A quick mention and heads up to old VM at PP..
Thanks Vig for some lovely poetry posts of late! Go see all.. I have a link from this blog to PP (for the uninitiated)
Shakespeare's 70th Sonnet.. particularly beautiful! Also I love Charles Bukowski's "Be Kind".
If senor (meaning mainly Mortensen, but Bukowski also) doesn't begrude it, I have pasted the latter..
Be Kind
we are always asked
to understand the other person's
viewpoint
no matter
howout-dated
foolish or
obnoxious.
one is asked
to view
their total error
their life-waste
with
kindliness,
especially if they are
aged.
but age is the total of
our doing.
they have aged
badly
because they have
lived
out of focus,
they have refused to
see.
not their fault?
whose fault?
mine?
I am asked to hide
my viewpoint
from them
for fear of their
fear.
age is no crime
but the shame
of a deliberately
wasted
life
among so many
deliberately
wasted
lives
is.
-Charles Bukowski
Sorry Sir; I just loved this today of all days..
I had a particularly unpleasant experience with a colleage and came home in tears over his cruelty and lack of compassion.
As I drove out of the school ground I swore every bad word I ever heard or could ever make up; I cursed him.
I ran into some tourists; an old couple feeding the wildfowl stale bread... they had created a puddle of ducks and geese and their various young all across the lane!
I guess on viewing the ugly one amongst these "ducklings" hahaha - I guess... old Hans Christian Andersen sprang to mind. I smiled and the tears dried and I remembered how this guy who was so obnoxious had lost his dad 3 weeks ago.
I tried to "be kind"
I also tried to "be kind" to the old couple who had interupted my
mad-driving-jimihendrixplaying- swearing fury by inviting wildfowl to flood my path following their enticing left over "Mothers' Pride" yeasty bread leavings.
It wasn't until about 10 minutes after arriving home, dried up on husband's shoulder that I read the poem left at PP and thought ....
Be Kind!
Monday 25 June 2007
Review of the Elmet Festival...
Went yesterday to Mytholmroyd (that's the actual name of a village in Upper Calder valley!) AND the village where one of my all time heroes (and favourite poet) Ted Hughes was born and raised for the first 6/7 years of his life.
We went for lunch at Hebden Bridge (which is a surprisingly artsy little town) and then on to Mythomroyd for a talk by the brilliant Simon Armitage (described, probably rather emabarrassingly for him, as the Poet Laureate in waiting) Simon grew up in a village not far from Ted's birthplace and became enamoured with Poetry through reading Ted Hughes. He spent the first half of the talk describing how important the Upper Calder Valley was throughout Ted's life; despite the fact that Ted left the area as a boy. Rather than read poems by Ted, he played poems read by Ted himself on a CD player; having first described where in the valley they were set and why. You really need to hear Ted Hughes read his own poetry to get the true rhythm and sense and feeling and darkness of his work. * ideally you need to hear every poet read their own work!
The second half of the talk was Simon reading his own poems but reading those which showed the link between him and Ted.
Simon was extremely funny, his poems evocative and his thoughts inspiring. He decsribed the following poem much as he descibes it at Poetry Archive, I include a link to it here...
http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoet.do?poetId=87#
This one reminded me of Stevie Smith's "Not Waving Drowning" It is funny to start but ultimately very moving. Like when you start laughing and then hear the tragedy and it takes a moment for the emotional gears to shift and that awful sort of gap as all the air sucks out and leaves a vacuum, for just a long second before the wave of deep sadness breaks over you. It more often happens the other way around where you deal with the tragedy first and then find some relief when inexplicably it all turns to laughter. Sometimes I have experienced the first scenario immediately after the second- so it comes full circle.
Anyway- I loved this poem.
After the talk we had the great priviledge to be taken on a tour by Mr David Crossley; a gentlemen who knew Ted as a boy and has enjoyed an on going friendship with the Hughes family, even after Ted's death 9 years ago.
Unfortunately the tour was considerably shortened by the need for some of the kids to get back for a detention! (ugh!) This old gent took us to Ted's birth place and then to the canal where they fished for loach and Ted's life long love of fishing began. Mr Crossly read Ted's poems - the ones that related directly to their shared memories of growing up in this gushing ancient bleak living valley, surrounded by "dark satanic mills" and glowering moors.
