Before

The dark is rising
Now hear all of this
Last night the stars shone
And I watched them twinkle
One drop in each shard of space
Another droplet like a tear from the eye
Flip inwards, peopled with creatures
All standing shell-like, open to us
Watching the night sky
Pacing forwards and
Backwards, until
The sky empties
No stars
No sun
No
N

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then one morning
eyes slightly out of focus
I was taken by surprise

there in the mist, early hours
was a deer, standing in the garden
grazing, eating berries from the trees

the winter had been hard
this deer was thin, lack of food
had left it no choice but to come to the house

I stood and looked out of the window
motionless, I waited for the deer to turn
then it looked me in the eye, ten seconds

Then gone

Just the connection, an open
one sense in which I can move on
let go of the me of last year

Spring time, will be here soon
new growth, beginnings
a chance to escape the famine of winter

Hope.

On Sunday I settled down late morning to write a poem. It’s approaching the anniversary of my father’s death and I wanted to do something that would help with this. I was also keen to build on something I had already written. I took a poem from a collection of poems back in 1998 called ‘Brother Spirit Brother Soul’ and thought this would provide useful inspiration.

The poem had 24 lines, so I dropped each line at the top of a separate page. The intention was to write a poem for each of the lines. After I had written one I thought I’d try another. Well, without going into detail on the passage of time, 6 hours later I had written 24 poems, chosen a photo for the cover and had a booklet completed.

I may return to it to do some further editing of the poems, but for now here it is. I’ve sent it out to a few people for comment. I’ve never had such an intensive period of creativity before. It’s fascinating to look back at it now and see how the ideas ebbed and flowed as time passed. Pushing myself on with the experiment brought through ideas that wouldn’t have otherwise emerged. An interesting experiment, which I think I will repeat.

What did it teach me? Immense amounts of creativity come just one step at a time. Commit to small steps. Having 24 titles to work with created the instant stimulus to work from, which made the process of generating something new easier because there was already a starting point.

Anyway, feel free to download the pdf by clicking here and have a look at the book – “Spirit Soul: Pursuance”. You can also go to this page to find other pdf’s for download. I’d welcome feedback. I’m still unable to open up comments without being deluged with junk, so use the contact form.

Pictures on the wall were all taken with this new camera
Living in a world where every second can be captured as a
Perfect digital image. Still or moving images
Everything caught as a series of digital code
So that every trace of every life can be saved for future viewing
If only we had the time to review everything
At least then we might learn something from the mistakes of history.

Coming soon – ‘November Suite’ - a booklet produced (not surprisingly) last November.

The following poem was created using a phrase which I stumbled across – this became the title of the poem and was then put through google. This is an early draft, but I like the direction it follows:

The Voice of Wittgenstein

 “After several attempts to weld my results together
The best I could write would never be more
Than philosophical remarks

My thoughts would soon be crippled
If I tried to force them on
Against their inclination”

An anti-systematic attitude
Like John Cage’s music or Stockhausen
A permanent condition

Numbered aphorisms, as though
The world of existence could be reduced
To a set of interwoven statements

 Everything succumbing to the power of language
Different voices in dialogue
The first of the post-modernists

 Voice 1, then Voice of Tradition
Voice of Perplexity
And the Voice of Clarity

 These voices are inside my head
All at once, they seize language
Mess with it, precise but dissective

Taking objects and making of them
A contradiction, a complexity
Confusion that removes sense of self

Uttering a word, a phrase – I love you
Lost in translation, in perplexity
A permanent condition.

[20:30]

I’m hoping to have it finished before the end of this month. As soon as it is finished I will be posting a pdf for free download – and it will be possible to buy a hard copy of the book too, very soon.

I have also begun work on Collected Poems: Volume One which covers 1985 to 1996. More news on this very soon.

trying to find something which doesn't exist

The latest collection of poetry is nearly completed. I am in the middle of the final poem which is an extended piece called ‘seventy nine to eighty two’. 

Here’s a verse from it:

Watching bands at Eric’s – seeing Simple Minds
Keyboard player with his head between the beams
Music bouncing off walls, everyone saying look at me
- Looking and seeing ideas for the next night out

I have found an old painting of mine which I am going to use for the cover of the book. You can see it in this post. It’s a watercolour in the form of a mandala. I’m not really much of a painter, but I liked this image, particularly when I scanned it into the laptop.

I have posted several of the poems from this collection over recent months. The middle section of the book comprised a series of poems each beginning with a line from one poem by Robert Bly – this was an interesting process which took my writing away to topics which I wouldn’t have otherwise discovered.

Once I have completed the book, I will post a pdf  of it for free download. Watch this space, as they say!

young bird
picks his way through reeds in the shallows of the river

parent birds no longer haunt this stretch of water
except in dreams and spirit movements

finding his way through this special setting now
with no thoughts for his parents

in a glorious moment he catches
a silvered stickleback in his beak

before letting go of spring
he will ruffle feathers just one more time

and as you capture sight in the lens for just one second
he is gone, flashes of feathers as he disappears

like the time slip escape of a happen-stance
incredible in a state of disbelief