Yet more new blogs, incuding one I encouraged to be started

http://earthrepairblog.wordpress.com/ I encouraged this blogger to get going.

http://notborninenglish.wordpress.com/ Scroll down to the January 15th 2014 post about writing your own personal dictionary.

http://poemworks.blogspot.co.uk/  ModPo and on the Facebook group for it too.

List, Busy, Your, Said - my new titles

Now I have filled my 'What the Hell!?' notebook I am experimenting with using titles with 4 letter words. Simple ones, not necessarily swear words. It feels different, more considered and calm.

My inspiration for this came from the short words in Beowulf, for example: road, gear, sand, hand...The basic parts of the world seem to come in these one syllable packets in English.

I don't have the same sense of urgency to write now I am using this framework. That could be because the notebook is upstairs and I am down here. Having it with me might change things.

3 work placements

Now I am up to 3 regular work experience placements. Oxfam Online, No 2 Things helping with workshops and general management, and using a saw and big secateurs at the gardens of the SCEEC by the Power Station in Didcot.

That last one is monthly. The first session was today and is just what I need: fresh air, sunshine and wind. We volunteers are told exactly what to do, but have the freedom to walk around and get lost too, which is what I did. I took some time out with a collegue to watch the wildlife from a hide. So peaceful and beautiful. My face is burning from the sunshine.

I have 3 more potential placements I am working on. When each one works out I will write about them. Happy days.

Get connected with Stephen Watts, translator of Adnan Al-Sayegh

Gosh: Page on Spitalfields Life blog about him.

See if you can spot the section where his personal library is described.

Crash course on Adnan Al-Sayegh

5 min film by Wooden Films, 2007, 'A passage to exile'.

Audio of short poems in Arabic spoken by Adnan Al-Sayegh and in English by his translator Stephen Watts.

Footage of the threat delivered to him in public at a Poetry Festival in Basra 2006.

Both English and Arabic typed versions are given on his Facebook page. To find it, do a search using his name.

The English lines up neatly with the Arabic. So a word on line 2 in the Arabic will be somewhere on line 2 of the English. I love translators who make it easy for learners. Or rather poets who keep ideas within the boundaries of a line.

.....

After reading a little of his writing I get the feeling that he breathes in events and breathes out the words to react to them. He seems to have no barriers which dam up and hold onto thoughts and feelings.

Yet is this true? What is still held back, frozen beneath the surface? In any case, living or rather getting older brings an endless series of events and changes to process. Why am I even asking that question?

...

I did some stressing about the seminar with Adnan Al-Sayegh I want to go to. My son H wisely and wittily said I should learn the Arabic phrase for 'I don't speak Arabic' just in case I get spoken to in Arabic and haven't a clue what I have been asked. How well he knows me. Does this count as home ed or just life late at night in our kitchen? They are the same thing.

لا أستطيع أن أتكلم العربية حتى الآن

Ravensbrück and my new form

Ravensbrück

Paulette Gouache

But she survived

I made good friends

So don't leave any bread

They spoke in their old bedroom

It's a bit cryptic. I do increasing numbers of words per line. Each line is somewhat unrelated to the next. Same topic though. It's about thinking about a topic from various different viewpoints.

In this case:
the name of the prison camp,
the name of my great aunt,
the phrase I use immediately after saying that she was taken there,
a phrase she said to me about her time there,
my father's instruction before we had lunch with her and my great uncle in Paris when we were 8 or 9,
and a note about my own grandmother's memory of the days and nights they spent together talking about what she had gone through after she got back to their family flat in Paris in 1945 and were able to just be together at home.

Is this a well-known form or one I made up myself?

The first line both is and isn't the title. I like that slight confusion about the status of the first word. Of course the first word is the starting point for all the rest. So the form and content are one. I write these in order of line length, asking my mind for the next number of words.

I'm working on an exhibition of poetry

I am moving on from my 2nd event, the Christmas Tree of Poetry. It had books underneath it just where the wrapped presents would go. They got rather damp and curly, but it was worth the sacrifice to hear that people were walking around the church reading from them.

The 3rd event is to be an exhibition in my house with the theme of written portraits of older relatives. Prose would count too and the concepts of relatives can be loosely interpreted. Mine is not a portrait at all! It was meant to be, but went somewhere else entirely.

It doesn't matter at all if it is a micro-exhibition with just 2 or 3 items. I'm thrilled to be having ideas and creating something from scratch.

Sonique - It Feels So Good

Don't settle. Do what you love. Steve Jobs.

