In all our sanctuaries we sit at risk
  • Poems for Public Display

    I never stop yearning for good poetry to reach past its traditional catchment areas – those shelves in the bookshop marked “Poetry,” the university literature department, the dedicated arts festival, the shy, solitary and possibly eccentric brain – and find a valid place for itself in the public square, the waiting room where we all have to sit at some point and take stock, the moment of true contact in a furious crowd, in these perpetually tumultuous times.

    But do I really mean that ? Would I be content if it really happened ? If life itself became a kind of permanent arts festival ? Is that what I mean ?

    I suspect I have made an image of the whole business. I think what I really mean is that there should be more truth about the place, more emotional honesty, more honesty and goodness and fullness of word, more wholeness of being. And how could anyone disagree with that ?

    And, rightly or wrongly, I see poetry as offering those things.

    I yearn for language to cease being just a sales technique, a cloaking mechanism, a means of control, a contrivance in the service of Me and Mine and the Lie ; to cease being used as an abuse and avoidance of the Truth when we need it to be a passage to, and serving of, the Truth ; to cease being used as a tool to work on people, when it is there for us as a reaching out to our neighbours, open-handed.

    But can poetry really supply all this healing Good ? Certainly not of itself. If you put a few words together and call that a “poem,” does it automatically become some kind of benevolent or even therapeutic magic spell ?

    Of course not. But the fact is that, from time to time, I do meet words that ring in my mind and spirit, by virtue of some kind of truth I recognise in them, and/or they recognise in me, and there is some kind of music about them which seems part of their truth, as if in and through their truth, they have found a music which author and I can both dance to.

    And then there’s a funeral and it’s clear that the person who has died was sincerely loved by those who attend. For there is wordless grief running through and hanging over everyone. And a need for adequate words. And the adequate poet is called on at that point, speaking from the same love. And the poet, from that place of genuineness of feeling, offers the words that are needed and can be shared by the community, giving due honour to the departed, to the angel and mystery of death and to the grief of those who remain. And suddenly the poet and the poet’s words have become essential, ministering to the needs of the moment, everyone’s need.

    Therefore, adequate, good-enough poetry can sometimes be an answer to a simple and essential human need, and is not merely some rarified extra, or ego performance. (And surely not to be wheeled out only in times of loss ?)

    A few months ago, I curated an exhibition of some poems from this project I run called “Poems for…the wall.”  The exhibition was held in Clifton Cathedral, a major Roman Catholic church designed and constructed in the late 1960’s and early 70’s in the architectural style of that time, sometimes called “brutalist.” I find it a remarkable building, an aid in itself to reverence and wonder, and in my opinion the poems looked lovely there.

    In fact, you might almost say that they found their true tongues there. The “brutalist” aspect of the building creates shapes and surroundings of a sort of raw essentialness. And in a way I cannot explain, the wood grain inscribed into the concrete surfaces as they dried, adds to the essentialness – a delicacy married to the massive, an organic complexity bound into the constructed simple.

    And in that setting, the poetry gave of its richness of language in a way that I don’t think I have ever experienced before. On seeing the exhibition for the first time, someone exclaimed that it was like seeing a present-day Book of Psalms open and revealed here, in a concerted cry of the nations.

    Some good photographs were taken of the exhibition, but it has taken me several months since then to find a way to project them adequately online. Now at last I have and, thanks to Google Photos, here is the link.

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  • A New Tale of Two Cities

    This is a fable. I wrote it some time ago but it still feels apt, perhaps more than ever.

     It comes from a set of essays called “Fables and Reflections.” For the full set, see the link in the right hand margin of this page. Under the heading “Poems and Prose Online or on Film”, it’s the 11th link on the list.

    This particular fable comparing two cities features a character called Jason. Jason became more prominent as the Fables accumulated. To a degree, he  became their source, their teller.

    In his never-ending search for the golden fleece, Jason featured as a kind of between-person. He belonged in the real world, but found no footing in it, either here nor there. So where ?  He slipped between frontiers, between garden fences (like a fox), between lines.

    The fable starts, inevitably, with a famous quote from WB Yeats :

    “The best lack all conviction, while the worst /Are full of passionate intensity.”

    Jason unnamed, Jason dis-mantled, lost in his time, having no place, climbed up on a rock and spoke to an Agora long deserted. Only green lizards and goldfinches heard him. He said this:

    Let us imagine Place A.

