path of happiness and knowledge
is beset with hardship and doubt :
Ice : ansus mannez :
Ansus largo largo :
Ansus northaz dagu :
Northaz othillo thuraz ice ing ::
Be still : know yourself :
Let words flow as water : transform with words
your inner needs : you are but one : together
we become the wings of the butterfly :
The poem obviously has V-effect. The reader is subconsciously repelled, and may consciously declare that it is self indulgent bullshit. This reaction reinforced by the title. It meets none of the expectations of a chocolate box love poem, nor does it fit into the genre of angsty self help - though there are invitations towards New Age self discovery.
At it's heart is a three line riddle, which can be read as an acrostic.
The translation of the runes, my interpretation, are literal - as much as any oracle materials can be literal.
Not that the poem needs interpretation. It can just be read as it is, and the runic elements treated as a meditative mantra.
I am, and still am, a little dubious of the 'the double sun'. But one cannot deal with the runic occult on any serious level without running into moral issues of the mid twentieth century. However, the swastika has an ancient history. It is doubtful if the person who went up the moor I see from my window, two and half thousand years ago, carved the swastika stone as a statement of grievance over the 18th century partition of Poland or the Napoleonic laws of religious toleration.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Cue random photo to make the Facebooks look jazzy....
07/03/2014
#Love #Poetry
Love
Ice: ansus mannez :
Sowelu ewaz largo feyu largo ewaz sowelu sowelu
northaz ewaz sowelu sowelu :
wunju hagalaz ewaz northaz:
ansus largo largo :
raido ewaz teewahz ur raido northaz sowelu :
teewahz othillo :
mannez ewaz ::
Be still : know yourself :
Move to the light and grow fat : grow with life :
For the light of the double sun is your guide :
Find joy in adversity and your need for truth :
Let talk flow : for wisdom is achieved in defeating weakness :
Vanquish loneliness and stay true to your quest :
Ice : ansus mannez :
Ken othillo northaz sowelu teewahz ansus northaz ken yerah :
Othillo feyu : largo ice geebu hagalaz teewahz sowelu :
Ewaz wunju
Ewaz raido :
Ken hagalaz ansus northaz geebu ice ing ::
Be still : know yourself :
In loneliness we understand the need for others :
The need to converse and find new insight :
Only stunted riches lie within : as winter
turns to bring the growth of spring :
The path of happiness and knowledge
is beset with hardship and doubt :
Ice : ansus mannez :
Ansus largo largo :
Ansus northaz dagu :
Northaz othillo thuraz ice ing ::
Be still : know yourself :
Let words flow as water : transform with words
your inner needs : you are but one : together
we become the wings of the butterfly :
----------------------------------------------------------------
Ice: ansus mannez :
Sowelu ewaz largo feyu largo ewaz sowelu sowelu
northaz ewaz sowelu sowelu :
wunju hagalaz ewaz northaz:
ansus largo largo :
raido ewaz teewahz ur raido northaz sowelu :
teewahz othillo :
mannez ewaz ::
Be still : know yourself :
Move to the light and grow fat : grow with life :
For the light of the double sun is your guide :
Find joy in adversity and your need for truth :
Let talk flow : for wisdom is achieved in defeating weakness :
Vanquish loneliness and stay true to your quest :
Ice : ansus mannez :
Ken othillo northaz sowelu teewahz ansus northaz ken yerah :
Othillo feyu : largo ice geebu hagalaz teewahz sowelu :
Ewaz wunju
Ewaz raido :
Ken hagalaz ansus northaz geebu ice ing ::
Be still : know yourself :
In loneliness we understand the need for others :
The need to converse and find new insight :
Only stunted riches lie within : as winter
turns to bring the growth of spring :
The path of happiness and knowledge
is beset with hardship and doubt :
Ice : ansus mannez :
Ansus largo largo :
Ansus northaz dagu :
Northaz othillo thuraz ice ing ::
Be still : know yourself :
Let words flow as water : transform with words
your inner needs : you are but one : together
we become the wings of the butterfly :
----------------------------------------------------------------
Into the Ordinary
#Poetry, is an #expression of #beauty.
The #poet transforms the #ordinary into the #extraordinary, #revealing hidden #depths, and #enlightens...
Are we through 140 characters yet?
Excuse the opening, but this blog feeds to twitter, and much as I loath twitter, I am told I must have it for marketing.
In a recent post I mentioned the art of the ordinary - I can't link to post, as the links here don't work on my goodreads blog, which is also linked to this blog. I like goodreads more than twitter,and again I am told I must have it for marketing. Excuse the post-modernist revealing of structure in these asides.I realise the irony of saying I can't post links because of the goodreads blog, and then posting a link to the goodreads blog, but I figure if you are reading the goodreads blog, you won't follow a link to the goodreads blog. Did I mention the goodreads blog? I'm told I need it for marketing.
Anywho....
Contained within the cliche of art, poetry, being an expression of beauty, the transformation of the ordinary into the extraordinary, the revelation is of hidden depths, is the question, why? Why does the ordinary require change?Why can't it just be observed for what it is?
Vermeer understood this question. Practitioners of logomography, in it's purest sense, apply it all the time.
The second element of the art of the ordinary is humour.
The obvious example is the Magritte painting, Ceci n'est pas une pipe, in which a hyper realistic portrayal of a pipe is presented above a caption declaring that it isn't. A little joke.
But let us go back to Vermeer, and his painting of the milkmaid. The image is shocking in it's simplicity, it's depiction of what is there, and for it's time the humbleness of the subject. There is no allegory, no referencing of great events or peoples. Yet look at the window. Whilst it is an ordinary window, it can also be seen as a perspective screen. A knowing wink. A little joke, that we should be viewing the milkmaid from outside of the house, voyeuristically, from above.
The third element is seeing things that are not seen because we see them everyday.
In the examples above, there is the pipe, the milk maid, the mouse trap. And in lomography the unframed and unfocused image of the peripheral vision, that our brain filters out, just as in the cocktail effect.
Marketing
Ingredients
1 ½ mugfulls of water
7 teaspoons of sugar
citric acid
flavourings carried on a gm base:
can design hinting at health.
Demographics
Most American women do not know,
if at the present moment,
they are wearing stockings or tights.
The product will be placed
directly in the eye line of seven year old girls.
Married women, having lost the sex drive,
look to younger role models.
Married women, having lost the sex drive
don’t care if they have a bit of a gut.
Your product will be placed in aisle seven
so any good intention at healthy eating
has long since gone by the board,
due in part to the bleating of the seven-year-old girl.
Target group favourite colour is chocolate.
Target Percentage of Population
Enough to make a killing.
Recommendations
Convert the chemical works
from polypropylene production.
Choose a song by someone cool.
Charge 82p.
In another life I was told that for reasons of my job, I was writing for a business magazine, that I should sign up to be sent a daily marketing report. The report consisted of various statements, which when pieced together were supposed to inform, and enrich. I used one of these snippets as the hook for the poem, namely the supposed fact that most American women, it was @63% , didn't know when asked if they were wearing stockings or tights.
Which in itself is quite a good little joke.
And no doubt someone has used the information to make money. Despite the statement making no sense. As tights in America are not the same thing as in Britain, and frankly why would any woman answer this question? It's none of anyone's business.
Another thing that struck me about these reports was the sheer cynicism of the information. But then, anyone who has ever shopped in a supermarket will understand this implicitly. Or indeed has read a women's magazine. Supermarkets are positively saintly in their marketing compared with the messaging targeted at women through 'their' media. The editorials might speak of empowerment and the triumph of woman, but the ads are for plastic surgery, quick fixes and generally to buy stuff to make you better. Speak of which. I am told that women's magazines are banned from psychiatric some wards as they hinder recovery due to the poor self image they promote.
Obviously the poem has V-effect and duality. How could it not?... how dare a man be a feminist!....but it also has the required three elements of the art of the ordinary: it focuses on what is - the cynicism of marketing, without resort to artifice, obfuscation or pretension -, it has little jokes - favourite colour chocolate -, and it shows what is seen but not seen - the careful placement of goods, the objectification of the individual, the enforcement of guilt.
