I don’t think there was any immediate catalyst for this stanza, as far as date or event were concerned. In the UK, as elsewhere, there just seemed to be so few redeeming features, no 5th cavalry rescue , no clearing of the mist, no light of sanity breaking through. The thought that we make a world that reflects the chaos of our own natures is neither new nor original.
Yet whatever dreadful things we do and make, the plain and simple bliss of being still waits in ambush.
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This piece returns to a preoccupation of my own, concerning language. What is the point of writing, the point of taking a position and then articulating it ?
And of course that leads to the question, why keep writing these stanzas, these mere words amid all the bizarre and frantic and disastrous political action going on all round us, mere words among so many words, but so many false words. Will anyone stop for long enough to read these words of comment and protest, in rhyme? Why would they ? Might the poems even play a part, in the public forum, on behalf of sanity ? Why will they not ?
Again : if words in our time have become truth-free, just tools and weapons for self-interest and self-worship, if – in other words – words can be empty or mean anything, a worthless currency, just another way for sinners to prosper, what’s the point of turning to them ?
In writing the stanza, I found myself remembering the appalling public death of Muath Safi Yousef al-Kasasbeh, the young Jordanian air-force pilot first captured and then publically burned to death by Isil or Isis, in January 2015, for propaganda effect, providing us with one of the more appalling images of our era. What words are sufficient for that act, that purpose, that caged human dolor ?
Yousef is an Arabic form, in Latin script, of the English name Joseph. Joseph is the name of my eldest son. All my sons are half-Greek. That young man, burnt to death in a cage, could have been anyone’s son, of whatever race.
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About three months ago, I organised an exhibition of poem-posters in Clifton Cathedral. This is a bold and wonderful Roman Catholic building in Bristol, designed and built in the 1960’s and 70’s. The exhibition took place on a balcony there, built above the font and overlooking the altar.
As soon as I am able, I shall upload a set of photographs. Thank you to Alan Thunhurst for the vast majority. He took and processed them without charging.. Thank you as well to Canon Bosco, the cathedral dean, for supporting the whole thing and for suggesting the balcony as its venue.
The material used for the exhibition came from the “Poems for…the wall” project which I run. There were two main themes. The first was diversity in terms of difference of mother-tongue and ethnicity. Rogues use those differences to encourage division and to poison communities. Reality suggests that – on the contrary – our differences are our greatest strength and perhaps our only hope. People of every origin and culture meet in peace under the cathedral’s vast roof and common vision. Most of the poems on view were accordingly bilingual.
The second main theme was mental disturbance.
For the purposes of the exhibition, a number of the poems were enlarged, some to A0 size. The poems and their setting suited each other very well and, in my opinion, added to the statement both are making.
Here is a brief report I wrote on it.
And here is a set of photographs of the exhibition, set out in Google Photos
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Self-evidently, these are times of national crisis from which only the best of governments can rescue us. We do not have the best of governments and one still worse is coming. So it matters that Tom Watson cuts a rather lone figure in the Labour Party just now. What he stands for, I believe, is decency and Labour’s true values. So why the in-fighting, why is he apparently so isolated ? The context, of course, is Labour’s anti-semitism scandal, the recent Panorama programme which explored it and – following the programme – the Party’s contemptible attacks upon the “whistle-blowers” who did their duty in talking to the journalists concerned..
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It continues to look certain that our new Prime Minister will be a toad. In saying that, I am thinking partly of Mr Toad of “Wind in the Willows.” I am also mindful that the UK ambassador in Washington, Mr Kim Darroch, has just resigned, due to being betrayed by some colleague, and to the fact that, afterwards, when Mr Trump expressed displeasure with Mr Darroch, Mr Johnson acted immediately as a Trump toady.
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The 2019 Glastonbury music festival is now behind us. The parrot attended, at least in spirit. Then he came home and read this article in The Independent. https://www.independent.co.uk/…/brexit-jeremy-corbyn-len-mc… It suggests that, out here in the present-day world, what goes on in dear old Len Mcluskey”s tent/castle/head-harbour-of-the-past seemed to be having an immoderate affect upon Corbyn’s position and actions over Brexit, and hence on the present and future of very many people, above all the nation’s young.
Wallace Stevens is an American poet. Years ago, I read his long poem “The Man with the Blue Guitar.” It keeps returning to the phrase “things as they are” and the phrase has stayed with me ever since. The Facts of the Matter. How It Is as opposed to how I dream or want or lie it to be. The Truth. Reality. Creation. Things as they Are.
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In the press, the same phrases have kept coming up in relation to Jeremy Corbyn’s failure to take a clear position, or offer any real leadership, on Brexit. Almost on a weekly basis, there has been “new pressure” on him from one or another of his various supporter groupings, to “come off the fence.” “Crunch meetings” have kept being arranged, but they resolve nothing and all that results is a change of adjective : “crunch” became “tense.” The day before this stanza was written, another such meeting took place. Same old result. Personally, I see no real “fence” for Jez to sit on, whatever the rationalisations. I just see his gross and unforgivable inadequacy.
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When I wrote this, Boris Johnson was entertaining the nation with the question of when a certain photograph was taken. It claimed to show that the nation’s prospective Prime Minister had now made up with his girl-friend after their row. It was therefore safe to vote for him. He was accused of lying (again). The photograph had almost certainly been taken before the row took place. And people were wondering when would he ever answer the questions interviewers put of him ? In other words, when would he ever tell the truth ? And still it looked as if he was certain to be the next Prime Minister of the UK. But would he be that much worse than either of the two alternatives, the one beside him to the right, or the one opposite to the left ?
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