No tuesday poem from me

I've been laid low, laid out and pulverised by a head cold. At certain times during the past week and a bit I've felt up to enjoying being sick in that slightly masochistic way one can, surrounded by gently cooling cups of fragrant herb teas and unread books, but I'm over it. I want robust coffee, curries and something strident and galvanising to read.

So, while we're waiting for the Muse to attack, leap over to the Tuesday Poem blog where you can read 'In Carbondale' by Cliff Fell, this week's featured poet curated by Harvey Molloy who writes great liner notes! Enjoy the poetic feast, my starvelings.

Tuesday Poem

Piecework

Why did the day break before it began?
The dream still fermenting, the sudden rain?
Then you, muttering behind the door
you jerked shut.

I walked around the man-made lake.
A cormorant dived, making the water dance.
I was not lonely as I pieced the day back;
         this corner of sky
         a piece of green bench
         that edge of dark wing.

Catherine Bateson, 14/04/2015

This poem was, partly, inspired by the first class of How Writers Write Poetry which is a Canvas MOOC from the International Writing Programme from the University of  Iowa. Robert Hass is one of the first group of poets to talk about 'Notebooking, Sketching, Drafting' which is Session One of the course. I had heard him before as I enrolled in this MOOC last year, as well. This year they seem to have added some poets and I so enjoyed it last year, I didn't mind hearing the sessions again. Hass suggests beginning a (two-line) poem with a question and then answering it. I'd been fussing around with this poem all afternoon, trying to make it work and going off on tangents. Finally, after watching the video, it came together.

I like questions. I try to use them in my everyday communications, too. They open up possibilities.

As does the featured Tuesday poem. This week it is Leilani Tamu with a powerful, plainsong poem, 'Aotearoa Runaway'. You can read an article  by Tamu here - and it is interesting to read this alongside the poem, not only because it talks about incidents in the poem but because it displays another side of Tamu's writing. 'Aotearoa Runaway' has been curated by Tulia Thompson, and she provides a  perceptive commentary. Please read it.

Tuesday Poem

 Blessed

Cockatoos wheel and tilt in
delighting the fearful tourists
who hold out dishes of seed
as the birds, all beak, gnarly claws
and greed, ruffle their feathers on parade.
Further in the forest small birds flash in and out,
their beserk scolding stops when we speak.
Later it will rain - the sky's iron-grey.
Look up through dizzying stands of mountain ash.
Beneath them, so small,
we are put in our proper place. 

All week, my poems have been filled with birds, forests and sky. We're hosting two young German couchsurfers and, walking with them, I've looked at my own world through tourist eyes. It is beautiful in the Hills and we're supremely lucky to live so close to the forest and to be woken, every morning, by birdsong. Recently, Keith's seen an owl, or a Tawny Frogmouth swooping silently through the night when he's taken Honey, the lab, out for her evening trot. Today the rain's falling but we've already walked and I'm home, wearing the shawl I knitted in Paris and thinking about finishing my Easter socks. Much to be grateful for - including the holidays! (And finishing Chapter 16 of The Novel.) If only I could remember these states of grace when I'm deep in the mire of stress, self-flagellation or just general crankiness.

Do visit the Tuesday Poem. This week it's 'Darkroom' by Erica Goss - and this richly evocative poem is followed by an interview with Goss and her partners in the Media Poetry Studio project. Such an innovative and exciting project! Many thanks to Michelle Elvy for featuring Goss. While you're looking around at poems, take a look here at the work of one of Goss's collaborators in the Media Poetry Studio.

Scultpture by William Ricketts.

Preparations for NaPoWriMo

First - read this week's Tuesday Poem! Linda France's homage to a wasp nest. I love seeing old bird nests in the bare trees in winter, a reminder that when spring comes around again, the male birds will start flirting all over again outside my window. I added the idea of nests to my thoughts about NaPoWriMo.

