In all our sanctuaries we sit at risk

  • In Search of Good Faith

    I have been carrying a little string of thoughts in my head for several weeks. They make a point I haven’t seen being made elsewhere and which might be worth adding to the mix. Maybe it would be of interest to someone passing, even throw some further light, however dim and peripheral, on what’s happening around us, or at least offer a perspective on it.

    But aside from my desire to add my own tiny drop to the daily word-lake, I knew that writing the thoughts down would simply relieve me of my own silence. Staying silent feels too much like being rendered silent and somehow adds to the tension and grief of difficult times. You feel more of a victim if you’re not talking. Talking brings your own unique creativity into the picture, your own small but fervent being out into the avalanche of things. It may be delusional, yet it seems truly the case that “having your say” is good for the health. It helps to have a meaningful hearing, as well.

    But I have found it really difficult to get started. To an extent, I’m used to that, of course, or to some version of it. Before take-off, you need a count-down. Before sitting for any exam, you might find yourself listing excuses for not turning up. It’s part of realising what it is you’re about to take on. It’s part of getting ready.

    But my recent difficulty feels different. It’s not that I don’t know what I want to say. There is a clear line of thought which I can see ahead of me and want to explore and which I do seriously think might have some small value, if I can do justice to it.

    So it’s something else, or something more, that’s been causing the blockage. I’ve had a few thoughts about that too and am giving it its own post and title here. Perhaps then, and only then, I’ll be able to apply myself to the first post, the one still waiting for me !

    I think the issue is that the need to make sense of things, and then to put that into words, is a fundamental one, basic to being human, basic to staying more or less afloat through the day. Just to achieve some coherence, however briefly, can improve morale, keep the forces of chaos at bay, the brain buoyant in the flood of present events. Coherent commentary can’t stop the wrong things happening. But it can at least take their measure, find their shape, look them in the eye.  

    But “making sense of things” feels especially hard these days, the struggle for coherence especially daunting. And on top of that, I feel a greater than usual sense of hopelessness. It feels even more difficult than usual just to put sentences together, string an argument across the gulf. It’s like building a tower in a shattered landscape. Is it worth the effort ? Truthfulness, or at least a genuine aspiration to truth-tell, is the only mortar conceivable. But does that mortar still work ? Is anyone still interested in truth ? Actually, at present, speaking in words feels less like building a tower than putting up a little sandcastle with a paper flag on it. The flag says, hey listen, I have something I want to say, something that matters. Then the tide comes in, with a roar. There is no matter, roars the tide. Just force, chaos, unstoppable fury. Nothing matters.

    It is surely a factor that language is an especially damaged currency in our time. The Lie has stolen all the words. The catchy sales slogan or computer-game image has swept reality from the reckoning. What words are still meaningful, uncontaminated by the all-pervasive Lie ? What language is still un-befouled, clean of desecration ? What words still hold good ?

    Here, for example, is the UK Prime Minister, Mr Johnson, on the Nolan Principles of appropriate conduct for public life in our democracy : “The precious principles of public life – integrity, objectivity, accountability, transparency, honesty and leadership in the public interest – must be honoured at all times,” he writes. Or someone wrote for him.

    But the same Mr Johnson who might or might not have written those words never stops lying. His words on the Nolan principles – just another sleek and smirky lie, further befouling and making nonsense of the standards of behaviour the words set out and which, in reality, he treats with contempt or simply ignores. His own immediate gratification in being at the centre of things, soaking up attention, freed from restraint, is Mr Johnson’s only measure of good. It is on public record that he has been sacked twice for lying. I do keep going on about this, I know. But it is a very large elephant in every space occupied by our nation’s elected leader, in every human encounter in which he is engaged, at any level, at any time. It is a mop-haired mammoth, smirking. To have been sacked twice for lying is a remarkable record by any standard, possibly unique in this country and far beyond. In “normal” circumstances, such a record would (and should) make him unemployable. And yet we allow this man of bad faith, this anti-social element, this repudiation of all things honourable, to run the government of our country, in these critical times. And two years on, despite a disgraceful record as leader throughout that time, he is still astonishingly popular. What does that say ? What does it mean ?

    It does all rather take one’s breath away. Short of breath as one is, words are even harder to come by than usual. What is there left to say ?

    But every day, knowledgeable and observant journalists and feature writers keep reaching for words, and often those I read seem good to me, they make sense, and are therefore reassuring in some fashion. It is helpful to hear a sane and honest voice making sense of something, throwing light on a small patch of the darkness and turmoil.

    But, even in those cases, what are the words doing, really ? Are they setting any weather ? Do they do anything more than make the writer and some readers, (the majority of whom are already sympathetic, of course) feel a little better – temporarily, at least ?