    Place A is made of illusion. Consequently it is strongly built. The walls are thick and tall. The roads are straight and tidy. The position is high up at the top of an isolated hill and consequently easily defended with its powerful weapons of illusion. The inhabitants of Place A feel sure of their security there. It is well governed (tidy streets) and it is safe (thick walls etc.). There are few taxes to pay. There are large luxurious shops where the fancy can be fed and tickled all day long. It is a good and comfortable place to live, a firm base, a safe harbour. Its only drawback is its untruth.

    Let us imagine Place B.

    Place B is made of fact and reality. Consequently its position is disastrously exposed to attack from all directions at all times and its inhabitants are constantly rushing to defend the walls. The walls are badly built due to weak management and constant argument. The weapons at the people’s disposal are thin reeds and badly written tracts printed on recycled paper. Place B is appallingly led, with dispute, cowardice, and hesitation the predominant features of its government. Morale in Place B is so low that the hospital doctors report dramatic increases in illness both physical and mental; and the police report equally dramatic increases in crime levels. There is a constant dribble of deserters to Place A. To live in Place B is like living on a raft in heavy seas.

    Let us imagine a great crisis threatens the planet upon which both places are situated – Planet AZ. Huge fissures have begun opening up all over the surface. It transpires that the mining required to build the walls of Place A have done real and irreparable damage to the planet’s inner structures.

    Furthermore, a plague of insects has been reported streaming towards the two cities and it has been established that the insects are a new race that has bred and multiplied on the artificial fertilisers used to feed Place A’s population and the insect horde has now exhausted its local food supplies.

    Furthermore war has broken out both on the planet and in outer space and the war has been caused by the extremes of poverty experienced by peoples far away who have been grossly exploited to keep the inhabitants of Place A in the manner to which they are accustomed. Various peoples are involved, the carnage is appalling and the weapons being used (sold to them by Place A) threaten the whole planet.

    Clearly, solutions have to be found in this emergency. New answers are needed. Old patterns have to be changed. A leadership must operate which inspires the noblest possible response from the inhabitants of the two cities and is able to focus and contain that response to the maximum possible effect. For, clearly, the best human skills have to be applied, new and unprecedented levels of co-operation, the wisest possible application of knowledge, understanding, strength and organisation.

    From which city would we expect that leadership, that level of response, chiefly to come? The firm but illusory base of Place A? Or the insecure but truth-facing raft of Place B ?

    My answer has always been that the solutions needed must inevitably come from the exposed position of fact and reality. Despite the chaos there, Place B contains people whom experience has trained to live skillfully with truth and insecurity without deserting to Place A. There is nowhere to build except upon fact and there are no builders you can trust except those skilled and practiced in handling and addressing fact with familiar affection and without anxiety . Therefore, the skills and experience upon which the planet’s future depends must reside in Place B.

    Afterword

    But nowadays, said Jason, I am in doubt of my initial conclusion. For is not the exposure to reality experienced by the people of Place B so debilitating that just existing there saps all available energy ? Perhaps just keeping your balance on the raft takes up all available hope and skill. For instance, it seems that the word “intuition” which for me describes an experience of fact, is used quite easily nowadays in the world of  science, which I fear I still tend to associate with Place A. On the other hand that word can no longer be used at all in the world of social work and social care, which I still – despite everything – associate with Place B. The reason that “intuition” has become taboo in social work and similar activities is that it does not seem “scientific” enough and cannot be measured “scientifically”.

    Perhaps, after all, it is people used to the comfort, security and illusory self-belief of Place A who will come up with the answers. It will be answers already known in Place B, but not propounded or practiced effectively there, due to the habitual confusion, timidity and exhaustion that runs through the place like the very cement with which it was built.

    Small children range far from a secure home, precisely because of its security. The more secure the base, so the more adventurous you feel you can be, and the further out you feel you can go, and the more solid and settled in yourself you feel. Remember to whom Shakespeare handed the crown of the future, after the death of old Lear : not to a prince from the facile new world, the new mentalities of the Renaissance, but to Edgar, a prince from Lear’s old tired and corrupt mediaeval world, a prince now purged and scoured by Lear’s own experience of purgatory on the heath, a man still based in the old solidities but made whole from them and renewed out of them. Only the broken can become whole.

