Shafts of Light

San Francisco Sunset
Sun setting over the Presidio’s landmark wood sculpture
From Jean Beaufort to the Public Domain

Wednesday 20/01/2021

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“Leaning into The Wind”, director Thomas Riedelsheimer’s film, follows artist Andy Goldsworthy; his movements, meditations, and manifestations. Here is a trailer: https://youtu.be/BQYGbfVfpm0

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Wonderfully Evident and Wildly Affinitive:

Knowing

starts, in this case, with something Andy Goldsworthy: loving that which happens, looking into cracks and tears, and knowing the life that there hums from darkness richly—

writhes from darkness richly. Then

who would move—what can move as wildly well as humanity

reintroduced?

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I picked up my notes today, with a mind to wonder wanderingly away from the questions I face when I find myself

facing

those unfortunately wrathfully avoidant…

do we know who they are? …do they?

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No thing goes as wildly well as one (and all) quietly roaring antiphonally, directly and manually overboarding

Corruptly Gratuitous and Whitely Hooded:

Lies

slaving-men’s underdeck oars of maniacal antinomies:

You still have horns, they say, You will never make a heap of sand, You must and cannot know your hooded father (and I am lying);

You must and cannot know your hooded owner (Even with our oars we won’t reach land), You still have halos, though.

If I am lying, know I am. Shan’t get where without their oars? Freedom in the promised land? Without progress who will starve? Who holds progress?

…and who takes its reaching hand?

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How easy is it to get caught up, and lost in those wordy traps that staunch defenders of their-own-pride contrive? How easy is it to lean into the wind and fall and move through branches and lose and find the woodland’s lost and found?

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Underlying what Overlies:

Dusted over cracks and tears — blow — hooded lies richly rise from throats of pits of darkness blow away

Rich in life — be known — loam that underlies — test our eyes, and shafts of light — let them minute.

Styx and Hubris

Mon 11/01/2021

Hello again. How are we welcoming this year in? I know I haven’t found my flow, or maybe I have found flows, but no sure steady flow. It isn’t always clear what ought to be shared, and with whom, but there is always a tune (an underlying hum at very least), demanding words for its own release. 

Our Climate: A Coalescing Eclipse Pattern — Plumwood Mountain

Rarely have I enjoyed such daunting walls of text so thoroughly. This is flowing, and difficult to pull quotes from, but know…

“This is no longer the world of the painter Titian or even Arthur Rimbaud with its nano-technical prowess and attendant attempts at opening a possible shift into other galactic dimensions.”

Ooooooohhhhhhhh…

Will Alexander   Not thought as evolved complexity or psychic definition as philosophical splendour but the reality of both not only as our inner climate, but as our devolved inner climate as well. This is what I will call a coalescing eclipse pattern. Our circumstance seems as more analogous to one of a devolved hull […]

Our Climate: A Coalescing Eclipse Pattern — Plumwood Mountain

Smoking Guns and Cat Skin Drums

Sunday 20/12/2020

Who ever knew what it felt like to be shot through the heart? Maybe Sharon Olds, or anyone who (in her words) beats the cat skin drum.

Yesterday I listened to a recording shared by Billy Mills in his blog Elliptical Movements https://wp.me/p3ei8Y-Tt. I was warmed and inspired by Dianne di Prima’s words and wrote three poems: two, which I felt bold enough to rehome (here), and one, which isn’t done with me, yet.

Today I came across a tweet of Dr Kim Moor’s https://twitter.com/kimmoorepoet?s=09 that put me on to this recording… https://www.poetryfoundation.org/podcasts/154955/leila-chatti-and-sharon-olds-in-conversation of Leila Chatti in conversation with Sharon Olds. I suppose that I (semi-consciously) join the conversation, and that is quite emboldening. I have more to say about loyalty than I could dance around in a day. Leila Chatti’s response to Sharon Olds’ concise statement “My loyalty is more horizontal than vertical”…

“Could you say more about that?”

