Early morning rain
the down-pipe chiming
out-of-time with birds
valiantly calling through mist.
The old dog's breathing meditation.
The kettle boiling and winter
creeping under the doors.
Check out the Tuesday Poem blog for the curated poem of the week. This week it's a poem from Naomi Guttman's novella in verse, The Banquet of Donny and Ari; scenes from an opera. 'Chernobyl Wedding, 1986' is a pantoum and the subtle word-shifts and repetition create a poem whose form which beautifully matches the rituals of the subject matter while still able to insert a chilling element of menace. Thanks to Eileen Moeller for posting this poem.
A blog where I talk about the reading, writing, post the Tuesday Poem and, sometimes, show some knitting.
Showing posts with label Tuesday Poem Blog. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tuesday Poem Blog. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 02, 2015
Tuesday, May 19, 2015
The Tuesday Poem - 'Afterword' by Robyn Rowland
Afterword
i.m.
Seamus Heaney, April 13 1939 – August 30 2013
It was the week after your funeral mass.
Your poem Postscript
was meandering through my memory,
with your government
of the tongue, your message about voice,
unique sound of a poet come into themselves.
I was re-arriving, driving from Clifden,
the road you knew well, out
along the marbled spine of our peninsula,
jetlagged, neither
here nor there.
Packed overgrowth from summer was so full
compared to the stark cold spring I left
earlier in the year,
when you were reading and writing, knowing
already
tomorrows are best left uncounted.
It was a soft day but no wind to blow the dust
off a long trip,
no hurry in the low-slung sky,
a slight hush in the lightly wet wheels.
Air had been thoroughly soaked and a
county-full of spiders busy at work.
The land was hung as if for Christmas –
every tip of gorse branch, each dip of lavender
heath,
every vacant space between the cups of fuchsia,
was glitter-strung. Thousands of webs, millions
of drops,
netted a tinselled land, branches rising
as shimmering limbs from the bog,
or perhaps heaven had laid out a lacy crystal
cloth
that angels at play dropped careless beneath
long hugging clouds,
and the trees, reaching up, had torn it about
themselves
in bliss at their lovely ornament.
Or maybe, for a small moment, the earth,
feeling aged beyond counting, had
webbed-over with wearied loss,
grown ancient at your death.
Robyn Rowland © from Line of Drift, Doire Press, Galway
Ireland, 2015
Third
generation Irish-Australian, Dr Robyn Rowland AO has been reading and teaching in Ireland for
32 years. A citizen of both countries, she lives in the two places
equally.
Robyn
has previously published ten books, seven of poetry, with two further books
forthcoming in 2015: Line of drift,
emerging from her life in both Ireland and Australia (Doire Press, Galway,
Ireland) and This Intimate War.
Gallipoli/Canakkale 1915 – içli dışlı
bir savaş. Gelibolu/Çanakkale 1915 (Australia and Turkey). The latter,
based in historical research, represents the experience of both Australians and
Ottoman Turks during that war. It is bi-lingual, with translations by Assoc
Professor Dr Mehmet Ali Çelikel from Pamukkale University.
I've been taking part in the Iowa Writer's Centre online poetry MOOC - and the linebreaks in the current Tuesday Poem, 'Albert Park' by Alice Miller interest me. Have a look and see what you think - I agree with the guest editor, Saradha Koirala that they invite you to read the poem in different ways.
Phew! Good to be back at the blog....
Tuesday, April 28, 2015
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.
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, April 07, 2015
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.
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.
Tuesday, February 17, 2015
Tuesday Poem Blog - 'Shore Grass'
Shore Grass by Amy Lowell
The moon is cold over the sand-dunes,
And the clumps of sea-grasses flow and glitter;
The thin chime of my watch tells the quarter after midnight;
And still I hear nothing
But the windy beating of the sea.
From: Honor Moore, editor, Amy Lowell, Selected Poems, American Poets Project, 2004.
This poem reminds me of Stradbroke Island where we used to spend a week, sometimes two weeks, every Christmas holidays. This was years ago and the island was not top to bottom resort back then. We used to stay at Clayton's Cabins and the generator stopped at 10.00 pm so the lights went out! There was a small general store and surfies, who would frequently camp in the caves on the cliffs to save money, lived on milkshakes and hot chips from the store.
It was a walk along the cliffs to Point Lookout where there was another, slightly larger store. We'd buy iceblocks there and watch the surfies from the clifftop. Once I saw three sharks, quite visible in the clearest water, circling around a surfer. There was nothing one could do from the cliff except watch. He surfed in, but there were stories...
