This date got me thinking of identity. The base datum made when rooting first our mind into place and culture. The signs we follow and/or connected with, which guide us along life's path.

Childhood would appear the most logical time for this to happen. When we consciously decide what to buy into. The base line Datum we take our bearing and measurement of self from. The one we trace back to and start from again if we decide to try a new track.

~

The Englishness i grew up in, was a one which defined itself in opposition to the notion of southern Englishness: a northern one. In this model, total Englishness was a duality I did not ultimately connect with, because my parents, like Morrissey's, are not English.

~

This is why we were unable to connect, because our home life meant it could never be. Most children reared in the Irish culture in England, have this confusion in their mind to various degrees. How can we connect to a place whose imperial past so colours our perception of what Englishness is?

England had a lot of colonies and some who come to England through this link, may have a fundamental beef with Englishness as a cultural force for good in their lives, depending on what vibe of Englishness was doing the rounds in their home nation. Often they have come from a place with a history of English subjagation.

~

It always seemed to me that the bottom line of being English, was being happy about being a subject of another person. I know that technically the english are not subjects but citizens; and it seems the contract between individual and nation went through a lot of change since the sixties, when everyone began wising up to the reality that English life as a citizen was preferable to being a Subject. improved Education made people see the truth, and improved standards of living -- whilst the technology boom meant the rituals, magic and theatre from a non-technological past stopped happening, once people got free of being the playthings of monarchy.

~

Some think we are the playthings of politicians and global business. Daddy's boy george the second, whose idea - some say - was to expand his familial business interests by becoming the pres. Tony on the fag end of his seventies sixties trip, sincerity slipping beneath the accumulation of cock ups. Plus his datum had a rock-star-messiah complex going on, but unlike the real thing, he had only the costume of political office in which to perform. Suits at all time.

He couldn't slip on a pair of wraparounds and slip into the oval office for a chat about third world debt like his template - Good.

~

This is what Morrissey could be doing if he returned home to his culture, instead of throwing gladioli about the stage his dream built, swapping faxes with Alan Bennet when he lived in the UK. Before he re-located to Los Angeles and became a hispanic icon in a bewildering twist upon his path. His innate quality of being to effortlessly astound all who follow his doings.

~

Rupert Murdoch has a gas with the lads about how to keep the billions happy. If Morrissey's on page seven, ten, ignored - and what news to broadcast.

~

Morrissey's looking good on being a vegan. I saw him on on a TV chat show and it was clear his years had been well chosen. Maybe he could join me and you in our garden of Eden dearest?

Stephen felt excluded from the fun and games in Hulme. Spent all day dreaming of being himself, alone in his bedroom, one poster on the wall. Johnny Rotten - God Save the Queen and a facist regime Sid felt a part of before overdosing in the centre of his and Nancy's whirlwind. Died like her majesty's mother, an icon of englishness.

~

Sid James and Barbara Windsor.

~

Plurailty of tongue - come, speak of england and sound what is heard in anima mundi. Mint the noise of imperial coinage, pull from the purse, pocket and cauldron the spirit you control cover or stir. Spend it abroad with us.

Yesterday and today, when cycling up Dame Street to Lord Edward Street, I saw an elderly man I used to live in the next room to, when I was a resident at the Iveagh Hostel on Bride Street, pictured above. He is a schizophrenic with cancer, and has deteriorated significantly since I saw him last. He doesn't look like he has long left.

He is one of those people who we know to see but have never spoken to. Like in any town, some people we have known by sight from childhood, but never a word passed between us. Strange, and yet, entirely human. A common experience.

I lived at the Iveagh from July 2004 to December 2005. It provides direct access accommodation in single rooms for 70 single homeless men with low support needs and there are 125 single rooms providing long term accommodation.

I moved there in July 2004 a newly (2:1) Writing Studies and Drama graduate, right after finishing university in England, living in a small room in the basement for the first six months, where the 70 short-term homeless men are housed; and then on the first-floor for a year, in the room next door to where the man I saw on Dame Street yesterday has been living for many years. And as a lot of the other long-term residents there also have. Some have been living in their ten-by-six rooms for forty years. And happy to call it home.

I moved there with the practical and romantic notion that I would test myself as a trainee three-year old barely between bardic grade-one Focloc and two MacFurimid ('son of composition') student-poet in Dublin, whilst living with society's poorest, of which I was one. It was a practical solution to my then homeless situation. As though I eventually got educated, I was for extended periods in my twenties prior to getting educated, in a series of similar hostels and in the same boat as all the men living week to week in the Iveagh, who I lived with for the first 18 months of being in Dublin.

I moved out after Brian, an alcoholic in his fifties, on one to three bottles of Jameson a week, discovered he had inoperable secondary cancers throughout his body. Brian was a really kind man, who everyone liked because of his openly honest nature, and at this point, I instinctively knew it was time to move out and look forward with my dream, that decanted a kilometer away to a self-contained studio-room on the first floor in a Victorian terrace off the South Circular at Donore Avenue.

Long term the Iveagh hostel is not an ideal venue for inculcating healthy eating habits. And with minimal cooking facilities making your own food is the exception. If I am honest, I am too much of an emotional coward, and though my moving out had been slowly on the back-burner to-do list for some weeks, I was spurred to move out the second of those final few weeks with him facing a swift and sudden end.

I was too spiritually weak and afraid and had no intention of witnessing someone i shared alcoholic tendencies with pass on in such a sorrowfully tragic 'private matter' before my inexperienced eyes. My emotionally privileged existence, being a happy reader and doggerelist in the life-long swim to Segais Well, I knew couldn't handle well -what proved to be- the month-long terminal decline and his death within weeks of being diagnosed after going to a doctor with excruciating headaches.

Before this however, the Iveagh offered a perfect balance to my writing. The writing kept me sane and the homelessness helped me keep a balanced perspective after arriving at the height -and through the final four years- of a mass cultural delusion and toxically tragi-comic social ostentation and default crassly nouveau riche Celtic Tiger affections - when sporting in the then new literary form of pseudo-critical spontaneous online trolling/freedom fighting in the battle of Ideas and on inherently unstable and shifting speculative sands of the discourse with poets at various literary-topic talk-sites I stumbled across and began writing and publishing linguistically innovative conversational doggerel at straight after arriving in Dublin and becoming a resident in the Iveagh homeless hostel.

~

When a well known poet dies, there is a brief outpouring of condolence, but not for the homeless men in the Iveagh.

The poem below was occasioned with this man as the human agent propulsing to life the fictional Sweeney of the title. And on this day of all days I think it appropriate to remember the forgotten men like the one I saw yesterday.

A Stray

Sweeney spat flakes of monologue
to an invisible foe in room 108
before he took the plunge.

A flyer of thought
who'd lick round corners like a knife wind

sweep up shined steps
and cyclone through swinging doors
of the red-brick kip called home,

trailing an underbelly-aura of tramp-glamour
through the smell of pine-fresh floor-polish
lining corridors like the yellow smoke
of Eliot's Prufrock.

He'd wake to reality's nightmare
cursing in a feral wheeze or grunt
and shout about

"cunts....bastards....lazy wankers dying of cancer"

then bang a wall with his fist
and start the day dissolved in tears.

He never socialised
or idled with others

just the one time of a long chat with himself
in the communal area, before Oisin complained
to a warden, who shut him up,

stuffed him back in his dressing room
where he worked on the final scene.

A plasterboard box left whistling
as he stepped onstage at the shelter
deep acting
at 8 12 and 4,

dressed in a drab bundle of grey rags
clutching a mug

with a look to no one
and none to him.

What demonic cause sucked his life
away behind the eyes
and forced his lips to pucker gumward;
curdle twisted words in his mouth
and draw sweat onto the one shirt
he ever wore and never took off?

Years of liquid cosh and ECT
beat and drained Sweeney's blood-bound scrap with life

nuked his mind and buckled his passion
on an anvil of despair

razed thought to a desert, where a phantom's whisp
baked his nut to the brain-scrambled recipe
a frazzled garda scraped from the pavement
and time struck from the memories of residents -

this spirit passing to assemble at the  House of Donn.

Arghhhh!!!!! mmmmnn... yummmy yummy yummy.. lurrvve, darlink darlink darlink,
squiffy super dooper... oh my god oh my god oh my god !! arghhhh

.. gimmie gimmie gimmie -- let me touch, let me touch, let me touch, let me touch - the hair, hair, hair, so so fantastically blowy blowy blowy...arghhh, arghhhh....ummmm, yah yah

come, come, come, need me need me need me. arghhh!!

yes, yes, yes -- want want want want - need need need...arghh!!!
oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.. arghhhhh!!!

..die, die, die dying darling darling
let me love you one more time, upright darlink be mine tonight

Mandy motion one more time
darling, darling, ummm mandzie

mandzie wimby womby bemby wemby
noh ! noh ! noh ! arrghhh !!!!

wickle mamby
darlink you poor thing, come mandz
let mwee make it becker wiv a wuvly wickle floral print

checklist --- hair, teeth, hotpants, esturay mahnday
dahrlink gonna gwiv yoo a B, B, E and moors of mockle main,

any day noo mah gwin yiz
twickle madnzie, twixle yiz iz soo intellectual that yiz iz
gonna git made into a star mandzie, darlink,

wiv a nickle tatterz caterpillar dwess,
ummm..

I cannot go on anymore living the lie so, hello.

