Before ModPo

The Spring before I encountered the ModPo poetry class, I was taken by this list. It is the reading list suggested by the Craft Class for The Writers Studio of New York. Yes, I know there should be an apostrophe in there.

The list was what I started to work my way through. It gave me the idea of exploring American Literature further. I was shocked at the speed with which the students were expected to get through the work. I wondered how on earth they could afford so many texts.

This is the current reading list for the Craft Class.

Be inspired.

Playing with words

A group of us meet online each day to bounce ideas around. There are 2 discussion areas, the 2014 Pushcart Collection and the Objects section of Tender Buttons by Gertrude Stein. The discussions get written up and shared online, where else?

Pushcart 2014 - blog written by Karen Carlson

Tender Buttons - blog written by Karren LaLonde Allenier

Forgive some of the language..

Dictionary

I have had 2 successes with my Arabic dictionary today.

While waiting for T to come out of work I did some work and came across a word which had foxed me ages ago on Twitter. It was just there on the page close to what I was looking up. The fact I spotted it even though I hadn't been looking for it at all surprised me. It shows that learning happens in its own mysterious ways.

At home H and I were chatting. He flipped through the dictionary so I suggested he have a look at the English words. I said it was mainly in English to be honest. He read out some which were to do with splitting, distinguishing and dividing.

End of January new blogs

http://www.thethepoetry.com/ I suddenly got John Ashbery via this blog.

http://notborninenglish.wordpress.com/ See her create new forms.

http://garethprior.org/ A neighbour passed me this blog, she knows him.

http://thepatwinslow.blogspot.co.uk/ Poetry in prison, based near Oxford.

Risky Behaviour

I was driving along on Sunday morning. Then I started thinking about properties and how to leverage up, how one might build a property empire!

A bike was ahead of me and a bend to the right which I know very well. Normally I would be Mrs Cautious and drive slowly behind the bike until I could see right along the road before overtaking.

Instead I found myself just overtaking, knowing it was a blind bend, vaguely hoping nothing was coming the other way. There were 2 vans in fact, there was space, but I must have given both drivers and the cyclist a heart attack.

So there is a clear example how even thinking about financial domination of the world warps the mind.

OneRepublic - Counting Stars

52 - 4: An Invitation - "To Arnold"

I will sit on the stairs and gently wait for you.
I will watch as you walk over towards me
and rub your body and head against the bannisters.
If you wish you can come closer and sniff my fingers.
You might lightly brush your tail against my still arm.
I won't move, I'll wait for you.
Another time I might lay out some string on the landing,
so you can be a wild cat and pounce on it
and kill it again and again.
I want to see your fierceness surface
and your playfulness.
You are safe with me.

Fixing, controlling, being generally annoying

My brother and I were discussing our current lives. We wound up looking at times when we have let things happen. Chaos caused by others can simply carry on being in chaos. As he said, look after your own chaos, don't get involved in fixing other people's!

I let a lot happen this weekend. For example when the big family lunch took place, the order in which the steaks were cooked, who served up the ice cream, what walk we went on, who came to sit at the table, where everyone sat and plenty more I didn't even notice.

Get Up Stand Up - Bob Marley

Beautiful honesty

For a while now I have tried to treat what people do and say as a gift of their true selves. Even though I may deeply dislike what they do or say, it comes from them without any disguise. That is in one sense a beautiful thing. It is what it is and I do not have to try to understand what they really mean. No more second guessing or trying to make it work or fixing it.

Let things happen, let others behave in this way or that way. See what exactly is happening. For someone used to seeing the good side of life this is quite a step.

I'm also trying to not step in and cover up for what other people do. That is hard, but I need to learn to let things not work out. In this way other projects can arise. Not tidying up after others is a first step in this direction. I can do it when I wish to, not all the time as a duty.

It means I can stop taking part in an activity without giving explanations. I can just move on, taking the benefits already gained without any obligation to keep on being present.

3 more new blogs

http://www.incidentalcomics.com/ Ministry of Poetry poster

http://fiftytwopoetry.wordpress.com/ "What is poetry for? Everything. "

http://www.chris.fewin.gs/  Go and click on 'In the beginning she created the breast'

Yes, I know you don't *need* me to hold your arm

My parents came to visit over the weekend. We had a walk after lunch, ie just before tea since we'd been talking for a long time at table.

I helped my mother down to the street, but then kept on having my hand tucked under her arm. After a bit she protested that she didn't need help. So then I had to explain that I wanted to be able to snuggle up to her and give her a little friendly nudge from time to time. Then she understood.

When I was first pregnant I asked her if I could sit on her knee. This was so that she could effectively have her first little grandchild on her knee. I don't know that she really appreciated the thought! She played along anyway.

