Friday 28 December 2007

At the year's end with R K Singh

With kind permission of Indian poet R K Singh Poet-in-Residence has once again raided those wonderful exotic archives to find appropriate material with which to celebrate the end of another year in the life of planet Earth and its people.

My Gawd

Psalms or no psalms
workers of iniquity
shoot their arrows
with praising lips and God
flees to see their shrewd schemes.

Wintry Wind

wintry wind
bangs the window tonight
my thoughts agitate

c) R K Singh

David Pike's New Year

Here's another topical and atmospheric poem by kind permission of David Pike, much respected poet and editor of Pulsar Poetry Magazine. David's also the bardic force behind the Ligden Poetry Society; a merry band of poets who enjoy coming together in Wiltshire's rural pubs and inns to do their poetry-mic things.

New Year

At the stroke of midnight
a bloke with a watch
and a slow-burning match
lit a fuse;
a drunk and bemused audience
ooh~d and ah~d before
anything happened
in anticipation ~
by way of preparation
.

The sky erupted
in a kind of multi~coloured way,
something not entirely unexpected.
Later, when the booms and bangs had receded
to a faint whisper of burnt sticks
hurtling to earth
to kebab sots on the strand
and more innocent creatures

the crowd became restless, expanded
to merge and mingle in the narrow streets,
some of the more enlightened citizens
headed home
for soup and sleep
but the majority milled around
absorbing the sights and sounds
of sadness and euphoria,

a short while later
fights began,
someone smashed~up a van
while a goon dressed as a vicar
blew~up a selection
of dubious balloons,
and surprisingly (in view of the weather)
a group of buxom women
streaked up and down, around
then down and up...

until the rain began
and it was all over.

c) David Pike (www.pulsarpoetry.com)

Poet-in-Residence wishes all true poets around the world a happy and healthy poetic New Year

On translating a playwright's poetry

Thomas Bernhard was a great playwright. Of that there's no doubt. Works like his dark comedy Elizabeth and his Nazi study Heldenplatz are classics in Austro-German theatre. They can be translated straight off and are sure to work. No problem.
When it comes to poetry however his style is very theatrical and in translation it needs to be slightly otherwise or the poem stands the risk of merely translating into a rant against God, illness, poverty or whatever. A straight translation of Bernhard is therefore likely to fall at the first hurdle. Poet-in-Residence has reflected long and hard on his first translation of the first poem of Under the Iron Moon(trawl sidebar) and now seeks to bring into it some poetic qualities; some rustic sounding alliteration for instance. After all, Bernhard (1931-89) spent most of his time in the rural Alpine region of Salzkammergut. Here then is P-i-R's second version:

Untitled (1st poem)

The year is like the year a thousand years ago
we carry the jug and switch the rump of the cow
we scythe and bleat and know nothing of winter
we quaff our scrumpy and know nothing
and soon enough we'll all be forgotten
and the poetry perished like the snow before the house.

The year is like the year a thousand years ago
we peer in the woods as if in the stall of the world
we tell lies and make baskets for apples and pears
we snore while our perishing shoes
repose before the door of the house.

The year is like a thousand years ago
we know nothing
we know nothing of the end
of the sunken towns, of the flood in which the horses
and people were drowned.


P-i-R translated from
'Under the Iron Moon'
by Thomas Bernhard.

A Suitable Sonnet from William Shakespeare

Searching for the best words to express utter disgust and repugnance at the latest barbaric outrage Poet-in-Residence can do no better than offer the attentive reader William Shakespeare's sonnet 129. Human blood, that precious life sustaining liquid, was spilled on a city street yesterday as casually as a bottle of wine knocked over by a drunk at a New Year's Eve party. The world's blood lust is a shame on mankind.

Sonnet CXXIX

The expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action, and till action, lust
Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust,
Enjoyed no sooner but despised straight,
Past reason hunted, and no sooner had
Past reason hated as a swallowed bait,
On purpose laid to make the taker mad.

Mad in pursuit and in possession so,
Had, having and in quest, to have extreme,
A bliss in proof and proved, a very woe,
Before a joy proposed behind a dream.

All this the world well knows yet none knows well,
To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

Thursday 27 December 2007

Social Intercourse in Munich

Some of the German terms used in the poem are: Herr Ober the German term for a waiter. Helles a bright beer served from the tap. Prosit! is cheers and a Kumpel is a miner.

Social Intercourse in Munich

My fondness for the fermented brew
fetches me to Munich's Hofbrauhaus
where I'm crammed and scrambled
by an overeager Herr Ober
into one of the last gasp gaps
in the rows of horn-buttoned lederhosen
and rough wool socks

into the cosy
fermenting warmth
of stolid bums
along a wooden bench.

Bavarian bonhomie
is armed with its mugs of Helles!
bright and clear as an Alpine spring
and topped with froth
smilingly served by wide-eyed women
with eager bosoms overflowing their dirndls.

I find myself across from Odin and Alvis
and their prodigious portions
of steaming rectangular sausage
slotted into white bread rolls
which they are chomping and munching
with fat-lipped zeal.

