Inspired by nature (again)

Having been visited yesterday by a wren, I have to be happy with little glimpses of wildlife here. Anyway, the mention of a buzzard that was amazing Russell yesterday on the phone, was enough to get me writing.

 

Buzzard

It sits, on a tree stump

or a weathered post, hunched

in its oversized feather jacket.

Buzzard is the collective

noun for feather dusters.

It stretches banded wings,

feeling for the air, the uplift

pulling, unfolding into the sky.

It wheels like linked hands

fingering the clouds.

Rabbits corkscrew into brambles,

pigeons tremble, fat, against tree trunk,

nest, wall. Raiding parties form,

of crows, or rooks, that harry

it from above the meat-hooks.

In summer its rag bag children

follow, hawking death clumsily

missing, crashing into the grass;

striking trees in explosions of leaves.

Rip and squabble over the dead.

One mistook a paper sculpture,

a papier-mâché pig, fat and brown

on our windowsill, and fell,

then understood and threw out

five foot wingspanned brakes.

A buzzard eclipse, as it darkened

six panes of glass, claws clicking

before folding into shrubs,

to scramble unhurt, ruffled;

to derisive shrieks overhead.

By late autumn, the buzzard,

paired and childless, having driven

off competing marauders,

hangs in the last summer thermals,

circles, adjusting a single feather.

Poetry is invading my world again

OK, so there's this research module, that flings tasks at you, that I find irresistible. Write a bibliography... so Harvard referencing which I have always used for essays pops into my head, and i think how pointless it is for really creative pieces, and I'm much rather steer my reader down the same creative path that I took. So this is my (very first...be kind) draft.

Harvard Referencing

Here are the inky footprints

of my research, academic name dropping

on the treasure map of my resources,

in citations and publishers and authors.

References that don’t mention the time

I wrote them, wine-dazed at three

in the morning, book in one hand,

toast or remote or lover in the other.

Citations pepper the text, season

it with the magnitude of the published,

the security of peer reviewed words.

My ideas smothered by a patchwork of texts.

Me (2010) locked into the half truths

and slant rhymes of writers who loom, heavy

tomes shadow me; lose me in their pages,

pressed, library scented until released

in a deluge of post its, fine pencilled notes.

I would rather reference the other

way, through coffees sipped, poems

fallen into, music that drew lines

under thoughts, italicised words, coloured.

Rather, I would send the reader on a journey

to stand in galleries and walk under trees,

stand knee deep, as I did, in spring tides

or row onto the lake, fingers trailing in snowmelt.

Or make them sit by the Aga, with a notebook

full of poems; tear out the least desired

and leave them on the hotplate to singe

and curl; fold into ash by morning.

Or I'll reference the shopping list or recipe,

or words whispered into my ear;

or the lies I tell in-laws—or out-laws.

Blog, unblog, quote friends on Facebook,

pin down praise from my mother

in instructive citations. Draw in lipstick,

cartoons on the mirror, reference the scent

of the t-shirt I wore to mow the  lawn.

Write in cardamom scented ink.

 

References, citations and bibliographies are used in a piece of academic writing to enable a reader to identify and locate the sources which have been consulted by the writer.

Being at home

It appears I can be creative at home, and I can edit in Winchester. Of course, being at home has many other benefits as well, but tomorrow I shall get on a  train at Barnstaple and progress towards Winchester, hopefully finding time to enjoy a bit of reading along the way (Freud again). At least I mastered Mrs Dalloway, although I don't think I'll read it for pleasure, I got my tired head around it. I don't like reading books that haven't caught my interest (I'm re-reading Sabriel by Garth Nix for fun - hard to think this is a kid's book). But the chore has been done, and I did get some pleasure from the language itself. The most useful thing I have done is read biographies of Woolf, explains the book's themes.

So here, because I miss it so much is another picture of the house, so I can remind myself that it's still here, and waiting for me!

I ought to be waving back at the Tarka trail, but I missed that opportunity. Walking along the old railway, now a cyclepath and footpath to South Devon, gives us some stunning views and inspires some poetry along the way.  The wildlife here is lovely, we had a jay six feet from the living room window this morning and I saw deer last visit. Onwards and trainwards....

