Thursday 31 January 2008

Free e-copy of Mavericks

Mavericks, an e-book containing 20 of Poet-in-Residence's short poems from the period 2004/5 is now available. The e-book differs slightly from the original scissors and paste job - a limited edition of 20 signed copies. The poem 'Show me the woods' has been replaced by 'Walking with Bukowski' and there have been one or two improvements to the texts of some of the works. But basically it's the same book.
To obtain the e-book, which prints to 22 sheets of A4, click on the 'poem hunter' link in the sidebar at the left of this page. When the 'poem hunter' home page arrives on screen simply enter Gwilym Williams in the search box. This should take you to the e-book. Poet-in-Residence has test-printed a copy. It works!

Cold Sweet Tea

Members of Poet-in-Residence's family are exploring the family tree. Goodness knows what they hope to find! One branch of the family worked at a colliery situated on the North East coast of England. P-i-R's mother reckons the mine was closed because of the risk of dangerous subsidence and that the families had to remove from the miners cottages which had been built too close to the pit, and were in a precarious condition. The following poem is an attempt to recreate the scene, as seen through the eyes of a young coal miner's mother.

Cold Sweet Tea

Boys, who can barely write, kneel
deep down, miles out to sea beneath
black-ribbed sands, before
the coal-face and pneumoconiosis.
Stripped to the waist, mine's as thin
as a pit prop; a crab-shadow clawing
for coal to make a rich man richer.
From time to time he swallows
cold sweet tea from a tin,
observed by a sleepy canary
and a blind pit pony in the light
of a Davy Lamp. When the clock
strikes I prepare his sink;
water, scrubbing brush, soap.
Listen for his footfall. The house,
within spitting distance of
the shaft, is going to its knees;
coming apart at its dusty seams.
Buckled and sagging, it creaks and
groans with each subsiding night.

c)- 2005 Gwilym Williams
This poem is taken from a limited edition booklet of 20 signed copies. A self-publishing effort containing 20 short poems, the booklet called 'Mavericks', is a one-off from the aptly named 'Kitchen Table Publications'.

Wednesday 30 January 2008

Herman Melville - poet

The author dedicates 'Moby Dick or, The Whale', the classic novel as follows:
In token of my admiration for his genius, This Book is Inscribed to Nathaniel Hawthorne.
The work begins with an 'Etymology' supplied by a Late Consumptive Usher to a Grammar School. It begins:
[The pale Usher - threadbare in coat, heart, body and brain; I see him now. He was ever dusting his old lexicons and grammars, with a queer handkerchief, mockingly embelished with all the gay flags of all the known nations of the world. He loved to dust his old grammars; it somehow mildly reminded him of his mortality.]
The Etymology, such as it is, is followed by a more comprehensive sub-chapter headed 'Extracts'. This section consists purely of quotes and rhymes of which the following is a small selection:
The great Leviathan that maketh the seas to seethe like boiling pan. Lord Bacon's Version of the Psalms
The mighty whales which swim in a sea of water, and have a sea of oil swimming in them. Fuller's Profane and Holy State
'And pray, sir, what in the world is equal to it?' Edmund Burke's Reference...to the Nantucket Whale Fishery
The aorta of a whale is larger in the bore than the main pipe of the water-works at London Bridge...Paley's Theology

Whale Song

Oh, the rare old Whale, mid storm and gale
In his ocean home will be
A giant in might, where might is right,
And King of the boundless sea'

Following the telling of the tale, some 650 pages and 135 chapters later, are several illustrations - A Map showing the Cruise of The Pequod, the Rigging and Cross-Section of a Whaler, Implements Belonging to a Whaleboat and so on. There's also a Glossary of Nautical Terms. All very useful.

But there's more to Herman Melville than books like 'Moby Dick' and 'Billy Budd, Sailor'. There's another side. His poetry. Poet-in-Residence was recently surprised to find the following poem from Melville in the book '101 Poems Against War' (faber and faber). It tells of one battle in the American Civil War. The poem is a requiem for 24,000 troops who died at Shiloh, Tennessee in 1862. Unbelievable it may seem today, but the events at Shiloh took place 11 years after the publication of Moby Dick.

Shiloh

Skimming lightly, wheeling still,
The swallows fly low
Over the field in clouded days,
The forest-field of Shiloh -
Over the field where April rain
Solaced the parched ones stretched in pain
Through the pause of night
That followed the Sunday fight
Around the church of Shiloh -
The church so lone, the log-built one,
That echoed to many a parting groan
And natural prayer
Of dying foemen mingled there -
Foemen at morn, but friends at eve -
Fame or country least their care:
(what like a bullet can undeceive!)
But now they lie low,
While over them the swallows skim,
And all is hushed at Shiloh.

Two more from Michael Newman

Poet-in-Residence is delighted to showcase more work from the able pen of Michael Newman. The first poem 'Red Kite' (national bird of Wales) appeared in the September 2004 edition of 'Pulsar' and the second poem 'Porthleven' in the June 2004 edition.
Both poems are published here with Michael Newman's kind permission. Enjoy.

Red Kite

Just waiting on pole perch,
Telephone wires sagging, dragging down
With the rain,
Mountains a Welsh spectre.

His eyes are yellow-indulgence,
His feathers a ruffle of ennui.
Forty-eight hours,
And no movement,
No passes at exposed rabbits.

He can see the warden's
Frustration,
The poacher's resolve,
Can differentiate between the two.

And yet,
In the few seconds of take-off,
Outdoes camcorder,
To leave only
That imprint of memory

Recalled in talks,
Dreams, side shows,
Quietly penned now.


Porthleven

Radio-controlled gulls
Land on the beach,
While a silhouette-moon
Is remoted from Solar HQ.

Now wisps of smoke
Signal belated barbecue.
Far out,
Another ship anchors
At earth's rim.

Even the varicose hills
Niggle away at woodland serenity.

Everywhere we are searching
For something beyond self,
For an answer to the question
We have yet to pose.