…made me hum “Yes, please.”

I found this middle section of the conversation especially enthralling. Sharon Olds says, of her art, that…

“I can’t call it up, but I find that exercise, and taking my vitamins, and reading poems (other people’s poems) is good for that.” 

It was good seeing the sun out, and walking, and listening, in agreement, stopping to take a picture

and jot down a mildly affirming observational verse

I keep hearing artists’ dystonic reactions to the adage that art somehow comes from inner madness. There was a seed of this dilemma in my mind. 

Leila asked Sharon if she would read her poem Little Things, and Sharon replied that she’d be happy to. They each give an analogy for the virtuosity or benefit of paying attention…”a kind of praise”…a kind of antidepressant”.

I was reminded that I have been without my prescription for two days, and resolved to visit the pharmacy. The pills aren’t preferable to sunshine, exercise, nutrition, taking in other people’s poems/art, making, and the joy of real recognition within conversation; but they do seem to bring these things more readily into the scope of my attention. Shrinking away from the world is never inspiring. Depression is not something I want to write about, but I am inspired to share any thing that sparks, and seeds a dilemma, or answers a cryptic and pertinent allegorical question with a wicked line, and another, and another. Today it was that conversation, both poets’ readings, and then

that one line and the way she read it…

Maybe she beats the cat skin drum 

from As if my Mother, from Sharon Olds’ Arias: that made me look up! You’ll have to listen. It’s around 20 minutes in.

And then her Ode of Broken Loyalty, too. 

Spells Wishes Courage Prayer

Saturday 19/12/2020

Christmas Carols: Carol Anne Duffy and more…

Thursday 17/12/2020

The spirit of Christmas found me well, today, after a previously novelly sombre lead up. I wrote cards, and opened cards from friends, and also a card from the local Christian Centre along with a carol sheet for this Sunday’s socially distanced service on the green. O Come, All Ye Faithful!

The National Theatre of Scotland’s Makar to Cracker added a sense of celebration to my evening.

Jackie Kay is Scotland’s Makar, and she describes her role as being “to enthuse about poetry, and to take poetry oot and aboot…”

She MCs Makar to Makar, and this Christmas special, with certain enthusiasm, and I’m already looking forward to the Burn’s Night special, on Thursday 28/01/2021.

Imtiaz Dharker was the first poet to appear, and described her poem Go to the Child as “the closest I’ll ever get to writing a carol”. It can be heard (and enjoyed) here, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07lx8br . I found it to spin a sense of magic and majesty.

Jen Hadfield read A Bad Day For Ice Fishing, the “closest to a snowglobe I’ve got”…a dog makes snow angels. She sees heaven in a rockpool, reads Rockpool, then reads To A Limpet (a glorious ode).

I felt invited into her Shetland home, upon her reading of In the Same Way: a poem from her second collection Nigh-No-Place, published in 2008 by Bloodaxe Books, and winner of the T. S. Eliot Prize. At the centre of this poem is the kitchen door that separates herself, and her adventurous cat from the squalling Shetland winter. Letting her cat out, and then (with the wind) in again, and out, and (there is so much more to it, but) finally

“…the wind canters in, and She, with a wild carol, and all the night hail (melted) gleaming in her furs.” that’s the way I heard it, anyway. 

Surely, worth reading and re-reading.

Carol Anne Duffy (kindly, and humorously) shares the story of her birth, and Jackie Kay comments that upon reading her good friend Carol Anne’s book Meantime, she…

“really loved Prayer in it, and the image…the idea that we can have a prayer for the secular, and that prayers or blessings (if you like) are in everything“. 

Dame Carol Anne Duffy resigned from her role as Poet Laureate in 2019, and is a professor of contemporary poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University. She seems to me to (generally) embody gravitas. She chose seven poems to read, with the “spirit of Makar to Cracker, in mind, and also the very difficult year that not least 60 000 families have endured, and that people are continuing to endure.” The seriousness she brought to proceedings was not altogether sombre. After reading Prayer, she reads The Bee Carol, an intimately hopeful creation, possibly inspired by Thomas Hardy’s Oxen and it’s last line“hoping it might be so.” 

