Jun 13
Finding a reason for walking on a beach, and then realising that the feeling of sand between the toes will powerfully evoke memories:
trying
I have looked up into the stars at night
That are so scattered
Across the infinitely deep sky
I have seen into great vacuums of awesome space
And been left standing
Not understanding
But trying.
Dec 14
I posted a couple of days ago the link to the ‘November Suite’ booklet. Here’s a poem from that collection in case you’re wondering whether to go ahead and download.
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
Dec 12
Ages ago on this blog, I promised to upload the collection of poetry which I wrote in November 2009. It was written through the month – a poem a day. Follow this link to download the booklet. I hope you enjoy it – as ever, I am always keen to get feedback (use the contacts page).
If you want to see more of my writing, please drop your email address into the box over on the right. I’ll add it to my list, and send you content that isn’t available on the website.
Nov 28
Here’s a poem from ‘Spirit Soul: Pursuance’ to give you some idea of the contents of the latest book. If you like it, go take a look. The link is here, and on the ‘Free Stuff’ page of the site.
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.
Nov 23
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.
Here’s a poem, hot off the press, from a new collection I am in the middle of writing called “Father, Brother, Son”. On the poetry front, I will be posting the pdf of ‘November Suite’, a collection I wrote through the month of November last year, in the next few weeks. It will be available as a free download. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy reading this one:
This spectacular view again, bored with it
This spectacular view again, bored with it
- Staying in this temporary home -
What happens to the flow of life, with this big disruption?
And I see a jay, in the bush, unaware of me.
Magnificent costume, my clothes drab, lesson learned then.
The sun shines on the unjust and the cruel, like the victims too.
Winds serrate the landscape at 80 miles an hour for hours.
How does this have such a gut pulling shape on my emotions?
The eye of I wonders why.
Should I stare at a Rothko painting for days on end,
Contemplate the suicide of a place of turmoil,
To see into his three band state of mind?
Or should I walk on deserted beaches, deckchairs flapping
Seagulls pitching and dive bombing, thoughts of
Everything I lived in, everything I have lost?
Landscape then is all there is, the sense that
Living is bigger than loving, that is the start point,
Where survival holds all together, safe in harbour.
I will sail again, for new places, new people
But not until I have let go of old journeys,
And anniversaries that scrape the surfaces of my experiences clean.
Jun 12
…. in case you need just a little more tempting to follow the link, here is a short poem from ‘Scrapes against the Soul’:
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.
If you follow the link to the ‘free stuff‘ page, you will be now be able to download a free PDF booklet of ‘Scrapes against the Soul’, a booklet of poems which I produced last year.
Coming soon – ‘November Suite’ - a booklet produced (not surprisingly) last November.
Nov 12
I’m in the middle of an exercise to write a poem a day for November – the resulting collection, once edited, will be called ‘November Suite’. I am using various exercises to generate material. For example, I take the last line of the previous poem and google that phrase. Then I follow the links and harvest phrases and words from the pages that I find, using the material which this produces to steer the sense of the poem.
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 said in mid-September that I had nearly completed the latest poetry manuscript, ‘Scrapes against the Soul’. Well, I have been stuck on the last poem for a few weeks now. It is a long piece which captures my experiences of Liverpool in the late 70s and early 80s.
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.
Do you ever buy tickets for something, think it’s a good idea at the time, then have serious second thoughts as the date looms? I saw this event recently – the Poet Laureate for the UK appearing at a reading in the Wirral. It seemed too good an opportunity to miss. But on the night, I was wondering whether there would be a tiny audience. Poetry readings can be tedious to say the least!
I was surprised – 300 people turned up. They weren’t disappointed. The evening began with 3 young poets from the Wirral Young Poet Laureate scheme who each read a group of poems.
Carol Ann Duffy presented for just under an hour. Her readings were magnificent. Just the right amount of explanation, description and context setting for each poem. I loved her poems based on myths, with a feminist twist or a different take. Excellent. She ended the reading with a poem she had been working on that afternoon – a poem about war, with many place names read out like the tolling of a bell. The presence of local place names gave a particular resonance to this. Powerful stuff.
The evening was organised by the local library service – it’s good to see something which draws in readers and writers to the enjoyment of literature. And it was also great to have some of my preconceptions dispelled so effectively. A good night out.
