Full moon again - Last sleep out?

Walking through such high banks of grasses

H and I went for a walk while it was still light. I explained how I sat in a hedgerow last summer to simply be there and see what was happening all around me.

We saw a bumble bee holding onto a grass head. There was Hogweed, so I told him how much taller Giant Hogweed can be and how dangerous it is to touch.

A red flying beetle caught my attention.

Last sleep out?

I might not get the chance to sleep outdoors in this garden again, so I'm taking my chances out there tonight, though the wind has got up.

I do it because of the noises at night, the breathing of the wind, the space, the darkness, the sweeping of the trees around the front garden, the opportunity.

Previous places: cockpit of the boat and the patio garden at Tachbrook Street.

Engineering

Each time I put something together the engineers have designed new ways of fixing it. I hope they realise that people like me appreciate their imagination and the whole process of working it out. They are teaching me how to follow their thinking. The diagrams don't help much, handling the pieces and looking at it all does.

My poetry whatsit has woken up

11pm

It's hell trying to get to bed in poetry land
We are playing with words and memories
Party time with comments and likings

Form, Content, Meta-poetics - Co-op Arabic class

A reminder to myself, always look for these 3 aspects in the Mod Po Plus texts. Just those 3 will keep us busy for hours.

Back to Kenny Goldsmith and Traffic. Article. Video discussion not for sharing. Just join the class of 2015.

Co-op Arabic class

This is very enjoyable, we sit and go through whatever we choose to go through. One person tells me I know so much... I then promptly get to a word which just looks like squiggles on the page, no hints at all. But then, after a bit of wondering and not finding it in the dictionary, I come up with how to split it up. That's good.

Then I top it off with a mini-lecture on the other meanings I remember. Was I shut up with a piece of cake??

We are all teachers in our other lives, so I carefully ask my friend whether she can say that word, and is she clear about the vowels? We don't have to try to keep up, we repeat what the sentence means, bit by bit, pointing at each word and clarifying tricky letters. We ask what we are puzzled by and look up endings, going over the same basic stuff again and again.

I blow my own trumpet by saying al-qahira more times than I need to, because I like saying it :)

I'm given homework to keep me quiet, because my friend can see I'm the sort who needs to be kept busy.

I get all bossy and tell the next person to tackle the next few words, going round the table anti-clockwise. By the end of the session we are going round the other way without planning it. How did that happen?

I have promised to bring in 3 copies of a poem. They will be poem-ed by me whether they like it or not! There are some age 6 children's books I could bring instead, much easier and, since we have all had children, would be a reminder of old times.

The thistle is growing huge and the bees are happy. No-one has yet fallen off their chair and we exchange news about our lives while eating cherries.

We encourage each other and say that none of us learnt English from a book, but by repeating things in our own ways, as and when we wanted. Whatever we do is a bonus.

We have shared language lesson traumas together already, so are very appreciative of our current freedom. We still need an actual Arabic speaker to talk to us as if we were toddlers: Here is the cup, Where is the cup? I like the cup because it is red. This morning I wanted tea, but also wanted coffee. My mother drinks coffee, then she drinks tea, in the garden, by the sea...

Can't believe my luck

Two of us will be meeting every week to discuss one of my favourite subjects in a structured and planned way. There is a cafe and the best view for miles from the Ridgeway over towards Oxford. We met online and just click :)

Well, we did have an exploratory chat to share what we each wanted at the moment and whether those things were compatible, where our interests lie and what we each really wanted to do.

I was spectacularly late last time and this time as well, but she didn't give up on me.

So: Tracie Morris this time and Laynie Browne next time.

...

Again from my draft posts, written a couple of weeks ago.

Giving each other pleasure: I see 3 sonnets go sailing by on Court Hill in the sunshine

Well, that's where we got to on Thursday with our poem we couldn't let go of. We were walking around talking about it and wondering why we didn't like it, but just couldn't move on from it. Then I said 'I bet it is made up of 3 sonnets' more as a joke, the most unlikely thing I could think of, so we counted the lines and lo and behold, the poems is made of 3 sets of 14 lines, each 14th line is the end of a stanza.

