Each Sunday in December there will be seasonal poems on the blog. For a few years I lived in the Withington area of Manchester, so I recognised the shop mentioned in Annie Muir’s poem. It’s from her pamphlet New Year’s Eve, published by Broken Sleep Books in 2021.
Crab Snowglobe
Thrown in with shoelaces and paracetamol, a souvenir from Copson Street pound shop –
this rusty orange crab on a rock with specks of glitter resting
in every nook and cranny. Around the base there are footprints in sand
and another, smaller crab, exactly alike except I can touch it.
Inside your hard, glass globe you seem to be in some other dimension
like the reflection in a mirror, or memory.
Either dormant or ecstatic – when I shake you up
it is for a moment New Year’s Eve, your pincers grasping to catch the confetti
that floats around your head in kaleidoscope slow motion.
Then, when each piece has fallen, you wait for something else to happen.
Biography
Annie Muir lives in Glasgow. Her debut pamphlet New Year’s Eve was published by Broken Sleep Books. Pre-pandemic she handed out poems on the street outside local libraries, and she has a podcast – Time for one Poem – aimed at complete beginners to poetry. @time41poem
Another quote from Claes Oldenburg’s famous Ode to Possibilities ‘I’m for …’ from 1961. It reads like a long list poem. Oldenburg said it was a statement, not a manifesto.
Risham Syed, The Tent of Darius
My poem Wearable Narratives, from my second collection, Nothing serious, nothing dangerous, published by Indigo Dreams in 2019, is in two parts. The poem was inspired by art in the Manchester Art Gallery. Last week I posted part i (Scarf).
The Tent of Darius, an installation from 2009, is a complex work by the Lahore-based Risham Syed. It consists of five embroidered vintage European Army Coats with a small painting. This is a copy, painted by her, of the Charles Le Brun work of the same name. Syed describes her inspiration for it:
“I imagined these five coats to have travelled all over the world, with women having contributed to them by adding a piece of embroidery. They are like these tired, old worn-out soldiers who have dreamt of coming back home. On the one hand, they symbolize the imperial power, but on the other hand, there is another aspect to this work; how soldiers from the colonies were made to fight for the Imperial powers. It’s true for any army including the Pakistan army, where most soldiers are from Jehlum, Potowar region, from poor, lower middle-class families and end up with the army because of their physique/tradition, in the hope of making a romantic/glamorous career. This work, compares the romance/glamor to the actual reality of war, the aim of it and the beneficiaries of it. I juxtapose the embroidered coats with an ‘Oriental’ painting called The Tent of Darius, a seventeenth-century painting by Charles Le Brun that provides the title for the installation. In it, the Queen of Persia bows to Alexander the Great who has conquered the land. It serves as a metaphor for the West making incisions in the East.”
I was very moved by the sight of these five coats and the details of the embroideries which inspired the last stanza.
The tent of Darius
The ornate faux-Chinese frame holds a cropped copy on acrylic: The Queen of Persia draped at the feet of Alexander.
Below, an array of five overcoats, donated by European soldiers, appliquéd and embroidered by women’s hands.
Under the lapel, a stilled windmill, peach-coloured vanes. A green tree above a button hole. Death comes like blue geese.
On Monday, my journey to the other side of the North Sea involved five different modes of transport: taxi from Aldeburgh to Ipswich, National Express coach to Standsted Airport, Easyjet flight to Schiphol, Intercity to Den Haag Centraal, tram to the flat. All clockwork, no delays. It was dark when I got back home.
Taking part in the ‘live’ Poetry in Aldeburgh Festival has been a joyous experience. The highlight was the reading Our Whole Selves with poet friends. Poet Kathy Pimlott and I wrote several blog pieces about the readings, workshops, performances, open mic. These will soon be on the official website. A big thank you to the small organising team which managed to arrange a wonderful programme.
The poems I read were from my new collection Remembering / Disease, published by Broken Sleep Books last month. I opened my set with Nautical Miles (from my collection Nothing serious, nothing dangerous). When I looked at an old photo, I saw that only Hoek van Holland is ‘less than a hundred’ nautical miles. Good reminder that poetic truth matters more than the accurate facts…
Nautical miles
Outside the Sailors’ Reading Room, the sign:
thin wooden planks, painted white: Den Helder, IJmuiden, Hoek van Holland.
