After a Keith Haring exhibition

The exhibition KEITH HARING 1978-1982 is showing at Vienna's Kunsthalle until 19th September 2010.

Haring (1958-1990) was inspired by New York downtown culture. He drew cartoons in the New York subway, his philosophy being that people should not be frightened of art and that art should be for the masses. Millions of ordinary people travelling through New York's subway stations in the early 1980's saw Haring's cartoons from the train windows.Recently somebody told me that I put too many of my poems on the Internet. I should put them in a book and sell it. But I've already done that. Now, like Haring, I want to share my work with as many people as possible.

I don't want people to be frightened of poetry, or to think of it as something elitist. That viewpoint is a hangover from poor teaching methods. I think of this Poet-in-Residence blog as a way to share my work. Whether my work is worth sharing, whether it is any good or not is not really my concern, for ultimately all depends on the individual reader's conception of it.

Artist as middleman

at least on paper

angular men with attitude
are free to hang around the subway stations
under the phallic buildings
at 14th 23rd 33rd and 66th
in NY
where the TV
is a dog barking
and to carry their crosses
and their violence
behind their backs
when they shop for mouthwatering giant chickens
in tailored-to-fit trousers
for slimline wives
planning the next vacation to Florida
on the sofa with a cool filter tip
in their lips

On subway paper at least

the dark side of an energy that bears its cross
unseen behind its back
is found in a TV newsreader's eyes ears and mouth
all firmly closed to a story

Viewers are therefore free to create

their own realities
their own meanings
and their own conceptions

UFO ZAPS DOG

------
gw2010

The last painting - a Lautrec

My brief sojourn in 1998 into the world of paint ended with this picture. Aristide Bruant was a good friend of Lautrec. I've seen the original of this picture and I'm in a position to say that I'm pleased with my effort. I gave it to my mother.

There's a small difference between my painting and the original. In my painting the word son was deliberately omitted.

Thinking back on it, as a result of Oort Cloud blogger Clown Car's remark, I think my total output was about 6 paintings in as many weeks. One painting I remember doing was of a man called Eddie Campbell running on Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in Britain. I copied the picture from a photograph in a fell running magazine and then added a few rabbits and swallows to make it romantic. I also did a couple more French works and that really was the end. As suddenly as it had started my furious flurry of painting was over. I had come through whatever it was that I had to come through. I gave all my paintings away apart from the Degas (below) which I sold and the van Gogh (below) which I kept.

The important thing about my painting period, as I see it, was that I learnt about composition - but not in a theoretical way. I understood why painters put a dab of colour here and not there, and why lines were at this angle and not that angle, and I'm not talking about vanishing points when I say that, I'm talking about composition. And I think this knowledge is also useful when it comes to writing poetry in a Rene Magritte° kind of way.

The interesting thing I now discover on looking back was that all my paintings were of people rather than scenery and objects. It was, and is, people that interest me.

-
°The painter Rene Magritte said paintings should be given poetic titles, e.g.- "An owl is a clock without hands."

The Italian Woman

The above picture is The Absinthe Drinkers an oil painting by Degas. In 1998 I decided to become a painter. This new hobby, or was it therapy, didn't last very long. But in any case I painted a fair copy of the above picture on paper using a mixture of egg tempera and water colour, and signed it with my own name. I displayed it in my local pub. After 2 or 3 of weeks one of the regulars came to me and said he liked it. He offered me a few pounds for it. That, more or less, is and was my career in art.

Vincent van Gogh is, and always has been, by favourite painter. There are many reasons for this, not least being the fact that I have great respect for the man as a person.

There's a Vincent van Gogh painting of The Italian Woman hanging in the Musee D'Orsay in Paris. It was painted in 1887. It is done in oil on canvas. It is obviously worth millions.

The painting of The Italian Woman hanging on my wall was painted by me in 1998. It is the same size as van Gogh's original. I used egg tempera (poster paints) on paper and signed it with black ink. It is obviously completely worthless.

And yet at a distance, unless you'd seen the original, you'd probably struggle to see any difference between the two paintings. Clue: Mine's the one now rapidly fading!


