Listening to my heart

Last Sunday I sat for my hour at the Quaker Meeting, thinking, looking around etc.

Eventually I started feeling not just the beating of my heart, but the continual whooshing of the blood up and down and around the whole of my inner body.

How have I waiting all my life to hear what has been there all along? It was so peaceful and real. I feel like saying 'Hallo after all these years!' so I'm doing it now, here.

All new blogs added in November 2013

http://wovember.com/2013/10/27/the-wovember-wal/ Wool

http://notstrictlyhomeed.blogspot.co.uk Silent sheepdog training

http://prufrocksdilemma.wordpress.com/ Also doing ModPo class

http://faithmummy.wordpress.com/ Stuff

http://theinvisiblestrings.com/ More helpful stuff

http://mumblingsontheverge.wordpress.com/ To home ed or not to home ed

http://cadee.blogspot.co.uk/ Close reading poetry

http://djennedjenno.blogspot.co.uk/ Helping to preserve manuscripts in Djenne

http://www.asifyourlife.blogspot.co.uk/ Poetry in UK

http://peculiaritiesandreticences.wordpress.com/ Community TA from ModPo class

ModPo - Doing the work

4 types of work are listed in this piece I found in a book. The 4th one is applicable to ModPo I think:

http://shinynewcomputer.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/four-types-of-work.html

So while we have focused on interacting with each piece done by the poets in the syllabus, 'doing the work' of analysis, personal response and reflection, the team running the course has been doing a greater work.

Who has been sleeping on my laptop?

Judging by the fact that it was set to dark, and then when I got the light back, all sorts of windows were open....it must have been the cat from next door.

Beautiful home ed Ted talk

11 minutes discussing home education

http://unschoolery.com/hackschooling

Have a look at the comments too, don't get stuck on the first couple of comments though.

Fruit and vegetables

I am fed up with my cold. I have decided to go on a health kick and cut out all the baddies. This is partly to end my cold and partly vanity, because a friend once said I looked wonderful and the only thing which had changed was a healthy diet for a few days!

Counting heads

I mentally think of where my parents are: Dumfriesshire; T: Cambridgeshire; the rest of us: right here.

Sometimes I think of a relative and wonder for a moment whether they are still alive. That is a version of counting heads too.

Sir Nigel Rodley, UN Special Rapporteur Juan Mendez, His Majesty King Hamad of Bahrain

Careful words in this assessment of the progress made in Bahrain since the publication of the BICI report. So many people worked hard on this, risked sharing information, gave so much time and nervous energy to it.

Assessment: http://bahrainjdm.hopto.org/2013/11/22/bici-commissioner-view-on-implementation-2-years-after/

The BICI report itself is detailed and is a hard read if you did what I did and read it from beginning to end. It is split into many different sections, so just go to the section you want to look at.

BICI report: http://www.bici.org.bh/

Sir Nigel Rodley: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigel_S._Rodley

Juan Mendez: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_E._M%C3%A9ndez

His Majesty King Hamad of Bahrain: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamad_bin_Isa_Al_Khalifa

Jennifer Scappettone

I'm going through the forums on ModPo to read and comment about Scappettone.

Then I went to the rest of the internet and found some great lines from an interview she did:

"LH: When you review, do you focus on a particular text (poem, story), the book at hand, the author’s body of work? Do you think this choice of focus influences criticism, or your own criticism, and if so, how?

JS: I zoom in and out.  My best thoughts arise in states of unfocus, or focus on something utterly unlike (running, chopping, riding a subway), then migrate to unexpected contexts.  It would be interesting to do a publication that “reviewed” single lines or sentences."

My bolding!

"LH: What do you hope to achieve by writing about writing? Do you believe that reviews can actually bring new readers to texts?

JS: I hope to honor marginalized or invisible intellectual and aesthetic labor, attract stranger to stranger, & burn through prior horizons of the possible.  Yes."

More of my bolding.

http://lemonhound.blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/on-reviewing-jennifer-scappettone.html

I never thought I'd hear this song again... but here it is "FALILE SE KASTELANKE" :

When I was little we had a record of Serbian folk songs. All I have ever remembered is the phonetic 'falile se kastilanke' sound. I decided to search on YouTube and up it popped. It is the exact same recording. I recognise the men's voices, the guitars, every note :) I am so happy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsPAB_e_fIk

Welcome to a bit of my childhood.

Oh my God...here is the actual cover:

http://www.discogs.com/Ansambl-Dalmacija-Falile-Se-Ka%C5%A1telanke/release/1945501

Bowie night on the radio show, now until 8.30pm roughly:

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

T and O are busy upstairs doing this.

Take a poetry trip inside the White House

I'm so enjoying this long video from the White House. Kenneth Goldsmith and Alison Knowles, both so very radical. So much laughter in the room, such great funny challenging answers.

Beautiful, shocking poems from the students later on in the film.

I haven't gone to the beginning, bit I assume it's great there too.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/photos-and-video/video/2011/05/11/poetry-student-workshop-white-house

Ongoing conversations about birth and everything

Every Monday morning my gardener comes over to put 3 hours into chopping and neatening up our garden. What really happens is 2.5 hours of gardening and 30 minutes of coffee and chatting about life. Over time we talk about all sorts of things and can build on previous conversations. Since he has daughters and I have sons we share info about that. The younger generation is growing up and giving us food for thought in our little parenting group of 2.

Home education - article by home ed person

http://www.utne.com/politics/democratic-education-of-unschoolers

Written by Astra Taylor of the USA.

PennSound Radio

Intense, but available online.

http://tunein.com/radio/PennSound-Radio-s151308/

Poetry channel.

An old draft post, still worth reading

I'm so cross, the FT has a big article with statistics blaring out about the % of babies born to 'foreign born mothers' presumably as if that is a bad thing. I want to wear a big t shirt saying 'born to a foreign born mother and father = double points!!' Most of their journalists will come from such a lovely situation too. It's not a thing, as my son would say.

.....

Maybe this was in the run up to the Immigration Bill debate. When that happened I wrote a protest letter to my MP and was sent a lovely copy of Hansard by return giving the transcripts of the debate. It was good to read, lots of forthright and supportive comments from various MPs.

I am an art gallery

This is what I woke up thinking last Sunday, just like that, a complete statement. The essay we were asked to do the next day was based on a poem called 'Why I Am Not A Painter', which includes the phrase 'I am a poet'. So I have been pondering this and then acting on it. Now I have several A4 print outs of photo portraits of my near family on the wall next to my desk.

That just gets me to 'I am a curator', so I have a little way to go before I become the Tate with its huge halls, marble floors and my memories of that clanking piano which was suspended from the ceiling and crashed open every few minutes. Though inside my mind I have the Rothko room. To me it never moved away from the old Tate. I have enough vast buildings in my brain to last me a lifetime...

...try Derek Jarman's garden:

http://wellywoman.wordpress.com/2012/06/30/garden-tour-derek-jarmans-garden/