tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-89579898883917522902024-02-19T04:57:34.897-08:00Peter Wilkin's BLOGWords wheeled into the sunlight. Shadows, dark and devouring, lurking on every street.Peter Wilkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12955283590189985306noreply@blogger.comBlogger43125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8957989888391752290.post-34730149610485683982013-12-27T06:22:00.000-08:002013-12-27T06:22:49.350-08:00The Rucksack Project, Bradford
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">One day early in November my wife, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/#!/ally.wilkin?fref=ts">Ally</a>, approached me with
tears in her eyes. One of her friends had posted The Rucksack Project <a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10151362465075873&set=vb.170628232976559&type=2&theater">video</a> on a
Facebook group that she belongs to & it had moved her profoundly. She asked
me to watch it & I did. Within minutes we had agreed that we needed to
create a Rucksack Project event near to home.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">After some discussion with friends we calculated that <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradford">Bradford</a> was the nearest city to us that might truly benefit from the Rucksack
Project. Within a few days I’d made contact with <a href="https://www.facebook.com/#!/mathew.white.1044?fref=ts">Mathew White</a>, founder of <a href="https://www.facebook.com/rucksackproject">The Rucksack Project</a>, & created an <a href="https://www.facebook.com/rucksackproject#!/events/1464271430463811/">event page</a> on Facebook. Ally & I
launched the event on our Facebook pages. The response was astounding. Within
one week over 100 people had pledged their support. As people joined the event
they shared it on their own Facebook pages, causing it to go viral. By the day
of our event, almost 500 people had signed up to it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Prior to this event I’d only been to Bradford on a couple of
occasions. It was a steep learning curve trying to identify & locate all
the homeless projects that served the City. So, I hauled my mate Danny (who
doesn’t ‘do’ Facebook) on board &, with his help, managed to find &
either visit or contact just about every homeless project in the area.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p><br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Despite having identified December 21<sup><span style="font-size: x-small;">st</span></sup> as the
day of our main event, we quickly decided to ask people to put some rucksacks
together so we could hand them out earlier. Winter was rapidly approaching
& it seemed crass to hold onto all the rucksacks until that date.
Additionally, many people wanted to be a part of the Rucksack Project but
couldn’t make the main event. So, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
identified a number of collection points where people could drop off their
rucksacks & other items of clothing, enabling me to pick them up & distribute
them almost immediately to several homeless projects. <a href="https://www.facebook.com/#!/nigeofbass?fref=ts">Nige Mason</a> offered up his
garage in Idle as the Bradford collection point, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/#!/bennettwasobrien?fref=ts">Hanna Bennett</a> from <a href="https://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/People-First-Keighley-and-Craven/147127538738391">People First</a> at the Furniture Project in Keighley volunteered to receive rucksacks
from Keighley folk and Ally offered up her shop, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Crystal-Space/175719385848886">Crystal Space</a>, as a collection
point in Silsden.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p><br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">One of the homeless projects we connected with was <a href="https://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Hearthounds-UK/427594664019097">Hearthounds UK</a>, a charity working with homeless people & their dogs.
Danny & I met up with them one Thursday evening, together with people from
the ‘Streetwise’ project who were handing out warm meals in Centenary Square.
It was the most humbling of experiences as we handed out rucksacks to several
homeless people whilst <a href="https://www.facebook.com/#!/nurtureyourchild?fref=ts">Carrie</a> & John from Hearthounds talked to a homeless
person & his dog. Fortunately, we had a bag full of dog food & treats
with us that someone had donated & were able to hand them over to him
together with a rucksack. His gratitude totally rocked my soul.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">When we began planning our event in early November, I had a
vision of us all forming a flash mob & descending on Centenary Square to
hand out our rucksacks directly to homeless people & rough sleepers. I
gradually began to realise the impracticability of my grand plan, particularly
when the number of volunteers ascended into the hundreds. The more I thought
about it the more it made sense to distribute our rucksacks as widely as
possible so that they would reach & benefit as many people as possible.
