National Poetry Day: Refuge and Carolyn Forché's 'The Boatman'

Today is National Poetry Day in the UK, and this year's theme is 'Refuge'.

On a global scale, the world is experiencing the highest levels of displacement ever recorded. On a more personal level, I have friends who have become refugees this year. And while the disastrous war in Ukraine or the horrors of migrants drowning in the Mediterranean may be prominent in the thoughts of many, they are just the tip of an iceberg which includes mass displacement in and from countries such as Congo, Afghanistan and so many others, due to war, natural disasters, famine and a host of other reasons. Even for those who have fled or claimed asylum under marginally less terrible conditions than some others, the emotional impact (at the very least) is shocking.

Carolyn Forché's 'The Boatman', from her most recent and truly wonderful collection In the Lateness of the World, speaks in the voice of a taxi driver who is also a Syrian refugee. I find the juxtaposition of the incredible horror of what he's endured to arrive in a (relatively, apparently) safe city, with his determination to "see that you arrive safely, my friend, I will get you there", almost unbearable. Forché brilliantly conveys the contrasts between the warm taxi and the filthy, dangerous rubber boat, the hotel in Rome with its portraits of films stars and the dead child floating in the water. How surreal it is to hear someone in a calm environment quietly describe the inhumanity they endured to arrive there. And there is also an underlying sense that death is never far away. 'The Boatman', as a title and the self-description of "the boatman, driving a taxi at the end of the world", makes me think of Charon, who took the souls of the dead across the river Styx. 

On this melancholy note, please enjoy National Poetry Day and the many ways in which it explores 'Refuge', some surely more comforting than others. 

Image: Syrian and Iraqi refugees reach the coastal waters of Lesbos in Greece, after having crossed from Turkey. Author: Ggia. Used under Creative Commons license

National Poetry Day 2020: Vision

 

Today is National Poetry Day in the UK, and the theme for 2020 is 'Vision' or 'See It Like a Poet'. There are many wonderful resources and poems available on the National Poetry Day website, and a lot more out there generally on the internet (even more so than usual this year, of course...) 

Wandsworth Art has done a 'Wandsworth is poetry' feature to mark the occasion, and delightfully, I am included as a Battersea/Wandsworth poet, alongside excellent contemporary poets and the greats of the past such as Edward Thomas and Thomas Hardy. You can read it here: https://wandsworthart.com/wandsworth-is-poetry/ 

(Thank you so much to Hilaire, another poet who lives locally, for getting me on this list!) 

Black Bough Poetry's 'Deep Time Volume 1' issue, published in print during the summer, is now also online and includes my poem 'Open Ocean'. You can download it here. Buying the print issue is also highly recommended, particularly as the artwork is beautiful and more so in print. You can buy it here in the UK and also on Amazon in other countries. 

Muse Pie Press, who have published several of my short poems over the years in Shot Glass Journal, recently crowd-sourced a 'pandemic poem' from writers who they have previously published. We were asked to contribute a line responding to our feelings about the COVID-19 pandemic, which could then be woven into a long poem. You can now read the ambitious and startling result here. I could ask you to guess my line, but rather than do that, I'll tell you that it's 'Waking to light's anxiety - the distance of all things'. 

New Poem Published for National Poetry Day, & Sherlock Holmes Essay

I never feel as though I end up fully participating in National Poetry Day, because if I'm in London I'm working (it's the first Thursday in October) and if I'm off work, it's typically because I am out of town. I am currently in Canada, which also meant an eight-hour time difference. However, "participating fully" isn't really the point: enjoying and promoting poetry is, and there's always a way to do that at least a little.

The theme of National Poetry Day this year was Truth. I was delighted that the wonderful Ink Sweat & Tears chose my poem 'Speaks true who speaks shadow' as one of fifteen poems in total that they published across five days, on and around National Poetry Day. You can read the poem here: http://www.inksweatandtears.co.uk/pages/?p=20142&fbclid=IwAR2vfh2nSOp8A9r8M19eIc_C3pxSr6ILZgHb4tknfDDplzvvUVsWut58PuQ

The title of the poem is taken from Paul Celan's poem 'Speak you too' (the translation by John Felstiner), and my poem is dedicated to Alexander Litvinenko, who was assassinated in London in 2006. I have always been fascinated and saddened by Litvinenko's story, and I recently saw the play A Very Expensive Poison at the Old Vic, which is about his life and death, so it has all been on my mind.