Across the horizon, they are less than a hundred nautical miles from Southwold in Suffolk
where the narrow beach of pebbles – grey, brown, black mostly –
is held together by couplets of groynes, slimy green.
Both our languages have the word strand.
Note: The Sailors’ Reading Room, Southwold is a Grade II listed building from 1864 and still a refuge for sailors and fishermen.
I am very glad to introduce this month’s guest poet Sheila Butterworth. We met many years ago, in that Yorks/Lancs Branch of the BHS. I let Sheila introduce herself and her haiku.
“Winning the Leeds Waterstones Haiku Competition in 2000, organised by the Yorks/Lancs Branch of the British Haiku Society, introduced me to the world of haiku poets, workshops, journals and a network of local poets with whom to chew the haiku fat. I have since had poems published in Blithe Spirit, Presence, The Snapshot Press Haiku Calendar, Wales Haiku Journal and The Red Moon Anthology.
Most of my haiku come out of the everyday experiences of life within a mile of my edge of village doorstep where I have lived for 40 years. This is where I notice those things that have most meaning to make haiku. The familiar environment highlights the nuances of change in place, in time and in me and this is when haiku happen.”
coming light the bubble and trill of robin and wren
high street dawn the smell of sweet dough folds into the fog
morning mizzle molehills spatter the spring pasture
planting potatoes startled sparrows scatter in the quickthorn
summer rain the shining bole of a sapling ash
evening sun the shadow of the wood fills the field
It is a great pleasure to introduce this month’s guest poet Tania Hershman. I met Tania a few years ago when I attended a series of workshops she gave on flash fiction. She is a generous, inspiring tutor. I have chosen four different poems from her new collection.
Tania Hershman’s second poetry collection, Still Life with Octopus, was published by Nine Arches Press in July 2022, and her debut novel, Go On, a hybrid “fictional-memoir-in-collage” will be published by Broken Sleep Books on 17 November 2022. Her poetry pamphlet,How High Did She Fly, was joint winner of Live Canon’s 2019 Poetry Pamphlet Competition and her hybrid particle-physics-inspired book ‘and what if we were all allowed to disappear’ was published by Guillemot Press in March 2020.
Tania is also the author of a poetry collection, a poetry chapbook and three short story collections, and co-author of Writing Short Stories: A Writers’ & Artists’ Companion (Bloomsbury, 2014). She is co-creator of the @OnThisDayShe Twitter account, co-author of the On This Day She book (John Blake, 2021), and has a PhD in creative writing inspired by particle physics. As writer-in-residence for Arvon for Autumn 22-Winter 23, Tania has curated a programme of readings, workshops and talks, both online and in person. Find out more at http://www.taniahershman.com
Still Life With Octopus (II)
I only asked her once to climb inside a jar for me. (Before we met, I’d watched all the videos of those experiments.) She sighed but did it, said I could screw the lid, released herself easily. You could become any shape you want, I said. She said nothing. One arm sent itself out to switch the kettle on. While she made us tea, I put the jar back in the cupboard, feeling that slight ache from too much sitting in my hip bones, my lower back, where fixed part meets fixed part of me.
Standardized Patient*
Today I am your lower back pain. Listen, I have all the details, will not veer
from the script. Tomorrow I will be your cancer of the kidneys. Next week,
I may be your one-legged skier (I know, I know). Whose pain is this?
*Standardized patient simulation lets medical students practice on people trained to play patients.
And then God
sends someone else’s Jewish grandmother to stop me
with a question about birds I can’t answer. She says – as if this is her river – I’ve never
seen you here before, then presses for my exact address. Instead
of the usual, Such a nice girl, no husband?, she asks, No dog? I don’t know why
I tell her then that I’m a poet, but the gleam in her eyes
warns me this is the point to leave, the unasked
dancing on the path between us: Will you make a poem out of me?
Middle of the Night
Night asks me to wake up. What? I say. Night whispers darkly, something about cats coming in and out, a baby five doors down. You want company? I ask. Night nods. I get up
and we make tea. Too early, the cat mutters as we pass. Night and I get back into bed. I’m fine now, Night says.
