"Poetry Is Everywhere; It Just Needs Editing"

Ladybird photo © Gabrielle Warr, 2012

 

This entry is a shameless plug for my newly published poem, 'Northern Line', which appears on the Ink Sweat & Tears blog/e-zine on this link: http://www.inksweatandtears.co.uk/pages/?p=3509

When I posted the link to the poem on my Facebook page the other day, my artist friend Gabrielle Warr sent me the above picture, which of course went perfectly with the poem. So I asked her if I could add it to this entry and she agreed.

'Northern Line' is my contribution to the mythology of the London Underground. It is also based on something that really happened to me and which later, in my head and heart, became something greater and stranger than the actual event.

I would like to write a whole series of poems on the Underground. It could happen some day.

As for the quotation which gave this entry its title, it is from American poet James Tate.
 

Derek Walcott's 'Sea Grapes': Homeward Bound through Classical Surf

 

SEA GRAPES (Derek Walcott)


I have written a little about Derek Walcott before, and my feeling that among living poets he has perhaps the greatest ability to unite the personal and the epic. 'Sea Grapes' is an outstanding example. Its theme reminded me irresistibly of the lyrics of Sting's song 'History Will Teach Us Nothing':


Our written history is a catalogue of crime
The sordid and the powerful, the architects of time
The mother of invention, the oppression of the mild
The constant fear of scarcity, aggression as its child


Hardly an exact parallel - maybe it's just the vibe that is similar. Still, 'Sea Grapes' could be saying that while "the classics can console", in historical and even personal terms we don't necessarily learn anything from them except for the fact that patterns repeat themselves again and again.


This brings nobody peace. The ancient war
between obsession and responsibility will
never finish and has been the same

for the sea-wanderer or the one on shore now
wriggling on his sandals to walk home...


The strange thing about this poem for me, though, is the fact that it seems to have a double meaning. One meaning is about the lessons of Homer's Odyssey and other such tales, and the necessary limitations of those lessons. This is the intellectual meaning, I think. (It also reminds me that I know very little about the classics such as Homer.) But the other meaning is emotional and I am not sure if it is implicit in the poem or if I have projected it onto the words. For me, it is a poem about homesickness.


That sail which leans on light,
tired of islands,
a schooner beating up the Caribbean

for home...


I have never been to the Caribbean - my closest encounter yet is from a couple of visits to the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, when I swam in the Caribbean Sea. But when reading it, I see that almost blinding light striking off waves in constant refracted motion, and the "exhausted surf" beating up onto the shore, creating a dragging, percussive yet soothing rush of pebbles. While I have seen and heard these in different parts of the world, I associate these images most with the sea off Victoria on Vancouver Island, where I grew up. (I took this photo in June, on the ferry between the mainland and Vancouver Island.)

Thus, this becomes for me a poem with an almost educational dimension, alongside the equally or more important emotional dimension. It's a poem which is both intellectual and state-of-mind, and that may be the best of all.

Edinburgh: The Scottish Poetry Library and Robert Fergusson

Last weekend I went to Edinburgh for a friend's wedding. It was a Spanish-Scottish wedding and both kilts and flamenco dresses were featured, which was pretty great.

On the Friday afternoon after I arrived, I walked up the Royal Mile under a startling blue sky and went to the Scottish Poetry Library. Here are a few pictures I took:

Nearby there was a monument to the eighteenth-century Edinburgh poet Robert Fergusson. An important influence on Robert Burns, he wrote poems including the Edinburgh masterpiece Auld Reikie, before his tragic death at the age of 24.

Finally, here is a completely gratuitous picture of the Sherlock Holmes statue near Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's birthplace, which has recently been restored to its place.

Thom Gunn's 'In Santa Maria del Popolo' and Caravaggio's Conversion on the Way to Damascus

This painting is Caravaggio's Conversion on the Way to Damascus, painted in 1601. It is in the church of Santa Maria del Popolo, in Rome, and I saw it when I visited Rome with a friend three years ago.

By then, the painting had already held a great deal of personal significance for me for close to fifteen years. In my last year of high school, when I was sixteen years old, I took a course called Western Civilization, which (oddly enough) was based on the TV series and book Civilisation by British historian Kenneth Clark. I had never before taken a class which gave me such a good overview of the course of Western history over the last two thousand years, particularly in terms of religion, literature, art, architecture and music, and how they related to the events of history. I discovered Caravaggio and this painting through that class, as well as the paintings of JMW Turner, and Bernini's Apollo and Daphne statue, which we also saw in Rome. It was definitely a pivotal moment for me.