Only the children seem unaffected,
Guarding their grains of truth
With sandcastle defences.

c)- Michael Newman

Moving snow

Clearing a path to the back gate through the knee-deep snow P-i-R was once rewarded with a free poem of sorts. It 'just came'; like Robert Frost's poem 'Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening' which 'just came' to Frost when he was looking out of a window.
The following, pleasing for its layered meaning, first appeared in a special 10th anniversary edition of Poetry Monthly in April 2006.

In the Garden

Snow in the night
and rain in the morning
is the heaviest load
for the shovel.

Struggling with mine,
I'm immediately struck
by the breathless prospect
ahead.

c)- Gwilym Williams

Arthur Hugh Clough, the Liverpool poet...

This year sees Liverpool as European City of Culture. It is therefore appropriate to take a look at the poetry scene on Merseyside. Poet-in-Residence looks back at the days of adventure, sailing ships, exotic trade and danger on the high seas. And there he finds the wonderful poetry of Arthur Hugh Clough.
Born on New Year's Day on the shores of the Irish Sea, in the westward facing Liverpool, it's hardly surprising that the poet Arthur Hugh Clough should travel the world and write of the great seas and the far horizons. What is surprising however is how modern, relevant and readable some of his poetry is today.
Winston Churchill would quote from Clough during the period when Britain 'stood alone' for 18 long months against the Nazi menace with its list of more than 8,000 banned authors, the Nazi menace designed to crush freedom of thought and free expression. And today, one may read the same poems again and find much relevance in them. The test of the great poem!
Today, poetry is still alive and well in the City of Liverpool. In a recent editorial Martin Holroyd of Poetry Monthly, cited 'The Beatles' as an example. An interesting aside, is that Israel has decided to apologise for not allowing 'the fab four' to perform in the so-called 'holy land' because 'they could corrupt the young'. Unfortunately John Lennon is no longer available to comment on this curious
and strangely-timed apology.
Today, Liverpool's leading poets, scousers* like Jim Bennett and Roger McGough, keep the poetic flag bravely flying high.

Say not the Struggle Nought Availeth

Say not the struggle nought availeth,
The labour and the wounds are vain,
The enemy faints not, nor faileth,
And as things have been, things remain.

If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars;
It may be, in yon smoke concealed,
Your comrades chase even now the fliers,
And, but for you, possess the field.

For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,
Seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back through creeks and inlets making
Comes, silent, flooding in, the main,

And not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light,
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly,
But westward, look, the land is bright.


Where Lies the Land to which the Ship would Go?

Where lies the land to which the ship would go?
Far, far ahead, is all her seamen know.
And where the land she travels from? Away,
Far, far behind, is all that they can say.

On sunny noons upon the deck's smooth face,
Linked arm in arm, how pleasant here to pace;
Or, over by the stern reclining, watch below
The foaming wake far widening as we go.

On stormy nights, when wild north-westers rave,
How proud a thing to fight with wind and wave!
The dripping sailor on the reeling mast
Exults to bear, and scorns to wish it past.

Where lies the land to whish the ship would go?
Far, far ahead, is all her seamen know.
And where the land she travels from? Away,
Far, far behind, is all that they can say.


Arthur Hugh Clough (1819 - 1861)

*scouser - a native of Liverpool - so-called after a traditional hotpot-style stew or soup.

Tuesday 29 January 2008

Osip Mandelstam 1891 - ?1938

There's a question mark against the date of death of the persecuted Russian poet Osip Mandelstam. It must be presumed that he perished in a Russian labour camp. His volume Tristia (1922) contains poems noted for their spiritual intensity. The poem below is dedicated to the memory of Mandelstam and the countless millions of fellow victims of the brutal regime. It was written by the poet in February 1916 and translated into English by Joseph Brodsky in the 1980s.

Tristia

I've mastered the great craft of separation
amidst the bare unbraided pleas of night,
those lingerings while oxen chew their ration,
the watchful town's last eyelid shutting tight.
And I revere that midnight rooster's descant
when shouldering the wayfarer's sack of wrong,
eyes stained with tears were peering at the distance
and women's wailings were the Muses' song.

Who is to tell when hearing 'separation'
what kind of parting this may resonate,
foreshadowed by a rooster's exclamation
as candles twist the temple's colonnade;
why at dawn of some new life, new era
when oxen chew their ration in the stall
that wakeful rooster, a new life's town crier,
flaps its torn wings atop the city wall.

And I adore the worsted yarn's behaviour:
the shuttle bustles and the spindle hums;
look how young Delia, barefooted, braver
than down of swans, glides straight into your arms!
Oh, our life's lamentable coars fabric,
how pure the language of our joy indeed.
What happened once becomes a worn-out matrix.
Yet, recognition is intensly sweet!

So be it thus: a small translucent figure
spreads like a squirrel pelt across a clean
clay plate; a girl bends over it, her eager
gaze scrutinizes what the wax may mean.
To ponder Erebus*, that's not for our acumen.
To women, wax is as to men steel's shine.
Our lot is drawn only in war; to women
it's given to meet death while they divine.


*Erebus - in Greek mythology, a dark region under the earth through which the dead pass on their way to Hell.

Monday 28 January 2008

On the battlefield with John McCrae

In 1914 the Austrian war poet, pharmacist and field-medic Georg Trakl (see below) committed suicide in a psychiatric ward, at the second attempt, after terrible wartime experiences on the Eastern Front in Galicia. On the other side of the great European bloodstain, on the Western Front, the Canadian poet and doctor John McCrae died of pneumonia on this day, January 28th, 90 years ago. In rememberance of the 10,000,000 men who perished in the 1914 - 1918 War, a war which finally ended as a result of the German Navy going on strike, the Poet-in-Residence blogspot presents McCrae's best-known poem 'In Flanders Fields' and also his poem 'The Unconquered Dead'.

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

Take up your quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.


The Unconquered Dead
"...defeated, with great loss."


Not we the conquered! Not to us the blame
Of them that flee, of them that basely yield;
Nor ours the shout of victory, the fame
Of them that vanquish in a stricken field.

That day of battle in the dusty heat
We lay and heard the bullets swish and sing
Like scythes amid the over-ripened wheat,
And we the harvest of their garnering.