With hindsight, it was the best decision, given the veritable mountain of
rucksacks that we built in the space of one hour at <a href="http://www.victoriabradford.co.uk/">The Great Victoria Hotel</a> …
too many by far to take out & distribute among the homeless in one fell
swoop. </span></div>
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<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> <em>The huge swell of rucksacks at The Great Victoria Hotel</em></span></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">And what a wonderful venue <a href="https://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/The-Great-Victoria-Hotel/107176806093403">The Great Victoria Hotel</a> turned
out to be, run by an equally wonderful bunch of people who not only let us have
the rooms for free but also threw in free parking for us all & mince pies
to boot! Huge thanks to Becca Porter, the Meeting & Events Sales
Co-ordinator at The Great Victoria, who bent over backwards to accommodate our
every need &, also, to the indefatigable <a href="https://www.facebook.com/#!/MISSPUMA?fref=ts">Helen Rigby</a> from <a href="https://www.facebook.com/#!/bradfordfundraising4u">FUNdraising 4 U</a>
who approached the Hotel in the first place & who worked so tirelessly
& selflessly to make our event a success.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Yet, having taken a rucksack along to the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/#!/events/169431626588168/">Manchester event</a>
the following day, there is nothing to compare with actually handing over a
rucksack to someone who desperately needs a change of clothes, a sleeping bag
& a waterproof coat. I was privileged enough to mingle with many of the
Manchester people who received a rucksack. Their gratitude was so clear to see
& their stories heart-wrenching at times. How incredibly tragic that the
vast majority of people’s over-inflated egos cause them to swerve the issue of
homelessness. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Before we reached the Manchester event in Piccadilly Gardens
Ally & I stopped to talk to a homeless person sat outside the Costa Café on
the edge of the square. His face lit up when we engaged with him & he
proudly took up his guitar & played a song for us. He had a story to tell
& we listened to him for a while. Given our backgrounds in psychiatry it seemed
to us that his homelessness was quite probably related to a lengthy history of
severe mental health problems. And hundreds, possibly thousands, of others
merely passed him by … either repulsed by his difference or, sadly, too focused
on their own personal Christmas missions to even notice him. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Back to the Bradford event & that incredible swell of
rucksacks in the centre of the room. </span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Every single person present (& lots
more who would have loved to have been there but couldn’t make it) was brimming
with a genuine desire to help, to ease the discomfort & suffering of a
homeless person. Christmas, that thing that glitters & dazzles in every
supermarket & department store from the middle of October, had suddenly
taken on its original meaning again. This was a Nativity scene being played out
right in front of our eyes: people arriving & laying down their gifts to
the cause. It was a moment of true giving with absolutely no thought of reward
or recompense but for the common wages of our most secret heart … that inner glow
that thrums gently deep in our innards.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p><br />
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<o:p></o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;">And how heart-warming & reassuring it was listening to
the people from Hearthounds & <a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Horton-Housing-Association/59599443484?ref=br_tf">Horton Housing</a> telling us about the wonderful
work they’re doing. It was at some point during these presentations that
everything disappeared from my consciousness & nothing concrete remained:
no windows, no doors, no pictures on the wall, no people … no rucksacks. Just
an immense feeling of oneness, as though myself & my surroundings had
melted into each other, joined by a unifying purpose of helping homeless
people.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Now, we are done. The event has passed & our rucksacks
are already being distributed to those who need them. In a way this blog
represents closure, though the feelings of solidarity & kindness generated
by it will remain within me always. All that remains for me to write now is a
massive ‘thank you’ to Mathew White, an inspiration to us all … & an acknowledgement
that homelessness is a huge, world-wide problem that needs responding to
constantly. Between us we have done a small but priceless piece of work with
homeless people. Let us think about how we can build on this in 2014 & take
the Rucksack Project forward towards even bigger & better achievements.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><o:p><em>Mathew White & Ally Wilkin at The Great Victoria Hotel</em></o:p></span></div>
Peter Wilkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12955283590189985306noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8957989888391752290.post-3367651054606071232013-07-23T03:54:00.000-07:002013-07-23T03:54:24.716-07:00Briannca and the Crystal Dragons<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiESujlZqW0_g6CIuWq6OY4SPKMGDNDewXxGEotonsbhqc0tlfac2pL2ConbCD6Ur9xz-dmQpoFU_EbF6rFnzz3sj65g7uu1POum6V3lJ1Sm9hLfnH8F_GbXTBPP25ILkVlmb0kGPZFJkHn/s1600/IMG_4065.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiESujlZqW0_g6CIuWq6OY4SPKMGDNDewXxGEotonsbhqc0tlfac2pL2ConbCD6Ur9xz-dmQpoFU_EbF6rFnzz3sj65g7uu1POum6V3lJ1Sm9hLfnH8F_GbXTBPP25ILkVlmb0kGPZFJkHn/s320/IMG_4065.JPG" width="215" /></a></div>
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At last! It's here: <i style="font-weight: bold;">Briannca and the Crystal Dragons</i>, a fantasy novel for children between the ages of 7 & 12 ... though possibly just as enjoyable to read if you're an adult, too.<br />
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It's co-authored by <a href="https://twitter.com/marousia">Marsha Berry</a> & myself & published by Chiaroscuro Books. There are also some wonderful illustrations throughout the book by the ever-so-talented Claire Farr, who also designed the front & back covers.<br />
