Month: May 2018

Nature poetry from the BBC

Trees by Katherine

http://www.bbc.co.uk/poetryseason/poems/the_windhover.shtml

 

The Windhover by Gerard Manley Hopkins

To Christ our Lord

I caught this morning morning’s minion, kingdom
of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in
his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl
and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shèer plòd makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold vermilion.

Related Video

Hopkins' moral maze

Poet insight

Hopkins’ moral maze.

Tags: animals, beauty, faith, nature

More poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins

An interview with the poet Khaya Ronkainen[ life from South Africa to Finland]

adventure cold cross country skiing dawn
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

http://poetryblogroll.blogspot.co.uk/2018/02/life-of-poet-khaya-ronkainen.html

 

Extract

I understand Finland has very advanced social systems. What impresses you most about it?

Khaya: What impresses me is the accountability and transparency on how public funds and taxpayers’ money are used in creating a dignified and decent living for all. The accessibility of education, free and everyone’s right, regardless of background, impresses me the most.

Sherry: It impresses me as well. In North America, we are losing rights left and right at the moment.

When did you first begin to write? Did it help you with the culture shock of finding yourself in a new place?

Khaya: Ah! The famous question…*laughs*. I can’t say for sure. As a child I preferred to write than to talk. This means I did a lot of letter writing, you know, more like the Dorothy Osborne kind of writing; long reports about rural life to my cousins and friends living in cities.

But it was when I moved to Finland that I actually started putting meaningful stories down. It was a way of dealing with culture shock, and so words became my friends.

Sherry: I love that: “words became my friends.” They do give comfort. When did you branch into poetry?

Khaya: I don’t think I branched out into poetry, Sherry. I’ve always been in it, even before I attempted to write it. I’ve always been a lover and a reader of poetry with influences such as S.E.K. Mqhayi and Tiyo Soga (Xhosa poets/writers), to name just a few.

I even had a crush on John Keats himself, during my high school years…*laughs* when a boy trying to impress me recited Keats’ Endymion. I thought, wow! I want to do that. But then I went to study business and got swept away a bit, whilst I chased the bottom line.

So, I returned and pursued poetry seriously, when I got stuck in my novel writing; a project that is still pending. Luckily at the time, I was also doing studies in English Philology (as part of a career change), and the process of writing poetry sort of came naturally.

Sherry: I love that you branch out in all directions, exploring all life offers. What do you love about poetry? What makes it sing for you?

Khaya: I love how poetry pushes limits with language and form. Its ability to make us pause, be in the moment, and remind us that water is still wet. The process of birthing a poem; the whisper, the nudge, the build-up and the release that eventually leads me to write with urgency. That like any other art form, poetry doesn’t belong to the creator but to the people.

To quote one of my writer friends, Khutsie Kasale, “Poetry is something more sacred and authentic. It is a gift of words birthed through the artist that come straight from the hands of God.”

So, I love that poetry means different things to different people depending on where it finds them.

Sherry: Such a good explanation! I read on your blog that you come from the Xhosa people, who have a strong tradition of oral storytelling. Do you think that is reflected in your poetry, that you are carrying on the tradition in your work? Do you remember a grandmother or someone in your family, who told great stories that caused you, as a little girl, to dream?

Khaya: I mentioned earlier on that I don’t think I branched out into poetry, I’ve always been in it. By this I mean, a Xhosa child, (or an African child for that matter), learns quite early in life who they are. That is, a knowledge of their origin, past history and culture because African cultures pride themselves on clan names.

So, a child learns about the notion of iziduko/izibongo through chanting of a multitude of family clan names; ancestors and heroes (living and dead) from the elders.

Chanting of clan praises is poetry itself; oral poetry that overlaps with a song. Thus, in my writing I’m always trying to emulate that rhythm and harmony.

Sherry: I envy you that rich cultural heritage. I see it, too, among the First Nations people where I live – such an ancient, proud, traditional culture.

Would you like to share three of your poems here, and tell us a bit about each one?

Khaya: Before I share, it’s important to point that my work often examines duality of an immigrant life; loss and gain. And the “I” doesn’t always mean the writer but the speaker.