Second best

It's really hard being the second wife. It's not as if the first wife drove him to drink or infidelity or divorce, they were happily married: that is to say, they had their ups and downs. Then she died. Suddenly, horribly, in an accident. She stopped being annoying, wrong, demanding, needy or whatever it is that we can sometimes be. Then I stepped in. The problem for me is that she used to keep little mementos like birthday cards from him, her husband who is now my husband, tucked into the pages of books. We have very similar tastes in books - and men, as it turned out - and I periodically find these little bullets between the pages of books, waiting to shoot me in the heart.
Anyway, I'd been writing poetry (on the subject of nature, long autumn walks hand in hand earlier that day) when I was ambushed by a recipe book. A card from him, all love and sweetness, and completely understandable. I am completely wracked with unreasonable jealousy, in fact, we were close friends during her life and I hardly knew the man-in-a-suit that she was married to. They had this lovely romantic story about how she met him when she was engaged to someone else, and nearly didn't marry the other guy, but they were both so young, she married Mr Wrong but never forgot Mr Right. When it all fell apart he was still waiting... and they lived happily ever after until a moment of fate took her away.  It's hard to compete with that. I literally came second.
My problem is, she's smiling in photographs, video, smiling back from her children, and she never gets it wrong. He doesn't look back, he's changed so much because losing a partner like that transforms you (it did me, anyway, many years ago). I'm not sure they would even want each other. If she came back,. which she can't. So why do I feel so insecure? Anyway, I walloped out a poem from previous jealous rants and hope to put it behind me. And yes, it is deeply self indulgent crap first draft but I need to get it out of the way so I can work on chapter 4 and my TMA01 for A363, which still needs a commentary.   

Bookmarks

His first wife whispers, pressed

between the spines of books on my shelves,

her Canterbury tales alongside mine, postcard

from him, bookmarking the Knight’s tale.

She never lies now, she never says ‘no’.

Her hands are smooth in memory,

He says he loves her on notes in blue biro.

Jealousy papercuts my soul, stings.

Delia Smith archives their love, florist’s cards

for flowers longer composted than she

sucked dry by the tree, woody fingers exploring

her bones, silver birch dancing in the winter winds.

Birthdays seasoned their lives in  

‘My darlings’ sprinkled like flour, tart tatin

and chocolate brownies, in the Good Housekeeping

Cookbook, love from Mum and Dad (but not mine).

The letters drop from a dictionary, about babies

they conceived, sweaty and earthy nights loving

her and not me. She cradles my children on video,

birth wet, still raw, in her dead arms, blows kisses.

‘My darling’ on a card with forty on it, final

celebration before a Nissan Micra crushed her,

death blown, waxy, a still life in the mortuary

hollowed by death, ageless. I grieved.

I didn’t know then that we would be sharing him.

I keep his letters nested in a wooden box,

when I die, burn them, so wife number three isn’t pierced

by his words, his love, his passion for me

as it browns and shrivels in the winds of winter. 

Coming second sucks.

Agh! Poetry drafts.

I know there are people who just seem to think in poetry, who pin beautiful words and phrases onto a page and then move them about into a harmonious and beautiful form. I'm not one of the those. However, one useful tip I can pass on to those of you who share my struggles: Translate roughly 150 words at a time through babelfish, into French (for lyricism) or Italian (for wit) or even Russian if you just want to go earthy and sexual. Then cut and paste the result and translate back into English - you find some lovely ideas and words. 'The Gathering Tree' becomes (somehow) 'l' sourcilleux tree', which somehow found my intention, to try and describe the magical congregation of rooks and jackdaws in a tree on the ridge opposite our house. (It actually means 'beetle-browed' but for me will be the sorcerer's tree). The innocent sounding 'And clouds of inky rags approach from the east / Spiralling to the valley floor, brushing the brook / With feathery fingers, then riding the wind up, / Up to the ridge, to land in the Gathering tree.' became 'and the clouds of inky of rags moor from the east Of [zakruchivayushch] into the spiral to the sex of valley, cleaning [ruek] by brush [pri] feathery of finger, after this wind upward, to the ridge, to the earth in gathering the shaft.' Via a bit of Russian. This is why I like writing poetry, I've remembered.

Theories again

I find Monday nights' theory sessions fascinating but the reading is hard. Maybe it's because I don't have any education in literature... I knew this bit would be hard, but it has produced the odd bit of amusing fiction. I wrestled with Walter Benjamin's ideas about Kafka - only ten years after Kafka's early death and I think, a product oif their own time. It was way easier to look at Kafka in terms of Freud. I thought I would get them sitting together chatting and that turned into a row across a lake (major metaphor for the whole conscious boat of a bottomless lake of unconscious crap, which came up quite 'by accident'. There are no accidents in Freud. Which is why I'm a humanist...) They got chatting about something I am aware of - how much we are revealed by our writing. Looking back over writing that I thought was quite transparent, I see so much more now. Doubts, angers, fears, sadness, hope, love...even in old blog posts and letters. Anyway, I knocked up a first draft :