On another subject, and really not poetry but I'm going to mention it anyway, I've published another essay about Sherlock Holmes in the new collection Sherlock Holmes is Everywhere!, published by Belanger Books. The essay is essentially about how I find Sherlock Holmes in London, and it's just one of a huge variety of essays which locate Holmes anywhere and everywhere. The Belanger Books website is here, but you will find that it takes you to Amazon to purchase the book, so you can also search for it there.

New Poems Published in The Interpreter's House and Ink Sweat & Tears

I think that poem publications are much like buses in that often there are none for ages and then there are a few at once. Or at least two.

This week, my poem 'Healer' appeared in Ink Sweat & Tears, as part of their National Poetry Day feature (which they have a tradition of turning into National Poetry Week). The next day, my poem 'In Paris' was published in The Interpreter's House, which has just moved to a new online format.

I wrote 'Healer' a couple of years ago when I did a residency with the Poetry School and London Parks & Gardens Trust, in Cleary Garden, a historic public garden in the City of London. Although it was named after Fred Cleary, who campaigned for public spaces in the City, Cleary Garden was originally founded by Joseph Brandis, the subject of the poem. There aren't a lot of details about Brandis (that I'm aware of) but he was a member of the Cordwainers Company, and he did such a good job of transforming that particular bomb site into a garden that the Queen visited in 1949. The theme of this year's National Poetry Day was 'Change', so the poem was perfect for the Ink Sweat & Tears feature.

'In Paris' was written last year, after my last visit to Paris (a weekend meet-up with my brother). I've now been reading Paul Celan for over 20 years, and his importance in my writing and reading life can hardly be over-estimated. I've written a few poems more or less inspired by or dedicated to him, but this is definitely the one I'm happiest with. I always think of Celan in Paris, although, as the poem says, I've never gone as far as Pont Mirabeau (he lived nearby and is presumed to have jumped to his death from that bridge).



Photo: Cleary Garden, London. Taken by Clarissa Aykroyd

National Poetry Day: Osip Mandelstam's 'The Twilight of Freedom'

Today is National Poetry Day in the UK, and the theme for 2017 is 'Freedom'.

For this year's theme, the poem I have chosen is by Russian poet Osip Mandelstam: 'The Twilight of Freedom' (translated by Clarence Brown and WS Merwin).

This is one of Mandelstam's earlier poems, from his collection Stone (1913). "O sun, judge, people, desolate/are the years into which you are rising!" he writes - presciently, considering that the regime had not yet arrived under which he would eventually die (in 1938, in a transit camp, after years of persecution).

The lines "In the deepening twilight the earth swims into the nets/and the sun can't be seen" made me think of Isaiah 25:7. Mandelstam urges courage, but with a keen, sad understanding of the extent to which the world has drifted from what it should be, in humanity's insatiable quest for power.

National Poetry Day 2016: Messages

Today is National Poetry Day. I seldom manage to do much for this occasion, but, well, I'm thinking poetry. There are many events taking place around the UK, which you can discover by visiting the website, or just with a bit of online browsing.

This year's theme is 'Messages'. This is once again a theme which could encompass every poem, but these two seemed appropriate. Enjoy!


THE LETTER ALWAYS ARRIVES AT ITS DESTINATION (Niall Campbell)

THE LIGHTKEEPER (Carolyn Forché)

New Poem Published for National Poetry Day (Week)

Nikola Tesla in Colorado Springs, 1899. Photograph by Dickenson V. Alley. Public domain


I was in Canada on 8 October - National Poetry Day in the UK - and with the time difference I slept through most of the happy occasion. However, on 11 October Ink Sweat and Tears published my poem 'Thinking of Tesla on the District Line',  as part of their program of poems for the week following National Poetry Day.

