It's actually July 2007 now, and I'm fully occupied with living, rather than finding time to write about it, so - unless and until (I'm always optimistic) time slows or life becomes eeeeeezier - this blog is going into abeyance. Hope that's the word I meant...
Despite my initial misgivings about joining what seemed a pretty egotistical fad, I have been inspired to try writing a public journal (known technically, I'm told, as a weblog or blog) by reading ones written by the poet Fiona Robyn .
Take a look at her website and creative writing blog at:www.fionarobyn.co.ukwww.creative-living.blogspot.com
THESE ARE MY JOURNAL ENTRIES WRITTEN SINCE LATE 2005, inclued to get the ball rolling, fill some space and put readers in the picture:
In danger of feeling smug, after getting via Glenn Storhaug a copy of a review of my poetry collection, by Bob Mee from iota, that describes me as “a quietly assured, contained but consistently curious poet” It mentions “the economy of (my) writing” and my sense of fun, which is “an integral part of this serious poet who understands the primary job of the poet is to investigate the stuff and nonsense of being human.”
Likewise because I’m getting the hang of using my laptop computer, which means I can sit and do keyboard work without being as unsociable as when I had to do all my typing in the Flarestack Office up the stairs. Need to crack the network question, though, or sort out saving work to CD so I can move work to the pc when necessary – except that I’ve just got a printer cable to be able to print direct from the laptop.
And the circumcision is finally settling down to the point where I can forget about it for hours at a time, thanks to the kind & sensible Dr Howes. In addition, the Somerset sunsets are getting pretty, the birds have accepted our feeding table, and I was allowed to join the Pilton band of bellringers at Thomas A Beckett, Pylle, yesterday, to ring before their carol service: a great family to be welcomed into. And I’ve got my bronze Buddha head by my bed, and I seem to be Somerset rep for the Poetry Society Stanza scheme.
And George Wallace is pleased with the elegant job I’ve done for his chapbook, and Jessica Harman ditto for hers. And Meredith Andrea’s is going to be a cracker.
However, feeling oddly lazy / unproductive as I spend most of my life doing not much except thinking about myself & my poetry & reading poetry & telling people why I don’t like their poetry & promoting my own poetry & not writing anything worth reading. In fact, not even any more sending out my stuff to magazines.
And now I’ve just watched a History Channel afternoon about the Pacific War, so I’m feeling ach why is the human race so set on madness & mutual destruction? And yet spending time thinking about Buddhism & Spinoza & what human life is about & for, and the nature of creation and all that jazz seems a thing worth doing – especially if I somehow manage to record some ideas to maybe save others from wasting some time in the way I seem to have misspent most of my life.
And there was Professor Lord Winston, the Jewish tv science presenter, telling us how science and religion are two different ways of looking at the universe, one focused on the external world and one on the inner. CERN used as a setting, to show how the scientists are essentially looking for God, too.
20 Dec ’05: this could be the beginning of my Pepysesque phase. Late to bed last night – as ever. Why? Sat up to watch the second half of a John Wayne Pacific submarine piece of tosh in some forlorn vague hope of insight re Pacific War, then American Dad followed by Family Guy – two post-Simpsons satirical cartoons I enjoy. On my bedside cabinet is a piece of scrap where I’ve written out, to help me learn them, the changes of bell order during Plain Hunting on four, six and eight bells. Last evening at tied bell practice it was briefly as if I’d forgotten all I’d learned when it came to pulling up the bells, but Richard patiently explained and showed me what had to be done (in a way I don’t think he had before) and so I reached a new level of understanding what I’m doing. Now maybe I’m doing a similar thing in my head with the Buddha / Kabbalah / Alchemy / Tarot / Jesus thing. I have picked up recently a Lion Bible companion and a book on the life & times of Jesus that it felt almost the right time to buy. So I’m trying to become Spinoza meets Pepys.