What a man! This is the Commencement Speech Steve Jobs gave to the graduating students at Stanford in 2005.

Search for it on YouTube.

Write down the pithy advice and jump in with both feet into whatever thing you must do.

One of my favourite posts

A couple of years ago I discovered a project linked to the 2012 Olympics.

"The World In London" put on by The Photographers' Gallery

Do go there and wander about. Look at the different photographic portraits. Listen to the recorded voices of the people telling a tiny snippet of their stories. Read their words.

There is a list of 204 countries, click on each one to see what is behind each button.

I couldn't sleep

Last night I couldn't fall sleep until some time after 3am.
Due to my active mind responding to the Poetry Readings.

Last autumn I kept on having to sleep in the day.
Due to the intensity of my online Poetry course.

Being split up

I have just remembered how my various managers used to split me up from people I worked with because we used to chat and enjoy our lunch breaks and work times. McDonald's did this to me and Scottish Widows' too. They couldn't deal with people chatting intelligently about anything and laughing about a crossword puzzle we were communally solving in my drawer. I'd totally forgotten that too. Fun times.

It was probably because it disturbed the others and interfered with the work flow, but at age 19/23 that didn't cross our minds.

Does this still happen?

Einstein and Jesus

I think this Friday morning job might be the right place...my co-worker quoted Einstein at me!

In return I shared my adventures with a book called Jesus of Nazareth, which had a short trip off the shelf, to my packing station, then back again as the buyer had had a change of heart. He is sleeping soundly in his shelf slot behind the gorgeous white satin of a wedding dress.

I might or might not start another poetry series. I'm thinking about the name.

"This is what I can't tell you"

"This is what I remember"

"One evening this happened"

"I don't want to write this, but"

"Silence"

"This is why I didn't come to London for that family party"

"What the (different) hell?!"

"What fresh hell is this?!"

"When I said I was fine, what I could have said was.."

"If you'd listened and waited, then listened some more, I might, just might have told you that.."

"Even now I don't want to look back and write about this"

"I worry I might forget what happened, even though I have spent 5 years not talking about it to anyone, apart from short glimpses, more to silence and stun the other person, shut them up"

"When I have talked about this to professionals in the past the other person would give me 'the look', the one that says 'I am out of my depth. I am scared. I can't hear what this mother is starting to tell me.'"

A different set of Umm Kulthum songs, more delicate, more beautiful. The first set are no longer available on YouTube. http://umkolthoum.blogspot.co.uk/

Early Feb blog haul

http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/morleyd/ David Morley, no new posts, but look at the old ones.

http://thestoneandthestar.blogspot.co.uk/ By Clarissa Aykroyd. She was at Poetry Parnassus in London 2012 too.

http://kimmoorepoet.wordpress.com/ More Poetry Parnassus

http://displacement-poetry.blogspot.co.uk/ More Poetry Parnassus

http://yearofpoetry.livejournal.com/ Prompts

http://www.versifier.co.uk/ Ivor Murrell, reads his work out loud.

17 is on the horizon, and 50 is looming

Next winter H will be 17. As the law stands this means he will no longer be officially home educated and the Local Authority will no longer have him on their books. I am wondering what happens to home educating younger humans as they go towards the late teens. At what point do they and the parents stop using the term home educated? Where will this leave my status in the world? How will I describe myself then? Will we still pass our days splitting hairs and playing endless variations on Monopoly? Will we feel free? What will H be passionate about? Who will he be friends with?

In just under 2 months I shall turn 50. Khamseen Jahre alt. J'aurais fifty ans. It feels confusing. Normally I cut my hair very short at each decade. Each time it has been a mistake, but irresistible nevertheless. Maybe I will lose my moorings very slightly. From the content of this post it is too late to ask that question, I am already under way, motoring before I raise the sails, switch the engine off and proceed on the wind alone. No longer wallowing, but heeling a little from the wind.

How I miss Poetry Parnassus - these pieces bring it all back

I have just found a new blog to follow. It will be in my next post of new blogs. (I just typed 'logs', I do love those typos!)

The writer was at our fabulous, wonderful Poetry Parnassus in London 2 years ago:

http://thestoneandthestar.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/poetry-parnassus-on-friday-and-saturday.html

I think I will do some searching and find some other people who were there too. I'll add them to this post later.

http://kimmoorepoet.wordpress.com/2012/07/02/poetry-parnassus-gushing/

http://displacement-poetry.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/rain-of-poems-al-saddiq-al-raddi.html

http://annperrin.wordpress.com/2012/07/01/12532/

That is enough I think!