Today, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of artists painting away in large well-illuminated 'art factories' in China. They are extremely talented and can make you a cheap copy of any painting you want so long as they have a photograph to copy from.

So what makes a painting valuable? That's one of the questions that blogger Jim Murdoch at The Truth About Lies (see my LINKS>>>) will be addressing in a forthcoming post. If Jim's other posts are anything to go by the subject will be researched meticulously and discussed in great depth. I'm looking forward to reading it.

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An Austrian Mona Lisa?

Both these paintings are in reality the same size, and they are quite small, perhaps 15" x 10" at a rough guess. They were painted in 1912 by the Austrian artist Egon Schiele. The medium is oil on wood. In reality the backgrounds are the same colour and not as shown in these photographs.

Today the paintings hang, not as I have placed them here, but side by side. He on the left. She on the right. The two subjects are therefore looking towards each other. They are now in the Leopold Museum in Vienna's MQ. And I saw them yesterday.

The name on her baptism record is Walburga Pfneis. Shortly after her birth her parents were officially married and she was given her father's surname and became Walburga Neuzil. Later she became known as Wally (pronounced: Valley).

She was Egon Schiele's muse and lover from 1912 until 1915; but then he decided to marry Edith Harms.

Wally became a nurse and in August 1917 went to work in the Balkans. Before the year was out she had died of scarlet fever.


the Austrian Mona Lisa
reunited with her lover
controversy surrounds








self-portrait
chinese lantern plant
background










The upper picture was the subject of a recent court case in New York. It appears that Wally was one of thousands of works of art looted by the Nazis during World War II. The painting was subsequently recovered by U S Forces and handed over to the Austrian authorities in 1950.

A long-standing dispute over the ownership of the painting has now been resolved with a payment of an undisclosed sum believed to be in the region of €15 million to the estate of the original owner.

Whether any piece of wood with some paint on it, no matter how well done, can be said to be worth €100,000 per square inch,in a world where miners are working in dangerous and unhealthy conditions risking life and limb for a dollar an hour, is another question.

-
image: wiki

WHEN IN ROME...

AB INITIO AB ORIGINE AB OVO AB OVO USQUE AD
MALA ABSENTE REO MORE MAJORUM MIRABILE
DICTU MIRABILE VISU PER MARE PER TERRAS
STUDIUM IMMANE LOQUENDI RENASCENTUR JOCI
CAUSA IN MEDIA RES ITA LEX SCRIPTA HEU PRISCA
FIDES!

When in Rome...

"From the beginning..."
"From the origin..."
"From the egg..."
"From the egg to the apples"

The accused being absent

"After the manner of our ancestors"
"Wonderful to relate..."
"Wonderful to see..."
"Through sea and land"

An insatiable desire for talking

"They will be born again..."
"Into the midst of things"
"For the sake of a joke"
"Thus the law stands written"

Alas for the ancient faith!

______
gw2010

Poetry bus drummer

This week's Poetry Bus Challenge has to do with our early memories of school. On reading Dominic Rivron's poem I was reminded of a one and only performance of a primary school orchestra of which I was a member, our average age was about 5. In limerick form here's the tale of one unfortunate drummer and his teacher.

a music teacher (first grade)
gave instruments out to be played,
one boy banged a drum: TOM! TOM! TOM! ...
bashed holes in the skin with aplomb
until the teacher cried STOP! her nerves frayed

but not to be defeated she fished around in a large box and after some minutes the problem was solved:

the drum was removed from the band
and the answer appeared in her hand
a triangle instead
'now hit it gently' she said
and with a smile she regained her command
-

small french poem 6

sudden good fortune
to see the underside
of the cards
look for the woman
to obtain the object
goes without saying
diamond cut diamond
the fashionable world
the letters of credit
each saint to his candle
that is all as may be

the devil on crutches
that's another matter


-
gw2010
artwork:
wiki commons / Edme Jean Pigal (1798-1872)

small french poem 5

goose-liver paste
and partridges
fallen from the clouds
everywhere and
in all directions
laugh in your sleeve
egregious fool
wiser than wise
with belly to the ground
speak little and well
find repose in yourself