I love beaches at night - the shadows on the sand, the dark, glittering water and the track straight to the horizon made by the moon.
Do have a look at the Tuesday Poem blog this week which features an intriguing section of a longer narrative poem, 'Pen Pal' by Sugar Magnolia Wilson. It's great! I read it and immediately downloaded the pdf. Kudos for Cats and Spaghetti Press, too, for doing something so beautiful and then giving it away. Thanks, too, for Helen Rickerby for posting this - she's this week's Tuesday Poem editor. Sugar Magnolia Wilson's work makes my fingers itchy to write. (And what a wonderful name!)
The moon is cold over the sand-dunes,
And the clumps of sea-grasses flow and glitter;
The thin chime of my watch tells the quarter after midnight;
And still I hear nothing
But the windy beating of the sea.
From: Honor Moore, editor, Amy Lowell, Selected Poems, American Poets Project, 2004.
This poem reminds me of Stradbroke Island where we used to spend a week, sometimes two weeks, every Christmas holidays. This was years ago and the island was not top to bottom resort back then. We used to stay at Clayton's Cabins and the generator stopped at 10.00 pm so the lights went out! There was a small general store and surfies, who would frequently camp in the caves on the cliffs to save money, lived on milkshakes and hot chips from the store.
It was a walk along the cliffs to Point Lookout where there was another, slightly larger store. We'd buy iceblocks there and watch the surfies from the clifftop. Once I saw three sharks, quite visible in the clearest water, circling around a surfer. There was nothing one could do from the cliff except watch. He surfed in, but there were stories...
I love beaches at night - the shadows on the sand, the dark, glittering water and the track straight to the horizon made by the moon.
Do have a look at the Tuesday Poem blog this week which features an intriguing section of a longer narrative poem, 'Pen Pal' by Sugar Magnolia Wilson. It's great! I read it and immediately downloaded the pdf. Kudos for Cats and Spaghetti Press, too, for doing something so beautiful and then giving it away. Thanks, too, for Helen Rickerby for posting this - she's this week's Tuesday Poem editor. Sugar Magnolia Wilson's work makes my fingers itchy to write. (And what a wonderful name!)
Tuesday, February 10, 2015
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.
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.
Monday, January 26, 2015
Tuesday Poem - Interlude by Amy Lowell
Interlude
When I have baked white cakes
And grated green almonds to spread upon them;
When I have picked the green crowns from the strawberries
And piled them, cone-pointed, in a blue and yellow platter;
When I have smoothed the seam of the linen I have been working;
What then?
To-morrow it will be the same:
Cakes and strawberries,
And needles in and out of cloth.
If the sun is beautiful on bricks and pewter,
How much more beautiful is the moon,
Slanting down the gauffered branches of a plum-tree;
The moon,
Wavering across a bed of tulips;
The moon,
Still
Upon your face.
You shine, Beloved,
You and the moon.
But which is the reflection?
The clock is striking eleven.
I think, when we have shut and barred the door,
The night will be dark
Outside.
from, Honor Moore (ed), Amy Lowell, Selected Poems, American Poets Project, 2004.
This is my first Tuesday Poem post for 2015! I've chosen this Lowell poem because of that lovely intersection between the domestic detail and the erotic. I'm also intrigued by the movement in the last part of the poem - does the barring of the door keep the moon/Beloved inside so the private space (domestic and erotic) is bright in contrast to the (sinister) dark night?
Amy Lowell was an Imagist and at the centre of the Imagist controversy. In 1915, in the introduction to her Imagist anthology she attempted to list the hallmarks of this poetry:
Check out the Tuesday Poem blog for this week's featured poem and navigate the menu of Tuesday Poets for other lyrical delights.
When I have baked white cakes
And grated green almonds to spread upon them;
When I have picked the green crowns from the strawberries
And piled them, cone-pointed, in a blue and yellow platter;
When I have smoothed the seam of the linen I have been working;
What then?
To-morrow it will be the same:
Cakes and strawberries,
And needles in and out of cloth.
If the sun is beautiful on bricks and pewter,
How much more beautiful is the moon,
Slanting down the gauffered branches of a plum-tree;
The moon,
Wavering across a bed of tulips;
The moon,
Still
Upon your face.
You shine, Beloved,
You and the moon.
But which is the reflection?