    Perhaps, after all, the teachers, the leaders, the discoveries, the changes, the solutions, will come from the false but strong and firmly established position of Place A. Initially adventurous due to its security, initially strong due to its strength, they will survive and be made whole by the scouring, the mortification, the transformation that is now required of them in order to emerge in the doorway and lead us clear of our disasters.

    A lizard ran over Jason’s foot. A goldfinch twittered, sweetly as ever.

     

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  • Parrot’s in his Tower – and That’s All, Folks

    This stanza was written on the day after Mr Johnson’s election victory on December 12th, 2019. It will be the last stanza of “Parrot Addenda,” rounding off this series of 164 stanzas. It does not mean the Brexit story is over, of course. There’s plenty more to come. It just means that the situation is suddenly very different. The tension and doubts and possibilities that have existed since the 2016 referendum and Cameron’s resignation, are no longer present. And this Parrot’s way of telling the story has nothing more to add.

    I believe that, amongst much else, the story so far has been a win and reward for the Lie of which, of course, Johnson is a shameless, constant and largely unpunished practitioner. His election victory rewards him for his lies and is a portrait of this nation’s disarray and perhaps its despair.  The Lie is theft. It steals our language from us, it replaces clean air with foul. We are reliant on words to connect us to the truth and to the truth of each other. The Lie now running riot, led from Number Ten Downing Street, therefore spells ruin for our community.and for our democracy as presently configured and constituted.

    And it leaves the parrot with nothing further to say, no medium of truth to say it in. And he has been tiring of late, flying above the flood. There is no point flying on and on, even if it were possible.

    The tower he has found is the Tyndale Monument, an inspiration and sentry post for English honour and clean speaking, overlooking the Severn Estuary. At the top of it is a kind of cage.

    The parrot will feel at home there, and in the best of company, but always on high alert for a time when words come clean again. 

    Image result for tyndale monument

     

     

     

     

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  • The Casting of the Parrot’s Vote

    And this piece was written on election night, a second night of pause and waiting, with the chill moon again prominent and beautiful overhead.

    We walked home after casting our votes, our act tiny power, our tiny power of action. We had done what we could, and put our very sceptical crosses against the name of a decent man attached to a party that had already lost its way before choosing a grossly inadequate leader.

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  • The Parrot Looks Up at the Moon

    I wrote this stanza the night before the UK General Election on December 12th. In my part of the country, the moon was very clear that cold December night, and had been for several nights. If not full, then very nearly so.

    The electorate had a profoundly disheartening choice and a victory for the Progressives, or at least a position sufficient to restrain the fanatic Far Right and practitioners of the Lie, would still have been accompanied by a strong sense of trepidation.

    But still I found myself that night, under the moon, with a sneaking hope that somehow sanity would cobble something together, something reflective of the nation’s predicament and fine balance ; the election might even come up with something unexpected, inspirational, gladdening… 

    And there was the Toad, intent on serenading the Leaver half of the country. Here comes the sun, get it done, get it done. And all the time, his back was turned to the nation’s other half. Would that pay off ?

     

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  • UK Election – Parrot Prognosis

    Thinking of the election due later this coming week, and of the likeliest result, I fear for the parrot. “He speaks all languages aptly,” wrote Skelton, implying that the parrot hears everything and can keep nothing out. So what will be swirling about in his brain by Friday morning ?

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  • The Toad Negotiates with the Underworld

    This week Mr Trump (“the American Minotaur”) was in the UK for a meeting of NATO leaders. Then he got the hump because people were laughing at him and he left early.

    Not long ago, Mr Johnson (“The Toad”) did a Putin with a bull. See picture above. Perhaps he was rehearsing for his upcoming chat with Mr Trump (the Minotaur).

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  • The Parrot Seeks Respite from the Flood

    Last week “Prime Minister” Johnson tried to take political advantage of the terrorist attack in London. This despite the appeals of the father of one of the victims, expressly not to do so. But how could Mr Johnson resist ? He’d lose one vote, no doubt, but might well have gained rather more than one. It’s just a matter of weighing the numbers. A no brainer for a Toad. So he said it was Labour who were responsible for those deaths. 

    What further depths do we have to sink to ?

    In the meantime, the Parrot, Bird of Paradise, uncaged and homeless and close to exhaustion, looks for an ark for respite or as staging post, as the Flood continues to cover the Earth.

    We seem to have strayed into the Old Testament. Or has the Old Testament suddenly been translated into our present darkness ? 

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