More Irish impressions

As promised the sequel to the recent Irish impressions is here. In fact there are some more newly discovered notes in the treasure trove box; this may become a mini-series,-

PUBLIC BATHING

casual towel
flung over bare shoulder
he reads
the rusted instructions
at The Forty Foot Gentlemens Bathing Place°
when suddenly his companion speaks:
you're such a plonker, dad!


CLOUD SHADOWS

gliding
on the crawling sea

the gorse green and yellow
the purple heather

the ferry from Holyhead

the blue mountains of Antrim


FISHING BOATS AT HOWTH HARBOUR

Star of Nazareth
Rose of Sharon
Renegade
Waddenzee
Fragrant Cloud


PORTMARNOCK

brisk in the fresh sea breeze
blowing over the eccentric
orbit globe of limestone
that is the acorn barnacle
the confident hip-swinging
rosy-cheeked girl
takes her sunday morning walk
and the world's liveliest and friendliest dogs
happily boss each other to death all around and over the beach


AN OBSERVATION

some old golfers
having lost their balls
are wandering around the sand dunes


A FEELING

The sheeptrod leads me
through the heather and gorse
and over the flank and the rocks on a rock strewn hill
and away from all that tourist business below
and the faraway fading din of the road menders' machine working on the bend on the pass.
When I reach to the summit I share the space
with an Irish hawk that flies
above the islands and the rocks and the squalls below in the sea
and above the dolmen on the jagged limestone top
and feels at one with the force of nature
and creation and the warm sun.

°The location of the famous Bathing Place is near to the Martello Tower featured in the writings of James Joyce. These days women are also allowed to swim there.

A poetry game you can play at home

Here are the so-called rules. Take a decent piece of literary text. In this Poet-in-Residence example it's a day's entry chosen completely at random from a Virginia Woolf diary. Highlight some poetic-looking words and phrases and cobble them together like a piece of IKEA furniture thereby making a poem. The Poet-in-Residence poem THE OLD DRIVING WHIRLWIND took all of ten minutes to compose. Now you may cry, "And it shows!"
But that is deliberately missing the point. We can and should self-assemble these poetic goods on display in the DIY shop window. It's a small contribution to poetic posterity. Give it a whirl. And don't be afraid.
In THE OLD DRIVING WHIRLWIND only the word 'is' (line 3) and the punctuation were added.

THE OLD DRIVING WHIRLWIND

Two glasses of vin du pays
Settle the dust in my mind.
Hope is the colour of dirty brown paper.
A dark cultivated woman
Something of miraculous desirability
Was my desire
Mounting all the time steadily
Coming in at night in the wet
Punctured in a mountain village
In the bitter windy rain
In the old driving whirlwind ...

_______
gw 2009

SHAKESPEARE'S HAIKU...

...is the name of a new PiR blog. It's in the A-Z LINKS >> under S for Shakespeare!

Irish impressions

Scribbles from Ireland on miscellaneous bits of paper. How many will be found in the inefficient fruit&veg box filing system? Who can say? More will be added here as and when they are uncovered and rediscovered.

BLUE FLAG BEACH

white and silvery
herons
and whispery reeds
in hollows


GALWAY

is a town of pubs
and wild Irish women
with warm hearts
and big smiles
bursting bright-eyed
from energetic shirts


DUBLIN CITY CLOCK

There's always time
for a Guinness
when the time
is 10 minutes slow!

UNESCO World Poetry Day 2009

To celebrate UNESCO World Poetry Day tomorrow, 21st March 2009, UNESCO will hold several events to honour the life of Pablo Neruda. A good choice. Poet-in-Residence on the other hand will pay homage a day earlier than recommended and to another poet, a man whose graveside he has had the honour to visit. Here then is a suitable poem from the pen of Joseph Brodsky a man who charged at the world with full intensity as Sven Birkerts rightly said.