Some yielded, No, not we! Not we, we swear
By these our wounds; this trench upon the hill
Where all the shell-strewn earth is seamed and bare,
Was ours to keep; and lo! we have it still.

We might have yielded, even we, but death
Came for our helper; like a sudden flood
The crashing darkness fell; our painful breath
We drew with gasps amid the choking blood.

The roar fell faint and farther off, and soon
Sank to a foolish humming in our ears,
Like crickets in the long, hot afternoon
Among the wheat fields of the olden years.

Before our eyes a boundless wall of red
Shot through by sudden streaks of jagged pain!
Then a slow-gathering darkness overhead
And rest came on us like a quiet rain.

Not we the conquered! Not to us the shame,
Who hold our earthen ramparts, nor shall cease
To hold them ever; victors we, who came
In that fierce moment to our honoured peace.

Sunday 27 January 2008

Poetry in public places - Ulysses by the Merlion

The Merlion is a gigantic 80 ton sculpture to be found in Singapore. It is a fish with a lion's head. From it's mouth gushes a torrent of sea water. It is a modern Singapore icon. People in colourful clothes pose for holiday snaps in front of the statue. They buy miniature versions to take home. Hitachi, The Fullerton Hotel and HSBC must be delighted with all the free publicity due to their prominent background location in a million tourist photographs.
In 1977 Singapore poet Edwin Thumboo penned a poem about the Merlion. A plaque at the base of the sculpture is inscribed with his charming ode to Singapore's lion of the sea.

Ulysses by the Merlion

I have sailed many waters,
Skirted islands of fire,
Contended with Circe
Who loved the squeal of pigs;
Passed Scylla and Charybdis
To seven years with Calypso,
Heaved in battle against the gods.
Beneath it all
I kept faith with Ithaca, travelled,
Travelled and travelled,
Suffering much, enjoying a little;
Met strange people singing
New myths; made myths myself.

But this lion of the sea
Salt-maned, scaly, wondrous of tail,
Touched with power, insistent
On this brief promontory...
Puzzles.

Nothing, nothing in my days
Foreshadowed this
Half-beast, half-fish,
This powerful creature of land and sea.

Peoples settled here,
Brought to this island
The bounty of these seas,
Built towers topless as Ilium's
They make, they serve,
They buy, they sell.

Despite unequal ways,
Together they mutate,
Explore the edges of harmony,
Searched for a centre;
Have changed their gods,
Kept some memory of their race
In prayer, laughter, the way
Their women dress and greet.
They hold the bright, the beautiful,
Good ancestral dreams
Within new visions,
So shining, urgent,
Full of what is now.

Perhaps having dealt in things,
Surfeited on them,
Their spirit yearns again for images,
Adding to the dragon, phoenix,
Garuda, naga, those horses of the sun,
The lion of the sea,
This image of themselves.


One may wonder what Sir Stamford Raffles, the founder of Singapore, would make of the strange lion-fish creature, the Merlion. Poet-in-Residence suspects that he would be delighted!

Georg Trakl's poetry

Rainer Mairia Rilke (below) found Georg Trakl's poetry to be a thing of sublime existence. Trakl was born in Salzburg in 1887 and studied pharmacy. From 1910 - 1911 he served in the Austrian Army Medical Service. In Vienna, as a chemist, he experimented with drugs. In 1914 he enlisted in the Medical Corps. He died in Cracow in November of that year.
Alexander Stillmark has translated some of Trakl's poetry. With the aid of a trio of Professor Stillmark's translations we may discover why Rilke was such a devoted Trakl fan.

The Ravens

Across the black nook the ravens hasten
At noonday with harsh cry.
Their shadow sweeps past the hind
And sometimes one sees them in sullen repose.

O how they disturb the brown silence
Wherein a tilled field is enrapt
Like a woman by heavy foreboding entranced,
And sometimes one can hear them bickering

Over some carrion scented out somewhere;
Of a sudden they direct their flight northwards
And dwindle away like a funeral procession
In airs which shudder with rapture.


Föhn*

Blind lament in the wind, moon-like winter days,
Childhood, the footsteps quietly die away by the black hedge,
Long tolling of evening bells.
The white night quietly draws on,

Transforms pain and plague into crimson dreams
Of stony life,
That the thorny sting never ceases to vex the decaying body.

Deep in sleep the fearful soul draws a sigh,

Deep the wind in broken trees,
And the sorrowing figure
Of mother sways through the lonely forest

Of this mute mourning; nights,
Filled with tears, fiery angels,
All silver a childlike skeleton shatters upon a bare wall.

*Föhn is an unseasonable warm wind that blows in Central Europe. People blame the Föhn for ill-health - everything from headaches to high blood pressure to raised heartbeats. P-i-R finds the Föhn to be a pleasant warmth and a welcome change from the cold.


In the East

A people's gloomy wrath is like
Wild organs of a winter storm,
The scarlet wave of battle,
Of leaf-stripped stars.

With shattered brows, silver arms,
Night beckons dying soldiers.
In the shade of autumn ash
The spirits of the vanquished sigh.

Thorny wilderness girds the city.
The moon hounds frightened women
From bleeding steps.
Wild wolves burst through the gate.

Saturday 26 January 2008

Reading Rainer Maria Rilke

Rainer Maria Rilke died in 1926 leaving a legacy of fine poetry. This morning on the local radio the well-known actor Otto Schenk, currently appearing as Herr von Ledig in Nestroy's Unverhofft in Vienna, admitted to being something of a Rilke afficionado. Schenk said that he couldn't get through a day without reading at least 3 poems by top poets such as Rilke. He explained that poetry was almost a religion. Reading poetry is like praying, said Schenk. It's unbelievable how poets manage to explain the unexplainable and how they find the words to do so, he added. Otto Schenk's remarks stirred something in P-i-R's soul, causing him to reach for his own Rilke volume, too long unopened, to find poems to share.

The Neighbour

Strange violin, why do you follow me?
In how many foreign cities did you
speak of your lonely nights and those of mine.
Are you being played by hundreds? Or by one?