Then ransack your library for books on writing poetry - or simply books on writing about writing. I have quite a few, but the two I was drawn to immediately are The Practice of Poetry, edited by Robin Behn and Chase Twichell and Luna, Luna, Creative Writing Ideas from Spanish, Latin American and Latino Literature, edited by Julio Marzan, both books I have used in the past.

Find a good notebook. Easy around here!

I wanted to also be inspired by some images, so I googled various images and stored them on my desktop - though I might now go and make a Pinterest board.

Commit to NaPoWriMo somewhere publicly. Done.

Lastly, create a pile of poetry collections and anthologies to dip into over the month. Preferably have some books which are new to you, some which challenge your normal reading and others which contain old favourites. (Still doing this - it's rather a joyful task!)

That and getting my computer fixed was just about all I've achieved today! I hope your day was slightly more productive! Go read about the productive wasps - you know you want to!

Tuesday Poem - Poppy-picking by Robyn Rowland

Poppy-picking 

for Meral, Bozcaada island/Tenedos, 2013

Not the soft wrinkled skin of old men –

papery, easily torn – or the crumpled blooms in our town plots.

Upright as tulips, Turkish Red Poppies are firm and sure,

they need just four petals, bright scarlet,

red as red can get, each with its eye kohl-black.

We are laughing like children,

racing through fields-full, higher than our knees.

They crowd the narrow roads of your island

spilling across runnels, under fences

as if they were once water, spreading in a flood.

We are poppy-hunters, poppy-picking.

We run ahead of the other women,

driving to lane’s end, friends’ building sites,

competing for the best field to harvest.

You hold them hostage with talk while I grab and gather.

We pluck the four petals. Pollen-loaded stems are

shocked, naked, worrying how to attract bees.

Velvet along our fingers we recall our babies’ skin,

filling bucket after basket, harvesting till your small green car

is loaded with the lightness of their feather-weight.

At the house we wash them outside in basins.

Small creatures emerge to be purged,

bits of grass, poppyseeds, perhaps enough

to charm a winged monkey, put a lion to sleep

on their trudge behind the rainbow.

Over and over we rinse them, the spring heat on our backs,

flowers ruffling and crinkling in our cool hands.

It’s like washing silk shirts. The pot in the kitchen 

is boiling its sugary clouds. Your secret ingredient

that I am to take with me ‘to the grave’ is wafting old Morocco in.

When the jam is ready it cools into dark-claret shades

ready to sit in my bags with poppy lokum, red-poppy syrup,

travelling back to a country where red poppies only ever meant

grief over fields full of the bodies of dead young men,

a generation of women left unmarried, alone.

Now – you say to me – when you see red poppies you will think of these –

friendship in spring; wild flowering and its fruit; gelincik,

which means lovely young brides in their ladybird beauty,

black eyes shining with happiness; the touch of red velvet,

of sunshine, wet silk; the sweetness of jam on the tongue.

 Robyn Rowland

This Intimate War. Gallipoli/Çanakkale 1915 – Içli Dışlı Bir Savaş. Gelibolu/Çanakkale 1915, is written by Dr Robyn Rowland AO and translated by Dr Mehmet Ali Çelikel. Published here with permission of the author.

Initially drawn to Turkey by her Turkish sister-in-law, Robyn began work about its landscape and history in 2009. During that work she has been a guest of the Turkish Australian Cultural Centre and the Australian Consulate in Çanakkale, and there learned of the Turkish history during the Gallipoli (Gelibolou) war. Beginning work on poems about the war, Robyn realised her limited knowledge on the Turkish experience and its relationship to Australian history. Her manuscript of poems on the war is enriched by the translations of Turkish translator Dr Mehmet Ali Çelikel, with whom she has been giving bi-lingual readings in Turkey. 