Ireland 3 - Sweeden 0

1 Mar 2006 ... Steve Staunton the saviour of Irish soccer, starts his reign in charge of the Republic with an impressive victory in a Wednesday night friendly in Dublin's Lansdowne Road.

~

What you are reading, is Seamus Kennelly and Brendan Heaney making believe, you too can dream of being the one who flies under night heron wings, blushing above memories and cemetries holding the fuse of they who came before and make us the people we've become.

Of course, I no longer know if this blog is a good idea. I have no readers, there is no chance, it seems, of a poetry editor snapping up and selling my work, so it is not as the worlds number one writer I must dabble, but as a bundle of breathe and brilliance from the outer making the inner real. The gods without are the cause, but the location is within this skin and bone container claiming:


Self and Imagination

war and peace colliding in a fictional realm of grace
sheer gliding linguistic citizen, invisible the crown

hidden within literacy, an owner, community, calm
verbal pathway belief leads you to - ruby lip lover
unseen juganaut of faith - dreams and freedom

bouyancy saviour v Ireland, happening printed
by inner sidhe, and the vacuum a language sailor

in shadow and shade, tree like in peaceful wooden
scenes, twig witchery bog breath druidical spacer

breathes. Magi gathering beneath stadium eaves
a night the saviour appeared in a friendly. Passion

play, coyote like shyness, the diametrical opposition
in essential flux, perfect harmony of itself, yourself;

friendly being and true native spirit - fair play, phwo-
of 40 thousand witnesses coopered to it, the love...

Next game, was a 0 - 1 drubbing in May at home by poorer Czech opposition, and in the stadium, the saviour's golden one-game honeymoon, ended in bitter recriminations, in what became an unceasing wave after wave of woe for the spirit of soccer on the island.

And when the man appeared pitchside, and not making it happen by a sheer belief alone, many fans lost belief that one game had given. It was a fluke, some said, the team played so well that first frozen March spring evening, dark and bitter, but still, the unexpected result. One voice roaring, home.

The on pitch action, spoke far far louder than the saviour getting it wrong.

The greek strain in the tragedy, appeared in the next match, Hera and her locks of woe in a three tri con of pure belief the saviour was before the fall. The consensus in the stadium was, the saviour was shown up for a chancer; and prophetic doom voiced in the Sun and stars on which the fans affirmed, gave rise to the belief that it had all been a cosmic jape, at their expense, and thus: none were happy.

Slowly, the underperforming saviour became subject to a vicious campaign of bile and brutal satire, some claiming of which, he was deserving, and the professional soccer pundits, jihadic hacks and windbags practicing their dark journalism, exhaled their crushed longings and hope on this man of tender years, in a relentless torrent of begrudgery and brooha.

Thus a failed saviour, he had to be, and the talk turned to ..hey, get real and sack the turnip breathing thick git, before michael barrymore nicks his job...


However, in the hour of need, when all was lost and the saviour had took to taking long walks to ponder his next move in the intolerable hot house of highly volatile public opnion, an even greater act of supremely divine intervention occured. The random miracle everyone knew in their most secret of selves - it is clear now - and collectively held similar pictures within the immediate and central same border or dernier or some such natural tide mark of anarchy this island has -- manifest in the exterior form of events which made reality seem but a handmaiden to the saviour's Fate.

The soccer magus and saviour from Drogheda was delivered a galactic intervention needed to rescue him from the off pitch antics that stemmed from the underperforming players who he was unable to motivate. The human man behind the saviour mask, appeared; after a comatase drunk - in clear dire straits beyond the one the saviour was facing - drew a replica firearm within the saviours personal space when he was pacing the Louth shoreline in deep professional turmoil, the night before the next game, wondering what woe was to appear on the morrow in his war with the hacks.

And what did was so bizzare, it was a miracle of sorts, because at the next press conference, on the morn before that fateful August match, after the fake gun had been pulled on our saviour by an irrate - not fan; but bewildered fellow countryman with lunatic tendancies when in drink - the saviour was very upset, but his deeper spirit not only flickered, it flamed....

He, actually - couldn't care about the personal trauma, of the imitation arm in his space being wove around by an inebriated upset person, which the saviour properly copped onto sharpo, but the grief it gave his parents and family, the press intrusion had caused...

But that night in August 0 - 4 Holland at Landsdowne Road and post 1 - 0 away in Suttgard to Germany, the saviour was doomed to a long drawn out goodbye in a war of attrition with the armies of enemies ranged against him. Alas he was slowly sacraficed, for underperforming, some say, in his role as a miracle worker with shorts, shinpads and ball.


Eight fair years, honest blooms, if you ever find us
bleeding, declare by the dead generations that give

the living their claim, the pipes are laid square, gutter
spout pointing downwards, a temple of telling tales

by the door post and stories most tender, border lying
straightlines drifting to the very terminus of an image

amazing to see, the under-line current that will affirm
the island queen of memory's annointed Her leaders,

following the straight bowled knowledge from Tír
na Og, in the name of god and of the dead generations

from which we receive an aul tradition, land of eternal
youth, a mythical place existing on pages time forgot

the singular straight line, visible in a captioned image,
lives and will prove with nought but light and air,

no roman came and smashed the altars, but the native
men and women aways here. And so the transition from druid to fili and the bardic to soccer culture, was not a renty one of heart break and pain, but joyous, some say. In the dark ages, Ireland - renowned for being the beacon of light, hope peace - for peace light and hope, is nought but belief..

A four square canon of greats the rest of the globe may shake their head in bewilderment at. GB Shaw? Heaney? Doyle? And the others?

For all our faults, to give hope to others not resident here, we must do good things; be putting hope into the world.

The globe is full of men mongering doom, but none have a right to fix the boundary of another's intellect in the quest to stop our heart beating, cuisle, so declare the right of us to a belief in oursleves and control of our destiny.

None can make us believe a book is any good but our eyes alone; and of the best irish poets ever to have practiced, and who did so in the - now forgotten - bardic culture that existed for 1200 years, Gofraidh O Dalaigh is an arch ollamh, William Carleton the son of a seanachie, so read and believe a mind crossing can place de facto dictator at number one, any it wants.

gra agus siochain.

Baraka

Hallelujah, wow ! wow !
Hallelujah, Wow ! Wow !

. everthing goan be different after we die
we aint goan be hungry, aint goan be pain
aint goan be sufferin, won't go through this again
after we die.

Hallelujah, Hallelujah, wow ! wow !

Amiri Baraka - Dope
	Found at bee mp3 search engine

This is a circa 1978 recording of Amiri Baraka reciting Dope.

Born in Newark New Jersey in 1934, 74 year old Baraka was the Poet of the Black power movement and one time Greenwich Village beat poet whose slave name was Lee Roi Jones, but which he changed upon becoming radicalised after Malcom X's assassination. When Baraka was New Jersey poet laureate in 2001, he caused a storm of outrage with his poem Somebody Blew Up America - written within a month of 9/11.

~

I first heard Dope in the final year of university when Robert Sheppard, the linguistically innovative poet who instigated and runs the writing degree at Edge Hill University in my home town, which i stumbled onto by accident, almost - brought in a set of recordings for us to listen to during the final semster of six, of a wholly Modern American Poetry course spanning three yrs.

One Friday afternoon in the NW of England, in a non-descript classroom with the seven or so on the final poetry module -- only three of whom had elected to be there by their own volition (Robert having to shang-hai three out of the heavily oversubscribed Short Story class on the first day in order to legally carry on) - we listened to the series of poems Sheppard had brought, two of which were by Baraka.

The first poem I heard Baraka read, was Black Dada Nihilismus from 1964, which i thought sounded like an inarticulate racist, and then Dope (link leads to download) - from his Revolutionary Marxist period during the Carter administration, and which i thought was as viscerally powerful and gripping to listen to, as Black Dada Nihilismus was not.

The 1964 recording struck me as the voice of an inarticualte man with a chip on his shoulder, but 12 or so years later, he had learnt his craft of live poetry, by plodding on, reading, writing, and non stop recital, and it is a tour de force damning of the whole American political process, as it was then, in relation to the rampant inequality black people were subjagated by.

. it can't be capatilism.

Jimmy Carter wouldn't lie,
you heard him at the state of union address
swearing on Rosalynn's face lift:

I wouldn't lie.

Nixon lied.
Haldeman lied.
Dean lied.

Hoover lied --- Hoover sucks too, but Jimmy don't
Jimmy wouldn't,
Jimmy aint lyin.

It must be the Devil, must be the devil
put your money on the plate
it must be the devil
in Heaven we'll all be straight.

It can't be Rockerfella
he gave Amis poot-booty a scholarship
to behaviour modification university
and Genivive almost-white works for his foundation.

It must be niggers.
It can't be Mellon, he gave Winky suck-ass
a fellowship in his bank
put him charge of closing out mortgages

in the low-life Pittsburgh Hill nigger section.
It can't be him,

Yes sir - Yes sir - Yes sir - Yes sir - Yes sir
yes sir - yes sir - yes sir - yes sr

put your money in the plate
don't be late, don't have to wait, all goan be in heaven after you die.

~

This is the link to a great and lengthy interview with Baraka from Black Collegian.com, in which he gives advice on writing.

Baraka studied philosophy and religion at Rutger's University, Columbia University and Howard University and left without obtaining a degree to join the US Air Force in 1954, from which he was dishonourably discharged for violating his oath of duty, at the rank of Sergeant - as a result of three anonymous letters to his C.O. accusing him of being a communist, lead to the discovery of Soviet writings in his possession.