We both laughed with glee at this. So satisfying. Noisy poetry discussions!

So where did that get us? Well, we started looking at the poem in an entirely different light. How is it that a new respect comes in, a new sharper assessment, looking for the meaning given by the two breaks between the three sonnet lengths, the creation of 3 more separate sections. A greater appreciation for the choice of stanza lengths, enjoyment of the 2 line sections in particular.

Anyway, I need to write the rest on the forum where we both chat.

Translation Day in Oxford

The first session was on translation from Arabic to English.
On reflection I discovered new elements in the whole process of translation and writing poetry:

A

(with apologies to the lecturer, I hadn't gone to google and didn't realise he is already published, and what is more, is already in an anthology on my bookcase)

At what point is the translator moving towards writing his own poem?
At what point do you need a poet to write a translation of a poem?
At what point does a translator realise that writing a translation of a poem is in fact writing from his own poetic voice?
At what point does the academic exercise fall away and the writing of poetry itself start?
At what point does the translator realise that he is a poet, and start to take part in the poetry world? 

B

 

Why do I say I think it's ok for this particular translator to use a slightly old-fashioned word, one I wouldn't and couldn't use, because it says something about the translator's own history of learning English? That is moving away from accurate translation to something more personal.

C 

Why is discussing translations in a group so easy? We get to all sorts of layers of meanings quickly, but in a different way to Mod Po or the Sunday poetry group I used to run. Those groups looked at published poems by well-known names. 

D

Discussion could go further, to the wishes and choices of the translator as a writer, who is doing a double revelation, of their own life and knowledge plus the original writer's.
The space for revelation of the translator's poetic voice is incredibly narrow, because of the intense restrictions placed upon it by the requirements of the original poem, but that is enough.
I can only hear that voice if I know their own work already. 

E

Here's something else: if I can't read a poet's original work properly yet, comparing several translators' own work in English to the translations they have all made for that one poet helps. The elements which are constant in the translations are the ones I am searching for.  

F 

At what point is it ok for me to want a translation to show knowledge of contemporary English poetry? Where does a translation of a contemporary Arabic poem stand in respect to contemporary English poems?
How much can I demand of a translation? I want to remove the capital letters, can the translation world cope? If it is at the suggestion of a stranger, but not from the translator's own heart, can it be right? No, it has to be what the translator can stand behind. But every single bit of a poem is up for grabs. What does that actually mean?

There's more:

G 

The Back Room Poets group I go to sometimes includes poets sharing translations they have made, without the originals I now realise. We workshop them in exactly the same way as with poems written in English. We treat them as poems written by the writer and have the same expectations and reactions to them, though the subject matter is not theirs.

H

Do translators know of the process of workshopping freshly written poetry with others? It is a formal, yet intimate process. We all undergo the scrutiny and appreciation as we go round the table in turn over 1.5 hours. We are open about our problems with a poem's words here and there, we disagree with each other, there are so many ways to read and respond to a poem, particularly when the poet is right there with us. Or rather we are all there with each other.

We also get to all sorts of meanings in workshop evenings, but that is utterly different, the poets are there, we mention the tiny details we are tripping over and need to be altered. The poets offer alterations and we the readers say what works better for us. There is a need to communicate and be received by the listeners. The poem may then be ready for submission for publication, or for a public reading. The poet works out what they are able to alter and what one word they just have to keep.

 

Translation as a group is a much more invasive process. We query everything, or rather by the end of the session we were getting towards changing everything in the bridge version. I did wonder, who gets the credit for the end result? We gave new words and new word orders. We had to hand in all our notes on the handouts, that was a surprise. I wrote far more notes once I knew they would be read and used in some way :)

I

Within the poetry world there is a strict convention that shared unpublished poems are taken away by all participants, never to be shared outside the group, but allowed home with each of us, printed on a sheet of printer paper.

J 

We hear each poem read by the poet, but in a translation exercise we don't hear the original poet. They are so very absent. It is as if they are dead, unless someone in the room has met them or knows them. Mm, that is a big problem, how can anyone get over that?