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Want to know a little bit about the story? Ok ...<br />
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What would YOU do if you found a dragon in your bedroom? Or a whole bunch of them guzzling mustard and belching loudly in your school's kitchen store cupboard?<br />
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That's what happened to Briannca Chardine, an ordinary schoolgirl who, guided by the mysterious Ruby, takes on the unbelievable challenge of rescuing seven time-locked dragons from their crystal caves.<br />
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Accompanied by her nerdy brother Enjee, Briannca sets out on a series of amazing adventures where she encounters the deadly fogbrain plants, the mind-boggling Quantum Tunnel, the Moon's destruction by the deadly quirks and much, much more.<br />
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If you would like to buy our book you'll find it on Amazon.co.uk right <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1908794070/ref=rdr_ext_tmb">here</a> & Amazon.com <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Briannca-Crystal-Dragons-Peter-Wilkin/dp/1908794070/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1374574367&sr=1-1&keywords=briannca+and+the+crystal+dragons">here</a>. You can also take a peek inside the book too on both Amazon sites.<br />
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Alternatively, if you want to see where some of the inspiration for the book came from ~ particularly the rather strange crystal shop owner, Ruby ~ & can contain your excitement and wait another week or so, we will be stocking the book at <a href="http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Crystal-Space/175719385848886">Crystal Space</a> in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silsden">Silsden</a>, West Yorkshire.<br />
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<br />Peter Wilkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12955283590189985306noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8957989888391752290.post-29113884252770981462013-01-10T13:35:00.000-08:002013-01-10T13:35:05.456-08:00Underneath the Heaventree<br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><b>'Winter Star Shower' ~</b> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 13.5pt;">©peterwilkin</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">‘The heaventree of
stars hung with humid nightblue fruit’ ~ ‘Ulysses’, James Joyce</span></i><i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Under the icy light of a switched-on moon<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">yesterday’s snow crunched like sugar<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">as we gazed upon touchless stars,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">tasted their carbon, their iron<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">melting on our tongues.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">You wanted to give them something -<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">an oblation - but all you could find<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">in the shadowed garden was a rusted lamp<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">that you offered </span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">up to
every flimmering sphere<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">of plasma
in that far-flung, gas blown space.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Heart-shook,
I confessed to feeling less than you.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">You
smiled and said you could <span style="color: #222222;">see star-threads</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">connecting me to all the constellations.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Glancing heavenwards I caught sight<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">of a rose-pink glow centred in Cassiopeia’s breast:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">a nipple stiffened in a blush of humility.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Tipped in her throne she showed no rancour<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">as the flow of her milky light nourished me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Lush with
astral sugar I began to drag down<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">all those
luminous, spinning orbs.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">You grabbed a flowerpot and dashed round<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">like a whitefaced clown, catching them<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">as they </span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">tumbled ... and
all the merry dancers<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">sashayed
across the blue vault<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">as your
breath spilled out in brumes of argentine.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Peter Wilkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12955283590189985306noreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8957989888391752290.post-12311616439504111962012-11-22T13:35:00.003-08:002012-11-22T13:35:49.162-08:00A review of 'A Druid's Tale', by Cat Treadwell<div style="text-align: center;">
<img alt="A Druid's Tale" id="coverImage" src="http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1337247491l/13637784.jpg" /></div>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Despite the author’s recommendation that </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">A Druid’s Tale</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> be “consumed slowly … in
small bites”, I initially swallowed it whole! Purely because I found it to be such
an addictive read. However, the book is so incredibly rich in content that it’s
impossible to digest in one sitting. Each page is so full of tasty morsels that
it needs to be read through several times and reflected upon in order to
assimilate the words into your bloodstream.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br />Cat Treadwell is a Druid Priest and, by dint of that fact,
she is well qualified to write about Druidry and explain exactly what it is.
