Monday 29 November 2010

the UFO

perhaps from Andromeda


arrives through the nearest worm hole


and hovers
over the city

perhaps somewhere in India

and then

it disappears


only to reappear again
somewhere else

when news of the sighting breaks


the mayor and the local policeman
have seen it


and a man on a train
has taken a snap

- the quick photo
of the blurrimedage
______
gw2010

Saturday 27 November 2010

On La Jolla Shore beach

- for Jacob Bronowski

the silver sequined
full moon's dancing fish
sits and fits herself
tails low into the sand
to lay her eggs above the waterline
for him to fertilise
by dancing round in slippery tight embrace
ejecting froth
as only a gyrating grunion can
and this even as she lays
in rhythm with the tides
these eggs that will incubate and hatch
in 9 or 10 days time
when the waves return to wash them to the sea
______
gw2010

Friday 26 November 2010

Labyrinth in Berlin

I exit the subway station
and am startled by the lack of light

I walk through the foggy streets
when darkness settles in

And I lose the sense of direction
in the labyrinth of blocks

To become another testament
to something more than failure
______
gw2010

Thursday 25 November 2010

Evelyn Holloway's Shadowlights

In a tunnel-like building that smells of burnt coke and worked metal I imagine the dragon roar of the furnace and through the sparks and clouds I see the shadowlights lick the curved ceiling and walls.

I hear the clinks and taps of ghostly figures at work on their anvils. And the heat. The imagined heat is enormous. I wonder how many horseshoes would have been produced in a place such as this situated as it is in the chief metropolis of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the centuries before the horseless carriage appeared? It must run into millions.

A moment of truth finally arrived yesterday in the smithy where hundreds of tools comprising hammers, files, mallets, pincers, iron masks, wire brushes, pokers, clippers, chains, benders, straighteners, dowsers, blocks, rags, moulds and all manner of long-handled ironmongery, the required paraphernalia and tools of the trade were on display on the walls and work surfaces.

And there below the tools a row of formidable vices standing in line; sentries on a long workbench looking silently from below the rough limewashed bricks of this place which is the Alte Schmied.

I was delighted to be in that location to witness the presentation of the first volume of poetry from the pen of 55-year Evelyn Holloway, a Viennese poet and also a resident of St Ives in Cornwall who writes equally well in two languages; English and German.

Shadowlights (or Schattenlichter) is a handsome 128-page hardback and I found that the poems are conveniently set out for the bilingual reader like myself, with the original English versions on the left-hand pages and the translated-German versions on the right hand page. The poet under the glare of the ceiling spotlights read a small selection of her poems first in English and then in German.

Evelyn Holloway's work is influenced by a close encounter of the poetic kind with the playwright Samuel Beckett in Oxford in 1973. In a 3-page poem titled Meeting (Begegnung) she tells of this meeting and how the words of Beckett affected her future development as a writer.

And so he buys a dress for me,
green with splinters of glass stitched to the front.

It is a candid account of a young student meeting her literary hero. And that is Evelyn Holloway's way. In fact she is at times much more than candid. She is an honest and fearless writer. She is not afraid to meet her ghosts as in her poem Letter to the Past (Brief an die Vergangenheit). In another poem she writes of Virginia Woolf:

Beauty does not come from the surface.
It is loving each tree, each seagull,
loving the silence and the screaming winds.
. . .

Where is she?
Frozen by fear in bed last night
Obscene murmuring of an old man

A poem Figure in Landscape (Figur in Landschaft) was read by the author. It brought a Barbara Hepworth sculpture to life.

For me, Evelyn Holloway writes the most illuminating and revealing poetry to come from a female poet in Austria since the era of Christine Busta.

Probably as a result of her lengthy sojourns in Oxford and Cornwall she finds herself in the dualistic role of an insider and outsider looking in and out at the same time. From this unique vantage point she is now able to produce important work.