speak of the wolf
to see his tail

______
gw2010

small french poem 4

a thought
to pass the time
a person is allotted
step by step
one goes a long way
a little thing
perhaps
on a visiting card
written
at the bottom
by way of parenthesis

patience surpasses
knowledge

______
gw2010

small french poem 3

shade
subtle variations
of low origin
one under protection
of another
little by little
suddenly risen
to pay a visit
to attain the object
to encourage others
to make leave

don't forget
we have changed all that

______
gw2010
pic/SK

small french poem 2

star of the north
without thought of tomorrow
fire of joy
in your natural state
a theatrical effect
a cocked hat
a travelling companion
with giant strides
and of good augury
a key to the mystery
and all as it should be

needless to say
the day will come

______
gw2010
star/clip art

small french poem 1

we shall take the moon
by the teeth
and pull her
the whole together
little by little
by degrees
with tender glances
by fits and starts
a work of long breath
(it matters not)
to the temporary resting place

the more fools
the more fun

_______
gw2010
moon/clip art

Cloudland

First part of a 4 part anti-epic. You shall be spared the others!

1. Deepbrook

Winter is the season
when the gales blast o'er the waves
to blow the darkly crested spray
into the howl of airshocked space
and all the waves fall down
down crash back to the world
and something drags the world back out
and rolls-it-up in undertow
and sends it running for the shore
beneath a banshee's wail

and so
we shall go to Deepbrook
and the voices of summer
by way of the Long Gael Road

to where a silken Hermes scarf
lies abandoned on a hall chair
and ice-cubes tumble from a tray
for aperitifs to the consomme´

whisky soda would be just fine
or failing that a stiff martini

on an evening of nervous glitter
and ample plates of grouse and neeps
and hemlines placed above the knees
in a candlelit room where women talk
and roses wither on the sideboards
where sadness looms with the buttered leeks
and chairbacks creak
when the hostess speaks
and the corners of her mouth turn down
and her forehead somehow sets in frown
and her wattled dewlap wags her pearls
and her gnarled arthritic hand unfurls
and points its crooked fingers
to the fleurs-de-lis on the crockery
(the escutcheon of the infantry)
and the flintlocks hanging on the walls
and the open window
where the cockatoo stirs

au courrant

for freshly back
from shuttlecocks
two handsome boys with golden locks
address the virginal
and the flageolet
by the trellis of espaliered rose
where javelin and
discus thrower pose
on concrete plinths on scented ledges
at the end of a path
between box hedges
and play passages from The Hunt Comes Home
for the prick-eared pinschers
on the manicured lawn
and the pretty young thing in her red chiffon hat
a delicate peach with
the bloom still on her
who stands before an escallonia archway
demurely fiddling
with a sprig of thyme

apropos

Miss Abigail Sandberg-Harper

blue chip child
of salvaged futures
hedged around
with promissory notes
grey market kickback
and old family stock
preferred & pivotal
who rides a chestnut hack
to hounds sidesaddle

she's just a normal mixed-up rich-kid

however

Castor and Pollux

the musical twins
circling Abigail's heavenly orbit
are another matter
and they are firmly out of bounds

to lay it straight on the line - they've got bad habits
like they're serious freebasing junkies
like they're completely wired to the moon
like they're permanently torched up
or if not they're out on the sleigh-ride
like in a word they're hooked
like if they're not cranking up
they're coasting down
like if they're not blasted
they're stoned
like if they're not skinning-up
they've been busted and boxed
like for those boys anything goes

Acid
Blues
Charlie
Draw

Eye Openers
Flake
Goofballs
Harry

Ice
Junk
Lebanese
Moroccan

Nepalese
Poppers
Quicksilver
Rocks

Skunk
Tranx
Uppers
Whizz

XTC
Yellows
White Lady
and Zoom

anyone for a spliff? (Castor)

but Abigail's gone

inside

nudis verbis

Lord Aubery pulls on his cigar
as he leans at the end of the bar
he's one of the board
at Proud Stout and Claude
and now he tells all and sundry
how Castor and Pollux were falsely arrested
and how the local constabulary
should have better things to do
than harass those two
innocent offspring of his
they shall be well represented
most stoutly defended
the truth shall come out -
they were framed
says My Lord

- an aside to the reader

the twins are OD and
on the mainline to heaven

- and so back to the party
where most of the guests
are now horribly flushed
and there's the echoing music and clang
of old plumbing
and grumbling
and belching
and groaning
and farting
and retching
it's a case of the cramps
to use the Deepbrook patois

beware the bacillus
in the beche-de-mer
the pathogenic cells
mutating in the coccus
stick with the legume!
was what I wanted to say
but it's already too late
unless that is...