Seeing the painting in real life was a very moving experience. It is an incredibly powerful work, and it depicts an extremely crucial moment in one of my favourite Biblical books, the Acts of the Apostles. I'm always glad to not be disappointed when I see something like a work of art that I have waited to see for many years.

I have been thinking about the intersection between visual art and poetry: the places where they meet, or art inspired by poetry, or poetry inspired by art. I haven't reached many conclusions yet, except that the two mediums do two very different things and so it is hard to do one inspired by the other. Art is more immediate and visceral; poetry is subtle, cumulative and chronological - and even by saying that I am aware that I am simplifying far too much.

I tried to write a poem about this painting years ago, when I was about twenty. I doubt it was more than semi-successful. When I lived in Dublin and was discovering the wonderful art of Jack Yeats, W B Yeat's brother, I wrote a few poems inspired by his paintings, particularly For the Road and The Singing Horseman, both of which are in the National Gallery in Dublin. For the Road came out quite well, The Singing Horseman somewhat less so. I have a poster of his There Is No Night, which I used to go look at in the Hugh Lane Gallery. I love it but it has always bewildered me in some way I can't explain. I tried to write a poem about it - in fact, I tried on and off for at least a few years. I never really succeeded, which is still a source of frustration for me.

This is the poem 'In Santa Maria del Popolo', by Thom Gunn. Again, at this point of intersection between art and poetry, I am left uncertain. It is a rather analytical poem, more about Caravaggio's intentions and the poet's somewhat cynical questions, than about the painting itself, or the scene it depicts.


IN SANTA MARIA DEL POPOLO (Thom Gunn)

D H Lawrence's 'Shadows': "I Am In the Hands of the Unknown God"

I have never been a big fan of D H Lawrence, but that has more to do with the fact that I had to study Love Among the Haystacks in my first year of university than with anything else. I was unimpressed by the gender stereotypes and the professor's comment that little girls adored horses because they were a boyfriend substitute. (I was still riding at the time.)

Anyway, this inspiring poem has gone a long way towards rehabilitating Lawrence for me. It is also perfect for the time of year.

The painting is another John Atkinson Grimshaw, Figure in the Moonlight.



SHADOWS (D H Lawrence)


And if tonight my soul may find her peace
in sleep, and sink in good oblivion,
and in the morning wake like a new-opened flower
then I have been dipped again in God, and new-created.

And if, as weeks go round, in the dark of the moon
my spirit darkens and goes out, and soft strange gloom
pervades my movements and my thoughts and words
then I shall know that I am walking still
with God, we are close together now the moon’s in shadow.

And if, as autumn deepens and darkens
I feel the pain of falling leaves, and stems that break in storms
and trouble and dissolution and distress
and then the softness of deep shadows folding,
folding around my soul and spirit, around my lips
so sweet, like a swoon, or more like the drowse of a low, sad song
singing darker than the nightingale, on, on to the solstice
and the silence of short days, the silence of the year, the shadow,
then I shall know that my life is moving still
with the dark earth, and drenched
with the deep oblivion of earth’s lapse and renewal.

And if, in the changing phases of man’s life
I fall in sickness and in misery
my wrists seem broken and my heart seems dead
and strength is gone, and my life
is only the leavings of a life:

and still, among it all, snatches of lovely oblivion, and snatches of renewal
odd, wintry flowers upon the withered stem, yet new, strange flowers
such as my life has not brought forth before, new blossoms of me

then I must know that still
I am in the hands of the unknown God,
he is breaking me down to his own oblivion
to send me forth on a new morning, a new man.

"Archetypal Dreams": Anne Wilkinson's 'TV Hockey' and the Canadian Obsession

I took this picture in 2009, at the World Hockey Championships in Bern, Switzerland. It was during the gold medal game between Canada and Russia, one of the most classic rivalries in hockey history. Canada lost, but it was still a great game (said the Canadian, graciously.)

It is not really possible to describe to people of most nationalities - except for the Finns, the Swedes, the Russians, the Czechs, and a handful of other nations - what hockey represents to Canadians. For one thing, in most countries you have to call it "ice hockey", and if you're Canadian, that just doesn't seem right. What the English call "hockey" is not hockey, for one thing - it is grass hockey or field hockey.