Do in all great cities men exist
who tormented and in deep despair
would have sought the river but for you?
And why does your playing always reach me?

Why is it that I am always neighbour
to those lost ones who are forced to sing
and to say: Life is infinitely heavier
than the heaviness of all things.


The Song of the Beggar

I am always going from door to door,
whether in rain or heat,
and sometimes I will lay my right ear in
the palm of my right hand.
And as I speak my voice seems strange as if
it were alien to me,

for I'm not certain whose voice is crying:
mine or someone else's.
I cry for a pittance to sustain me.
The poets cry for more.

In the end I conceal my entire face
and cover both my eyes;
there it lies in my hands with all its weight
and looks as if at rest,
so no-one may think I had no place where-
upon to lay my head.


Epitaph

Rose, o pure contradiction,
desire to be no-one's sleep
under so many eyelids.

Rose, oh reiner Widerspruch,
Lust, niemandes Schlaf zu sein
unter soviel Lidern.



Rilke's self-composed epitaph is inscribed on his tombstone in Raron, Switzerland.
The above poems are from the excellent translations of Albert Ernest Flemming.

Friday 25 January 2008

Wordsmith Carroll

Daresbury, often passed unnoticed by motorists, is aside the main road that runs between the town of Warrington and the city of Chester. It is the village where Lewis Carroll was born, 176 years ago on the 27th January.
Placed to 'capture' the passer-by who chances to stray from the main road, is the traditional village inn - the Ring O' Bells. It's much the same as it was in the days when Lewis Carroll's father, the Reverend Dodgson, rang the church bell to summon the flock to worship.
The strange and wonderful thing about Daresbury is that its secrets are hidden deep underground. Beneath Lewis Carroll's birthplace there exists today a real Alice in Wonderland world; the magical world of the very small - the Mad Hatter world of quantum physics - the world where man is vainly trying to unravel the unseen mysteries and secrets of the universe.
Not far away, in North Wales, is the village of Deganwy. It stands on the shore of the Irish Sea below a mighty rock known as the Great Orme. On, or rather inside, the Orme is found the oldest and largest bronze age mine in the world. So far as is known up to the present time the mine goes down at least 9 levels. The number of bronze age axes that could have been made from the product of this one mine runs into millions. Children were sent into the mine with bones from sharks as tools for digging. These days general public may explore part of the first two levels of the mine which has been roped-off and illuminated with electric lights. Mind your head! The ways are narrow and low.
The mine had not been discovered in the time of Lewis Carroll but could it be that he subconsciously 'picked up' some sense of it on one of his visits to Deganwy. It was in Deganwy that Carroll met the girl on whom he based his character Alice. She happened to work in the hotel where he liked to stay. They walked together on the Orme and spoke of strange and magical things.
From the top of the Orme you may just make out the place where Poet-in-Residence was born. Look along the Menai Straits, the channel between the sunny Island of Anglesey and the brooding mountains of Snowdonia. If you make out the famous Menai Bridge, its large chains gleaming white in the sunshine, you'll have found the spot.
When P-i-R was learning to speak he made-up his own words; sambeld and bumbeld, for instance! These words have to do with the quality and texture of bread.
Lewis Carroll was another who engaged in such nonsense. Words invented by Carroll are now part of our everyday language - words like chortle and burble. To mark the 176th birthday of his mother's favourite poet, Poet-in-Residence presents a fitting flittering poem from 'Through the Looking-Glass'.

Jabberwocky

'Twas brilling, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

'Beware the Jabberwock my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!'

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought -
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

'And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Lewis Carroll Jan 27th 1832 - Jan 14th 1898)

Thursday 24 January 2008

P-i-R's January squall haiku

drumbeat of hailstone
and the wolf howling
in the chimney

c-2008 Gwilym Williams

Miss Jones

Miss Jones

When I was small
Miss Jones told me off
for breaking the drum
during the music lesson. You
bashed it too hard, she said
and then she gave me
the triangle to hit instead. But gently
she said. I found I couldn't
break it
no matter how hard I tried.
Miss Jones beamed at me
folded her arms
and sighed with pride.

c) Gwilym Williams

More poetry from R K Singh

Mining R K Singh's archives, with his more than generous permission, Poet-in-Residence has unearthed another piece of poetic wonderment. Indian, yes; and yet it's also somewhat Byronic. (see Byron at 30 - below)

When I Stopped...

If my world couldn't be
what I had thought in my teens
I can't help. I was
dependent on my father

a self-made man against
the currents I couldn't read
the sky and its stronghold

the prints of Ganga's sand
have faded like the rainbow
in a spray of years
that prick like pebbles

now the caries, cavities
cyst and myopia haunt
and sexual anxieties
disturb sleep and dreamless nights

the hairs on my balding head
mirror the laughter
I have ceased to take note of

I have ceased to peel
the ugly shapes, the cunning
and treacherous I work with

resent my identity
and the future I fail
spinning influences

yet I'm sure when I stopped
it won't be all that bad:
my vision would still be good
I would still smell fresh air

c) R K Singh 2005
visit http://rksingh.blogspot.com for details of R K Singh's poetry publications and to read more of his poems and haiku.

Wednesday 23 January 2008

Discombobulated

Discombobulate, a word with W C Fields overtones, (U.S. slang) is a transitive verb meaning to disconcert, upset (Wordsworth Concise English).
Alan Morrison, poet-in-residence at 2 psychiatric homes on England's south coast and author of 'Mansion Gardens' (a collection lately reviewed by your humble scribe for Pulsar Poetry) has kindly given permission for the following poem, from the aforementioned book, published in 2006 by Paula Brown Publishing, to appear here:

Miss Discombobulated

Wearing laundry of years, two holes
for eyes where blackbirds pecked the linen
lined with experience's permanent creases,
she clung to the word 'discombobulated'
as if a thick, warm, comfortable fur-coat;
trampled years since contented
with hyperbole of 'moments' reeking like
cheap white wine in a lukewarm glass;
her past, a fug of pub fag-smoke
perfuming her black Hispanic hair;
ages since pages she once wrote
saw shimmer of day; memories'
invisible walls stalled her everywhere.

c)- Alan Morrison

Pike's beery bards go digital...