But it was in the air force he did much of his early reading, as there was nothing much else to do, and it was here he was part of an informal self-educators reading group of young black men reading the classics for the first time and talking philosophy. But the one thing I got from reading the piece is that Baraka was very much aware of the responsibility he had been given through his upbringing, to stand fast and remember the history of black America.

When he was a child before the civil rights movement he recounts a story his grandmother told him as a boy, about a black boy who had had his genitals cut off and stuffed in his mouth after being accused of raping a white woman, and he rhetorically questions why she would tell him this at such a young age, and replies:

"Sweet little old lady from Alabama.... Why would she tell you that story? ...you still got it in your mind, sixty years later, you still remember that story? -- "yeah, I remember it" -- in detail? --"absolutely" -- well that’s why she told it to you.

I don’t know if y'all still have that in your homes, I can’t speak on that, but I know that is what we as writers have to do, continue that tradition. The only way I can see that tradition being extended is through the role and function of the writer in the community."

And so Baraka obviously views his work as being part of a tradition greater than himself, the one singular person, and which I take as the main sign of his integrity as a poet.

Baraka ingested a lot of reading and created his own world view, which constantly changed over the course of time as a result of the changing social conditions, which to some extent his poetry brought about. So rather than being a poet reacting to circumstances he has no control over, Baraka actively seeks a poetry of impact. Poetry which will have an effect, and which comes out of his basic stance rooted in the little black boy from an educated family growing up in unfair times.

And his live power is a direct result of his sincerity, as he has steered his own course to a point of understanding where he is clear of his role and the historical foundations of poetry from which that role came.

. goan get all you need, once you gone. Yes sir - I heard it on the Jeffersons,
i heard it on the Rookies
i swallowed it home on Roost -yes sir !

wasn't it nice, wasn't Slavery nice
wasn't it so cool
and all you had to do was wear derbies
and dress and train chickens

and buy your way free if you had a mind to.
Must be the devil
it wasn't them white folks

~

He argues that poetry is nothing but music and rhythm. He thinks that "words fly on the rhythm" saying that the rhythm comes first, words second. I can relate to this, as there is a pre-verbal music and we can tune into it, and at the rarest alignment, the words fit not because of their properties of sense and meaning, but because no other words will. The sound is specific to such a degree only those explicit words link into what chain Shakespeare through the mask of Caliban has as - sweet sounds knitted together, and air which does not trouble or cause discomfort. And once s/he has the nack and know of how to do it, the words are not laboured over, but come on the fly, not consciously chosen - in a process of attuning our instinct by the vehicle of experience through practice, leading to what (if any) eloquence others may (or may not) discern, which connects or moves their inner music-world, as a result of our interior world outing in a fair semblance and accurate reflection from our pool of self-song sung sweetly flowing from one human being, to another.

Straight Criticism we learn at college, begins with treating a text as a non living body of words we intellectually dissect, cut apart and state the author wrote such a string to evoke a mood, make a point, link to some other part or stream of links in a chain flowing before us - and describing the reasons we think an author was impelled by, grasp the creational process which a text/poem arises out from. Created not wholly by reasoned intellect, but a mix of faith, surrender, cunning and trust in moments of satisfaction Heaney speaks of - that we have learned to recognise, instinctively, to yield our belief to that. And though others may look on in bewilderment, shaking their heads at the seemingly reasonless decisions our art impells us to take, at the end of the text, something of Art will appear and pass the finish line on only a hunch, hint, pre-verbal sense of knowing when to end, and a seemingly methodical laying out of words will be the result.

The smooth author's mind, as though the narrative had already been written and just needed excavating.

...lazy niggers, chain they-self and threw
their own black ass in the bottom of the boat.
Come to think of it, there was a certian king ass Bawaki to help throw yo ass in the bottom of the boat

your mama, your wife and you never seen them no more.
It musta been the devil.

Give me your money, put it here in this plate
heaven'll be here soon, you just gotta die
just gotta stop livin

close yer eyes, stop breathin and Bammo !
heaven'll be here.

Bammo ! you'll have all of what you need

a wow wow
Wow ! Wow !

A Poetry of Belief, Faith & Hope.

There is an article in today's NY Times by Adam Nagourney: The '08 Race: A Sea Change for Politics as We Know It - who speaks how this election has fundamentally upended the way presidential campaigns are fought and how the paradigm got turned upside down and truly became bottom up instead of top down - citing the internet as the instrument making a brand new relationship between our leaders and ourselves.

Adam O'Riordan writing on Barack Obama's inner poet in todays Guardian books blog, speaks of the freshness of his conversational style, which (I think) appears to be the forthright human honesty of a seemingly normal person who has plucked the day by harnessing new medias and making them the vehicle for a message of hope and change by inclusion.

Instead of detached multi-millionaires relying on a rhetoric of agression and using one way monologic publishing to instil the fear of unseen forces amongst us, we now have (on the face of it) human normality wrapped in a message of hope; opening the vent of our hearing as we awake and cop on to the simple act of Communication, on the human level.

They who seek to rule by fear, do not like people talking to one another, and in the past in the press, politicians had it this way and we had to take their word that certain dangers existed which didn't. WMD etc. But now, with the net, we can speak amongst ourselves, check facts, pulll up information that would before have taken far longer.

Thus, the cute rich who had us running around chasing ghosts, mist and fabrications whilst staying one step ahead spreading untruths and confusion that manifests in a false fear of others - no longer hold civilisation to ransom.

~

Charles Bernstein who set up the world's first internet Poetics discussion group Buffalo Poetics list - which began as a small band of Robert Creely, Susan Howe, Pierre Joris, Alice Notley, Marjorie Perloff, Silliman, Keith Tuma and numerous other liberal American poetic greats -- is the man for accurate internet prophecy in relation to poetry and the web.

In his seminal I Don’t Take Voicemail paper, first delivered orally as “The Art Object in the an Age of Electronic Technology” -- presented at a symposium, sponsored by the Parsons School of Design, at the New School in New York, on April 16, 1994 - Bernstein lays out his vision of how this then, very new communication technology, will pan out and his poetical prophecy was accurate in many respects:

"The most radical characteristic of the internet as a medium is its interconnectivity. At every point receivers are also transmitters. It is a medium defined by exchange rather than delivery; the medium is interactive and dialogic rather than
unidirectional or monologic.....The potential for discussion and collaboration is appealing–the format mixes some of the features of correspondence with a discussion group, conference call, and a panel symposium such as this one (with the crucial difference that the distinction between audience and panel is eroded)."

One of my favourites is the poetry of politician Robert Francis Fitzgerald Kennedy, a full blooded American with eight Irish great grandparents, along with his brothers, all poets. And it is in a brother Francis Fitzgerald's extemporised address in Indianapolis, breaking to a black audience the news of Martin Luther King's murder, that living poetry is as History itself:

'So ask tonight
return and say a prayer for the family
-- Yeah, it's true -- but more important
say a prayer for our own country,
Which all of us love -- understanding
and compassion can do the country good
In difficult times

...the majority of people in this vast
country who live together,want to improve
the quality of life and see justice for all
Human beings that abide by peace in our land.

So let's dedicate ourselves to what a Greek poet
said many years ago:

"tame the savageness of man and make gentle
the life of this world."

Aeschylus

And my own humble prayer:

Strong is the power of our light.
The spiritual armour of goodness
Resisting rulers' wicked wiles
And the cult of men in darkness.
Within us beastial faith lies,
Learning truth in a fearless
Charm composed to invoke divine
Defence against all manner of evil
And inscribed upon Saint Patricks
Breastplate. A loricae. The snippet
Below, in druidic protection meter.

"I arise today
Through the strength of heaven
Light of sun
Radiance of moon
Splendour of fire
Speed of lightening
Swiftness of wind
Depth of the sea
Stability of earth
Firmness of rock.

I arise today
Through God's strength to pilot me."

Sunday Night Live

Hep cat Jack and Al in Vegas, two high balls no hookers, Greg and Ginsey at it like bonobo pygmy chimps with a couple of dwarfs purchased in Walmart - discount for poets - no, no make that a brehon to go, de-capped lower case no need for titular bullshit. Jack was like that, a Kerouac from New Ross, French-Wexford-Canadian, African American, Amergin through and through. Top of the world ma, made it to the cover of a Rolling Stone back when Neal was on the road -- Frisco, circa 1952.

Three bottles later, we sorta sorted out the thoughts in our head into some kind of insane order, got the ball rolling before Obama stepped up to the plate at the railroad, the town hall, the campus, the community and a couple of Sarah Palin's with two John McCains, garbled, frozen eyes in a war on horror, the lies love and truth, well yer hadda be here to prove it, to know what moved us, caught the tune that's now in the music of what passing between us, happened as Setanta prior to becoming Cúchulainn - fought at the ford in Ardee, with the state line Ohio, stump at the railroad, the oval office of Sean and Francis Fitzgerald filling out space with the air so eloquent; only a trace of humanity, irish, low key, democrat-republican lover of the deepest nuance, lives in our history, and man could Jackie blow.

How Dare you K!!!!

YouWriteOn.com

Free Publishing for 5,000

YouWriteOn.com Will Publish 5,000 Writers For Free!!

Arts Council funded YouWriteOn.com will publish the first 5,000 writers who contact us for Free - Fiction & Non-Fiction.

Absolutely appalled!!