Maybe here...
I can locate a way
through life's turbulent changes...

it could be that these consumable props
are simply lubricants
to loquaciousness and social intercourse

the noble bouquet
of the crisp clean beer
and
the steamy fragrance
of the grilled horseflesh
may cause these thick pink tongues
to be suitably oiled and greased
and ready to flap.

Bygone are the days
of sylvan primitives
with aurochs
and cauldrons of sour Germanic ale, I say

brewed from stale bread mash
a turbid mixture
cooked in woodland clearings
and quaffed
with half-baked myth, I add
ordering a monastery beer
in a dark brown bottle
flavoured by the hooded fishermen
of souls; my spiritual comrades
in the good Lord's army.

Bowls of bones arrive
simmered long
for chewing and sucking

and bowls
of burbling potato stew
and a basket of sliced black bread.

A painful time when children were knife-blade thin,
I add

as Odin and Alvis slurp the soup

Prosit! Kumpel!

says Odin to Alvis
easing his baldric a notch

and they raise their mugs

but not in my direction.

Let's all forget the toil of the day
grunts the dwarf
to his giant companion.

A Welshman
was once buried with his crocks of beer

I try...


c) Gwilym Williams 2007.
Like to read another of my Munich poems? Find On the Feldherrenhalle Steps at http://www.therecusant.moonfruit.com
Simply click on 'poems' in the Recusant sidebar and scroll down to Gwilym Williams.

Wednesday 26 December 2007

Another Thomas Bernhard poem

From Thomas Bernhard's collection 'Under the Iron of the Moon' here is P-i-R's (Austro-German to English) translation of the second poem in the sequence.

Untitled

Not many die
for a house
in the desert
or a bone-dry tree.

Not many die
for ash
that was fire
or for the wine
of a fallen king
to celebrate
a general's
torched fields.

Not many die
for one another
when the seeds drift
or in spring
when death and birds
turn clear skies black.

No,
not many.


c) Gwilym Williams 2007

Thomas Hardy's Christmas Reflection

There's more to Thomas Hardy than rustic tales of yokels leaning on coppice gates or squires and maids lounging in shady gardens as this hard-hitting 4-liner written in the poet's 84th year demonstrates.
The poem could almost have been written yesterday.

Christmas:1924

'Peace upon earth!' was said. We sing it,
And pay a million priests to bring it.
After two thousand years of mass
We've got as far as poison-gas.

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

Sunday 23 December 2007

Doug Hill, temporarily permanent

Canadian poet Doug Hill, also known as riverwriter, writes here of winter and one man's war with the elements. As one who ended up on the physio's table after his own grim winter, P-i-R is not in the spring of life by the way, I feel deeply for the poem's hero.

Doug has kindly given permission for his fine poem to be published on the Poet-in-Residence blogspot. Pour yourself a glass of your favourite Christmas poison and enjoy being temporarily permanent!

temporarily permanent

Snowflakes detached themselves
from the heavens
pixels in their multitudes
swarmed to earth
born on the wind
each insignificant
but together a force
to stall the countryside
mute the crackling
staccato of machines
and lock life in its cold
silent hug

The old man decided
to shovel his driveway and the walks
after breakfast
after lunch
after supper
and each time the snow lay waiting
howling drifting
pant cuff deep
over the boot tops
almost to the knees

When he staggered in
after each session
he was a little more tired
his joints a little more warped
his body sagged a little more
and he a little less
snow caked his parka a little more
his eyes blurred a little more
his corns ached a little more
and he a little less

The next day
he would face a little more
and feel a little less


c) - Doug Hill / riverwriter
Well worth a look is Doug's poetry blog at http://riverwriter.ca/wordcurrents/

From the Land of the Long White Cloud

3 delicious kiwifruits for Christmas courtesy of Owen Bullock co-editor with Patricia Prime of the twice yearly haiku and tanka journal Kokako published in New Zealand:

from Bernard Gadd, Papatoetoe, NZ :

you feed the horses
admire long delicate lips
your back is warm
I slip an apple slice
between your teeth

from Suzanne Vaassen, Waiheke Island, NZ:

all autumn
two rabbits fatten in the loft
at christmas
ten children
gape at father's killing knife

from Owen Bullock, Western Bay of Plenty, NZ :

a seagull
is here, its sound
is there


Wonderful. Even the place names are poems! P-i-R

Saturday 22 December 2007

Lao Tzu's Yuletide Message

the court is corrupt

the fields are overgrown with weeds
and the granaries are empty

there are those dressed in fineries
with swords at their sides
who are filled with food and drink
and possessed of too much wealth

this is taking the lead in robbery
and far indeed it is from the way

Gwilym Williams

poem based on D C Lau's 1964 Penguin Classics translation of the Tao Te Ching
verse 121,121a

Walt Whitman's Persian Lesson

A Persian Lesson

For his o'erarching and last lesson the greybeard sufi,
In the fresh scent of the morning in the open air,
On the slope of a teeming Persian rose-garden,
Under an ancient chestnut-tree wide spreading its branches,
Spoke to the young priests and students.