The clock is striking eleven.
I think, when we have shut and barred the door,
The night will be dark
Outside.
from, Honor Moore (ed), Amy Lowell, Selected Poems, American Poets Project, 2004.
This is my first Tuesday Poem post for 2015! I've chosen this Lowell poem because of that lovely intersection between the domestic detail and the erotic. I'm also intrigued by the movement in the last part of the poem - does the barring of the door keep the moon/Beloved inside so the private space (domestic and erotic) is bright in contrast to the (sinister) dark night?
Amy Lowell was an Imagist and at the centre of the Imagist controversy. In 1915, in the introduction to her Imagist anthology she attempted to list the hallmarks of this poetry:
1. To use the language of common speech. . . .She was the partner of Ada Russell and her poetry boldly declares the eroticism of this relationship, in an era when 'Boston marriages' were common but not sexually explicit. She was a lifelong friend of Robert Frost, Thomas Hardy and D. H. Lawrence and an adversary of Ezra Pound. She was a formidable worker, translating classic Chinese poems and writing a biography of Keats before her untimely death at 51.
2. To create new rhythms. . . .
3. To allow absolute freedom in the choice of subject. . . .
4. To present an image. . . .
5. To produce poetry that is hard and clear, never blurred nor indefinite.
6. Finally, most of us believe that concentration is of the very essence of poetry.
Check out the Tuesday Poem blog for this week's featured poem and navigate the menu of Tuesday Poets for other lyrical delights.
Tuesday, December 02, 2014
Storytime - Tuesday Poem
It's the storytime Christmas party
And the library is knee-deep in children.
Above the babble and the one screamer
a child earnestly demands, 'But why?
Why did the pig fall in the water?'
I admire his narrative persistence.
The answer - the author thought the end correct -
won't do, the pig has a new owner for now
and the pig's fate will be rewritten.
How I envy the young storyteller!
Like a film in reverse, the pig's back on the swing
kicking up his hooves in the sunny park
he's stopped pushing his brothers by the lake
and arguing over the sailboat. All drama is erased
but the pig is happy and the young editor
although not versed in plot
clearly understands contentment.
Catherine Bateson, 2014.
When you've visited here, check out the Tuesday Poem blog and read today's featured poem, 'A room of books', by Rethabile Masilo, a regular Tuesday Poet. Narrative intersects narrative, poems speak to and around each other. Lovely!
And the library is knee-deep in children.
Above the babble and the one screamer
a child earnestly demands, 'But why?
Why did the pig fall in the water?'
I admire his narrative persistence.
The answer - the author thought the end correct -
won't do, the pig has a new owner for now
and the pig's fate will be rewritten.
How I envy the young storyteller!
Like a film in reverse, the pig's back on the swing
kicking up his hooves in the sunny park
he's stopped pushing his brothers by the lake
and arguing over the sailboat. All drama is erased
but the pig is happy and the young editor
although not versed in plot
clearly understands contentment.
Catherine Bateson, 2014.
When you've visited here, check out the Tuesday Poem blog and read today's featured poem, 'A room of books', by Rethabile Masilo, a regular Tuesday Poet. Narrative intersects narrative, poems speak to and around each other. Lovely!
Monday, September 22, 2014
Tuesday Poem - more Thomas Hardy!
The Voice
Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me,
Saying that now you are not as you were
When you had changed from the one who was all to me,
But as at first, when our day was fair.
Can it be you that I heard? Let me view you, then,
Standing as when I drew near to the town
Where you wait for me: yes, as I knew you then,
Even to the original air-blue gown!
Or is it only the breeze, in its listlessness
Travelling across the wet mead to me here,
You being ever dissolved to wan wistlessness,
Heard no more again far or near?
Thus I; faltering forward,
Leaves around me falling,
Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward,
And the woman calling.
December 1912
Thomas Hardy, Collected Poems, Macmillan, 1976
A haunting poem, written after the death of Hardy's first wife, Emma, from whom he was estranged. After his death Hardy wrote many poems, recreating their early love. Of these poems, Lytton Strachey wrote:
Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me,
Saying that now you are not as you were
When you had changed from the one who was all to me,
But as at first, when our day was fair.
Can it be you that I heard? Let me view you, then,
Standing as when I drew near to the town
Where you wait for me: yes, as I knew you then,
Even to the original air-blue gown!
Or is it only the breeze, in its listlessness
Travelling across the wet mead to me here,
You being ever dissolved to wan wistlessness,
Heard no more again far or near?