You might like to compare…

https://mysecondspring.ie/blog/bee-carol-carol-ann-duffy

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53215/the-oxen-56d232503c32d

She goes on to describe Premonitions as a “resurrection poem”, and hopes it can offer comfort. I found a delicate and familiar warmth in the imagery of the poet watching her Mother (who is gaining youth)… 

“open the doors to the grace of her garden” where “flowers close to their own premonitions” then seeing Mother’s “magnolia tree marrying itself to may air”. 

Carol Anne’s lyrics are beautifully sung by Kathryn Williams, and in fact the singing, throughout the hour and forty five minutes of Makar to Cracker, is all shades of angelic. The whole thing (and Makar to Makar, too) can be found on YouTube.

https://youtu.be/mLJqn6nmqGY

Jackie Kay’s final special little gift (in her penultimate offering as Makar, before her Burns night farewell) is a special Christmas message from Annie Lennox, but before that, she makes an inspired toast and reads her poem The Promise…

Fill your glass. Here’s tae us.

Before Christmas

Wednesday 16/12/2020

Think

snowberry/acorn-green/nut-brown.

 

Pin up

holly-red and hawthorn crowns

threaded

with shedded wool all round,

to

soften the song the mistle thrush throws.

 

Say goodbye to waking in the night

to deathwatch knocks turning time back,

and waterlogging fallen trunks and

branches creaking as they crack.

 

Light a candle,

clove an orange, and

hand out hearth-hot cups.

 

Ignite the coals, and

as the grate gets a-glowing,

engrace each padded patchwork stocking.

The Language of Movement: Introduction

Monday 14/12/2020

In the new year, I will be publishing a series of posts about the language of movement, with features on the works of creative dance educator Barbara Mettler, and of yoga teacher Vanda Scaravelli (1908-1999), also the works of:

filmmaker Dario Argento,

psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk (and his contemporaries), and

poet Sarah Westcott (whose 2016 book Slant Light and, forthcoming book Bloom can be bought directly from Pavilion Poetry at Liverpool University Press https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/imprints/Pavilion%20Poetry/ )

As an overweight (big foodie, clinically depressive, music mag junkie) teen, finding ways to slim through gentle controlled movement (I couldn’t have bounced around the netball court) felt like discovering the holy grail.

I worshipped Judy Alter, author of Stretch and Strengthen, and evangelized about her methods, which taught me to walk! I had “walked” for some time, but had learned (to my own detriment) to sit down for more than half the day, and to drag my feet. Simple practices and principles of rehabilitative stretching and strengthening allowed me to recover the ability to run (comfortably), and to dance. 

I’m certainly not athletic, nor a dancer, or a yogi (in any lofty sense), but maintaining or gaining freedom of movement, as a necessity for self expression, and as a way towards feeling free, has (for many years) felt fundamental to my existence.

Barbara Mettler worked on the principle that dance is a basic human need. She referred to dance as the language of movement, the universal language, and the primary art form. In these posts, I’ll explore the meanings behind the movement, as well as the ways we write about movement, and I’ll share some of my own creative writing on this theme.

R.S. Thomas, THIS, and A Lasting Gift

12/12/2020

I haven’t been writing (much), but rewording. My college art tutor (Kevin) said “It’s (all) well and good, you having ideas, but you’ll have to produce some work at some point.”

There are reasons, such as…I shouldn’t say, and other reasons to let the pen dry, and the paint turn (into) tin-wrapped brick;

and it’s been less than half-done for so long now, that’s just the way I’ve learned to like it. 

They’re all good reasons. The best laid plans…

The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft a-gley.

Aft, but not always.