...you are
on chaise-longue reclined
with dreams of your hack
or waiting in line
with your harp for your fix

...for it's blissfully peaceful
in Cloudland.


footnote:
Lord Aubery, devastated, made his quietus with a flintlock and was duly placed alongside his wayward offspring in the family tomb at Deepbrook. All the guests made full recoveries.


______
gw2010

On looking in Rosamunde Pilcher's Voices in Summer

image: Cornwall-Devon publicity dept

Working in a garden shed I recently discovered in a forgotten corner behind the clapped out deckchairs and flyblown flotsam of cobwebbed cans and bottles, rusted rakes with broken teeth, rotted remnants of oilcloth, rags smelling of paraffin and stale polish, heaps of broken seed-trays and other obstacles such as plastic-coated bits of wire and dusty light bulbs and paint tins full of rusty nails and screws and a watering can with a large rusted-through hole in the bottom, a discarded paperback book, damp but in fairly reasonable condition.

It was a copy of Rosamunde Pilcher's Voices in Summer.

The only thing I know, to date, about Pilcher, in fact there are two things I know of her or rather of her books, and these are that she wrote a successful novel called The Shell Seekers and that the TV films of her stories are most popular in Germany where there is a mania for stylish folks with manor houses, stables with thoroughbred horses and gleaming saddlery and open-topped MG cars and green wellingtons and Range Rovers and Mercedes cars that are, or appear to be always found in some indefinite Pilcherland which is bounded by the sparkling seas of Devon and Dorset, Cornwall and even sometimes the West Coast of Scotland and where the sun's rays always shine and gleam and reflect on a rolling blue sea and the grass on the manicured lawns and the rolling hills is always as green and lush as Irish clover.

I scanned the chapter headings: Hampstead, Deepbrook, Islington, Tremenheere, Landrock, Penjizal, Saint Thomas, Roskenwyn, Homes. And then I thought, if Eliot can make poetry with names like Burnt Norton, East Coker, The Dry Salvages and Little Gidding surely I can also do if not it, then something like it, with a little help from Rosamunde Pilcher and her chapter titles.

And so I've chosen now the four which have what I consider to be the most poetic sounding names: Deepbrook, Landrock, Roskenwyn and Homes.

That's the first step.

On Edwin Morgan and the Kamp

A rare thing

yesterday in the Kamp
that brown feeder
burbling its winding way
down through the iron hills
of Lower Austria
in search of the Danube
I sat down on a small rock
and eating my lunch
my cheese and pickle sandwiches
I watched a school of shadows
hovering lazily over the gravel bed
and for some reason that I still cannot fathom
I found myself musing on Eddie Morgan
and his concrete verse
and acrobatic Sprache
when allofasudden ...

I saw an armadillo clad crab
a white clawed crayfish
as it turned out to be
a rare thing
and it was there and then before me
slowly crawling along the shallow bottom
passing the shadowed school
pointing in unison upstream
in the sun-flickered brownness of the water
the crab's whiskers waved in a swirl of currents
and its bold white pincer flicked always
rightways in search of Etwas
and finally doing so
from under a stone ...

where it would patiently wait

______
gw2010

A Poetry Bus poem: from Skye News

This week's Poetry Bus challenge is to write a poem about sleep, or more correctly the first impressions on waking up. As usual my contribution to the driver's jingling cap is a Limerick.