'Finally my children, to envelop each word, each part of the rest,
Allah is all, all, all - is immanent in every life and object,
May-be at many and many-a-more removes - yet Allah, Allah, Allah is there.

'Has the estray wander'd far? Is the reason-why strangely hidden?
Would you sound below the restless ocean of the entire world?
Would you know the dissatisfaction? the urge and spur of every life;
The something never still'd - never entirely gone? the invisible need of every seed?

'It is the central urge in every atom,
(Often unconscious, often evil, downfallen,)
To return to its divine source and origin, however distant,
Latent the same in subject and in object, without one exception.'

Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892)

Friday 21 December 2007

Pike and the Ligdenaires

David Pike is the man behind the Ligden Poetry Society, that happy band of beery bards who meet every now and then to versify and quaff in those quaint and curious Wiltshire pubs and inns.
David also edits Pulsar, a publication now in it's 13th year. Those of us residing too far from the bacon rearing County of Wiltshire to chew the poetic fat and lean can still get a taste of the enterprise via the LPS website at www.pulsarpoetry.com, or through Pulsar, which comes out in March and September.

With kind permission of David Pike here's a lovely poem of his from the September 2006 edition of Pulsar:

Millrace

Clear water,
a ripple or two
below mill spume,
a glimmer of activity
in mid stream -

through a chill surface
something moves? flits,
hits the eye
and stirs the mind
with boyhood echoes

a charge of raw energy -
lithe sinew, braced
resists the race,
hovering over gravel
like a grey
torpedo

gills rhythmically chew water
suck in, push out,
filtering, absorbing

then, spooked
it surges, advances
in a cutting arc
through downland water,
honed to perfection
cuts liquid like the sharpest
shard...

brook trout
leaves the picture,
an indistinct hue
colouring the observer's thoughts
with quicksilver,

a wondrous thing

too vital
to linger.

c) David Pike

Keep visiting http//:Poetry-in-Residence.blogspot.com for what's good in poetry.
P-i-R will be publishing more of the best of David Pike in the coming weeks.

Thursday 20 December 2007

Ho Chi Minh in Paris

July 1946, Paris

the thin small man
the bouquet of roses
the palace on the right bank
and neatly trimmed
for the occassion
the goatee beard
but not
the marks of long suffering
and deprivation
the faint smile
is fixed
many years
in many prisons
where time is always long
he says quietly
to the colonialists

go back 4 years
to the restless uplands
on the Chinese border
and that thin small man
stopped
on his way to Chunking
and taken by the Chiang Kaishek police
Nguyen Ai Quoc the patriot is dead
they say
but this man will do
same age
same size
near enough
approximate enough
an obvious simpleton
he'll do
a fair replacement
and so they take him away
a smiling dog on a lead
wandering over 13 districts
long days of long walks
from makeshift prison to makeshift prison
they drag their strange smiling dog through
hunger
cold
fever
the cangues
exhaustion
but the dog keeps its strange smile
and listens intently
to songs of the birds
and sniffs intently
the scents of the flowers
it sees the moon rise and fall
it sees the morning and evening twilight
it believes in itself
and knows
and in its kennels of misery
in all the dirt and the squalor
in all the corruption in disease ridden holes
amid all the cockroaches and mosquitoes
and the lice and the itch-mites
and the syphilitics
and the opium addicts
and the gamblers
it sits quietly smiling in its corner
and in a worn out notebook
in a foreign land
a poet writes his poetry
in the language of his jailers

Gwilym Williams

there is no secret door between his public and private life
for him the sight of suffering is a call both to action and to poetical expression
(Phan Nhuan)

Wednesday 19 December 2007

Togviraklippur

P-i-R's Icelandic ode The Togviraklippur today headlines Charles Christian's popular ink-sweat-and-tears poetry blog (http://ink-sweat-and-tears.blogharbor.com).
If you feel you need to know what a Togviraklippur is and what Icelandic housewives get up to during those long Arctic winters then that's the place to look.

The 7th Wergle Flomp

Poet-in-Residence using his 'infamous' alias recently entered his 'infamous' Euterpe poem (see sidebar: spoof poem) in the free to enter 7th Wergle Flomp, a spoof poem poetry contest described by 'Winning Writers' as 'infamous'.
The final date for entries in the 7th Wergle Flomp is, as you might expect, the 1st April 2008. The US$3,336.40 prize pot includes a US$1,359.00 1st prize. P-i-R's poem was easily submitted via the Wergle Flomp website. The judge for the current contest is Jendi Reiter.
The rules, such as they are, are quite simple. Basically your spoof poem must have been entered in the first instance in a Vanity Poetry Contest. Wergle Flomp has a handy list of these dubious coffee table poetry book contests should you need a pointer. Once you've had your poem accepted by the Vanity Poetry Contest Organizer, and that's a mere formality, you may enter a copy of it in the 7th Wergle Flomp.
Entry in the Wergle Flomp gets you onto a monthly newsletter list run by Adam Cohen at 'Winning Writers'. The newsletter prints to 18 pages and is crammed with useful information for the poetry contest aficionado.

