Some new work

An audience on video

The say you can’t see an audience from the stage
But looking back over the jellied images, washed and wrung out over
Years of play, the stars shone.
There they were – newsreaders, humorists, sportsmen,
And their wives, juggling their breathing through laughter,
As the funny man danced out in front of them,
Lit so no shadow would fall on him.
It was like looking at the night sky – a spread of echoes.
Events that happened years ago, revealing themselves,
Disclosing their final moments, then disappearing.
Watching the adult stars of my childhood,
Dashing across a black screen, existing in laughter only,
Then silenced was enough to fill a few minutes of my time,
From their lifetime’s achievements.

"He writes of not of the heart, but of the glands"

It is with a strange reluctance that I sent off for the Academi Cardiff Poetry Competition 2009. I sent off Citizen Ken and Shepherd of the Landes.

It is hard to remember writing them, how I felt when they were finished. My two favourite pieces that i have written. They were both outcomes of my ability to have a clear vision in my mind and write about it straight, with a clarity that, I feel, doesn't deserve much post-editing.

I haven't had that ease of writing for a while. Like Faulkner says, I am writing from the glands, the idea that I should be producing poetry because, I believe, I am a poet. But the need, the want and the drive are not necessarily present all the time. I need a little more heart these days.

The relevance of the English Pound

The application of labor, and how you judge what is worth your labor, is often a decision that is not made available to you. There are reams of verse that I have written that I shall never use which, at the time, I thought they were inseperable from myself. They were me and my thoughts. On a recent trip to Dartmoor, to be taught under the guidance of both John Burnside and Andy Brown, the notebook was ruined. Black ink laid across the page, a spectre of what it was, fading to the lips of the page. I was disapointed with my swelled paper: several years of notes ruined.

The reason why I quoted the poet Ezra Pound as my first entry, and the title of my blog, was because he knew how to phrase truth and what was worth the writer's labor. He always seemed to identify the link between the writer, the work and the message and how they all interlinked and danced in between one another. He knew what should remain true:

What thou lovest well remains, the rest is dross
What thou lov'st well shall not be reft from thee
What thou lov'st well is thy true heritage

I hope to follow my original passions through this, by writing whenever I am able to. The working life has demulsified my own interests and the things I "lovest well" into disparate objects, flung around my room. It used to be that I had a symbiotic relationship with them, but now they are qualities of a personality which I often claim as my own.

Watch this space.

And so

The ant's a centaur in his dragon world.
Pull down thy vanity, it is not man
Made courage, or made order, or made grace,
Pull down thy vanity, I say pull down.
Learn of the green world what can be thy place
In scaled invention of true artistry,
Pull down thy vanity

- Ezra Pound