30 September 2006

End of week at IH. Pleased Toru and Luidmilla turned up to the poetry night. Jo has iritis, her left pupil is dilated and looks sore; she has experienced double vision and an aversion to bright lights. Hannah is taking a PGCE in Wales for two months.

Dad drove up from Dorset, met me off the train. Ivy is very unwell. We talked about the course and its future and he read some magazines. I showed him the house and we ate sausage rolls from the Real Meat Company. He gave me Margrave of the Marshes. 'You're a good number one son.'

'Somersault':

'Doesn't your dog get cold in the back of your truck?'
'He's alright.'
Poetry and Music Night at The George
Theme: 'Magic and Mystery.' Part of the Bradford on Avon Arts Festival.

Readers Carrie Etter, Alan Summers, Karen Hoy, me + open mike slots.

A great night. My longest set at 10 minutes - 'Fable', 'Adventures', 'Your Timing', 'Evening Out', 'Miso', 'Dream', 'Ceremony', 'Rites'.

The audience included Piers, Barbara, Olly + students from Bath English Language College, Luidmilla and Toru from International House, Steve.

Olly asked for a hard copy of 'Evening Out', and a female member of the darts team asked for 'Fable'.

People responded most to the poems with the longest introductions eg the mention of Polish students over-using the phrase 'for me' in 'Adventures.'

Drinks with Jim, Alan and Jim's niece Margaret till small hours.

Rob played 'I'm not going back to Falmouth.'

Jim You have a lot of intense intellectual energy, and if you don't find an outlet for it ... it will fuck you up.

Karen I love the way you have groupies (nodding to Toru and Luidmilla).

Rob It's good just to listen to your voice.

Alan passed the hat and bought us drinks.

Introductions

'Fable' This is a poem about abuse of trust, even a mother's to her child.

'Adventures' When I think of mystery I think of Tintin. When I was at school, the nurse had a copy of Tintin and the Shooting Star in the sick bay. I used to kick off my shoes and read it in bed and I felt better. I also had a Polish student who frequently said 'For me ...' instead of 'in my opinion', and it made me think about that phrase.

'Your Timing' A new poem.

'Evening Out' An update on tales of mortals stumbling upon Diana bathing naked in a waterfall.

'Miso' When you are in Iceland you write of home. My brother lives in Australia so I write about him.

'Dream' I also have guilt dreams about my brother.

'Ceremony' I think any rite of passage makes you more of an adult, even the death of a cat.

'Rites' This is about two colleagues.

28 September 2006

REJ Smiths Knoll

27 September 2006

REJ - Tremblestone
Young


He prayed for two months before his visit
for a host family that loved him as his parents did,
practising Christians.

His host father is a vicar. They live beside a church.

-

He bluntly tells me he prefers modern buildings.
Stopover


Through the plane window
a windswept deserted small hours airport.
This is the place I inhabit now.

I look in at the lit cabin -
going somewhere yet grounded.
La Brancha

She swung her legs away from him
as if for a swift exit
as if her mind didn't match his
as if she could barely bring herself to meet his eyes,
as if she didn't care for how it looked.

When she left she suffered
to kiss his cheek,
left a note to cover their meal and more.
Oxford

a malingerer's dream

she can't find her ricola

he plays the role of James Spader
renders previous relationships meaningless

Oxford and Manchesters' long straight roads

Oxford a bicycle city due to impossible parking

Australians predominate, denoted by Billabong t-shirts

peanuts - the breath killer, Bukowski's ambiguous phrase

G.M. at the Eagle and Child

it was previously to be a radio play in episodes

Sat at table

Room with a View, that happy coincidence of posture

24 September 2006

Oxford Poetry Conference


Michael Longley 'There's life in the old boy yet!'


Oxford


'An Inconvenient Truth', 'Little Miss Sunshine'.

Salted fish fried rice in The Flying Condor, Merguez and Oxfordshire sausages at The Big Bang.

Oxford's long streets, a bike city. Always on the outside, walking around places.

Frogmore Papers rejection. 'Fable' and 'Summer School' came very close, even asterisked!

21 September 2006

'Sodden Ground' and 'Reassurance' accepted by FIRE.

20 September 2006

Your Timing


After I had boarded the 10.17
to meet you at the pier,
through the window I watched you wave me off.

The arrow fired after you into the green,
you stood beside me
and carefully replaced the shaft.

A javelin tossed over my brother’s house,
before the tip turned earthwards
you tugged at my smock, a passage of writing in your hand.

After cleaning our block,
the sheets pulled tight across our beds,
orange piles of linen lined the halls for days.

14.95 to change a battery,
the watchmaker advising you not to do it yourself,
you slipped the catch with a 20 pence.

Outside the security office having returned your key,
a spider fell from your scarf to the paving;
the cab driver nodded, started the engine.

After baring my soul, that Saturday,
you walked towards me, all well.

Over the bridge and down I lift your suitcase.
You signal my train as it pulls away.

Dream talk

10 degrees is 10 years ... and I fucking know what I'm talking about.

Brilliant! Well done for picking all of it up.


'You saved him,' they say to her.
All that means is I was subsisting on breadcrumbs.

19 September 2006

How To Be Free, by Tom Hodgkinson, Hamish Hamilton

18 September 2006

Poems to Send Out:

Magma – Chicago, Field Trip Greenwich

10th Muse – Towing the Line, No Distance, In Tearful Weather - to include 'Injury', 'Group Portrait/Roll Call', 'Fable'?