Rowing on the Lake

Freud pulled back, feeling the slight spring in the oars against the green water of the lake. ‘Spruce oars,’ he said. ‘I grew up with ash, a beautiful wood, but heavy.’ As they passed under the beech branches clutching the sky, Kafka was cut into strips of yellow and grey. Freud smiled, sighed into his beard, the warm air reflecting back onto his lower lip.
Kafka turned his head to watch as Freud dipped the blade of the oars into the water, creating vortices, spinning in different directions and flashing with light.
‘I never learned to row.’ His voice was soft, very precise.
Freud took another stroke of the oars, then another, the boat beginning to pick up a pleasing momentum, surging ahead with each stroke, coasting in between, in open water. The lake seemed darker green, as if it was bottomless. ‘I don’t analyse any more, you know. I have many students who do. I can recommend one.’
The younger man put one hand onto the water bubbling beside him, his fingers barely skipping on the surface, trailing lines and bubbles of their own. ‘I know.’ Kafka was neatly dressed, thick socks travelling between the turned up hem of his trousers and small black shoes, which were in need of a polish. He had the hungry look of many consumptives. His voice was hesitant, nothing like his writing. ‘I simply find myself…haunted, I suppose. Haunted by dreams and images.’
Freud stretched back and shipped the oars. Drops of water streamed down them onto the bench beside him, and he pulled out a handkerchief to mop up the two pools.
‘Cigar, Mr Kafka?’
Kafka leaned forward to take one.
Freud took one himself. The match flared into life in an acrid cloud of phosphorus, blown across the boat. He offered the matches to Kafka, who shook his head, preferring to hold the cigar for a moment before tucking it into his jacket pocket.
‘I shall smoke it later.’ He smiled, and Freud immediately warmed to the man. His smile enlivened his solemn, child-like face and brightened his dark eyes. He immediately seemed younger.
‘How old are you, Mr. Kafka?’
‘Franz. Please, call me Franz. I am thirty seven years old.’
Freud studied the younger man. ‘I have read your novella. “The Metamorphosis”.’
Kafka, inclined his head. This was one area on which he appeared more confident.
Freud watched smoke drifting starboard, dropping onto the surface of the lake, cut into ever-changing trapeziums and triangles by the wind over the water.
‘Of course, it is possible to interpret the beast, the verminous monster Gregor is transformed into, as the pre-eminence of the id.’ As the younger man did not speak, Freud continued to address the water. ‘His transformation is the beginning of the transformation of the family, the mother and father, the sister Grete.’
‘Indeed.’ When Freud looked at Kafka, he caught him chewing on his lower lip.
‘Was that your intention?’
Kafka looked away, thoughts chasing across his face in fleeting expressions, one hand clasped tightly in the other.
‘Perhaps. Not consciously. I suppose my thoughts were that Gregor was not the benefactor for his family that he thought he was.’
‘So, in some sense his return to support for the family was a castration of his father?’
Kafka rolled his head on his shoulder, as if the muscles there were tight. ‘I suppose so. But that was not in my thoughts when I wrote the story.’
Freud opened the wicker picnic basket between the men’s feet. ‘Do you care for a blanket? There is a cold breeze.’
‘Thank you, no.’ The man leaned forward, his clasped hands resting on his knees as Freud dropped a blanket over his own legs and reached for the flask of coffee.
‘So, tell me, what were your thoughts when you started to write?’
He poured Kafka some coffee and this time, the younger man accepted it, cupping reddened fingers around the china mug. He seemed to think, lifting his head as he looked around the lake, the distant shores barely visible in a haze to the east. ‘I suppose I was thinking of…how mundane life is.’
‘Mmm.’ Freud sipped his coffee, grimaced at the strength of it. Josefina, the maid, always stewed it.
‘I just wondered, what it would be like for something so extraordinary…so different, to happen to someone so ordinary. I had no ending planned, nor any beginning, really. I was as surprised as any reader to find Gregor had become a—monster. ’
Freud let his gaze wander over Kafka, who was staring into his coffee, frowning, as if to find answers there. Kafka looked up suddenly with his deep, dark eyes. His face was drawn from wide Slavic cheekbones to a pointed chin, his cheeks hollow.
Kafka spoke quietly, as if they could be overheard, even hundreds of metres onto the lake. ‘These words, these ideas…they intoxicate me. I write and even I cannot believe that these thoughts have come from me.’
Freud nodded, allowing a smile, that he hoped would be reassuring, to curve his beard. ‘All thoughts, all ideas and fantasies are possible, and permissible.’ He touched the fingers of one hand to the corresponding fingers of the other. ‘These forms rise from the unconscious, as symbols of deeply buried desires and needs.’
‘But what desire could be represented by becoming a creature so repulsive?’ The writer’s thin, brown fingers trembled on the cup.
Freud shrugged. ‘How repulsive? You did not describe the creature, other than to suggest it was vermin, unclean, insect-like.’
‘I hardly know myself.’ He drained the cup, handed it back to Freud. ‘I am drawn to these images that haunt my sleep.’
‘Mmm.’ Freud looked at the wrinkles on the man’s forehead, the paleness of his skin beneath the dark hair.
Kafka looked up at him, reached out a hand to grasp Freud’s jacket sleeve. ‘If I publish these stories, people speculate…people see what is in…my depths.’ He swept the other hand across the surface of the water. ‘Like this lake. If it were transformed to perfect transparency, what wrecks, what monsters would we see? Drowned sailors, smothered babies, the detritus of all the towns along the river, discharging into the lake.’
Freud patted his hand for a moment then gently detached it.
Kafka continued. ‘If these monsters live inside my soul…and I reveal them in my stories…’
Freud shook his head. ‘Inside the mind of every man and woman, my dear Kafka. Your soul I cannot comment on.’
Kafka blinked as if there were tears there. Freud looked away to allow him to compose himself.
‘Perhaps, my dear Kafka, you should consider analysis after all. I could refer you to a colleague of mine.’
‘I shall stop writing.’
Freud picked up the oars, dipping them into the water, left hand ahead of the right so they did not clash. Pulled more on the right side, to turn the boat back towards the jetty. They had drifted maybe half a mile down the lake.
‘Would you care to take an oar? A brisk row shall soon warm you up.’
He made room for the slim writer, who stooped and shuffled crabwise onto the seat. ‘That’s it, dip—pull, swing back.’ As they pulled, Freud kept an eye on the shore. ‘There ideas are not harmful. They simply represent experiences and emotions from your past.’
‘I understand…that.’ Kafka was pulling hard, out of breath after a dozen strokes. ‘I prefer to…keep them private, however.’
‘Indeed.’ Ten, fifteen more strokes and the boat was moving strongly against the slight current. ‘You could consider not publishing them all.’
Kafka lost the rhythm for a moment, and Freud allowed him to catch up. Pull, lean, pull, lean. The leather soles of the younger man’s shoes slipped a little on the boards. ‘Spruce, you say?’

