Pages: Robert Sheppard: two poems excerpted from Twitters...

Pages: Robert Sheppard: two poems excerpted from Twitters...: Here are two poems excerpted from Twitters for a Lark , not because I thought there was anything wrong with them but because I needed to cut...

"Your Little Poetry"

Dharma wheel.

The poetry I write might not be 'big' in terms of making money. It may not be 'big' because it reaches everyone, because everyone who reads it loves it, or because it's used in an advert. There are very few ways, apart from the amount of lines, that I could qualify the things I write as 'big'.

But never belittle it.

It has been the only thing available to me at times when everything else seemed to be coming down around me. It has created discussion and togetherness in those that have heard it, one of the things I prize most about life. Without it, I would just not be who I am. Indeed, I might not be at all, without something to focus on, something to say, something to simply stop me succumbing to the ultimate darkness.

Whatever your views on poetry, or me, or my work, don't, with a sweep of your hand so small that diminishes even the dismissiveness of your attitude, talk about my 'little poetry'.

You might not rate what I do, but what I do is what I am, so disregard my work and you disregard me. Do that, and I'll happily leave you to your 'important work' without looking back.

As always: peace, love and light.

The wheat                                                               The chaff

{fo}

kiff my aff



CALL TO ARMS - EMERGENCY MEETING OF 'SCARF'

From the Liverpool Echo's site:
http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/incoming/gallery/everton-goodison-park-7051684

Right folks, enough is enough. As if Liverpool losing 5-0 to Man City and Everton getting stuffed 4-0 by United over a month ago wasn't enough, just this weekend we've had The Reds being done in by Spurs, 4-1 (at their supposedly 'cursed' Wembley ground), and Everton slumping to a 5-2 defeat at the feet of Arsenal, preceding their manager's exit. This is too troubling to let slide!

I propose an emergency meeting of 'SCARF' - the Scouse Association for Remedying Football - which will have powers to call upon the government to inject millions of pounds into our footy funds, ready for the January transfer window. In addition to this, we will have the initiative to try and bring sanctions against all other clubs, especially the Mancunian ones, for deliberately lacking a sense of humour and 'winning too much'.

Football is a rich and varied sport, full of fantastic athletes, scenes of high drama and, ultimately, families of fans just wanting to enjoy themselves. SCARF will try to fix the current, woeful situation of madness on Merseyside, and bring back some of that 'score goaling' I've heard so much about in other clubs' games.

SCARF president, Maggie McCartney, has commented, "Scousers have often had a different outlook on life, from the rich diversity of cultures that the docks and universities brought into the city, to the way political ideologies - especially those of Mrs Thatcher - have bred a sense of outsiderness in England. Our outlook in football is no different. For many years, Liverpool - especially - have been, if anything, overly concerned with winning. This year, we are seeing a fresh and beautiful expression of playing well and getting no results. It seems, however, that other clubs are stubbornly rolling along with outdated ideas of 'trying to put the ball in the back of the net', ultimately for three points. My organisation will seek to level the playing field any way it can, and, with a little luck, get Scousers back on top."

Theresa May has yet to expand on her earlier comment, "What is a Liverpool?"

On an Aspect of Foreignness

By Hintha - Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11570695

Whilst watching the situation in Myanmar, I saw a shot of a hospital ward sign in Burmese, subtitled in English as 'Male Ward'. The Burmese alphabet reminds me of bubble clusters settling on the page (or the sturdier medium of signage...) - there's something light and beautiful about it, yet a sense of purpose and tangibility the same as any other writing system. In the middle of the scene of devastation I was watching, the particular likes of which we don't see happen in 'the west', it felt odd to me to see this little translation, this bit of recognisable English.



http://www.zimbio.com/photos/Airport+Sign/Clive+Owen+Airport+Germany/ZLZz4J8sBoz

I got thinking of airports. I've been lucky enough to get abroad a couple of times in the last few years, and by and large, English has drawn these spaces together, on signage and often in dialogue, too. Obviously there are benefits. It's nice to be able to be understood when you 'don't have the words', but I feel guilty because I know why English has this status, and when I'm in a different country, I want to show respect by speaking the native language, and having English spoken back to me tends to smother the moment. It's no 'biggie', but it leaves me pondering the nature of foreignness. When language is so essential to identity, and to deeper concerns surrounding 'reality', its use impacts heavily upon one's experience - in short, one feels, in a way, like one is not 'properly abroad'. One feels as if the body has moved, but the mind isn't sure if it has kept up. Something like that...

Anyways, here comes the turn. The 'interesting bit', if I may be so bold as to say. I was recently booking some tickets from a French website. French happens to be the language I am most fluent in, after my mother tongue. However, the verbs alone in the usually habitual process of online shopping were alien to me. My school-taught stuff didn't cover the essential units of what I was grappling with. I made a couple of educated guesses, based on what I thought would be the etymologies of the unfamiliar words, because it's reasonable to think that a word that looks very similar to one you know would have a similar meaning, right? Well, after checking with a translator (and a good friend of mine who's a language whizz), I found out I was wrong with most of my attempts.

