The Mother who Writes

She writes

In between pink coughing medicine doses

the mother sits to write

sleep deprived, she steals moments from

her child’s illness

not focused her body signals for sleep

but the last spoon of Calpol is kicking inn

and she might not get another chance tonight

There’s always a mess to be tidied

around the house, or in her head

there’s always going to be a pile of clothes to be ironed

an overgrown back garden

a thousand courtesies she hasn’t met   

But for now, the rain is falling angrily on the cheap

fibreglass conservatory roof

she calls it inspiring

and she writes.

 

My meeting with Ian McMillan and other cool BBC people!

May 4th 2011


So today was the first meeting with the “BBC People” to start work on the Spoken Word Talent Development Project.

I met with Louisa Davies (Director at the MAC) on the train to London. Walking in London towards Arts Council England (ACE) we passed by West Minister Abbey and were horrified to see what seemed to be 5 maybe 6 hundred people queuing outside! Tourists waiting to get a glimpse inside the Church to see whether anything remains from the Royal Wedding!

Before we entered ACE we met with Bohdan Piasecki (who was also chosen for this project), and poets from regions other than the West Midlands there are two poets from the East: John Osborne and Deborah Stevenson and two poets from the North East: Degna Stone and Michael Edwards.

We all finally went inside ACE and met with Ian McMillan, Presenter of the BBC Radio show The Verb. Erin Riley, Producer of BBC Radio 3 and Mathew Dodd, Head of Speech Programming and Presentation at BBC3 Radio. They were all such interesting and inspiring people, I kind of fell in love with Ian McMillan who is funny and witty and has an incredibly sexy voice! We all talked about the project, how they all hope it’s not just going to be a perfectly cut radio show, but something that is young fresh and inspiring to listen to by the audience. For the project each poet was asked to choose a more established poet to work closely with, someone we personally admire and who can help us improve our writing skills, or our performance skills or both, which ever we felt we needed more help with. I chose to work with Aoife Mannix and I am looking forward to meeting her and finding out what we could come up with together, later when the piece is produced, I will perform it on Ian McMillan’s show The Verb, BBC Radio 3.

Ian wanted to see us perform, so each poet performed a short piece, he also wanted to learn a bit about each one of us, so we did a short recorded interview with him in another quiet room, all of these clips of our performed short poems and answering Ian’s questions about ourselves will be incorporated into the program for the final show, so that instead of a boring radio interview where it’s question and answer, it would be more like a magazine style show, bits and pieces, and different voices from the poets, and then the final “big” piece which was developed in conjunction with our mentor poet.

We all agreed that Spoken Word Talent Development Project was a mouth full so we decided to go with “Verb New Voices”.  

Our next meeting is on July 26^th at the MAC in Birmingham, until then I will meet Aiofe and will start writing my radio piece so that in our July meeting with Ian and the producers I (we) would have something of a progress.

Ice skating.

The stiffness of the skating boot was the first challenge

tightening the laces, they felt hard on her tiny soft foot.

I showed her how to spread one arm for balance

while I held her other hand

I took her slowly, cautiously

I pointed out to other children:

“look at that little boy over there, see how his feet slide? That’s what you should do”

But she didn’t believe spreading her free arm would  give her balance,

she didn’t want to imitate the little boy

she wanted to skate her own way,

she didn’t mind falling,

and she fell

many times.

As we staggered on the hard frozen surface, wobbly and ungraceful

we skated across previously etched tracks,

soon our tracks were one of the many.

Then something began to weigh;

she was shackled by my hard grip and my fear for her,

I was shackled by the belief that I mustn’t let her fall,

she finally demanded I let her hand go;

“Mummy! Let me go, but stay behind me, so you can grab me before I fall”

The Loves that Don't make it to "I Love you"

The loves that don’t make it to ‘I love you’ ;

The stillborns

The bastards

The weaklings

The easy to forget

The forever lingering "what if?".

half

i go about my day

half full

half pretty

half happy

i say: ‘hello it’s good to see you ’

words heavy

empty

dreary

i avoid windows on rainy days

when a reflection of you beside me

is most vivid.

the girl, the woman 

she says: “no, it’s all in the past, i’m happy now”

as she wraps her waist in the stiff fitted coat that uprights her

holding the girl the woman and the years

in the silent doing of a single button.

When the love poem outlives the love

I have written my poem ‘Somewhere’ a while ago for a person I was very fond of, the relationship did not last but just yesterday the poem was accepted for an anthology entitled ‘Bad Language’. I was very pleased to learn that it had received some acknowledgment and amazed at how the poem had held on to an emotion that had passed. This anthology will be printed and distributed, soon people will buy it, and lend it to friends and maybe be even give it away as gifts, some will not like it and give their copy to charity and some will squeeze it between two old books on the shelve and forget it was ever there! Whatever the case the poem (alongside others) will be read and passed on, someone might read it and say “hmmm this is kind of sweet!” all the while the person subject the poem entirely oblivious to how that single moment of pure affection composed in this short verse continues to linger to them.

The poem here is doing what a poem does best; binding the beauty of something that no longer exists, but I will always know.

Somewhere

He hides somewhere 

between the skin and the skin,

and pressing my warm cheek against

the cold window I dream I’ve somehow

narrowed distance, 

defeated,

I hold him between my lashes when I sleep.