Shadowlights (Schattenlichter) may turn out to be one of the best debut collections of 2010 .
ISBN 978-3-85129-887-1 - Wieser Verlag, A-9020, Klagenfurt, Austria
http://www.wieser-verlag.com/

Gwilym Williams

Wednesday 24 November 2010

End of cruise

a divinity shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will
- Shakespeare: Hamlet, V, ii, 10

End of cruise

the blow on the deck
deals slurred feel
to the sense of balance
and the cards fall

the throbs and rumbles
of the engines
change with the shadows
on the whitewashed walls

the fireworks
streamers balloons
the shaft of the moon
the frozen dagger

in the city's mist-blue fog
showers are en-passant -
silver sticks in the crushed ice
of parasolled cocktails
______
gw2010
image: Titanic

Monday 22 November 2010

22nd November 1963


On this day in 1802 William
Blake wrote to a friend:
"I have traveled thro' Perils
and Darkness not unlike a
Champion and I shall still go
on Conquering"


Love poem

They drove to the beach
at Terza Rima
in the new Sestina Quatrian
two lovers full of blank verse

there for an apricot sonnet
- a romantic couplet they made -
- there is no better place to enjamb -
he poured her a dactyl of Homer's Old

as she peeled her zeugmas with zest
and worked off his trochees
put on a spondee ...
I dare not imagine the rest!
______
gw2010

At the bus stop

After the skittles
the old man peels an apple
and dreams of the past

In the window
of the shop for second-hand books
the gray cat sleeps in the afternoon sun

And over the street
the girl pegs out the sheets and pyjamas
of a concentration camp victim now grown old

While in the flat above
a cantankerous old fool is on a TV comedy show

And below on the corner
a modern-day minstrel strums a euphonious elegy

And a spider dies in his cap

A man on a bicycle cycles past
with a string of onions over his handlebars
and a rose in his mouth

In a garden
a bird eats hemlock

The sound of a train is heard from a distance

And above City Hall
in a symphony of light
the last flying saucer is consumed by flames

The old man looks at his wrist

And sees that the bus
is late

______
gw2010

Old slates

The unsilent mountain side is soused
and still and still there's more this day
incessant stair-rod rains and insane gusts
above the black lake's surface ripped in vees
where waterfalls pour milk and we stand alone
in tussocked grass and bog upon a slope
of broken slate that's stacked in steps
into the mists and the unseen bleats of sheep
like us chilled deep into the bone and there
I feel the presence of an angel.

The blue slate quarry house below
is but a pattern nettled on the ground
as if an excavated dig had left and left it so
a fallen monument to men who roofed the world
and to the sons who were called away
to Ypres, Somme and Mons.
______
gw2010

Sunday 21 November 2010

ON THE GREEN HILLS FAR AWAY

after the rumble in the morning silence
blue heaven became whiter than white
and Ground Zero awhirl like a fairground
ride with flying handcarts and the music
of suffering children screaming
in clouds of dust
as the spirited
winds fuelled
the burning air
and the false
dawn grew
dark prematurely
and they plunged
into the rivers
of the delta
to escape
the fiery
whirlwinds
and the
melting
skin slid off their slimy bodies as
they waited in the ruins of a hospital
until the dust had settled and the war
was over and the spanish bayonets and the
goosefoot and the morning glories bolted from the
wreckage and the grass on the hills grew tall and lush and green
gw2010


A poem for Rene´ Magritte

the meaning rests in having precisely no meaning when they do not want to be decoded and they want to remain secret charming enigmatic and the top hats of decent bourgeois attire mother's suicide was far from charming but was enigmatic her face was covered with a cloth when found in a river nothing is hidden behind a cloth and there is only the canvas and the wall and behind the wall something or maybe not anything at all but all pictures must raise questions as with the moods inspired by the sounds of language so we do not construct a difference between painting and poetry but carry our concepts with us into the magical doors in trees when we go to look at the new laid egg of the bird that is called clairvoyance and sense a spirit close to our own in a world where everything visible hides something else visible and words can make us believe that we can transform a woman's flesh into the sky and return to the hotel suite with the dog and unlock the door and meet georgette under the owls and the unsolvable riddles of surreal unconscious dreams where the man with the bowler hat bewilders the viewer and mystery is trying to make familiar objects wail and to topple over the order and to say this is a horse or a valise or a pipe would be a lie as this is only the image of a clock you think
______
gw2010

An actor rests between assignments


"War is a racket"
- Major General Smedley Butler

I know what I'll do
with all the prizes
I'm gonna win
in the Worldwide Lottery
with my latest foolproof system
of numbers drawn
from the holy books

I'll buy paintings
in oils
by Sandy Warhole
and store them
in a vault
with bars of gold

The Napoleonic Wars
brought prizes
of gold
and also the bonus
of two World Wars

Perhaps
there's a role
in an East End theatre?