Adam Cohen points out that your poem does not have to be actually accepted as an entry by a Vanity Poetry Contest. Some contests have a screening process that blocks submissions containing words such as 'scam' for instance. Many thanks Adam!
P-i-R

Tuesday 18 December 2007

Haiku from Scotland

If Robert Burns was alive today he'd be 348 years old and probably have a poetry blogspot. And on it he'd doubtless have some seasonal haiku to go with his 'Auld Lang Syne'. In his stead P-i-R has discovered an accessible and accomplished deputy in Edinburgh's John McDonald. John, whose blogspot is called 'zen speug', has kindly given P-i-R permission to publish a selection of the latest haiku. I reckon Burns would appreciate these:

wund i the lum -
brucken airticles
stour alang the causey


wind in the chimney -
broken things
race along the street

a snell wund
the bodach hunkers
his box souchin


a bitter wind
the old man sits
his accordion wheezing

Yule lichts daizzlin
deep i the gangrel's kep
dowie broon placks


Christmas lights dazzling
deep in the beggar's cap
dull brown pennies

the auld maker
hame frae the burnside
breidnirls aye in's pooch


the old poet
home from the riverside
breadcrumbs still in his pocket

Poem shortly appearing near you...

Poetrymonthly.com has today taken a decent length poem from P-i-R about that infamous Welsh disease known as Hiraeth.
It will appear in the printed journal and on the journal's website in January.

In Hora Mortis

Translating the late Thomas Bernhard's 'In Hora Mortis' from the original Austro-German and I am pleased to say that I have this morning completed the first draft. It's coming along, is what I can also say about it. Yes, it needs knocking into shape but I reckon the ghost of controversial poet/playwright/novelist/essayist will be quite happy with the end product.
Last summer P-i-R visited Bernhard's farmhouse home where a small theatre has been constructed in the barn. Martin Schwab and Hermann Beil entertained with a humorous Bernhard sketch involving two old men and a canary.

Monday 17 December 2007

Hymnodist Wesley, 300 tomorrow

In countless streets the evenings will soon be ringing to the strains of 'Hark! the Herald Angels Sing' as small and large bands of carollers, bona-fide or otherwise, armed with their rattling collecting tins and various musical and unmusical instruments plod and slosh their weary way from door to door, corner to corner or square to square ostensibly collecting cash for charity.
The author of the world's most popular doorstep carol will be 300 tomorrow and so at this time P-i-R recalls how as a boy along with his brother, like many another disreputable youth of his generation, he doorstepped the odd sixpence from an old lady here and there by means of Charles Wesley's famous hymn. So off-key and painful to listen to were the brothers that residents paid them to cease singing and go on their way. The money would end up in the cash drawer of the local tobacconist. No health warnings in those days!
By way of apology to those old folk and the celebrated hymnodist P-i-R has unearthed a couple lines that have a touch of poetry about them. They come from 'Come, O Thou Traveller Unknown':

I leap for joy, pursue my way,
And as a bounding hart fly home

This year when they come round to entertain me with their sheepish carol singing I'll happily slot an extra coin in the knife-mouthed tin. And I don't care where it goes. I owe it.

Many Happy Returns, Charles Wesley!

P-i-R's Christmas Haiku

Getting good feedback at present is:

countless snowflakes falling
bringing messages
from distant stars


and here's a new one:

in the dark rooms
the stockings hang
limp and satsuma-ripe


c) Gwilym Williams 2007
- see also P-i-R's Xmas Haiku

Sunday 16 December 2007

Quote of the Month

From Finley Peter Dunne (1867-1936) War and War Makers

I wisht it cud be fixed up, so' th' men that starts th' wars could do th' fightin'

Poem of the Month - December

This month's poem of the month is Shelley's monumental sonnet against tyranny. In just 111 words the poet covers the subject of tyranny from A to Z. The poem composed in 1817 was relevant then, is relevant today and will be relevant so long as mankind inhabits the planet. It was first published under the pseudonym Glirastes (from Gliridae).
The dormouse (Gliridae) is a small climbing rodent of Eurasia and Africa which feeds on nuts, berries and seeds. There are 10 species. The best known the common dormouse hibernates in winter beneath debris and tree stumps, waking if hungry to feed on its store of food.

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Saturday 15 December 2007

Book of the Month - December

'The Art of Haiku 2000' edited and published by Gerald England
at New Hope International is an essential tool for anyone
contemplating the world of haiku. And even for those who reckon
to know something about it.

This 80-page book is crammed with invaluable information and
relevant examples. It was in fact my first foray into the form.
I quickly discovered that there's a lot more to haiku and tanka
than simply haiku and tanka; words like senryu, haibun, renga,
sedoka, sijo and even tipuritura came to mean something. Not to
mention renju and waka. Or even renku. But don't let all this
jargon deter you for everything you need to know is neatly
explained in a well set out format.