If you should happen to be in or near the County of Wiltshire, England, tomorrow evening, Thirst-day 24th January 2008, you could do a lot worse than pop along to 'The True Heart Inn' in the village of Bishopstone, near Swindon, armed with plenty of beer money (entry is free) and a brace of your poems.
The Ligden Poetry Society will be in attendance, taking photos and making digital sound recordings from 8pm onwards. Poetry editor David Pike (scroll sidebar) may even chance a strum or two of his fretted instrument.
More details at www.pulsarpoetry.com

Vanity poetry saga rolls on...and there's an unpaid job in haiku

Check out http://www.ink-sweat-and-tears.com Charles Christian's poetry and prose webzine and click on Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:etc. (in the upper left 'latest replies' box) for the very latest on this gripping epic. Learn why you may be inspired to emulate Dylan Thomas or Ted Hughes but not Seamus Heaney or Sylvia Plath!

And with less than a month remaining don't forget to visit
http://winterhaiku2007.blogspot.com where you may even be inspired to apply for the spring 2008 blogspot job opportunity! No wages but plenty of fun and lots of nice poetic people.

Tuesday 22 January 2008

Byron - Egyptian joker!

Byron's Egyptian witticism appears in the 7th verse of 'Middle Age'. So, for our birthday boy (see 'Bad Boy Byron' - below) and for our celebration here's that verse together with some other Byronic observations, taken from the poem:

Extracts from Middle Age

My days of love are over, me no more
The charms of maid, wife and still less of widow,
Can make the fool of which they made before,
In short, I must not lead the life I do;
The credulous hope of mutual minds is over,
The copious use of claret is forbid too

. . .

What are the hopes of man? old Egypt's King
Cheops erected the first pyramid
And largest, thinking it was just the thing
To keep his memory whole, and mummy hid;
But somebody or other rummaging,
Burglariously broke his coffin's lid:
Let not a monument give you or me hopes,
Since not a pinch of dust remains at Cheops.

But I being fond of true philosophy,
Say very often to myself, 'Alas!
All things that have been born were born to die,
And flesh (which Death mows down to hay) is grass;
You've passed your youth not so unpleasantly,
And if you had it o'er again 'twould pass -
So thank your stars that matters are no worse,
And read your Bible, sir, and mind your purse.'


The noble Lord reflected on the capricious state of his joie de vivre on his 30th birthday, January 22nd 1818, and concluded that he had best reform his ways.
P-i-R has no forbidden claret to hand for the birthday toast but fortunately there's a handy bottle of Guinness left over from Hogmanay.-
Salute´!

Monday 21 January 2008

Carrion Crows in Winter Storm

Carrion Crows in Winter Storm

the invisible
roller coaster
with its ragged black passengers

c)- Gwilym Williams
the above haiku also at http://winterhaiku2007.blogspot.com

Invitation to fellow poets

Dear fellow poet,
Do you have a previously published contemporary masterpiece that is now suffering under the ubiquitous and unjust 'not previously published elsewhere' rule? Would you like to publish a poem or two here on the poet-friendly Poet-in-Residence blogspot?
Poet-in-Residence is currently inviting contributions from all corners of the globe. The few simple rules are that your poem must be of an acceptable standard and have been previously published somewhere and that you, the poet, hold the copyright. No pornography will be considered. The poem/s must be written in English.
Poet-in-Residence reserves the right to set-out the poem against the left margin. See Byron's poem below. In Byron's original every alternate line is inset. On this blog it goes straight down, hard to the left margin.
If you'd like to contribute you can simply reply to this post stating when and where your poem was published. Leave your e-mail or blog address and P-i-R will be in touch.
A good idea would be to trawl through the blog. Read poems from the likes of Michael Newman, Geoff Stevens, Alan Morrison, R K Singh, David Pike and others to get a flavour of P-i-R's poetic tastes.
With best bardic wishes,
Gwilym Williams

Bad Boy Byron's 220th birthday!

A rake about town in Venice and other dubious early-19th century resorts Lord George Gordon Byron was also a strong swimmer, despite being born with deformed ankles and a clubfoot. Venetian gondolieri will proudly tell you how Byron for a bet, swam from the quayside at Venice Lido across the choppy seas of the lagoon and up the murky waters of the world's most famous open sewer the Canal Grande, which is not a canal at all but a river you wouldn't want your dog to swim in, to a point well beyond the Rialto, in fact as far as the train station some gondolieri say. The bisexual noble Lord bedded two women that same day it's claimed. A true gondolier's man. A Venetian hero!
The 22nd January 2008 will be the 'mad bad and dangerous'* poet and freedom fighter's 220th birthday. He died in 1823 while training the home side's soldiery, the so-called Byron's Brigade, during the Greek War of Independence. Unfortunately during this noble enterprise he was taken ill in a rainstorm and died of a fever. His body, preserved in alcohol, was subsequently returned to England where St. Paul's Cathedral and Westminster Abbey both refused to have it. His heart was buried in Greece.
*quote from one of Byron's conquests, Lady Caroline Lamb (nee´ Ponsonby) wife of Lord William Lamb Melbourne the future Whig prime minister.

So We'll Go No More A-roving

So we'll go no more a-roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.

For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul outwears the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have rest.

Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we'll go no more a-roving
By the light of the moon.

By way of celebration, unlike the stuffed cassocks in the Abbey, Poet-in-Residence will raise a glass and perhaps with a little Vivaldi pay his personal tribute to one of the wild and wonderful characters to be found in the boundless world of poetry.