Also yesterday made an A5 flyer for George Wallace’s book, to email out to the 15ish page list of contacts he sent. Scary, but we may have a commercial success on our hands there. Jessica will be a different matter, probably – though she is pondering a contact list…Lynette has sent a cover draft by her sister-in-law (?) we can use. That’ll be fun. And Meredith’s collection has some quite exciting poems in – I shall enjoy putting them together, and will learn a lot about the writing process there.
Quote from How Poetry Works (by Philip Davies Roberts) which I got out to send to Bobby Parker but then found so many good things in it I decided to hold on to it myself:
“This relative unpredictability of the language of poetry means that the listener must pay close attention to every sound. One cannot allow oneself to slip into the automatic perception of language with which everyday conversation or news items are taken in. Poetry prevents this automatic perception from taking place by continually arresting the listener’s ear with novelty; the surprise of striking imagery, the inventiveness of phonemic patterning, the motor effect of metre, as well as the interest inherent in the fresh views of reality conveyed by the poem. It follows that any new poem, or any poetic language, that sounds as though it has been heard before, allows the listener to begin perceiving it automatically, as though it were conventional language, and then to react to the piece as if it were no more than some kind of referential communication and not a poem at all”
22 Dec ’05: One of the things I enjoy about Pepys is the detail of everyday seventeenth-century living and work. So:
Finally posted 60 copies of George Wallace’s new chapbook “when I was dead” yesterday. Even at Printed Paper Rate it cost the firm £50 to send, but he’s going to pay £60 he left with Geraldine, plus eighty dollars we agreed, so that’s a hundred pounds – the actual discounted price for the copies he’s buying – so we’re not doing so badly. Ten of what I sent will be going to reviewers. He’s given me a 15-page list of email contacts, to whom I’ll be sending the flyer, and I’m pretty confident the book will sell well. We’ll see. Also yesterday posted a good selection of our pamphlets to Ellen Rachlin, who’s paid forty dollars (£20) for maybe £40 worth of stuff that cost £11 to send. Can’t justify that at all, but her poems are sometimes very good and she’s financial person at the Poetry Society of America, so maybe bread on the water.
The process interests me, quite apart from the editorial tasks & the exercise of creative/aesthetic judgement – the Gutenberg part, of (1) printing a copy, (2) “dealing” the pages in pairs and then printing it again to get the back on each sheet, (3) putting together the cover and endpaper sheets in a “sandwich” pile, (4) collating them all together, (5) getting the right touch on the stapler, (6) folding, (7) pressing the batch in a paper box, under a pile of directories with Webster’s on top, and finally (8) folding them into a posting wrapper thingy. And, of course, (9) weighing the parcel and either sticking on the most beautiful stamps I can find or taking it to see Sally at the Post Office. Simple tasks but satisfying in an odd low-level way.
23 Dec ’05: Posted 26 copies of Jessica’s book today – small packet rate, saving a pound or so. Feeling of wellbeing again – gave Christmas boxes (only £2) to milkman, postman, binmen and the recycling guys & gals. Cards to all the neighbours in our little Close; reciprocation from number 5 from another Wendy (who does seem to be on her own) and says looking forward to meeting you. Overcame the family brainwashing about the ersatz & the imitation by acquiring (from the tip) a “plastic” terracotta-coloured garden urn, which I have this afternoon set up planted with a cordyline that the garden centre man says has creamy coloured flowers. We shall see. Should look good anyway in due course, near the two ground-level purple cordylines we have already and the sedges & bamboo – if that survives.
25th Dec '05. What is it in me (us) that prevents us sending our poems to magazines? Somewhere on my desk are two returned submissions – one from Fiona Sampson at Poetry Review and one from somewhere else – or are they both Po Rev? – anyway, the point is, I know I should be sending her something else (and I do have work ready that stands a chance) and also sending to Osiris, and yet I don’t. Not really because I have no faith in my poems or in the system or in editors’ judgment (magazines’ve published my stuff before, many times). Is it really fear of success, or laziness, or reluctance to compete? Or fear of rejection? Or fear of being judged – that feels nearer to it, and yet no real judgment happens, does it – I just get back either the usual polite slip (or a comment- which I would honestly welcome) or the yes, please letter.