Word Roots

Of origins I do not know

Theories varied and accepted

Making sense and no sense

Words are my friends.

Words that go forward

In prose and in books

Words that return

In verse and in song.

Of classical and medieval

Renaissance and modern

It’s Twa, the forage and pastoral

Tshawe, the ancestral heroes I seek

Diminished words found

Not in history books

Accepted words whose

History is esteemed

It’s Nongqawuse‘s words I thirst;

A prophecy from uQamata

Words older than writing

Dramatic and creative

Praise poems of no particular

Historical period. Folk tales

Of Tokoloshe terrifying

Children and adults alike.

Infidel words, beginnings

I do not know but whose

Oral tradition leaves me

Smitten in a trance

Speaking in tongues

Descending the Great Lakes

Borrowing from Khoi

To click a sound.

A tradition of Xhosa poetry

Whose metre measured not

In literary magazines, yet rhyme

Rings loud in Grahamstown

Words murmured teasing

With foreplay, words chanted

Exploding into a climax

Do scratch an itch

Spoken and sung

Barbaric and censored

Roots of word

I seek.

Khaya: This poem examines relationship with languages. It was inspired by a Poetry Festival held in my city, Tampere, in 2015. The theme was Syntyjä, Syviä, loosely translated as “root of words”.

Journeys I’ve Travelled

I’ve been to the north
I’ve been to the south

Journeys —
left me floating in between
(where both worlds depart)
and with no claim to either.

Suburbia no longer white
we sip tea and spend hours
discussing weather, whilst
the sun shines in black rural.
In song and dance we quench
— thirst vanquished.

I’ve been to the city
I’ve been to the country

Allow me the misguided view
with diluted memories, for
I build a world with these
smatterings of my life.

Khaya: I think this one is self-explanatory.

                     Summer

                    What would you have me say of you?

                    Ours is an obscure relationship

                    You led me believe I was your baby

A summer baby―

                    Because down south, October simmers

                    Spring overlapping with summer.

                    What would you have me say of you?

                    As if immaterial, now you tell me I am

An autumn baby―

                    Because up north, October teases

                    Skies weep fearful of winter.

Khaya: And the last is a poem excerpt from my upcoming chapbook that I’m hoping to release in spring 2018. I wrote it in celebration of the centenary of Finland’s Independence.

Sherry: Thank you for these, Khaya. You express yourself so well. I especially love the Xhosa words included in your poem. And we look forward to your book.

When you aren’t writing, what other activities do you enjoy?

Khaya: During my spare time, I can be found wandering in nature, hiking and backpacking, amongst other things, with my husband.

Should you go on holiday this year…….

Blenheim_winter2014-2.jpg
Blenheim

Why not take a holiday in  the Vatican State especially if you are wanted by the police here or in Australia and you are a Cardinal.
How about going to Poland  and asking  what anti-Semitism ever did for them?
Don’t buy a raffle ticket in Saudi Arabia.Gambling is illegal.
Don’t go to Egypt with  your own Mummy
On the Golan Heights you  get a good view of Israel.Soon it will be in Israel
If you go to Gaza don’t strip unless forced to by the Border Guards.Smile and be friendly.It annoys some of them.
If you go to Jerusalem, wear long sleeves even if you are a nudist
In a Mosque, be decently dressed.If you remember what it means
Don’t bear or bare arms anywhere in the Middle East
That cheap 15 day trip to Damascus might end  early when the Bomb drops.We know who has one.
Don’t complain that the French don’t speak English.Complain if they do
If in the Holy Land,pray.
Pray anyway
Remember the flu in 1918 killed more people than two world wars .Is giving your enemies flu the best revenge?
I wish we were Muslims as the clothes Christians and atheists wear are so revealing it’s enough to make a man  or woman go mad with either rage or lust  or both.It’s embarrasing living here as only immigrants dress nicely [ and me![
I  reckon a stay at home holiday and a donation to the Red Cross might be the answer for me.