Thankfully, she does not do that. Instead, she shares with us her own lived
experiences: real experiences that paint infinitely more colourful and detailed
illustrations than any academically driven text could.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br />Very aware of the absolute folly of trying to impress her
readers, Cat keeps it real from the very first page to the last as she
describes her fears, her agonies and some of her epiphanies, all explained and
related to her Druidic beliefs and practice. I felt myself connecting with her,
even journeying with her as I made my own way through her story. And
connection, she demonstrates, is at the very heart of her practice. True connection
is a communion with otherness: to other living beings, to the inanimate, to the
forces of nature, to our ancestors and to the whole of creation.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br />Guided by <i>Awen</i>,
Cat lays out her pages in this gem of a book in a way that both informs &
inspires the reader. I read her chapter on ‘Public Ritual’ and learned about
responsibility and honour. I read about ‘Dark Mythology’ and emerged bathed in
the light of the beauty of darkness. And I read of Celebration, after which I
promised myself a whole new and more honest way of being with others as I mark
not just certain dates in the calendar but each day as an opportunity to give
of myself to others whilst rejoicing in the never-ending wonders of this
spinning planet.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br />Yet as I completed my first read of A Druid’s Tale,
I felt to ‘know’ nothing more about Druidry as a concept. I had learned about
Cat and how she interprets her role and lives her life as a Druid Priest … but
I didn’t understand the term ‘Druidry’ any more than I did before. I sat,
reflected … and then it struck me. Druidry is not one ‘thing’ that can be
neatly categorised and boxed. Nor should it ever be. Druidry, it seems to me
after reading Cat’s book, is a certain way of being and becoming and learning
how to discover and accept your True Self. It is a way of ‘being with’ the
world in what Martin Buber describes as an ‘I-Thou’ relationship: blissfully
unaware of one’s ego’s restraints and bound together in the glory of the other,
be it a person, a creature, a rock, a star or a goddess.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br />After these insights and still stirred by the author’s
passions and honesty, I gazed out of my window at the rain-lashed moors on the
horizon and listened to the howling wind as it grabbed at piles of leaves and
flung them around the garden. ‘Perhaps this is druidry,’ I thought as the
unpredictable chaos of a gale-blown afternoon suddenly filled me with energy
and the most reassuring feeling that I was not alone.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<h2>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Product details</span></h2>
<div class="content">
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b>Paperback:</b> 183 pages
</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b>Publisher:</b> Moon Books; 1st edition (29 Jun 2012)
</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b>Language:</b> English
</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b>ISBN-10:</b> 1780991134
</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b>ISBN-13:</b> 978-1780991139</span></li>
</ul>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">You can order a copy of A Druid's Tale <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Druids-Tale-Cat-Treadwell/dp/1780991134/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1353617560&sr=1-1">here</a></span></div>
</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
Peter Wilkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12955283590189985306noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8957989888391752290.post-23125273505214352212012-08-20T04:14:00.000-07:002012-08-20T04:14:21.301-07:00'Phases of the Moon' ~ Louise Hastings' first published collection of poetry<span style="font-family: inherit;">This is so exciting! I am <i>so </i>pleased to announce that <i>Phases of the Moon</i>, the very first collection of poems from the most lovely & extremely talented poet Louise Hastings, is available to buy now from <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Phases-Moon-Louise-Hastings/dp/0985154896/ref=pd_rhf_dp_p_t_2">Amazon.com</a> & <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Phases-Moon-Louise-Hastings/dp/0985154896/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1345328199&sr=1-1">Amazon.co.uk</a> </span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://wingsoverwaters.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/phases-of-the-moon-3d-final3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://wingsoverwaters.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/phases-of-the-moon-3d-final3.jpg" width="273" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Louise is a rapidly emerging poet who I & a multitude of others have been following on <a href="http://twitter.com/LouiseJHastings">Twitter</a> & her <a href="http://louisehastings.net/2012/08/20/phases-of-the-moon-release-day/">blog</a> for quite some time. It is such a privilege & a pleasure, therefore, to offer you my review of Louise's stunning collection of poems:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">‘What
name defines me?’ asks Louise Hastings in her poem called, simply, <i>Poet</i>. Well, after having savoured the
delights of her first collection she is clearly a very talented poet who has
the ability to hold the reader in the simple truths and beauty of her words. So
many times I found myself stepping out at the end of a poem with a sense of its
wholeness fixed firmly within me. That is her writing style. Her poems tend to
capture you and hold you in the lilt and sway of her basic, uncomplicated
rhythms.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>Phases of the Moon </i>is a glorious concoction of poems that paint the
richest pictures of an <i>Awakening</i>, ‘away
from the grey and mechanic into the poetic and extraordinary’. In her opening
poem, <i>Shadow Dancing</i>, Louise likens
her soul to ‘a blown fuse’ as, through the process of writing, she begins to
accept the frightening shadows that have haunted her for so long as spaces of
potential discovery, ‘where there is life, death and love’. Striving
desperately to throw off years of shackled emotions, her plea is heart
wrenching and obvious in her poem <i>Monday</i>
as she craves the ‘twisted love and yearning’ of life as opposed to one that
merely ‘drips water along the windowpane’.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Her troubled childhood
features strongly in many of her poems. In the poem <i>Phases of the Moon</i> she finds herself ‘walking the asphalt lights
with jagged shards of memories’, a child cruelly deprived of ‘amber flight’.