K

Last point..I am a chopper and love to get rid of excess words (hard to tell from the length of this post!) and that can't be done with a translation, so I am made to stick with the original, accept it totally. Then wrap it in my language, put my whole mind onto it. This is an entirely different process, mind to mind. I now need a translation group to be part of.

Going all round the houses to get back to my starting point

I have an Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature, so I looked up something and browsed around for a while.

Which authors jumped out at me? Saint-Jean Perse and others from my French reading years.

My texts are in plastic bags in a dark cupboard and also in boxes in the attic. They used to be neatly arranged on proper bookshelves which I'd built myself, but things have happened since then.

I need my books more than anything else. I will know I am at home when they are cherished and visible. There have been many years of darkness/silence.

Car conversations

I got a bit irate, but did calm down. We were discussing relationships and having children. As a parent just being correct and bland isn't enough, and isn't possible in any case. How much to put into words? There will always be other times to continue discussing this. It probably underpins all other topics.

Containers

Beautiful vases and boxes make all the difference to a room. Stacks of un-contained items are messy and distracting to me. Why are dividing lines necessary and reassuring? Why is the pattern made by a row of vases so important?

Dunya Mikhail

Interview in English in the magazine Guernica.

Published in 2006 by Carcanet, a book of poems called The War Works Hard. Translated from Arabic to English.

Click on 'Excerpt' to read one poem from the collection: 'How magnificent the war is!'

I find it helpful to just read one short poem, otherwise I get brain indigestion. So trust the editors to have picked one to let you look into her world without drowning. One of my tutors was like that, with him it was ok to just take one careful glance at a time.

No such thing as a neutral trip to London

...

H and I played Therapy on a sofa in the Reading Room at the Wellcome

My brother and I both looked at the exhibition, but took turns

Decided to leave the questionnaire for another more reflective time

...

I offered money to a woman sleeping rough, but she indicated 'No'

...

Tubes and buses, lots of being bumped around on the top deck

My father was thrilled that H asked for some wine

My mother was thrilled that H likes breakfast at the cafe each day

...

Dobre yutro/Dobre dan/Good morning/Good afternoon - My English isn't good enough

My Serbian

Yes, a bit more Serbian, will I find my soul in there somewhere? My mother and H are learning at the same time :) Try putting it into Arabic:

دوبر يوترو/ دوبر دان

My English

I know it is too vague and waffly. Too informal. Too personal.

Worse than than: How can I consider ever doing any further study, as the saying goes, if I resist the idea of ​​correct, authoritative and anonymous academic-speak? Resist it with my whole body and being, not just with a little shudder. I got a 2:2 as well, and I'd need to have got a 2:1. That can't be changed. I did get a first for one of my finals papers, translation from French to English,  so that is in my favour. I remember how easy that paper was,  I recognised the writers and just felt at home with the texts. My 16th century paper was a nightmare, I had never got on with Ronsard and experimenting at that point was never going to go well. At least I can be calm in the midst of an academic disaster.

I want to study contemporary US and UK poetry as well as modern Arabic language and literature, I cannot give up any of them. So I am snookered before I start. What I want to study is so vast I might as well carry on at my own pace. My current situation is very nearly perfect from that point of view.

I see why being able to learn is such a privilege. So many things have to be in correct alignment. Or you have to sacrifice everything else and just go at it, come what may, and simply never give up. Or only for an afternoon of crossness, meh feelings and general rantification.

Michael Longley: The Ghost Orchid

Michael Longley: The Ghost Orchid

I zipped through this using a simple approach, mark the poems I want to mark and keep on reading quickly. I feel a bit of a poetry criminal for doing this, but am doing it anyway.

ok:

the mad poet p 6 - because of the made-up words, eg 'afflicted with the itchy nirls'

baucis and philemon p22 - because maybe reading about a happy couple will help

the scissors ceremony p27 - because I used to cut finger and toe nails kindly for years

the fishing party p42 - because I can't work out who is who yet

sun & moon p50 - because my brother used to call us Brother Sun and Sister Moon

Reading/s

Do people look at me the way I look at Ziba Karbassi and Stephen Watts?