He showed photographs of the views from where we stood, just as those views looked in 1930s. His enthusiasm, born out of nostalgia and empathy for Ted's words was palpable. He was a living oral history, standing on a greasy green moss spot on the old quarry slabbed walk way under a bridge over a dark muddy canal reading "The Canal's Drowning Black" and pointing at a newish old folks' sheltered housing block when he read the line "Mount Zion's Cowled, Satantic majesty behind me..." This having shown us a black and white blurred photo of Mount Zion - a huge methodist chapel stained black with industrial smog (circa 1938)
Having been into Ted's home and seen where this chapel stood you understand how this austere place of puritanical worship blocked out all light from the Hughes home and was an immence ominous black wall.
I feel kind of saddened and delighted by meeting Mr Crossley. A simple and honest man who again and again pointed out that he "whar nor scholerrr!" He was living the poetry purely and honestly and emotionally and not pretentiously - he was inspirational. I was saddened because the old chap must be mid seventies and whilst fit as fiddle - will not be around forever to share this absolutely vibrant and living history for all. Of course if "he whar a scholerrr" he'd have written a thesis and made countless documentaries etc.. as it happens he is just an enthusiastic old chap, who not olnly knew and loved Ted as a boy and grew to respect and understamd his work on a very personal level in age, but also has an immense understanding of social history in a part and time of England now long long gone. I wish we could capture old Donald Crossley's stories forever on film or recorded sound.
Oral history me lovelies... go out and tape you granddad and nana now---today! Keep a journal and blog even. Take pictures, write poems and then take pictures again because all too soon we'll be history too.
By Ted Hughes...
The Canal's Drowning Black
Bred wild leopards - among the pale depth fungus.
Loach. Torpid, ginger-bearded, secret
Prehistory of the canal's masonry,
With little cupid mouths.
Five inches huge!
On the slime-brink,over bridge reflections,
I teetered. Then a ringing, skull-jolt stamp
And their beards flowered sudden anemones
All down the sunken cliff. A mad-house thrill-
The stonework's tiny eyes, two feet, three feet,
Four feet down through my reflection
Watched for my next move.
Their schooldays were over.
Peeping man was no part of their knowledge.
So when a monkey god, a Martian
Tickled their underchins with his net rim
They snaked out and over the net rim easy
Back into the oligocene -
Only restrained by a mesh of kitchen curtain.
Then flopped out of their ocean-shifting aeons
Into a two-pound jam-jar
On a windowsill
Blackened with acid rain fall-out
From Manchester's rotten lung.
Next morning, Mount Zion's
Cowled, Satanic majecty behind me
I lobbed-one by one-high through the air
The stiff, pouting, failed, plaed moons
Back into their Paradise and mine.
:::::::::::::::::::
We went for lunch at Hebden Bridge (which is a surprisingly artsy little town) and then on to Mythomroyd for a talk by the brilliant Simon Armitage (described, probably rather emabarrassingly for him, as the Poet Laureate in waiting) Simon grew up in a village not far from Ted's birthplace and became enamoured with Poetry through reading Ted Hughes. He spent the first half of the talk describing how important the Upper Calder Valley was throughout Ted's life; despite the fact that Ted left the area as a boy. Rather than read poems by Ted, he played poems read by Ted himself on a CD player; having first described where in the valley they were set and why. You really need to hear Ted Hughes read his own poetry to get the true rhythm and sense and feeling and darkness of his work. * ideally you need to hear every poet read their own work!
The second half of the talk was Simon reading his own poems but reading those which showed the link between him and Ted.
Simon was extremely funny, his poems evocative and his thoughts inspiring. He decsribed the following poem much as he descibes it at Poetry Archive, I include a link to it here...
http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoet.do?poetId=87#
This one reminded me of Stevie Smith's "Not Waving Drowning" It is funny to start but ultimately very moving. Like when you start laughing and then hear the tragedy and it takes a moment for the emotional gears to shift and that awful sort of gap as all the air sucks out and leaves a vacuum, for just a long second before the wave of deep sadness breaks over you. It more often happens the other way around where you deal with the tragedy first and then find some relief when inexplicably it all turns to laughter. Sometimes I have experienced the first scenario immediately after the second- so it comes full circle.
