Mina Loy, Music, Perforation

This is going to be an all-singing, all-dancing blog post of varietal wonders.

I will begin by recommending one of my favourite poets to you because I'm sure we're all sick of the sound of my voice.  And also no-one ever seems to have heard of her despite the fact that she is GREAT and at least as good as other people who were writing at her time, namely Gertrude Stein, Marianne Moore, et al. Her name is Mina Loy and I would advise you to quick-step - run not walk - to your nearest good bookshop, or Amazon, and purchase The Lost Lunar Baedeker which is edited by Roger Conover.  It is a very good collection indeed.  Personally I prefer the earlier poems, which I wrote a critical essay on a couple of years ago, talking about how Loy writes from her perspective as a woman.  Here is a Wikipedia page which tells you a bit about her (as always with the dreaded W, take anything that isn't properly referenced with a pinch of salt.  And don't even think about citing it as a source)... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mina_Loy

I lent my copy of this book to my friend so I might have to pilfer a poem from Google, if I can find one, for your reading pleasure...

Lunar Baedeker
by Mina Loy
A silver Lucifer serves cocaine in cornucopia To some somnambulists of adolescent thighs draped in satirical draperies Peris in livery prepare Lethe for posthumous parvenues Delirious Avenues lit with the chandelier souls of infusoria from Pharoah's tombstones lead to mercurial doomsdays Odious oasis in furrowed phosphorous--- the eye-white sky-light white-light district of lunar lusts ---Stellectric signs "Wing shows on Starway" "Zodiac carrousel" Cyclones of ecstatic dust and ashes whirl crusaders from hallucinatory citadels of shattered glass into evacuate craters A flock of dreams browse on Necropolis From the shores of oval oceans in the oxidized Orient Onyx-eyed Odalisques and ornithologists observe the flight of Eros obsolete And "Immortality" mildews... in the museums of the moon "Nocturnal cyclops" "Crystal concubine" ------- Pocked with personification the fossil virgin of the skies waxes and wanes----

I stole that from here and I would really have liked to share 'Parturition', which is my favourite of her poems, but I can't find it online.


And because I can't resist the narcissism, here is a first draft of something I started writing yesterday:


perforate


when first he slipped it in
it hit a rib before sliding 
through my bone-valley
like a solid metal snake.
all that was soft collapsed
and seeped through its cage,
cooling as it trickled down my legs.


the blade met my blood,
greeted it like an old friend,
and I remembered that tang --
like eating off a cheap spoon --
from when I licked those
hidden, self-inflicted wounds.




Now I'm going to make some dinner before heading out to see The Dead Weather.  I might even review it later.  But I have a few gigs to catch up on - Pixies, iLiKETRAiNS, and Annie - so perhaps I should get to those first.  Anyway, I'm hoping tonight will be good - I saw them at Glastonbury, unexpectedly, and they still managed to suitably rock at five in the afternoon, so my expectations are high.  Plus it's at The Forum, and you can't go too far wrong with The Forum, in my opinion.

Australia, redrafted

I workshopped Australia for creative writing this week, which led to a temporary crisis of confidence in all my abilities to do anything.  Not because the feedback I got was especially bad - it was mixed, as feedback always is, and should be.  But just because having people pick your work apart piece by piece is an uncomfortable experience and I think mainly my crisis was about putting myself in that position, and whether I want to.  Workshopping this year is very thorough, which is great, but means you can never escape from the interrogation of your work.  Every word is questioned and all in all it's a process that ends up making me feel like it is just an impossible task, writing.  Every word could be a different word, and it's so easy to just go on gut and not really, REALLY think about what I'm saying, or whether I've already said it.  It is impossible to be objective about your own work.  So there is the great benefit of workshopping - you get a whole bunch of different objectivities, different opinions, different ideas.  It makes you realise where you've been lazy, or just a bit stupid, or blind.  But the upshot of that, and the downside, is that it suddenly seems impossible to trust myself to write anything at all without second, third, tenth opinions.  Because even if I go through a poem a hundred times there are always things I will miss - things I don't even realise are there, things that feel integral to the poem because the idea occurred simultaneously with another and it seems inconceivable to remove one part of that.  Repetitions, duplications, inactive words that aren't really saying or doing anything.  It's so hard to pick those things up.  I can go back to poems I wrote years ago and suddenly see really obvious things that need changing.  Sometimes.  But just as often I'm so used to the poem being that way that it is almost impossible to reduce it back to its constituent parts and remember that this word may always have followed this word, but it doesn't HAVE to, it just always HAS, and that's not the same thing at all.  Kind of like de Saussure's theory of signifiers and signified -we're tricked into thinking a bottle has to be called a bottle, but of course it doesn't, it just always has been in our experience (presuming one is a native English speaker, obviously).