Rabbie (Burns) wished that…

I for poor auld Scotland’s sake

Some useful plan, or book could make

And does he hear the thanks he gets for doing just that? I bet he does.

’till next month, Rabbie.

R. S. Thomas is kind to me, when I have nothing to say. I imagine he could have been less kind to those keen on freely emptying their minds. 

R. S. asks, in his poem NO…

Are you better than he, that the glib questions

Multiply at your tongue’s tip?

His poem THIS, you can see here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=29027 along with INDOORS (another show of the man’s humility, and his weariness with facing proud intolerance). 

I find his solemn intercessions soothing.

The tone of THIS is more wistful, and the poem reveals a desire (for more), that isn’t common in Thomas’s collections of testaments to the goodness of a stoic existence. 

I thought, you see, that on some still night,

When stars were shrill over his farm,

And he and I kept ourselves warm

By an old fire, whose bars were bright

With real heat, the truth might ripen

Between us naturally as the fruit

Of his wild hedges, or as the roots,

Swedes and mangolds, he grew then.

I believe ripe truth is a fine thing to wish for.

Bloodaxe’s 1986 publication of R. S. Thomas’s selected poems 1946-1968 was passed to me in Rosthwaite car park, with (needless) apologies for the lack of wrapping,
this time last year, before last Christmas,
after walking my favourite loop, up to Watendlath, down through Ashness Woods, to Grange…
We diverted at Grange, up toward Manesty Woods, and played chess in the Borrowdale Gates, before skirting (back) between the ever-green east side of Castle Crag and the Derwent’s chill and languid waters, in the dusk.

To borrow a question (not too glib) from fellow blogger Bret:

What do you make of this poem?…or that poem?

Where the Rivers Meet

Friday 11/12/2020

I might write easily about the town I call home (close and familiar all my life). Here the river Cocker (twelve miles from it’s source at the head of the Buttermere valley) runs into the Derwent, which carries its waters (another nine miles) out to the coast. I’ve grown to see the town’s subtleties as worthy of protection and preservation. The floods that struck the town, in years gone by, took homes from folks, and broke businesses, but (overall, I believe) they didn’t shake the place’s identity.

I may go meta (here) about meetings. I have been hearing, and reading (In Martin Buber’s I and Thou) about the worlds that we connect in, and the ways that we connect; we: natural beings, human beings, and (if you’ll let me have it) spiritual beings. I am taking liberties.

I did not grow up espousing the hills and vales that hemmed me in, nor the bards of the lakes that haunted their clouded tops and low hanging mists. Those poets that garnered popularity, and whose fame endured; they seemed to me to be the antithesis of everything edgy, that (from my tens through to my twenties plus) desperately (and successfully) demanded my attention. They made their own impressions, though (the landforms and their lovers). I might yet make a friend of Coleridge’s inquiring spirit.

The climate here (socially) has never felt as foreign to me, as it does now. Familiar faces are (essentially?) obscured, and (though this country’s people are often recognised as being self-restrained) some of us seem to be overcome by a distant manner that isn’t inherent. Every thing does change, and I imagine (hope, maybe) that every flu and fad floats over and away from something more lasting and substantial. All that said, I am not at all averse to fashion or import, and any strange day (be it haunted or blessed) is rarely not improved by the use…or misuse (I am guilty) of the popular Japanese poetic form (the Haiku).

I often take a quiet moment, at the place (pictured) where the rivers meet.
Sitting there (with myself, with nature, or with spirit) I doubt it would be terribly foolish to try to do the form justice, and pen 17 syllables that breathe out the movement of the moment and the feel of the season.

Clouds covered the whole face of the sun, today, and I stayed a little further inside my own mind than I might usually. The closest I came to inspiration was in reverie of a fond carefree complacency…actually in solemn recognition of its absence from the conversation shared with a family friend that I chanced to meet on the street.

we hover and see

nothing touching lightly but

clouds meeting pavements