Alastair Mackie tweet poetry

Beautiful lines of Alastair Mackie (1925-95) who was born in Aberdeen, Scotland. Why is he barely in print now? He graduated from Aberdeen University after serving in the Royal Navy during World War II. He then taught English at Stromness Academy, before settling in Anstruther, Fife, where he taught at Waid Academy until his retirement in 1984. Compare Charles Causley...

poetandgeek poetandgeek.com 

I'm richt glad the auld words still come back like migrant swallas black shears o the gloamin

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The full poem...

Aiberdeen Street

I

Ye were hyne awa fae Nuremberg o the flags,
the death-crap o the purges; Il Duce's
black-sarked legions heistin eagles…
Woolie's guns and gairden canes airmed oor wars
focht on your cassies, oor granite battle-field.
Paper planes whitent the gloamin-faa,
earth-bund swallas the scaffies sweepit up.
And quines were bobbin corks aneth the tow brigs
o their skippin ropes. Cairt horses snochert
and the shod wheels girned and dirded.
Here in this play-grun atween the tenements
– sea gulls on the lums – I breathed in Scots.
Years later I howkit up the street's kist
o memories and found amon the mools, deid words,
the affcasts o history, teuch as granite setts,
the foonds o my world.

II

The navel-tow o the street,
I snippit ye lang syne for war, for college,
for a dominie's day darg…Your skirling lung
is quaiter nou, cloggit up wi metal.
(I mauna cuddle in the wyme o yesterdays.)
The granite tenements stand yet
faur streenger fowk bide nou. Windas like glowerers
gaup still on oor auld hoose,
the granite centenarian o the street.
The place is like a kirk-yaird.
Fae the dowier distances o middle age
aathing's smaaer than it used to be.
My father crines at the het cheek o the ingle,
and oot the winda, a tooer block
rents the air.
            Ower the chippit cassies
the tackety beets o deid louns thinly jow.

III

Nae McD's 'lang coffin o a street',
mair a village fit-path lined wi setts.
Streets at tap and boddom merked oor frontiers.
We spoke o girds, scuds, quines, bleedy doctors…
I'm richt glad the auld words still come back
like migrant swallas, black shears o the gloamin.
Marx we hadna heard o, only the Marx brithers.
This was oor grunwork, the hard pan o oor lives.
A sma bit street that hirpled doun a brae.
Whitever roads I took since then I
began wi workin fowk in granite tenements.
Aa the lave was superstructure.

More on Mackie here http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-alastair-mackie-1590907.html, source of text from Silver: An Aberdeen Anthology, edited by Alan Spence and Hazel Hutchison (Polygon, 2009) http://www.spl.org.uk/best-poems_2009/013.htm . And thanks to Pantufla for the image http://www.flickr.com/photos/pantufla/366428610/

Writing angry

This is one of the unwritten rules. Think of Virgil and his two lines of poetry every day. (That statistic has haunted me since I first heard it as a teenager).

They say "don't write angry". You might end up with an emotional mush like the worst kind of journaling - and yes, we have all been there as writers. Particularly the teenage stream of consciousness love poems that just seem to go on and on forever and then you did this and I did that and things never really come to a conclusion...no wonder poor old Virgil seems the enemy of teenagers with his methodical and concise method.

But perhaps we are just confusing anger with speed. Fast writing can lead to lack of form (but at other times it can be liberating).

So if you are a Virgil type poet let go of form and method and see where it gets you. Write when you have a rage inside. My guess is that the flow won't sink your boat. Who knows it might even take you all the way to Australia.

Oxford Rain Drops, Mumbai India 15th October 2011

Oxford Bookstore and Rain Drops E-Magazine proudly presents a poetry, book reading and storytelling event for all age groups. Open mic. Free. Date: Saturday 15th October, 2011 from 4 until 6pm.

Find this event at the Oxford Bookstore, Apeejay House, 3 Dinshaw Vachha road, Churchgate, Mumbai-20, Mumbai, India.

More information here http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=149017548526974 and on Rain Drops E-Magazine which features puzzles and new poetry here https://www.facebook.com/pages/Rain-Drops-E-Magazine/251592264855615?sk=wall and the September edition here http://moksa.whitedrums.com/raindrops-2a.pdf.

Web of paths

Somehow or other I find myself in October and still in the wood.

The night is already getting dark early.

There is one inhabited house in the centre of the wood. I am ashamed to say I walk past and round it each night. Those who live there don't know I am there. I don't think I have even disturbed the owl who uses their outhouse as a pre-prandial perch.

I don't spend time there. It is just always on the way. Whether I am going up to the pond by the fir trees, through to my own abandoned nook further up the valley slopes, or stopping by that tree to listen to the leaves and the wind and the rain.

This house is the centre of my map as the nights draw in as it never was in high summer. It is situated in a clearing made by its original forester's need for firewood. Two paddocks, a barn in a centre of a circle and around it paths spiral out through the plantation pines. Bracken. Long grass. At one stage, these paths would have had their own centrifugal pull. Now they are almost cosy in the light of a bit of moon.