Similarly, in <i>Inner Child</i> we find her
‘cloaked in moth wings and dust’ as she ‘trips down present-day halls,
corridors that smell of emptiness’. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Yet, far from being
confessionals, these beautifully crafted poems shine softly like petals in
sunlight: each one an epiphany that carries with it emerging hope as Louise,
herself, becomes ‘a little poem that could’. Love, too, touches her like ‘a
silken tendril along my skin’ as, freed now from the trammels of her past, she
finds herself ‘embraced by the scent of warmer rain’. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Whilst certain themes do
emerge from this collection, each poem is always glazed with a degree of
purposeful ambiguity. Louise has perfected the technique of wrapping her poems
in intrigue as her words take us towards familiar destinations via unfamiliar
pathways. Step into any of her poems and there is always something new under
the sun for us to discover.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Louise’s very first
poetry collection, having touched just about every emotion it is possible to
feel, leaves me thrumming with an inner contentment as her words linger like
the aftertaste of strong chocolate. And the way in which she dips her poems
into the universe and all its mysteries, for me, automatically draws out
comparisons with the poetry of Mary Oliver. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">It is so hard to choose a
favourite poem from so many gems but I will leave you with the final lines of <i>Seeing Zebras</i>, a poem of time, mindfulness
and liminal space, where:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">‘In
my underlying consciousness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">lies
linear time,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">full
of yesterday and tomorrow,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">flowing
through heart and lungs,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">through
endless breath<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">where love is earth’s glow off its
edge.’</span><o:p></o:p></div>
Peter Wilkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12955283590189985306noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8957989888391752290.post-88935693705758476632012-04-17T08:23:00.000-07:002012-04-17T08:23:02.068-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/Lt3IOdDE5iA?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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<b>Summer Lightning </b></div>
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Deep In the day’s shadows<o:p></o:p></div>
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my blue-eyed boy dawdles<span style="color: red;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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where dreams and stars blend<o:p></o:p></div>
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in glorious paradox.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Here, in his sea-soft space<o:p></o:p></div>
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galleons dip and rise<o:p></o:p></div>
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on the swell of an edgeless ocean.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Oh darling boy, time is so fast <o:p></o:p></div>
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and childhood such a skittish thing.<o:p></o:p></div>
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One day you will throw it out<o:p></o:p></div>
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like busted shoes<o:p></o:p></div>
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as you wake and smell the elegance<o:p></o:p></div>
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the algorithms<o:p></o:p></div>
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inside life’s iron cage. <o:p></o:p></div>
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And will you fly, I wonder?<o:p></o:p></div>
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Or will you sing?<o:p></o:p></div>
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The angels present at your birth<o:p></o:p></div>
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were rather coy, if I recall.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Nudged by the moon’s slow spin <o:p></o:p></div>
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you rise from your rocking boat<o:p></o:p></div>
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and I adopt a stolid air <o:p></o:p></div>
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as if my love for you<o:p></o:p></div>
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were rather ordinary.<o:p></o:p></div>
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How difficult it is, at times,<o:p></o:p></div>
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to bear the shock of summer lightning<o:p></o:p></div>
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arcing between our ribs.<o:p></o:p></div>
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When you are stubbled and long-boned<o:p></o:p></div>
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and I am kicking air –<o:p></o:p></div>
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unwrap this poem<o:p></o:p></div>
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on a bellrung Sunday during rain,<o:p></o:p></div>
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feel the beat of my devotion<o:p></o:p></div>
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pounding in the slack of its creases.<o:p></o:p></div>Peter Wilkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12955283590189985306noreply@blogger.com50tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8957989888391752290.post-49162782682649741172012-03-19T07:11:00.002-07:002012-03-19T07:11:16.491-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqrY0sOUc7YH7c6B7MaAJ92BJdK_fL1VwMIEYawglClGMJoieax7k9mDbca6oDNpyEztsF78qUNsZZhtr6ftCCUzEfOErkqqtlsK56yAe8VaDSESx_m9janwLrpMrvN-7KB_c-m-WU5Opb/s1600/ostara12.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqrY0sOUc7YH7c6B7MaAJ92BJdK_fL1VwMIEYawglClGMJoieax7k9mDbca6oDNpyEztsF78qUNsZZhtr6ftCCUzEfOErkqqtlsK56yAe8VaDSESx_m9janwLrpMrvN-7KB_c-m-WU5Opb/s320/ostara12.jpg" width="230" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<br />