So here I am on Boxing Day, at the beginning of what has become my annual Change Week. Took the MacInneses to lunch at the Apple Tree – good to be able to treat them for a change. And after a rest watched Celebrities in Therapy, with Kate Marlow (whom I will look up on the internet) followed by a Findhorn programme. A Kate Marlow technique is to list “What I think about…” such as ‘Men are…’, ‘Women are…’, ‘Life is…’, and ‘I am…’ – which in the absence at the moment of a counsellor I will try.
2nd Jan 2006
Always there are piles of things I have to do that prevent me from doing the things I want or even need to do. What am I on about? Well, for instance, today I “should” do what I promised myself I’d do yesterday, on the one day I could call my own, namely send out my poems to Osiris and Fiona Sampson, and have a go at website design, instead of just getting on again with other people’s pamphlets. And in wider areas beyond poetry, I could be chasing up Spinoza (look in the Glastonbury bookshop for a slim Spinoza book) rather than occupy myself with fridges and car maintenance and so on. But Eva’s book about Mom & Dad makes me begin to wonder about the extent to which I’m as daft as Dad was…
11th January '06
Last evening I rang the Tenor!!! Fairly seriously considering almost closing down Flarestack (actually reducing to one or two titles a year) after Rowe/Poulson/Bosson – so that I can do some writing/artwork/philosophy/my life. That would be in 2007 I think.
15 Jan. '06
After Plath/Paltrow movie, Cold Mountain with Kidman playing piano as I hoped to do my keyboard, Jane Goldman on Tarot, getting in a tangle with emailing artwork ten times by mistake apparently (and unopenably) to Polly Rockberger: should I give up trying to do computer graphicky stuff and the pursuit of Stanza business, start to offer Tarot locally, resume keyboard learning/practice, become a bellringing recluse? Or should I carry on doing what I’m doing – the fact I’m working for other people gives an incentive to get out of bed, so to speak: if I was only doing stuff for myself I guess I wd be even more dilatory than I am. Or should I pursue Buddhahood or Spinozaness? Major satisfaction from Penelope Cline replying to my editotorial and offering artwork, ditto Pat Morgan, and now finding Polly. Oh, and Tom Kelly promoting OWP via his webpages, Charlie Christian ordering extra copies for family, and some more website leads for me. But having to write and ask Julie Boden whether she wants to order a copy of David Hart's Beethoven sequence"Work, the work" plain at £4.50 or signed & numbered at £15 is for some reason exercising me mind a tad.
7th February '06 already
Feeling kind of pleased with myself in that I’ve pretty well finished rooting out and / or cutting back (to fence height) the bushes in the back garden bank. And then it began to rain, so I’d done it just in time. Been at it whenever sunshine and energy have coincided, and it prepares the way for planting the ornamental flagpole cherry tree we got for £7.50 from Yeovil Wilko, and planting wildflower seeds.
On the other hand I’ve only printed and posted Lynette’s book, and have not (still not) sent out review copies to Liz’s list or those for Jessica or the others. I’ve re-edited Sue Moules but have not put together Geraldine.
Got my Pilton bellringer’s sweatshirt but have not yet mastered ringing up and down with the band. – Sally high, Charles!
Looked fairly carefully into the car replacement options, and have decided to wait until a Panda 1.2 comes up at £4,000 – Huttons in Weston will let me know.
The Back Garden The feeling I want to keep/create is of a woodland clearing – a sort of wildflower stage set or arena, bounded by taller plants backed up by shrubs/trees/hedge, rather than getting rid of the holly trees and the bushes altogether, as I originally meant. The rectangular space will lose its corners by virtue of the woodpile, bamboo, dogwood on the left, and the jasmine stump, ornamental cherry and pollarded pyracantha on the right. And the bushes I’ve decided to keep, albeit cut down to fencepost height, are going to soften the fence line.
