Now plugging: Memento

Memento

This book was kindly produced by J.S.MacLean as a memento of the times that a big crowd of poets had on the now defunct CriticalPoet.com.

Three of my poems are in there, as are contributions by another 37 accomplished poets.  One of the three I provided was Coming Round which is featured on this very blog.

On-line poetry forums are a very useful resource, when they are good, for the beginning or developing poet.  I see them as occupying roughly the same position of the literary salon of former centuries.  On them you can both get feedback on your own work but, more important, you can practise critiquing the work of others.  This is vital as the ability to understand the strengths and weaknesses of a poem underpins the ability to self-critique, and thus self-edit.

To put it another way, until you've learnt to understand why somebody else's poem doesn't work, you haven't a hope of knowing whether yours does...  and also seeing other people praise the very feature you just condemned, that teaches you something of how different readers can come to the same text in very different ways.

A good forum is also a source of companionship, writing prompts and exercises.

So the demise of a good one is a sad occasion, but also a chance to look back at the good times and realise how far you've come.

All of me...

It was easy, so I made a playlist of all my poem recordings.

Maybe you could put it on while you are falling asleep at night.  I hope that sends a disturbed shiver down your spine, it certainly does mine...

Actually I can't imagine what anybody will do with this, but here it is anyway.

---

The girl who...

As you may know, I'm something of a fan of Nordic Noire dramas.

Not an fanatical fan.  I'm not the type who can obsesses about a TV series (for the purposes of this discussion, Dr Who isn't a TV series, it's a religion...)  However I do check new Nordic Noire series out when they appear, just to see whether I'm going to enjoy them.

One of the frequent features of these series is strong, eccentric female leads, and this is where this particular poem stems from.  At the time of writing, I was thinking most about Saga Norén from The Bridge (which was on at the time).  However the direct references in the text are to Lisbeth Salander, the original Girl Who... (the films don't 100% do her justice: read the books.)

These are very different characters in several ways, but the big thing they have in common is minds found some way out on the autistic spectrum...  which is another place this poem is coming from.  I often relate strongly to autistic characters.

What else...?  (1) This is skirting the edge of being a sonnet...  (2) Remind me sometime to rattle on about "normal" human psychology and the various spectra within which we are all so carefully positioned.

---

---

The girl who...


tattoos dragons, kicks hornets etc and stands
in the half-furnished apartment smoking/staring
through the picture window while the world
fades monotonically into twilight and snow
takes the evidence. Somebody calls and she grunts,
eyes, hand and cigarette unmoving. Feel the cold as if
we were close, as if there were a closeness here.
We brush a hair from her temple, and click:
the side of her head opens to reveal the steel
wheels spinning and a quiet persuasive hum. Come
back to the front, see the eye, see the smile not for kissing
the face not wholly numb, and rapid-fire summations
of an intellect that takes no prisoners, sees no need,
but speaks: put the body-parts on ice for morning.

Bootstraps (revised)

Why would I post nearly the same thing twice?

To demonstrate the creative process, of course!

Also to show how the only constant is change, nothing can be taken for granted, no plan survives contact with the enemy, and we are our own worst enemies.

But mostly because I am not a revisionist.  Events are events and even if we subsequently forget what they were, they still are what they were.  Similarly history is written by the victors, and thus not real; but it is what was written and always will have been...

...so I can't simply replace the previous post and thus erase the historical record (I only do that if I make an embarrassing mistake.)

Let's call this the history of the World, v0.2-patch-level-1...

---

---

Bootstraps


First floor — survival gear: axes chipped
from patient flint; animal skins stitched
with skill and bone needles;
tribal leaders
arguing beside the standing stone;
berries gathered in the sun; fires kindled
in the gloom to keep the toothier beasts at bay; going up...


Second floor — farms and agriculture; cats to keep
the rats away; dogs and scrawny goats; the spinning
year and fleeces; fleas in every rush pile
bed; people sleeping on a platform,
animals beneath; pots built from the local clay and fired
by the clan who have the knack; orange/yellow copper
in the kiln ash, a young man prods it thoughtfully; going up...


Third floor — city states: law and orders;
walls; gates; men with wise beards,
meet, casual in the forum; politics; decorum, until
the food gets scarce; princelings swapped with
worldly powers to guarantee the peace;
philosophers on temple steps; priests
at watch, nervously; a man who writes everything down; going up...


Third floor mezzanine — libraries and scriptoria: days
spent, short and candle dim; rude notes
illustrated in the margin, to the greater glory; a story
captured and defined, here and there a line
of mystery; history, on the lectern, written by scribes
in the chapter-houses of the monasteries of the victors;
a new fear of fire; books from half the World, traded, copied; going up...


Fourth floor — industrialism and empire: men
in clever top hats; lines on maps or diagrams which change
the game; labourers becoming craftsmen, speaking plainly
of pounds per capita per square imperial inch;
unflinching duty; railways; educating lesser races;
ignore their anger, they are children; government buildings
in grandly inappropriate style; social reform; going up...