Thus I; faltering forward,
Leaves around me falling,
Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward,
And the woman calling.
December 1912
Thomas Hardy, Collected Poems, Macmillan, 1976
A haunting poem, written after the death of Hardy's first wife, Emma, from whom he was estranged. After his death Hardy wrote many poems, recreating their early love. Of these poems, Lytton Strachey wrote:
They are, in fact, modern as no other poems are. The author of Jude the Obscure speaks in them, but with concentration, the intensity, the subtle disturbing force of poetry....He fumbles; but it is that very fumbling that brings him so near to ourselves.Don't forget to check out the Tuesday Poem blog for the featured Tuesday poem and, from there, navigate to other poems.
Tuesday, June 24, 2014
Tuesday Poem - 'Without You' by Adrian Henri
At some stage the Poetry Circle was discussing - more or less in passing - the work of poets like Roger McGough and Adrian Henri. I can remember where I was sitting in Ipswich Girl's Grammar School library when I first discovered Henri's poem, 'Without You'. What did I love about it? It was both real and surreal. The language and imagery changed from jokey 'Without you there'd be no colour in Magic colouring books' to melodramatic, 'Without you Mahler's 8th would only be performed by street musicians in derelict houses' to poignant, 'Without you blind men would sell unlucky heather'. I was twelve and had a crush on boy, a young man, really, well out of my reach. I had only been kissed inexpertly, but the fear and yearning behind the wit, and something else, too - a vitality - in the lines sang out to me.
I don't want to break copyright but click here to hear Adrian Henri's 'Without You' read by James Haddow. You have to scroll down a little and be patient.
In other poetic news? The Poetry Circle explored a number of poems at our last, sadly triangular, meeting. With only three of us present we zoomed through the following:
'Earth Hour' by David Malouf
'Aquarius' by David Malouf
'The Ikons' by J K Baxter
'Olduvai Gorge Thorn Tree' by Sarah Lindsay
'Evaluation of an Unwritten Poem' Wislawa Szymborska
'No Title Required' by Wislawa Szymborska
'Taliesin and the Spring of Vision' by Vernon Watkins
'Music of Colours: White Blossom' by Vernon Watkins
'Solomon Grundy' by Alice Oswald
'Dart' by Alice Oswald
I loved the Alice Oswald poems - and I hadn't struck her work before. They had a lovely energy and unexpected twists and turns of imagery.
More poetry on the Tuesday Poem page and from there you are only a click away from many other poems brought to you each Tuesday.
I don't want to break copyright but click here to hear Adrian Henri's 'Without You' read by James Haddow. You have to scroll down a little and be patient.
In other poetic news? The Poetry Circle explored a number of poems at our last, sadly triangular, meeting. With only three of us present we zoomed through the following:
'Earth Hour' by David Malouf
'Aquarius' by David Malouf
'The Ikons' by J K Baxter
'Olduvai Gorge Thorn Tree' by Sarah Lindsay
'Evaluation of an Unwritten Poem' Wislawa Szymborska
'No Title Required' by Wislawa Szymborska
'Taliesin and the Spring of Vision' by Vernon Watkins
'Music of Colours: White Blossom' by Vernon Watkins
'Solomon Grundy' by Alice Oswald
'Dart' by Alice Oswald
I loved the Alice Oswald poems - and I hadn't struck her work before. They had a lovely energy and unexpected twists and turns of imagery.
More poetry on the Tuesday Poem page and from there you are only a click away from many other poems brought to you each Tuesday.
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
Tuesday Poem - Bear Cloud
Bear Cloud
We saw it in the sky – a sign.
Some said of abundance,
promising bounty and a long life.
It galloped
towards the horizon
lifting feet too delicate for the
white bulk they carried so swiftly.
We’d seen it before carved into rock
a quiver of crude spears
decorating its hide
and something like it
at the edge of the world
prowling between snow and stars.
Now in clouds, it announces
its own death –
ribbed like a slow ship
lumbering landlocked
or rolling in endless water
beyond reach.
For a moment it hung above us
shadowing the land beneath –
and hunger soured the ghost breath
that knuckled down our spines.
Catherine Bateson© from Poems from the End of the World.
Check out the Tuesday Poem blog for other poems from all parts of the world. On the hub, guest editor Andrew Bell brings us 'Bad Housekeeping' by Emma Neale - a delight of a poem! Do read it.
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