 

Photo by Leah Kelley on Pexels.com

 

Three Hundred Thousand More BY JAMES SLOAN GIBBONS

We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more,
From Mississippi’s winding stream, and from New England’s shore;
We leave our ploughs and workshops, our wives and children dear,
With hearts too full for utterance, with but a silent tear;
We dare not look behind us, but steadfastly before:
We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more!
If you look across the hill tops that meet the Northern sky,
Long moving lines of rising dust your vision may descry;
And now the wind, an instant, tears the cloudy vail aside,
And floats aloft our spangled flag, in glory and in pride,
And bayonets in the sunlight gleam, and bands brave music pour:
We are coming Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more!
If you look all up your valleys, where the growing harvests shine,
You may see our sturdy farmer boys, fast forming into line;
And children from their mothers’ knees, are pulling at the weeds,
And learning how to reap and sow against their country’s needs;
And a farewell group stands weeping at every cottage door:
We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more!
You have called us, and we’re coming, by Richmond’s bloody tide
To lay us down, for freedom’s sake, our brother’s bones beside;
Or from foul treason’s savage group to wrench the murderous blade,
And in the face of foreign foes its fragments to parade;
Six hundred thousand loyal men and true have gone before:
We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more!

Poetry and the American civil war

INTERVIEW 
An extract

A “Poetry-Fueled War”

During the Civil War, poetry didn’t just respond to events; it shaped them.

When Edmund Wilson dismissed the poetry of the Civil War as “versified journalism” in 1962, he summed up a common set of critiques: American poetry of the era is mostly nationalist doggerel, with little in the way of formal innovation. On the contrary, argues scholar Faith Barrett. In her new book, To Fight Aloud Is Very Brave,Barrett contends that a broad range of 19th-century writers used verse during the Civil War to negotiate complicated territory, both personal and public. Taking its title from a poem by Emily Dickinson, Barrett’s book also argues that Civil War poetry was much more formally destabilizing than scholars have traditionally acknowledged.

The book explores work by Northern writers such as Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, and black abolitionist poet Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, along with amateur “soldier-poets” and several Southern poets, including the so-called poet laureate of the Confederacy, Henry Timrod. Barrett devotes a chapter to Herman Melville’s little-read postwar collection Battle-Pieces, and another to the close connection between poetry and songs during the war.

Barrett co-edited a 2005 anthology of Civil War poetry called Words for the Hour, and her own published poetry includes a 2001 chapbook, Invisible Axis. She spoke with the Poetry Foundation from Appleton, Wisconsin, where she teaches English and creative writing at Lawrence University.

You write that the Civil War was a “poetry-fueled war.” What do you mean by that?

Poetry in mid-19th-century America was ubiquitous in a way that it just isn’t now. It was everywhere in newspapers and magazines, children were learning it in school…. Americans were encountering poetry on a weekly basis, if not a daily basis, in the Civil War era, and that’s a profound difference from contemporary poetry and its place in our culture.

There are so many accounts in newspapers of soldiers dying with a poem in their pockets, poems written on a scrap of paper folded up inside a book; so many accounts of songs or poems being sung or read to political leaders at particular moments. For example, after Lincoln announced the second call for a draft … James Sloan Gibbons wrote this song poem called “Three Hundred Thousand More,” which he supposedly sang to Lincoln in his office one day. So there’s a kind of immediacy of impact, that poetry is actually, I suggest, shaping events, not just responding or reflecting on them

When blackness is accepted, may one learn?

The gravity of loss brought me to earth
Beneath the rotting leaves, I lay with worms. |
I wondered if I were of any worth.

No more to be enchanted by love’s mirth,
I with unnamed particles was turned.
The weight of loss bears down the heart to earth.

I could not rise alone but saw a path
While I slept a unity had formed
I learned I need not think of what I’m worth

My sorrow brought no guilt nor fear of wrath
I am both eagle and the twisted worm
In my little grave, I loved the earth.

Like the adder, shocked into rebirth.
I from silent underworld had learned
Not to judge the soul about its worth.