Fifth floor — total war: wondering what it's all about in a foxhole;
shells; war poets; dysentery; seven new kinds of mud
to drown in; gas, artillery and wire; cunning inventions
to burn up everything you've known;
fragments of bone in your hair; high explosive
which de-constructed your buddy, hearing, presence of mind;
ACHTUNG MINEN! no leaves on the trees; rumours of a treaty; going up...


Fifth floor mezzanine — teenagers and youth: sex and drugs;
hugs and messages of vague well-being; seeing things
in new lights; days lost in what used to be reverie, but now
is chilling out; tearing down old certainties, while still
living
within them; distant mystics, sexier than the local ones;
rolling the stones; liberty, equality, hints of progressive policy; going up...


Sixth floor — technology: machines for making machines that make
decisions; tension round the rate of change; every day strange
and bravely whirled; Internets; commerce; the people, connected
and loving and arseholes, in equal measure; treasure
sieved from big data; advanced manufacturing facilities
and people drawing squiggles
to sell them on-line; connections for the World, for your mind; going up...


Seventh floor...

Top floor — future: worlds beyond number;
World without end; machines that think
they are men; vice-versa; change here for: space
elevators, interstellar colonisation, Dyson spheres, generation ships;
the stars like sand upon the beach of every island paradise the mind imagines;
there is no ceiling...

...I'd put your head between your knees,
it takes some folks that way Sir. If I were you
I'd wait
until it all stops spinning
then take the other car.

Everybody else: please hold on tight...
this lift
only
goes
up...

Bootstraps

Who doesn't want to write a history of the World?

This is a slightly unusual posting, as this poem isn't necessarily finished.  What happened is, I put it on a couple of forums, and I got some enthusiastic responses, and also some suggestions for improvements.  Then somebody asked if they could share it on Facebook, and I thought: why not?  However Facebook loses formatting, so it on my blog for her to share...

...so here we are, but it may be subject to further edits later.

Call it a history of the World, v0.1-beta...

---

---

Bootstraps


First floor -- survival gear: axes chipped
from patient flint; animal skins stitched
with skill and bone needles;
tribal leaders
arguing beside the standing stone;
berries gathered in the sun; fires kindled
in the gloom, to keep the toothier beasts at bay; going up...


Second floor -- farms and agriculture; cats to keep
the rats away; dogs and scrawny goats; the spinning
year and fleeces; fleas in every rush pile
bed; people sleeping on a platform,
animals beneath; pots built from the local clay and fired,
by the clan who have the knack; orange/yellow copper
in the kiln ash, a young man prods it thoughtfully; going up...


Third floor -- city states: law and orders;
walls; gates; men with wise beards,
meet, casual in the forum; politics; decorum, until
the food gets scarce; princelings swapped with
worldly powers to guarantee the peace;
philosophers on temple steps; priests
at watch, nervously; a man who writes everything down; going up...


Third floor mezzanine -- libraries and scriptoria: days
spent, short and candle dim; rude notes
illustrated in the margin, to the greater glory; a story
captured and defined, here and there a line
of mystery; history, on the lectern, written by scribes
in the chapter-houses of the monasteries of the victors;
a new fear of fire; books from half the World, traded, copied; going up...


Fourth floor -- industrialism and empire: men
in clever top hats; lines on maps or diagrams which change
the game; labourers becoming craftsmen, speaking plainly
of pounds per capita per square imperial inch;
unflinching duty; railways; educating lesser races;
ignore their anger, they are children; government buildings
in grandly inappropriate style; social reform; going up...


Fifth floor -- total war: wondering what it's all about in a foxhole;
shells; war poets; dysentery; seven new kinds of mud
to drown in; gas, artillery and wire; cunning inventions
to burn up everything you've known;
fragments of bone in your hair; high explosive
which de-constructed your buddy, hearing, presence of mind;
ACHTUNG MINEN! no leaves on the tree, rumours of a treaty; going up...


Fifth floor mezzanine -- teenagers and youth: sex and drugs;
hugs and messages of vague well-being; seeing things
in new lights; days lost in what used to be reverie, but now
is chilling out; tearing down old certainties, while still
living
within them; distant mystics, sexier than the local ones;
rolling the stones; liberty, equality, hints of progressive policy; going up...


Sixth floor -- technology: machines for making machines that make
decisions; tension round the rate of change; every day strange
and bravely whirled; Internets; commerce; the people, connected
and loving and arseholes, in equal measure; treasure
sieved from big data; advanced manufacturing facilities
and people drawing squiggles
to sell them on-line; connections for the World, for your mind; going up...


Seventh floor...

Top floor -- future: worlds beyond number;
World without end; machines that think
they are men; vice-versa; change here for: space
elevators, interstellar colonisation, Dyson spheres, generation ships;
there is no ceiling;
the stars like sand upon the beach
of every island paradise the mind imagines...

...I'd put your head between your knees,
it takes some that way, Sir. Shall
I drop you somewhere?  The Victorian Era?  The Renaissance?
Very good Sir.  Going down...