Letter to an Archaeologist

Citizen, enemy, mama's boy, sucker, utter
garbage, panhandler, swine, refujew, verrucht;
a scalp so often scalded with boiling water
that the puny brain feels completely cooked.
Yes, we have dwelt here: in this concrete, brick, wooden
rubble which you now arrive to sift.
All our wires were crossed, barbed, tangled, or interwoven.
Also: we didn't love our women, but they conceived.
Sharp is the sound of the pickax that hurts dead iron;
still, it's gentler than what we've been told or have said to ourselves.
Stranger! move carefully through our carrion:
what seems carrion to you is freedom to our cells.
Leave our names alone. Don't reconstruct those vowels,
consonants, and so forth: they won't resemble larks
but a demented bloodhound whose maw devours
its own traces, feces, and barks and barks.

______________________
Joseph Brodsky 1940-96

Ants, Austria 1914

A version of the following poem was written some years ago after visiting an exhibition by the Austrian World War I artist Albin Egger-Lienz; a man who became so unpopular in his own country because of his anti-war paintings such as The Nameless that he was forced to go into exile in Italy, the land of the WWI enemy. The poem is now rewritten and improved.

Ants, Austria 1914

Cutting summer grass
Egger-Lienz peasants
with long curved blades of
steel flashing fresh
in the summertime sun
releasing the grass
clover and wild-flower smells
and the dark dank smells of earth
when one swished point
grazes the hidden nest
of ants -
and leaves
its scar upon the ground.

Some stop work -
see them running
crazily around.

The rest
swish on -
bend the knee
drop the shoulder.

________
gw 2009

A graveyard in Venice

Here's a recently recovered, much revised, poem to do with Poet-in-Residence's visit in 2005 to a Venetian graveyard. It was Napoleon's idea that the Venetian's bury their dead out of town as it were. The Reporto Evangelico is a short ferry ride from the main island, about halfway to the island of Murano.
The overall contribution of Ezra Pound, whose reputation lives mainly on the back of his Cantons, to the history of poetry and art in general, because of his support for Mussolini and his inferior Chinese translations as someone, perhaps it was J M Coetzee, called them, is debatable. For comparison we may consider Joseph Brodsky or Igor Strawinsky; two with whom Pound now shares a place in the sun.

Reporto Evangelico

A dazzling patch of sunlight
strikes and is reflected
from a marble slab of white
which lies beside a leafy shadowed path
in the Reporto Evangelico
where I see a brown lizard
shaped like a question mark,
a question mark which seems
to be barely breathing -
it's only a shadow on a marble slab
marked with the name
of EZRA POVND.

And then I'm moved to look
through the children's letters
held in see-through folders
propped against another stone
standing over sprays of flowers;
and to count the many stones
and coloured shells left all around
by children and other poets; there's water too
in a small green bottle and many
coloured pencils in a box
beside the rougher upright stone
of Joseph Brodsky.

_______
gw 2005

Yuri Gagarin in Uzlop

This poem was written after visiting a restaurant on the Austria-Hungary border, a part of the old Iron Curtain. It transpired that the Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin had been there and had signed the Visitors Book.

Yuri Gagarin in Uzlop

Yuri Gagarin was there before us
at the Stork Mill
in Uzlop (now Oslip)
with its bean soup and gipsy music

after we'd dropped our leaflets saying,
We the Democrats
are fighting your War
It is not a War
of Land against Land.

Earlier in a brambled copse
there was a confusion of birdsong
peeps whistles and throaty warbles
and a dozen cabbage whites
in a display of dance
amid crabbed oaks
and a strawy tangled sea
under a circling kite on a thermal.

_______
gw 2005

Bar in East Berlin, a poem

Somewhere in East Berlin in 2007 some scribbled notes. Vague memories of a bar with plastic tablecloths, plastic flowers and small square tables. Time to kill. Some notes lately discovered;-

Bar in East Berlin

5 kinds of beer

football over the bar
on the box

someone losing

Stalin on the wall
with Lennon

thick air with light-flash
and loud music

door open to the street
and the fan broke

the barman pulls him a beer

_______
gw 2007

Mahatma Ghandi, a poem

There's a bust of Mahatma Ghandi on display in the Checkpoint Charlie Museum in Berlin. It was a moving experience to come across such an item in such a location. Here's a short Poet-in-Residence poem written in 2007 following a visit to that city.

Mahatma Ghandi

Trailing a god
dressed in wooden chappals
and a white sheet
I remembered a palace
where the king wore enough
for both of them.

Yet what can I do?