I shall not fear the flames of hell that burn
When blackness is accepted, may one learn?
The weight of loss breaks down the soul to earth
With dusty shredded leaves, we then converse

Post-truth, post-God, post meaning, post remorse

Who should speak, which people have a voice?
Can we trust the ones who’ve told such lies
Post-truth, post-God, post meaning, post remorse?

If we’re wounded, who shall give recourse?
Does it matter to them what we’re tortured by?
Who should speak, which people own their voice?

If we hear bad news, what is its source?
See the bodies  hear the babies cry,
Post-truth, post-God, post meaning, post remorse?

Can we spread democracy by force?
Is it still democracy post-war?
Who should speak, which people own their voice?

Which of all the methods is the choice?
What is politics the reason for,
Post-truth, post-God, post meaning, post remorse?

If I speak, will you believe I lie?
The tongues of angels whisper, what of Troy
Who should speak, which people have a voice?
Post-truth, post-God, post meaning, post remorse

After 3 years exactly ,I have lit the lamp

eeIMG_0132The lamp shade on another base.

Broken by your fall, the last you had
The lamp and base separated evermore
But now the light shines through the shade, I’m glad
I feel  the love  is lit deep in my core

The base stands all alone no more to be
Except for its own beauty  and its grace
Reminders of those journeys to the sea
Aldeburgh beach and joyfilled  face.

So on these parts, once unified, shall  live
I need  not throw them out with rubbish and old tins
The shade gives shadows I’m familiar with
The  rounded base has  boldly its self shown

What once was   one has now become two  parts
Each of them gives solace to my heart

Transport for London and the disabled

Photo0035I just spoke to them about the inaccessibility  of my local train station
I got the answer: it is expensive to make them accessible to the Government have given them till 2030 to do the work.By  then I might be dead.
Moorfields Hospital is next to this train line but I’d have to get a cab and  the traffic is hell.

Old or pregnant people forced to stand at bus stop en route for hospital

inthecoffeehttps://www.standard.co.uk/news/elderly-forced-to-stand-at-bus-stop-because-tfl-thought-the-seat-caused-yobbery-6517257.html

Maybe a bath could be installed instead of a seat.The seats are uncomfortable

Extract

Joan Jagger, 70, above, retired foster carer
“I’m furious. I use the buses all the time if I want to go to Camden or the West End. But I have arthritis and back problems and if I have to stand up for too long it’s agony. The seats are essential for people like me. You can also put your shopping on them to save bending down. Only one person wanted the seats taken away because she said kids were congregating here but since the CCTV camera was put up there is no problem. We were never asked first, and we want them back straight away.”

Olivia Leun, 36, who works in the Fortune Food café next to the bus stop

“Everyone’s very angry about it. We’re raising a petition to TfL to bring the seats back. They didn’t consult anybody first, they just took them away. There’s a lot of elderly people and pregnant women who need to sit down. We would like to let them sit in the shop but we can’t for insurance reasons. As a community we need to sort this out. There used to be trouble here but not any more, now there’s a camera right there. It doesn’t make sense.”

Problems of painters and poets

26219359_1054089244730953_3622257819011378810_n.jpghttps://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/wallace-stevens-problems-painters-and-poets

Extract

“Stevens first delivered “Relations Between Poetry and Painting” as a lecture at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1951. In this piece, Stevens explored the parallel attributes of poetry and painting, beginning with reference to adages that apply to both poets and painters and culminating with the emphatic conclusion that “it would be tragic not to realize the extent of man’s dependence on the arts.”

This crescendo in his argument is based on the notion that, in an age of disbelief, the arts in general are a “compensation for what has been lost. Men feel that the imagination is the next greatest power to faith: the reigning prince.” Stevens argues that, because poetry and painting operate at the juncture between imagination and reality, these arts assume a prophetic stature and become a “vital assertion of self in a world where nothing but the self remains, if that remains.””

