Even as I age  and wrinkle, I seem to be growing a poet’s shadow.  This blind companion, still strange to me, yet lifelong, has even begun to lead me about.  The development is partly of my own making , of course, or at least of my assenting, since it is absolutely necessary for my health, but in this slow, slow process of coming out, come what may, I am also receiving forceful help from real friends.

One is Steve Wasserman. He is recording my poems and putting them up on YouTube.  Below, you can hear the first two recordings :

Another friend is Mevlut Ceylan, poet, now Director of the Yunus Emre Turkish Cultural Centre in London. He has overseen the publication of a book of poems of mine called “Riding the Hyphen” (between I and Thou). An online version of the book has already been posted on this blog (“Here is a Book”)  and here again is the link to it.

The book itself is selling at £10.00 an issue. Email me if you want to buy one (see my address over to the right of the site)

Alternatively, come to a poetry reading at the Yunus Emre Turkish Cultural Centre in London, tonight,  Thursday October 18th, starting with snack food at 6.30 pm. The address is 10 Maple Street, London NW1T 5HA. It is off Tottenham Court Road, towards the northern end. Nearest tube, Warren Street.

I am sharing the platform with a good Turkish poet called Bejan Matur. I shall be reading my long poem “Travels of the The Last Emperor,” some of which Steve has already recorded (see above). I am supplying a typed copy of the whole thing here. If you come to the event, why not bring it with you ? You could be reading it as I recite it,  seeing the words at the same time as hearing them .

Some copies of “Riding the Hyphen” will be available for sale that evening. The Emperor is not included in it. He evaded that particular cast of the net. “Riding the Hyphen” is in three sections and all three are about crossing fraught human frontiers. If I could, I would give out copies of the book to all and anyone involved in seeking to help people through the medium of relationship, through making honest connection. The task of making and keeping real human connection is a difficult one, perhaps the hardest human task of all,  and warrants all our support, for our survival’s sake.

 

 

 

 

I am  adding Fable Four here to the pieces uploaded in previous posts (see below). Called “The Salesman who Set Up for Himself,” the Fable tells of one way of sustaining creativity in adverse conditions.

Fable Four belongs in a series called “Fables and Reflections” which consists of sixteen pieces in all.

Each piece takes just a few minutes to read. I am uploading them one at a time, every three weeks or so. The idea behind this approach is that people running all day just to keep up, are more likely to read them in short doses and at intervals.

But for those who prefer them all at once, here is a link to the sixteen together.

The series is a set of essays written after a working life spent supporting people with mental health problems. It thus records the learning gained from years spent one of Society’s many fault-lines dividing Balance from Imbalance, Have from Have-not, Them from Us, I from Other. In a sense you can say that, in exploring the constituents of community here, and at this time of strain and fragmentation, materialism and desperate zealotry,  the series asks and discusses what are the timelessly binding and redemptive skills of truthful human connection, the skills of love.

If anyone finds value or virtue in these Fables and Reflections, please send word of them to people you know who you think might want to read them. You could simply pass on this blog address, or, alternatively,  I am happy to e-mail them individually as attachments to people who would find that easier. I am already doing that for some people.  I would also be happy to send hard copy versions by surface mail.  If that is your preference, just send me your address.

Here is the online version of “Riding the Hyphen,” a book of some of my poems. It comes free of charge. The hard copy version costs £10.  To order one, email me.

Now for some background, beginning with a definition of the verb “to publish” :  simply to bring forth and scatter about.

For, even now, it is easily forgotten that publishing does not necessarily mean “book.” That association came about in the  late Middle Ages, when printing was invented and, these days, books  may be old hat. Certainly, they do not put out words and scatter them about as widely as could be. Words uploaded in cyber-space can reach far wider. In audio form, maybe wider yet.

So when my friend, the poet Mevlut Ceylan, recently offered to have a book of my poetry published in hard copy, why was I so excited ?

I have no convincing answer to that. But I love what Mevlut and I have now made, and with such extraordinary speed.  Half way through August, Mevlut flew to Turkey, where he was born and which he often visits. On this occasion, a pdf attachment had preceded him just a couple of days earlier, travelling at rather greater speed through cyberspace. Now, before the end of the month, Mevlut is back in London again, having returned with fifty copies of my book in his hand luggage, still wet from the printers,  freight of friendship. The book looks beautiful.

“Riding the Hyphen” seeks to throw connecting light upon three areas of human  life often feared and stigmatised by “mainstream” society. Everyone suffers as a result of this social denial and disconnection, the stigmatisers no less than the stigmatised.  The fraught frontier dividing I and Thou can at any time be opened and neutralised by means of a hyphen,  precarious and fragile. But how to keep your footing there, your balance ?