Each thought of him, an autocrat

oppressing my every other thought

moving my hands in a knitting motion

composing him little verse of longing

tying them in red velvet ribbons

blowing them gentle kisses in the wind.

In Love with a Dead Poet!

In Love with a Dead Poet!

The strong winds we’ve been experiencing here in the West Midlands (UK) for the past couple of days reminded me of e.e.cummings’ The Wind is a Lady, Sonnet I from his collection Post Impressions:

the wind is a Lady with

bright slender eyes (who

moves) at sunset

and - who touches – the

hills without any reason

(i have spoken with this

indubitable and green person

“Are You the wind?” “Yes” “why do you touch flowers

As if they were unalive, as

If They were ideas?” “because, sir

things in which my mind blossom will

stumble beneath a clumsiest disguise, appear

capable of fragility and indecision...

Every poet has favourite poet, a poet they hold dear, a poet who inspires their work, however my fascination with Edward Estlin Cummings (1894 – 1962) has exceeded the mere appreciation of verse and inspiration of thought to develop into a fondness and a love towards the person of cummings. But can you be in love with a dead person you’ve never met? I know that a lot of people continue to love their loved ones after they had passed, but this is someone I have never met before!

I've become besotted with cummings from my first readings of his work, when my first reaction was; ‘why are all the words written in lowercase letters? where’s the punctuation? and why was the poem fashioned in this unusual manner and shape? I found the answer to this in Sonnet (VII) of his collection Four:

since feeling is first

who pays any attention

to the syntax of things

will never wholly kiss you

cummings mostly wrote about love and nature, however his love poetry at the time was rejected by many publishers due to its highly erotic and sexually suggestive meaning, when  his collection No Thanks was finally published he dedicated it to the 14 publishers who have rejected it before, here is poem 16 of  his collection No Thanks:

may i feel said he

(i’ll squeal said she

just once said he)

it’s fun said she

may i touch said he

how much said she

a lot said he)

why not said she

(let’s go said he

not too far said she

what’s too far said he

where you are said she)

may I stay said he

(which way said she

like this said he

if you kiss said she

may i move said he

id it love said she)

if you’re willing said he

(but you’re killing said she

but it’s life said he

but your wife said she

now said he)

ow said she

(tiptop said he

don’t stop said she

oh no said he)

go slow said she

cccome? said he

ummm said she

you’re divine! said he

(you are Mine said she)

The same incident of rejecting his erotic poetry reoccurred when he tried to publish his collection Tulips and Chimneys, much to Edward’s disappointed the collection was never published in it complete form since publishers found many of the poems to sexually explicit, many poems were removed from the collection, cummings then had the rejected poems published in later collections entitled XLI Poems and &. Both XLI and & received better reviews than Tulips and Chimneys. 

These are some of the reasons why I am so love-struck by cummings, I love him for saying

the mind is its own beautiful prisoner.

mine looked long at the sticky moon

opening in dusk her new wings.

Sonnets – Actualities (VI)

But I love him even more for saying:

i am a beggar always

who begs in your mind

am this person of whom somehow

you are never wholly rid..

you might as well toss him a few thoughts..

Four (XV)

There are answers in e.e.’s poems, that is why I enjoy reading them, but they are also the kind of poems which are not fully ingested unless read out loud. And thus to my darling beloved e.e.cummings i would like to finally say:

i do not know what it is about you

that closes and opens; only something in me understands

                                 from his poem (somewhere i have never travelled)

Spring

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 - 1950) has always been an inspiration for me, this is why I was thrilled to learn that my favourite modern poet Lucille Clifton (1936 – 2010) was inspired by Millay also. In an interview I watched for Clifton on Youtube, she replies to the question “Which poet inspires your work?” Clifton laughs and says: “when I was young I read Millay a lot, you know, that kind of romantic but tacky poetry!”  She and the audience both laugh.

I must admit I was a bit disappointed when Clifton called Millay’s poetry tacky, but then again the two poets have led very different lives; Millay who describes her life as “very very poor and very very merry” was an ardent feminist, she practiced her bisexuality openly and had engaged in numerous love affairs even when married to her husband Eugen Jan Boissevain - as their marriage was an open one - she won the pulitzer price in 1923. While Clifton who had worked in social services and wrote a lot of poems about children sexually abused by their parents, admits openly in one of her public readings about how the husband she has been faithful all her life was not faithful to her. Clifton admits in her poem “Donor” how she tried to miscarry her son:

When they tell me my body might reject

I think of thirty years ago

And the hangers I shoved inside

hard trying to not have you

I think of the pills, the everything

I gathered against your

Inconvenient bulge; and you

My stubborn baby child,

Hunched there in the dark

Refusing my refusal...

The two incredibly talented and incredibly strong women obviously have very different perceptions on love and romance, but they will both continue to inspire me and my poetry, but enough about me, here’s Millay’s very timely poem Spring:

                             Spring

To what purpose, April, do you return again?

Beauty is not enough.

You can no longer quiet me with the redness

Of little leaves opening stickily.

I know what I know.

The sun is hot on my neck as I observe

The spikes of the crocus.

The smell of the earth is good.

It is apparent that there is no death.

But what does that signify?

Not only under ground are the brains of men

Eaten by maggots.

Life in itself

Is nothing,

An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.

It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,

April comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.