Sunday 20 January 2008

Recommended Poetry Competition

For those who enjoy a poetic challenge Poet-in-Residence recommends the 6th annual poetry competition from iota the quarterly poetry journal published at Lodge Farm, Snitterfield, Stratford-on-Avon, England, by Bob Mee and Janet Murch.
Reasons:
1) There is no line limit. Too often poems and ideas must be stuffed and crammed into 20, 30 or 40 lines. Like too small shoes - they must be made to fit. It's great to see that iota still allows an unlimited number of lines for that worthy poem. Long may it continue!
2) Entry costs a realistic two pounds per poem. One international poetry competition recently had no less than 3 different entry fees, dependant on where the entrant lived. The EU resident paid the most, followed by the UK resident, and then paying the least came the USA entrant. A people's poet scraping an existence in an old iron curtain country like Hungary would need to dig deep to find almost twice as much entry-'geld' as his star-spangled brother residing in the well-heeled film star state of California.
3) iota always reveals how many entries there were in the competition. Last year the contest attracted about 600 poems if memory serves correctly. It's curious how many competitions don't provide this basic piece of information.
4) The prize money is about what you'd expect. There are 4 prizes ranging from twenty-five to one hundred pounds. Winning poems are also published.

The closing date for this year's competition is April 15th 2008. Potential entrants should visit the iota website at www.iotapoetry.co.uk and read previous winning poems.

Taylor Coleridge and Luther King

2008 is the 40th anniversary year of the death of Martin Luther King Jr., the American civil-rights campaigner and leader. Martin Luther King, like Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, whose well-thumbed biography he often turned to for inspiration, followed the path of peaceful resistance. And like Gandhi (2008 sees his 60th death anniversary) King's peaceful tactics won the day.
So what's King's connection to the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge? King, as we know was a great orator and an avid reader of poetry as are many great orators. One Coleridge poem which King mentions in his writings is the poem 'Kubla Khan', subtitled 'A Vision in a Dream. A fragment' by its author. The story goes that Coleridge fell asleep in his chair having been prescribed two grains of opium for an 'indisposition'. He had been reading 'Purchas's Pilgrimage' and in particular the sentence 'Khan Kubla commanded a palace to be built...'. During his sleep the poet experienced what he called 'a vision', and on waking quickly jotted down its content. Unfortunately there was a knock at the door and his thought processes were disturbed. He was unable to recall other details when he returned to the work.
King was obviously aware of this story and may have been thinking of it when he wrote of 'the poem that remains unwritten because of the knock at the door'. As a tribute to King and Colerdige, and also to Gandhi, Poet-in-Residence offers 'the Fragment' under Coleridge's appropriate subtitle and recalls to mind King's immortal words "I have a dream."

A Vision in a Dream

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And here were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As ever beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And amid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And amid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!

The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight would win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome, those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise

(Coleridge said that the complete poem would have run to at least 200 - 300 lines. But, as often happens in life there came 'the knock on the door')

Poet-in-Residence's footnote: There are many peoples in the world who have grievances. If these grievances are real and not imagined it may well pay the aggrieved peoples to consider pursuing the ways of King and Gandhi which are tried and tested methods and have been found to work in the long run. The path of violence never brings real and lasting rewards. Could it be that there is some universal law at work in the affairs of men?

Friday 18 January 2008

Pike's Half Light

Here is the 3rd of David Pike's poems. Readers will recall his down-in-the-mouth and down-at-heel New Year poem and then the wonderful poem of the magical quicksilver trout.
Selected by Poet-in-Residence and published here with David Pike's kind permission is another lovely creation. This poem is taken from the September 2004 edition of 'Pulsar', a quality-content poetry magazine published and edited by David Pike and his wife Jill in Swindon, England -

Half Light

From an alley
near a park
a dog barked
a love song to the moon;
a refrain that few
would treasure

and the world
stood still
to listen...

The silver orb
glistened in the night sky
pulling tides by cosmic traction,
cool as ever

There was no reply
just a feeling of desolation;

a chill breeze
rustled the branches of trees
which inturn sighed
their lines -
to non-believers

and the dog growled,
annoyed by the moon's indifference
while denizens crept in the black depths
of shadow gloom,
creeping always creeping

as hours bled
from countless wounds
removing traces
of anaemic faces
in weathered frames
or flaking walls

while the invasive tune
resounded from tiles
in moonlit halls
of the known hinterland

later, clouds emerged
to blur the image
to the merest hint
of luminescence;
shards of light
split the night
with weak candescence

...as the hours evolved
the song dissolved to a mere residue,
something askew
and less than certain


c)- David Pike 2004

Poet-in-Residence is one poet and an editor of sorts who doesn't hold with the idea that good poetry, once published, be consigned to oblivion. Details of how to send your lost masterpiece for consideration at the Poet-in-Residence blogspot will be forthcoming in the next few days.

Meanwhile you may dig out those old favourites and keep them handy!

Thursday 17 January 2008

Hook Lighthouse, Ireland

Two years ago an ancient sage of the light, a retired lighthouse keeper, took P-i-R up and down an Irish pride and joy. This again for the Irish damsels of Catalonya.

Longsighted

He smiles the group around and up
the anti-clockwise steps
inside the automated light of Hook

the oldest working light around he claims

and broadly beams.

There were three cells
built inside these walls,
these walls that are ten feet thick,
for Pembroke's monks
who were the keepers of the light

yes, monks from Wales
humped countless bags of coal
up to the roof to fuel the flames

and light the point of Hook.

Out there is the graveyard
of the thousand ships
and over there by Crook

was Cromwell

not here by Hook he beams
once more and sharply sparks
his match across and
down the wall -

where it flares and leaps.

He brings the leaping light
adeptly to the bowl

descends the steps
inhales the dreams.

c- Gwilym Williams (this poem, which won one of those unbiquitous handsome cash prizes, will appear in P-i-R's first collection 'Genteel Messages')

Wednesday 16 January 2008

Edgar Allen Poe's 199th...

Edgar Allen Poe's 199th birthday, falling due on 19th January 2008. P-i-R has opted to celebrate with a suitable tribute from the American poet Hart Crane (1899-1932):

from The Bridge Tunnel Section / New York Subway

Whose head is swinging from the swollen strap?
Whose body smokes along the bitten rails,
Burts from a smoldering bundle far behind
In back forks of the chasms of the brain,-
Puffs from a riven stump far out behind
In interborough fissures of the mind...?