Soon, I hope to publish audio versions of all the poems which feature in “Riding the Hyphen.”

Here is the book’s  Preface  :

“Riding the Hyphen” is made up of three poem sequences, each written at very different times.

The first, called “Line Drawings,”  is a collection of portraits of people with long-standing mental health problems, whom I knew and worked with in my years as manager of a mental health community centre. In effect they are songs of loss and praise, not just of individuals, but of the connection between us which persisted through years.

The second sequence, called “A Light Summer Dying,” records the death from cancer of a young woman who lived round the corner. The story is non-fictional and much of it was written almost as a set of diary entries, just hours after the events being described. The woman concerned knew I was writing and in a sense she had commissioned this work as a record to help her two young sons remember and acknowledge her, after she herself was dead and their own memories of her began to fade.

The third sequence, “The Going,”  records the slow severance of the connection between my mother and me, due to her Alzheimer’s.  As increasing numbers of people know,  the death of someone who no longer recognises you, actually brings that person back to you in some ways, putting the present distortion between you more into the background, just the last few brush-strokes of  a much fuller picture. The series records an attempt on my part to stay imaginatively in touch with the person behind my mother’s eyes, until the point is reached when I can only observe her from the outside. The ability to use language is seen as central to staying human.

All these poems are in effect about lines, lines of division and connection, of frontier and hyphen.  In addressing subjects still largely blocked and cut off by fear and stigma, they reach for wholeness.

Rogan Wolf  
                                    August 2012

 

This is the third installment of “Fables and Reflections”

Fable Three is called “Opening to the Stranger.” It explores our relationship with the unfamiliar or unusual, with whatever seems new or strange.

The first and second installments (see earlier posts below) provided links to an Introduction, Fable One, Fable Two and Anchorite poems.

Each piece takes just a few minutes to read. There are 16  Fables in all and I shall post them here every three weeks or so. The  series is, in effect, a report back from a working life spent at a fraught frontier, one of Society’s fault-lines. They share learning and seek to offer guidance on how to survive and navigate and make real and creative human connection across division, shadow and frontier.

If anyone finds value or virtue in these Fables and Reflections, please send word of them to people you know who you think might want to read them. You could simply link them to the blog, or, alternatively,  I am happy to send them out as email attachments to people who ask for them, and am already doing that.  I would also be happy to send hard copy versions by surface mail to anyone who would prefer to read the pieces that way.  Just send me your address.

This is the second installment of “Fables and Reflections”

It consists of Fable Two and Anchorite poems.

The first installment (below) provided links to an Introduction and Fable One.

Each piece takes just a few minutes to read. There are 16  in all and I shall post them here every three weeks or so. The  series is, in effect, a report back from a working life spent at a fraught frontier, one of Society’s fault-lines. They share learning and seek to offer guidance on how to survive and navigate and make real and beneficial human connection, where connection can be difficult.

Fable Two, “Dame Marjorie’s Dream,” suggests ways you can tell truth from falsehood, the healing from the harmful. In the process it tells a story about  Dame Julian of Norwich, an anchoress of the fourteenth century. That is why I have added the set of poems, in case anyone would like to read them. Called “Anchorite Poems”, I think they are really about old age. And though suggested by Dame Julian and her time,  I think they were actually inspired the late Elizabeth Bewick, whom I knew and loved.

Elizabeth Bewick was a published poet who lived in Hyde, on the edge of Winchester.  While being typically English in some ways, she was also very much her own person, transcending cultural influence ; she was a shrewd and even rather intimidating loner, while being at the same time a kindly and active member of her local quiet community, surrounded by old walls of fervent, anxious, yet settled faith.  On her 90th birthday, in the local church hall, on a beautiful day, I named her Dame Elizabeth of Hyde.

If anyone finds value or virtue in these Fables and Reflections, please send word of them to people you know who you think might want to read them. You could simply link them to the blog, or, alternatively,  I am happy to send them out as email attachments to people who ask for them, and am already doing that.  I would also be happy to send hard copy versions by surface mail to anyone who would prefer to read the pieces that way.  Just send me your address.

I am uploading with this post the first installment of  “Fables and Reflections,” a collection of short prose pieces which I wrote over a period of around three months in Greece.  Future uploads will consist of just one Fable each. But this first post has two attachments, first the collection’s Introduction and second Fable One. Click on the link words. Exclusive of the Introduction, there will be sixteen fables in all.