The Back Garden
The feeling I want to keep/create is of a woodland clearing – a sort of wildflower stage set or arena, bounded by taller plants backed up by shrubs/trees/hedge, rather than getting rid of the holly trees and the bushes altogether, as I originally meant. The rectangular space will lose its corners by virtue of the woodpile, bamboo, dogwood on the left, and the jasmine stump, ornamental cherry and pollarded pyracantha on the right. And the bushes I’ve decided to keep, albeit cut down to fencepost height, are going to soften the fence line.
10th June '06 already already.
Sitting at our garden table (under the turquoise parasol) alongside a back garden bank full of plants & flowers – quite a few wildflowers (“weeds” to some) and a number of my favourites: lupins, delphiniums, crocosmia (not yet flowering) fuchsias, geraniums and some new discoveries. It will all need managing and controlling & must not get out of hand.
Could spend whole life, almost, saying what I’m up to and thinking – which would be a bit silly in a short time. Even the great Pepys only told a fraction of his stream-of consciousness, and only for a few years, I think.
We’ve had a week in Ilfracombe, and the weather hot every day, so the garden is very dry. Have hosed it in the evening, but we need a downpour. Have been reading Philippa Gregory’s novel about John Tradescant, and now starting Stephen Fry’s novel “Making History” which, if nothing else, has an intriguing set of chapter titles.
Speaking of women called Philippa, THE most important news is that my daughter has been in touch - after all these years and I had really given up hope. And she doesn’t hold a grudge!! And we are friends. So my life has changed and is changing remarkably. A whole new dimension and responsibility and source of ohbejoyfulness. And reason to re-examine myself and take myself seriously or not.
HOLDING WATER
A gradual coming into my own,
admitting
realizing these two steep little gardens
are what I have
all I have but all mine
for as long
as anything is mine
pace Mendip Housing
I can dig out the twiggy bits
from the top of the waist-high wall
put them to soak up the compost juice
dig in in their place my mix of sand & manure
so rain’s not wasted
in this dryness
accept that I own as much
as nasturtiums and poppies
the ragwort, the groundsel
and can choose (& no one else can) to pull or not
to pull them once the birds have had their way
with the seedheads, the caterpillars with the leaves
to make next year’s butterflies
for me
And I recommend Electricity, a novel by Victoria Glendinning. Allowed me to experience life as a late Victorian young woman, from a background not unlike my own (our own – my sisters and me) unbelievably anachronistic in the 1940s and 50s but vividly similar as far as atmosphere goes, and the underlying tensions and unspokennesses.
Here it is, almost the middle of July and I’m only just now starting to emerge from a dream of burying myself away in Somerset drowsiness, after beginning to make a couple of tiny gardens out of a sedge-and-rose-and-honeysuckle-overgrown rockery and a dense dark shrubby bank deep in dead holly leaves. And, falling into the clutches of Philippa Gregory’s novels, I’ve also been not only among the Tradescant dynasty in seventeenth century England but also trying to become a (Powhatan-obsessed) planter in Jamestown, Virginia, while struggling with church bellringing and reacquainting myself with my djembe thanks to the group I’ve joined at Hillmead estate in Sheepytown, drumming for hours at the Sunrise Solstice Festival and Priddy folk music weekend.
But awake and back to business, making and promoting pamphlets (despite printer, emailer and scanner being erratic-temperamental) for Donna Pucciani, Jo Pearson and Ian Pople. On top of falling across Tanner on Nietzsche and so trying to get to grips with, for instance, “art is the supreme task and the truly metaphysical activity of this life”. And then I have to go and phone Kay Lewis-Bell to say I wrote a poem about her paintings in Evolver magazine, visit her studio out in the Bruton sticks and realize I ‘should’ at some level have spent my life with paint and sketchbooks in the back of beyond too. But, hey, maybe a collaborative work will come out of it. Oh, and I also go to Jo Waterworth’s Glastonbury poetry workshops and Jane Williams’s Wells readings and workshops.
Have you ever listened to Avril Lavigne’s songs? (The one that for a few weeks it seemed was playing in almost every shop I went into “Why d’you have go and make things so complicated?” is maybe the least of them).