This is outrageous, truly a bad, bad and dangerous development.

Quality control gone by the wayside for some tin pot scheme which will bring 5000 books into the world that will not sell, that will not lead to commercial publishing for all but the most talented of authors, who will not sign up for it, because there is no one there to give them feedback and tell them what they have to do next to become a published author in the real sense of having an editor-author relationship, which underpins the very edifice of Publishing.

i am very very concerned about this and have written letters to eighteen different organisations about it, demanding it be stopped, that the arts council staff who came up with this stupid idea, and all those responsible, be immediately dismissed from their jobs.

i am starting a campiagn against it, and if any of you sensible people are concerned enough to get involved, there will be a demonstration in ten cities across the world, where we will be demanding this outrage cease. please get involved, please, please write to the arts council and your local TD, MP, Congress-person, Senator, and representatives for the bodies which conduct the political life of yr area, please, please, this runs against all natural law and i am very very concerned, consumed with fears, and am totally and utterley appalled.

if this venture has not been called off by Friday 3rd October, i will be chaining myself to railings of the arts council and beginning a hunger strike.

This is no laughing matter, this is pathetic, stupid, reckless, wanton and - if not criminal - certainly should be.

Come, come with us and let us show the world, we are intelligent, thoughtful, human lovers of literature which at least has some quality control checks and balances at the entry point.

already i have lost quite a lot of sleep about this, unable to work and am starting to suffer from depression. if my mental or physical health deteriates to the point where i am unable to conduct my lawful daily business, i will be suing the arts council for damages.

i have already engaged a barrister on a retainer of 5000 and a daily fee of 500 sterling, to make sure every legal avenue is explored for this reckless, entirely innapropriate venture to get stopped.

And whatever you do, do not buy a book called Ovid Yeats - Love Poems, by Desmond Swords.

Desmond Swords book, if it comes out, will corrupt the very fabric of eternal space and time (if such a state exists) and will corrupt our loved ones, make clever people stupid, take away the voting rights of the appalled and cause others great distress in their professional and personal lives, due to his disguise of grey hair, five ten, very very superficially compelling onscreen when reading live poetry, which has been enhanced with computer graphics to make him appear attractive to both men and women of all ages, and there is a very real danger, should this book

Ovid Yeats - Love Poems

by desmond swords, with a deep passion, nay addiction for bardic lore, the voice appearing out of nowhere, happy to have in a shop window speaking all new.

. can make your children, cleverer, happier, stop them getting bullied at school, make them lose their spots, become a millionaire at 12, just by looking at this book

Love Poems - Ovid Yeats

confer a cloak of invisibility upon anyone within six yards of it, make you a better ballet dancer, to olympic standards, just by touching the cover, and live forever should you read one line of the first poem, and become ...

you get the picture, stop

Desmond Swords, be appalled with me, come, come, let us strap up, this rougue intellectual poet.

. i am appalled!!!

Has Anyone a Pen?

In the warm womb of August
a bold trace drew within the night

a self-sleight of tongue, by silence
behoven to what force surrenders

a flat plate by the sun.

Silver, strange and yet it was some
stranger star our eye met, stalling

above leaves of grey mist which awoke
in the depth of a New York dawn

the ermine pulse of a swirling red
flicker and blue lit shawl below

the hollow mouthed source of our
alternative terminal view

caught turning on the radar
as an absent oyster shell -

shifting information some
place else.

The draíocht dawned in hazel of all
coirí filíochta music, and a trinity of light

configured eo fis from fizzing imbas
forosnai, nimble, swift and a tuatha

speck swirling nut-salmon
on an immram, connected to the borders

of our wisdom source six grades above us -
tong a toing mo thuath - throne of ollamh

the Réalta na bhFile: in Abraham's

hebrew the she brew ban-draoi, faced
two cliffs and streaming down, three

cauldrons, sourced its integral ability
within a mind and heart from the ridge-pole

the Cli to Anrtuh gap, dicating what wyrd
will come.

The talk at the latter part of this week, has been about the removal of a poem by an education examining board of a poem by Carol Ann Duffy OBE, whose career has been built on controversy.

She was born in Scotland and moved to Staffordshire, before starting a relationship with the now deceased Tranmere - Birkenhead - Wirral born poet Adrian Henri, when he was 39 and she sixteen.

Henri was born in 1932 and moved to Prestatyn in North Wales when he was six, studied at St Asaphs grammar school and took part in the Rhyl arts scene, before going to Durham to study fine art and in 1955, relocating to Preston, Lancashire, for a one year teaching job, where he met his first wife - Joyce Wilson - in a jazz club.

His summer job in Rhyl, brought him into contact with people from the Liverpool scene and he opted to go there, marrying in 1957, two years after Duffy's birth. He had his first exhibitions in 1958 and 59 at the Bluecoat in the city, and he held a variety of jobs, starting as a scenic artist in the Liverpool Playhouse and then teaching jobs in Manchester (1961-4) andLiverpool colleges of art (1964-8).

He and McGough met in 1960 at the Streates coffee bar on May Street Mount Pleasant and the rest is history, as he became part of a trinity of Liverpool poets whose work came to prominence caught in the slipstream of the global phenomena of John Paul George and Ringo.

Everything in Liverpool became cool overnight and half the planets young girls collectively fell in love with their chosen poster boy, four to choose from, and like pop stars now, these crushes as much about vicarious expression of their personalities in the social groups young girls cluster in, as any real affair of the heart.

Their work brought an idiom previously unheard to prominence in the UK as the working classes had their first artistic flowering, but unfortunately, much of it has not stood up to the test of time, and now its inherent weaknesses ioverlooked in the first flowering, glare at us unsophisticated and naff, as only the dated does.

The whole notion of being a working class poet, was a brand new concept, and there being no precedents, a DIY extemporisation, a pose, a mish match of the French Symbolists, obscure verse writers and home grown names all mixed in at the first attempt by men more in tune with chasing women and boozing, than applying themself to any tradition. A jazz riff and make it up as they went along'ness, which time has exposed as weaker than what the cheerleaders of the time blindly loyal and championing it as the birth of some anti-nazi, all inclusive third reich of UK poetry, next school run by and for the prolateriat mass from the anonymous estates of post war Britain and facing a thousand yrs advance on the untested and tried strength of two mop top jazzed up scousers and a woolyback from Presatyn.

And it was to this artist, Duffy decided to set her sixteen year old cap, by all accounts a girl who knew she wanted to be a poet at fifteen, independant, a steely will and as Henri said, appearing fully formed in Liverpool, seeking out her male muse.

Pestford Wives

Now I’ve experienced McCain's daughter at her blogette and seen the photos of the lovely tee shirts, simple designer duds and gee, really cool stuff.

She’s in a car, with a phone, smiling, and it says soo much about how we can all be quick to judge others based not on lipstick and fighting dogs, but on the character of their content, and i realised i was wrong to instinctively judge Sarah as a shallow self centred and hollow hockey mom who Anne Kilkenny, from Super Sars home city of Wassila, Alaska (pop 6-9000), a close fellow mom who says horrid, horrid things about her time as mayor in this vast megatropolis of; what may be only 6000 people, but home to the billion make up artist of make up artists, happy wishes, kisses and straight up canine makeup shops, beauty parlours and not like Michelle, who has been surgically re-sculptured by Barry Manilow's personal magician; in an e mail of blatant lies based on nothing but jealousy and which found it's way to the local rag the Anchorage Daily News .

she is not a true believer in the holy power of God and dutiful Christian who doth not judge on the colour of her dress, but on the content of the blog John’s daughter keeps, which i understand now i have found the power of the Lord our Holy Father, Buddha, Krishna and Allah, who i know God is a little pissed off with, and especially the Russians threatening the security of Sarah’s family with their illegal behaviour going into OMG..it’s Frankia, right?

Yah, radical offspring, who i know could be a real friend to me and all my friends, and if that Obama just stopped trying to kid us; actually said what he is for, and stop attacking blogettes dad, and Sarah (i think her husband soo much more dishier, don’t you) came up with his own ideas, instead of just running round after John, imitating his strategy, of saving the planet by eradicting the fraudulant spongers in the third world using their new found economic wealth, like with all the overtime they are getting, like all the easy unfair trade deals they do with UN-AMERICAN terrorist groups masquarading as underwear companies, soft porn retail outlets, abortion clinics selling DIY Devil worship kits and using back-engineered bad-alien Grey technoligies to harm AMERICAN business, health care taxes, adding to the welfare budget, lazing around all day, sponging off AMERICA, taking our oil in Russian, being ANTI-AMERICA and taking advantage of US the AMERICAN people, closing our factories, stealing our jobs, AMERICAN jobs, which ppl like John went to Vietnam as a Freedom fighter dropping napalm to clear the drug crops, to protect, fight for fair play, create new energy resources, to harness, protect, spread democracy in places where terrorists had in a stranglehold, using fear and scare tactics, trying to intimidate US, the billions of us American loving peacable ppl, who never seek war, but sure as heck aint afraid of standing up to those who would blatantly seek to spread terror to the very soul of the country i love, the land of the brave, home of the oldest democracy in the history of the universe.