Anyway- I loved this poem.
After the talk we had the great priviledge to be taken on a tour by Mr David Crossley; a gentlemen who knew Ted as a boy and has enjoyed an on going friendship with the Hughes family, even after Ted's death 9 years ago.
Unfortunately the tour was considerably shortened by the need for some of the kids to get back for a detention! (ugh!) This old gent took us to Ted's birth place and then to the canal where they fished for loach and Ted's life long love of fishing began. Mr Crossly read Ted's poems - the ones that related directly to their shared memories of growing up in this gushing ancient bleak living valley, surrounded by "dark satanic mills" and glowering moors.
He showed photographs of the views from where we stood, just as those views looked in 1930s. His enthusiasm, born out of nostalgia and empathy for Ted's words was palpable. He was a living oral history, standing on a greasy green moss spot on the old quarry slabbed walk way under a bridge over a dark muddy canal reading "The Canal's Drowning Black" and pointing at a newish old folks' sheltered housing block when he read the line "Mount Zion's Cowled, Satantic majesty behind me..." This having shown us a black and white blurred photo of Mount Zion - a huge methodist chapel stained black with industrial smog (circa 1938)
Having been into Ted's home and seen where this chapel stood you understand how this austere place of puritanical worship blocked out all light from the Hughes home and was an immence ominous black wall.
I feel kind of saddened and delighted by meeting Mr Crossley. A simple and honest man who again and again pointed out that he "whar nor scholerrr!" He was living the poetry purely and honestly and emotionally and not pretentiously - he was inspirational. I was saddened because the old chap must be mid seventies and whilst fit as fiddle - will not be around forever to share this absolutely vibrant and living history for all. Of course if "he whar a scholerrr" he'd have written a thesis and made countless documentaries etc.. as it happens he is just an enthusiastic old chap, who not olnly knew and loved Ted as a boy and grew to respect and understamd his work on a very personal level in age, but also has an immense understanding of social history in a part and time of England now long long gone. I wish we could capture old Donald Crossley's stories forever on film or recorded sound.
Oral history me lovelies... go out and tape you granddad and nana now---today! Keep a journal and blog even. Take pictures, write poems and then take pictures again because all too soon we'll be history too.
By Ted Hughes...
The Canal's Drowning Black
Bred wild leopards - among the pale depth fungus.
Loach. Torpid, ginger-bearded, secret
Prehistory of the canal's masonry,
With little cupid mouths.
Five inches huge!
On the slime-brink,over bridge reflections,
I teetered. Then a ringing, skull-jolt stamp
And their beards flowered sudden anemones
All down the sunken cliff. A mad-house thrill-
The stonework's tiny eyes, two feet, three feet,
Four feet down through my reflection
Watched for my next move.
Their schooldays were over.
Peeping man was no part of their knowledge.
So when a monkey god, a Martian
Tickled their underchins with his net rim
They snaked out and over the net rim easy
Back into the oligocene -
Only restrained by a mesh of kitchen curtain.
Then flopped out of their ocean-shifting aeons
Into a two-pound jam-jar
On a windowsill
Blackened with acid rain fall-out
From Manchester's rotten lung.
Next morning, Mount Zion's
Cowled, Satanic majecty behind me
I lobbed-one by one-high through the air
The stiff, pouting, failed, plaed moons
Back into their Paradise and mine.
:::::::::::::::::::
Wednesday 20 June 2007
Glastonbury
Not going this year. It opens the doors today and to mark that event I have been watching Julien Temple's film "Galstonbury". It puts me right there and really makes me regret not actually going this year. the festival has for certain become more corporate but is still a place to find yourself or rather lose yourself and look inwards.
This year for the first time I'm going to the "Green Man" festival in Brecon Beacons. Looking forward to seeing Joanna Newsom and Robert Plant (interestingly enough)
Was talking (I think here!) the other day about my obsessions with the numbers 2 and 5 and onward and then came across a little vid of Viggo talking numerology with Georg Gudni.... it';s here:
http://researchgruppen.com/pagelist/ViggoMortensenGeorgGudni/tabid/78/Default.aspx
Hmmm..
