Up until the end of Oct - New Blogs List

Magma Blog

13-ways-of-making-poetry-a-spiritual-practice

http://clarepollard.wordpress.com/2011/12/

http://pvmaro.blogspot.co.uk/ Home educating father

http://www.webofstories.com/play/richard.wilbur/64 Poetry site, this page is of Richard Wilbur reading out, then discussing 'Cottage Street, 1953'

http://neuropsychological.blogspot.co.uk/ Written by Anthony Risser, one of the ModPo students. He goes to the live broadcasts sometimes too.

What a relief, I have submitted my assignment

I have been working on this ever since Monday. I could have written reams. The more I wrote and then had to cut dramatically, the more individual words started dancing around in front of me saying 'look at me, explore all my meanings'. The shortest words started to need long paragraphs.

Even the title was a hurdle. First I had a really creative one. Then I decided that anyone given my title to review would give up on the spot. It didn't have words, just symbols. Oh well, I enjoyed typing it out, even if I then deleted it.

The poem was by Frank O'Hara

Why I Am Not a Painter 

I am not a painter, I am a poet.
Why? I think I would rather be
a painter, but I am not. Well,

for instance, Mike Goldberg
is starting a painting. I drop in.
"Sit down and have a drink" he
says. I drink; we drink. I look
up. "You have SARDINES in it."
"Yes, it needed something there."
"Oh." I go and the days go by
and I drop in again. The painting
is going on, and I go, and the days
go by. I drop in. The painting is
finished. "Where's SARDINES?"
All that's left is just
letters, "It was too much," Mike says.

But me? One day I am thinking of
a color: orange. I write a line
about orange. Pretty soon it is a
whole page of words, not lines.
Then another page. There should be
so much more, not of orange, of
words, of how terrible orange is
and life. Days go by. It is even in
prose, I am a real poet. My poem
is finished and I haven't mentioned
orange yet. It's twelve poems, I call
it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery
I see Mike's painting, called SARDINES.

Now I'd like to look at the actual painting and the actual series of 12 poems.

60 Songs of Awesome - Radio Show on now

http://www.centova3.shoutstream.co.uk:2199/start/leighton/

Apparently they have 60 songs so will have a longer show than usual.

2010 - 2013 I think.

For reference: Tender Buttons by Gertrude Stein

Tender Buttons

Ongoing close readings are here at The Steiny Road

I'm going to suggest to myself that I write out each one by hand as I get to it, starting from the current one, Mildred's Umbrella, and catching up as and when.

ModPo....join if you dare...putting the link again would be overkill, so I won't.

---

I now see there are three parts to Tender Buttons: Objects, Food and Rooms.

Live now: The Noughties on the Radio Show

Radio Tom and Oli

The Noughties

Now until 7.30 or 8pm

http://www.centovav3.shoutstream.co.uk/start/leighton/

ModPo - I am wondering how it will change

The class finishes on 18th November. I wonder how the discussions will continue on the forums. Will we continue to focus on each poet and be able to add new threads to widen those discussions?

Last year the built up volume of discussion was deleted the day before this year's ModPo started, so I assume the same thing might happen again.

I have read that the videos and sound links will stay live right until ModPo starts again next year too. If I go to Breakfast 2.2, the second timers' conversation, I might find out a bit more.

By the way, to anyone reading this, do consider joining the course while it's still possible to do so, then you'll have free access to the syllabus and discussion forums for a good few months of study in your own time. How good is that?

ModPo2013

90's Night - Radio Show from now until 8pm

The link is: Thomas and Oli

The kitchen has loads of pizza, I have put the link on the local home ed facebook list. Now to read some more poetry with loud music in my ears. No wonder I am rather deaf.

School's out - sense of freedom - Work begins

Even though I went to school and left at 18 I don't remember this incredible sense of freedom that I'm getting as a parent.

I am out of The System which I have feared and had to deal with without showing my fear for so many years. Even when the system is as good and thoughtful and well-meaning as possible, it is still a place of control and fear. Maybe it's just me, but even so, what a difference!

I feel as if we are a family again. I am a parent again. I hadn't been aware of how much I'd lost since 2000.

The home education of H continues in its highly autonomous way. That's just our household and goes on through the seasons.

T starts work tomorrow morning, so is not making the move to uni for a year. That makes it feel like Christmas, all of us still here under one roof, putting beds together, doing things to the MG. Which has just given off pretty noxious exhaust, I even smelt it at my desk at the far side of the kitchen... so much for lyrical moments!

'This evening, the ponds and lakes will be jumping, but I will be elsewhere.'

'I prefer to set off for a night stroll at dusk. Not only can the eyes adjust more effectively than if I stepped directly into full darkness from a lit room, I like the way my familiar surroundings are differently transformed as I walk through them. Somethings melt into their background, others remain solidly fixed yet reveal surprising new identities. Also there is sometimes an interesting meeting between diurnal and nocturnal nature, like when early bats and late swallows swoop together or a hare is startled by a badger.'

From Nightwalk by Chris Yates
Published 2012 by Collins

I am reading this a page at a time when I sit in my paternal grandfather's prayer chair each day. I have no idea where it will take me. I hope on a good mysterious walk! It comes from the library, so I may get a used copy online to be able to read it as slowly as I am planning. An early Christmas present to myself.

Listen Up

Radio show from our upstairs right now:

http://www.centovav3.shoutstream.co.uk/start/leighton/

I'm writing one of many, many Amnesty letters for Bahrain. Killing 3 birds with one stone.