First draft -


You come to me, Burnie MacKinnon,

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First draft -


Stones

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I've been reading over the last while Jim Murdoch's poetry collection This is Not About What You Think. It's refreshingly different to my normal poetry reading and written in a style entirely different to my own. I've been following Jim's blog for a couple of years now. He writes lengthy, essay-style informative and thought-provoking posts about authors, poets, books and writing. Many of his poems can be found scattered amongst his posts, mostly there to illustrate a point in his discourse.

Jim's poems are, by and large, rather short and aphoristic in style, there are several poems devoted to giving advice to children for example. Many of the poems come across almost like a series of proverbs in verse. The poems move between providing the reader with glimpses into the narrator's life and relationships on the one hand and poems providing us with universal 'truths' gained from the narrator's experience on the other.

One of my favourite poems in the book is 'Failing'. In many ways such a simple poem and yet the pathos really strikes home.

Failing

My mother taught me
how to be old.
I watched her falter
then fail and fall.

At least she tried to
teach me but what
did I care to know
about such things?

Now I'm old myself
I wish I'd paid
attention; I'm not
sure I ache right.

I am sure she'd have
something to say
about my limp, how
I hold my hip

and her “stupid cough”
I can't get right.
I must be such a
disappointment.

Another one of my favourites from the book -

Marks

My dad used to give me marks out of ten:
homework – seven out of ten,
the dishes – eight out of ten.

Anything less than a five
came with a clip on the ear.

Marks is merely another word for scars.
I have those too, the ones you
can see and the ones you can't.

I'd give my childhood a three.
That's me being generous.

Dad's no longer here and so I have to
mark myself. Is that what you
were waiting to hear, doctor?

What do you think this poem
might be worth? Maybe an eight?

In these two poems, as with most of Jim's poems, just as much of the poems exists between the lines as in the lines on the page. There is subtle insinuation at work, hints, question-begging. The poems can be funny too -

Tools

"Just because you have a hammer
it doesn't make you a joiner."
My father had his way with words.

So I took a handful of nails
and boarded up my heart
against him and against the world.

And safe on the inside I yelled:
"Screw you!"
but he was never one for puns.

You could say of many of the poems  that they verge on psychoanalysis, philosophical questioning and a hint of the absurdity of life when examined. These can be seen in statements such as "The first lies we tell / are generally to ourselves". "I never understood / what they meant by "in" / as if love could somehow / change into a place / to crawl inside and hide".

It is also evident in this poem -

Advice to Children III

It's supposed to feel good
when you do the right thing.
And sometimes you do.

But mostly you feel
like you had no real choice,
that somehow they made you.

And that can't be right.

The power of understatment is a quality that runs right through this collection and at its best carries the full weight of emotion with great impact.

Overall an enjoyable read, and it bears re-reading well. I'm very glad to have this collection to mull over and go back to.

First Draft

Fuchsia Pact

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A blog I gladly stumbled across recently is Poems Found in Translation. It's a wonderful blog, not only does the blog author/linguist translate poems from literally dozens of languages including Persian, Arabic, Hebrew and Chinese, for most of the translations he uploads a recording of himself reading the poem in its original language. I love this! I love reading poetry outwith the anglo/american traditions but I always feel I'm missing out by reading translations and not being able to hear the poem's original cadence, rhyme scheme, rhythm etc. I'm also really enjoying the translations themselves, they are translated as poems rather than literal word for word texts.

I've had some poems accepted by Northwords Now for publication in their next issue, which I'm really happy about! The editor of the mag was at the Callander poetry weekend and he emailed me after my reading to say he really enjoyed it, which pleased me no end! Plus they pay!!!!

(second draft)

I’m searching for signs, heart sounds

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The releasing of the previously unpublished poem 'Last Letter' by Ted Hughes has caused a fair bit of interest in the news over the last week. Anything that can shed light on those final days before Plath's death is of great interest to Plath fans though it may seem a little voyeuristic to some. Anyhow I thought I'd give some of my thoughts on the poem as a biographical document rather than as a poem.