Bangladesh is falling into the sea.
The polar bears are looking for helicopters.

_______
gw 2007

More poetry from Christine Busta

The translator traduttori traditori is a traitor. Here, in that case, another instance of Poet-in-Residence treason; again from the sensitive and illuminating poetry of Christine Busta. Don't tell the authorities in Rome!

TAKING UP

I have inherited my mother's
walking stick.
Her life was harder than mine,
and yet she needed it
much later than I.

Now, when I support myself with it,
I grip once more the hand
that my stubborness
so often resisted
and hear her quiet voice:

"I have always known
that you'll never take good care
of yourself. You are
too much my daughter.
Come! Stand up straight!"


CONVALESCENCE

With the last of my strength
I throw myself into a sleep;
only the breath of the eternal Creator
can wake me again.


AGAINST SO-CALLED REASON

The purest form of human intelligence
is goodness.
To your very end you'll need
all your foolishness and resistance
against so-called reason.


BAPTISM
OR WATER AND SAND

Those baptised with water
will have it lighter
than those baptised with sand.

For me, God mixed the sand
with spit.

_____________________________
Christine Busta (1915-87)
translated by Gwilym Williams
2009.

Jack Kerouac haikus for St Patrick's Day

A bottle of wine,
a bishop -
Everything is God

Jack Kerouac wasn't Irish but then St Patrick wasn't Irish either.

Haiku (before, during and after) to ease us all emerald green and darkly bottled stout into and eventually out of those Dublin glasses or a New York loving St Patrick's Day with musical memories of an Irish NY Police Band spirit, or wherever, whatever, and however we may choose it to be. God bless us all,-

Elephants munching
on grass - loving
Heads side by side

The stars are racing
real fast
Through the clouds

Well here I am,
2 PM -
What day is it?

______________________
Jack Kerouac 1922-1969

Prince in Galapagos Islands

The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall are visiting the Galapagos Islands. This is where the famous giant tortoise lives.

The Giant Galapagos Tortoise

The Galapagos giants
are on the move.
Their necks outstretched
long as a D H Lawrence nature poem
He persuing Her
over the high ground
on Charles Island
until He catches Her
and plonks His giant house on top of Hers
CLUNK!
and slowly seesaws to and fro
CLUNK! CLUNK! CLUNK! CLUNK!
And that's it.
That's life.
On Charles Island the Governor
tucks into the tortoise steaks
and remarks to The Philosopher°
All are different.
Show me the reptile
and I'll tell you where it lives.

_______
gw 2009
°Charles Darwin was known to his shipmates
aboard the Beagle as The Philosopher

andromeda blue-shifted

Here's a quickly scribbled poem or whatever you want to call it for the dim and distant future. It's something light for periodic tinkering!

andromeda blue-shifted

curving in from left side
on collision course

- that

it will be damned serious
is to mildly understate

compare it to that stray raindrop
just dripped onto the tip
of my Stabilo point 88 0.4fine
writing instrument
causing these big expanding blots on this damp paper

inevitable collision of galaxies

milk way
andromeda

andromeda
milky way

either way
it won't matter
it will make no difference

these galaxies are like dinner plates
- patrick moore
on sky at night

and they are now at opposite ends of the dinner table

that's the galactic scale
he says

galaxies are nearer than stars
he says

and so we are all
already
sheltering from the tempest
in the restaurant
at the end of the universe

or almost


where it's a long time away
in curving space

but if you're obliviously dead
it will seem to be less than an instant
claims the sommelier

two dinner plates
will smash one other to pieces
and then gather themselves up
as one reincarnated

now in the shape of a rugby ball
- the waiter with his notepad

god's not a man who plays with odd-shaped balls
says the waitress
wiping down the tables

and so here it is again -

two dinner plate galaxies
will be smashed to glorious smithereens
and will gradually come back
together as one big rugby ball
- the cook
unfastening his apron strings

but not as fish or fowl
he adds

that's complete bollocks
says the dishwasher
- frayed cloth unfolded

we have no proof that god's a man

who plays with odd-shaped balls
like the waitress
said


some will come back as a front-row forwards
others as tablecloths
declares the owner
- his clockwise arm
reaching for the closed sign

