I am adding Fable Five here to the pieces uploaded in previous posts (see below). Called “The Fisherman who Stopped Bailing,” it contrasts two different responses to life’s demands  – give yourself over to a life of bailing your own leaky boat until your energy runs out, or risk trusting others to co-operate with you in building a larger vessel, with better chance of weathering the storms.

Fable Five 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 in the care services, primarily in the field of mental health. It thus records what I learned and saw during  all that time deployed at one of Society’s many fault-lines dividing 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, frantic materialism and crude  zealotry,  the series asks and discusses what are the binding and redemptive skills of true human connection, the skills of love, the skills of being human.

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.

PS. Well done and thank-you, Mr President. Well done and thank-you, America.

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