It's also an example of the poetry of hate. But more on grotesques at a later date.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cue random picture to make the Facebooks less bland....
The #poet transforms the #ordinary into the #extraordinary, #revealing hidden #depths, and #enlightens...
Are we through 140 characters yet?
Excuse the opening, but this blog feeds to twitter, and much as I loath twitter, I am told I must have it for marketing.
In a recent post I mentioned the art of the ordinary - I can't link to post, as the links here don't work on my goodreads blog, which is also linked to this blog. I like goodreads more than twitter,and again I am told I must have it for marketing. Excuse the post-modernist revealing of structure in these asides.I realise the irony of saying I can't post links because of the goodreads blog, and then posting a link to the goodreads blog, but I figure if you are reading the goodreads blog, you won't follow a link to the goodreads blog. Did I mention the goodreads blog? I'm told I need it for marketing.
Anywho....
Contained within the cliche of art, poetry, being an expression of beauty, the transformation of the ordinary into the extraordinary, the revelation is of hidden depths, is the question, why? Why does the ordinary require change?Why can't it just be observed for what it is?
Vermeer understood this question. Practitioners of logomography, in it's purest sense, apply it all the time.
The second element of the art of the ordinary is humour.
The obvious example is the Magritte painting, Ceci n'est pas une pipe, in which a hyper realistic portrayal of a pipe is presented above a caption declaring that it isn't. A little joke.
But let us go back to Vermeer, and his painting of the milkmaid. The image is shocking in it's simplicity, it's depiction of what is there, and for it's time the humbleness of the subject. There is no allegory, no referencing of great events or peoples. Yet look at the window. Whilst it is an ordinary window, it can also be seen as a perspective screen. A knowing wink. A little joke, that we should be viewing the milkmaid from outside of the house, voyeuristically, from above.
The third element is seeing things that are not seen because we see them everyday.
In the examples above, there is the pipe, the milk maid, the mouse trap. And in lomography the unframed and unfocused image of the peripheral vision, that our brain filters out, just as in the cocktail effect.
Marketing
Ingredients
1 ½ mugfulls of water
7 teaspoons of sugar
citric acid
flavourings carried on a gm base:
can design hinting at health.
Demographics
Most American women do not know,
if at the present moment,
they are wearing stockings or tights.
The product will be placed
directly in the eye line of seven year old girls.
Married women, having lost the sex drive,
look to younger role models.
Married women, having lost the sex drive
don’t care if they have a bit of a gut.
Your product will be placed in aisle seven
so any good intention at healthy eating
has long since gone by the board,
due in part to the bleating of the seven-year-old girl.
Target group favourite colour is chocolate.
Target Percentage of Population
Enough to make a killing.
Recommendations
Convert the chemical works
from polypropylene production.
Choose a song by someone cool.
Charge 82p.
In another life I was told that for reasons of my job, I was writing for a business magazine, that I should sign up to be sent a daily marketing report. The report consisted of various statements, which when pieced together were supposed to inform, and enrich. I used one of these snippets as the hook for the poem, namely the supposed fact that most American women, it was @63% , didn't know when asked if they were wearing stockings or tights.
Which in itself is quite a good little joke.
And no doubt someone has used the information to make money. Despite the statement making no sense. As tights in America are not the same thing as in Britain, and frankly why would any woman answer this question? It's none of anyone's business.
Another thing that struck me about these reports was the sheer cynicism of the information. But then, anyone who has ever shopped in a supermarket will understand this implicitly. Or indeed has read a women's magazine. Supermarkets are positively saintly in their marketing compared with the messaging targeted at women through 'their' media. The editorials might speak of empowerment and the triumph of woman, but the ads are for plastic surgery, quick fixes and generally to buy stuff to make you better. Speak of which. I am told that women's magazines are banned from psychiatric some wards as they hinder recovery due to the poor self image they promote.
Obviously the poem has V-effect and duality. How could it not?... how dare a man be a feminist!....but it also has the required three elements of the art of the ordinary: it focuses on what is - the cynicism of marketing, without resort to artifice, obfuscation or pretension -, it has little jokes - favourite colour chocolate -, and it shows what is seen but not seen - the careful placement of goods, the objectification of the individual, the enforcement of guilt.
It's also an example of the poetry of hate. But more on grotesques at a later date.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cue random picture to make the Facebooks less bland....
06/03/2014
Investing
As a #poet it is always nice when someone says something about your #poetry.
Obviously whatever is said should be treated as an imposter. Particularly if the critique contains any element of 'good' or 'bad'. It should be handled more carefully if containing 'like' - but not likes, as that it just the modern way of saying, I saw what was written and am ignoring it'; much as the weasel word, 'interesting' should never be believed. An interesting poem is usually to be found in the gardens of an institution, performing attic Greek dance in purple silk - or a school.
It's been a while since I dipped my face in the poetic spring. The blurb for The Blue Book states the poems were written between 2000 and 2008 but thinking about it, it is probably 2006 or 07. The date November the 5th 2006 is really the cut off point as that was the date my daughter was born, she having died on 3rd of November 2006. There was the odd scribble afterwards, mainly in an attempt to understand or express the grief.
The event that probably did for the muse was shortly after, while me and the missus were still following the advice to pull our vest down to our knees and carry on, there was a poetry reading at a local group, at which a mother who had been through stillbirth herself was hustling her collection. They were very good poems; heartfelt and moving, interesting.
However, I looked at her, listened to her, and decided I did not want to be her; or be accused of being her.
It's one thing to expose mental illness, or alcoholism, or transvestism, or whatever. They have a long and honorable tradition in the art of self-abasement and agitprop. But, there was something pronish about using the hope of a child.
Gosh! this wind is long.
So having offended certain parties by daring to have a book to promote, and finding that joining in with poets is more fun than selling stuff I found a competition and decided to have a go.
Write a poem about the spring, using the words Violet, Blossom, Innocence and Sunbeam.
Oop Ont' Moor
Violet misplaced her innocence
parked in bluebells
on the backseat of a Chrysler
Sunbeam. Clive, was his name.
Obviously whatever is said should be treated as an imposter. Particularly if the critique contains any element of 'good' or 'bad'. It should be handled more carefully if containing 'like' - but not likes, as that it just the modern way of saying, I saw what was written and am ignoring it'; much as the weasel word, 'interesting' should never be believed. An interesting poem is usually to be found in the gardens of an institution, performing attic Greek dance in purple silk - or a school.
It's been a while since I dipped my face in the poetic spring. The blurb for The Blue Book states the poems were written between 2000 and 2008 but thinking about it, it is probably 2006 or 07. The date November the 5th 2006 is really the cut off point as that was the date my daughter was born, she having died on 3rd of November 2006. There was the odd scribble afterwards, mainly in an attempt to understand or express the grief.
The event that probably did for the muse was shortly after, while me and the missus were still following the advice to pull our vest down to our knees and carry on, there was a poetry reading at a local group, at which a mother who had been through stillbirth herself was hustling her collection. They were very good poems; heartfelt and moving, interesting.
However, I looked at her, listened to her, and decided I did not want to be her; or be accused of being her.
It's one thing to expose mental illness, or alcoholism, or transvestism, or whatever. They have a long and honorable tradition in the art of self-abasement and agitprop. But, there was something pronish about using the hope of a child.
Gosh! this wind is long.
So having offended certain parties by daring to have a book to promote, and finding that joining in with poets is more fun than selling stuff I found a competition and decided to have a go.
Write a poem about the spring, using the words Violet, Blossom, Innocence and Sunbeam.
Oop Ont' Moor
Violet misplaced her innocence
parked in bluebells
on the backseat of a Chrysler
Sunbeam. Clive, was his name.
Just as the gypsy read,
they walked out in March,
found the road to love
in April and, when she said
he may, they went bar tat.
A passing duck laced his boots
sensing worms. As the blossom
of passion steamed her glasses
she smelt of the spring.
This is the third or fourth rewrite, the original was a slightly obvious extraction of the urine. But as the piece has been trimmed and refined it has taken on a more serious tone.