    I have used the adjectives “sane” and “honest.” I assume these are attributes that are still valued. I need them to be. But are they, in this era in which Johnson is popular, in which Trump can still retain a rapturous following ? Do “sane” and “honest” represent a position worth defending, worth championing, worth trying to restore ? Is there any lasting value in writing anything at all ?

    There. The question asked, this piece is finished. Perhaps the next piece will come easier, now. I shall write it in good faith, on the assumption that there is still such a thing as good faith, that we can’t do without it and must somehow remain loyal to it and fight for it. I shall write my next piece to the best of my uncertain ability, as truthfully as I can, in the shaky belief that it is worth the attempt.

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  • What Are Words For ?

    So how are we to use this astonishing power we have ? This ability to shape the air into sounds of meaning which then we can share – is it purely and only a survival tool, a way to influence, or sell a line ? Are words just hooks to fish with ? And on from that, does communicating through words all boil down to propaganda, slogan, manipulation, cover-up, disguise, lie ? Are words just for keeping a felon toad in power ?

    Or can they help create and sustain a worthy human community, fit for a future ? I am bound to believe that indeed they can. I know they have to.

    And I have to believe that poetry is a currency of value, that it has a valid part to play in the real world, a world beyond arts festivals and poetry competitions. I know first-hand that it’s healing to write the stuff, especially if I feel I’ve got the words about right. But might it be healing to read it, as well ? Or, if not healing as such, something else of real and significant value, whatever that may be ? But let it be more than just entertainment for a few, or prettification, or diversion, or escape…

    Above all,  let it facilitate, even bring about, real connection between people, not just a matter of smart words read from a pedestal. Empathic connection. Words of integrity that reach out and touch.  An opening up of some sort, in and between people, both writer and reader, but beyond mere personality. Some sort of finding together. Words of community.

    During lock-down, and among – and maybe in response to – some of the feelings associated with that strange time, and with other contemporary events and conditions, I found myself formatting a number of different sets of my own poems, as small booklets to give away.

    Nowadays, these can be produced at home to quite a high standard of design and production, of course. It being possible, might it not also be desirable ? Not only designed and printed at home, but hand sewn together at home, booklet by booklet. And then handed on to some friend and acquaintance, perhaps with reference to a conversation we’ve had, as part of our relationship.

    So I’ve dropped all thoughts of reliance on specialist publishing expertise, or considerations that go with the commercial. Poetry is warm words of living connection. It’s a personal between thing. It belongs in the open hand. So let it travel warmly, hand to hand.

    I have said “hand-sewn.” Sewing the pages and cover together is also a matter of threading a needle. Quite a few times per booklet, as it happens, in my case. I am not a dab hand at it and sometimes I get fed up with it, while neck muscles protest, and it takes too long, and so on.

    And yet here is more imagery that fits and enriches this whole booklet idea. Getting the poem right is in itself a matter of threading words through the eye of a needle. Sadly, the wrong words also get through, and too frequently, but later – at least sometimes – you realise the shortcoming and return and try again. And when at last you are ready to let the poem leave you, it does feel as if the whole item has been carefully sewn together, each of its elements examined and accepted, found worthy and allowed through.

    So for me, “publishing” my poems has become a matter of sewing words together and handing them to people who live in contact – people I know, people I’ve been talking to, people for whom a particular booklet might be relevant, following a topic we’ve just discussed, or a subject one of us has broached or shared. It’s another form of working from home, you might say.

    I have uploading here an A4 version of the latest booklet (booklets don’t really work onscreen). It is an exploration of two items which have changed the world – their obvious differences but also their less obvious similarities. One is the face-mask which we have now lived with for so many months, but which one day we might be able to do without. The other is the digital screen, primarily that of the mobile phone. This of course has been around for longer and is less likely to go away. On the contrary, it will be accompanying and shaping our children’s lives in ways still hard for older people to imagine.

    The poems were written over the last six weeks or so.  

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  • UK ’21 – Resumé from the Cage

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  • The Death of an Old Man

    Yesterday, a grand and often very beautiful funeral was held, following the death of a likeable, shrewd and vivid man.

    It is of course hard to separate the image we are given of Prince Philip, or ourselves put onto him, from the man he actually was.

    He surely had a similar problem, himself. Who was he, apart from his public role, and the image the public projected onto him ? Who was he allowed to be ?

    But there is no confusion over the fact that a man once alive – and for a long time – is now dead. Those shrewd and clear-seeing eyes are seeing nothing now. They are relieved of seeing.