ANYWAY, I took on board some of the feedback, and redrafted a punchier version:

The Outback

            or, The High Road (Part Three)

after the fire –

even after all other

metal was smelted –

there remained an Aga

and a garden gnome.

after years and distance

have burned the sinews

that link us, my love for you

perseveres – incongruous as a

cooker in the wilderness –

and beside it, that guardian gnome

making sure nobody takes it away.


The problem is, that as soon as I change something I become riddled with self-doubt - how do I know the changes are better than the original?  Once I start thinking about that I want to quit acadaemia and work in Asda.


Also, I've noticed an uncomfortable truth.  Or at least I find it uncomfortable.  There is a great disparity between the analysis of published texts and the analysis of our own work.  In universities, I mean.  The general idea behind studying literature seems to be to talk about its good points, how wonderful it is, and not even question whether actually it might be a bit shit, or this line doesn't make much sense, or this is a bit of a cliche.  We just take it for granted that because someone decided they wanted to publish it, it is 'good'.  This goes for the academic and creative courses.  It makes me want to bring in a piece of work by someone else to workshop just to see what happens if people think I wrote it.  Workshops are focused on being critical.  Fair enough.  We also give positive feedback where it's due.  BUt if other writers are looked at, it is overwhelmingly to talk about how great x, y, or z is.  And yet I think a lot of what is written isn't that good.  I'm not saying that my writing is any better, but it's funny how there is an assumption that if it's published, it's perfect.  It makes it seem like there is some pinnacle of achievement to be worked towards, but there isn't.  The idea that just because for some reason a writer became canonised, highly regarded, or even just published, that means there is no room for improvement, is clearly not true.  But because as a student you are never asked to address what is not so good about a piece of writing, other than one's own, it feels like it is an impossible task to reach that level of achievement until you have rooms full of people talking about nothing but how great your work is.  Which, again, is plainly false.  Opinion will always be divided.  I dislike probably 90% of the poetry I read, however 'good' it is, and if you asked me to, I would happily pick it apart.  I'm sure a room full of people analysing a piece of writing by an anonymous writer who turned out to be a famous one would find plenty of points for criticism or alteration.  Because in a sense, writing is never finished, and we all have ideas about what we like, and what we want from a piece, and even if we can appreciate the merit of something we won't really think it is good unless we like it.  Which depends an awful lot on our own tastes and less than you would think on the talent of the writer.


I'm not sure what I'm trying to say really.  Perhaps just that it's hard to gauge where you're at, if you're an unpublished writer who never submits work to competitions, journals, &c., if the only context in which your work is received by others is a critical one, and yet you see a lot of work that you don't personally think is that good being celebrated because it's proved its mettle by getting published.  We're supposed to think that texts we study are good, and we're supposed to think that 24-year-olds who study creative writing are shit.  But Keats was 25 when he died, and he didn't 'study' creative writing, he just wrote, and a lot of what he wrote was rubbish, but some of it was good, and it's been so long that people have been thinking it's good that no-one bothers to think about whether it isn't.


Argh.  I'm not expressing myself very well.  And I did put myself in this position, of studying writing and having my work picked apart by word vultures.  So I'm not exactly complaining, or saying it should be any different, just observing the bias and contemplating it.  Mainly just because it's demoralising to hear people big up stuff I think is shit and tear down what I've written, because even though I know it's just opinions, and everyone's is different, and that's all fine and everything, it just makes me feel like my work must be shittier than a sewer with diarrhoea.  Which perhaps it is.  But whether it is or whether it isn't is kind of irrelevant, because feeling like it's shit is the problem, and that doesn't have anything to do with whether it is shit or not.