A somnambulist from Portree
Was fast asleep in a tree
Until an owl pecked his nose
And ripped holes in his clothes
Screeching Out of my house now with thee!

and now as the limerick begs it a translation into Scottish, at my request, from John MacDonald at the zenspeug blog -

a sleeperie stravaiger frae Portree
wis doverin ower in a tree
syne a hoolet dabbit his taes
an wrocht cloots o's claes
skirlin: oot o ma hoose wi ye!

______
gw/jm
2010
*in John's version nose changed to toes for flowing rhyme
°the Hieronymus Bosch image is from Wikipedia Free Pictures

Ten made-up words to be used in a piece of writing

One interesting and amusing exercise that I've picked up from George Szirtes' wonderful blog is to quickly invent ten words and pass them on. The one who picks them up has then to make a readable text using the words. Shortly after midnight on my way to the Land of Nod I quickly jotted down ten such words, went to sleep, forgot about them. This morning I found them and passed them on to my self as it were. And so after a cup of strong coffee to get my brain working I wrote, in ten minutes or so, a piece of text that came easily into my mind. Here it is. See what you make of it.

THE PIGDEN EXPRESS

Lord Heinrich von Scrumble shook the last drops of plinkton from his noyder, examined the organ closely and then tucked it away gently. He quietly zipped-up his kasderoons, washed his hands, shook them under the cold air of the plosklash machine, flung open the door and strode boldly into the corridor. His progress was immediately arrested.

The man's grip on his elbow was firm. The strong voice said, "Sir, your ticket please." It was the masnerat.

"By jingo, sir" exclaimed his lordship, turning flenny and clutching his chest, "you surprised me there, my yetamalt just missed a loopig."

"Don't give me all that twaddle and oink, I've heard it all before. Your sort are always hiding in the nedglim reckoning to be having a piouz. Now where's your ticket?"

Lord Heinrich von Scrumble reached into his inside pocket and produced a small card. Focusing on the script held closely under his nose the masnerat commenced to read:

XOXOX ID CARD XOXOX
PIGDEN ELECTRIC RLWY
- PERSONNEL MANAGER -
HENRY J SCRUMBLE ESQ

______

Now here's my challenge:-
Using the same 10 made-up words, give them new meanings, and quickly write a 250 word or thereabouts mini-story of your own.

1)- Jinksy quick as my nedglim braves the 10 word challenge. Her illuminating and Carrollesque story will be found under Comments.
-

Edwin Morgan's monster tribute

Firstly, opening and closing lines lines from Edwin Morgan's poem Foundation:

'What would you put in the foundation-stone
for future generations?' 'A horseshoe,
a ballet shoes, a horseshoe crab . . .

. . . a dozen conceptual universes
laid head to head like sardines in a tin
and poured all over with lovely oil
of poetry: seal it; solder the key.'

* * * * * * *

and so the Nessie


Edwin Morgan was the last man standing. Aged 90 years this highly acclaimed Scottish bard passed away on the 17th August just gone. He was the last of Scotland's so-called Big 7, the others being Hugh MacDiarmid, Robert Garioch, Norman MacCaig, Ian Crichton Smith, George Mackay Brown and Sorley MacLean. Morgan's final collection Dreams and Other Nightmares - New and Uncollected Poems 1954 - 2009 (Mariscat, Edinburgh) was published as recently as April of this year. There are wonderful tributes and comments to be found on the blogs WEAVER OF GRASS and GEORGE SZIRTES also reachable by PiR's A-Z LINKS >>>

A convenient link to an Edwin Morgan website will appear in the Poet-in-Residence A-Z LINKS >>> before you can say: fok fok splgrafhatchgabrlgabrl

-

3rd HOEFLEIN POETRY FESTIVAL

Höflein's hillside venue for poetry


presented by LABYRINTH POETS:

The 3rd höfleiner donauweiten poesiefestival, an open air summer weekend of poetry, music and wine, with a panoramic view of the Danube will feature poets and musicians from near and far.

The venue is Bergheuriger Schuecker at the village of Höflein, near Vienna. The dates and times are Saturday 28th August 2010, 12:00 - 18:00, Sunday 29th August 2010, 12:00 - 18:00.