A nettle patch suggesting the old midden and its nitrates has wilted in the cold of one or two nights although in general it has stayed warm. I see the old owners passing like I knew them.

These paths seems to hold me like a net. And then push me right out of the wood and back here.

transsub: Lyrische Cover mit Untertitel, 12th October 2011 Berlin, Germany

No text is free from references.

Mittwoch, 12. Oktober 2011, 19:30 Uhr, Eintritt 5,-/ Erm. 3,- Euro. Wednesday 12th October 2011 19.30.  at Lettrétage, Methfesselstraße 23-25, 10965 Berlin, Germany.

An evening of translation between texts and other media work, subtitled - with readings by Katharina Schultens, Tom Bresemann, Richard Duraj, Tobias Roth, Stephan Reich, Jan Skudlarek and others.

More about Lettrétage - das Literaturhaus in Berlin Kreuzberg here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Lettr%C3%A9tage-das-Literaturhaus-in-Berlin-Kreuzberg/50990561793?sk=wall and here http://www.lettretage.de/. More on http://kreuzwortberlin.wordpress.com/.

Herman Melville tweet poetry

Herman Melville the nineteenth century American author did write poems of which perhaps the best known provided the basis for his posthumous novella Billy Budd sailor; later itself the basis of the Britten opera. This tweet poem however is a found poem from within his first bestselling novel Typee.

poetandgeek poetandgeek.com 

glimpse of one blade of grass for a snuff at fragrance of a handful of loamy earth Is there nothing fresh Is there no green thing to be seen

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More on Herman Melville can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Melville. And the complete book here: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1900/1900-h/1900-h.htm

The complete passage from Chapter 1 of Typee:

Oh! for a refreshing glimpse of one blade of grass—for a snuff at the fragrance of a handful of the loamy earth! Is there nothing fresh around us? Is there no green thing to be seen? Yes, the inside of our bulwarks is painted green; but what a vile and sickly hue it is, as if nothing bearing even the semblance of verdure could flourish this weary way from land. Even the bark that once clung to the wood we use for fuel has been gnawed off and devoured by the captain's pig; and so long ago, too, that the pig himself has in turn been devoured.

[...] for, oh! how I wish to see the living earth again! The old ship herself longs to look out upon the land from her hawse-holes once more, and Jack Lewis said right the other day when the captain found fault with his steering.

'Why d'ye see, Captain Vangs,' says bold Jack, 'I'm as good a helmsman as ever put hand to spoke; but none of us can steer the old lady now. We can't keep her full and bye, sir; watch her ever so close, she will fall off and then, sir, when I put the helm down so gently, and try like to coax her to the work, she won't take it kindly, but will fall round off again; and it's all because she knows the land is under the lee, sir, and she won't go any more to windward.' Aye, and why should she, Jack? didn't every one of her stout timbers grow on shore, and hasn't she sensibilities; as well as we?

Poor old ship! Her very looks denote her desires! how deplorably she appears! The paint on her sides, burnt up by the scorching sun, is puffed out and cracked. See the weeds she trails along with her, and what an unsightly bunch of those horrid barnacles has formed about her stern-piece; and every time she rises on a sea, she shows her copper torn away, or hanging in jagged strips.

Poor old ship! I say again: for six months she has been rolling and pitching about, never for one moment at rest. But courage, old lass, I hope to see thee soon within a biscuit's toss of the merry land, riding snugly at anchor in some green cove, and sheltered from the boisterous winds.

George Herbert tweet poetry

This poem describes the state of freedom that can be obtained by following rules; in this case, religious ones. Herbert makes such a case for breaking chains though that quotes from the poem often only focus on the absence of the collar rather than its accommodation.

poetandgeek poetandgeek.com 

I will abroad What shall I ever sigh and pine My lines and life are free free as the road Loose as the wind as large as store

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Herbert himself was a Welsh poet who lived from April 1593 to March 1633.

The full poem:

The collar

I struck the board, and cried, "No more;
                         I will abroad!
What? shall I ever sigh and pine?
My lines and life are free, free as the road,
Loose as the wind, as large as store.
          Shall I be still in suit?
Have I no harvest but a thorn
To let me blood, and not restore
What I have lost with cordial fruit?
          Sure there was wine
Before my sighs did dry it; there was corn
    Before my tears did drown it.
      Is the year only lost to me?
          Have I no bays to crown it,
No flowers, no garlands gay? All blasted?
                  All wasted?
Not so, my heart; but there is fruit,
            And thou hast hands.
Recover all thy sigh-blown age
On double pleasures: leave thy cold dispute
Of what is fit and not. Forsake thy cage,
             Thy rope of sands,
Which petty thoughts have made, and made to thee
Good cable, to enforce and draw,
          And be thy law,
While thou didst wink and wouldst not see.
          Away! take heed;
          I will abroad.
Call in thy death's-head there; tie up thy fears;
          He that forbears
         To suit and serve his need
          Deserves his load."
But as I raved and grew more fierce and wild
          At every word,
Methought I heard one calling, Child!
          And I replied My Lord.

**************

More on George Herbert here:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Herbert