An ancient noble land John died for several times at the hands of Russian and Chinese torturers, but who God brought back to life, to save us from the lunatics threatening our every waking move, following Sarah, looking at her inappropriately, Obama, coming on to her daughter disguised as Obama Bin Laden, hiding in the bat cave, trying to corrupt Bruce Wayne, stealing the first ladies underwear, and with the oil industry and big business in his pocket, covering it all up, Blogette is here exposing the hypocrisy, using her brains, and not her looks, to save AMERICA, to stop the madness of rougue dictatorships, like Venuzala, Amerstam, Germany, France, Sweeden and undermine the democratically elected alien governemnts of Mercury, Saturn, Pluto and Disneyworld, who seeks to undermine the elected government of Zimbabwe and our good friend mister Mugabe, who is stopping the African continent from descending into anarchy.

GOD BLESS Bloggete, please donate what you can to the hugely imporatnt work, help the John McCain save the Moon for US fund.

The Russians as we speak are plotting to seize territorial control of Mars, an American colony our future generations will colonise, build new businesses, hosptitals for our poor and sick, bring new prosperity to our citizens on welfare, give second chances to the disadvantaged, ppl who never got a break under the last Democratic president Obama, who invaded Poland and spent all the federal budget on shoipping for his wife.

Please, please, don’t fall for their slick lies.

While there are some who go to washington for themselves and ask, what can America do for the environent, it takes a brave honest man like John to ask, what can the environment do for US the American ppl, the cleverest, oldest culture to have ever existed, and for this we thank God that his son, John McCain, died for us ten times and walked on water, to break the new water walking speed record, for you, selflessly for US the American people.

And Remeber, a vote for a convicted underwear thief, is a vote for reason and peace.

Simple Vidz

During the final weeks of university four years ago, i purchased a video camera after seeing a show at the National Student Drama Festival in Scarborough (which won best show) that used pre-recorded footage the two performers interacted with, flawlessly.

Ian Shuttleworth the theatre critic said it was easily the best of its kind he had witnessed and this was a spur for me, seeing the possibilities. I got the camera but hocked it to raise the ferry fare, because money was tight and I only thought it would be for a short time. And now after 48 months, i got it back and have finally arrived at the point i intended to four years ago.

Soon after coming to Dublin, I saw Seamus Heaney deliver a lecture on Patrick Kavanagh, the central thrust of which was the Kavanagh idea of a Poet's journey being the way "from the simplicity of going away to simplicity of return"; which has been a consistent and central critical plank in Heaney's own poetic.

He said that the development of a poetic soul is one whereby we start out knowing little and after a few years, rack up a lode of knowledge and reach a point where we think we are a bit handy on the poetry lark, and then, as we cast out into deeper intellectual pools, certainty deserts us as our learning increases and we realise that, in the grander scheme, the sureness we thought we were heading toward is merely an illusion and we know little.

And once this is accepted, there is a return, another cycle of learning with the simplicity of knowing we can never know it all. And eventually

"In the final simplicity we don't care whether we appear foolish or not" as Kavanagh said.

This is what we work towards, to follow our own star and dance as if no one is looking, like an actor in the magic circle who blots out the audience and behaves with a child-like simplicty.

And poetry being as it is, with nothing ever forced into the frame by a person's will -- indeed the more we try to engineer a poetic career with the resolve and style of a banker or careerist, the less likely it is to happen; so we trust what will be will happen and if it's meant to be, so be it, and now after four years delay, the gods delivered and the next space is ready. Live poetry on the vidz. Have a gander here

Father Ted trundlin homeward

Ulick O'Combover

Thursday 28 August 23.52

Hi M.

No probs if this is not the sort of caper appropriate for yr page, but we have just got a new computer and the camera purchased four years ago before we came to Dublin and which i hocked for the ferry fare, has returned and, thus this new direction on-stage here in the guttered back-lit glow of a dark Augustian soul hamming it up.

The days of spamming high on legal head shop hash are gone now, and spamming legit again after 18 months interruption, in a final five year push into that ollamh zone gods above, below and there, beyond the tube that place we'll never go, may ho ho ho for us, has thus begun.

The next five year study-jag jangling in free-play at the intellectual arena within, came after ten freakin novels worth of text took us there, 95 percent of our output we wrote last year was the worthless write-off Yeats did when he was high on blow and donuts dipped in opium, back in the golden days of our beginnings, and remember, as this is just an attempt to detach,

peel back the pith of light

as a s/he mind/intellect closing in on what god-head we have as the sidhe split gender God i read has just been located in the earliest Torah texts, as genderless s/he..

WARNING HIGHLY EXPERIMENTAL PROSE

LROVSE

was the name of a poem you wrote in the third yr, after a session with BS the Sheppard of verse, in Ormskirk, after a class where we had to use the Edmund Waller poem

Go Rose

as the piece impelling our response.

We all wrote parodies, of course, as voicing our deepest thoughts on the eternal theme from four to five on a Friday afternoon, in a small class of six or so, five young people and a man nearing fifty with a full head of grey and a broken potential long since gone south, was not really gonna happen.

LROVSE

You will always live
buried in a deep beyond
and beckoning to me...

this was the first of it and from that day, a standard in the canon from a course of which well, i do not know, but there some sidhe bell rhymes explorative still in what stood-chance rough pledged, and a stolen part imitation, part half yearning to sing, stitching itself inward and learning to trust

spoke of rhyme

wheeled throughout a throat and made it onto our page

Dear married M

I think i have fallen in (out of?) love with your imagination, due to quitting drugs, for which i wish to sincerely re-apologise and ask a big ask of you and yr very important colleagues over there on the NE seaboard where superbly synthetic united fakes faffing about with my head, smother me here in Kilmainham.

Please can i have my talent back?

I know you stole it in Cork the night of PC's fortieth. I conferenced with him at Dumb Leary festival of World couture in Seapoint last Sunday, the first and only day of summer here in the place i know you think i stole from under yr nose, but you had re-located by then ms M.

Do you remember the days far gone and the life we had?

The extemporised rants into the ollamh zone with Amergin Bergin shaman of the sally oak grove gardens where AE had the visions and WB spoke of then, later, much later, after he and M fell out over John Mac B, dearest cipher.

Hear too modest for a simple sum, innovatively singing the score of what may be when Sean MacBride comes back, back, from the grave of postmodernity dearest MG, managing director delivering us:

AE MB 3:1 DS WB 18:17?

Do you remember the time we made love in the goal here? The night before they took you out and shot me for ripping off Fat Frankie the Drimnagh drug lord under contract by dissident Ruskies, for depriving them of a stash his accidental labours wrought to insignificance by acts of de-cap latte, huddling in cloves and behoven to trouve for mystic trove on Eustace Street, Focus for the one euro fifty dinner the day s/he became homeless, invisible above us with sidhe gods complictly winging their wee way through air to the Gweedore and Donegal Daniel crooning of it all, mythologising eternity and a chap down and out in the jiggers of Temple Bar, Maud?

You lived a well ordered life with barley fed horses to sport with, in far flung revolutionary days back when George and Bill rustled through the night high on hash pills, armed and dangerous intelligentsia to the old leary faux fools and slow druidical silence saying it all, dearest M, let us love again.

Gavin Turner Video Diary

Please turn the volume right up to hear the sound on the video below.

It was made in the final days of my time at Edge Hill College (now university) in my home town of Ormskirk Lancashire, but I only managed to get my camera out of hock a few weeks back after going to the Ledbury poetry festival and meeting Neil Astley and Michael Schmidt at an orgy of the imagination and receiving a sixty euro advance after a bidding war (for me to not send them stuff) ensued at the Prince of Wales open mic slam on the final night; in which I came last.

just thought i'd deposit a stream of consciousness.

Frostean ice melting in warmth, stipulating what alliterative rivets
course back a shell, recovering behind the fire behind an eye

behind the hand behind a man behind the *I* inveigling consciousness
syntax flipped back, reversing one and zero, fed through gozzy eyed

optical data bits fluidly distancing an eye hung detached behind a door
upon a hook the six coloured tungen cloak shifts in short gasping jabs.

Rote memorised french existentialist philosophy aired in the wisdom
through friendship driving alan bennet and ginsie, jack and all the chaps,

bent hungering beneath the finest intellectuals a generation hunkered
down to clasp, truth-streaming human form and what came out. Closed

the NE seaboard in a mother load of visual transmission, impelling
Humanity to course through this waxed orbit of Icarus, sun driven, rose

winged into an air pool and dropped

dropped

onto a hill which never cometh racked in shredded shade and crepe lift,
mister bono, good sir Edge and Larry who Ardoyne hurt into poetry.

They too knew even you few as intimate with the gods of sound and
stone, are fixed in the frequency of silence rocked, beating forth and back,

back and forth toward laws of language contained in the locked box
beneath an academe oak grove of the bohemian paranoiac dress,

coaxed up the fair moaning wind wound in mummy tower and daddy Gia
stretching red rocked to ask -- what more in the name of us breathe

placebo and cipher; elevate in the flood and love they who carried
the phoneme of furniture genetically, bio-teched our kids lunch pack

and believe three towers collapsed uncontrolled, fell from phoenix dust,
and all the evidence spirited away, all the papers from building seven

smote to a no-trail of dust, new word ordering this American Century
of roaming imperialism dressed by Neitzean priests elevating

the observation Darwin made, into a geo-con sleight of hand backers
pulling strings of president and kings administer in sound gone,

striking out of kilter and the sky above bog

bless still America?

M&M -- Ledbury Melton Mowbray XI report.

"Your Soul

Your soul has three names;
the mirror, the holdall, the word
you dare not read.

.....(further)...