Picture courtesy of <a href="http://onewitchsway.com/2011/03/a-spell-for-ostara/">Rowan Pendragon</a><br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
A poem to celebrate the Spring Equinox</div>
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<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Ostara</b></div>
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<b><br /></b></div>
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Here, within the chorion, Life twitches<o:p></o:p></div>
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as the rushlight flimmers<o:p></o:p></div>
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beneath Winter’s melting egg. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Small fingers, stained with alluvium <o:p></o:p></div>
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unwrap like fiddleheads. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Eyelids begin to flutter, brushed lightly<o:p></o:p></div>
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by saffron tinted shadows. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Outside, She sits and rubs a cluster<o:p></o:p></div>
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of mallow green stones <o:p></o:p></div>
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shining them with spittle and oil.<o:p></o:p></div>
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When the Spring rains fall <o:p></o:p></div>
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she will fill her lungs with petrichor,<o:p></o:p></div>
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kneel in rich crumbles of humus<o:p></o:p></div>
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and, under a bone-white moon,<o:p></o:p></div>
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slide her arms deeply<o:p></o:p></div>
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into squelches of moistened soil<o:p></o:p></div>
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drawing out the new life<o:p></o:p></div>
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slicked and dripping with amnion.<o:p></o:p></div>
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This is the moment when we feel<o:p></o:p></div>
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the earth dancing inside our selves;<o:p></o:p></div>
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when the untouchable stars flicker<o:p></o:p></div>
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and whisper about infinitude.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOP6fJYt7rs&feature=fvwrel">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOP6fJYt7rs&feature=fvwrel</a></div>Peter Wilkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12955283590189985306noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8957989888391752290.post-70212469235871959912012-02-28T08:01:00.000-08:002012-02-28T08:01:30.432-08:00Severe weather warning<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">After days of faltering orange<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">down comes the drear<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">quick as a fit<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">rinsing cattle, turbines, whole villages<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">in bloodless pastels.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Only the red fox <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">eyes grinning, tongue-flopped<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">as he lollops by<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">makes reference to the copper rods<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">welded to my knuckles.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Days, cold and ceaseless, shiver<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">like small dogs,<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">gods mumble in an arbitrary way – <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Bring down the rains again</span></i><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">, I hear them say.<o:p></o:p></span></div>Peter Wilkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12955283590189985306noreply@blogger.com26tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8957989888391752290.post-35487812505829702462012-02-02T04:08:00.000-08:002012-02-02T04:08:44.134-08:00A cherished award<div style="background: #F3F4EE; line-height: 13.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="color: #666666; font-size: 10.0pt;">I feel very privileged to announce that I have just been awarded the Liebster Blog award from one of my favourite bloggers, the very talented poet Louise Hastings at </span><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;"><a href="http://wingsoverwaters.wordpress.com/">http://wingsoverwaters.wordpress.com/</a>. S</span><span style="color: #666666; font-size: 13px;">incere thanks Louise ~ it is a wonderful gesture & I truly appreciate it.</span></div><div style="background: #F3F4EE; line-height: 13.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />
</span></div><div style="background: #F3F4EE; line-height: 13.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><img src="http://wingsoverwaters.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/liebster-award1.png?w=529" /> </div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #f3f4ee; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; line-height: 13.5pt; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="background: #F3F4EE; line-height: 13.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="color: #666666; font-size: 10.0pt;"><b>The Liebster Blog Award originated in Germany (Liebster means “favourite” or “dearest” in German) In accepting this award, the recipient agrees to:<o:p></o:p></b></span></div><div style="background: #F3F4EE; line-height: 13.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #f3f4ee; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; line-height: 13.5pt; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span style="color: #666666; font-size: 10.0pt;"><b>1. Show your thanks to the blogger who gave you the award by linking back to them.<br />