When I read I look at people's eyes across the room.

This person here, then that person over there. To the left, centre and right.

...

H wanted to be dropped off at the cinema for 'Spy'

So I get a whole evening of eating and thinking while I wait

I have wanted to read MPT for years, I wasn't ready until now

Words are failing

Coming and going

Being in one place, then another

children big role
then son so
all to been
the cause embarrassing
this to ok
if home older
son home see
are it to
like with to
cause upheaval
then the mother
her husband the
then then is
so are feels
tended with be
profound to tended
all home going
the the mother

I could not post the text, so I performed various operations upon it to make it unintelligible. Perhaps this says un-enough? Sufficiently little? A form of cendoring, I mean censoring, not candouring.

...

The cat and I do Contact Improvisation when she visits at 7am

Looking for metaphors in the crash barrier and the lush green trees

Each time I use a swear word I really mean a whole paragraph

...

What happened to my grandmothers's friends?

I shouldn't have had a chat about how to discuss a problem today, or is this bumpy road a good one none the less?

Three vases from a charity shop for the kitchen implements.

Transplanting clumps of ornamental grasses, a strangely violent action, I felt like Salome

I held the grasses by the hair and walked across the garden with them.

My mother in law came back from hospital with a blue cross on her head.

My friend has the tiniest, sweetest little pond to dabble my finders in.          (fingers!)

New strict limits: just 3 full lines, every day

H and I chatted about cooking pizza last night. I said it in Arabic for him.

I wrote about the translation day, thankfully it's still a draft. Always search.

Each time I pick up an anthology I recognise more names from readings.

52 - Holocaust - Naguib Mahfouz - Arranging

52 won the Saboteur Award

Being part of 52 has been a remarkable education in reading quantities of poetry and in giving feedback directly to the writer. My first poetry group was Mod Po 2013, which lasted 3 months. 52 lasted a year, though I joined 1/4 of the way in. I think it is best to just take part in one focused and highly interactive online group at a time.

2 more Holocaust books 

What is all this about? Do I need to read more? Will I get to a point of balance, letting that drama sit and paying attention to current dramas? Can I only take in a bit about it at a time, so do just that, a bit each year? Circling round what happened.

Is it wrong of me to have read little bits from them, before and after purchase, then to have carefully shelved them with my not-Poetry-or-Arabic section?

Palace Walk - Naguib Mahfouz

This is taking my attention. I don't want to go fast. Each paragraph holds such a lot. It is a contrast to the collection Al-Mutanabbi Street. Family life vs destruction. My mind can only take in a certain amount.

Arranging items by colour vs by material vs by function

Since I was working for most of the day at Oxfam I had time to shift my plans and create groups of blue items, groups of bold kitchen ware, a display of the most old-fashioned china soup tureens and tea pots. I kept on adding things to groups which were already in existence, rather like introducing friends: oh you both like such and such, and you both live in Oxford.. I will get you together.

I love creating more display space in the shop.

Thrilling sights on the A34

A34 thrills

I drove past a small plane on the back of a truck a few days ago, then saw a sleek yacht in a lay-by going the other way.

Today H wanted me to follow a red Ferrari, so I did for a bit. Then a black steam train headed past us the other way. I wish I could have been stuck in a traffic jam beside it for 20 mins to look at all the metal work.

Wide open spaces

Wide open spaces

We had a second drive out in the hills nearby. All I could see were clouds, sky, unripe crops, green hills. After a bit we had a picnic on the grass and enjoyed the warm sun.

The road is s bit predictable, but different road users come along and H needs to deal with them. Horses, cyclists, another car from the rear.

Last time we had a tractor which passed by several times, cars coming along and a car parked on the verge with people standing around it.

Circumstances

Circumstances

A change in circumstances is a bit like the action and the response to taking the flower pot away from its usual place. Suddenly I see all the woodlice scurrying around underneath. Then they disappear into the surrounding plants. Feeling the removal they decide to make big changes so they can be safe again, but without relying on that flower pot just above their little bodies.

or:

The moving woodlice represent the underlying reality which had been covered up by a seemingly permanent inanimate cover, a barrier to seeing.