But regardless, it was nice to finally write a poem again. To stretch my mind in order to weigh an 'f' against a 'th', to find and reinforce the internal structure points, to play up and down the puns and tricks. Perhaps most shocking, as a confirmed southern softie, was that things fell into place when I squeezed through the ginnel, flattened my 'a's and med it reet northern.
It helps if you know the Yorkshire anthem, and the unofficial version, but if not the duck can be seen as the Roman sexual metaphor, or the term of affection, or as just a piece of surrealism.
Much as poets, and writers in general, publicly dislike these kind of writing exercises, they can be very useful ways of keeping your vest over you knees and just writing.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Cue random picture, to make the facebooks shine....
they walked out in March,
found the road to love
in April and, when she said
he may, they went bar tat.
A passing duck laced his boots
sensing worms. As the blossom
of passion steamed her glasses
she smelt of the spring.
This is the third or fourth rewrite, the original was a slightly obvious extraction of the urine. But as the piece has been trimmed and refined it has taken on a more serious tone.
But regardless, it was nice to finally write a poem again. To stretch my mind in order to weigh an 'f' against a 'th', to find and reinforce the internal structure points, to play up and down the puns and tricks. Perhaps most shocking, as a confirmed southern softie, was that things fell into place when I squeezed through the ginnel, flattened my 'a's and med it reet northern.
It helps if you know the Yorkshire anthem, and the unofficial version, but if not the duck can be seen as the Roman sexual metaphor, or the term of affection, or as just a piece of surrealism.
Much as poets, and writers in general, publicly dislike these kind of writing exercises, they can be very useful ways of keeping your vest over you knees and just writing.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Cue random picture, to make the facebooks shine....
05/03/2014
Gun
There is a certain expectation of what #poetry is.
In my post on V-effect I offered this grappling definition,
"In essence it should be a vacuum that by use of rhythm, and possibly rhyme, creates the space onto which the imagery is punched. There is a certain soporific quality to it. The problem is that often this is interpreted as niceness - both in the literal sense and it's kitschy common usage."
Perhaps another definition would be, you know what it is when you see it or hear it.
Anyone who has ever sat down to write a poem - as opposed to sat on a bus or a train and composed a poem to pass the time - will know that dreaded moment when the pen hits the paper. The opening of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor sound in your head, and out it comes. The poem will either finish you, or you will finish it. Words start appearing that you would never use in common speech. And in the worst of cases, you will create a work of art; something deep and profound, unalterable, impassive, monumental; and akin to a crucifix in a jar of urine.
I shall climb down off my high horse.
Occasionally, the organ in you head will sound out those heavy chords, and the opening line will not be to a poem. It will just be a line. It will sit on a scrap of paper, or in your notepad, sometime for weeks, or months, or minutes.
And thus it is with the line, 'The sun sits high past the noontime,'.
At the time I was writing a short film about a man who tells his girlfriend he is a rapist because he doesn't want her to find out he is a tranny. She knows he is lying, but thinks he has told her his big secret because he is having an affair. So when she goes to his house and catches glimpses of a woman, she breaks in, and.... well, I'm really sure what happens after that, as I didn't finish it.
Instead, I gazed out of the window, looked at the summer day, doodled the line, made a cup of tea, made another attempt at rewriting my version of the Bacchae, had another cup of tea, this time with a biscuit, played spider solitaire, had a bath, and generally bidjed about.
Later the line found me again, and for whatever reason transported me back to the 1970's, and those glorious hot summers of 1975 and 76. 'I know,' I thought, 'I'll write something about my childhood.'
Which brings us to, The Rabbit God.
The Rabbit God
The sun sits high past the noontime,
the flat land, new mown,
ambles away to the river.
And, in the last field before the railway lines
I lean against the stake of the barbed wire fence
and watch rabbits.
The year before the roadsides had been littered
with the blinded debris of mixi.
He is two months younger than I;
taller, more willing to fight,
though maybe my equal in strength.
We have just had a wheelie competition,
in the dust of the abandoned road,
which runs arrow straight over the crossing.
Our brown-berry legs,
in short trousers,
carry the scars of play,
in these dying days of the summer holiday.
He tells me to wait outside,
I kick stones:
he re-appears with the gun.
I am nervous.
He tells me it is fine,
that his parents won't mind.
And, anyway, they are both at work.
The gun is nearly as tall as me.
And as he pulls the trigger,
it nearly knocks him backwards:
though he says it is only a 4/10,
and he's fired bigger.
The rabbit looks shocked.
One moment it was chasing its friend's tail
the next it is moving sideways,
then backwards
then looping into the air.
The field which moments earlier
had been dotted with grey dancing,
lies fallow and still
a sea of watching eyes.
It is larger than I imagine.
'A female,' he tells me, laughing,
squeezing the guts,
gushing out a yellow stream.
I tell him to stop,
sensing desecration,
but he says you have to do it.
He breaks the gun, and casually carries it on the hip
holding the now cleaned doe
by the ears.
The last time I was in this garden,
we used a catapult
to test the parachute of his Action Man.
And, I think of this
as he slits the rabbit from pelvis to neck.
The torn flesh and purple innards
force me to retreat to the corner of the house.
When I peer around the wall,
in response to his urging,
I see his fingers enter the cut,
hook the skin,
pull the hind legs back:
with a deft cracking of bones.
It comes off in one piece:
the skin from the meat,
like the sound of a wet sandcastle being turned out.
That the poem occurred at all is somewhat surprising, as in the period it was written I was doing the performance circuit. And this has none of the jokes, firecrackers, knowing asides, that play well when performing. Nor does it have the deliberate confrontation to the audience to like it more that what comes before or afterwards.
There is V-effect and duality, so from the perspective of seeking to create an artistic integrity within my work that is pleasing. The duality being that there should be nothing ominous about two boys killing a rabbit, it's what young boys have done since time-in-memorial (a prize if you can spot the V-effect and duality in that statement)
If we go back to the grappled definition, the poem certainly has that vacuum within it, the space for the reader, and the image. When Bach's fugue had ceased playing, replaced by On the Road Again for the editing process, I hacked at the text to give it as much air as possible; leaving the briefest of descriptions to paint the scene, and focusing on the relationship between the three characters.
It also contains the art of the ordinary. Which is a concept I like very much, and will no doubt explain my rational at some point. But for now, suffice to say that rather than go through process to produce a crucifix in a jar of urine, you go through process to produce the cap off the toothpaste tube, or a receipt. Those things that are overlooked.
It's a shame that the Dadaists and Futurists failed to understand the expression in restraint, If they had perhaps there would not be such snobbery and fear towards the modern, and particularly the post modern.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Cue random picture to make the facebooks look dressed....
In my post on V-effect I offered this grappling definition,
"In essence it should be a vacuum that by use of rhythm, and possibly rhyme, creates the space onto which the imagery is punched. There is a certain soporific quality to it. The problem is that often this is interpreted as niceness - both in the literal sense and it's kitschy common usage."
Perhaps another definition would be, you know what it is when you see it or hear it.
Anyone who has ever sat down to write a poem - as opposed to sat on a bus or a train and composed a poem to pass the time - will know that dreaded moment when the pen hits the paper. The opening of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor sound in your head, and out it comes. The poem will either finish you, or you will finish it. Words start appearing that you would never use in common speech. And in the worst of cases, you will create a work of art; something deep and profound, unalterable, impassive, monumental; and akin to a crucifix in a jar of urine.
I shall climb down off my high horse.
Occasionally, the organ in you head will sound out those heavy chords, and the opening line will not be to a poem. It will just be a line. It will sit on a scrap of paper, or in your notepad, sometime for weeks, or months, or minutes.
And thus it is with the line, 'The sun sits high past the noontime,'.
At the time I was writing a short film about a man who tells his girlfriend he is a rapist because he doesn't want her to find out he is a tranny. She knows he is lying, but thinks he has told her his big secret because he is having an affair. So when she goes to his house and catches glimpses of a woman, she breaks in, and.... well, I'm really sure what happens after that, as I didn't finish it.
Instead, I gazed out of the window, looked at the summer day, doodled the line, made a cup of tea, made another attempt at rewriting my version of the Bacchae, had another cup of tea, this time with a biscuit, played spider solitaire, had a bath, and generally bidjed about.