_______
gw 2009

R K Singh and The Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poets

Here's the Bloodaxe catalogue blurb for this Jeet Thayil edited anthology launched in September 2008. For reasons which will soon become obvious it comes complete with Poet-in-Residence bold italic type.
" Jeet Thayil's definitive selection covers 55 years of Indian poetry in English. It is the first anthology to represent not just the major poets of the last half-century - the canonical writers who have dominated Indian poetry and publishing since the 1950s - but also different kinds of poetry written by an extraordinary range of younger poets living in many different countries as well as India. It is a ground-breaking global anthology of over 70 poets writing in a common language responding to shared traditions, different cultures and contrasting lives in the changing modern world. "

   One Indian poet not included in this ground-breaking global anthology is an Indian poet actually living and breathing in India. He is Professor Ram Krishna Singh. So what are Singh's credentials? And why does Poet-in-Residence bemoan the fact that R K Singh is not included in this definitive collection of Indian poetry?

Singh is a university professor who has authored over 150 academic articles and written 36 books including 11 books of poems. His poems, written in English, have appeared in some 140 publications and have been translated into nearly 20 languages. Dr Singh's recent works include English Language Teaching: Some Aspects Recollected, Teaching English for Specific Purposes: An Evolving Experience, and English: Grammar and Composition. In addition he has been actively involved with national and international journals. He is Professor of English & Head of the Department of Humanities & Social Sciences at the Indian School of Mines in Dhanbad.

This man is clearly a candidate for inclusion in any book claiming to represent the major poets of India one would have thought. So what's the reason that R K Singh is conspicuously absent from Jeet Thayil's Bloodaxe book? Perhaps Singh's poetry is not good enough? Well, let's take a look at it. His latest book is Sexless Solitude and Other Poems.

What do the critics and reviewers say about R K Singh's Sexless Solitude and Other Poems? Here's a small selection of their quotable quotes:
An essential work speaking out for love, sensuality and the meaning of life (Patricia Prime)
A daring experimenter (Dr Y S Rajan)
Attacks worn-out traditions and corruption (Dr Stephen Gill)
I almost drool in anticpation of reading his work (Lena Reppert)
A collection written with honest intentions and insight that would sit well amongst one's favoured treasures (Francisco Toscano)
The poet uses the technique of the internal monologue and other sensational devices to arouse the jaded consciousness of contemporary man (Rajni Singh)
The poet lifts the so-called unclean words of the street and gives them a new dignity. In the history of Indian English poetry, I guess, it has been attempted for the first time on such a scale (I K Sharma)

Perhaps Poet-in-Residence is wrong. It could be. Perhaps these critics and reviewers are wrong. It could be. Perhaps Bloodaxe and Jeet Thayil are right. It could be. Or they could be wrong.

Here you may now read a couple of R K Singh's 99 poems from his new book and judge for yourselves. First up, there's the title poem SEXLESS SOLITUDE. It's followed here by the poem CONCLUSION which in R K Singh's book is on the facing page. With R K Singh we needn't bother to hunt through the book for a good or passable poem. We can open at any page and we'll find the gems there -

SEXLESS SOLITUDE

I don't seek the stone bowl
Buddha used while here:
she dwells on moonbeams

I can see her smiling
with wind-chiselled breast
in sexless solitude

her light is not priced
but gifted to enlighten
the silver-linings

CONCLUSION

I wish I could clean the cobwebs of legends
that veil the vision, moralizing future
with doubtful glories urge us to move backward:

echoes of the dead reverberate; no use
setting the alarm to go off 2010

stashed away in empty slogans life's seconds
periodically exhumed is a travesty
of obsolescence of the sun ever clouded

Gateway of India or Delhi's Circus
suffer midnight lust with rites of consummation
like the conclusion of a tragic poem

________________________________
c) R K Singh
Sexless Solitude and Other Poems
Prakash Book Depot
Karmchari Nagar Road
Surkha Chhawni
Bareilly 243 122
India

Hamlet's haiku

Here is a fairly normal Poet-in-Residence haiku:

the bee leaves
the snowdrop
shakes its head

This haiku can be read and understood in many different ways. It has a multitude of meanings. It embodies nature. It is a riddle with no solution. It's fun. And it's quite funny too. And so now to Shakespeare,-