Dr Robyn Rowland AO received a Literature Board grant to complete research and write poems on Turkey. Australian-Irish poet, she has read and taught workshops in Ireland for 32 years. This Intimate war. Gallipoli/Canakkale 1915 (Five Islands Press) is her seventh published collection of poetry. Another, Line of  Drift will be published later this  year by  Doire Press, Ireland) 

This Intimate War was launched tonight, but unfortunately family commitments prevented me from attending. I'm sure it was a highly successful evening and I'm envious of everyone who could attend! Raise a toast to a brand new poetry book sailing into our lives and, when you've toasted to this book's success, hop over to the Tuesday Poem blog where you can partake of other poems. 

O Me! O Life! by Walt Whitman

O Me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring;  Of the endless trains of the faithless—of cities fill’d with the foolish;  Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who  more faithless?)  Of eyes that vainly crave the light—of the objects mean—of the struggle ever    renew’d;  Of the poor results of all—of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me;  Of the empty and useless years of the rest—with the rest me intertwined;  The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?   Answer.  That you are here—that life exists, and identity;  That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse. Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

There are just times in one's poetic life when one needs a blast of Whitman, I reckon.

When you feel sufficiently blasted, check out the Tuesday Poem. Today's poem is brought to you by guest editor, Zireaux, and it's a song by Fiona Apple. It does rather seem appropriate to have a song as the featured poem today and be talking here about Whitman.

I'm reading Hilary Mantel's short story collection, The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher. Brilliant!

Also, The Buddha Walks into the Office by Lodro Rinzler. Thought-provoking.

I would recommend both books, the latter particularly if you feel you're floundering at work, or if you simply want some kind of work/you reality check, or, like me, if you're always looking for ways to work differently - with greater calm, more empathy and more in tune with the way you live your non-working life.

Tuesday Poem

Some days you get these happy finds. Yesterday, trawling around in my computer looking for something completely different, I came across a handful of poems I'd forgotten I'd even written. They were meant for a verse novel for young adults I had abandoned in favour of a completely different project. Now that I've found them - who knows?

Highways

Down the Calder and it's all the same
yellow drought fields
Maccas like a circus tent
and all the doll's houses
for the little people
who slam the front doors
at 7.05 and again at 6.45,
home in time for the news.
Then over the Bolte Bridge -
blue shimmer of the bay
a holiday postcard
but I keep going
through the tunnel
out again
more yellow,
no Salvation Jane
cows, a bit of green
and a cloud.
Not icecream scoop pretty
no ballooning deb dress
or dragons hidden it -
just thick cloud
and no rain on the horizon.
No rain at all.

Have a look at the Tuesday Poem blog where a poem by David Gregory also evokes landscape but couples this with an undercurrent of loss. Helen Lowe is this week's Tuesday Poem blog guest editor.

'Lost Property' by Jennifer Compton - Tuesday Poem

Lost Property

Somewhere in the city

I lost the knitting

the sentimental wool

I had unpicked to reknit.

The colour scheme was alarming

but that was what my mother chose

when she was still capable of crochet

so I held my peace and flew her colours. 

I had been warned of an imminent loss

the knowledge of loss had thrummed by 

so I kept checking I had everything

one hand delving in my shoulderbag.

And more than the knitting is the pillowcase

made by my husband's mother, now deceased,

she had run it up from a summery cotton frock

with two ties at the top to keep the knitting safe.

My hands know the scarf in progress intimately

I was working away at the royal blue stripe

plain and plain and plain and plain again and turn

the yarn between my fingers running like smoke.

As I rose to leave my train at Upwey Station

a thud of portent hit me – something missing -

my soft bundle pierced by two sharp needles.

And my hands, now, disconsolate as ghosts.  

 Jennifer Compton, This City, Otago University Press, 2011.

 I've posted another poem by Jennifer on the Tuesday poem hub as I'm this week's guest editor, so I won't say much here except that this poem really resonates with me. I have lost knitting on public transport but, as in this poem, it was not the knitting itself that was the real loss. 

Congratulations to Jennifer Compton on the publication of her new book,  Now You Shall Know, Five Islands Press and many thanks  for allowing me to publish this poem and 'Like A Butterfly' on the Tuesday Poem blog this week. From this hub, you can waltz from poem to poem - enjoy.