Visiting Mum in Beeston View
This poem started life earlier this week in a Poetry School workshop led by Alicia Stubbersfield and has not been changed much. We spent an hour reading and discussing poems about old age and dementia by Philip Gross, Jo Shapcott, and Leontia Flynn before trying to write something ourselves. I have always found Philip Gross’s work difficult, and his book length sequence Deep Field about his father who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease is no exception. Nonetheless I found it really moving and would like to read the whole book one day.
Visiting Mum in Beeston View
The place has a smell of its own, a school, a farm.
Last week it was an airport, this week, who knows.
I find her dozing in her bedroom,
plonk myself on the plastic covered chair.
What do YOU want?
Good start. She points.
Look at that thing, over there.
It’s a framed photo, on her dressing table.
Two people, strangers.
Those are my daughters.
She always wanted daughters.
Today it seems she’s found them.
I change the subject.
Would you like to go out today?
Yes, I’m fed up with this hotel,
the waitresses are bitches.
She laughs a laugh that’s now a cackle.
They took them away in buses.
Who? I ask.
The Welsh. They were up to no good.
I’m tempted to say ‘not the Poles then?’
Your brother built this hotel.
Yes, I know mum, clever isn’t he?
Would you like some chocolate?
It’s the bar I bought her last week.
She puts it back in yet another handbag.
I tell her I like her skirt.
It’s nice isn’t it? I pinched it.
Doris comes in wearing mum’s coat
to be greeted by CLEAR OFF YOU.
They’ve let a load of Poles move in you know.
Well, I’m sure they had good reason.
You don’t know anything. Are you my brother?
I don’t rise to this, but go and sign her out,
return to find her stark naked in the corridor.
Another first.
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Scrivener
Today I thought I’d give a plug for Scrivener, the program I use to write and manage my work. I first found out about it in a plug by poet Don Paterson who mentions it in the introduction to his book on Shakespeare’s Sonnets.
There are two problems that any writer has to somehow deal with these days. First, what application to use for writing the work. Second, how to manage the status of the work. In the first case I imagine most people use that bloated piece of software known as Microsoft Word. In the second case what I am referring to is how to manage different drafts, comments, annotations, and publishing history. I have tried lots of different ways of dealing with these issues. I have tried different word processors, filing techniques, and databases to record status. None of them has been satisfactory. But now I have Scrivener, which solves all my problems in one package. It is much more than a word processor. In fact it’s word processing capabilities are quite simple compared to over-blown packages such as Word. Let’s be honest, how many of you Word users out there have done more than scratch the surface. How many of you know how to use it to set up a bibliography, table of contents, references, and so on. Not many I would guess! With Scrivener I keep all my poems in one file, along with different versions (snapshots), status, publishing history (list of places I’ve sent each poem for rejection), and more.
Take a look at Scrivener, it might just solve all your problems too. There are versions for Windows and Mac.
Anglesey
Anglesey May 2012, a set on Flickr.
I was a student in Bangor, North Wales in the 1960s and lived on Anglesey for the first two years. Having grown up in Manchester it came as quite a shock to find myself living in the wilds of Wales, and the weather often did get wild. The only means of transport was the infrequent bus service from Bangor to Beaumaris, but the last bus was 10pm, so I often found myself walking though Bangor woods to the bridge over the straits and back along the other side to my digs. I don’t go back there often, but was there last weekend to collect Katherine who’d been working at the Conway Centre. I took these photos while I was there.
I wrote the poem below some time ago. Plas Rhianfa is a huge old house that had been converted to holiday flats. Students could rent them in term time, if they had enough money to pay the rent (which I didn’t).
Menai Straits
The whirlpools swirl beneath Telford’s bridge
out to Penmon Point and Puffin Island
where cliffs of beaks clatter to the lighthouse bell.
The stench of seaweed sends Milo
scuttling across the mud banks to Cockle Inn
and a long draught of Sunset ale.
This druid-singing land conceals a crock
of broken spells in a mirador at Plas Rhianfa.
One puff from Milo’s cheek levitates the lid
and out spews the dust of dead monks’ dreams.
His plump and cuddly girl of local colour
sews a seam and cooks a hearty stew for us,
while he chases drunken syllables across the page,
corrupting rhymes that charm us all to Hell.
Montale
I’m feeling quite smug today. The last 30 days has helped me big time to break out of the doldrums and I have written another poem today. In fact I’ve written a sequence of three sonnets that I am hoping to workshop at my Poetry School class this evening.