2. Reveal your top 5 picks for the award and let them know.<br />
3. Post the award on your blog.<br />
4. Bask in the love from the most supportive people in the Blogsphere.<br />
5. And, lastly – have fun and spread the karma!<o:p></o:p></b></span></div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #f3f4ee; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; line-height: 13.5pt; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span style="color: #666666; font-size: 10.0pt;"><b><br />
</b></span></div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #f3f4ee; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; line-height: 13.5pt; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span style="color: #666666; font-size: 10.0pt;"><b>OK ~ so here goes for my five nominations in no particular order:<o:p></o:p></b></span></div><div style="background: #F3F4EE; line-height: 13.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="background: #F3F4EE; line-height: 13.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="color: #666666; font-size: 10.0pt;"><b>Abigail Baker - @The_Linnet A rapidly emerging poet whose poetry is loaded with insight and emotion. Each & every time I read one of Abi’s poems I am captivated by the subtle messages that unfold … always wrapped in the most beautiful language <a href="http://phoenixofthelinnet.wordpress.com/">http://phoenixofthelinnet.wordpress.com/</a><o:p></o:p></b></span></div><div style="background: #F3F4EE; line-height: 13.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="background: #F3F4EE; line-height: 13.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="color: #666666; font-size: 10.0pt;"><b>Will Senior - @WilSenior Will’s blog is a sensitive combination of his personal experiences of and insights into the psychotherapeutic process. And if you search hard enough you will also discover some real poetic gems hiding among his postings, not to mention his stunning photography <a href="http://inpsychotherapy.org/">http://inpsychotherapy.org/</a><o:p></o:p></b></span></div><div style="background: #F3F4EE; line-height: 13.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="background: #F3F4EE; line-height: 13.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="color: #666666; font-size: 10.0pt;"><b>Julie Swindel - @Membrane7 Julie’s blog is a rich mixture of her wonderful artwork and the life experiences that have influenced it. I hope she won’t mind me saying that, owing to her work/study commitments & hectic family life, she struggles to find time to post but … when she does post they are absolutely intriguing & exploding with colour <a href="http://membrane7.blogspot.com/">http://membrane7.blogspot.com/</a><o:p></o:p></b></span></div><div style="background: #F3F4EE; line-height: 13.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="background: #F3F4EE; line-height: 13.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="color: #666666; font-size: 10.0pt;"><b>Shan Ellis - @Awdures Anyone who knows Shan will be aware that she always ‘tells it as it is!’ Her poetry reflects her forthright approach and her poems tremble with power and emotion. My immediate reaction after reading one of Shan’s poems is always: ‘WOW!’ <a href="http://repressedsoul.wordpress.com/">http://repressedsoul.wordpress.com/</a><o:p></o:p></b></span></div><div style="background: #F3F4EE; line-height: 13.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="color: #666666; font-size: 10.0pt;"><b><br />
</b></span></div><div style="background: #F3F4EE; line-height: 13.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><b style="color: #666666; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 13.5pt;">Heidi David - @HeidiDavid Writing as her alter ego, Madame Paradox, Heidi has produced an absolutely memorable blog full of the most amusing & captivating posts. She is the author of an as yet unpublished novel - The Flying Jewel - which, if justice is done, will have pride of place on my bookshelves one day soon <a href="http://madameparadox.com/">http://madameparadox.com/</a></b></div><div style="background: #F3F4EE; line-height: 13.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><b style="color: #666666; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 13.5pt;"><br />
</b></div><div style="background: #F3F4EE; line-height: 13.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><b style="color: #666666; font-size: 13px;">I could, of course, have nominated forever but was restricted to just five people. To everyone who visits my blog & to all my friends & followers on twitter: I really do love you all.</b> </div><div style="background: #F3F4EE; line-height: 13.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><br />
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</div>Peter Wilkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12955283590189985306noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8957989888391752290.post-47549523888405136712012-01-31T06:29:00.000-08:002012-01-31T06:29:03.094-08:00Purpure<div class="MsoNormal">I wish</div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">I could smear violet<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">or indigo <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">across your lips<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">without someone<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">rigged as a poet<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">brandishing rags<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">that reek of pear drops<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">scrubbing my daubery<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">from your face<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">whilst screaming</div><div class="MsoNormal">certain shades of purple</div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">are taboo.