(Apologies to TVC for accidently posting there instead of her! duh! I' an idjit!!)
Lo/ve Jo xxxxxx
This year for the first time I'm going to the "Green Man" festival in Brecon Beacons. Looking forward to seeing Joanna Newsom and Robert Plant (interestingly enough)
Was talking (I think here!) the other day about my obsessions with the numbers 2 and 5 and onward and then came across a little vid of Viggo talking numerology with Georg Gudni.... it';s here:
http://researchgruppen.com/pagelist/ViggoMortensenGeorgGudni/tabid/78/Default.aspx
Hmmm..
(Apologies to TVC for accidently posting there instead of her! duh! I' an idjit!!)
Lo/ve Jo xxxxxx
Tuesday 19 June 2007
Off to worship Ted Hughes...
Off to Hebden Bridge on Sunday to enjoy a talk on Ted Hughes and a walk around his old haunts..
http://www.mytholmroyd.net/
I think we're starting with a pub lunch (always welcome) then...
Sunday 24th June 2.30pm LRC, Calder High School, Brier Hey Lane, Mytholmroyd.
The Elmet Trust and Calder High School English Department present:
Simon Armitage
Tickets £9 and £6 conc.
PLUS - Walks with John Billingsley and Donald Crossley; poetry slam cafe with Ben Allinson and other events: see local press for details.
Can't wait...
http://www.mytholmroyd.net/
I think we're starting with a pub lunch (always welcome) then...
Sunday 24th June 2.30pm LRC, Calder High School, Brier Hey Lane, Mytholmroyd.
The Elmet Trust and Calder High School English Department present:
Simon Armitage
Tickets £9 and £6 conc.
PLUS - Walks with John Billingsley and Donald Crossley; poetry slam cafe with Ben Allinson and other events: see local press for details.
Can't wait...
Saturday 16 June 2007
Viggorli
So what's happening to Viggorli?
Man- oh- Man! No one is watching me here are they? That's fine actually; means I can drink and type without guilt!
It's all becoming lost and hidden and paranoid. Why?
My love of V/O started moons ago and I've kept fairly silent and cool; I've watched people fall apart and lose friends over this idiosy. It's so pointless! It's only diversion anyway.
They're actors; that's the only reason we even focus on them- if we see/recognise/believe in love between them- then we need to be very realistic about the unrealism of the whole thing.
I am totally knackered by the secrecy and the lies and the paranoia over something JUST NOT THAT ESSENTIAL (except to the two people involved maybe) For all the others of us- it is just a diversion- and we can give the power of our love and our compassion and whether we find that it's directed at a true thing or an imagining that soothes our own souls' because it is a vision of what love could be... it doesn't warrant falling outs and war!
But in its silly little unimportant way, Viggorli shows us what happens on the greater scale of mankind! All believe and yet ultimately part ways over points of their belief and knowledege/supposed knowledge/hearsay knowledge of any given truth.
Yuech! All I wanted was to find a place to enjoy the careers of a couple of fine actors and seemingly great souls and their potential love for one another. That in itself is sooooo delusional- BUT at least I know that!
I am here for fun- a diversion ! I would prefer to get some escape from day to day by focussing on lO/Ve than wasting my wasted time with hate!
lO/Ve; love love love love.... forever love!
Man- oh- Man! No one is watching me here are they? That's fine actually; means I can drink and type without guilt!
It's all becoming lost and hidden and paranoid. Why?
My love of V/O started moons ago and I've kept fairly silent and cool; I've watched people fall apart and lose friends over this idiosy. It's so pointless! It's only diversion anyway.
They're actors; that's the only reason we even focus on them- if we see/recognise/believe in love between them- then we need to be very realistic about the unrealism of the whole thing.
I am totally knackered by the secrecy and the lies and the paranoia over something JUST NOT THAT ESSENTIAL (except to the two people involved maybe) For all the others of us- it is just a diversion- and we can give the power of our love and our compassion and whether we find that it's directed at a true thing or an imagining that soothes our own souls' because it is a vision of what love could be... it doesn't warrant falling outs and war!