    And he has been alive and featuring on the edges of my life, in public view, under public scrutiny, in some way as public property, ever since my early childhood. So his death feels significant. Something of me has gone too.

    I am old enough to have lost people less on the edges of my life than he was. By pure coincidence, a few days ago, I came across some old poems written following the first such death. This was the early nineteen nineties, just before the computer became standard equipment and changed the way everything got written and then stored. So these poems were typewritten on paper and I had stuffed them away in a file somewhere.

    In pulling them out, assessing and uploading (some of) them, I have done some revising. I like these two uploaded here. They are a bit bombastic perhaps, but I quite like that, as well. And today I would just like to dedicate them to the late Prince Philip, who became old unto death in my lifetime, keeping his back straight to the last.

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  • How to Speak in Times of Clamour

    A long time ago, I went away to Greece and spent three months there alone in a hut, facing the rock pictured above. By now, I had lived a youth and much of an adulthood and this was a time for reflection, in case I could make some sense of all that living, never to be repeated or recaptured, all that taking in and giving out.

    Soon I was producing quite a lot in both prose and poetry and it came to a point when it didn’t seem to matter, from one morning to another, which medium I would be writing in that day. I would find out.

    The prose pieces turned out to be a series of essays, a few of them a bit ranty, others more like fables. And that is what in the end I called them : “Fables and Reflections.” I saw them as a sort of collation of learning points, or strategies, or navigation guides for times of flux and tempest. You can find the series in pdf on the right hand side of the Home Page of this blog.

    Is it the best place for them ? Possibly. One of them seems especially relevant just now, and provides its own answer to the question I’ve just asked. Here is a link to it.

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  • Where You Live

    This poem was finished on the day of Joe Biden’s Inauguration, January 20th  2021. It does not have the glitter and panache of Amanda Gorman’s poem recited on that day, but I think it carries a great deal of the relief so many of us will have felt on receiving Biden’s clear signals that sense, sanity and integrity were back at the helm, at least on America’s side of the Atlantic.

    The poem has its origins far from Washington, though, at least geographically. It followed a short conversation I had with a near-neighbour who’s Canadian and remembers a view of the Canadian Rockies clearly important to her at an earlier time of her life. Our conversation took place in England, just outside our respective houses here, but within sight of some low Welsh hills to the west. It was my neighbour who made the connection between those hills we could see and her distant mountains which she saw beyond.

    Joe Biden’s inauguration as President of the United States has enormous significance for all of us, wherever we might live. Just so, truth is our home everywhere.

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  • So where have we got to, so far, in 2021 ?

     

    So where have we got to, so far, in the year 2021 ?  Locked in, locked down, sundered from outer family – again. And everywhere, the virus and its effects, spreading yet further, pressing wider and deeper.  The masked face, still – and ever increasingly – the image of our time. In the US, a few days ago, that enormous nation’s hoodlum head of state, unmasked but covered over in a cloud of orange make-up, lies and self-worship, ordered the storming of democracy and was joyfully obeyed by his natural constituency, supported still by a large number of the Republican party, self-serving and dishonourable. In the UK, we have stumbled into the mad miasma of our Brexit future, covered in our own thick cloud of puerile mop-headed lies (“call me Boris”). History races on, in 2021.

    There is so much to say, so many people saying it, some very well. What’s the point of adding yet more words here ?

    I just need to comment on the phoney debate that has now opened up in America (but it goes on in the UK as well), following the banning – at long last and far too late – of Trump’s use of Twitter. It has been his principle means of spreading lies, malevolent fantasies and incitement to mayhem, unchecked and unrestrained, for the last four years and more.

    So, just a few days before he is due to hand over the presidency, the direct and unmediated connection between Trump and his ardent following has finally been broken. His son and fellow-hoodlums in the Republican Party, still lurking in his slipstream, perk up. They voice “moral” indignation. They reach for the Constitution and seek to wrap and disguise themselves in those grand and ringing old words. The First Amendment. The right to Freedom of Speech. Forget the storming of the Capitol, they cry. What’s the country coming to, if freedom of speech is curtailed in this way ?

    But what is freedom of speech ? What does it mean ? Does it mean licence to say whatever you like, however poisonous ? Licence to lie ? Does it mean licence deliberately to obscure, distort, replace the truth, without any responsibility for the effects and consequences of your masking, your desecration, of the facts ?