And why do I often meet your visage here,
Your eyes like agate lanterns - on and on
Below the toothpaste and the dandruff ads?
- And did their riding eyes right through your side,
And did their eyes like unwashed platters ride?
And Death, aloft,- gigantically down
Probing through you - toward me, O evermore!
And when they dragged your retching flesh,
Your trembling hands that night through Baltimore -
That last night on the ballot rounds, did you
Shaking, did you deny the ticket, Poe?

For Gravesend Manor change at Chambers Street.
The platform hurries along to a dead stop.

A poem for the Irish girls

Poet-in-Residence sends here a poem to a couple of Irish girls met in a friendly bar. A green and glowing moment. And was it only recently in Barcelona?

Carnuntum

The palace of bread and circus
according to the Roman poet.

A place to seat three thousand
according to the information board.

And today a place in the baking sun
where muffled gladiators sweat
and swing their whirring STHILs
and strim the spring green grass.

Notebooked and pointing cigarettes
a bright and breezy crowd arrives
through the whispering poplars
below the unseen buzzard.

Sacks are quickly unzipped
and the tyros fall in

to eat and laugh
to clown and quaff.

Below the stones of the quadrifons
below the prayers to Jupiter
below the unseen buzzard
wine splashes from dark bottles.

And bread is torn.

The crowd begins to cheer.

c - Gwilym Williams
a poem from the 1st P-i-R collection 'Genteel Messages' currently in preparation.

Tuesday 8 January 2008

Alan Morrison's WINTER poems

Alan Morrison is a real nuts and bolts poet-in-residence. He is presently working as poet-in-residence in two psychiatric homes in the South of England. He recently e-mailed P-i-R a couple of experimental poems which serve to illustrate the kind of poetry he's currently working on with his students. It's a kind of acrostic poetry.
Having been to the psychiatric unit with its famous artists at 'Der Haus Der Kunstler in Gugging' near Vienna and studied what they achieve with paint and other materials P-i-R is naturally more than interested in Alan's psychiatric poetry workshops.
There must be many persons with psychiatric problems who can only express their feelings through paint, poetry and/or music. And it's people like Alan who help them, encourage them, show them the way do it. P-i-R humbly removes his poetic hat to Alan Morrison.
These acrostic poems from Alan's worksheets address the WINTER. Unfortunately P-i-R is unable to print them here exactly in the format that Alan would like to see but nevertheless they don't lose anything by this failure on P-i-R's part; they still manage to speak for themselves. A sign of a good poem methinks!

White drifts glistening, orange-blushed robins,
Inveigle our minds to yuletide's false promise
Nuanced in autumnal brittle hues -
Terracotta, copper, gold, all betray us,
Emptying to grey, dark clock-back days
Recalcitrant to all but desperate festivities.

summoned in with Wailing winds, lashing rains
coldest solstIce frosts the autumn light
each trembling November, branches crack
like chapped hands, dismanTled of their gloves
long fallEn, snowed under, crystallised -
the sun shuns half the day, Rises by dark.

Geoff Stevens barding it up in Ireland

3 years ago Geoff Stevens, yes! he of the da-da-da- Guy Gibson poem which appeared recently on P-i-R's pages (well worth a trawl through December 2007 on the sidebar to find it...look for keyword 'Handshake') took himself, his notepad and his camera on a tour of the Emerald Isle and kept a diary of sorts. He subsequently published a record of his misadventures under the intriguing title: 'A Keelhauling through Ireland - barnacles and all'.
From Geoff's 36-page booklet, with his kind permission, a postcard:

Lettermullen

Imagine this as a place
where no one spoke until
the invention of the radio
and then their voices crackled
with an atmosphere of rainstorm
and the crashing of the wild wild sea
as they asked for bread and potatoes
or a cylinder of liquid gas
at the store that stood there isolated
on a black and white TV screen of time
before a stone-littered landscape
that fronted a bleak background of hills
and a canvas of oil-smeared skies
and was a screaming motorcycle ride
from civilisation, a windswept sodden walk away
from the white-walled cottages
with their peat-smoke twisting chimneys
and turf-top roofs of mildewed thatch.
Introduce a car or two and the odd hiker
and allow a few women into the pub
and satellite dishes would sprout from the eaves
but colour would still only exist indoors
travel through on wheels or on yellow backs
of oilskinned walkers roughing it
through a landscape which is forever two-tone,
the wind grey and sounding black
as it whistles through the rain
or settles white and silent on the horizon's distant waves.

c)-Geoff Stevens

Only 3 copies of 'Keelhauling...' now left on the shelf! Contact Poetry Monthly Press at poetrymonthly@btinternet.com to get yours!

Monday 7 January 2008

Kitchen Table Publications

Poet-in-Residence's only published poetic collection to date is a humble pamphlet called 'Mavericks'; a freebie in a limited edition of 20, about 10 left in the box, and was a genuine glue and scissors job on the kitchen table at the Poet-in-Residence residence in 2005.
All copies were duly signed by the author and numbered. Unfortunately they won't be valuable one day. But at least they have the merit of being rare, only 4 times less rare than a Willy Wonka golden voucher (see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl).
If one should ever turn up unexpectedly on your doormat you may guard it well. Here's the 1st poem from 'Mavericks' - it's a tribute to Walt Whitman and Ray Bradbury. It's also a 'thank you' to those who support what's going on here.

We Sing the Body Electric

What say you my reader there
under this electric air
that sings between us
and carries my immortal words
and rhymes
over and above the songs of
trilling birds and
through mysterious space
and time;
are you and I the one and same
in some unholy supernatural game
enjambed just as those singing birds
whose words each dawning
trill the skies?

My song this day is sung for you -
you who seem to be
as much a part of me
as all those
trilling birds
and humming bees.

c-2005 Gwilym Williams

P-i-R's Poem of the month

From 'Hamlet' this 'poem' recited to young Laertes by Gertrude, Queen of Denmark, is P-i-R's latest selection. A descriptive and poetic triumph, complete with a seasonal joke, from the razor-sharp mind of the great playwright whom P-i-R has humbly dubbed the 'Quill of Avon'.

