IPYIASM

 

Made it! Away from home but managed to get a poem in a shop for IPYPIASM! See here for more poems in shops. This poem is an old one...

Happy new hope

Years have to start with hope, this is essential
We have to feel that good things are to come
A lack of hope can be most detrimental
It can stop New Year’s Eve from being fun.
No, seeing smiles ahead is fairly vital
We should see triumphs and tranquillity
We listen (hark) for fanfares by the skyful
Between them sighs contented, full and free.
We need to feel our hearts are in it with us
That hope has made it, somehow, through and through
Life’s switches may be always out to dim us
But we can think of ways to glow anew.
This New Year’s hopes might be the ones to make it
The outstretched hand - we see it, match it, take it

RF... years ago!

A different type of tree

 

Novar bounday beech #1 

Charcoal on Canson C à Grain paper

72 x 53cm

by Tansy Lee Moir

So, the eagle-eyed amongst you will notice that the above is not a Xmas tree.  Not at all. And that's quite a relief by this point perhaps (and Xmas still a week away... or more!). Neither is it anything to do with all the sad, sad news stories with us currently (suicides, mass murders of children...). It comes to something when watching "The Killing" is light relief from real life... heavy sigh.

No, the above is the work of Tansy Lee Moir (cue quote from her website) "an Edinburgh based artist with a passion for trees". I saw her work (two examples of it, in fact) in the huge Xmas exhibition that our county's main gallery, the Meffan in Forfar, holds every year around this time. There is always a competition element to the exhibition but, as happens with these things, I rarely agree with judges. My favourite pieces this year (and this is perhaps unwise as I know lots of artists around here and I'm not mentioning any of them today...) were a fabulous ceramic sculpture by Linda Masson (can't find her online at all... hence no link) and a mixed media kind of a picture by Gwen Black. And then there were Moir's charcoals... 

It was my friend who drew my attention to Moir's work first... and after close inspection we agreed that the pictures were a bit disturbing (I could see a pig snout breast in there somewhere) but also really good, quite compulsive-viewing and certainly memorable. "I bet they're the ones we'll remember", I said... and indeed that's certainly turning out to be the case. Interesting too that it was National Tree Week recently (I wouldn't have known but there were lots of radio programmes about trees etc.) and because of one of these programmes I ended up posting my tree poem/postcard to someone last week too (that poem's been online here and, for 2009's IPYPIASM*, here). And yes, I will get to this year's IPYPIASM but it might well be the end of the month (others are busy, busy, busy over here).

*International Put Your Poem In A Shop Month, of course!

Xmas post - early!

Up the road, yesterday

I may have mentioned before that I'm not exactly what you call a Xmas person (never have been really). I'm at least partly with Sheldon Cooper on this (click on name for the clip, it won't embed). But, of course, once you have children in the house it's not really up to you what you like and don't like... well, not all the time anyway... thus I have learned to have (at least a bit of) a Xmas face. And it's pretty when it snows (outside, not my face) and it has snowed this week (bit early for Xmas really but what can you do... it snows when it snows...).

More up the road, good depth on this one (or something).

A couple of weeks ago I even wrote a Xmas poem... about the 'trying to be cheery and in the Xmas spirit' business. It's not as good as the O'Hooley & Tidow Xmas song (posted before ages ago, sounds like this, and yes, they were EXCELLENT at the folk club this week, thank-you very much, really magnificent performances!) but I've read the poem out twice now (in Brechin and at folk club this Tuesday) and it's not the worst Xmas item you'll experience this year, I'm sure. Its title keeps changing... as does a bit of the last line... but for now this is what it looks like:

Season's bleatings

“Are you excited about Xmas?” the young ones all say

"The snow and the tinsel, the bells and the sleigh?"

Well... we older and wiser know what lies ahead

The ups and the downs, the emotional spread

So we smile half a smile and we sigh half a sigh

And we think to ourselves “My... doesn't time fly?

Xmas again and it's come round so fast...”

And we look in our file labelled large “Xmas past”

And we see many entries, not all of them glowing

With happiness, cosiness, carols and snowing

Instead family dramas, the trials we've had

Our own soapy operas, good stories and bad

Silent times too, lonely days, plans gone wrong

Times when the holidays really dragged on

So we give back our answer – a “yes” and a “no”

And a guide to our yuletide follows below.

At Xmas expectations are sillily high

From immaculate beginnings to the perfect mince pie

So we're on to a loser from the start of the game

But we try to ignore that, not focus on blame

And we sing all the songs, even angels and kings

And shop till we flop, wearing out our best wings

And we cook and we stew, and our memories bake

And the telly works hard to keep spirits awake

And we sink now and then, maybe after a sherry

And we try not to tire of the word that is “merry”

And we miss special people who've left us and gone

And we try not to cry but the tears still switch on

Like the lights, that at Xmas, are pretty and bright

There's a positive note, hark, an ending's in sight

For the yule, this is all, it comes round, has its slot

And we wade our way through it, excited or not.

RF 2012

Random poems and a calling

So last week blogger A Cuban in London asked readers to take part in a poetry game/task. We were to grab a book (of poems) and offer a contribution to share with others. The post full of poems is up now (here) and the poem I ended up giving is Edwin Morgan's "The Video Box: No. 25". You can also read it here  (and hear him read it) but beware as there are a couple of typos on that version (and yes, I have emailed the provider in question...).