A poem might be said to save the world by preserving something -- an insight, narrative, or historical moment. I write poems partly as an attempt to gain understanding of what I don't know or have only a vague sense of. I then hope that other people have had similar feelings and questions and can relate to the poems because of that."

Rob Mackenzie

~

Mackenzie is a Glaswegian poet in Edinburgh for the last four years (i think) and has a blog Surroundings

In a recent post, Rob deposited a poem by Italian Gabriel d'Annunzio, who was a mentor of Mussolini's and a rival intellectual combatant, one of the few who could play this dictators' game by using a gift for Decadent writing gripping Europe in the 1930's - to elevate himself a position with a mass to care about him, to ask questions and defend him, if his leader decided on a whim, to turn from friend to foe.

He is one of the many who wrote then, and d'Anunnzio's work is clouded now by the taint of his Fascist associations, but who can deliver a morally binding judgment --- with an accuracy we believe possible to clearly detect in the principle actors -- inhabiting this darkest time - upon bestial we, you us me or him, dear hearts?

d'Anunnzio was a Futurist poet - and artist whose Movement ultimately doomed itself. Hung from a scaffold erected with hot air nihilism brought on, when the first wave of modern mass technologies aimed at what - until then - had been the illiterate mass of sub-class and simple God fearing yoe-people, we the mass of peasantry where targeted with and by it, shaped into dangerous hate filled micro-cosmic compact mobs whose binary cultural philosophies the mass media print revolution and brand new form of Journalism, New-writing, formed.

Thus the base now resting on a genderless s/he-goddess race of gods, in neutral force who good and bad, light and dark within Creation, within each soul, most of whom just wanna have fun; but when on; divide Humanity into the pyramid of language lost and opportunities of finding one's inner Civilisation language-act in this language known as much about now as the poem d'Annunzio wrote in --

L'Ala sul Mare - which Rob translated and I used as a primer, along with the Italian original, to compose a very loose re-rendering of a (re-rendered) translation. But before we reach the revealing of a current piece, what immediately struck me, and detonating reason impelling this exercise --


The Wing in the Sea

Ardi, in the sea’s haze a wing,
cast adrift, shudders like a wreck.
The feathers, severed and scattered,
ripple in the air’s uneven breath.

Ardi, I see wax, the wing of Icarus!
When its creator served the king’s court
he built a hollow, wooden cow –

...are the first two stanzas (scot-gaelic bardic tradition - rann) . The first stanza, it is my contention to contest, reveal across the four lines creating it, the opening stanza's hypnotic sonic underlay and overly palpable design on drawing us to be impressed ---- nest in the waves being Happy, and this rann as the verbal machine enacting what self-remembrance writ its purpose to exist on a plane of Reality via fiction and make-believe, some poetic pretense by the poet, which doesn't fool the author who created it, but does our collective eyes, works the first stanza into a phonologic power immediately, in the opening first of these four lines, imposing itself upon us -- because phonemes acting collectively, as the very sophisticated whole - exercise in phonotactic constraint displayed - in what reads as --- an effortless acoustic groove, running both within each line and pattern of sophisticated metrical complexity, such as to be suggestive of perfect balance, or the Art Straight (dan direach) approximation (in my mind) and effortlessly interlocking a wholly linguistic made, most delicate and yet truly, (and i mean this sincerely) fulfilling the laws of flawless flight perfectly poised.

The first line

Ardi, in the sea’s haze a wing,

Clashes the image in, deceptively. Being the first line, we have nothing to constrast it with, but they beneath it, we are unaware of the first time we read it.

The three masculine stresses, act as an opening bell ring, ee ee ay. Because three of the eight syllables are held together by a fairly central and solid spondee - sea haze - which with the dee of Ardi (in this reading) contrast starkly with the twenty three feminine syllables following the eight clangorous first eight above them, below which

cast adrift, shudders like a wreck.
The feathers, severed and scattered,
ripple in the air’s uneven breath

...the feminine dash sounding far more fluid in swift swallow water wing movement conjuring a sense of acoustic descent, fleeing the arresting first three masculine stresses the first line creates, as a surface splash, acoustically heralding itself, some bell beneath which the meat and veg of -- not in yer face verse - but what as words beneath the sonic surface, and a verbal object - changing immediately as it sinks to flight and (apart from *like* in the second line) into a regular softly stressed - and what could equally be - a rising or descending zero quality of balance this work of invisible silence, weights in the twenty three feminine syllables that appear -- and twenty four beats down from a key masculine stressed image *sea haze) - the stressed *ee*in uneven revealing the underlying sonic architecture to be that of a bell jar or ski-jump top- (or bottom) of a heavy weight and within it -- as zero gravity, above/below - the object floats, finding its note of English language balancing, descended reflection through water or air; vacillating rooted weight-stress beginning to detonate in rising or falling flesh, flashed after the propulsive force release - into fluidity a word as sound and meaning caught in equipoise between intellect and imagination.

An interesting balance, the arresting images of this object i ask; as if some instinctual linguistic Belief or faith in O delivers to one, an unconscious zero cipher placebo of intelligence and creation made visible in that measurement of flight; crated interchangeable and the mind alone eying neutral, a s/he The Critic balanced and eyed i which declare a pen we the US all possess, hones a balanced listing or too fluent, slipping clumsily stumbling -

-- flourishing and perishing text that unlocks first within art, the Poet brain a there our S/as if ---- in four coded fineries honor and need to read --- wished thrice upon the response thus -- privilege what share the self-enobling craft of language brings, expressing outer as eye-sun and reflection affording the intellectual soul-jahs' decor in such gravity, balance of its brains and beauty in effect -- is noted and The object its measure, unit, phoneme and human breath enough to get worked up about declare (in the post-poetic completion high of state of the wholly inner religious self), affirmation by gods of chance trained instinctual our whimsy

Dear Reader/s

...only can willing, these lines into perfection propel, a telepathic ship of rules crossing translation and desire -- fulfilled into our eye mastered being proof alone it careers the Frostean ice upon a stove of life, messers leonard cohen, robert lennon, all the greats, appear here heard and as ones' Friend of the Intellect Ninius knew, mister and miss.

And funny it is Dubliner Billy Mills, Mackenzie's Guardian blokes blog colleague with the weekly Friday free for all workshop -- mentioned Icarus - within days of this friend/rival robber on his call for a poem written in response to some rigorous visual art flagged twice in short succession, and in the outer beat return this occurence of an object correlation of the hill and mountain to a sky-riven bardic gasser on the one true Craft tuned to freedom B tones of free hug me at a hub across molten, what wax of ewe and birch fettered ask a poet return them,

ask to take us back
breath, and breathing beckon

forward in halting call, grievances
s/he begged, pleaded to be spared

and knew the sacking none relish;
returning no call, silent chains

fettered to make within a prison
provision for synonym and letter

(scripted live each act a folly)

Whether this deliberate act of Idea theft occurred, only as two fictional protagonists in this object drama imagination creates and life re-ran -- or as two only they who answer canned what force creation wrought together upon pages far, far away, so lit time all forgotten that a head weighted luna orb pitted by the base sun, sitting there with a cat and spoon, three times fifty otter-skin suitcases and Funny, funny how Mills also mentioned two other topics which up the telekinesis quota of evidential measure -- sorrow's natural clowns Mackenzie, Mills and i must in some three way tangle of perfect psychic balance be - of what until the beginning of last month, was a near specious guild -- happy poet AND visual artist.

the visual artist Poet i admit to holding a fairly vicious prejudice toward as a cowardly human being capable of acting totally childish where Art questions occur, because the first famous one i met, overwhelmingly more viz than bhard, dressing as s/he did, in all sorts of cloak and garbled raiments, had no tungen but one from do you know who i am (not) cut ups mashed thrift and throwaway, nor link to a definable source beyond some vibey academic source of their island within where all alone, all alone our free winds moan o'er the i that hadn't met the eye of a visual artist and poet in that 50/50 balance so clearly and genuine; that until having the very great honor of meeting another happy one, he were only the second i've met, befittingly at the poetry evening of Ledbury Scribes, on Monday 7 July last, at Black Pepper restaurant, where it was created such a species do clearly exist and flourishing in the first bloom of the second wind youth deliver our future artist-intellectual striving to attain some faith in something within us alone as an individual member; a human collective rest of us alone, all art pieces divisible and yet All source Thing all around within and without us, our eyes decipher reality in a realm of five (sixth?) senses Instinct and i we all are living it, second to minute, forth and back beat the we oscillate collectively vocalising Creation's want for us to create who reveal his name is Roland MacMurran, a young chap who exited from academe with a first, several weeks before our lives collided in the heady mix that magical Herefordshire town concots.

Unaware of Herefordshire's local strong ciders, it was a pleasant bonus to discover Henry Westons Vintage Special Reserve, two seventy (pounds) and eight percent local cider and three of these a night, over short run, was the magical brew which possessed and fostered an Englishness about the Horshoe pub (integral inn at the top of Homend) that is not greatly urbanised and a very attractive allure for city dwellers. If only everywhere in England was as balanced as the finest ciders, its culture would be perfectly balanced. And it is easy to see why Ledbury poetry festival reflects that.

A third synchronism Mills mentioned, is Elizabeth Browning (nee Barrett), whose family owned slave-run plantations (though she wrote against this and for many political emancipation causes all her life) and who was also Ledbury native, reared in Homend, which is the very center of Ledbury town life, and where MacMurran and I attended the Homend Poets poetry event on Tuesday 8, in Ice-Bytes internet cafe, which charges a very reasonable two quid for half an hour.