As a series, “Fables and Reflections” varies in approach. Some of the pieces are essentially metaphor, allegory, parable, fable ; others are written more directly as discussion papers. They explore, among other things, the place and meaning of social responsibility and social inclusion, and the  skills required to make  and keep healing human connection,   in a Society otherwise much engaged in transition-fever, aggressive fundamentalism, material acquisiton, denial.

I believe this collection of pieces is relevant,  especially to people working/struggling along frontiers within Society where the need to connect, and to have skill in doing so, are especially important.

For various reasons my “publication” strategy will be to put up the fables here one at a time  and later perhaps on the site of a small charity I run called “Hyphen-21”. They’ll go up fortnightly.  At the same time I shall send them out as email attachments to people who have said beforehand they’d be interested. If anyone would prefer to have them sent in hard copy by surface mail, I would be willing to do that too. Just contact me and give me your address.

The Fables vary in length, but I would say on average that each takes approximately ten minutes to read. If you have them in hard copy, you could read each one over a cup of tea, a half pint, a glass of wine, whatever you fancy.

Fable 1, “The Door which Strangely Opens,” offers some thoughts on endurance and right action.

If you think that “Fables and Reflections” has any merit or value, please pass  the collection on, or recommend this site,  to anyone else you think might be interested.

Best wishes

Rogan Wolf

Someone I knew well died this Spring. Her death (from breast cancer) came twenty years after she was first diagnosed. But almost until the end, she refused to accept that death was pending. In her bed at home, she acknowledged the truth only a few hours before she stopped breathing, thereby making honest communication with her loved ones only briefly possible.

Until those final hours, she had believed that acknowledging the fact that the disease was a mortal one might in itself kill her. She felt that anyone who talked to her about death was introducing negativity into her system,  threatening her life, weakening her hope. Words which acknowledged the disease seemed almost more dangerous to her than the disease itself. She felt that her survival depended on refusing to resign herself and, by extension, that she could actually keep herself alive through the sheer positive power of her denial. She insisted on more time. “I am not a statistic“, she would say. “I shall stand aside.“ Another ten years would do. That round figure in the mind would take from death any power it might have had to lean across her every day and skin cell, causing her heart to plunge to the depths whenever she returned to consciousness in the early mornings, or her fingers to search every few hours through the scarred surfaces of her body, for further signs of the spread of doom.

That resolution of hers made me think of Lazarus.

Jesus Christ, maybe under pressure from Mary and Martha, his good friends, brought their brother Lazarus back from the dead.

The heart lifts. Here’s a happy ending. A pale figure emerges from the tomb to screams of joy. He’s back. Life is cheated of its rules. Loss and pain are pushed back.

But who is this man who has returned to us ? How can he be the man we knew ?

Christ has probably fixed things so that the parts of Lazarus that had decomposed are more or less back in place and reasonably hygienic once again. But he can’t fix the fact that Lazarus now knows how it is to die. That is beyond even Christ to change or undo. Lazarus has crossed the frontier that separates the living from the dead. He got through, leaving everyone else behind. We don’t know how it was for him, but he knows, or half-knows. Perhaps he’ll tell us, or half tell us. Perhaps he won’t want to.

And the story hasn’t ended at all. In a while – and the Gospels don’t tell us when – Lazarus will have to die a second time. By now, Christ himself will be dead and will be sitting alongside His Father, the Creator. So this second time, there will be no return trip. Will Lazarus be sorry ? Or glad ?

Was he glad that first time, having made the exit which everyone dreads so utterly, to be forced back into the blinding light, for the temporary relief of his sisters, only to have to go through the whole business again, a short while later ?

Did he dance out of the tomb, wagging his fingers, saying Hi guys, I’m back, let’s
party ! – now I have a second chance to live awhile, (but also the obligation again to
die ?)

We aren’t told how Lazarus lived his second wind and second death – in that new time granted him – how much more joy he experienced, how much more pain, how much human value there was in that meagre period of extra time made possible millennia ago.

Nor are we told about those crowds who followed Christ around, saying, Save me Lord, Heal me Lord, Bid me Rise up and Walk. We have to assume that He was only able to “rescue”a few of them. How did the majority feel ? Did they blame Him for failing to put things right for them ? Or did they blame themselves ? Or their Carers for failing to push them forward hard enough, or in the right way? What sort of lives did they lead, devoid of that interlude, that stay of execution, which Christ might have delivered to them ? In what spirit did they die ?

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     Rogan Wolf