What he himself might his quietus° make
With a bare bodkin°? Who would fardels° bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life

The three words marked ° are interpreted for us in a side-margin of the book from which the text is taken:

exit
small dagger / burdens

And there is our Hamlet haiku; we must only make a minor adjustment and hey presto!,-

exit
small dagger /
burdens

Make of it what you will. It's a haiku from Hamlet that has been around for years; but nobody ever noticed it before. Now you know the trick you may spend a happy hour or two unearthing some Shakespearian haiku of your own. Good luck and do not lose the name of action.
________

This item deleted at the request of the author

Wild Horses

Here is the final Poet-in-Residence poem selected from several published in Pulsar Poetry Magazine. The other three poems can be found directly below. Wild Horses first saw the light of day in the June 2005 edition (no. 42),-

Wild Horses

Jobless to Rise
is how that evening's paper saw it.

I was leaning over the rail
alongside the Riverside Terminus
contemplating the implications,
the options, the consequences;
and waiting for the bus.

I was drawn from my reverie
by the bracing smell of shower gel.
Close by and curving into me
was a brace of Aphrodisian seahorses.

Those twins were half unzipped
and v-framed in a sky-blue jumpsuit;
caressed with strands of wavy hair
and overlooked by helpless eyes
of the deepest swimming-pool blue.

They solicited only simple directions.
Could I by any chance point out
the most convenient place to worship.

Eager to be of service I told of a huge
emblematic edifice around the corner
with tall spires reaching heavenwards;
reaching up towards the unreachable stars;
a folly in spite of all its appearances;
a cold grey and gloomy construction
with no parish to call its own and
nobody ever going in there; spiders
and rats inhabiting the place.

All the clocks stopped.
The horses squealed and stamped their feet;
shook their proud heads and finally turned
and went away

stomp...stomp...stomping away
with a swish of the tail;

but hopefully not

in the wrong direction.

_______________________
c) 2005 Gwilym Williams

Forlorn Point (County Wexford)

Together with the poem Walkin' with Bukowski (below) the poem Forlorn Point (County Wexford) made its debut in Pulsar Poetry no. 44 (December 2005). It was written during a wonderful holiday in Eire in the autumn of 2004. Pulsar editor David Pike, astute as ever, placed the two poems facing each other, on the final double-page of the journal; Bukowski on the left and Wexford on the right.

Forlorn Point (County Wexford)

An oilskinned man
crunches over shells
slithers over seaweed
boot ends a coil of rope
toes over a rag of net
an old scavenger
foraging
in the setting sun.

A cormorant flaps
purposefully sunwards
- an outgoing pterodactyl.

What the man will take
from Forlorn Point
is the echoing note
of the oystercatcher
the gust of wind with salt
in its breath
and the splash of the swell
on the rocks.

_______________________
c) 2004 Gwilym Williams

Walkin' with Bukowski

The following Poet-in-Residence poem first appeared in Pulsar Poetry no. 44 (December 2005) -

Walkin' with Bukowski

I guess that was Buk's last job
honkin' me over
the Harbor Freeway
crossin' me over
by San Remo
his warty eyes blinkin'
in the blindin' steel and gas
crawlin' all day
on the freeway
jammin' up the place

say, you could read a poem to me
from Buk's last book
THE LAST NIGHT OF THE EARTH

you'd like the feel

the acid-free paper...

_______________________________________________________
c- Gwilym Williams 2005
Alludes to the opening poem jam by Charles Bukowski
THE LAST NIGHT OF THE EARTH POEMS (Black Sparrow)

Poet-in-Residence's pointless poem

The poem was published in Pulsar Poetry no. 45 (March 2006) in response to a debate about the use of line-breaks in preference to punctuation and to answer the challenge that it is not possible to write a meaningful and coherent poem without using at least some punctuation. After 3 years in the wilderness it's time that Poet-in-Residence's pointless poem had another outing. You will see that the poem contains the symbol ? but of course that's the point of the pointless poem.