Fifteen writers contributed high quality articles to make
'The Art of Haiku 2000', a user-friendly book that deserves
to sit on the desk of every aspring Basho.

check http://www.geraldengland.co.uk for availability and price

Gwilym Williams

The real value of work

Dylan Thomas often grumbled that the poems he sent to newspapers and journals only fetched a pound each. He thought they were worth at least two pounds. In his famous poem 'Museum Piece' Richard Wilbur muses on the worth of an artistic work, 'a fine El Greco' that Edgar Degas 'kept / Against the wall beside his bead / To hang his pants on while he slept.'
I mention those two examples as a follow-up to Martin Holroyd's piece (see below) about why we make art, in our case poetry; but many poets like Martin Holroyd and Geoff Stevens are fine painters too.
The two interests appear to complement each other. Many a poet will write of pictures that he or she has seen in a book, in a gallery or simply on a city centre advertising hoarding. It's all raw material for the ever-present notebook and biro.
A correspondent writing to P-i-R said: '...we all need cities that provide a more intellectual and creative outlet' and another: '...a wonderful experience to be in the cultural capital of Europe'. And so it is in both cases. The value of the poetry then is in the stimulus that is found in the environment and mined by the poet for all it's worth.
But let's not forget that the poet living in a desert can write of stars, the winds like the simoon, the freezing nights , the burning days, the endless horizons, the bleak spirituality of it all. None of us lives in a vacuum.
Yes, it's very nice to be in the sacher torte and baroque city of Vienna where P-i-R is ensconced. But it's certainly not necessary and probably it's not even desirable. In a place such as Vienna it's very tempting to let things slide, to let others do it for you; to join the coughing throng in their claustral and expensive Burgtheater seats, to dawdle in one of the ubiquitous galleries pseudo-discussing quasi-knowledgably the over-priced gilded rubbish passing for art for the sake of a free glass of sekt and a bun.
Let's never forget, the so much owed by so many to so few. So much great poetry was written in the Somme trenches for example. And let's not forget those great war paintings by Albin Lienz who refused to toe the official line and brought home the realism of what was going on in the Alps bewteen Italy and Austria much to the chagrin of local churchmen and petty officials who turned their backs on him.
And don't forget that even Mozart was shunned in Vienna in his day. Went often to Prague. But you can't find him today. And as for Vivaldi who died and was buried in Vienna the officials of the baroque jewel on the Danube managed to lose his body too.
So the value is not in the money. And it's not in the location. And it's not in the time.
Nowadays, with the new zeitgeist, it's fashionable to pay a fortune for a Lienz. And what today would an original Wilfred Owen manuscript stained with blood and mud of battle fetch? No. The 'real value' of the poem, the picture, or any work of art for that matter is found in the satisfaction it gives to the one who made it.

P-i-R

Friday 14 December 2007

Poetry From Handshake

Handshake is the news-sheet of the Eight Hand Gang and is available
at irregular intervals providing you supply John Haines with SAE's.
In Handshake 65 I spotted a gem of a poem. It's by Geoff Stevens, a
talented and prolific writer.

Coming Down for Air

Guy Gibson in a bleeding poppy field
near RAF Scrampton in Lincolnshire
hot in blue serge on a summer's day
reading a throw-away novel
trying to relax his tinnitus
attempting to get that dan-dan-dan
dan-danta-dan background music
out of his war-torn mind
before it was time to go up again
carrying Barnes-Wallis bouncing babies
over to the industrial Ruhr
on yet another dam trip to Germany

c) Geoff Stevens

SAE's for Handshakes should be sent to: 5 Cross Farm, Station Road North,
Fearnhead, Warrington WA2 0QG, England.
Geoff's new book Absinthe on Your Ice Cream can be ordered from 25 Griffiths
Road, West Bromwich, B71 2EH, England. Price 7.99p

The Brush Man

The following was first published in Poetry Monthly.
During the 1950s it was a common sight in England to see men going from door to door with cardboard suitcases offering for sale basic items such as brushes, polish and cloths. This is the story of one such man who called at the door of my house, an ordinary house in the middle of a row of houses:

The Brush Man

A loud knocking at the front door.

'See who it is,' said mam.

He opened the cardboard suitcase
and pointed
to
...the scrubbing brushes
...the clothes brushes
...the shoe brushes

The case twitched
and the brushes shook themselves
and fell out
all over the path.

'God save the King!' shouted the man.

He was the pretty girl's best boy
wearing khaki
in the Public Schools Brigade.

'Hurry up boys! Fill the ranks! Fill the ranks!' he
shouted.

Mam came running
brushed flour from her apron

Thursday 13 December 2007

Q. Why Poetry?

Why 'this burning and crested act'? is how Dylan Thomas might phrase the question asked and answered in poetrymonthly.com issue 137 by the journal's editor Martin Holroyd.

Holroyd's answer, rooted in long experience as poet, publisher, artist, graphic designer, editor, event-organiser, speaker, Dylan Thomas aficionado et alia must be more than worth its corn. P-i-R, with Martin Holroyd's blessing, takes pleasure in publishing here and now this more than significant editorial in full. Many of us will identify with the following sentiment succinctly presented in the proverbial nutshell:


It is one of those questions that is always being repeated. I suppose and suspect it is part of the grander question: Why art. When I look at the books on painting, graphic design and poetry that are crippling my bookshelves, not to mention finances, I am forced to ask: What good have they done me?