Most of the teams of the NHL (the confusingly named National Hockey League, the world's number one professional ice hockey league) are now in the United States, with a relatively small number left in Canada, but most Canadians are of the opinion that Americans just do not get it. Some years ago, American TV channels trialled a way to get the tiny black puck to show up better: every time a player shot it at speed down the ice, it left a little fiery trail on the screen, like a miniature comet. It was absolutely ridiculous and Canadians were amused no end. But I've been told by the English as well that they find the play (and the puck) very hard to follow. I was completely bewildered by this when I first heard it. I think that the eye muscles of a Canadian simply develop in such a way that you have no problem following play in the average game, although occasionally the action moves so fast that you don't quite know what is happening - but that's all part of the excitement.

I believe that every single Canadian grows up with hockey at least to a certain extent and it seeps into your personality whether you are aware of it or not. I have very early memories of our old black and white TV, with a rotary channel dial that had to be held in place by (appropriately) black hockey stick tape. The jumpy, joyous theme music for Hockey Night In Canada sometimes races through my head unbidden - I must have heard it played thousands of times. My brother, Lucas Aykroyd, played hockey for several years like most Canadian boys do. He didn't go on to become a hockey player, but he is now a sports journalist and a leading world expert on hockey. Something like it was bound to happen.

I realised after I moved away that I was more Canadian than I previously thought. Given that I have one European parent and grew up going to Europe regularly - and also perhaps because I was the kind of child who doubted her own ability to "fit in" - I always felt at least semi-European while growing up. Having now lived in England and previously Ireland for many years (well, it's sort of Europe...) I feel more Canadian than I did before. I suppose this is all inevitable. But I certainly have a rosy nostalgia around hockey that I never thought I would have. I love the rare opportunities I get to watch the game, especially when my brother has given me tickets to see the Worlds. I thrilled to the gold medal game from the Vancouver 2010 Olympics, where a lightning-fast goal from the Canadian star Sidney Crosby sealed the game in overtime against the Americans. (Apparently the entire country exploded at that moment, particularly in Vancouver.) Perceptively, an English commentator said: "To understand what this game means to Canadians, you have to imagine the World Cup final, with England as one of the teams, at Wembley Stadium." I don't think he could have put it much better.

Hockey poetry seems like an unlikely concept, but it is out there and some of it is quite good. In his poem 'Hockey Players', the great Canadian poet Al Purdy called it 'this combination of ballet and murder'. Michael Ondaatje and other poets have also explored the area.


TV HOCKEY (Anne Wilkinson)


I wasn't too familiar with Anne Wilkinson, although her name is ranked alongside that of Dorothy Livesay and P K Page, both Canadian legends. However, this poem really captured me. I realised that there was something about its sensory details and the shape of its movements that struck very deep. This is what I mean about hockey seeping into the personality of every Canadian; it's there even if you hardly think of it. The players do indeed "brood in boxes" and "stumble from their cages", and then they become birds - it is one of the fastest team sports in the world and I find football (soccer!) slow and hard to watch in comparison.

This poem, with its multitude of natural images including the "little black moon" of the puck, seems to invoke a primal spiritual ceremony or the movements of animals in the wild. And yet, if you are familiar with the sport, it is very recognizably about hockey. I love the way that it is familiar, but still casts a new and strange light on something that we Canadians think we know so well.

Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi at the Mosaic Rooms: "The Jewels of Minutes and Hours"

Leave that glass of memory to memory -
       let its essence transmute all these nights into gold

Leave the voice of Ali Farka Toure
       soaring
       through the silvered light of that room,
       a room inlaid with the jewels of minutes and hours


- Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi, from 'Garden Statues'


The work of Arabic-language Sudanese poet Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi burst into my life earlier this year when I saw a link posted somewhere to the poem 'Small Fox'. A small poem, like its title, but also like a perfect flower or a striking piece of jewellery. Browsing through other poems on the Poetry Translation Centre website, which has been working with him for some years now, I found poems about love and longing, Sudanese history, the imprint of the Nile on Africa, the artistic legacies of Sudan alongside those of other civilisations, and many other subjects. Although I would love to read the poems in the original Arabic (and definitely can't), I was amazed at the delicate flow of images, the emotional integrity and the intricate detail that they presented.

