Poem reaches A level syllabus

A weird discovery last night - that at least one set of sixth formers in a school in Croydon are studying one of my poems. Not sure if this is good or not but certainly intriguing. How it happened: a teacher friend of mine told me that the Forward Poems of the Decade anthology which includes my poem 'Wa/Harmony' (from Joy Change the Japanese collection) has been adopted as a set text for the Edexccel Alevel and AS syllabus! https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/mar/16/poems-of-the-decade-anthology-forward-prizes Quite soon, or possibly as I write, students may be writing essays comparing and contrasting it to another poem in that anthology.

This is the second time a poem of mine has reached syllabus level ('The Character of Rain' from the same volume was and perhaps still is on an Open University module). In this case not only is it strange to be re-reminded of the trajectories a little poem can follow outside my ken or even my awareness - how true they are now something other - an arrow sent forth to find its own way; it is also interesting to observe how work can be altered and reinvented in the process of anthologising and reprinting. The Forward Anthology has extended my poem by three lines! 

How this happened: I was not involved in the proof-reading of that anthology. Indeed I did not even know my poem was in it until it was published, and it took quite some time for me to be sent a copy of the book. When I did receive one, I saw that they had actually combined two of my poems into one. In Joy Change, 'Wa' on page 8 is followed by a little separate haiku on page 9. Haikus are traditionally titleless so this one was set slightly further down the page to indicate a new poem (other indications also being its separate listing on the contents page and indeed the fact that 'Wa' is in six regular stanzas of four lines each, while the haiku is much shorter in line length and in entirety - only three lines). Yet in the Forward anthology the two poems are presented as one.

I quite like the transformation this effects in an odd way although I wouldn't have (and didn't) choose it myself. It fits with one of the collection's potential themes - the expat lost and trying to find her way/make new connections in Japan. It also comprises a good lesson in layout - exaggerate the difference in layout if you mix titleless haiku with titled poems. And it illustrates so well the unfinished nature of a poem or any text. How often we assume we hold the definitive text in our hands, forgetting to check if what we see has been reprinted, republished, revised, or indeed translated from another language - perhaps several times, each of these actions having an effect on the text whether it be through differing layout, page design and size, alteration of wording or indeed changes in the actual language used. Those essays we write, those ponderings we indulge in are in this text now that we hold in our hands or behold on our screen, but not necessarily or not at all in the text the writer originally wrote (and what after all does that 'originally' mean - I had many drafts of 'Wa' I am sure and there is certainly one alteration I would make now if I was me back then (if that is ever possible) and rather wonder if I intended to make then but forgot: adjusting stanza one so the  'pack' is not used twice - although there may well be a student now commenting on exactly why that double pack is so important. (Sorry for the triple brackets by the way)).

But instead I think I want simply to celebrate the different groupings and interpretations that editors and readers and happenstance can come up with. A poem is never finished, is flexible and open and so Forward and Edexcel have done me a favour I think, in that way.

2017: into the new - a love song to Tod

very much still a rainy northern place but after some days of meditation what stays is not the chill and the wetness but the sharp clean brilliance provided by that rain, and also thankfulness at how individual and very much itself this little town I live in continues to be. every year seems to mark the beginnings of yet another new festival, which go on to win awards (Pulling Up Daisies), draw in relatives to visit (Lamplighter Festival), set a high standard for consciousness-raising through poetry evening and cartoon graffiti (The one-off how I wish it wasn't Climate Change Festival). The singing groups, the musicians, the folk festival, the one-off gigs... Yes, placed on the periphery, between two anciently warring counties, Tod has a history of going its own way that still sets a standard for the town, centre of Incredible Edibleness and yet without clinging on to it as IE threads its radial connections throughout the world, stuffed full of poets, potters, printers perhaps who knows, preachers(?), and other crafts or crafty men and women, builders, plumbers, wood-turners, small business runners, both an indoor market and an outdoor market, a traditional tourist information slap-bang up against a thriving willow weaving centre, a simple greasy or not so greasy spoon next to a state of the art truly ART hairdressers where I might get a lecture on how to take my glasses off and on so as not to spoil the cut, and in among the sheds and warehouses of one of its smaller industrial sites a totally unexpected climbing centre gleams its own promises and aspirations. and deep at its centre, opposite the lavish town hall is a huge gold bicycle - the tour de tod - as the Your de Torkshire /Tour de Yorkshire was fondly remembered - that it never even came through the town making not one wit of difference