Don’t go to Gaza… holiday advice

photo1525It might be on the Mediterranean Sea but the  place is very over-crowded,   2 million  or more in one little country and although the  border has a fence the IDF might fire through the fence if they can’t  understand PRESS in English or if   if your T shirt says
I am a lunatic
I am an algebra-ist
I  am in crisis.
I  am anti-cement.
I  am high  on anti-psychotics
I had a retinal crisis
My mother was a porcupine
Philip Wrath
Portnoy was a saint
I love Trains
I am gender free.
I love Moses
God made Trump
The big stain.
Philip Roth is dead.
Bury the past
Start over
Love your neighbour
Cain or Abel?
Mea maxima culpa

Share my data

PuzzleI went into a Turkish coffee shop today, but they had no turkeys
So I went to Starbucks and asked  if I could bring my horse in.The next thing, the police arrived and decide I was  mentally unusual.Too clever by half a horse.garden 2
The dental nurse held up this little white thing with a tail about 18 inches long.
I said,  thanks but I’d rather have a cat.She said,
This is your  wisdom tooth.
I can’t understand how  that nerve fitted inside my  gum.And to think, there are a few more like  it.No wonder I am neurotic.How would you like it if your nerves were 4 standard deviations North of the mean,median or mode?
It’s been there a long time so I miss it.I feel this great gap in myself.I thought it was my soul but only Kafka would think like that.And me.

IMG_20180522_200230

I went  into Costa’s and they let me go to the front of the queue as I was wearing my tooth as a pendant.The  root goes round my neck which saves buying a chain.Well, it cost enough to have it out! Maybe it was the white stick.Or the horse.img_20180522_194657This is my data from Facebook.Feel free to share.I did and look at me now.Maybe you’d do better not to.

photo2201_002

It’s the eyes,isn’t it? Cancer and bereavement, it would be odd if I looked happy.Even if I was15037259_808368232636390_4207439168134444053_n

In the land that dreams dwell in

8gsn49ecktfog_l-224

In the space that  dreams dwell in

where love and hate and life begin,

where swiftly the deep rivers flow

from those lost lands of long ago.

I wander through wild poppy fields

Underfoot the dark earth yields….

I see the flowering fruit trees start

Their blossoms gather round my heart…

I hear the sparrows sing with joy

And bees their busy wings employ.

In those lost lands I saw your face

And now I long for your embrace.

Are you real,am I deceived?

From this earth we all must leave.

Earth to earth and ash to ash

Glory,pride and boasting pass.

Leave me soon,my dearest one

For I,too, will be called on.

True love lasts and truth is real

Keep  to that and such ideals..

Earth to earth, we rest in clay

We must give all self away

Softly on this earth I roam

Seeking still my love and home,

for until the very end

Love and kindnss may descend.

Soft as wings of butterflies

Tears well up and wet my eyes.

My heart has melted into yours

Thus we grow and die like flowers

I went out  tempted by  gold sun and flowers

I went out  tempted by  gold sun and flowers
On the anniversary of my loss
I looked at roses, tears fell  down in showers

I wandered round the market for long hours
No-one home to  worry or get cross
I went out   to admire  both sun and flowers

Then suddenly black clouds moved in and glowered
But in the flowering rose I was engrossed
I looked at it while tears fell  down as showers

I  am one with nature as she powers
The rain outside, the rain inside,dear God.
I went out looking for your favourite flowers

I am silent in the lonely wooden tower
Where Jesus gazed, where dwelt the first white dove
I fondly wish the home was once more ours

With my naked hand, I touch your glove
Remembering  all the days of  our sweet love
I went out  for  the sun and  soft white flowers
I looked at roses, tears fell ─overpowered.

Extremism and Israel/Gaza

Extractqwdfbn.

For two generations, in what we can call the Yitzhak Rabin era, the leaders of Israel and of Palestinians tried, sometimes dysfunctionally and bloodily, to address this wrong and find two homelands around the pre-1967 borders.

But sometime in the 1990s, a mental shift occurred. Extremism grew on the Israeli side, exemplified by the ultranationalist who murdered Rabin, but it exploded on the Palestinian side. Palestinian extremism took on many of the shapes recognizable in extremism everywhere.

First, the question shifted from “What to do?” to “Whom to blame?” The debates were less about how to take steps toward a livable future and more about who is responsible for the sins of the past. The central activity became moral condemnation, with vindication as the ultimate goal.