I heard Al-Raddi read at Poetry Parnassus this summer and it was a big highlight. He also very graciously signed my chapbook of his poems in translation. He is currently in the UK for a residency at London's Petrie Museum, where he has been working on a series of poems relating to their ancient Sudanese artifacts. He has been a legendary poet in Sudan for many years and held an influential position at the Al-Sudani newspaper as cultural editor before losing his job for political reasons. His life and work is a reflection of the fact that writing poetry can be a controversial, volatile and dangerous act in certain parts of the world. The fact that he is a pre-eminent poet in a country like Sudan, where poetry is the number one art form, is also an indication of his stature in African literature.

This week I went to an evening of Al-Raddi's work at the Mosaic Rooms, an institute for the promotion of Arab-world arts and culture. It was chaired by Sarah Maguire, the founder and director of the Poetry Translation Centre and an acclaimed poet, who has translated many of Al-Raddi's poems. It was a great evening in an intimate space - Tower House on the corner of the Cromwell Road, which also happens to be the building which formerly housed LAMDA, my employers (although before my time) - and we were surrounded by the lovely crystalline-organic paintings of the Moroccan painter Yamou, who is currently featured in an exhibition there. It was also great to see such a diverse crowd; English and Sudanese poetry enthusiasts were both well represented, among others.

The evening fell into three main parts: Al-Raddi and Sarah Maguire reading some of his older poems in the original and in translation; a discussion with Joanna Oyediran, the Sudan Programme Officer at the Open Society Initiative for East Africa; and the reading of some of the poems that have resulted from Al-Raddi's Petrie Museum residence. Among others, we heard the poem 'In the Company of Michelangelo', which was inspired by one of Al-Raddi's earlier visits to the UK and exhibitions of Michelangelo's work which he saw here - it beautifully evokes the universality of the great artist's vision: "I left you radiant,/resplendent,/wherever your throne sets down".

The discussion with Joanna Oyediran touched on the recent creation of South Sudan and its implications for regional and African politics and art. I was very struck by her description of a map of Sudan where South Sudan had been painted out as though it didn't exist and had never existed. Al-Raddi's work sits at a challenging crossroads; he writes in Arabic but is an African poet, and Sudan is a recently fragmented country which has struggled repeatedly with civil war and rulership by oppressive governments. The poems from the Petrie residence were fascinating, but Al-Raddi declined to tell us exactly which pieces in the museum they referred to; apparently the poems are still works-in-progress, and all will be revealed in time. I also really enjoyed the lively question and answer session at the end, and Al-Raddi's comments on the importance of translation, which as he pointed out equips the poet with different skills and a different style in their approach to poetry. He said that "attempting to write a poem is like embarking on an adventure", and that this was the spirit in which he'd approached the Petrie residence.

Here are a couple of photos from the evening, courtesy of the Mosaic Rooms. First, Sarah Maguire and Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi reading:

And the panel discussion:

This was a wonderful evening and I look forward to further exploring the haunting and complex work of this African poet.


Photos © The Mosaic Rooms

Paul Celan on London's Mapesbury Road

I have just started reading Homage to Paul Celan, a collection of essays, translations, poems and miscellania about Celan, edited by Ilya Kaminsky and G C Waldrep. Kaminsky's introduction begins: "If there is a country named Celania - as Julia Kristeva once proposed - its holy texts are filled with doubt, and they overcome this doubt almost successfully, with words of wrenching, uncompromised beauty." Pretty irresistible.

It's a couple of years now since I went to the Celan/Poetry after the Holocaust evening at Southbank, with readings by A S Byatt (among others) and musical settings of some of the poems by the Michael Nyman Band. Around the same time, the Saison Poetry Library had an exhibition about Celan's poem 'Mapesbury Road' but unfortunately I missed this. Mapesbury Road, in Kilburn, is closer to where I used to live in west London but it is not somewhere I ever went. Celan visited his aunt, a Holocaust survivor, there in 1968. There is also a glancing reference to the assassination of Martin Luther King and the attempted murder of the West German student leader Rudi Dutschke, both around the same time in 1968.

The poem can be found on the BBC link below, although sadly the radio episode can't be accessed any more. It is a short poem which balances between violence and tenderness, and pivots around stillness. All in a few brief lines.


MAPESBURY ROAD (Paul Celan)


At work one day some months ago, I took a book order over the phone which was to an address on Mapesbury Road. I was quite transported when the customer gave me their address. So much so, that apparently I neglected to put the book in the envelope. The customer very politely told me a few days later that they had received an empty envelope in the post. This was a lesson to me to not let poetry annihilate practicality in my life. (It was also funny.)

I have not been reading Celan so much recently and I know I have to pace myself with him, but I think Homage to Paul Celan may inspire me to go back yet again.