Cover design: Ben Rothery
Note: Peter Godfrey-Smith, Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life (William Collins, 2017).
I enjoy most of the archive poems from the Paris Review which arrive in the inbox. I save many of them in my folder ‘Inspiration’.
The poem Imaginary Paintings, by Lisel Mueller (Fall 1992, # 124) is in seven numbered sections. Seven is always a good number. The length of sections varies, from one line (Love) to 10 (Big Lie).
Lisel Mueller, 1924 – 2020
1 How I would Paint the Future
A strip of horizon and figure, seen from the back, forever approaching.
2 How I would Paint Happiness 3 How I would Paint Death 4 How I would Paint Love 5 How I would Paint the Leap of Faith 6 How I would Paint the Big Lie 7 How I would Paint Nostalgia
I liked the start of the Big Lie painting:
Smooth, and deceptively small so that it can be swallowed like something we take for a cold.
Here is my attempt at How I would Paint Patience:
A small mat, wool, handwoven. Mostly pale grey, with the odd black nubbly bits at the corners.
Credit: Prawny via Pixabay
Writing prompt: If you’re looking for a subject for your imaginary paintings, you could always take one of the seven cardinal sins (pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, sloth) or one of the capital virtues that overcome them (humility, generosity, chastity, brotherly love, temperance, meekness, diligence). There is also prudence, fortitude, justice. Or take anything abstract, such as stubbornness, peace.
It’s four years this month since the poet Tony Hoagland died. Turn Up the Ocean was published posthumously this year.
The blurb on the back says ‘Over the course of his celebrated career, Tony Hoagland ventured fearlessly into the unlit alleys of emotion and experience. The poems [ … ] examine with mordant wit the reality of living and dying in a time and culture that conspire to erase our inner lives.’
The mordant wit can be found in some of the titles:
Four Beginnings for an Apocalyptic Novel of Manners
Why I Like the Hospital
On Why I Must Decline To Receive The Prayers You Say You Are Constantly Sending
The last few lines of this poem are:
And could you stop burning so many candles, please?
My god, think how many hours and hours and hours – think of how hard those bees worked to make all that wax!
Hoagland’s poems often go just over the page and here are the last few lines of Gorgon:
Your job is to stay calm. Your job is to watch and take notes, to go on looking.
Sorting out boxes with books that moved with me from the UK, I found this small pamphlet. Manchester poets Steve Waling and Francesca Pridham edited poems by members of Manchester Poets. Copies were sold at the Didsbury Festival to raise funds.
Here Fran tells us about her connection with the Madagascar Development Funds and shares some wonderful proverbs – writing prompts for your poems, flash fiction, short stories.
Madagascar
“My first contact with Madagascar came in 2013, when my husband, interested primarily in the country’s unique wildlife, persuaded me to take part in a trekking holiday there. The scenery is awe inspiring. A melting pot situated between Asia, Africa and Australia, Madagascar is the mysterious land of the ancient baobab tree, a land where pachypodiums thrive, the cat-like fossa hunts and lemurs swing from tree to tree. The most revered lemur, the Indri’s strange call wails through the rainforests, echoing the ancient isolation of the island.
The people
Despite this beauty, what however most caught my heart were the people. There is little infrastructure in the country and most villages consist of a small collection of adobe houses made from the spectacular red mud that Madagascar is famous for. The people have nothing, just the land they live on and any livestock, such as chickens or the zebu cattle that represent their wealth. Their generosity and welcome though is infectious. I gave a biscuit to a small child, four others appeared instantly, and the biscuit was shared immediately.
Credit: Puabar via Pixabay
Water
Their water supplies are often limited to streams that trickle into small muddy ponds, polluted sometimes by cattle who too have to use the water. Standing by the side of a small dirt track nearing the end of my trekking holiday I drank thirstily from a litre bottle of water I’d brought with me. Staggering down the track was an old man with his grandson, pulling and pushing at a makeshift trolley, carrying four battered plastic water containers. They had walked five miles to the nearest water supplies and were coming back to the village.