In economic terms very little. In terms of intellectual pleasure, a fair amount. There are choices to be made in life. One can turn away from 'the arts'; grab a six-pack or pour a large whisky, switch on the telly and watch an afternoon or evening's worth of mind-numbing pap about house moving, cookery, or watch a bunch of 'celebs' attempt to live with each other in isolation and wait for the inevitable to happen...Or have my already unstable paranoia about the mess the world is in massaged by yet another investigative journalist.

Oh yes! I have often slobbed out in front of the TV, with a whisky or two in the desperate hope that the folk who have control of this wonderful invention will make me feel I have achieved something humanly and culturally gratifying for myself instead of making me regret that I hadn't spent the evening in my office getting to grips with another poem, piece of artwork, working on pm.com, someone else's book or attempting to knacker-up yet another blues number on the guitar or simply reading.

All too often, I stun myself with alcohol and easy distraction instead of saying to myself that: 'Tonight I will bathe in such and such a poem and soak up every word for all their possible meanings and the elegance of its construction'. 'Tonight I will give myself a piece of art'. Hyperbole? Well - maybe, but such is my inner desire for an oasis of intellectual stimulus, satiation or even simple pleasure over gross boredom of spirit.

"I see the boys of summer in their ruin / Lay the gold tithings barren," (Dylan Thomas), and "Cannery Row in Monterey California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream." (John Steinbeck). These are the words. These are the words that first gave me an inclination that there was life beyond a bit of woodwork, compound fractions, the unobtainable body of the long-legged RI teacher and a looming lifetime of teenage angst. Oh, how I needed to go to Cannery Row how I longed to be a boy of summer.

Steinbeck is correct. A 'quality of light' is a poem, just as are 'the boys of summer'. We all have seen a bit of paradise; a patch of country so beautiful that it can cause an ache of longing. As a male I have often seen, on a hot summer day, a girl so like a clean, cooling spring rain in a white summer dress. At the other truthful extreme there is a literature that portrays a human ugliness as hard as a diamond:

" 'And does everything in Mexico opress you?...' 'Almost everything!' she said, 'It always makes my heart sink. Like the eyes of the men in big hats - I call them peons. Their eyes have no middle to them. Those big handsome men, under their big hats, they aren't really there. They have no centre, no real I. Their centre is a raging black hole, like the middle of a maelstrom.' " (D H Lawrence)

Or we get a contrast of two aspects:
Today we have naming of parts. Yesterday, / We had daily cleaning. And to-morrow morning, / We shall have what to do after firing. But to-day, / To-day we have naming of parts. Japonica / Glistens like coral in all of the neighbouring gardens, / And to-day we have naming of parts. (Henry Reed).

The ironical contrast between classroom boredom and nature's beauty just beyond the window in this last example really sums up much of what, in my clumsy way, I have been trying to get at: Why poetry?

c) Martin Holroyd (2007)

Dreaming

The theme is India and P-i-R has an apposite poem of his own up his bardic
sleeve. 'Dreaming...' was first published in 2004 in iota 67
but deserves another airing if only to complement today's fine contributions
from native poet R K Singh.

In India it was always hot
and long-necked birds
flapped down off tin roofs
and stole his sandwiches.
He sweated over broken wings
and jammed bomb doors
and was handy with an oily rag
and a box of tools. Once
he went three rounds with Freddie Mills.
Relished every sock
to his handsome jaw
to hear him talk.
Only sparrin', Freddie was the best,
he always said.

The second time
it was the real thing; tough;
life and death battle.
A mosquito had ko'd him
and they ferried him home
in a fever on a slow steamship.

Dreaming of Freddie Mills
he went the distance;
won the big fight.


c) 2004 - Gwilym Williams

2 haiku from R K Singh

The following works are published with R K Singh's permission:

Journey

Boarding the train
I look for my luggage
midst the cries of theft


Food

One grasshopper
and hundreds of ants:
food procession


Look out for more of R K Singh's poetry on this blogspot in the new year!

Astrologer

What would yuletide be without a little crystal-gazing? Since time immemorial people have queued to have their fortunes told at the turn of the year. Poet R K Singh once consulted an astrologer. His tanka tells a curious oracular tale:

Did I kill a snake
or do I pass forked urine
the astrologer asks
to calculate my future
I tell him no and yes

c) R K Singh
(published with permission)

Wednesday 12 December 2007

Spoof poem

As the whole world knows by now P-i-R's very own spoof poem (see item: Arthur Roberts - Spoofer!) is being currently considered for a mega-bucks cash prize and a whole heap of honours. The date when the fate of the poem - 'Searching for Euterpe' by Bill Jackson will be announced is less than a month away. Only trouble is that Jackson alias Williams alias Poet-in-Residence hasn't ordered a boxed set of coffee table anthologies or even one hardback book containing the poem, hasn't even ordered a gold pin, or a silver star, or a bronze wall plaque, or a crystal vase, or a cd set featuring the poem and others set to baroque music, and hasn't even booked any seats for himself and his much beloved at the annual poetry jamboree bash to be held sometime in some faraway celebrity studded location even with the temptation of cheap last-minute airline tickets and an advantageous €uro/$ollar exchange rate. It is therefore more than likely that 'Searching for Euterpe' won't make it to the mega-bucks cash prize stage, and so here it is free, gratis, at no cost for all to read, share and enjoy. And not even an expensive bound leather coffee-table book with feelgood paper for you to buy:-