Another Older One...

palimpsest

it’s always there

you know

like wallpaper

beneath the paint.

so I puncture

fissures in the facing

and flake off the

fresh veneer

to press my fingers

on past papers

and remember

when I loved you.

A new revision of a poem I wrote several months ago.  Not representative of my usual style, it was something I was told to do in a workshop - write a poem in heroic couplets from the point of view of a marginalised or fictional historical/mythological figure.  It was actually great fun, although it's a bit difficult not to go mad with rhyming ridiculous things.

Eve’s Wife

It is written in white and black,

In your holy little books, that

Adam and Eve were the only lovers,

And from them sprang all the others.

So they say ‘a man and a woman’s the natural

Way: God tells us – which of course makes it factual.’

As a result you don’t hear about me,

Though I certainly wasn’t the only

Woman who took simple pleasure

In that sex that they rightly call fairer;

And Eve was the one I wanted for life:

Eve was The One; I made her my wife.

Now before you get all soppy for Adam,

Know it was for show, Eve being his madam:

Adam and Eve had no love for each other

They just kept up the display for the governor

Of Eden, who created a matrimonial programme

To discourage those who attempted to cram

As much sex as they could into waking hours,

Without even courtship, or chocolates, or flowers.

My Eve and this Adam were examples

Of the value of nuptials,

So it had to appear to the world

As that old story of boy-meets-girl,

And I won’t lie, it was hard,

To be always on guard –

To pretend that I was merely Eve’s sister,

And only in private to chance to kiss her.

Still, it all would have been fine,

But one night after too much wine

I snogged Eve in the

Street and was seen by the governor,

Forcing me and dear Eve

To take our leave –

Which actually turned out to be good,

For we found a much nicer neighbourhood

And soon came to realise

That Eden’s no Paradise.

Sure, there was what’s known as the ‘Garden’,

But it was hardly an idyll or haven,

More a sorry excuse for a park,

And not a place to go after dark –

Full of dropouts and addicts,

And whores shagging like rabbits.

But to return to where this all began,

With the governer, the top man,

He decided something must be done

Now those bitches were on the run,

So he doctored some spin

To say that Eve committed great sin,

And certainly caused all the trouble we’re in.

This, he said, was the thing:

A woman can simply not be trusted:

All those hormones make her maladjusted.

This outlandish claim

Was made in Eve’s name

To perpetuate a feeling of shame

And a constant casting of blame,

But as you can see

From our side of the story,

There was no serpent, there was no Fall,

It was not the devil’s doing at all.

I’ve seen the way your books

Say that it happened, but look:

It’s just propaganda to slander

Those who don’t fit the agenda –

Which in itself is not a disaster,

Just tends to make things a little bit harder –

And after all these centuries

There’s still one thing I find really funny:

All that about Eve and the ‘forbidden

Fruit’, because, you know, back then

It certainly didn’t mean apples –

It was a slang name for female genitals.

The Third Way

The Third Way

They say when a baby cries

You should let it shudder alone

Until all its tears have gone,

So that it learns independence.

But when I hear the hopeless

Retching of the world I am like

An untrained mother in distress,

Watching pensive by the cradle

While the neighbours close their ears,

Or beat the walls for silence.

How can I comfort if

I cannot claw it all towards me,

Hug the universe too tightly,

Crush it to my chest until it

Gasps for breath and pulls

Away, saying, ‘hold me gently’?

Risotto

I just sent out a very handy little risotto recipe to someone on Twitter, and I thought I'd put it here in case anyone who likes poetry and graveyards also likes risotto because it is the easiest thing to make ever, and it's quick, and it could save your life one day.  You never know.

Ingredients:

* large knob/extremely large nipple of butter.