The following poets have, at the time of writing, been invited to read and/or perform: Hanane Aad (Leb), Jean Almeida (USA), Corneliu Anoniu (Rom), Walter Baco (Aut), Marian Bednarek (Pol), Dieter Berdel (Aut), Daniela Beuren (Aut), Franz Blaha (Aut), Tarek Eltayeb (Sud), Dagmar Fischer (Aut), Toby Fischer (Aut), Wolfgang Glechner (Aut), Heimo Handl (Aut), Nathan Horowitz (USA), Cornelia Hülmbauer (Aut), Aftab Hussein (Pak), Sarita Jenamani (Ind), Elisabeth Jupiter (Aut), Ka (Aut), Christian Katt (Aut), Hannes Lapesch (Aut), Manuel Ramos Martinez (Chil), Melamar (Aut), Karl Menrad (Aut), Lydia Mischkulnig (Aut), Enrique Moya (Ven), Chibo Onyeiji (Nig), Renee Paschen (Can), Gabriele Petricek (Aut), Sylvia Petter (Aus), Gwilym Williams (UK), Evelyn Holloway (Aut), Heinz Pusitz (Aut), Cristina Rascon (Mex), Wolfhang Ratz (Aut), Carlota Rokita (USA), Dana Rufolo (USA), Rati Saxena (Ind), Susanne Scholl (Aut), Victoria Slavuski (Arg), Peter Sragher (Rom), Najem Wali (Iraq), Peter Waugh (UK), Bernhard Widder (Aut), and Janus Zeitstein (Aut).

-

the fox on the beach

between the sunset and the first star - R S Thomas

the bruised eye of the sinking sun
and the roar of the sea's breath
and then the quick clacker of a fox
tiptoeing down the pebbles
through this going-down day
of upturned boats
and stacked lobsterpots
the invisible sniffed and rejected
above the boats
the lonely call of the owl
the bleating of sheep at prayer
it arrives at the stream's trickle
it sniffs the unseen
it likes the answer
it laps the water
it wanders hither and thither
it sees the sea's indigestible debris
if there are people they are silent and invisible
their anonymous aftermath disgorged
along the strand
their hunger is for progress
their appetite knows no bounds
the fox moves on
it vanishes into the sea's fret

_______
gw-2010

3 Haiku from Samuel Beckett

Have just eaten
I regret to say
three bananas

(Krapp's Last Tape)

Clear away this muck
Chuck it in the sea
So white

(Endgame)

Screw down the lids
My anger subsides
I'd like to pee

(Waiting for Godot)

-

Ritual on the 5th day

they speak of the batsman's 'long day at the crease' but consider the wicket-keeper's lot, out there all the time...

The ritual begins
when I crouch behind the stumps
in my padded pimply gauntlets
which smell of sweat and Blanco white and
I gaze into a glimmering light
and clap my padded hands three times
and shuffle my white clad flanneled bum
slowly from side to side three times
and slowly loll my neck
from side to side three times
and raise my left hand equally slowly
to my brow to squint and blink, yes three times
but slowly
and then lower my eyes to peer
from within my sweated helmet's cage
to the stripe of cracked and peeling earth
where a dreary crow ambles and pecks
and where the dust
at the batsman's bat slowly whirls
where he dabs the earth
more times than three
perhaps thirty-three
and twice more I raise my forlorn gaze
unto the sun
and silently pray three times
that the rains will come...

_______
gw-2010

homework

an 'overlap' for Samuel Beckett and George Szirtes












Reciprocity

In the barley and malt
in the drollery of life
in the profit to be found
in the mysterious depths
of the Irishman stout so it is
in the shadow of the Magyar
upon the steed of the Puszta.

I quaffed one to the other
and pondered deeply on it all.

To the donkey pickled and salted
salami conditi
to the pleasure of the porter
you were a spicy delight!

______
gw2010

the old choirboys

- God has no address

under the tree's whisper
the walk terminates and
the old choirboys stand as a group would

and with tight lips
and lines they talk around
to the finer points of canine

husbandry
and other domestic
and equally pressing issues

a recent hair in the soup
and how one of their number
spilled the beans

then someone sniffs
and someone swallows hard
- someone else has coughed

______
gw2010