But in its silly little unimportant way, Viggorli shows us what happens on the greater scale of mankind! All believe and yet ultimately part ways over points of their belief and knowledege/supposed knowledge/hearsay knowledge of any given truth.
Yuech! All I wanted was to find a place to enjoy the careers of a couple of fine actors and seemingly great souls and their potential love for one another. That in itself is sooooo delusional- BUT at least I know that!
I am here for fun- a diversion ! I would prefer to get some escape from day to day by focussing on lO/Ve than wasting my wasted time with hate!
lO/Ve; love love love love.... forever love!
Wednesday 13 June 2007
Monty Python's Completely Useless Web Site
Monty Python's Completely Useless Web Site
You see I wanted to just add a sound thingumy..
Ah well..
"yes and you should give us all a good spanking!"
"And after the spanking... the oral sex!"
" Maybe I couls stay for a bit"
I really think Orlando would make a great Eric or Michael in the film biog of Monty Python!
You see I wanted to just add a sound thingumy..
Ah well..
"yes and you should give us all a good spanking!"
"And after the spanking... the oral sex!"
" Maybe I couls stay for a bit"
I really think Orlando would make a great Eric or Michael in the film biog of Monty Python!
HELP! Virgin Blogger WLTM Pro Blogger with GSOH for fun and possibly serious HTML talk serious relationship... :-P
I am sooo new to this and I find that I have linked to a few cool sites in a side bar: at least I hoped I had done this! BUT it doesn't show up! Can anyone of the 70 people who have viewed my profile please come and comment and let me know in English (non techy) what I have done wrong?
Thanks lovies..
Anfreya xxxxx
PS: I always kiss in twos and fives... I have this number superstition thang happening.. 2 or 5 or 12 or 15 or 22 or 25 or and get this 52, 55.. I've never loved anyone enough to leave more than that; so don't know what would happen next!!!!
PPS: If you can leave a comment about what the hell is wrong with me psychologically too that would win you the next appropriate number of kisses up... Ta La xx
Thanks lovies..
Anfreya xxxxx
PS: I always kiss in twos and fives... I have this number superstition thang happening.. 2 or 5 or 12 or 15 or 22 or 25 or and get this 52, 55.. I've never loved anyone enough to leave more than that; so don't know what would happen next!!!!
PPS: If you can leave a comment about what the hell is wrong with me psychologically too that would win you the next appropriate number of kisses up... Ta La xx
Viggo's generous nature..
This is a link to someone's MySpace- where the guy is writing his review of Budapest and inadvertently having a dinner paid for by Viggo.
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=30923730&blogID=275413005
It sounds pretty true to me. What d'you think?
What a sweet thing to do. It has a karmic quality to it in a way; if he pays for this guys dinner good karma will come back at him in the form of SL winning their game (which they did)
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=30923730&blogID=275413005
It sounds pretty true to me. What d'you think?
What a sweet thing to do. It has a karmic quality to it in a way; if he pays for this guys dinner good karma will come back at him in the form of SL winning their game (which they did)
Monday 11 June 2007
http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=1537
try this out...
And now a favourite.
Very English - I think this sums up how it is to be English...
A Subaltern's Love Song- Sir John Betjaman
Miss J.Hunter Dunn, Miss J.Hunter Dunn,
Furnish'd and burnish'd by Aldershot sun,
What strenuous singles we played after tea,
We in the tournament - you against me!
Love-thirty, love-forty, oh! weakness of joy,
The speed of a swallow, the grace of a boy,
With carefullest carelessness, gaily you won,
I am weak from your loveliness, Joan Hunter Dunn
Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn,
How mad I am, sad I am, glad that you won,
The warm-handled racket is back in its press,
But my shock-headed victor, she loves me no less.
Her father's euonymus shines as we walk,
And swing past the summer-house, buried in talk,
And cool the verandah that welcomes us in
To the six-o'clock news and a lime-juice and gin.
The scent of the conifers, sound of the bath,
The view from my bedroom of moss-dappled path,
As I struggle with double-end evening tie,
For we dance at the Golf Club, my victor and I.