Poems Sent Out

OWP – Portrait, Delivery, Injury, Festivity, Ceremony, Christmas Lights

Smiths Knoll – Quilt, Lesson Plan, Orientation, To the only woman to swim at Southsea at 9am, In a Naval Town, Half-Term

David's anthology - Territory, Railyard, The Masseuse


17 September 2006

pixel - picture element
versatile software defines the computer's functions
punched into 'the bare metal' - 001 011 00 01 011 010
mnemonics - 'push bp'
libre - free speech / freedom
gratis - free beer / buy one get one free
free projects - wikipedia, creative community


If you want to forget your troubles wear tight shoes
Cast


John, a burr in his voice, weathered with good living. The doctor is always in. His classical music disrupted by slamming doors. Broccoli with cream cheese dinner.

Debbie, kindly, drives to the Fylde building and back. Prepares for her class 3 - 8pm.

David, everyman.

Brian, no hello, goodbye or thanks. David Hemmings look-alike. Cycles to Spar for cans of cider. Visits curry house alone at 1am, 'I'm a big boy now'. Spotted in cafe eating breakfast including a Danish pastry, alone. A colonial lord after the empire has crumbled.

Lynda, overworks, eats lentils and rice.

Carolyn, heavy metal drummer, explains how I have betrayed the spirit of karaoke.

Nicola, Ukranian North west quarter, all smiles.

Anna Louise, 'Matt!'

Hannah, 'Are you okay?'

Steven, elicits 'Yes!' from his lucky students.

Nick, (on last day) 'You're dressed like an amateur dramatics teacher.'

Stewart, 'That was one of the worst, if not the worst, meals I have ever had.'

Lorcan, 'A place first defined by where you can get to from it.'

Alice, 'That was the greatest crime!' unguardedly opens the fizzy water.

'We're in a play'. 'A problem play'.



Magdalena 'You're the best teacher I've ever had.' Wants to own a Portugese vineyard. Regards mangled boardmarker lids -'You're a kinaesthetic learner, right?'

Tania 'It's the first time anyone has believed me.'

Meg 'You like shampoo, right?'

Issa, Genevieve, Tania, me, Smita, Magdalena, Christian, Julia, Christoff

3 Weeks at UCLAN

Teachers stealing food from the fridge.

Doing the old soft shoe in Lorcan's kitchen.

Windemere - No Vacancies signs.

Cafe a la Meditteranean
Pasta a la Vongole
Spahetti Bolognese (connoisseur's choice)
I tip on the table instead of at the bar.

The Black Horse
Free jukebox when blonde woman is behind bar. Unicorn beer. Impossible to get upstairs.

The Unicorn
Mentally disabled man clears ashtrays, boy/girl plays fiddle, Up on the Roof karaoke after David leaves, spectators for our game of pool, 'a pint of Mild', someone pulls the switch on the lights like in Grease or some high-school dance.

The Tavern
Boxing on the set, a young man croons to a backing tape.


German idioms

A patchwork family

Under the shower


Modern Times released

Dream


I try to steer him around his grief
but he asks direct questions.
'What have you managed to do with my son?'
He drives the van, his son crushed beneath its upper half,
to the language school, which is undergoing rebuilding.
The Beach Boys are playing on the radio.
I almost run along the corridors of partition walls
and exposed nails, till a German voice is audible through a wall.
I cannot tell her quickly enough
I need to get to another side,
a place where I know my way
better than him.

I saw the near-accident. The boy
slid on the falling back of the truck, almost
to the ground. His feet teetered
inches from the road. 'A miracle,'
I said, as his mother gathered him up.
She and he both disappearing beneath the moving roof.

I sat in the front of the truck,
boy and mother trapped.
Then it occurred to me
to try to find the father,
check for a pulse.

He knew how to drive
and he knew the direction
better than me.

14 September 2006

Come to the front of the ark
and look up. Note the pots
filled with earth yet to be sown.
The ladder up the side like a bunk-bed's.
The cafe underneath the stern
with sunflowers across the tables.

Buddhist prayer flags flutter
over the courtyard, faded bunting of a delayed voyage.
A silver bowl for a dog
has been placed beside a table-leg.

Others already use the ark:
the elderly hearty savour organic soup
over conversation. The pregnant take
the steep stairs easily, find it hard to navigate
the up-close toilet. They leave
without having given birth. A desk
stands to attention outside the door,
its drawer filled with stones.

Look up at the front of the ark.
All you have to do now is get on.


Closed Line


My father's intercom
could summon five children through a wheelchair-
friendly floorspace to a dining table
served by ice from a wall-fissure.

I felt like I had barged into your room,
the line so static-less, direct and cool.
I saw the toughness in your glance tough as pale straw
as you asked me to identify myself.

A heavy metal drummer - a cliche -
your heels tapped against desk.
A fan-blade cut the air.
My receiver barely knew
it had been picked up.




Audience


Hugged-in hips,
tensed thighs and heels,
she casts herself against
each dark-haired judge,
her fracture a year behind her.

Evenings, she practises Montreaux French
on men, perches on tables to bend an ear
beneath flickering light.
Her ambition stilled even as it lapped at her throat
that second she was unsure she was rising or falling.



My Advice


as direct, intimate
and suddenly-present,
as a shell at my ear.

Downstairs, my neighbour trips.
His cry shrill and brief,
immobile and ashamed
he waits for his carer to discover him.

At the table, you eat curry,
grains of rice coating the sides of your clay bowl.
You should leave me single.

11 September 2006















Blackpool