                                                                                       love it

Just post Xmas 2016

I love christmas for the push it gives me into giving, going round the shops thinking about other people for a change, the opportunity to hook up with old and even forgotten friends by card, the visits I get from old dear friends, all the times that it inspires love and kindness rather than scarey consumer madness, the morning chocolate from the advent calendar, the christmas haiku meeting with the haiku christmas cards, getting the tree, lighting the tree, the way people turn their minds and hearts to the needy, the way I do, the singing, playing the recorder in the Horsforth orchestra, the feasts, the supra, making christmas cards, receiving christmas cards, the party on my road, those few days off work when the email goes quiet, the lights and the glow that shine on us from our older solstice festivals, the promise of lighter days, the darker starrier nights, the thought of new resolutions, old resolutions renewed, new beginnings, christmas cake, nutroast, beautifully steamed brussel sprouts oh yum, meeting up with my younger relatives, meeting up with my older relatives, the impromptu and the planned christmas dinners and outings, the reckonings of life/finances/happiness, and the consequent intentions and determinations to do better, the mixture therefore of enjoyment and good hopes, the much 'liked' videos of wise words and wise people (Desmond Tutu and Dalai Lama), the singing, the loving, the forgiving, the living.

Now can I take that text and make it the background for a poem? Will do, will do

writing poems with jim and other stuff

it's very pleasing to have a nephew who shares my love of words, even more so when we sit for a quick, delicious, no excellent, coffee in Hebden's Chapter 17 and he lays paper before me and instructions for a creative writing exercise which completely unpreparedly I am to participate in, and this all in 5 minutes before we have to go to the cinema.

     Write three words. Your turn.

     Uh ok choose two and write their opposite.

     Write a shop name and a street.

     Write a three line poem.

I am raring to go: I'm getting into this and looking forward to working up my notes which promise to become a Viking/Icelandic piece. when to my horror Jim says

    Swap papers.

Oh no - bye bye Vikings and welcome to the Broken Biscuit emporium

Me:

The back room of the Broken Biscuit Emporium
overwhelmed not with biscuits but scarves
knitted from the bare bones of the flooded high street

hmm more like prose but interesting how the Hebden floods creep in

Jim:

                              CAST
Merovingian farming tools, rusted axe heads
Scan the wares at Deremethynge, alright
the icelander's fishnet catches your eye.


Yes! Sharp as an owl, keen as a Lamplighter float, cool as a Pennine winter???

Atta boy Jim!!

staggering from the peony - haiku in progress

Off to the Yorks Lancs Haiku meeting today. This time it is in the rural environs of Huddersfield, which happens to be warmer than Tod, slightly. The host bakes great quiches and the company will include some fine haiku writers. We are to bring 2 to 3 haiku on travel, of some one else's creation and of our own, to be discussed, as usual, anonymously. The company can be ruthless. They can of course also be wrong. But it's a rare and welcome privilege to attend the meeting nevertheless, and there will be some fine haiku there.

I have one on an owl. It's in my little notebook. dated 2/10/2016, and noted down shortly after the experience, when I was coming up the steep lane to my house one evening, and just past the lamp a bird slid noiselessly out of the hedge and flew low along the lane in front of me. It happened so quickly that the word 'owl' only came to me after it had gone. I knew very well I had owls. I often heard them at night but this was the first time I had seen one of them. Thrilled and moved I formulated the haiku, which after several mental drafts, mainly mulling over a preposition for the lane I believe - over? across? in front of me? I noted down

leaf-strewn lane
in lamplight
an owl flying [flies?] low

Part of the thrill was that I had found myself unusually quiet enough to receive this haiku moment - often I am too full of the then and the soon-to-come to stay that long in the now.

I like it and you could say it refers to travel, for the owl at least.