Later the line found me again, and for whatever reason transported me back to the 1970's, and those glorious hot summers of 1975 and 76. 'I know,' I thought, 'I'll write something about my childhood.'
Which brings us to, The Rabbit God.
The Rabbit God
The sun sits high past the noontime,
the flat land, new mown,
ambles away to the river.
And, in the last field before the railway lines
I lean against the stake of the barbed wire fence
and watch rabbits.
The year before the roadsides had been littered
with the blinded debris of mixi.
He is two months younger than I;
taller, more willing to fight,
though maybe my equal in strength.
We have just had a wheelie competition,
in the dust of the abandoned road,
which runs arrow straight over the crossing.
Our brown-berry legs,
in short trousers,
carry the scars of play,
in these dying days of the summer holiday.
He tells me to wait outside,
I kick stones:
he re-appears with the gun.
I am nervous.
He tells me it is fine,
that his parents won't mind.
And, anyway, they are both at work.
The gun is nearly as tall as me.
And as he pulls the trigger,
it nearly knocks him backwards:
though he says it is only a 4/10,
and he's fired bigger.
The rabbit looks shocked.
One moment it was chasing its friend's tail
the next it is moving sideways,
then backwards
then looping into the air.
The field which moments earlier
had been dotted with grey dancing,
lies fallow and still
a sea of watching eyes.
It is larger than I imagine.
'A female,' he tells me, laughing,
squeezing the guts,
gushing out a yellow stream.
I tell him to stop,
sensing desecration,
but he says you have to do it.
He breaks the gun, and casually carries it on the hip
holding the now cleaned doe
by the ears.
The last time I was in this garden,
we used a catapult
to test the parachute of his Action Man.
And, I think of this
as he slits the rabbit from pelvis to neck.
The torn flesh and purple innards
force me to retreat to the corner of the house.
When I peer around the wall,
in response to his urging,
I see his fingers enter the cut,
hook the skin,
pull the hind legs back:
with a deft cracking of bones.
It comes off in one piece:
the skin from the meat,
like the sound of a wet sandcastle being turned out.
That the poem occurred at all is somewhat surprising, as in the period it was written I was doing the performance circuit. And this has none of the jokes, firecrackers, knowing asides, that play well when performing. Nor does it have the deliberate confrontation to the audience to like it more that what comes before or afterwards.
There is V-effect and duality, so from the perspective of seeking to create an artistic integrity within my work that is pleasing. The duality being that there should be nothing ominous about two boys killing a rabbit, it's what young boys have done since time-in-memorial (a prize if you can spot the V-effect and duality in that statement)
If we go back to the grappled definition, the poem certainly has that vacuum within it, the space for the reader, and the image. When Bach's fugue had ceased playing, replaced by On the Road Again for the editing process, I hacked at the text to give it as much air as possible; leaving the briefest of descriptions to paint the scene, and focusing on the relationship between the three characters.
It also contains the art of the ordinary. Which is a concept I like very much, and will no doubt explain my rational at some point. But for now, suffice to say that rather than go through process to produce a crucifix in a jar of urine, you go through process to produce the cap off the toothpaste tube, or a receipt. Those things that are overlooked.
It's a shame that the Dadaists and Futurists failed to understand the expression in restraint, If they had perhaps there would not be such snobbery and fear towards the modern, and particularly the post modern.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Cue random picture to make the facebooks look dressed....
04/03/2014
Letter Box
The Look Inside feature on Amazon allows potential readers a peek at the #poetry. According to feedback all that can be seen is the table of contents.
Regular readers will know, it is barely a week since I learned how to convert a Word document to the required format for uploading to Kindle. Yes I know I should read the FAQ's and there are various manuals that could be consulted, but having external gonads if I can't mend it with a hammer it can't be mended.
Therefore, the past few days have been spent trying to discover if there is some way to instruct Salome how many veils to drop. This quest through blogs and websites was fruitless.
So I hit on the idea of moving a poem ahead of the TOC - a decent spray of WD40brought back which buttons to press. And being on a roll, the copyright business and contact details were moved to the back of the book, a few bits and pieces deleted, some spolling mistakes corrected, and Bob's-your-live-in-lover the file is ready for upload.
The bumped poem is this....
Universal Suffrage
Grandmother had the self same dolls
all lined up and on display. Once
a year she would take them out
for dusting. They were not for touching
but remained behind glass,
smiles fixed, fading from
four ‘til six as the sun passed
over the backyard. Tiny women
trapped beside the pantry door, forever
catching crumbs and flinching
from the faces of eager children.
A frigid life, lived on the shelf
infertile: yet beautiful, unnatural
in its combination, awful
now when contemplated.
As you can see, the poem uses enjambment to establish meter and emphasis.
When the file was uploaded I decided to have a look at the preview, in order to make sure the poem could be seen.
So I did.
And was rather surprised that instead of just the TOC, the preview offered @ six poems, plus the TOC.
Which is not to call the people offering said feedback liars.
I suspect that Look Inside offers a percentage of the book as a preview (@10%). The original document is 77 pages in Word. With page breaks, the original title page, copyright, TOC, etc, would have been about 7 pages. Amazon calculates the file at about @96 pages, and the preview now shows roughly 9 pages, which with the changes is the TOC and @six poems.
At which point I decided to test it on various devices - yes, yes, I realise I should have done this before, but what you gonna do?
So I asked the missus to look at it on her tablet.
"Is it meant to look like this?" she asked.
"Like what?" I snapped, still a little annoyed at her reluctance to help; she had been watching Criminal Minds on Netflix on the desktop and reading crochet blogs on her tablet.
"With the lines all jumbled up."
I went and had a look. In the vertical plane, the preview had compressed the text, breaking up the lines, ruining my cunningly crafted enjambments, in short the dreaded formatting issue that poets have been moaning about.
In theory this should be a big deal. But, I find myself wondering what people are complaining about.
The poem is still there.
The reader if they choose can have the formatted poem, if they choose to zoom out far enough to make the text unreadable without a magnifying glass. And the only reason the tablet is compressing the text in the vertical plane is because within the pop-up frame is the option to buy. There isn't an issue in the purchased copy. Effectively it is like peering through a letter box.
Yeah, but, no but....
I was once chatting with a curator at the Royal Academy. She told me about a a critically acclaimed installation piece. The artist had sent instructions as to how and where the various objects should be set in relationship to each other. I asked her how difficult it was to ensure that the piece was displayed correctly. She laughed. According to her, they did their best to follow the instructions, and the artist was free to move things if they weren't happy, but it was all academic because once the exhibition was underway the people who had most control of what the public see, are the cleaners.
"He who binds himself a joy,
does the winged life destroy."
----------------------------------------------------------------------
cue random picture to make the facebooks look pretty....
Regular readers will know, it is barely a week since I learned how to convert a Word document to the required format for uploading to Kindle. Yes I know I should read the FAQ's and there are various manuals that could be consulted, but having external gonads if I can't mend it with a hammer it can't be mended.
Therefore, the past few days have been spent trying to discover if there is some way to instruct Salome how many veils to drop. This quest through blogs and websites was fruitless.
So I hit on the idea of moving a poem ahead of the TOC - a decent spray of WD40brought back which buttons to press. And being on a roll, the copyright business and contact details were moved to the back of the book, a few bits and pieces deleted, some spolling mistakes corrected, and Bob's-your-live-in-lover the file is ready for upload.
The bumped poem is this....
Universal Suffrage
Grandmother had the self same dolls
all lined up and on display. Once
a year she would take them out
for dusting. They were not for touching
but remained behind glass,
smiles fixed, fading from
four ‘til six as the sun passed
over the backyard. Tiny women
trapped beside the pantry door, forever
catching crumbs and flinching
from the faces of eager children.
A frigid life, lived on the shelf
infertile: yet beautiful, unnatural
in its combination, awful
now when contemplated.
As you can see, the poem uses enjambment to establish meter and emphasis.
When the file was uploaded I decided to have a look at the preview, in order to make sure the poem could be seen.
So I did.
And was rather surprised that instead of just the TOC, the preview offered @ six poems, plus the TOC.