* some vegetables (the original recipe says 2 cups, but I have a terrible habit of just ignoring recipes and doing whatever I feel like.. it's just logic really, a reasonable amount of veg so that the ratio of rice to not-rice seems about right)

* 2 cups of rice (arborio rice works best, but if you can't get hold of any you can use pudding rice instead, which is practically the same thing.  I've never tried making it with normal rice, which has a different shape and texture, but it might work...)

* 5 cups of stock (I use veggie Oxo cubes dissolved in water, but I don't know if they exist in the US.. I'm sure there's an equivalent though.  Essentially it just means you can use some kind of stock cube type affair, doesn't have to be all that crazy boiling bones and turnip ends malarky)... if you prefer and have it to hand, you can substitute one cup of stock for a cup of white wine instead.

* cheese, if you so desire.  Cheddar works fine, goes all nice and melty, or feta is also really yummy and retains its shape a bit so you get nice little cheesy lumps.

Method:

1. Melt the butter in a pan (BIG pan, as the rice expands like billio) and add the rice and any uncooked soft vegetables (you can make it with stuff like pumpkin, squash, beetroot, etc., but you need to roast them separately first and add them at the end).  Stir it all about a bit.

2. Add the stock.  All of it.  Stir it a wee bit just so it's all evenly distributed.

3. Put a lid on the pan and simmer it for about 20 minutes.  I tend to check it every now and again and give it a stir just to stop the rice sticking to the bottom.

4. Shove in any pre-cooked/-roasted veg and any cheese.. stir it in, and voila!  Dinner is served.

5. Nom it in your face.  It's nice with salad.

My favourite one that I've made is one I often do around Samhain/Hallowe'en, which has roasted pumpkin (or butternut squash), pumpkin seeds, and feta cheese in it.  Yummy. But the beauty is you can bung anything in... well, within reason, you know.  No wiper blades or cat litter.  Nuts and seeds are nice for a bit of bite, too.

OH, and VERY IMPORTANT is that this recipe, as in the quantities specified, makes absolutely SHITLOADS.  So if you're only making it for two, you can halve the quantities and still have enough for seconds.  You can feed four people VERY decently on this amount, and really you can vary the recipe up or down to suit your requirements - as long as the ratio of stock to rice remains the same, it'll work fine, and you can just stick in however much veg you feel like you want in there.

Graveyard Pictures

I just mopped the floor and now I'm marooned at my computer until it dries and I can walk on it, so I thought I'd share a few of the photos I took in Brockley Cemetery yesterday, as mentioned in the post below.  I only got 20 minutes in there because they shut the gates really early, but the sun was at a beautiful angle so the light was nice... I wanted longer - it's bigger than I thought, and has lots of interesting statues rather than just endless eroded headstones (which are very nice too, but I like the angels missing limbs and urns covered with ivy and all that proper good old spooky graveyard stuff).  I've also recently finished reading The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, of whom I am a great fan, so I was decently imbued with lots of fantastical notions about who I might meet in the cemetery.  As it turned out I had only squirrels and crows for company, but I guess you can't expect the souls of the dead to come out at 4.15 in the afternoon now, can you?

(As an aside, I recommend the book - I was a bit unsure at first, as my expectations were high and the writing didn't seem up to Gaiman's usual par... but I was soon corrected, for it improves apace after the first few chapters, and is a satisfying and amusing tale.  Not my absolute favourite of his, but nonetheless deserving of the crazy amount of prizes and awards it's won in the year since it was published.  I was intrigued to read the acknowledgements and discover that Gaiman originally started writing at what is chapter three of the book, which could explain why the beginning seems a little sub-standard.)

 

Cemetery

I'm not sure if this is finished.   I mean, it obviously isn't finished, it's just a first draft that came into my  head on the way back from taking photos in Brockley Cemetery... but I'm not sure if it should end where it does, or if it needs more.  I had to stop my brain thinking of more in case I forgot it before I could get home and write it down, and by the time I'd put it in my notebook the moment had passed and no more words came.  Maybe I just need to return to it, or maybe it just wants to be small.  I don't know.  Opinions welcome...

he gave me roses in a pot
so that they would stay alive
      but even so      they died
and now the pot is all I've got

perhaps it is a sign
that love     like life      is not
forever       it will stop.
and we're running out of time

Cake

When I'm not writing poems or doing any of the other many things I do, and therefore don't do very well, I make cupcakes and then decorate them so sickeningly that they don't even taste very nice any more... BUT they DO look pretty, and this, as we all know, is the most important thing...