    And to go one step further : what is speech itself ? To answer that question adequately cannot be done in brief, even if I were qualified to take it on. But one aspect of the answer seems essential to me and I feel duty-bound to keep pushing it. Speech – the words we say and hear in our meetings and transactions one with another – exists as a currency, just like money, a means of exchange. And inter-action through speech is foundational to all human societies, above all to democratic societies, at least as much as coinage is foundational, maybe even more so. For just as, without a sound coinage, our society would become dysfunctional and tend to break down, so the words we use and share have to be trustworthy, honourable and of true value. I don’t mean we all have to be right at all times. But I do mean we have to be basically honest in service to the truth. Otherwise, social breakdown will follow, as it did in Washington, last week.

    I think this equating of language to coinage, seeing them as currencies equally basic to our wellbeing, is exact, not fanciful, even though money has a tendency to be measured as a quantity, speech more to do with quality.

    Issues of quantity can be easier to measure than those of quality – and also easier to address. But how we address financial misconduct might reveal to us how better to measure, address and repudiate the abuse of our free speech.

    In terms of money, abusive or anti-social behaviour comes under a wide range of titles, each seen as a crime under the law : fraud, forgery, cheating, theft. And Society is clear on how to view and what to do with citizens caught engaging in these abuses. We agree in seeing and punishing them as felons. We have a whole legal system ready to try them in court and, if they are found guilty, to punish them in various established ways.

    And I say without hesitation that for any holder of public office to use his/her position deliberately to mislead the public, through words, for that person’s personal advantage, he or she has committed a crime no less material than any of those cited in the previous paragraph. In fact all those crime definitions are equally applicable in this case. For a politician to lie to people in order falsely to win their support is precisely an act of fraud, and of forgery, and of cheating, and of theft – theft in broad daylight., brazen and unashamed. A sovereign people, or the representatives of that people, cannot make the major and hugely difficult decisions required of them in a complex world unless they are “properly informed.”

    In the UK, the sixth of Lord Nolan’s “Seven Principles of Conduct in Public Life”, says very simply : ”Holders of Public Office should be truthful.”  Mr Johnson, (“call me Boris”) our present Prime Minister, calls those principles “precious” even while he ignores the sixth one on a serial basis.

    Mr Johnson can afford to do so, because the principles are toothless, especially so long as Mr Johnson himself, as Prime minister, is left responsible for their implementation (Mr Johnson is on public record as having been sacked twice in the past for lying – an outrageous record which should debar him from public office of any kind).

    That is why, here in the UK, I support Plaid Cymru and Compassion in Politics in their campaigns to make lying in politics illegal. Mr Johnson cannot be left as final arbiter of ethical political behaviour when Mr Johnson’s only gauge and measure of what is right is his own immediate self-interest, whatever the cost to others.

    And that is why, over there in the USA, Mr Trump has not been deprived of free speech at all. Belatedly, he has been deprived of his power to abuse free speech and his fellow-Americans, stealing from them the truth, brazenly abusing his office and his nation in doing so. Yes, free speech is the sacred right of all of us. But it is a temple vulnerable to desecration. It needs protecting from the likes of Mr Trump and our Mr Johnson and their respective dodgy acolytes. There are in fact too many of the likes of Mr Trump and Mr Johnson prominent in our times. They are low felons. We need to stop voting low felons into power. Too many of us seem to prefer their lies and their self-worship to our reality. We need to cure ourselves of that deadly mistake. And we need to name, shame and penalise these liars.

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  • A Severed Edge

    In the rush and flood of falsity and ill-doing that enter and surround our everyday lives, among all the mis-steps and momentous errors born of that rush and that falsity, I keep returning to certain physical landmarks that at least give the appearance of standing firm and of meaning something worth standing for.

    One such landmark is St Aldhelm’s chapel. It has been standing at the top of a Dorset cliff for almost ten centuries. By definition, it is precarious, yet endures. Its door stays open. It faces south towards France.

    And almost ten years ago, I scattered some of my mother all round it. Her ashes flew up into the wind and out over the sea. She and I both belong there.

    And from time to time, I give poetry readings in the chapel. It’s like reciting in a cave. But you are not just reading to your present small audience in this cave. The place is full of living shadows from the past, full of meanings and memories from all and any time. So poem selection has to be strict. Each has to pass a stern test beforehand. Will it belong in there ? Will it sing in harmony with the song the place is already singing ?

    The last time I read in the chapel, the British nation had already lurched into the nonsense valley-of-the-shadow we call – just as nonsensically – Brexit. And early in the reading, I made reference to that disastrous mis-step and ill-doing on the part of my nation, by reading a poem that spoke as if from the chapel to the continent of which we are part, here so close across a narrow strip of sometimes stormy grey water.

    You can say that, this present week-end, we might be coming towards one of the many nonsense heads of that nonsense valley-of-the-shadow. Or is it tails ? That is why I have uploaded the poem here today, with the picture of the rough and lonely little building in which it was first recited.

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