______
gw2010
artwork: gwilym williams

Saturday 20 November 2010

Ultima Thule

- for Birgir, Hekla and Hrafnkell

On the island of fire and ice
see the trolls and the elves
late emerged from the dark
with music magic and art
the street's at the end of the world
where Pythaeas the Greek
sent his wife to flog fish
in a spot on the Langavegur
a setting for surreal events
she never returned, the way was rugged
and dark; the wind's melancholia
brings freedom to roam in the lights
of the North where the plover of gold
is the bringer of summer.

______
gw2010

Thursday 18 November 2010

Word Wrestlers (for GS)


Way-wordy and self-indulgent
I wrestle with my whimsical words

A series of tightly-tucked stanzas
An entrapment of collective fantasy

The violence of entertainment
Knows no bounds. They shan't escape this time.

I connect . We contest. And then
I discover them to be fragile

And so I give up and move them
Peripatetically for knock-out effects

I crack the soft on the hard
And cool the hot on the cold

But I don't destroy. I transform
And preserve. And then I give

Them my last ironic scrutiny -

But Look! We are back in the ring
And I'm wrestling them over again...

______
gw2010
image: free clipart

Wednesday 17 November 2010

(poems) in space

A prosthetic device holds them up
in embryo form
they articulate
the value of indifference

grotesque lovable repulsive
they suck the paps
of an exhausted past
and promise perils

runaway progress
hobbled and cobbled
with organic transplants
ready to grow

old prematurely
they understand
the issues involved
are interventions

in human life
they can never be perfect
but love transforms
abnormalities

I love them all
they are family
______
gw2010

Tuesday 16 November 2010

The Last Tram

Almost out of breath
for I've run like hell
to catch the last tram
of the night
I flop into the last vacant seat

I'm travelling to the end station
a new destination
it's out of the city

doors flip open
a cold draught rushes in
flip closed

when people get off
they take warmth with them

nobody gets on
and the stops get further apart

and after a while
I'm the only one left
except of course for the driver
hurtling through the darkness
of the forest
where we now are

but after a while
the tram slows
and there's the familiar announcement
"Final station, would all passengers
please disembark"
and the tram stops
abruptly

at the terminus
where the only light to be seen
is the dull yellow glow in the driver's cab

and so I go forward
to ask for directions to the house of my friend
but there's nobody there
there's only his coat

______
gw2010

POETRY 2010 SELECTION

One click on the yellow star and you'll find a lovely selection 20 poems free to print-off. Yes, the Poet-in-Residence Poetry Twenty-ten Project is now completed. My thanks to the following contributors and also my thanks to those who sent poems that were unfortunately for one reason or another not suitable for this particular collection.

Contents:-

Fog - Joan Cairns
Old Fox - Gwilym Williams
Summer's End - Annie Kerr
At a Loss for Words - Zaina Anwar
The Hardy Thistle - Pat Thistlethwaite
In cozy illusions - R K Singh
Transience - Zaina Anwar
Snow - Pat Thistlethwaite
Celebration - Joan Cairns
Heptonstall - Joan Cairns
Diamond - Gordon Mason
Witness - Gordon Mason
Our voices break too - Rachel Fox
Snapdragon - Alan Morrison
It took a long time - Evelyn Holloway
Extra - Pat Jourdan
the echo of stillness - Marja Blom
Indulgence in Dance - Marja Blom
The Last Days - Dominic Rivron
Tangerine Season - Zaina Anwar

Any author in the above list who feels so minded may obtain from me a second-hand poetry book by way of 'payment'. I have a couple of boxes crammed full of poetry books collected over several years (mainly reviewed for New Hope International & Pulsar). Details of how to obtain your free book are published along with your poems.

In the space at the top of the first of the 12 pages you may draw, scribble, print or stick your own suitable title or icon for the collection. In that way your personal copy will be unique.

It's a publishing revolution! I've titled my copy Electric Lambs. It's from the poem 'Celebration'.

