Drift, again - Penguin - Bellingcat/Brown Moses

Drift: It took me until the end of the book to understand what was going on. I was lost in the language and in the format for much of the time. Then I was lost in the images. I had to let go and just see what would happen next.

One section was too much. I jumped over it. Once I had completed my journey/reading, I went back and read that section backwards from the end, small paragraph by small paragraph. My method for dealing with distressing text. I prefer to know the outcome and want to avoid being frightened and pinned down by the author over many tension filled pages.

Spoiler alert: I will put my other comment down below so you can come to this in your own time.

H is getting practice at filling hot water bottles. He accused me of over-filling the kettle because the hot water bottle now looks like a penguin who has eaten and drunk too much and is lying on its back trying not to move. I murmur that you don't have to pour every last drop into the thing. If I pat it too hard it might burst.

New Blog: Bellingcat set up by Brown Moses, who is/was active on Twitter identifying true locations and exact make of shells in Syria

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This should be far enough down the page. There is an astounding arrival of love in the book, just like that, between the end of one paragraph to the start of the next. If that has ever happened to you, you will get it instantly. Wow. I won't type it out, go and find it for yourself.

Winter visiting

This year it means visiting friends every day. 4 days in a row so far. Other years we have been much more home based or snowed in. My brother even drove up from London today. I'll be with a friend in her studio tomorrow night. This is great. I am handing out more Christmas cards as I go, I did a bit of forward planning. This year the juggernaut that is Christmas is simply rolling on over us all.

My insides don't know what to do with themselves when I hear this: Drift by Caroline Bergvall. I so, so want to get to watch and hear this whole piece. It's a combination of dreading the outcome of any trip in a motor boat and adoring the continuous tension of the humming music crossed by her seagull voice.

The Quiet Compere tour 2014 - Sarah Dixon runs this and is writing it up. Part 1 and Part 2 are published so far. Quite a few names are familiar to me from 52.

Amazingly, she has booked me for a 10 min slot at the Oxford one in May. It's lucky I have enough poems already as I have stopped writing. Why?? Maybe my fingers are too cold and we sit on the sofa watching black and white films until 2am. Too much facebook, or too little? Not enough trouble coming my way? Not in the mood at some level.

'What shall we do about stale cake?'

'Who were the protest group called 99%?'

'What does that all mean?'

Pascal Petit's blog: I think she is the one for me, poetry and the Tate Modern. Look down the list of previous blog posts on the right hand side of her page. She is coming to Oxford for a workshop on Sat 28th Feb.

Drift by Caroline Bergvall

I missed this by an hour recently on a poetry pilgrimage to London.

There is a printed, written poem, plus a voice plus musical performance. I can't find a complete recording or video of that. Short portions of the audio are available.

Blog piece on the whole poem.

Link with 2 short audios.

Hearing what I can of it makes me realise how I have taken in the cold, sea smashed nature of our life here in the north of Europe. The wind, rain, gales, shipping forecasts, fear for those in heaving ferries... the whole horror of the sea. Yet my intense longing to be near it, to smell the air, have the salty skin which comes from spending days sailing. Those rocks and pebbles, cold sand, little patterns we make in the sand to channel the water down via our own little river way to the edge of the beach. The endless destruction and shifting from the waves. Wonderful and fearsome, unalterable, terrifying.

To ployon - autonomous education again

Ancient Greek anyone? I found myself offering to teach H the first line in my Ancient Greek book when we were last out and about in our garden under the huge moon in the late evening. Since the answer was 'No', I quickly told him those first words and that they meant 'The boat'.

It all started when we were talking about the planets, stars, the sun and photons. Qi had told him about the great length of time the photons take to get to the surface of the sun. We mused over the inscrutable nature of light and I tried to point out a planet. Saying it was at 1 o'clock in relation to the moon didn't help. Pointing out Orion without a laser beam was difficult too.

Would you like it if I told you that I have started both my paragraphs with quotes from ModPo texts. I just got another one in there. This is where common texts turn into in-jokes and get irritating to outsiders.

Caroline Bergvall's VIA

Tracie Morris Africa(n) and with Val Jeanty

Gertrude Stein's Portrait of Picasso - video in French about her writing, art collection