This post is called Montale because I have been working for the last two years on translations of poems from his first three collections. I don’t speak Italian, so I rely on the Italian poet, Carla Scarano, who I first met on another set of Poetry School workshops being run by Peter Sansom. Between us we have produced about 22 translations and aim to produce 30 that we hope to publish, as long as we can get permission from Montale’s publisher. The way we work is that Carla sends me a literal translation and I do my best to turn it into a poem, keeping as close to the original as I can. This is not easy, because much of Montale’s work is extremely difficult to get your head round. With my new found energy I am hoping we can finish the final poems within the next couple of months.
Here is one of my favourites
The house of the customs men
You don’t remember the house of the customs men
perched high on the edge of the sheer cliff:
deserted, it has been waiting for you since the evening
your restless thoughts swarmed in and lingered.
For years the libeccio has battered the walls
and the carefree sound of your laughter has gone:
the compass needle spins round at random
and the dice seem to be loaded.
You don’t remember; another time clouds
your memory; a thread unravels.
I still hold one end; but the house recedes
and up on the roof the smoke-stained weathercock
creaks and whirls without pity.
I hold one end; but you are alone here,
holding your breath in the dark.
Oh the vanishing horizon lit by the faint light
of the distant oil tanker!
Is the passage here? (the recurrent roar
of breakers way down under the crags…)
You don’t remember the house of this, my evening.
And I don’t know who’s going and who’ll stay.
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Day 30: Deep Impact
This is it, the end of the line. I have amazed myself by producing something every day. At the start of the month I was struggling to write on a regular basis, now I feel I can move on with a regular writing pattern. I am going to write every day. Not a poem every day, but I will type words into Scrivener every day.
I’d like to thank those behind NaPoWriMo for their work, Janet Rogerson for alerting me to its existence, and those who have liked some of my poems, made comments, and even chosen to follow this blog. I have decided that I will carry on with the blog and publish new poems here from time to time.
My last NaPoWriMo poem for 2012 is a bit of silliness that I started several years ago, but never finished, until today.
Deep Impact
In the year of the monkey I entered
my fridge, a Zanussi, in a competition,
to demonstrate the veracity of e = mc^2,
First Prize, a one-time trip to a comet
said to be the size of New York. It won.
The world’s observatories watched in awe
as a robot shoved it out of the door
into the path of the approaching comet.
Deep Impact is what everyone saw
when my Zanussi smacked into Tempel 1.
Imagine their surprise when they analyse
the eruption of debris, gas and light
that my fridge emitted in the distant night
and discover the signs of primitive life
come from the atoms of a frozen chicken.
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Day 29: Shinkansen
Space and time are bound together. In 1949 it took my dad, an airline pilot, six days to fly from London to Sidney in a twin engined DC3 (see photo below). Now the journey can be done in one day. In a way then time shrinks space. Today’s poem is called Shinkansen, which is the name of the high speed railway network in Japan. Apparently they tested a maglev train at speeds up to 361mph in 2003. Imagine the journey from Manchester to London at that speed – all the space between would shrink to a bus trip into town.
Shinkansen
So smooth
so swift
this Shinkansen
with hiss
and blur
of snake
with shades
and brogues
and mohair suits
along
the line
from Tokyo
past Shinto shrines
to Shin-Osaka
sushi lunch
and sencha tea
and busy ness
in Honda land.
Dad (2nd left) plus crew and the DC3
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Day 28: Rubnous Robbery
I can’t believe there are only two poem-writing days left. At the start of the month I didn’t think I’d survive beyond the first week, but here I am. I’m not going to kid myself that there is much of value in what I’ve written, but I do think there are a few poems that are worth looking at again a month or two from now. Question is, what do I do on May 1st? Answer: keep writing bozo.
Yesterday’s prompt (day 27) was to write a nursery rhyme or clapping song. I haven’t done that, but what I have done is to write a silly 14-liner in blank verse containing a few made up words (neologisms if you like fancy words).
Rubnous Robbery
Quilk was woken by the sound of rubnous’s
foraging in his garden. ‘Shig me,’ he
bellowed, ‘what farlabbery is this then?’
He rushed and grabbed his whisnaugh from its hook
by the door and crept into the garden
where he saw a big rubnouse harpaddling
in his prize runner beans. ‘You! you glumpcious
bastard,’ he yelled and set about the head
of the rubnous with his heavy whisnaugh.
Such phalarity followed. The other
rubnous’s stopped dead and, being scroobled,
picked up their hentarbunants and, trying
to be as garrulacious as they could,
rushed off empty handed back to the woods.
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