Credit: via Pixabay
The Madagascar Development Fund
When I returned to England, I started raising money to develop water supplies and build wells in Madagascar. We are lucky enough to work with The Madagascar Development Fund, a small charity run by the ex British Ambassador to Madagascar and have provided enough money now for four wells. The charity specialises in small projects which because of the charity’s experience are achievable and can bypass the complicated political situation in the country.
We have been lucky enough to attend the opening of one of the wells where we were welcomed into the village by singing, dancing, and drumming. We were given a welcome feast and a poem, written specially for the event was read by a young man, resplendent in what looked like a doctor’s white coat!
Malagasy Proverbs
The Madagascan culture is infectious! Their proverbs or ohabolana capture the learning and wisdom of centuries, inspiring both thought and writing! Enjoy the poems they produce!”
Truth is like sugar cane: even if you chew it for a long time it is still sweet. Words are like eggs; when they are hatched they have wings. Like the chameleon keep one eye on the future and one eye on the past. Let your love be like the misty rains coming softly but flooding the river. Those who know how to swim are the ones who sink. Don’t be like a shadow: a constant companion, but not a comrade. An egg does not fight a rock. Only thin dogs become wild. A canoe does not know who is king: when it turns over everybody gets wet.
We’re staying with the Writing Poetry paperback that Matthew Sweeney and John Hartley Williams wrote together for the Teach Yourself series.
In Chapter 12 they’re looking at first lines of contemporary poems, and the need to hook the reader:
Someday I will go to Aarhus Hitler entered Paris the way The strangest thing I ever stole? A snowman. Brethren, I know that many of you have come here today We gotta make a film of this, Jack. After she left he bought another cactus.
All these lines are intriguing, but they work in different ways. The first is a vow, then we have the first half of a comparison that the reader needs to complete. The third is a question with its own answer, followed by a resolve in dialogue. Number 6 is a story that begins in the middle.
Here are first lines from some of the poems in my pamphlet A Stolen Hour (Grey Hen Press, 2020):
For just one minute of the day If we were strangers, His binoculars rest on the windowsill. The week before I’d given my pleated dress away. Bedrooms are for hiding white. One hour was stolen from the time I am the last stonemason. Date of refusal decision: 13 September 2017
What do you think? Which is the one that intrigues you most and why? Feel free to use them for your freewrite, your ink waster. If you get a poem or flash fiction from a line, I’d be pleased to know!
One of the poems in this week’s inbox came courtesy of The Paris Review: Identity Check by Hans Magnus Enzensberger. The title is intriguing enough, the first line is a bold claim and a denial:
This is not Dante
This immediately sets up tension and hooks the reader’s curiosity. If not Dante, who is it? We get an answer we know can’t be true: This is a photograph of Dante. Then: This is a film showing an actor who pretends to be Dante.
The poem continues like this. It reminded me of a poem of mine published in orbis magazine which uses similar techniques. If I feel really ‘stale’, then using two prompts of a different kind is guaranteed to work.
In 2017 I went to Tate Modern for the exhibition of Robert Rauschenberg – very stimulating. It included his telegram This is a painting of Iris Clert if I say so. A visit with a poet friend to Manchester Art Gallery then started the poem. The painting described is Portrait of Lucian Freud by Francis Bacon. Here is the link.
Franz Kafka
This is a portrait if I say so
A portrait of Kafka, in a long coat; dark grey, almost black. No, it’s not. It’s just paint on canvas. This is a portrait of the man who was a friend of the man who put the paint on the canvas. Paint is history. Painting is looking for something, then losing it again. This is a portrait of a man, based on a photo of Kafka. My friend Kathleen asked Was Kafka’s face that long? The man in the long coat in the portrait is striding out. No, he’s not. The note to the right of the portrait says the man who is not Kafka is leaning against the pillar, but the pillar isn’t straight. This is a portrait of a man who isn’t famous, based on a photo of Kafka, and Kafka became famous, and the man who put the paint on the canvas became famous. Kafka is dead. The painter is dead, but this portrait is living, dead paint is living. This is the living portrait of a man who had friends. The man in a coat the colour of death. All colours become history. A coat; a face; a pillar. A portrait is, he says so.
Acacia Publications 