Second, the dream of total victory became the only acceptable dream. In normal politics, certain longstanding debates are never really settled; competing parties instead reach an accommodation that works in the moment. But extremists stop trying to win partial victories, insisting that someday they will get everything they want — that someday the other side will magically disappear.

Third, extremists over time replace strategic thinking with theatrical thinking. Strategic thinking is about the relation of means to ends: How do we use what we have to get to where we want to go? Theatrical thinking is both more cynical and more messianic: How do we create a martyrdom performance that will show the world how oppressed we are?

Palestinian politics has shifted. It shifted from 1967 thinking to 1948 thinking. If you read the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas’s April 30 speech or much of the commentary published over the past week, it’s clear that some powerful Palestinians now believe that the creation of the state of Israel is the wrong that needs to be addressed, not the expansion and occupation.

Grant us,love, the grace to see and fight

I can’t write poems about   the Fall
Plastic window,    curtain calls
Coloured  cclothes pegs and the iron
Men with names like ,Bill and Brian

I can’t write poems  about  my school
Nor on  algebra  rings offools
I hate to eat from plates at dinner
Am I   on the spectrum, not a sinner?

I cannot write about the Christ
Evoking grief at  sacrifice.
Pedophilia   hid by men
Men whose lies  might come again

Oh, what is left this world, its might?
Find the grace to see and  fight

David played and it pleased the Lord

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack in everything

Then love itself was gone

I heard there was a sacred chord

There’s no-one left to torture

We don’t  like babies, anyhow.

But does it have to come so cruel, so  very bright?

It pleased the Lord

A sacred chord

We’ve seen the Nations rise and fall

We’re just the little Jews who wrote the Bible

Jesus was a sailor

Forsaken, almost human

He sank beneath your wisdom

Only drowning men could see him

That’s no way to say,goodbye

I have tried in my way to be free.

I swear by this song and by all I’ve done wrong

Dance me to the end of love

Climb on your tears and be silent

Oh, broken love.

Gentle this soul

The sun give over to splendour

Bless the continuous stutter

Of the Word being made into flesh

 

It’s a kind of evolution that’s begun

My finger nails keep breaking,they’re so thin
And my hair has forty partings,love has gone
It’s falling out,I looks like  an  old cat
There is no glory as it is so flat

I don’t know if my skin will will  join in too
We need  more protein, eggs and  vindaloo.
The Indian ladies’ hair looks very glam
Rubbed with olive oil and brushed out femme

Why don’t we wear hats and veils  when out
Convert to Islam, with a hijab flaunt.
Mystery attracts the aging man
Wear silk clothes or nothing if you  can

Our God is hair and so we  sacrifice
Days and weeks of out eternal life

 

Bones knitting

Why not do more  exercise, it’s fun
Come to Gaza, with the sea and sun
Run away from  bullets, here they come

Butterflies are  bullets and they’re bombs
Bombs don’t have to weigh  a million tons
Why not do more  running, it’s  such fun

 

It makes  us  women dash from those  big guns
Tear gas makes us cry till overcome
Run away from  bullets; watch them come~~

It’s a kind of evolution  that’s begun
Wiping out the inferior type of man
Why not see bones knitting, it’s  such fun

It’s enough to change a harlot to a nun
See  the children savaged now and them
Dart away from  bullets, Hate  again

Many’ve left us for the world to come
The God is harsh ans cold, he’s  called Vulcan
Why not do more  exercise, it’s  fun
Running from   those bullets, gassed and stunned

Scraps of paper and how Picasso made my legs give way

Photo0049

When I was first doing this I found it very anxiety producing as it was unknown territory.I never saw any when I was a young person.Then when I was 21 I saw a Monet.After that I loved all those Impressionists and Cezanne.Finally seeing a Picasso made me fall to the ground.My knees went weak and my legs gave way.It happened again when I saw Lincoln Cathedral floodlit.I hope not to do  any more falls as I am not so  rubbery as  I used to be.
Is there anyone else who has had an  experience like that?