Roland and I recited a selection of our work there, and bought The Homend Poets' anthology, with poets like Mike Andrews, Julie Louise Jones, Guy Malkerson, Med Snookes, Dave Turner, Charles Eden and Nick Halligan -- very committed poet and retired teacher who carved a way into our guild of eloquence, at the coal face of secondary education, and whose lines -

"A ship in a bottle, a black ash-tray owl,
A barrel for spills and bent copper bowl.
Everything worthless, yet all have a place
A friendly reminder, the familiar face "

..affected me Live, in a way which brought goodness and a sense of the communal, us, the Ledbury Scribes, the Homend Poets and the three other events Roland and I as poets in residence of the open-mic series, in which numerous local poets from Herefordshire and beyond, came together and celebrated the verbal art, shared our songs and took an active role in our communities of average working poetry lovers attending the work-shops.

And the fourth and final connection the very human blogs of these two men, caused and immediate association with, a visual object, viewing through the triple lens, the likeness in which we attempt to import and link with an original sonic heft of what original essence (as I discern it) third hand, is very beneficial for any practice; offers the opportunity of working in a way which allow all access to the one store in which --

Far god cast off above the sea,
feathers drift, an airless evening

And the rippling wings of Icarus
severed with a single breath

hollow light above the sky he sought
to go beyond, his flight sun-courage

driving waxed wings high above
a lone sphere, glow Too hot beyond

His normal orbit and attempting
to reach and reunite, raise feathers

in our greater mind
to write; into the whirlpool Icarus

dropped

thank you very very much for the honor of sharing and learning messers M&M.

An empty ice-box emits its guttural buzz,
sparking light at twenty five past one

onto a kitchen clock. Nothing came out straight.

A cupboard; stale bread, chickpeas,
can of Guinness; and beyond a window,

the garden seemed to unravel - patterning
wheat (no milk) two cigarettes

and last to feel regal under striplight,
a cellophane reflection glowing awake -

swimming in the lone dark vat of night,
pitching a planet last to walk -

a light into the door of a UFO.

~

The above text came out of a *write-through* exercise, which is the natural evolution of the cut-up method Burroughs made popular. Working with the word-processing mouse technology, we can move electronic-text about so much faster than with scissors and paper.

This means that the standard unit to work with in this form, rather than being a line of text, we are thinking and working at word-level, shuffling them about on the screen with space-age fluidity.

The PC has revolutionised how we can work with text, and this form comes under many names, the latest being *mash-up*, and now there are Poem softwares which we can feed text into, and it returns a computer poem, thus cutting out the middle person of our mind.

The software applications are really a novelty, and it will be a while yet before we can purchase technology which will recreate in poetry, the Human experience.

The source text for the above is here.

Derek Hines

One of the most instructive recorded readings i have heard -- and by far the book of poetry which affected me most since arriving in Dublin to continue my research - is Derek Hines, reciting his tour de force re-rendering of the ancient Sumerian myth

"Gilgamesh."

Anyone professing a poetic interest who has not come across his award winning book should, in my opinion, acquaint themselves with his work and experience a truly original contemporary Canadian voice of great power and breadth, and which most serious practitoners recognise as operating on a higher frequency and one of deep awareness and accomplishment, inf both craft and technique. His inventiveness was head and shoulders above anyone else, and it was clear from listening to this poet, he is in a league of his own:

"Fill the sky to choking
with a reedbed

..a blind of shafts
..the very air woven by

his merest gesture to fable...
the crush of gravity's paint

..till void reabsorbs
..a smash and grab of years
...a protector, got drunk,

stayed drunk

..back flip...the map
marking time
...washed up as far south

as man or god can go
..like the madam who ran the roadhouse

..our lady of times edge
..we find him there

pushed to the worlds prow,
barely more than a beat
in the days narrative"

Hines made a four thousand yr old
poem, which many consider the closest we have to the earliest (and uncorrupted) truly ancient myth, which one soul from the NW order of scouse beat God botherers, found very rewarding to experience.


It took me four years after leaving formal education, to absorb the system of my Tradition -- for it to *appear* whole, as it were.

And the correct way for routing into the Myth systems which grew out of Sumerian and ancient Egyptian star knowledge (and on which our own mungrel mix and mish mash, oddly matched one) which the Latins influenced our Culture to claim as their own.

I is clear, reading this stuff, how Goidelic myth, irish legend, rests on an identical (numerical) poetic base..


the Metric at the base of poetry, is standard, or rather, my research has lead me to conclude, the most uncorrupted system is the bardic one, and poetic knowledge is the same whether we are addicted to cartoon lore of a self-invented poetic we make up blind, orthe most ancient Sumerian code, and their planet X, their watchers and angels came from, some speculate, is has aancient extra-terrestrial keys to understanding it in the fullest terms of existential proofs, which is not for the skeptical dreamer unresponsive to -- what a hundred yrs ago would be dismissed as the rantings of a mercury poisoned mad person but now -- the most challenging and axiomatically shattering theories upon the whole natural core fabric of whateber it is poetry reveals to us in the self supported learning states.

Alone we find the reasons behind our intelligence - logically and with provenance, we trust -- andthe knowledge they who Know: the *knowing ones* of the literal translation of a poet in ancient times, on these islands at least -- thousands of years prior to Chaucer, the grandfather of our classical canon's tongue; where are they now?.

And so good luck

love and peace, the society for truth reporting now on the alternative News way the net has, of concerned people no longer having to swallow the conjectural stuff, but truly export our minds to a sort of fourth dimension of understanding myth, after the keys to illumination whatever gods we trust and make, gift us critically, our Research into the nuts of it, to Gilgamesh and all that mob, all the earliest sources..

surely this is the logical route to real knowledge of the throne room at Tara, called

*star of the poets*
Réalta na bhFile

the High King - Ard Ri
their throne was this
appellation and when one studies the stuff, it is clear that Robert Graves is right in his assertion that Ireland and Wales were the final resting place of the essential BC mode and mind, but my own take is that a lot of the critical uncertainty (not by you of course) displayed by the miners of the soul, is due to Real fruits not that plentiful, as most poracticing today, take their cue from ABCDE or whoever, ms X, and mistake the straight face one liners pitched in tenors that wld have the lay reader beleive the author is well up on this Expert are of research, but often alas, this is a sham and tragic really, that our positions are often just a pose, and so a hundred best folk in a room, rarely lowering their guard and admitting

*i know little really*

but rather, confuse real star knowledge on the page, for vaugue imitative attempts at being a composite someone else, instead of being ourselves -- or rather, not arrogate ourself any claim to possessing any self-cut keys to unlocking the puzzle of eternal space, but to learn for Love and poetry, to be as good as we can intellectually, to prove using fictional art to prove faculties' assassin in the status quo - is 12 whatevers in play before the hour turns into eternity and we win some stuff, because such a person wants to help us out, for whatever human reason they are (or not) sharing a space on the bus of love and peace, traditionally, we pretend....

Wendy Howe

Presence

A string of dust drops
from the corner of the ceiling
in to the small room below ---

first still, then stirred softly
into motion
by a woman's breath.

Her respiration is warm
thickening with sorrow
while the white thread glistens.

Floss untwisted from the fine tatting
of a spider's craft,
it swings back and forth
widening the square pocket of air...

Wendy Howe

~

I began this as an extemporised riff as a result of responding to *how did the Susan Howe day go?* inquiry by Geraldine Monk on the British Irish poets list, and got

"the day began with an address by s/he to the many gender neutral minds,constructed with thought alone, there to direct their celebratory and affirmational force, toward the work of this wonderfully well known guild member, who lets face it, when the sheep and goats get sorted in latter times by the children of our childrens childrens children in the next century..."

and it struck me to speak of a far less known, yet equally worthy poet who also shares Susan Howe's surname:

Wendy Howe.

Wendy Howe is a NY state english teacher and computer teacher who i first came across around the time i discovered GM's work, and impressed me equally. There was a site with about 60 or so poems of hers there (though i think she has since removed it) and i spent two days reading them, feeling i had found a true trove of classy verbal gear, and what struck me was the simple lyric Horacean construction.


I wrote to her she told me she had been writing since she was 15, so -- 30 yrs at it -- and far ahead of my eye in experience.

What clinched it critically, that this was poetry of a proof in the top 10 percent of contemporary practitioners, was that the site of these poems, wasa bit like the old BBC Get Writing one, and as each poem was added, timed and dated (the sixty were posted over three or four yrs i think) it drew what were cleartly sincere comments from ppl who were not poets and just simple appreciators of this deft evocative lyric voice.

We had a brief exchange of e mails over a few weeks and she sent me her six point Poetic outlining how she approaches the art of writing verse..

~

Though Elizabeth's Bishop and Dickenson, are seperated by two or three poetgenerations (D dying 25 yrs before B was born in 1911), these are the two the mind yokes into an Image underlining a metaphor of two career trajectories: one (Bishop) conducted at the time with lots of chatter, interest, awards and wide recognition, such as Howe, Susan has...whilst Wendy Howe, is the emily dickinson parallel, and below is her six point composition poetic..


~


*Thank you so much for the time and consideration you
have invested in reading and contemplating my poetry.

I was very touched by the beautiful poem you write
about my verse on your Blog site. What lovely words
and imagery.