All those photographs, listening and watching over 49 years

It takes a life
time's blindness to
see one's father.

from Cahoots
by Cid Corman

Moby - Why does my heart?

Being an editor

I have been given one poem to do whatever I like with for my written portraits exhibition. I want to type it out so I can display the handwritten version and a printed version.

The problems I have encountered already as I have been typing it onto a text edit file are:

Which are commas and which are full stops?
What do I do about lower case letters at the start of some lines where I think they could be upper case?
Do I try to play around with blank lines to create stanzas?

So I need to type it out exactly as handwritten, then chat to the poet about what he'd like.

Of course the handwritten version includes all the ambiguities, but all anyone needs to do is read and contain these queries in their head as they read along.

So typing out a poem is a much bigger intervention than I had anticipated. It is in fact a translation, an alteration processs.

Have all the songs of Umm Kultum, that will take a while!

'Habibi' means 'my darling' by the way. You will hear this a lot. 'Ya habibi' is untranslatable, something like 'you, my darling' but it isn't 'you' at all, more an extra layer of greeting. like 'hiya' in English, but a more personal. Yes, untranslatable.

Seriously, this is my question:

If you write more personally than before, what the hell do you do with it? Burn it, eat it, bury it in the garden, what?

I know I binned nearly all my life up 'til age 30, so that's taken care of, but I don't want to bin my current life.

Ensure I spend my waking and sleeping hours with fellow writers of stuff?

Totally unrelated: have some music: The Verve - Lucky Man

38593 views

I bet some of these are my own, but even so, that is a huge number of glimpses from around the place. I hope I have started some trains of thought and been helpful at some level to others.

Writing is helpful to me. It leaves a trail I can wonder at and chew over. My future interests might or might not be noted here before I am even aware of them.

Jean Valentine

I started by reading the poem "Waiting", here it is:

Waiting

Then I clicked on the name 'Jean Valentine', just above the poem's title, and found an essay:

Essay

Quote1 from the essay:

She was with Dr. Shea for ten years. "He said, 'For you, you should write every day, including Christmas!'" Valentine laughs. "And that really changed my life and it changed my fears..."

Quote 2 from the essay:

My children had left home, they were off, so I was no longer a home mother." This casting off of identities became for her, "a very positive thing. I realized that my 'identity things' were not there, but I was still there. You could take away all my identities, and I was still there. That kind of knowledge has really been a beautiful thing." The first poem she wrote again was "Trust Me," the affirmation that ends the 1989 collection Home. Deep. Blue.

These quotations make perfect sense in the essay, but because I have removed them from their moorings I think they become both clearer and more confusing. That pleases me. This is my version of taking found language and doing something with it.

My experiment:

She was with Dr Shea for ten years.
"He said, 'For you, you should write every day,
including Christmas!' Valentine laughs.
"And that really changed my life
and it changed my fears..."

When I encourage other people to write their own blog...

I mean that I appreciate seeing how a person lays out their thoughts. I like to see the words they choose. Even the spelling mistakes say something and any tiny anomalies of punctuation.

Interaction in person is fleeting and hard to recall, yet a composed creation is another side to a person and is something I happen to get a lot out of. It is easier to mull over and see in the round.

I like the variation in subject choices and the changes over time due to new interests. I like to see the flow of life, not knowing what might happen next.

Radio show: songs from artists who will release an album in 2014

T and O are busy upstairs with the show. It is back after the New Year break.

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

They are gossiping about their friends...I hope they don't offend their small listener base.

In business

I am on the way to having full time work. My plan is to have 5 work experience voluntary placements each week, changing every so often to gain wider experience. Then to go from there in applying for part time, then full time work in an area I have expertise in.

My first slot is taken, Friday mornings at Oxfam in Wallingford, dispatching books bought online. I hope this goes well.

Beowulf in Tweets

Since my post of the Seamus Heaney translation of the last lines of Beowulf is my consistently most popular post, I'm adding a link to the tweeted version of the whole of Beowulf.

http://historyoftexttechnologies.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/beowulf-in-hundred-tweets-beow100.html 

These tweets relate to a gory section I remember, about the swimming down to fight and kill deep underwater:

"48. At mere’s bottom, grim & greedy, she gripped Beowulf, mail-coat-aided; benthic beasts struck as she hauled him to her fire-lit hall #Beow100

49. With sword, the hero struck her head, but to no avail. Grabbing her hair, he fought hand-to-hand. She threw him down & drew a knife #Beow100

50. Woven war-mail (& God) saved him. He spotted an old giant sword. Through her bone he cut. Light shone. He hacked off Grendel’s head #Beow100

December 28^th

51. Above, Danes gave up at the ninth hour & left the Geats to stare at a blood-muddied mere. In the under-hall, the giant sword melted #Beow100

52. Our hero swam up with head & sword-hilt, rejoicing in his victory. Loyal thanes thanked God; rode to Heorot to present the booty. #Beow100 

53. Beowulf spoke: “It wasn’t an easy fight, but divine intervention showed me a sword. Here, have the hilt. Now you’re free of fear.” #Beow100"

Awe - Jill McDonough - Time

Listen to how to get more awe in your life:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N43Sgmz502w

Go to 22 mins to hear about the beautiful jumper.