This year's theme for National Poetry Day was Light. I wrote the poem some time ago as a little tribute to Nikola Tesla, a favourite scientist, and it seemed to fit the theme well so I sent it off to Ink Sweat & Tears. I don't usually have favourite scientists, and it is fair to say that rather than really being a poem about science, this is a Famous Dead Guy Crush poem. Tesla was a remarkable man. The glimpse of lights from the District line is real, by the way. I think you will find it around Gloucester Road, though I can never remember exactly.

National Poetry Day 2014: Remember

Today, 2 October, is National Poetry Day.

I'm sure it's partly because it's a weekday (I think it's always a weekday), but it seems as though I never end up doing a whole lot on National Poetry Day. I'm still not sure if I will be attending any events tonight. However, I am wearing this top. (In case you wonder about the English, my friend who lives in Japan gave it to me. They have a deep love there for funny English on t-shirts.)

I may or may not be going to events later, but I'm delighted that I have a poem up today on the wonderful Ink Sweat & Tears, who are publishing poems for a few days on the 'Remember' theme. The poem is called 'Against Remembering' and you can read it here.

I find the 'Remember' theme quite difficult to get my head around, simply because virtually all poetry (possibly even more than other art forms) seems to deal with memory in one way or another. Presumably the theme was chosen to coincide with the 1914 centenary, but war poetry is far from being the only focus (though it is one focus): remembrance and memory are being interpreted in a wide variety of ways, including research on the nation's most-memorised poems (you can look at the #thinkofapoem hashtag on Twitter, or the work of The Poetry and Memory Project.)

Because of the breadth of the theme, I wasn't sure which other poems might be most suitable to highlight. When I thought of favourite poems, almost every single beloved poem I have ever had came to mind (and I have had many beloved poems), or else none came to mind.

Eventually, though, I thought I would post the below poems, which all deal with aspects of and approaches to memory. I thought almost right away of Edward Thomas, but again, it seems as though every one of his poems is a memory poem: sometimes about anticipating memory. This is just one of them.

Enjoy, and I hope you're having a great National Poetry Day.


EARLIEST MEMORY (Sharon Olds)


REMEMBERING CARRIGSKEEWAUN (Michael Longley)



THE LONG SMALL ROOM (Edward Thomas)


The long small room that showed willows in the west
Narrowed up to the end the fireplace filled,
Although not wide. I liked it. No one guessed
What need or accident made them so build.

Only the moon, the mouse and the sparrow peeped
In from the ivy round the casement thick.
Of all they saw and heard there they shall keep
The tale for the old ivy and older brick.

When I look back I am like moon, sparrow and mouse
That witnessed what they could never understand
Or alter or prevent in the dark house.
One thing remains the same - this my right hand

Crawling crab-like over the clean white page,
Resting awhile each morning on the pillow,
Then once more starting to crawl on towards age.
The hundred last leaves stream upon the willow.

"Close My Eyes and I'm a Vessel": Water Poems for National Poetry Day

Snow Storm, JMW Turner, exhibited 1842. Tate Britain.



It is once again National Poetry Day in the UK, and this year's theme is 'Water'.

I wanted to share three of my favourite water-based poems: 'Diving Into the Wreck' by Adrienne Rich, 'The Sea Is History' by Derek Walcott, and 'Rivers Into Seas' by Lynda Hull. It may not come as a huge surprise to those who know me that all of these water-based poems are also sea-based.


DIVING INTO THE WRECK (Adrienne Rich)


THE SEA IS HISTORY (Derek Walcott)


RIVERS INTO SEAS (Lynda Hull)


Enjoy.

National Poetry Day: 'Stars' by Keith Douglas

Milky Way photo by jurvetson. Used under Creative Commons license



Today is National Poetry Day in the UK, and this year's theme is 'Stars'. (It also happens to be a year to the day since I started writing this blog, but I think that may be a subject for another entry.)