pointless poem

this poem will harm nobody
point the finger at nobody
say nothing about nobody
that could be taken the wrong way
or any other way for that matter

this poem will say nothing
controversial or otherwise
about nothing and nobody

this poem will be so bloody
pointless
that you will think

there should be a law against it
or at least a regulation
or a sub-regulation
or the sub-section of a sub-regulation

this poem will not even entertain
one semicolon

what about that then?

cut

_______
gw 2006

Francesco Petrarch's House in Arqua

Francesco Petrarca, to give him his correct Italian name, was born in Florence, Italy in 1304. From the age of 12 until he was almost 50 he lived mostly in Provence, France. In 1341 he was crowned Poet Laureate in Rome. His humanist works anticipated the Renaissance and his poetic works influenced European writers and major poets such as England's Chaucer.
In a letter to Matteo Longo dated 6th January 1371 Petrarca wrote: In the Euganean Hills I had a small house built, seemly and noble; here I live out the last years of my life peacefully, recalling and embracing with constant memory my absent or deceased friends.
Three-and-a-half years later, during the night of 19th/20th July 1374, the poet fell asleep with his head resting upon his books. He was never to wake.

The village of Arqua is in the Euganean Hills Regional Park, an area of small extinct volcanoes and hot springs. It lies to the south-west of Padua and overlooks the Veneto plain. In early March a walk through the hills will reveal clusters of snowdrops, daffodils, violets, clumps of rosemary and patches of wild garlic among the laurel trees and oaks on the south-facing slopes. The olive groves are at this time of year being cleared of winter debris, the vines are being snipped and tied, and in the ruins of old buildings in the wild brambles the brown lizards are awake. It's an idyllic spot. Truly a spot for a poet like Petrarca.

As summer drifts into being the white water lilies and the yellow-bellied toads will appear in the ponds, the marbled white butterflies will flit amid the downy oaks, the red backed shrikes will shrike (if that's what shrikes do) and the peregrine will zoom below the sweet chestnuts after the mouse running through the monkey orchids. Pure and wonderful nature. Petrarca, in search of peace quiet, wrote that he ran away from the noisy city as if it were a prison.

Today there are no books in the house at Arqua. The bookcase stands idle and empty. The bronze bust of the poet on the shelf has a bullet hole drilled at close range into the top of the forehead. The culprit is said to be an 18thCent. vandal, identity unknown. The true reason is unknown. We can only guess. An anarchist? A drunken soldier? A rival poet? The bust on the impressive marble grave just along the road outside the front door of the village church is but a replacement, a copy.

Above the many times disturbed and stolen bones of the poet (said now to be elsewhere) the large black bell in the angled shadow at the top of the brick tower clangs out the noontime hour which vibrates and echoes through the still air and sends a flurry of pigeons briefly skywards.

By chance the following quotation, which might well apply to Petrarca, was found on a chocolate wrapper at a picnic spot on the hill overlooking Arqua -

the heart has its reasons
which reason does not know

Poet-in-Residence considers the fact that Petrarca's study faced into a garden as he dwells on the mind of the visionary poet who advises us to: standomi un giorno solo a la fenestra (Canzoniere 323 of Canzone delle visioni). It would appear that Petrarca died exactly as he would have wished. The Euganean Hills Regional Park is a wonderful garden. And the house of the Poet of Arqua is at the heart of it.

Poetry Kit Recommended Site Award

The happy purchase of my glorious spoile,
gotten at last with labour and long toyle.
- Edmund Spenser

Poet-in-Residence has been awarded the Poetry Kit Recommended Site Award.

The success, if one dare call it that, of Poet-in-Residence is due in no small measure to the many readers old and new visiting and revisiting, and commenting on these pages on a regular and irregular basis, broadcasting a few poetic seeds, rather like Van Gogh's sower in the various comments boxes, thereby keeping the ground productive and the poetry ploughman up to his job. Many thanks to you all.

Poet-in-Residence aims to be the poetry magazine you will wish to find in the infernal waiting room. Pick it up, flick open at almost any page and there you will almost certainly find something worth reading. A short item, a longer one, an in-depth piece over several pages; so more than something simply to pass time as it were, although it is that as well.

There are to date approximately 400 pages in the Poet-in-Residence poetry book. It strives to be a place where poets who write and also those who enjoy reading poetry can both feel at home. Residence is the poetic name of the planet on which we all live.