I need silence to write - and other unexpected changes

I can surf and read pretty much anything online while listening to music, but I have to have my full mind with me when I write my 'What the hell?!' poems. I hadn't expected that.

My mind is also being rearranged by listening to Umm Kultum. My other music sounds as if it comes from another time and place. Irrelevant pretty much. I hadn't expected that either. I used to love it so much and now it's just brash and in my face.

My handwriting is bothering me too. If I write clearly it looks as if I am filling in a form and takes so long. If I write fast I can barely read it and only a few of the letters are completed.

I watch as my hand whizzes back and forth, knowing subconsciously when to break and put a dot or cross. I seem to have created my own set of rules for which letters I join to which other ones. Is this a standard process for writing in English? Compulsory individuality. The only rule is there are no rules, yet your own rules have to approximate to others' rules. Just enough, but not too much.

It's similar to watching how my hands move as I drive and hold the steering wheel, again performing a sort of dance with the wheel as I turn it around corners and back again. Are there similar non-rules operating here too?

What next?

Walking over a bridge

After Great Aunt Militza died I was thinking in the kitchen. I was standing up at the time and looked behind me as part of my thinking.

The sensation or image I had was that I had thought I was passing through life, as if walking at my own pace over a long widely spanned bridge. As I stood there I had been looking towards my desk as the far shore I would reach in due course.

Then I turned and looked behind me towards the kitchen door. All of a sudden I realised that a big chunk of the bridge I had walked over safely had just fallen into the waters, all at once. So instead of having the whole expanse stretching behind me, just there, showing how far I'd come, I had a big gap which came close to where I was standing.

Would I be able to get to the other side in time, before further sections of the bridge collapsed, with me on it? Getting to the far side seemed perhaps out of reach, instead of a certain goal which I could take my time with.

'My time' - what an assumption.

John Cage and Fair Isle

HaveI linked to this before? I love it when people mix two things they love to make something original and seemingly so easy, so right.

http://tomofholland.com/2013/05/17/aleatoric-fair-isle-alea-iacta-est/

Aleatoric:

But wait a second: what is this “Aleatoric” when it’s at home? In musical terms, aleatoric music is “music in which some element of the composition is left to chance”.

That is a little taster to encourage you to go to the main link.

Arresting

This photo-plus-poem rams home the message that the poet who breathes, dies; but the words which never breathed, live on.

http://carolpeters2013.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/6-january-2013_6.html

65 by William Everson

"I am living in the Now"

H's answer to my challenges/complaints/crossness about the lack of work experience, social nights out and general asking for money to go a long way away to eat, drink and stay up all night.

He makes me laugh, but I still want him to shift himself and go to London/Oxford/Didcot. He has the freedom to just go and stay with relatives, but chooses to stay with us. How can I make home sufficiently boring that he takes off? No doubt I will rue the day I ever said this.

When I was 16 I whizzed off with a friend to Paris for a week after O levels. At 18 I was off interrailing and made it to Mycenae, via Venice, Belgrade and Athens. How gripey and middle-aged I feel today.

Digging with a silver spoon

Apparently when I was about 3 I used to entertain myself by digging in the earth under the rose bushes with a silver spoon. I love it when my mother comes out with these amazing images.

I wonder what I found there. I wonder whether I just liked being near the plants and enjoyed the peace and quiet. I wonder whether I was using my christening spoon, the one I only recently liberated from my parents' house. I felt like a robber, asking them to let me take home my own christening spoon.

New poetry coming in 2014 - I love the little greenhouse picture

My choice of the poetry books suggested here: http://www.npr.org/2014/01/04/258659166/ice-cube-sculptures-tulips-and-death-a-2014-poetry-preview are the first, fourth and the eighth collections.

If I put them on my Amazon wish list then one night at 11pm I'll say "What the hell!?" to myself and order them for the sheer delight of it.

Given the choice between a new top and a book the book would win. Luckily I can't read all the time, so I do buy new clothes sometimes.

More new blogs - early January

http://www.ayearofbeinghere.com/

http://raymmaxx.wordpress.com/

http://www.inksweatandtears.co.uk/

http://rashabellydance.co.uk/blog/

http://blogbaladi.com/