Which is not to call the people offering said feedback liars.
I suspect that Look Inside offers a percentage of the book as a preview (@10%). The original document is 77 pages in Word. With page breaks, the original title page, copyright, TOC, etc, would have been about 7 pages. Amazon calculates the file at about @96 pages, and the preview now shows roughly 9 pages, which with the changes is the TOC and @six poems.
At which point I decided to test it on various devices - yes, yes, I realise I should have done this before, but what you gonna do?
So I asked the missus to look at it on her tablet.
"Is it meant to look like this?" she asked.
"Like what?" I snapped, still a little annoyed at her reluctance to help; she had been watching Criminal Minds on Netflix on the desktop and reading crochet blogs on her tablet.
"With the lines all jumbled up."
I went and had a look. In the vertical plane, the preview had compressed the text, breaking up the lines, ruining my cunningly crafted enjambments, in short the dreaded formatting issue that poets have been moaning about.
In theory this should be a big deal. But, I find myself wondering what people are complaining about.
The poem is still there.
The reader if they choose can have the formatted poem, if they choose to zoom out far enough to make the text unreadable without a magnifying glass. And the only reason the tablet is compressing the text in the vertical plane is because within the pop-up frame is the option to buy. There isn't an issue in the purchased copy. Effectively it is like peering through a letter box.
Yeah, but, no but....
I was once chatting with a curator at the Royal Academy. She told me about a a critically acclaimed installation piece. The artist had sent instructions as to how and where the various objects should be set in relationship to each other. I asked her how difficult it was to ensure that the piece was displayed correctly. She laughed. According to her, they did their best to follow the instructions, and the artist was free to move things if they weren't happy, but it was all academic because once the exhibition was underway the people who had most control of what the public see, are the cleaners.
"He who binds himself a joy,
does the winged life destroy."
----------------------------------------------------------------------
cue random picture to make the facebooks look pretty....
03/03/2014
The Unsaid
In yonder age, I had a job installing a database at a food factory.
Well perhaps installing is too grand a term, as it was really standard slave data input drudgery. However, the computer I was given was barely able to run the program. When it came to calculating the calories, allergy information. cross referencing the ingredients, it would take half an hour bordering on the blue screen of death to perform a task that should have taken two seconds. The four week temp job, stretched out and out, eventually lasting more than a year.
This wasn't a problem for me, I was being paid, but I had a lot of time on my hands. I read the e for additives book, learned a great deal about making soup and sauces, made some new friends, had regular smoke breaks, wandered about, did the tasting sessions, chatted at the water cooler, and generally had a rather pleasant experience.
At the time I was exploring Norse paganism. It is questionable if a Saxon were to stumble into a time machine, and find the New Age me fiddling about with runes and drinking whiskey, they would recognize the mixture of 19th century Romanticism and Wiccan wishful thinking as Norse mythology. Regardless, it was fun.
It also allowed me to spend the hours, waiting for the ancient computer to compute e-coli in PJK456123-a 2mm Diced Chicken, writing poems. They were written in runes, not specifically runic poems, the runes were simply the code that allowed me to write without workmates passing comment. The fact that I was writing poems was weird enough, the unfamiliar linear script just added to the weirdness.
Thus was born a series of epic poems, filled with Gods and mortals, magic and pathos.
As with the way of all flesh, and bits of paper, those poems are long gone. So you'll never know the tale of the man cursed to drink but never be drunk, who wins a magical axe from Thor by beating him in a drinking contest, which he uses to cut himself to pieces in despair at not being permitted life's pleasures. Only for Loki to piece him back together, reverse the curse, and drive him mad with drunkenness at the sniff off the barmaids apron. And so on, with maidens to woo, and monsters to fight, all the while being the play thing of the Gods.
Years later I revived the theme, with this poem, Spring Shoots.
------------------------------------------------------------
cue random picture to make the facebooks look nice
Well perhaps installing is too grand a term, as it was really standard slave data input drudgery. However, the computer I was given was barely able to run the program. When it came to calculating the calories, allergy information. cross referencing the ingredients, it would take half an hour bordering on the blue screen of death to perform a task that should have taken two seconds. The four week temp job, stretched out and out, eventually lasting more than a year.
This wasn't a problem for me, I was being paid, but I had a lot of time on my hands. I read the e for additives book, learned a great deal about making soup and sauces, made some new friends, had regular smoke breaks, wandered about, did the tasting sessions, chatted at the water cooler, and generally had a rather pleasant experience.
At the time I was exploring Norse paganism. It is questionable if a Saxon were to stumble into a time machine, and find the New Age me fiddling about with runes and drinking whiskey, they would recognize the mixture of 19th century Romanticism and Wiccan wishful thinking as Norse mythology. Regardless, it was fun.
It also allowed me to spend the hours, waiting for the ancient computer to compute e-coli in PJK456123-a 2mm Diced Chicken, writing poems. They were written in runes, not specifically runic poems, the runes were simply the code that allowed me to write without workmates passing comment. The fact that I was writing poems was weird enough, the unfamiliar linear script just added to the weirdness.
Thus was born a series of epic poems, filled with Gods and mortals, magic and pathos.
As with the way of all flesh, and bits of paper, those poems are long gone. So you'll never know the tale of the man cursed to drink but never be drunk, who wins a magical axe from Thor by beating him in a drinking contest, which he uses to cut himself to pieces in despair at not being permitted life's pleasures. Only for Loki to piece him back together, reverse the curse, and drive him mad with drunkenness at the sniff off the barmaids apron. And so on, with maidens to woo, and monsters to fight, all the while being the play thing of the Gods.
Years later I revived the theme, with this poem, Spring Shoots.
------------------------------------------------------------
cue random picture to make the facebooks look nice
02/03/2014
Duality
In Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being
there is a very interesting discussion of opposites, in which he points out the opposite of darkness is not light, just as the opposite of lightness is not weight. But, these ideas are deeply ingrained - man/woman, day/night, liberal/conservative. high/low, old/young, long/short, Jew/Muslim/Christian/Atheist, rich/poor, religion/science, good/bad etc.
In the same novel, there is the marvelous Sabina, who is an artist concerned with what lies behind the image.
She is a character I have always identified with.
At which point it is useful to travel back to the early noughties. Internet connection is via dial up, the Twin Towers have recently fallen, English is still the Lingua Franca on public transport, The Third Way is the vogue in politics, and Tony Bliar has yet to get that curious twitch in his eye.
There am I listening on the wireless, with jaw agape, to the debate in parliament as to whether or not Britain would send troops to the impending conflict in Iraq. The cause of my gaping jaw is the claim, reported dutifully by all media, that Saddam Hussein has missiles that at four minutes notice can attack Greater Britain.
Now leave aside the subsequent issue of WMDs, at this stage Dr Kelly is still alive and Andrew Gilligan has yet to appear on an early morning un-neutered 'hideously white' BBC Today program. The Commando style drawings in the newspapers the following day showed Scud missiles, and large arrows indicating their flight path and a map angled in such a way that made Iraq a near neighbour - of seemingly everyone. Yet anyone with any knowledge of modern warfare knew the claim was a lie.
But wait, it wasn't. This is New Labour we are dealing with. The British territory referred to was some military bases in Cyprus, which are technically British territory. They can't be blamed if the story is spun to make it seem that Dorking is about to be attacked.
The tale gets more bizarre when spokespeople start quoting Thomas Aquinas and his justifications for what is and is not a just war. You will recall Tony was still doing God at this point. And not only God, in the Christian happy clappy guitar playing sense, he was also reading the Koran. This part of the story gets dropped later when Jihadi types start playing The Crusades card.
So we come to duality.
Perhaps it is my Piscean nature, or perhaps it is my admiration of Sabina, but I have always rather admired duality in art. Whether it be Blake's Jerusalem, the, supposed, subversive John the Baptist symbology of Da Vinci identified by Picknett and Prince, or the playfulness of Magritte with Ceci n'est pas une pipe.
And so I wrote A Prayer.
Our Father, franchised from America
that makes the world the same.
Thy mores come,
thy burgers will be done in Omsk
as they are in Capetown.
Give us our dose of the daily dead
and televise their carcasses
as we bomb the shit out of those that trespass against us.