There is a willow grows askant the brook,
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;
Therewith fantastic garlands did she make
Of crowflowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples,
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them.
There on the pendent boughs her crownet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke,
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide,
And mermaidlike awhile they bore her up,
Which time she chanted snatches of old lauds,
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and endued
Unto that element. But long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.

(to 'get' Shakespeare's joke you need to know that 'long purples' are 'early purple orchids' and that they have testicle-resembling tubers)

P-i-R's January Book of the Month

'Don't Ask Me What I Mean' is the apposite title of a 350 pp Picador paperback compiled by Clare Brown and Don Paterson. The top rank poets contributing essays range through the full spectrum of British Poetry over the last 50 or 60 years; and include such names as Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney, Philip Larkin, T S Eliot, and Sylvia Plath, just to make a random fist.
The book begins encouragingly with the first sentence: Poets are mad.
From that point on it swerves hither and thither through the bardic thoughts of more than 100 madmen and several mad persons of the fairer sex. An average of 3 pages per literary lunatic.
It's a great book to take to the pub to puruse in safety of the sepia painted corner with your glowing pint of real ale or your fizzing gin and tonic.
The Finacial Times's backcover blurb sums it up quite well if in a rather dull tone: ...some of the best and most engagingly human prose about the agonies and travails of writing poems...
Rush out and buy it with your Christmas book token! says P-i-R with aplomb and gusto.

Poems for Neil

P-i-R's friend (yes, he has one!) Neil said: I don't understand poetry if it doesn't rhyme!
Here they are then. Poems for Neil.

Winter

Winter is here with his grouch,
The time when you sneeze and you slouch;
You can't take your women
Canoeing or swimming,
But a lot can be done on a couch.

anon)

Notable Family

There's a notable family named Stein,
There's Gert and there's Ep and there's Ein.
Gert's prose is all bunk,
Ep's sculpture just junk
And nobody understands Ein.

anon)

Comment on the Poet-in-Residence blogspot continues to trickle in. Unsolicited observations include: "the friendliest poet on the internet" (thanks for that one!) and "impressed with what you're doing" (thanks for that one too!).

January's library books

Unspeakable Verse - Lewis Carroll and others
The Forbidden Tree - Rose Ausländer
Concrete - Thomas Bernhard
Collected Poems - Christy Brown
Poems & Prose - Georg Trakl
Collected Poems 1941 - 1994 - Michael Hamburger
In Hora Mortis - Thomas Bernhard

The Great Wilhelm Busch Album

It's just 100 years since the great Wilhelm Busch, the confirmed bachelor, the oil painter, the cartoonist, the poet, the satirist, the German Mark Twain, the inventor of the strip cartoon, the creator of Max & Moritz and much else, left his mortal coil.
P-i-R is fortunate to have access to the 350 page special edition of The Great Wilhelm Busch Album containing over 1800 drawings and corresponding verses.
The book begins with the story of Holy Antonius from Padua. This is the one you should pray to when you've lost some precious thing. He will recover it for you. Or may seem to. His jewel-encrusted glass-cased finger may be viewed in Padua Cathedral.
The best known of the tales in the collection, and these days performed as a ballet set to music by Rossini, is of course the 1865 story of Max & Moritz. It's the salutary tale of a couple of scamps who get up to mischief wherever they go.

Extract from Max & Moritz - Chapter 7

Max and Moritz beware of pain -
Here comes your final cunning game!-

The boys are cutting holes in sacks
behind the Master Baker's back,

Now look, there goes Farmer Mac
carrying his heavy corn-filled sack,

And from the sack, as through a door,
the corn pours out upon the floor,

He stops and then he says 'How so?-
The sack gets lighter as I go!'

c)- Gwilym Williams

...and so it goes on until the end when the devilish duo are sliced up in a mincer and fed to the chickens. No good can ever come from bad. There are no happy endings for scoundrels. You get the pictures? Imagine the pen and ink cartoon under each verse.

These are quite rough translations by P-i-R from an old style of German but serve to give the reader an idea of how Busch's stories progress.

Sunday 6 January 2008

Michael Newman's snapshot of family life

2008 - and the Earth spins daily in its orbit, spins yearly around the Sun, itself a spinning star spinning along the edge of the Milky Way; and only on its third spin is this great spinning disc known as the Milky Way; and now after all the rockets and all the cork popping of last long-spun-out weekend we find ourselves yet again examining our fingertips for old earwax and wondering why?.
And so, back down to Earth then. And where better to begin 2008 than with something reminiscent of Wales's famous doubting Thomas. The story goes that R S Thomas, the priestly poet of the Lleyn Peninsula, once asked what an almost empty bus was doing attempting to negotiate the narrow bridge in the centre of the village of Aberdaron, a tricky proposition even for a normal car. A brave pedestrian passing by compared the bus's predicament to that of Thomas's church and thereby risked the wrath of Thomas and of heaven.
Michael Newman is a writer long-admired by P-i-R and it is with great pleasure and with his kind permission that the following poem which featured in the 100th edition of 'Weyfarers' (the Guildford Poets Press) in June 2006 is now published here.

The Photograph

First in the frame,
Edwin Grimmett,
Farmworker - itinerant at that,
Keeping his head above debt
Like a bobbing buoy,
Arms the colour of red marl.

Next we have Mathew Grimmett,
The eldest son and first-born,
Cutting corners as a lorry driver,
Fudging, fiddling,
Anything to augment meagre overtime.

Then we have Andrew Grimmett,
The one who did follow his father,
And now lives on a tractor.
Permanent position on a big estate,
Pension, too.

Silas Grimmett, what of him?
He's kept quiet
By doing errands in the village.
Each list is like a cypher
Which the shopkeeper decodes.
Ga-ga vowels replace thanks,
But mean the same.

Which leaves Sarah Grimmett,
Mother, wife, mid-wife,
Charlady, cleaner, gardener,
Church goer.

Four men under one poor roof,
And they look to her
Without seeming sentiment.
And yet her face becomes
The stained-glass by which
The say their fumbled prayers.

c)- Michael Newman