There were three phrases I stumbled on quite badly. "Ajouter au panier" was the first. I thought it meant 'return to something'. I was confident of 'ajouter', but didn't know what 'panier' meant. It turns out 'ajouter' means 'to add' - so I was wrong on that - and 'panier' is 'basket'. As someone who has grown up around bike enthusiasts, I should have known this, as it's so similar to 'panniers' - only one letter away, indeed - the bags bikers use on the back of their behicles. Second phrase was "je continue mes achats." If I'd thought about this a bit more straightforwardly, the 'je continue' bit must mean 'I am continuing', and I knew 'achats' must be my purchases ('acheter' means 'to buy'). Instead, I abstracted it a bit more to mean 'continue to payment', which is a perfectly normal thing to expect, so much so that I ignored linguistic logic - at my peril! The last thing was 'terminer ma commande'. 'Terminer', I thought, was 'terminate' in the sense of 'get rid of', y'know, 'delete', but in many contexts in English, even, 'terminate' means 'complete' - to terminate an order, or a train terminating at its destination. Let's just say, I didn't want to risk clicking this until I was absolutely sure what I was doing.

It was all a little bit scary. For all I knew, I could've been clicking on the 'charge me a million Euros for a can of French fog' button ('me chargez un million d'euros pour une canette de brouillard français', in case you ever need to know). It was frustrating, too, especially when I thought I knew what I was reading, but the things I was clicking took me to the 'wrong' part of the website. I was blaming technology before I began to think that I might have got it wrong. Also, contrarily, it was fun.

Finally - foreignness!

Mort Launching Black Shiver Moss

From http://www.seren-books.com/

I was lucky enough late last month to go to Graham Mort's Lancaster launch of Black Shiver Moss. Before I talk about the night itself, I'd like to say that I have recollection of reading a collection or two of Mort's poetry and short stories before. Even though it was a long time ago, the impressions they left behind are still very vivid, and that tells a truth about the quality of his work. It's not 'what I usually go for', though, mainly as it isn't what you'd call 'experimental', and is mainly (I think this is fair to say) focussed on the natural world which, despite evidence to the contrary, is equated in my lazy mind as 'traditional' or 'conventional', which are both uninspiring words to me.

After this fine evening, though, I was reminded about the depth and bittersweetness in his work. There is joy, too, of course, but a man of his astoundingly sharp observation of the world is always going to see the harsh truths and not mince his words, either. Something I've been worrying about in my own writing lately is how (if at all) I manage to capture an image, and then here I am in the presence of someone who is master of that. How does he do it so well? Without trying to be opaque, I'd say 'he just does it'. I don't know whether he'd see himself as fearless (as a writer), or not, but it comes across that he has no qualms about the work of language, and I think my anxieties arise because I feel I need to explain too much, and to be too clever or whatever. So my lazy mind is, in short, wrong.

That's all I want to say on the poetry. I don't think I can add anything by going into which poems were read and what I thought of each one, tho I will use this opportunity to say hi to Winston.

Anyhoo, enough of my my words, here's some of my his words, or, the question and answer section. A lot of the QnA stuff was sort of passe to me. There was the sort of 'why do you break a line here on the page, but read it differently' sort of thing, a trying to pin something down that, as a writer, you instinctively know 'isn't what it's all about'. Not to say we shouldn't think about it, but, you know, to ask the writer directly makes me squirm a bit. He related a story, which he referred back to later, of some Archbishop being asked some question about God's work, and giving an answer... not vague as such, but, y'know, not openly and directly obvious, like 'there's something deeper under the surface'. He's right, though. There is 'something deeper', and as a writer that's enough, if the poetry's good (which his is, without doubt).

The question that was interesting to me, firstly, was concerned writing habit. He revealed with a laugh that he's "fantastically ill-disciplined" which, I must say, should give us all a great bloody deal of hope. He knows when he's got something to work on, tho, and sets about it. Also the old line (not a lie) that writers (well, at least some of them) are 'working all the time' - thinking, mentally drafting, and even just observing and processing what will eventually end up, in whatever form, becoming a piece. I felt I was going to remember more of what he said and give you something decent here, but I haven't... Sorry!

Secondly, someone had asked him about the relationship between what he reads and his work. He said there was no real link between his reading and how he'll draft something, but I found he tickled my fancy when he said that writers should read something completely unrelated to things they are doing, as he feels that it can have positive results (I think he meant in a 'seeing things afresh' sort of way, but then, also, you can come back to the writer's perception, and how something totally different may help you generate new things too). He mentioned in particular something which I can't remember. I think he said it was a Japanese motorcycle manual, or maybe a philosophy of bike production, where there was a moral voice running through these technical elements, which you would expect to be 'objectively voiced'. Hard to explain, but he did it charmingly... And no, I'm sure it wasn't Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which I still ain't read. Possibly something from this site?

The other particularly interesting thing was him talking about being in academia, and how reading his students' work is a good way of continually being part of the creative world. That's my dream in many ways, to be an active part of the campus (and beyond) mind, so I sat back and let his words bathe me in the moonlight of possibility.

I'd just like to finish by saying how witty Graham is. Throughout the night he made a few quips and whatnots, and I have to say he reminded me of John Lennon quite a bit. Now, for me, there could hardly be a greater compliment of someone's intelligence than this, and it must be true that this brightness of mind is in his work (though Seamus Heaney is a more oft-quoted example of similarity, in his poetry at least), so do check it out.

Lovely night, lovely man, lovely poetry. #blessed #peace #love #light

Pages: EUOIA Night August reading at The Other Room: Repo...

I want a fictional poet of my very own, but would she or he want me? Never mind that, just read Sheppard's account of what sounds like a brilliant night, one that I'm very disappointed I couldn't attend:



Pages: EUOIA Night August reading at The Other Room: Repo...: Last night, the Other Room celebrate d the European Union of Imaginary Authors, with readings in person and on video.We are told that the E...