These brightly coloured fellas on the right are the most recent batch, made in honour of a little documentary called Making the Difference. It made it to the final twelve of Virgin Media Shorts 2009, which means that it will soon be coming to a cinema screen near you. To celebrate, I placed the aforementioned cakes in strategic locations around London's south bank, as mini art installations. Me and the crew of cake-placers were somewhat hindered by a group of German students who were quite certain that the cakes were in fact for eating not viewing, but it was great fun nonetheless.

The second batch I ever made, seen to the left, were, frankly, for bribery. Making the Difference was originally made for the Exeter Phoenix's 'Two Short Nights' festival (and it won the audience award), and the directors thought that perhaps it might work in their favour to pleasure the staff of the Phoenix with some offerings. So these chaps were born...

But the reason I ever got into the cake thing in the first place was for cakes to appear in the documentary - the full, eight-minute version of which can be seen here. The first batch looked like this:

Taking them around Exeter and asking random people to pose with them was great, although allowing the seagull to devour my labour of love was a little painful.

So there is a little bit about cake. I like cake a lot. I make normal, edible cakes often. But they don't look as remarkable as these folk. Decorating them is a time-consuming task, but it's also brilliant fun.

Girls

Girls

I saw a rose today
And told her she was beautiful,
For there she was
Showing every perfect petal…
But she didn’t even thank me –
What a bitch! –
Or deny it: she must think
She’s really fit.

Oh, rose, you might be rather pretty
In your way, but don’t you know?
After a compliment there’s only
One thing you can say:
‘Oh no, oh really, don’t be so silly –
You are so much better than me,’
For it doesn’t matter that you’re
Born into a beautiful body,
And that this is not your responsibility –
If someone says a nice thing,
do not agree but answer, ‘no!
Goodness, no! Not me!’

It’s very clear, you see, that
We don’t desire you to love yourself,
Or think you should have confidence –
We would prefer that you stayed on the shelf,
And only when you’re old, and it’s decided
That you’re ugly, can you lament
On your lost beauty, regretful
Purely in the past tense.

Australia

Australia

After the fire

all that remained

was an Aga,

and a garden gnome.

After everything

metal was smelted

there was still an Aga,

and a guarding gnome.

After years and miles

have burned every sinew

that links us, my love

for you remains

like that Aga –

incongruous as a cooker

in the wilderness –

and beside it

that guardian gnome,

to ensure nobody

takes it

away.

An Old One

the beginning

and where our

rivers join

I place my trust

upon the water

although I do not

have a boat ---

so out it goes

in half an eggshell

with spiders’ webs

for sails

and it cannot travel far

but for now it only

needs to

float

fucked

fucked

we lie silken
with each others’
milky fluids
and we feel closer now,
after the ineffectual procreation,
lying in the senseless adoration
of post-coital affection,
than when you
inhabited me –
but I want you further
away.

legs stuck open with your semen,
skirt lifted by your erection,
I feel bound to satisfy your
ceaseless desires
and let you colonise me –
your newly-claimed territory --
let you put your seed
within my body,
as has been done
throughout history.

and even though you touch me gently,
and only coerce me slightly,
and rarely enter when I’m asleep,
and ensure that I come, mostly,
and even though I love you so,
for the silenced women in
other centuries, other places, other bodies,
I want to say, No.

Reviving

Right Now I am sitting in the semi-dark dusk of my flat watching neighbours ride soggily home on their bikes and looking at the miniature rose plant sagging on my window-sill, hoping it will revive. This is the point from which I begin another blog, with another set of good intentions to keep it updated.

The Safe Room

Internally you grew me,

And when I clung in the womb

Like a stubborn cat curled in a lap

And clawing at its warm cocoon,

You would not let them induce me

Because I was not ready for the world,

And you never could let me be free.