'Searching for Euterpe'

In 1810* in the University of Vienna
they opened Joseph Haydn's large head
and found in there a lot of music
104 symphonies for a start
and then delving deeper they discovered
the sonatas and the masses and the concertos
and even beyond them in dark corners
they discovered innumerable lesser pieces
or pieces they believed to be of less worth
shall we say - it was all quite a performance
all those professors and their instruments
measuring the skull's bumps and working out
the cranial index but in the end the whole thing
was futile and Haydn's great head was returned
not to his body in the mausoleum
but to the jar of formaldehyde with its label
along with lesser heads lined-up like notes
on shelves along the cellar walls
where it remained in peace and pungent gas
obtained by the partial oxidation of methyl alcohol.


*The date is uncertain. Haydn's head was stolen by grave-robbers
who took it to the science department at Vienna University.
It's theft was only discovered some years later when it was decided
to move Haydn's body from its grave and take it to the mausoleum in
the Austrian town of Eisenstadt.

Hooking a fishy poetry book

'Not Expecting Fish' is a new volume of poetry edited by
Charles Christian of the addictive ink-sweat-and-tears poetry
blog. Readers angling for a seasonal stocking filler can hook
into more details and the title poem at:
http://www.ink-sweat-and-tears.com/
P-i-R's brand new aquatic ode also speaks of fishy goings-on.
'The Togviraklippur' trawls through deep and murky waters and
is set to debut on ink-sweat-and-tears in the coming days or
weeks.

Tuesday 11 December 2007

We're on our way to the top!

Googling those famous 3 words 'poet in residence' finds
this quick loading crystal clear advert free blog already
in 21st place out of 313,000 Google entries! And we've only
just got started! Two places further down the ladder you'll
find that old supermarket explorer Walt Whitman and bogged
down one place below old Walt no less a personality than
Seamus Heaney.
It's worth another beer. Prosit and good health says P-i-R!

Arthur Roberts - spoofer!

Those persuasive vanity poetry contests have been written and written about almost ad nauseum. The basic advice is: Don't do 'em. You all know the standard format - publication in cocktail party anthology - invitation to star studded prize presentation - membership of exclusive gold badge poetry club - framed award certificate - blue ribbon - silver pin - etcetera, etcetera.

If you're anything like P-i-R and you want to take a sideways swipe, here's a tip - send in your spoof poem and keep the debit card for something more useful than an anthology of stream of consciousness teenage angst and run of the mill dross called 'Wandering Clouds' or 'Silver Linings'.

By the way 'The Wordsworth Concise English Dictionary' is P-i-R's tip as the best value for money book a budding writer can buy. His rather battered copy contains 156,000 definitions and only cost a smidgen.

P-i-R's 'spoof' (so-called after the game 'Spoof' invented by comedian Arthur Roberts 1852 - 1933) is entered in this year's world famous vanity contest and will be 'judged' (their word not mine) in early January 2008.

An exercise in translation

Here is my freshly baked translation of Thomas Bernhard's untitled opening poem in his collection 'Unter dem Eisen des Mondes' ('Under the Iron of the Moon'). Unfortunately, for copyright reasons, P-i-R is unable to display the full original German text or James Reidel's translation.


The year is like the year a thousand years ago,
we carry the jug and strike the back of the cow,
we mow and bleat and know nothing of winter,
we drink our cider and know nothing,
and soon we'll be forgotten
and the verses decayed like snow before the house.

The year is like the year a thousand years ago,
we look in the woods as if in the stall of the world,
we lie and weave baskets for apples and pears,
we sleep while our dirty shoes
moulder before the door of the house.

The year is like the year a thousand years ago,
we know nothing,
we know nothing of the end,
of the sunken towns, of the flood in which the horses
and people were drowned.

c) Gwilym Williams 2007

The first three lines of the recently published Reidel translation (Princeton University Press) will serve to highlight important differences in interpretation and translation style. You may judge for yourself which version is most faithful to the spirit of Bernhard.

The year is like a year a thousand years ago, (why use the indefinite article?)
we carry the jug and whip behind the cow, (no mention of a whip in the German)
we reap and know nothing of winter, (by going for 'reap' missed B's lovely pun)

Das Jahr ist wie das Jahr vor tausend Jahren,
wir tragen den Krug and schlagen den Rücken der Kuh,
wir mähen und wissen nichts vom Winter,


I applaud Reidel for tackling the two Bernhard books 'In Hora Mortis' and 'Under the Iron of the Moon' and bringing them together in one volume but I confess to raised eyebrows on reading a comment by Richard Howard, series editor of the Lockert Library of Poetry in Translation, on the back cover blurb: 'I am very taken with James Reidel's translations...'.

P-i-R's Yuletide Library List

Juggled the books! They are now all date-stamped until next year,
8th January 2008 to be exact.