The main surprise is that on the Friday before her death, Plath had posted a letter of goodbye to Hughes which he had received earlier than she'd expected -

"Your note reached me too soon—-that same day,
Friday afternoon, posted in the morning"

..."That was one more straw of ill-luck
Drawn against you by the Post-Office"

So she posted the letter in the morning possibly assuming he would receive it the following day. Instead he got it that afternoon and rushed around to her flat fearing the worst. She was getting ready to spend the weekend with friends. The insinuation is that her plan was to let him stew in panic over the weekend not knowing  whether she was dead or alive and if alive no idea where she was -

..."Had I bungled your plan?
Had it surprised me sooner than you purposed?
Had I rushed it back to you too promptly?
One hour later—-you would have been gone
Where I could not have traced you."

"How I would have got through that weekend.
I cannot imagine. Had you plotted it all?"

Yet Hughes arrives at her flat, Plath burns the letter and Hughes is seemingly reassured enough after seeing her to leave her alone with their children and go off for the weekend with no further contact with her.

"My last sight of you alive.
Burning your letter to me, in the ashtray,
With that strange smile."

..."But what did you say
Over the smoking shards of that letter
So carefully annihilated, so calmly,
That let me release you, and leave you"

The poem tells us that he spent the Sunday night with Susan, who turns out to be Susan Alliston, a poet who died in 1969 of Hodgkin's disease. Hughes wrote the introduction to her book of poems. Another surprise - Assia wasn't the only other woman he was having an affair with. The strangest part is that they spent the night in the same room / flat on Rugby street where Hughes and Plath had spent their wedding night, the very bed even -

"Susan and I spent that night
In our wedding bed. I had not seen it
Since we lay there on our wedding day."

There is also the suggestion that Plath phoned Hughes several times during that last Sunday night and early dawn on Monday. Hughes being the only one privy to her last diary entries, she may have recorded such fruitless attempts to get in touch with him -

..."How often
Did the phone ring there in my empty room,
You hearing the ring in your receiver"

"Towards the phone booth that can never be reached.
Before midnight. After midnight. Again.
Again. Again. And, near dawn, again."

The poem is another bizarre addition to the mystery of events. Clearly, to my mind, Hughes wanted this poem published posthumously otherwise he would have destroyed it instead he entrusted a typed copy of it to his wife, Carol.

I've got to say, I like our present poet laureate but her response to the poem as "a bit like looking into the sun as it's dying" is surely the most hyperbolic twee I've ever read!

First draft -

Autumn trees

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A few more favourites, just because!


Lightness
by Meg Bateman


It was your lightness that drew me,
the lightness of your talk and your laughter,
the lightness of your cheek in my hands,
your sweet gentle modest lightness;
and it is the lightness of your kiss
that is starving my mouth,
and the lightness of your embrace
that will let me go adrift.

A Tired Man
by Attila Jozsef

Solemn peasants in the field
straggle homeward without a word.
Side by side we lie, the river and I,
fresh grasses slumber under my heart.

A deep calm is rolling in the river.
My heavy cares are now as light as dew.
I'm not man, or child, "Hungarian" or "brother" -
lying here is just a tired man, like you.

Evening ladles out the quiet,
I'm a warm slice from its loaf of bread.
In the peaceful sky the stars come out
to sit on the river and shine on my head.


untitled
by Anna Akhmatova

The door is half open,
The lindens smell sweet...
On the table, forgotten,
A riding crop and a glove.

The yellow circle of the lamp...
I'm listening to rustlings.
Why did you go?
I don't understand...

Tomorrow morning will be
Joyful and bright.
This life is beautiful,
Heart, just be wise.

You are completely exhausted.
Your beating is fainter, more muffled...
You know, I read somewhere
That souls are immortal.