On the floor of her bedroom lie blazer and shorts,
And the cream-coloured walls are be-trophied with sports,
And westering, questioning settles the sun,
On your low-leaded window, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.
The Hillman is waiting, the light's in the hall,
The pictures of Egypt are bright on the wall,
My sweet, I am standing beside the oak stair
And there on the landing's the light on your hair.
By roads "not adopted", by woodlanded ways,
She drove to the club in the late summer haze,
Into nine-o'clock Camberley, heavy with bells
And mushroomy, pine-woody, evergreen smells.
Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn,
I can hear from the car park the dance has begun,
Oh! Surrey twilight! importunate band!
Oh! strongly adorable tennis-girl's hand!
Around us are Rovers and Austins afar,
Above us the intimate roof of the car,
And here on my right is the girl of my choice,
With the tilt of her nose and the chime of her voice.
And the scent of her wrap, and the words never said,
And the ominous, ominous dancing ahead.
We sat in the car park till twenty to one
And now I'm engaged to Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.
try this out...
And now a favourite.
Very English - I think this sums up how it is to be English...
A Subaltern's Love Song- Sir John Betjaman
Miss J.Hunter Dunn, Miss J.Hunter Dunn,
Furnish'd and burnish'd by Aldershot sun,
What strenuous singles we played after tea,
We in the tournament - you against me!
Love-thirty, love-forty, oh! weakness of joy,
The speed of a swallow, the grace of a boy,
With carefullest carelessness, gaily you won,
I am weak from your loveliness, Joan Hunter Dunn
Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn,
How mad I am, sad I am, glad that you won,
The warm-handled racket is back in its press,
But my shock-headed victor, she loves me no less.
Her father's euonymus shines as we walk,
And swing past the summer-house, buried in talk,
And cool the verandah that welcomes us in
To the six-o'clock news and a lime-juice and gin.
The scent of the conifers, sound of the bath,
The view from my bedroom of moss-dappled path,
As I struggle with double-end evening tie,
For we dance at the Golf Club, my victor and I.
On the floor of her bedroom lie blazer and shorts,
And the cream-coloured walls are be-trophied with sports,
And westering, questioning settles the sun,
On your low-leaded window, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.
The Hillman is waiting, the light's in the hall,
The pictures of Egypt are bright on the wall,
My sweet, I am standing beside the oak stair
And there on the landing's the light on your hair.
By roads "not adopted", by woodlanded ways,
She drove to the club in the late summer haze,
Into nine-o'clock Camberley, heavy with bells
And mushroomy, pine-woody, evergreen smells.
Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn,
I can hear from the car park the dance has begun,
Oh! Surrey twilight! importunate band!
Oh! strongly adorable tennis-girl's hand!
Around us are Rovers and Austins afar,
Above us the intimate roof of the car,
And here on my right is the girl of my choice,
With the tilt of her nose and the chime of her voice.
And the scent of her wrap, and the words never said,
And the ominous, ominous dancing ahead.
We sat in the car park till twenty to one
And now I'm engaged to Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.
And so it begins....
"The time has come," the Walrus said,"To talk of many things:Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--Of cabbages--and kings--And why the sea is boiling hot--And whether pigs have wings."
I've been prominent in places and hidden in places for the longest of times. Now is the time to come out; to speak of the things, share of the things that interest me. I want to lead where before I have followed.
I intend to take note of the wonderful Perceval Press; which frustrates me because it's one way. Yet I love poetry too- I want to share my twopen'orth . This will include my favourite poetry, pubs, films, ales and of course will include my thoughts about Vig/Orlando.
You can comment. You can watch. I don't care particularly. I just want to be myself for a bit.
I've been prominent in places and hidden in places for the longest of times. Now is the time to come out; to speak of the things, share of the things that interest me. I want to lead where before I have followed.
I intend to take note of the wonderful Perceval Press; which frustrates me because it's one way. Yet I love poetry too- I want to share my twopen'orth . This will include my favourite poetry, pubs, films, ales and of course will include my thoughts about Vig/Orlando.
You can comment. You can watch. I don't care particularly. I just want to be myself for a bit.
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