And lead us not into Utopia
but deliver us from evil.
For thou hast dominion
the power and the weapons
but maybe not forever
Amen
There. It's obvious isn't it. A cheap trick. Oh how lame using the Lord's Prayer - it's been done a thousand times. Brainless anti-American bullshit.
Well it is if you think the opposite of day is night.
For one thing it isn't the Lord's Prayer, or at least not the version I have heard in any church in the past ten years. But then being a Sabina, it is the version I recite while all around are using the lumpen verse of the new text..
And what I haven't mentioned is that I was, and remain, in favour of the Iraq war. Mainly on old fashioned Liberal principles of self determination.
Thus the poem is written from that perspective.
Hence the appeal to deliver us from evil whilst steering clear of Utopia. And the warning that Empires, even when acting from noble intentions, risk losing their treasure and their moral purpose when ground down by endless war. And I rather like that if I go in a McDonalds, or a Gap, or a Tesco or or whatever, I know exactly what I will get. Which is probably why I shop at Booths, don't eat those kind of burgers more than once or twice a year, and wear whatever the missus buys me.
Of course the poem can be - and usually is - read from the completely opposite perspective. But it wouldn't be a dualist poem if it couldn't. Neither would it have V-effect.
As an aside there is a very interesting book by Jillian Becker called Hitler's Children: The Story of the Baader-Meinhof Terrorist Gang
that examines how the talisman's of anti-Western liberalism developed, onto which so much current oppositional posturing is attached. Of particular interest is the odd rationale behind the attacks on department stores - which broadly equates with the No-Label meme, though the antecedence of the anti-brand movement is perhaps not so lamentable.
The biggest issue I had was with the Our Father. Originally, it began Our Tony, since there is a layer of satire in the poem. Tony Bliar's father in law - the lazy scouse git - Tony Booth was popping up in the news back then, and when Cherie wasn't sitting under turquoise pyramids, she was putting it about that she was just a working class northern girl. So it seemed appropriate. But, it also made it too specific. At which point the choice was with the Catholic or the Protestant opening. In the end I went with the one I use - though not quite, as I generally use the surprised version when in church; Ah Father.
---------------------------------------------------
Cue random picture to make the facebooks look nice.....
there is a very interesting discussion of opposites, in which he points out the opposite of darkness is not light, just as the opposite of lightness is not weight. But, these ideas are deeply ingrained - man/woman, day/night, liberal/conservative. high/low, old/young, long/short, Jew/Muslim/Christian/Atheist, rich/poor, religion/science, good/bad etc.In the same novel, there is the marvelous Sabina, who is an artist concerned with what lies behind the image.
She is a character I have always identified with.
At which point it is useful to travel back to the early noughties. Internet connection is via dial up, the Twin Towers have recently fallen, English is still the Lingua Franca on public transport, The Third Way is the vogue in politics, and Tony Bliar has yet to get that curious twitch in his eye.
There am I listening on the wireless, with jaw agape, to the debate in parliament as to whether or not Britain would send troops to the impending conflict in Iraq. The cause of my gaping jaw is the claim, reported dutifully by all media, that Saddam Hussein has missiles that at four minutes notice can attack Greater Britain.
Now leave aside the subsequent issue of WMDs, at this stage Dr Kelly is still alive and Andrew Gilligan has yet to appear on an early morning un-neutered 'hideously white' BBC Today program. The Commando style drawings in the newspapers the following day showed Scud missiles, and large arrows indicating their flight path and a map angled in such a way that made Iraq a near neighbour - of seemingly everyone. Yet anyone with any knowledge of modern warfare knew the claim was a lie.
But wait, it wasn't. This is New Labour we are dealing with. The British territory referred to was some military bases in Cyprus, which are technically British territory. They can't be blamed if the story is spun to make it seem that Dorking is about to be attacked.
The tale gets more bizarre when spokespeople start quoting Thomas Aquinas and his justifications for what is and is not a just war. You will recall Tony was still doing God at this point. And not only God, in the Christian happy clappy guitar playing sense, he was also reading the Koran. This part of the story gets dropped later when Jihadi types start playing The Crusades card.
So we come to duality.
Perhaps it is my Piscean nature, or perhaps it is my admiration of Sabina, but I have always rather admired duality in art. Whether it be Blake's Jerusalem, the, supposed, subversive John the Baptist symbology of Da Vinci identified by Picknett and Prince, or the playfulness of Magritte with Ceci n'est pas une pipe.
And so I wrote A Prayer.
Our Father, franchised from America
that makes the world the same.
Thy mores come,
thy burgers will be done in Omsk
as they are in Capetown.
Give us our dose of the daily dead
and televise their carcasses
as we bomb the shit out of those that trespass against us.
And lead us not into Utopia
but deliver us from evil.
For thou hast dominion
the power and the weapons
but maybe not forever
Amen
There. It's obvious isn't it. A cheap trick. Oh how lame using the Lord's Prayer - it's been done a thousand times. Brainless anti-American bullshit.
Well it is if you think the opposite of day is night.
For one thing it isn't the Lord's Prayer, or at least not the version I have heard in any church in the past ten years. But then being a Sabina, it is the version I recite while all around are using the lumpen verse of the new text..
And what I haven't mentioned is that I was, and remain, in favour of the Iraq war. Mainly on old fashioned Liberal principles of self determination.
Thus the poem is written from that perspective.
Hence the appeal to deliver us from evil whilst steering clear of Utopia. And the warning that Empires, even when acting from noble intentions, risk losing their treasure and their moral purpose when ground down by endless war. And I rather like that if I go in a McDonalds, or a Gap, or a Tesco or or whatever, I know exactly what I will get. Which is probably why I shop at Booths, don't eat those kind of burgers more than once or twice a year, and wear whatever the missus buys me.
Of course the poem can be - and usually is - read from the completely opposite perspective. But it wouldn't be a dualist poem if it couldn't. Neither would it have V-effect.
As an aside there is a very interesting book by Jillian Becker called Hitler's Children: The Story of the Baader-Meinhof Terrorist Gang
that examines how the talisman's of anti-Western liberalism developed, onto which so much current oppositional posturing is attached. Of particular interest is the odd rationale behind the attacks on department stores - which broadly equates with the No-Label meme, though the antecedence of the anti-brand movement is perhaps not so lamentable. The biggest issue I had was with the Our Father. Originally, it began Our Tony, since there is a layer of satire in the poem. Tony Bliar's father in law - the lazy scouse git - Tony Booth was popping up in the news back then, and when Cherie wasn't sitting under turquoise pyramids, she was putting it about that she was just a working class northern girl. So it seemed appropriate. But, it also made it too specific. At which point the choice was with the Catholic or the Protestant opening. In the end I went with the one I use - though not quite, as I generally use the surprised version when in church; Ah Father.
---------------------------------------------------
Cue random picture to make the facebooks look nice.....
01/03/2014
Alienating Readers
I'd forgotten just how annoyed people get with V-effect....
CONSULT THE BOOK OF KNOWLEDGE....
" Brecht first used the term in an essay on "Alienation Effects in Chinese Acting" published in 1936, in which he described it as "playing in such a way that the audience was hindered from simply identifying itself with the characters in the play. Acceptance or rejection of their actions and utterances was meant to take place on a conscious plane, instead of, as hitherto, in the audience's subconscious""
It's not something very popular these days, as it conflicts with the controls inherent in media messaging which are all about manipulating the subconscious. In order 'to prepare to be ready to achieve your potential'.
People have certain expectations of what a poem should be.
In essence it should be a vacuum that by use of rhythm, and possibly rhyme, creates the space onto which the imagery is punched. There is a certain soporific quality to it. The problem is that often this is interpreted as niceness - both in the literal sense and it's kitschy common usage.
Rather than disappear up my fundament with explaining further, and getting into the back alleys of exceptions, I'll offer an example of my use of V effect.
Here's me reading Bleaching a Mouse.
And yes the incident did occur.
After months of reasoning with the mouse, trying to ignore it, trap it, starve it, poison it, chase it out of the house, catch it to release it, I finally happened to find it in a bucket, grabbed a bottle of bleach and drowned it. Then to make sure I poured a kettle of bottling water into the bucket - which led created the chemical reaction described in the poem.