However, having alighted on a Basho offering to take as well last night (I think the intention is to read through haiku books or to rifle your haiku memory but I cheated and googled Basho and 'travel' - ah well, it still took some finding)

A bee
staggers
from the peony

mine now seems far too wordy. I've been pondering the difference overnight. Basho's hinges for me round the word 'staggers' with its connotations of drunkenness and the zig zag of bee flight, although this one can hardly fly I think, as well as the precision of 'peony', and as I write this now I wonder if the way a peony is shaped will make a bee come out of it clumsily too. [[[[[]]]]]] the symbols mark my quick dip into google land again and yes the peony petals in the images I found are very closely leafed together. I can quite imagine a bee going far in and then being disoriented on coming out, or even blinded by the sun, possibly having to squeeze past the petals too.

So what can I ditch from mine?

The orange tinge of the lamplight seems important to my memory, and the leaves are needed to suggest the season, and the lane because the owl was flying along right in front of me - as if we shared the walk for a moment.

lamp lit
an owl
flying low

no, that misses out the sense of the owl in front of me, which was so magical, but I like the addition of 'low' - another part of that magic. Does it matter so much that the light was orange?

along the leaf-strewn lane
an owl
flying low

yes gets in the season and lots of 'l's - 'along' is also more accurate than 'over', which was another preposition I had hovered above. But the word order is a bit clumsy and so very unlike that smooth silent swift glide of the owl. I was intending to put here (and now will) this next draft:

flying low
along the leaf-strewn lane
an owl

but my commentary has inspired a change before I even get there. I want not 'flying' but a word that like 'staggers' carries much with it - in this case flight, silence, smoothness, and a specific rendering of the bird's movement, while retaining an 'l' sound too:

gliding low
along the leaf-strewn lane
an owl

There! I have it! But I take one last look back at the first version and am once more undecided, not sure which to take !!! Maybe the journey will decide me.

The second haiku I can offer is a hawthorn buzzard moment - from around the same time as the owl. Another first bird experience - seeing and identifying the buzzard and then, just when it has gone out of sight, hearing the confirming sound of its call. I was walking down another lane, this time in Herefordshire, towards the Vipassana meditation centre. Here are the versions in my little book, dated 17/10/2016:

over the flowering hawthorn
the [flown] flying buzzard's 'mew'

over the flowering hawthorn
the soaring/flying buzzard's
mew

flowers hang over
the hawthorn hedge -
the mew of a buzzard

the last is most accurate since it wasn't the hawthorn hedge itself that was flowering - not in the autumn - but another kind of flower hanging over it. However, I know the group will ask me to name the flower and even google can't help on this.

I come up with

flowers heap
over the hawthorn hedge
the mew of a buzzard

which gives a hinged line in the middle but is less accurate in that there weren't as many flowers as a 'heap' would suggest.

How about

flowers hang
over the hawthorn hedge
the mew of a buzzard

?

Yes. And maybe the haiku group can help with the flower.

Just to finish off, I check the Basho poem online again. I've remembered the preposition wrong. Robert Hass, who translated it, has managed more precision than that, and also cut the lines differently - a clearer more definite picture than my misremembered one. How delicate this work is!

A bee
staggers out
of the peony.

Pali word for the day (11.11. 2016)

Pausing to consider

opasamika — upa + sama + ika = prefix denoting


        nearness or close touch,
        under & on, approach
        from below + calmness,
        tranquillity, mental quiet
        = leading to quiet,
        allaying, quieting

Leaf-cutting

Seeing a facebook photo of a Japanese friend of mine silhouetted by the autumn profile of the mountains around Kanazawa, Japan, where we used to walk together admiring the leaves, the strong reds, subtle orange, thin pink, deep yellow, crinkly green and more, of the autumn foliage, I remember how little I remember now here in Yorkshire to do just the same. We have weekends for that of course, leisure-pleasure time, and even evenings, although the longer nights cut that kind of leaf-viewing a little short and dark, but we don't have quite the same preparedness that is valued and cultivated in Japan: to open up to what is there in the air and the light, at the moment of time in which it is. And I feel grateful now for my years steeped in Japanese culture and arts and social interactions in the traditional town of Kanazawa which so often focus around the ever-present but ever-fleeting moment of now, a moment I appreciate again right here as the bush grown up in front of my house in the last few years is being cut back to reveal more mountain than I have seen for a few seasons, though less leaves and less refuge for little animals and birds, but it will always grow back. I enjoy the horizon I can now trace, but the memory of the leafy branches that hid it for so long also lingers dearly there.

pruning
a distant hill
where leaves once were