Reading and writing

I've been concentrating on books since the boys left. I took up the recommended book The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks and read it in one go. It is a story of a rather revolting character who graphically tortures and kills animals, and describes his three murders, committed while he was a child. Yet somehow Banks manages to write the character so well, that although you are repelled by what he does, you start to concern yourself with his welfare. Somehow you start to see Frank as a real, damaged and deluded individual. The final twist came as a huge surprise to me, though cleverly signposted. It's a kind of Gothic novel for the modern world. Fantastic writing. Truly, a book I would not recommend as light entertainment or bedtime reading, but amazing.

On to poetry, from the snippets I sketched out in Devon and on the train. I have a vague outline, based (at the moment) on James Joyce's interpretation of St. Thomas Aquinas' views on beauty: wholeness, harmony and radiance. For me, one of the wonders of the natural world is the way huge flocks of corvids, mostly jackdaws and rooks but sometimes crows too, come together into huge flocks, gathering, lifting into the air then settling like washing in the trees until they set of to make an even bigger group somewhere else. the birds travel miles to do this, and they do it regularly.

Mark Cocker in Crow Country described 40,000 or so in the most gorgeous prose. Meanwhile, I struggle to describe the sight and sound of hundreds of jackdaws assembling last year over the Cairn and the beginnings of a gathering when I was in Devon last week. I was literally breathless, wordless, by the sheer beauty of nature and all the sensory experiences of it. I love it when that happens, but it makes it difficult to put into words. I think it's like sketching, you see a lovely view but the lines on the page, or the watercolors for that matter, don't capture the original. Even photography, by emphasising the visual, kills the rest. Difficult. I have come up with 18 lines, so far, a miracle for me, as I end up with really small poems. My tutor suggested 4000 words of fiction or 150 lines of poetry. I'll never be able to come up with that much poetry, it's like making magical potions ('first find an unopened pine cone that has been nibbled by a squirrel, soak for three days in melted hail...' OK, made up, but you get my drift?).