And I am most grateful for you bringing
my work to the attention of others, especially other
blog sites and some editors. I am a very modest person
who feels that my poetry has substantial, artistic
merit; Yet, I am always striving to perfect and hone
my skills. It's an on-going process and my poetry
(writing styles, voice, technique) evolves as I evolve
intellectually and spiritually.

....your courage in journeying to Ireland to become a full time poet: I
think takes a lot of determination and love of the craft, itself.

Ireland is a place that inspires and fosters poets and their work. I think
it draws people to its artistic and scenic climate because of the
myth, the song, and the struggle that has defined the history of Ireland.
Perhaps, that's why poets may be able to thrive in Dublin and receive the
audience, respect and recognition they deserve.*

(obviously wendy doesn't practice in the warm pool of crocodiles, as JP Dunleavy
terms it here)

*You asked me about technique or a method of sanity to
my writing. I have been composing poetry for over 27
years. Presently, I am 42. I started writing verse in
my early adolescence. At that point, it was all about
me and my struggle to understand life and my place in
the universe. However, as I aged and became a
teacher and mature poet, I developed some values that
have always guided my work and defined its thematic
essence.

(1) I always write with the reader or the observer in
mind. I try to make my images, my allusions and my
messages accessible to people's sense of familiarity.
In other words, I strive to employ words, metaphors
and ideas that people have experienced or encountered
in everyday life. For example, I would not use
references to tv shows, personalities, brand names
that are typically American and only understood by an
American audience. I want to be understood by all readers.

(2) I try never to weigh down my sentences with
multisyllabic words. I simplify my verse and use the
smaller words. Also, I avoid placing too many modifiers
in front of my nouns. Too many adjectives clutter the idea,
take away from the clean lines of the poetic symmetry.

(3) I always wait for inspiration to come to me
randomly. A poem (for me) must happen spontaneously
or it sounds too contrived. I go through periods of writer's
block because of this concept but it's worth waiting
for a good idea to come in the end.

(4) Sometimes, a glimpse of nature, a scrap of conversation
with a friend, a headline in the newspaper or reading
another line from a poem, sparks an idea, an image.

I always write these quick flashes of inspiration down
in a notebook. They can be developed into poems sometime
in the future.

(5) I am not afraid to leave a poem unfinished.
Sometimes I will start a poem and struggle with it for
days. At this point, I leave it and come back when I
feel I am equipped to complete it. And by length of
abandonment, I mean anywhere from a week to even a
year. There are three poems I have left up in the air
for a year each and then returned in another year to
complete them. Some people say how can this be done
when the writer loses her continuity of thought or
original intent over a prolonged absence from the text.
I feel the poet can bring new perspective and insight
especially if he or she has been away from the
troublesome verse for awhile. A break always gives
the mind a chance to rest and re-invests its frame of
reference with new energy and stimuli. Those traits
can help to re-shape a half-finished poem and perhaps,
lead it in a stronger direction.

(6) Always trust your gut instincts and imagination. I
have learned to be myself and trust what sounds right
to me. After all who knows my own self or thought
process better than I do.

I am sorry if this sounds too didactic but I tend to
define my methods in list form. And yet, I must say
have no perfect or set formula for writing a poem. I
mostly follow an idea and develop it into a storyline
or an observation.

I always try to keep my details and images unified. If I start with sea
imagery, I stay within that context. If I use a bird, fire or water as my
main source of meaning, my images and actions feed of that idea. I also
love history and often find creative inspiration in the situations and
challenges of people who faced great adversity or achieved something of
worth in the past. It's hard to define how I write but I work at it with
perseverance and imaginative diversity.

Below are two links that describe my poetic working habits better. The first
is an in...

----

Well, for now I have rambled on far too long. Again,
Kevin, thank you so much for all your enthusiasm and
kindness. I deeply appreciate it. I hope I have
answered your question about my writing habits to a
satisfactory degree. You know it's difficult for
writers, artists or even musicians I think to define
their own work and the impact it has. At least, it's
difficult for me and I probably should not speak for
anyone else.

I do have to run but hope this has helped you
understand my technique as a writer and my approach to
poetry. And I agree, Baraka is stunning. His work is
intense and powerful. I came across him in graduate
school and found his work riveting and unique. I
enjoyed reading that link to the interview. Thanks for
sharing it.

Best regards

Wendy

~

this is a link to two of her poems

a mice slate ard ri: literary dogging and BB

Hacks being appalled at the Taste their rivals display, was de rigeur online last week, and guardian books bloke editor...brave chief literary dogger Claire Armistead, a deluded mother of two, gave a heartfelt plea and plammy dressing down to all the anonymous ppl who say appalling things, trying to convince this misty fictional bunch paranoia creates, to change their ways, and stop saying stuff they

...know in their heart of hearts they shouldn't"


her neo communist convictions and brave handling of a persecution complex, affiliating in plastic tenors with -- what used to be called -- the working Class: and this is the dizzy moo'er and intellectual demonstrating her tragically genuine proofs of not being the brightest; not like yah..like if

"you're a number on a Home Office deportation list it isn't. Not if you're waiting to be allocated a council house." like me yah, or rather, my cleaner who i am basing my next volume of poems around, speaking, if not her voice, using the experience of being privileged enough to have Magztanyah working for me...and when i say working, that makes it sound as if i am a typical lower to mid middle Class, status, pecking order, rep, slot and Honour, award, prize, Judge obsessed grader of others not *we* Royal wannabes more than creative writer, and mother expectant of bauble, cbe, and oh, not having any real exciting mental activity going on in my own head, go for the second hand approach, of speaking up on behalf of the oppressed people, for you my Public audience.


Before i started working on the blokes bog, in sacred pooh HQ, for the GU lagtic federation of untalented fabstazi broods of foaming vixens, who speak up on behalf of they who need humanitarian and civilising verbal assistance in order to make me feel good about myself -- in the absence of real Intellectual fireworks and any long term Poetic critical construction, framework on, from and within which a writer can pontificate, appalled at the Taste of others...


...recently Armistead revealed she targeted an anonymous writer who contributed to an in house (failed) publication on the hell of being a mum to teenagers, by checking what info she had against maps of and narrowing down the mother of nightmare teens the Guardian love to fpcus on so the leader writers can strike the fuax marxist pose in print, detach for a day of ranting the world to rights...and the literary editor armistead, set about trying to physically locate her, wanting only to speak to this total stranger (who it turned out had made up her diary, sensationalised her account) face to face...which in another context, fellow doggers at the lamp post, can contextualise, as stalking -- appallingly tacky and seemingly ignorant of all irony her Taste displays --- and with no fundamental grasp of reality, this trash lit bore's never gonna staple on...i fear.


Read yah, her type of finkin, their commentator's truth, adepts in a Higher intellectual Artistic stazi of disgruntled rich idlers,

"..you know, it is all very well and good ranting, on what one perceives as injustices -- in the case of this lightweight thinker's immensely convoluted metaphors reliant on ephemeral knowledge of fleeting pointless fellow colleague-ranters' names, pointless fellow shoe ins on the bb, from common room to idle dogging on the blogg, as part of a brave new deluded class of pretend Intellectuals, who are only truly interesting, when not competing in the good aul jolly dogging.



Shirley Dent, Toynbee, Fiona Looney, Carol Malone, Anne Robinson, Hell Clinton, all Woman i do not need to read to know, are overpaid gobs spouting negative bollix, and after yrs of daily practice telling their silent void what is good for it, the polly Public which exists in one hack head alone, and prior to the net, not a voice of reason, but a singular human being, with an opinion on everything, often vicious, like the two H's younger and elder, both horrid, whingey gits, what do they do? are they fortune tellers, what's their track record as a prophet?



Public, thats Us ppl, each Unique and the gift of the net, one can learn in a way unique and in which one need not sacrifice the s/he principle, that We are all single Minds, alone and it is Hope which leads to optimism, which leads to confidence, which leads to belief, freedom democracy, all the Good civilisation...


...but ranting away as this, is a self fulfilling prophecy. If a writer only ever moans in print, after a few yrs, well, peter hitch, any number of vicious vixens, the Malones, the horrid totally bad natured cackler in the irish (yah) daily Mail whose mugshot alone tells us she revels in being a vicious, trully disgruntled professional Mum, dogging trash lit Opinion, bunches of ppl who all have good jobs that pay very well and take expensive jaunts, travel around the place in nice motors, and moan about everything in their life..


i live in a bedsit and am very very happy, on state bens, and i do not moan with the bile and bitterness these broomstick users hagging in print do...it's dead easy, write unhappy, stay unhappy, write happy, get happier until you are so far above the whiner/s one can but dance in comedic light and Human warmth, the quality s/he can aim for, as equal as s/he can go for the absence of it, fifty fifty, our Will controls what appears in print and if it is always about how Bad the world is coz some middle aged looks obsessed dreary Woman as professional construct


s/he trapped in female flesh, rants how some millionaire younger rival in the physical appearance dept, should be gassed and tortured for setting the wrong example to the bitter old bags parish of *young* ppl, as if s/he the Looney, Fiona doing all but showing her nickers and stripping off in rage, is the worlds foremost expert on everything from celebrity shopping and regular first class travel and holidaying advice, to going totally green in that particular kind of hack way, which says, do as i say, not as i do, as i am more humanly Important than ooh yah you, graded intellectually by an overpaid droning blokey pro career Woman in psychic drag...

utter trolls,

gra agus Pax dans siochainn