It's National Poetry Day!
On Facebook everyone's posting a few of their favourite lines of poetry, my lines are from Plath (unsurprisingly!), but here I can post the poem in full.

Nick and the Candlestick
 by Sylvia Plath


I am a miner. The light burns blue.
Waxy stalactites
Drip and thicken, tears

The earthen womb
Exudes from its dead boredom.
Black bat airs

Wrap me, raggy shawls,
Cold homicides.
They weld to me like plums.

Old cave of calcium
Icicles, old echoer.
Even the newts are white,

Those holy Joes.
And the fish, the fish -
Christ! they are panes of ice,

A vice of knives,
A piranha
Religion, drinking

Its first communion out of my live toes.
The candle
Gulps and recovers its small altitude,

Its yellows hearten.
O love, how did you get here?
O embryo

Remembering, even in sleep,
Your crossed position.
The blood blooms clean

In you, ruby.
The pain
You wake to is not yours.

Love, love,
I have hung our cave with roses,
With soft rugs -

The last of Victoriana.
Let the stars
Plummet to their dark address,

Let the mercuric
Atoms that cripple drip
Into the terrible well,

You are the one
Solid the spaces lean on, envious.
You are the baby in the barn.

Bavarian Gentians
by D.H. Lawrence

Not every man has gentians in his house
in Soft September, at slow, Sad Michaelmas.

Bavarian gentians, big and dark, only dark
darkening the daytime torchlike with the smoking blueness of Pluto's
gloom,
ribbed and torchlike, with their blaze of darkness spread blue
down flattening into points, flattened under the sweep of white day
torch-flower of the blue-smoking darkness, Pluto's dark-blue daze,
black lamps from the halls of Dis, burning dark blue,
giving off darkness, blue darkness, as Demeter's pale lamps give off
light,
lead me then, lead me the way.

Reach me a gentian, give me a torch
let me guide myself with the blue, forked torch of this flower
down the darker and darker stairs, where blue is darkened on blueness.
even where Persephone goes, just now, from the frosted September
to the sightless realm where darkness was awake upon the dark
and Persephone herself is but a voice
or a darkness invisible enfolded in the deeper dark
of the arms Plutonic, and pierced with the passion of dense gloom,
among the splendor of torches of darkness, shedding darkness on the
lost bride and groom.

I think I'm in love with Lawrence...

I'm so happy that Michelle McGrane is showcasing four of my poems on her wonderful poetry blog Peony Moon. Michelle's blog is a goldmine of contemporary poetry, if you take some time to read through her posts you'll not be disappointed, I'm so pleased to have some of mine in amongst all that gorgeous poetry!

I came across a wonderful interview/essay with Phillis Levin on Anthony Hecht's startling poem 'The Transparent Man'. Her explication and personal response to the poem is beautifully and thought-provokingly done. The poem is written in blank verse and so there is much discussion and insight on how the form not only adds substance to the poem through its stylistic tricks but also how it fundamentally contributes to the 'message' of the poem as an extended metaphor. A very interesting read, can be found here.

On the subject of Hughes' letters, Olwyn Hughes has just sold a bunch more of Hughes' letters to the British library.
The letters apparently include add-on's by Plath and provide further insight into both of their respective creative developments!
See here for the British Library statement and thanks to Peter at Sylvia Plath Info blog for the heads up.

practice, practice, practice...a group of short exercises I worked on this morning

Meditations on the Clouds

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Advice from Ted

I've spent the morning immersed in the Letters of Ted Hughes trying to soak up any writing advice.