Poetry:
Sailing Alone Around the Room by Billy Collins
The Whispering Gallery by William Logan
In Hora Mortis / Under the Iron of the Moon by Thomas Bernhard
Gaudette by Ted Hughes

Other:
The Plague by Albert Camus
The Ballad of the Sad Cafe´ by Carson McCullers
Elizabeth Costello by J M Coetzee
Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck

P-i-R's Xmas Haiku

alabaster snow
in an agitated bubble
hides the scene

Strokestown Poetry Festival 2008

A new P-i-R poem will today wing its way to the isle of William Butler Yeats. Emerging from my vacillations this winter morning I will see to it that I am early in the post office queue with my precious entry. The last date for work to arrive at the Co. Roscommon headquarters is 31st January next. So there's a bit of time. But nevertheless it's a good idea to beat the Xmas chaos and any possible strikes by vacillious postal staff. There's a charming website complete with a printable entry form and a map of Strokestown itself to look at as you ponder the poetic possibilities. Googling 'Strokestown Poetry Festival 2008' will quickly get you there.

Monday 10 December 2007

She died in bed

She died in bed
in a fever
long before the 4 children
were born.

She found herself
on a new level of existence
in a strange dimension
beyond gravity -
formlessly floating
and looking down
on her discarded corpse
and her own mother
grief-stricken
and awash with tears.

The doctor gone. The undertaker
on his way.

This so moved her
that she slipped back into her
discarded body
and came back to life.

And this was in the days
before computer games.

Sunday 9 December 2007

Sorting the books

It's the same old story. Too many books. Now's the ideal time to bring some pre-New Year resolution and order to the situation. Out of the boxes and down from the shelves they all come now. Some destined for pride of place in the dusted-out bookcase, several poetic works elbowing each other for that prime slot on the middle shelf, others relegated to lesser higher or lower shelves, or even worse to the cellar bound cardboard boxes. Some books will soon be on their their way to the Irish pub's Book-Crossing club. Others will dwell in obscurity until next year's local community bazaar. It's all going on now at the Poet-in-Residence-Residence!

Saturday 8 December 2007

Poet Milton - 399 tomorrow!

As P-i-R pens this note we're only an hour or so away from John Milton's 399th birthday. And that means only 3 weeks and a couple of days away from the start of his 400th anniversary year! A fine time to remember him therefore.

A few lines from the blind poet's 19th sonnet 'On His Blindness' should suffice:

When I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless ...
. . .
'...God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts. Who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best ...
. . .
They also serve who only stand and wait.'

Born December 9th in 1608 in Bread Street, Cheapside he died in 1674
aged 66. He defended his love of learning and declined to get a job or
take holy orders. And who can blame him?

Food Guru Poem

the food guru

wraps his legs
around his neck
to look for all the world
like a genetically modified supermarket chicken

unfrozen at holiday time

ready to be cooked
with oven chips
reconstructed from frozen coagulate

or a free range turkey stuffed with sage

depending on the angle of the light


and meditates without breathing
or seeming to breathe

on the meaning of life
and life beyond life


this day

the food guru is wearing his off-white bum wrap

the one that smells a bit
like a melting glacier


tomorrow

he will sit once more
upon his head
under the ubiquitous guru tree

living only off sunlight


for years

the scientific experts
have written many articles
for the weekend papers
explaining all of this


you may unfold
and read them

when you've had your chips

c) 2007 Gwilym Williams

Neruda's Selected Poems

Pablo Neruda (1904 -1973) won the 1971 Nobel Prize for Poetry. His 'Selected Poems' from Penguin Classics, originally published in 1970 by Cape, contains excellent English translations.
P-i-R's pick from this Chilean poet's bristling bag includes no lemons. Highly recommended are:-

Death Alone, Barcarole, Walking Around, Ode with a Lament, There's No Forgetting (Sonata) - from Residencea en la terra (1935),
I'm Explaining a Few Things, The Way Spain Was, Furies and Sufferings - from Tercera Residencia (1947),
They Come for the Islands (1493) - from Canto general (1950),
Religion in the East - from Memorial de Isla Negra (1964)

An extract from the 'They Come for the Islands' -

The children of day saw their smiles smashed
. . .

and when time danced around again

. . .

Nothing was left but bones
rigidly fastened in the form of a cross
to the greater glory of God
and of men

. . .

And an extract from 'Religion in the East' -

serpent gods entwining
the crime of being born

. . .

fierce gods made by men

. . .

the whole earth reeking of heaven
and heavenly merchandise

Sunday 2 December 2007

Rooting in the Banana Box

Today's unearthed bargain:
In exchange my newly minted 1€uro coin a battered Penguin - Children of Albion, Poetry of the 'Underground' in Britain. This 382-page 1969 collection from the New Movement or so-called Underground poets contains such good stuff as Adrian Mitchell's 'Veteran With A Head Wound' and 'Nostalgia - Now Threepence Off'.
Editor Michael Horowitz thanks Allen Ginsberg for visiting Liverpool and serving British poetry with a timely kick in the rectum. Also in the Penguin are Lee Harwood, Spike Hawkins, Tom Pickard and co. all the alphabetical way to Michael X.