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!
Aug 14
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
… from the latest poetry sequence (still unfinished) called ‘Scrapes against the Soul’
The conversations the night sea has with the dawn
Leave an empty hissing through the sea weed, as if
Everything had left the world in solitude…
And my heartbeat can be heard beneath the lap of waves
Quickened by the memory of lost loves and lost lives
Out beyond the edges of my full recall
Enough now to have spoken with the elements
Everyone wonders where I stand, beyond reach
Remembering a glimpse of someone from 30 years ago
They not the same, me not the same
As the sea changes in each fragment of a second
And the sun filling the sky before it appears
And when the memories seem tired, the voices heard before
I remind myself that each sound is unique, nothing repeats
Where I see patterns, they are only my creation
Every conversation the dawn has, with the sea and the mountains
Is new, it will do, it will make, it will be clear
Some space outside solitude that is not made of loneliness.
…I wrote this poem some months ago, and before I started to make contact with friends from school who I had lost contact with some 30 years ago. The content and sentiment now seem prescient at the least.
… from my latest collection of poetry, called ‘Scrapes against the Soul’:
Sonnet
Now you know why I spent my twenties crying,
Aching for some meaning beyond empty
Atheist life of wonder, wandering,
A lost corn-circle waking, open third eye
When I close my eyes I can still see through
Where I see the spiritual opening.
In my twenties I would sit hoping that
The meditation practise brings results
Like life, trying too hard leads to nothing.
In the night’s silence I was too busy
Listening to the wrong sounds, not waves of am.
Colours that flow when I watch, wait, empty.
Then landscape becomes chaos of colours
Springs forwards as soul within catches fire.
“If we can’t find Heaven, there are always blue jays”
He said, as he opened the car door and walked off into the night.
I looked at his shadow shortening to the street corner
And wondered how I had been so gullible, to listen to this.
I was sitting there now, nothing left. No hope.
Just the memories of something I would not do again.
And like a blue jay, scavenging for food, an acorn or seeds
I looked for traces of hope, anything to put back
The stars that lit my skies, the sunshine and heaven
Before he pushed his way into life, and drained it dry.
The clouds that click, the inner vision, then the ancient burials
Redemption days which I thought I had lived, swept away with reason
And my mouth opens as I speak to the heavens, “Give me back the vision
Remember the open flight of a bird that wanted to escape.”
Aug 10
[from a new poetry sequence which I am developing]
I watched the little specs of dust as they floated
In shafts of light through the church
A voice was working its way through a sermon
But my mind was engaged in this little world
Where the dust bits fall then spin and whirl
Some micro universe where I can imagine
A whole world flowing out and away
I imagine being a deity myself
A young Buddha watching worlds collide
Wanting to ease suffering, push aside
Left beneath the senses
Once it was all flickered into my inner world
Where the imagination can withstand anything outside
Crash of life-form to the real meaning of all things.
I thought it would be useful to set out some of the ideas and techniques I use to produce new poems. When the creative muse is off on holiday, I sometimes draw inspiration from old poems. I am also really interested in techniques from popular music, particularly approaches like remixing, remastering and cut-ups. These ideas can be adapted to the printed word.
So, I am currently using the following techniques:
I’m going to experiment with some of these techniques over coming weeks. If you use any of them, feel free to post feedback in the comments.
Jul 16
After a long poetic silence, words are beginning to appear in my head again.
Some new poetry fragments – towards a 2007 sequence…
(1)
The sound of the helicopter blades reminded me that
The first time I had stood on this rocky outcrop I had
Wondered what I was doing next
Then the pieces of the jigsaw all fitted
Because the steam-like mist rose from the valleys below
As if it was time to be going
Growing like an adolescent in the kitchen raiding the fridge
Watching everything like it’s the first time.
(2)
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.
(3)
Be here, be now
Somehow holding on
To everything that we thought was
Precious and spoken
(4)
Tangled spindrift
Winged fragments of encapsulation
Such as bones and carcasses
Pieces becoming new things, new essences
As though the earth were starting all over again
Washed and bleached inside the sea-bed
Where once waited creatures now extinct
Flapped and furrowed, waxed and winnowed
Embraced in water, pictured on the stones
Each one scraped against the soul.