The whole affair was rather shocking to me, having never killed anything other than insects. It exposed something rather primitive akin to a the classic cartoon witchdoctor. Indeed, at one point in the stand off with the mouse I did rig up a spear with a bread knife and a broomstick - quite what I expected to do with it I can't say; though I did find myself fantasizing of engaging in epic gladiatorial combat as the rodent acquired the proportions of a lion.
But the truth is that a) I didn't want to kill it for reasons of karma, and b) if it had to die I would prefer it did so in a commonplace way, with a sprung wire snapping it's neck.
And for the same karmic reasons I wrote the poem, in honour of death of this worthy opponent.
The list sets the scene in as simple a manner as possible, drawing the reader into a commonplace scene. And then comes the expression of the madness of violence. Followed by the catharsis of the funeral scene.
Cue the disclaimer, 'an animal was harmed in the making of this poem'.
Some people get it. That the poem is a statement about the treatment of animals and the transcendental nature of violence at a conscious level.
Others don't, preferring to rely on the subconscious reaction and appeals to propriety.
Which shows the intended alienation was successful.
------------------------------------------------------------
Cue random picture to make the facebooks look nice
CONSULT THE BOOK OF KNOWLEDGE....
" Brecht first used the term in an essay on "Alienation Effects in Chinese Acting" published in 1936, in which he described it as "playing in such a way that the audience was hindered from simply identifying itself with the characters in the play. Acceptance or rejection of their actions and utterances was meant to take place on a conscious plane, instead of, as hitherto, in the audience's subconscious""
It's not something very popular these days, as it conflicts with the controls inherent in media messaging which are all about manipulating the subconscious. In order 'to prepare to be ready to achieve your potential'.
People have certain expectations of what a poem should be.
In essence it should be a vacuum that by use of rhythm, and possibly rhyme, creates the space onto which the imagery is punched. There is a certain soporific quality to it. The problem is that often this is interpreted as niceness - both in the literal sense and it's kitschy common usage.
Rather than disappear up my fundament with explaining further, and getting into the back alleys of exceptions, I'll offer an example of my use of V effect.
Here's me reading Bleaching a Mouse.
And yes the incident did occur.
After months of reasoning with the mouse, trying to ignore it, trap it, starve it, poison it, chase it out of the house, catch it to release it, I finally happened to find it in a bucket, grabbed a bottle of bleach and drowned it. Then to make sure I poured a kettle of bottling water into the bucket - which led created the chemical reaction described in the poem.
The whole affair was rather shocking to me, having never killed anything other than insects. It exposed something rather primitive akin to a the classic cartoon witchdoctor. Indeed, at one point in the stand off with the mouse I did rig up a spear with a bread knife and a broomstick - quite what I expected to do with it I can't say; though I did find myself fantasizing of engaging in epic gladiatorial combat as the rodent acquired the proportions of a lion.
But the truth is that a) I didn't want to kill it for reasons of karma, and b) if it had to die I would prefer it did so in a commonplace way, with a sprung wire snapping it's neck.
And for the same karmic reasons I wrote the poem, in honour of death of this worthy opponent.
The list sets the scene in as simple a manner as possible, drawing the reader into a commonplace scene. And then comes the expression of the madness of violence. Followed by the catharsis of the funeral scene.
Cue the disclaimer, 'an animal was harmed in the making of this poem'.
Some people get it. That the poem is a statement about the treatment of animals and the transcendental nature of violence at a conscious level.
Others don't, preferring to rely on the subconscious reaction and appeals to propriety.
Which shows the intended alienation was successful.
------------------------------------------------------------
Cue random picture to make the facebooks look nice
28/02/2014
K.I.S.S
Scouring for potential customers on the twitters, I was struck by the odd reputation poetry has. Apart from the rather dull meme of the problem of Kindle formatting, and the usual chit-chat about rap being poetry anf vice versa; I was interested to note the cliche of poetry being a 'cry from the soul' being repeated in various forms.
The gullible often look at this as being something deep. And the trendy tend to use it to reveal the deeper truths that lie behind the committee thinking of the 'liberal consensus'.
As someone who is happily married - well we would be if hetrosexualists hadn't forbidden civil partnership as an option - with three kids, I can vouch for the power of words correctly applied.
The missus and I met at a poetry gig in a working men's club (and you don't get more Room at the Top than that), and after a bit of cat dance, she wooed as surely and firmly as Cyrano de Bergerac. It's funny look back on it. Because there we were at the local poetry group, her at one end of the table, I at the other. The read round began. Frank with his marvelously seductive nature poetry, John with his Guardian reading sensibility oozing through his text, me with some piece of whimsy; and on the wheel turned in the candle light. Until it got to the missus.
Her poem was simplicity itself, A list of tell tales signs that she had fallen in love - a workmate noticing she wore brighter lipstick - was the line that sticks in my head. It's an odd feeling to be on the end of such a direct invitation. A heartfelt missive. A cry from the heart if you will.
When she had finished, the discussion centred upon the the perceived feminist message of the poem, and how all the items listed, and the situations described, were indicative of the patriarchal oppression of women. But as I sipped my beer, and toked my rollie, I fixed the missus with a beady eye, unable to move because of the erection.
Another example that sticks in my mind, is a Kathy Benson poem about her grandmother's house. In it she mentions the clocks. I was instantly transported to my grandma's, where on the hour, every hour, the clocks up and down her street would chime over the space of three minutes.
----------------------------------------------------
Random picture to keep the Facebook interesting....
The gullible often look at this as being something deep. And the trendy tend to use it to reveal the deeper truths that lie behind the committee thinking of the 'liberal consensus'.
As someone who is happily married - well we would be if hetrosexualists hadn't forbidden civil partnership as an option - with three kids, I can vouch for the power of words correctly applied.
The missus and I met at a poetry gig in a working men's club (and you don't get more Room at the Top than that), and after a bit of cat dance, she wooed as surely and firmly as Cyrano de Bergerac. It's funny look back on it. Because there we were at the local poetry group, her at one end of the table, I at the other. The read round began. Frank with his marvelously seductive nature poetry, John with his Guardian reading sensibility oozing through his text, me with some piece of whimsy; and on the wheel turned in the candle light. Until it got to the missus.
Her poem was simplicity itself, A list of tell tales signs that she had fallen in love - a workmate noticing she wore brighter lipstick - was the line that sticks in my head. It's an odd feeling to be on the end of such a direct invitation. A heartfelt missive. A cry from the heart if you will.
When she had finished, the discussion centred upon the the perceived feminist message of the poem, and how all the items listed, and the situations described, were indicative of the patriarchal oppression of women. But as I sipped my beer, and toked my rollie, I fixed the missus with a beady eye, unable to move because of the erection.
Another example that sticks in my mind, is a Kathy Benson poem about her grandmother's house. In it she mentions the clocks. I was instantly transported to my grandma's, where on the hour, every hour, the clocks up and down her street would chime over the space of three minutes.
----------------------------------------------------
Random picture to keep the Facebook interesting....
27/02/2014
Short Selling
A while ago, when I didn't give a shit and had something to say - as opposed to now, when I have something to sell and don't give a shit - I wrote a sketch about London to pass the time on a bus journey, which included this passage....
I can’t be bothered to say that line again, you’ll have got it by now.
I’m old enough to remember Madness and the alien embassy
at Marble Arch, in what was once the proud offices
of BCCI. So the fact that there is a Boots on Carnaby Street
no longer shocks me. I did have a smile at the new people TV
format adopted by the armed forces for the current war.
And, I did wonder why so many of the statues were war memorials.
And I did stare in wonder at the Hugeneot church that
gazes across the leafy square to the offices of Twentieth Century Fox
and think – this isn’t the place they planned D Day –
and come to think of it why is there a statue to Marshal Foch?
And I wonder if we as a nation have buildings cover?
And if so, can we claim against the Boots on Carnaby Street,
and the lack of bookshops on the Charing Cross Road
and the lack of decent books inside them.
And how much for a coffee?
Does that include the flight to Kenya?