Read, read, read...click, click, click

6 documentaries on poets in or from the Arab World, on the Al-Jazeera English website:

http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/poetsofprotest/poetsofprotest.html

First time - New learning groups for 2015

for handing my car over to my son to practice in
for sitting there issuing commands like 'go into 2nd now'

for feeling someone else drive it up onto the grass verges
and back down onto the tarmac again after the tractor had passed

...

I enjoy setting up groups. When one comes to an end another one can emerge.

We now have a new Arabic one which meets in a garden round a table with a scary parasol. My friend and I grabbed it every so often, convinced it would take the whole table with it when the wind blew in strong gusts. We eat and drink right from the start. I can behave myself and wait for food and drink, but I'd much, much prefer not to.

Our poetry sharing group meets weekly at someone else's house and is like a port in a storm. Again, we don't do any work until the mugs of tea are in front of us. I have got so used to the way the others read and to the work they do, similar but new each time.

In the latest one we will examine a series of poems from the ModPo Plus syllabus. We will think and talk on our stomachs for this too since we will be meeting at a cafe. We know each other from online, but not so much in real life as yet.

The best thing about all of these groups is that no money changes hands, so we are all equal in that respect.

Learn about Wole Solinka

One of the candidates for the Oxford Professorship of Poetry is Wole Solinka.

He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1986, and has written plays, essays, poems, movies, novels and short stories. He has 5 books of memoirs, published between 1971 and 2006. So a huge body of work.

Jude Montague's show on Resonance fm shares readings by Wole Solinka and discusses the poetry world. His words are simple and clear. Topics include prison and solitary confinement and abuse of power.

He has taught at universities in Nigeria, in the US and also at Oxford University in England.

Carmen Bugan writing on the PEN website.

Wiki page - a big life, I need to spend some time with this.

Voting is open to people who have a degree from Oxford, plus others:  voting process starts here.

At the end of Jude's show there is her song: 'It's about passion, it's about love and soul.' Listen to the breath, the words, the articulation of each sound and the calm music encasing it all.

..

Getting all excited about poetry forms

This time it is not the form of the poem itself, but of the poetry sharing meetings.

1. Small group of 6 maximum, round a pub table, passing around a published collection by one of the people there, take turns to read out different poems, or even take turns to read out the same one.

2. In a small group, share photocopies of published poems by people who are not in the room but are known to one of us personally, ie have met in real life, or at any rate have heard read in the same room. Again, take turns to read the poems out, because each person has a different way of reading out loud.

3. I'll show you mine if you show me yours. Share poems we have not put forward for publication and are not likely to any time soon. The poems are shared, but go no further. So the really personal stuff gets an airing in a safe space. We all get to know each other a lot better. We at least know we don't have to sit on 'those' poems.

4. Moving towards other languages: working away at translations we or other people have already published. Pick apart what we can of each language; laugh at our terrible knowledge of vocab and grammar; stop feeling that it's a bad thing that our language skills are at whatever level they are at. We are breathing, isn't that enough?? So share both our knowledge and our un-knowledge. Only very short poems, or just the first couple of lines of a poem. It's not an exam.

Friday

The moment I leave work I feel so tired

I saw a woman counting out an amazing number of pills

The Weston Library foyer is full of spaces and surfaces to gaze at

I saw a manuscript starting in Latin, then shifting to Italian

A Greek manuscript used an unfamiliar writing style

Not a single word of Arabic in the display, grr

A lorry reversed ever so close to my cafe table in the street

I'm happier rushing through polishing and pricing, 30 mins per box

As promised, I shared some sheets of Aramaic, 'Can you speak it?' my colleague asked!!

All plans to go to the bank and museum after work drop away

Created yet more display space

The till is really complicated

Eating rusty nails - Summer and winter - Unresolved roleplay

Eating rusty nails

H asked me to do something which was beyond my red line. I replied that I'd rather learn my vocab, ie eat rusty iron nails, sorry to the vocab, but it's not my way of doing things.