"If you write whatever attracts you, and you write it as hard as you can, and as rich, then you can't miss...[j]ust write it off, in your own way, and make it stand up off the page and jump about the room" (p66)

"Insofar as poetry is convincingly the real speech of a real person, it seems to happen "off" the page. I think that's fairly true" (p373)

"poetry is simply the name we give to a certain kind of writing...inner concentration, inner listening, dependance on the spontaneous mind rather than on cultivating & remembering mind... So rather than saying 'study writing', I was saying 'practice writing', as diving to depths has to be practised.
The whole business closer to athletics than to aesthetics, perhaps. hence my no words about 'technique'" (p483)

"My definition of 'poetry', almost, excludes anything coming from the ego under the ego's control" (p628)

"The deadliest thing is for a writer to develop too fixed a 'style'. The ultimate, to my mind, must be the naked voice of that inner being" (p636)

 "A feeling is always looking for a metaphor of itself in which it can reveal itself unrecognised" (p678)

I'll add more as I finish the book, but these quotes speak immensely to me, especially the 'practice writing' as opposed to 'study writing'. I think too much about how to write and simply don't 'practice' enough, fairly obvious advice really...

I've been a rubbish blogger lately...but I think I needed a wee break from it.
Life has pretty much normalized again: the children, the pup and myself  have fallen back into a routine after a summer of chaos. I've not been writing much but I have been reading, reading, reading prose, poetry, history, poetry.
Trying to work out where to take my poetry next. I want to deepen it, encompass more with it, when I read Phillis Levin's gorgeous May Day collection I feel my own poems have too much description and zero philosophy or ideas whereas Levin's are packed with beautiful detail and description but also full of ideas and musings. I'd like to develop a more defined 'voice' (the dreaded 'voice'!!!) in my poems, I love the casual tone of Anne Sexton's poems in All My Pretty Ones yet they still manage to be weighty poems. I think I really need to loosen up in my own writing.
I survived the Callender reading, in fact I really enjoyed it. The more readings I do the more I really, really enjoy them, amazing considering I'm such an introvert! I managed to get there for the morning and afternoon sessions, it's great just getting to a poetry event but I really enjoyed the variety of the readings which included a series of poems accompanied by a man playing songs on a ukulele in-between each poem! Of course I bought more books, it amazes me the quantity of quality poetry out there.

"Writer's block is a fancy term made up by whiners so they can have an excuse to drink alcohol" - Steve Martin

Unfortunately the business of life has taken over poetry and blogging recently, plus zero inspiration hasn't helped. Hopefully things will settle down soon.
I'm doing a poetry reading a week on Saturday at the Callender poetry weekend along side Chris Powici, Tom Murray, Kona McPhee, Bridget Khursheed and Andrew P Pullan. So very much looking forward to it, the full programme for the weekend can be found here.

I received my contributor's copy of Gutter Magazine and even got a wee mention in the forward which was nice.
This is the lovely cover of the Cinnamon Press anthology due out next month and which I have three poems in, plus I have a poem in one of the weird and wonderful Sidekick Books micro-anthologies(produced by Jon Stone and Kirsten Irving, editors of Fuselit Magazine which is due out next month also.
So hope to get back to blogging better soon! I hope even more that I'll manage to write even one poem, soon!!!!

The great Scottish Makar, Edwin Morgan, has died, aged ninety. A sad day for Scotland, poetry lovers and all those who knew him. I was lucky enough to meet him a number of years ago when I won a poetry competition organised by the RSAMD in honour of him.
An amazingly eclectic poet with a huge output of works. Despite his age and battle with cancer, Morgan published his last collection just three years ago.
Tributes by Carol Ann Duffy amongst others can be found here.

**edit** oops Morgan amazingly published his last collection, Dreams and Other Nightmares, on his 90th birthday!

Exciting news for Plath fans: the academic and literary journal,

Plath Profiles issue 3  is now on-line!

Packed with numerous interesting essays such as 'Plath's Legacy for a Male Poet' and 'Sylvia Plath and Edvard Munch: Mindscape of Chagrin', it includes a range of (some excellent) Plath-inspired poetry and artwork.

Essential reading for any Plath and Hughes fans.

(Right - detail from bedroom wallpaper from 3 Chalcot Square, London, 1960)