Don't worry it's not in the new book, it's a sketch.
Still, I read it at a local writers group and this woman went off on one about my descriptions of bookshops. I had seen her the previous week in just such an establishment, sipping a latte - I love that northerners pronounce it latty - reading some sort of earnest feminist tract with airbrushed cover and prose.
I mention this because of the ongoing business of price for The Blue Book. I have succumbed to the harpies crying at me for daring to ask a fair price. For some reason it is outrageous to ask for one hour of someone's time at minimum wage in order to pay for a piece of art. So now I am only asking half an hour at minimum wage.
Of course the trick I am missing is that I should be touting tales of salacious liaisons between Big Foot and an enthralling lady vampire, which is an avenue I intend to explore. Indeed I am currently working on a fantasy fiction that will have a homosexual dwarf as one of the main characters - once I have got through the first part, that ends with the death of a nymphomaniac princess at the jaws of a magical dragon. After all if you are going into the penny dreadful market, you might as well go the whole hog.
Which brings me to a rather absurd notion, the cost to page ratio.
Clearly someone has done a webenar on this, or there is some website or another along those the lines of those 'how to write' books. As it appears to be something that the slaves are very keen on.
I don't dismiss the theory out of hand, as in the past I have thought long and hard about the subject of pricing a poem. Perhaps the solution ultimately is something like the Apple music store, where you buy the track you want and ignore the artistic entirety of the album. As a concept it is nice, you could have your poetry playlist - Stop up the clocks, the opening to Under Milk Wood, a couple of Pam Ayres, that John Donne one about his mistress - but it would rather defeat the point of Taking Tea with Kingsley Amis.
But back to this idea of never mind the quality feel the width.
How many haiku's would equal the Tay Bridge Disaster?
At which point you might say anthologies already fulfill both of these functions.
And indeed they do. But rather like free kindle books, they also leave a great deal unread.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Random picture of the day - purely to brighten up the Facebook feed....
I can’t be bothered to say that line again, you’ll have got it by now.
I’m old enough to remember Madness and the alien embassy
at Marble Arch, in what was once the proud offices
of BCCI. So the fact that there is a Boots on Carnaby Street
no longer shocks me. I did have a smile at the new people TV
format adopted by the armed forces for the current war.
And, I did wonder why so many of the statues were war memorials.
And I did stare in wonder at the Hugeneot church that
gazes across the leafy square to the offices of Twentieth Century Fox
and think – this isn’t the place they planned D Day –
and come to think of it why is there a statue to Marshal Foch?
And I wonder if we as a nation have buildings cover?
And if so, can we claim against the Boots on Carnaby Street,
and the lack of bookshops on the Charing Cross Road
and the lack of decent books inside them.
And how much for a coffee?
Does that include the flight to Kenya?
Don't worry it's not in the new book, it's a sketch.
Still, I read it at a local writers group and this woman went off on one about my descriptions of bookshops. I had seen her the previous week in just such an establishment, sipping a latte - I love that northerners pronounce it latty - reading some sort of earnest feminist tract with airbrushed cover and prose.
I mention this because of the ongoing business of price for The Blue Book. I have succumbed to the harpies crying at me for daring to ask a fair price. For some reason it is outrageous to ask for one hour of someone's time at minimum wage in order to pay for a piece of art. So now I am only asking half an hour at minimum wage.
Of course the trick I am missing is that I should be touting tales of salacious liaisons between Big Foot and an enthralling lady vampire, which is an avenue I intend to explore. Indeed I am currently working on a fantasy fiction that will have a homosexual dwarf as one of the main characters - once I have got through the first part, that ends with the death of a nymphomaniac princess at the jaws of a magical dragon. After all if you are going into the penny dreadful market, you might as well go the whole hog.
Which brings me to a rather absurd notion, the cost to page ratio.
Clearly someone has done a webenar on this, or there is some website or another along those the lines of those 'how to write' books. As it appears to be something that the slaves are very keen on.
I don't dismiss the theory out of hand, as in the past I have thought long and hard about the subject of pricing a poem. Perhaps the solution ultimately is something like the Apple music store, where you buy the track you want and ignore the artistic entirety of the album. As a concept it is nice, you could have your poetry playlist - Stop up the clocks, the opening to Under Milk Wood, a couple of Pam Ayres, that John Donne one about his mistress - but it would rather defeat the point of Taking Tea with Kingsley Amis.
But back to this idea of never mind the quality feel the width.
How many haiku's would equal the Tay Bridge Disaster?
At which point you might say anthologies already fulfill both of these functions.
And indeed they do. But rather like free kindle books, they also leave a great deal unread.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Random picture of the day - purely to brighten up the Facebook feed....
Free Stuff
The more observant readers will notice the new content in the sidebar.
The less observant should look for the links under the title Audible Poems.
These are of me reading some of the poems wot I rote.
So for those who want to try before they buy, just click the links.
The less observant should look for the links under the title Audible Poems.
These are of me reading some of the poems wot I rote.
So for those who want to try before they buy, just click the links.
26/02/2014
Joining the Club
And so the task of selling the book begins.
I hit upon the idea of joining forums, so that I could pimp links, which in turn would feed the spiders and bump me up the search rankings. The problem is that I have never been much interested in epeening on forums. But needs must....
So off I go.
I sign up to a forum that appears to be either popular, or paying, as it is the top of the googles.
The usual schtick is to type the letters and numbers to prove you are not a robot. Not here. 'who wrote the Raven?' they want to know. Edgar Alan Poe, I reply. Wrong. Fill in the passwords again, next question. 'Who wrote Pride and Prejudice?' Ummmm.... Jane Austen or is it Jane Austin? I don't know, having never managed to wade through more than a page and a half of her work - they are great on the radio, but unreadable. Reset passwords. 'Mary had a little lamb it's fleece was....?' And I'm in.
I'm then faced with a profile page that is either very specifically designed in order to give an accurate reflection of the hidden truths of the creative process, or they are selling it to the NSA.
The question that really baffled me was 'what level of criticism would you like?' There were three options ranging from 'just my poetry' to 'Maoist character assassination.' Actually this was perhaps not the most baffling because there were about ten choices for those wishing to express their romantic relationship. I didn't even know there were ten choices of relationship. The choice clearly fed into the next question, as to what sort of friendship I was seeking with other members. I found myself wondering at this point if they took luncheon vouchers, as it was all getting a little too Madam Cyn for my taste.
All I want is to pimp a few links, and suddenly I am being asked to declare my level of willingness to take Elizabeth Barrett Browning up the coal scuttle.
Clearly this sandwich board business is not so easy as I was led to believe.
I hit upon the idea of joining forums, so that I could pimp links, which in turn would feed the spiders and bump me up the search rankings. The problem is that I have never been much interested in epeening on forums. But needs must....
So off I go.
I sign up to a forum that appears to be either popular, or paying, as it is the top of the googles.
The usual schtick is to type the letters and numbers to prove you are not a robot. Not here. 'who wrote the Raven?' they want to know. Edgar Alan Poe, I reply. Wrong. Fill in the passwords again, next question. 'Who wrote Pride and Prejudice?' Ummmm.... Jane Austen or is it Jane Austin? I don't know, having never managed to wade through more than a page and a half of her work - they are great on the radio, but unreadable. Reset passwords. 'Mary had a little lamb it's fleece was....?' And I'm in.
I'm then faced with a profile page that is either very specifically designed in order to give an accurate reflection of the hidden truths of the creative process, or they are selling it to the NSA.
The question that really baffled me was 'what level of criticism would you like?' There were three options ranging from 'just my poetry' to 'Maoist character assassination.' Actually this was perhaps not the most baffling because there were about ten choices for those wishing to express their romantic relationship. I didn't even know there were ten choices of relationship. The choice clearly fed into the next question, as to what sort of friendship I was seeking with other members. I found myself wondering at this point if they took luncheon vouchers, as it was all getting a little too Madam Cyn for my taste.
All I want is to pimp a few links, and suddenly I am being asked to declare my level of willingness to take Elizabeth Barrett Browning up the coal scuttle.
Clearly this sandwich board business is not so easy as I was led to believe.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)