Summer and winter

It wasn't that bad, I was eating a pistachio magnum thing and drinking hot mulled wine while H did important beauty activities on the other sofa.

Unresolved roleplay

Why has this come to mind? Over 10 years ago I was in an acting workshop dealing with irreconcilable differences, or conflict, or standing your ground... I was given a scenario to act out and the other person was given an opposing one. We had to stick to our guns as much as possible.

In such a short time I had stood there in silence and our little play had become, not a shouting match, but a moment of intimacy, with me changing my mind and my partner putting himself in my hands to sort out the situation somehow. Everyone clapped.

Maybe it was resolved, by how it turned out? Maybe it was one of those moments in the history of the universe where a tricky situation becomes a beautiful, trusting one. Alchemy.

But what about what remained unsaid? I never explained part of my scenario, that I was supposed to be going out to a party given by people who hated the other person. Did he similarly hold back part of his supposed story?

I am still in that part of my mind where I am considering not going to the party, but sitting on a bench in the street to talk about the problem he'd come on stage with. I think one part of my brain will always be just there.

Crickets

I know the sound of crickets at night from the South of France when I was little.

Without warning a short film shifted to exactly that, but in another country.

Maybe that sound at night is just one country of its own? Like thunder and lightning?

Why does endless tuneless cheeping have such emotional resonance?

And be almost unbearably beautiful?

Petals on 10th - 12th May each year

Every year I see the honesty plants come into flower. They are purple. When our white cat was in his last days, having an injection each week, then in the weekend before the vet visit on the Monday...he'd walk in the garden and brush past the flowers. He'd get purple petals on his pure white coat.

I watched him have what I sensed might be his last walk on the grass at the front of the house. No petals that time. I think he lay down on the grass.

I didn't wake him even once that last night, I let him sleep. Normally I'd stroke him and interact with him every time I walked past him. I had to give him enough food and drink before night came since he had to be a thirsty and hungry cat in the morning, prior to a possible operation on his jaw.

I made and gave the decision by phone to euthanase him, because he couldn't be operated on and was unconscious already..'Kiss him and let him go'. We cried at the kitchen table in shock, then when we were all ready walked to our village church to write a small message for him.

Of course the flowers we gathered for his grave were the very ones he'd been brushing against.

Every year the same set of leaves and flowers from around the back garden are at the exact same stage of blossomingness.

Full moon - Diana Moore - A Visitor to the Forest

Full Moon

That's it. When my aunt went to India to meditate I was about 10 and upset she was leaving. I told her that when I could see the moon, she'd be seeing the same moon. Did she realise I missed her?

Diana Moore

Diana performed twice recently at the Ekphrasis poetry readings in the Ashmolean in Oxford. I simply listened to her first piece, half spoken/half sung. She is so comfortable on stage, even if it is a flat floor of a gallery.

She needed someone to turn the pages for her second piece, A Visitor to the Forest, so I did that. It is a poem inspired by this painting. It has been published as a children's book and is in the shop in the Ashmolean.

It is so unusual and easy to read out. Even the review on Amazon is beautiful!

Her website

The title kept me for several days

"The title kept me for several days, along with the full stops, one and two syllable words and their beautiful patterns and rhythms, plus the 4 triple syllable words. I'd move further along, then go deep into one aspect, even working out the 3 line moving average for full stops. I drew a little graph on squared paper to examine this. Where am I with 'drink' and 'think'? I'm nowhere ready to examine 'days'. Those capitals are very square, what do I think of those? And what about 'life' innocuously sitting in a line. I lie, I went back to the title and found it more and more slippery. I had forgotten how much time it takes to meander around a poem. I had to rest my brain on the sofa again today for a few hours. I had thought it was my Arabic class or that strong coffee causing me such tiredness, but no!"

I hit on these words in a search box. I copied and pasted them because they seemed unusual and I wondered who this interesting person was who had written them....yes, anyone can see where this is going.

Finally I realised they are MY WORDS.