Obsession with maps

Maps may be more important to poets than even I thought. And I like maps.

Troubadours were travelling poets who went from court to castle performing their poems often with musical accompaniment. The traditional view associates the troubadour with the Pyranees and southwest France in the 11th century Occitania, but the art may have its roots in the Moorish kingdoms of southern Spain and North Africa. And of course courtly love (their main theme) has something in common with the love poetry of Arab tradition too.

But back to maps. These men and women had to memorise their route as they travelled from wealthy patron to patron in the same way as they memorised their poetry. And it might be considered that better mapping techniques were a positive advantage in the successful promotion of their wares.

A link between maps and poetic form? Oral poetry has long been a repository of genealogy, so why not geography? Maybe our early explorers and cartographers had more in common with the venturing poet than the action man/pensive artist dichotomy would lead us to suppose.

More on troubadours here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubadour.

Compass Translation Award-2011 * Russian Poetry in English 3Oth October New York, USA

It is that time of year again when days start to draw in. And what better way to spend them than in a celebration of Russian poetry at the Bowery poetry club ( 308 Bowery (Between Houston and Bleecker) F train to 2nd Ave, 6 to Bleecker New York) from 14:00 - 15:30. There is even a cafe.

поэзия

The Russian American Cultural Center and the Cardinal Points Journal present poetry, song and translation in memory of Stanley Mitchell (1932-2011) and Oleg Woolf (1954-2011)

First: The results of the First Compass Translation Competition (The Gumilyov Contest) held under the auspices of the Cardinal Points Journal. Second Irina Mashinski, poetry; Oleg Woolf, songs (recordings).

More here http://bowerypoetry.com/#October_30

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/.