Landlocked and lightbound in London, I don't see as much of the stars as I used to growing up in a small city/large town in Canada. When I am back in Canada and I see Orion (generally, the only constellation I really recognise...) and its attendant stars, a pang strikes me. I remember travelling to Australia and New Zealand and being confounded by how different the night sky was. Everything was in the wrong place (actually, I'd noticed that even on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico) and I could see the Southern Cross, which really was thrilling. In recent years, I have been stunned by the wash of stars across the sky in the Sahara and in the Western Desert in Australia. They were like sand and they made the sky white.

Stars can signify so many things. They tend to lead me to thoughts of the smallness of human beings and the overwhelming vastness of the universe; questions of faith and eternity. They can also instill a feeling of loneliness, or give life to striving and attainment. It is very much dependent on the context, like so many things.

I have chosen Keith Douglas's poem 'Stars' for this National Poetry Day. I noticed that the National Poetry Day website had featured this poem in one of its suggested lesson plans for teachers and students, but I had been thinking of writing about it for some time and this is the perfect moment.


STARS (Keith Douglas)


At first I thought that this might be a poem reflecting Douglas's experiences during World War II in the deserts of North Africa, but it is dated 1939 and he did not go to the Middle East until 1941. It seems that the hills he describes in this poem are English and that he was a university student when he wrote it. The poem is dedicated to Antoinette, with whom he was at Oxford and who was either a girlfriend or someone he pursued (I'm not quite sure about this.)

Poets often seem like prophets (or perhaps they are, at least occasionally) but this seems especially the case with Douglas. I could be projecting onto this poem but one could easily assume when reading it that he had already gone to the war. (Of course, whenever the poem was written during the year 1939, everyone knew that the war was coming or that it was going to last for some time.) He writes of the stars as a vast army "marching in extended order", as "comrades". It's easy to imagine the starry army above reflecting a human army below, and soldiers seizing moments of peace amidst death and darkness.

There could be something a little whimsical about this poem - "greetings of ethereal officers", and so on - but the final lines undercut it: "Yes, we look up with pain/at distant comrades and plains we cannot tread." Although Douglas was to write finer, more accomplished poems - he would only have been 18 or 19 when he wrote this - this is one of his truest and most distinguishing marks, and one of the hardest to bear: his brutal, unflinching honesty. When I read those lines I wonder at his state of mind. Knowing that his own death was coming, and soon, is a theme throughout his poems. It's hard to know if it was some sort of death wish, or just a stern realism about his situation, or something else. There is something in the conclusion of this poem that bears out Ted Hughes's comments on Douglas, in his introduction to the Faber Collected Poems. Hughes speaks of a "passionate, fatalistic outlook ...the gallantry a cool acceptance of the worst possible fate. The source of the stage-lighting of this whole performance is, perhaps, that thing difficult to face - a vision of his own early death, his own death already foresuffered."

I am still trying to figure out why Keith Douglas's poetry blew my mind so comprehensively when I started reading him about a year and a half ago. This really does not happen to me often with such speed and force, not since my teens. Hughes's introduction to Douglas touches on some of it. "The dominant component of Douglas's line," says Hughes, "suggests a masculine movement, a nimble, predatory attack, hard-edged with a quick and clean escape." I have a liking for poetry with a certain masculine and muscular quality to it, which also has something to do with my love of Louis MacNeice, among others (see "Manly Men" for more details - I should probably have a Manly Men tagline.) But I found this comment from Hughes's essay particularly haunting, as it reflects something that I quickly came to feel about Douglas: "The music is familiar and intimate, like the inner voice of one's own voice, yet a desolate sort of music, closer to the crying of a bird than to the massed organ tones of great abbeys audible in [Wilfred] Owen." This is spot-on. When I started reading Douglas, there were aspects that felt so close to my own perceptions and experience (and this in the work of someone whose life was very different from my own) that I couldn't understand it, and still don't entirely.

Anyway, I have departed from the original idea of this entry, the National Poetry Day theme of 'Stars'. There are a lot of great poems on the subject out there. This one is by a poet who, I suppose, fulfilled some of the star-related clichés about burning out rather than fading away. I am very glad to have discovered Keith Douglas, as sad as he sometimes makes me feel.

Have a great National Poetry Day!