Other poetry news... International Put Your Poem In A Shop Month (IPYPIASM) is upon us (details here). I can't say I have any inspiration for that event just yet but it is only the second day of the month so I guess I have some time to get ready for that!

Finally I am really looking forward to our local folk club this week because on Tuesday night (4th December) our guests will be the duo O'Hooley and Tidow. 

Other people's poetry - Sharon Olds

This week I gave a poetry reading at a local "social club". "We're just all old ladies", the organiser said to me on the phone at one point (or something like that). "No 'just' about it", I replied (or a more stumbly version of that sentiment) — she obviously didn't know that any audience is a good one for a poet and if it's forty good souls, sat there patiently and politely and offering you tea and biscuits at the end, well better still! I had a great time... and I think some of them did too. I talked about life and poetry for an hour and even sold some books (hooray — buns for tea!).

I'd decided that, for a change, I'd read a few poems by other poets as well as just my own work this time so I spent quite a while looking through some of the books and pamphlets and bits of paper in my possession in the past couple of weeks. In the end the 'poem by someone else' that I most enjoyed reading was "I could not tell" by North American poet Sharon Olds (you can read it here, it's from her 1980 book "Satan Says"). I'd given the whole event the general theme of "all the things a poem can do and be" and Olds' poem went into the "say the unsaid" section. It is one of the things I like most about poetry, I think, that it can sometimes say things we might not feel we can say in other ways or places. This poem is really about responsibility and the complications it involves and that's a subject I think about quite a lot anyway so the poem has kind of hung around me since I first read it years ago (the copy I have is just a photocopied one from a library anthology... I don't even own any of Olds' books... maybe I'll change that some time soon). After I read it yesterday and watched the reactions I had that "wish I'd written that!" feeling that a person gets sometimes. It makes you work harder if you channel it right, I suppose.

Olds' poetry isn't to everyone's taste... she makes some people uncomfortable I think and she writes a lot of what you might call personal poems. Indeed I certainly haven't liked everything of hers that I've read but then I'm not sure I like everything that anyone has written. I'm not sure writing works that way, if we're really honest with ourselves about our reactions. I have mentioned Olds on blog before though — when this poem appeared in the film "Into the Wild" for example — and if you're interested there is an online interview with her here. Plus look at this photo... I'm sure I once read some nonsense about how "women over a certain age" shouldn't wear their hair in bunches... well, Sharon Olds laughs at your stupid rules, fashionistas (and so should we all!).

Sorry! Photo had to be removed. It was the one you can see here. Great pic!

And, to finish, some interesting quotes from the interview linked to above:

"I suppose the mission of every poem would be to be a better poem than I am capable of writing."

"it’s fine to make things that aren’t okay"

"As a child I was a very successful liar" and

"My first really vicious review I believe I cried, threw up, slept, woke up, and started writing again. But I took the hit. Someone wanted me to stop doing what I was doing, but it didn’t work."

Another Sunday

 

So just last week it was that thing called Remembrance Sunday... much talk of peace, the end of war, remembering the horrors... and then already, just a week later, war is back on the news agenda, big time (not that it really went away... of course... does it ever?). And in this case the war in question, the Palestine/Israel conflict/situation, is one of those subjects where feelings are so strong that it's hard to see any way-out to anywhere... as far as the outside observer is concerned. In fact I remember back in the late '80s when I was at university and quite involved in politics (student cliché no 732) there were two issues that caused the most heated, never-ending debates and one of those was Palestine/Israel (and the other was abortion rights... also back in the news this week, thanks to that horrific incident in Ireland). As women's officer for the student union I was much involved in the latter debates (and got used to arguing, fairly pointlessly, with glassy-eyed young men who knew they were right because Jesus told them so... or something) but I was less involved in the Israel/Palestine debates (mainly because there were large, heavily-informed teams on both sides so I wasn't really needed). I sat in the room for many of those debates though and boy, were they going nowhere towards workable solutions then (and, on the whole, nothing seems to have changed... ). Maybe I shouldn't write about it at all. Probably. It is one of those subjects people really fall out over.

So anyway, the photo... the photo at the top of the post is a war memorial in the grounds of the now-closed mental hospital at the top of our street. I walked past it last week and was interested to know if anyone had visited it to lay any poppy wreaths or anything now the hospital is out of business. There were no wreaths but there were a few paper poppies stuck into the stone. Here are the close-up shots:

and finally... even closer... and almost too packed with meaning...

Who needs poetry?

x

Talking pish

St Cyrus beach, Aberdeenshire, 7th November 2012

I omitted to mention on here the other week that there is a series of short interviews with poetry folk on the Passionate Transitory right now. Mine is here but there are lots of other friendly blogging types on there too. I think I win the prize for being "least enthusiastic about poetry" (doubt there is one...) and I am aware that it really isn't my first love at the moment. It doesn't really bother me too much... it will probably be back... and currently I'm not even reading prose very much (which is very unusual). Other stuff afoot... just the way it goes.

And the post title today? Just one of my favourite Scottish phrases... and I suppose it could refer to my interview!

x