With best bardic wishes,
Gwilym Williams

Monday 15 November 2010

timeslip


yesterday

a lumpish knot in the string

a rogue particle in the quantum

an extra raisin in the donut

take your pick



an/d time slipped

made an absence of progress

in curved space

we sensed
- as through a gap
a brief and sudden rush of wind

we shifted
to a new dimension

where history stays
the future changes
and for the moment
the present

matter/s

______
gw2010
image: CERN

Song for a film


for the world's political prisoners

shooting sprees
and bitter tribal fighting

the disappeared held captive
in underground jails

today with modest splendour
they killed another man they didn't know

and only one voice
that of the oldest there
was raised in protest

on the mudflats of an estuary
in a blinding rainstorm
a ragged man in shackles
is tried and shot in secret
by the moral guardians of a state
in failing health
and dying of complications
its land reduced to smoking ruins

firemen play their hoses
on the people
the spin on the story
ringing in their ears

another shot dead
in the back of a car
the remote village
in the mountains

an old man hanging from a tree

when dusk falls
the scenes take on an air of beauty

of spiritual renewal
an occasion touched with magic

tomorrow's news
the official statistics
the death toll of bigotry

______
gw2010

Saturday 13 November 2010

Hundred White Horses (Bahrain)

Bahrain

Is the gateway to a poem
I deeply believe in
A poem that rides
The hundred white horses

An archipelago poem
A poem with boats
And historical ports
And the hundred white horses

Off Qala't al Bahrain
Where I learnt to swim
Before I could ride
The hundred white horses

Is where I was born
Between the two seas
In which there were pearls
And the hundred white horses

I fished from a hut
That stood on the beach
With a view like a postcard
Of the hundred white horses

There were no polished cars
No five star hotels
No boat trips with friends
Just the hundred white horses

I drank sweet water springs
And I walked with a woman
Who sang Repent, oh yea sea
To the hundred white horses

Before I left with the dhow
The behemoth steel dredgers
And their fearsome steel teeth
In the milky white sea

______
gw2010
Bahrain, the so-called gateway to the Gulf, means between two seas. The archipelago, it is said, may have been the location of the Garden of Eden. The beaches, the small fishing harbours, the sea itself, are being overwhelmed like many other jewels once set in turquoise seas by heavy industry, banking, high rise urban sprawl and all the consequent side effects.

Thursday 11 November 2010

Focussed

How the girl effects her pose
- turned up collar
- head in profile
- a pouted smile of sorts
as it suits him now to do
now that she's out of doors
and he's framed her
at armslength
upon let's say the Rialto Bridge
on a cool and misty morning
where the sunrise brightens
to the slaps of waves
I really couldn't say

______
gw2010

The Old House (Bavaria)

today whitewashed

and everything inside
painted white

the tables
the chairs
the doorknobs
the floors
the ceilings
the light fittings
the bedrooms
the lounge
the kitchen
the gas oven
the blender
the fridge
the sink
the bath
the shower
the medical room
the couch
the desk
the hat stand
the doors
the windows
the telephone
you name it

everything painted white
and gleaming like a swan's wing

once it was all brown
the approved colour
dolorous and heavy with enforced limitations

but now it is white
the colour with no limitations
the colour of the visible spectrum
the colour of purity
and forgiveness

how nice it all is

______
gw2010

now and then


now
open your dreams
to the light of this day
and see
what dreams are possible
then
find your way
to encounter your own
and be
your own dream curator

______
gw2010

the lilja (made in finland)


A
functional and convenient
portable ecumenical chapel

constructed
of perforated plywood
and prefabricated timber panels

daylight
filters through
to the 3 main parts

vestibule
altar wall
and chapel space

under
a protective coating
of painted plywood where one can

contemplate
the sacred space
and the forest atmosphere &

reflect
on the meaning
of religion without symbolism

and
enjoy
the peace and Quiet

______
gw2010

Tuesday 9 November 2010

daddy-longlegs

for D H Lawrence

I arrive with my soap and towel
But there in the empty bath
Is a daddy-longlegs.

I shall return in an hour.
He'll be gone by then. I think
They must come up the plughole

For I can't figure out where else
they could come from. But I never
Seem to be able to spot them

Coming and going so I can't really say
If it's true. An hour later I'm back
But now there are two. He's prancing

Before her as if he wants to impress
With his long slender legs. I think his brain
Is the size of a dot. She is not impressed

Or at least she doesn't appear to be,
For when he runs to her in all his eagerness
She scampers to a spot a foot away and

He quickly gives up the chase. Now they stand
As still as only they can and stare at each other.
What are they thinking? Can they, do they, think?

And if so, with what? With their tiny brains
Each the size of a dot? I think not.
But who can tell? I go away, I'll come back later.

And when I return I see only her. He's gone
Down the plughole I suspect. Did he? Didn't he?
Did she? Didn't she? She looks unmoved

As far as one can tell. Now I'll go to bed
And have my bath tomorrow. At least
I will if the bath is free!

______
gw-2010