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Plump for synonyms<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">or succedanea<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">like mulberry, murrey<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">and other ersatz</div><div class="MsoNormal">woads of register</div><div class="MsoNormal">they howl </div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">blind to the fact<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">that every livid tint<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">fingered on your face<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">is scraped<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">from melting stars<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">leaving soft</div><div class="MsoNormal">iron embolisms</div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">occluding the lumen<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">of my dreams.<o:p></o:p></div>Peter Wilkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12955283590189985306noreply@blogger.com22tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8957989888391752290.post-14602345485939399072011-11-25T13:09:00.000-08:002011-11-26T13:17:26.384-08:00Elegy (for Amanda)<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Perhaps I saw you differently<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">softly scented<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">a thousand unborn stars <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">glimmering in parens<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">between each rhythmic hip-swing.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">When the pale mists came</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">you rose like twisted willow<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">a sweet, difficult rising<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">arms outstretched<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">as far as being reaches.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Under autumn’s cold shadow<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">remnants of your breath<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">splashed against my cheek<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">like alluvion.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">I could not let you go.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">But where to keep you<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">among the soul’s clutter?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Here, in this waiting space<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">between open-beaked birds<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">and creases of heaven-red petals.<o:p></o:p></span></div>Peter Wilkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12955283590189985306noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8957989888391752290.post-11178452707159611162011-11-08T02:20:00.000-08:002011-11-08T02:20:43.999-08:00A review of Michael Richmond's book: 'Sisyphusa'<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Take a sizeable chunk of Nineteen Eighty-four, introduce pieces of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, add a dash of Poppy Shakespeare – and you will still be missing several vital ingredients that the author <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/sisyphusa/">Michael Richmond</a> has blended together to produce his dystopian novel <i>Sisyphusa</i>. Influenced by his own emotional breakdown and a lengthy spell of psychiatric intervention, Richmond has created an intriguing work of fiction that satirizes Mental Health Services whilst, simultaneously, highlighting the disempowerment and stigmatization experienced by twenty-first century psychiatric service users.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Snatched from the local Liquidizer one dreary February night, Odis Winston wakes up to find himself incarcerated in Sisyphusa and categorized as Weirdness Grade 2. After months of seclusion he is finally deemed ready to embark upon a rehabilitation programme with the ultimate goal of being discharged back to his home and family on the Island. As the story progresses, the chances of Odis or any of the other service users ever being allowed to leave Sisyphusa seem increasingly slim until, having been slung down into The Pit – a pitch-black hole full of human sewage – he meets the mysterious Gwen who, driven by her guilty conscience, discloses her secret plan for a mass break-out.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Running contrary to any such ideas of escape stands the formidable Warden Serky, an epitome of humiliation and control. Ably assisted by the beast-like henchmen, she struts her stuff like Nurse Ratched on acid, brainwashing and humiliating the service users in the ironically named Team Recovery. A much more insidious sentinel lies within the service users themselves as they succumb to the process of institutionalisation: a passive acceptance of and reliance upon the hospital structure, which is much more likely to thwart any escape attempts than the three-headed monster that prowls the corridors of Sisyphusa.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">As time passes, Odis’s mind-set slowly changes as he begins to develop insight into the disempowering structures that underpin the mental health system in Sisyphusa. Identifying himself with the other downtrodden service users, he develops a quiet determination to redress the balance of power. Of course, despite a thin glimmer of hope, life in Sisyphusa continues to be plagued with tragedies, from the intimacies and tensions that emanate from service user relationships to the untimely deaths and suicides of a number of inmates. Perhaps the only realistic chance of escape is to follow the Flower Eaters’ example and ingest the essence of the Ziziphusa flowers.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Throughout the novel, Richmond manages to parody the negative effects of what we still refer to as mental ‘illness’ by introducing concepts such as ‘climbing pills’ (mandatory medication crucial to the rehabilitation process), ‘Normalization classes’ (where service users are cognitively restructured and taught to behave like ‘normal’ people) &, perhaps the most insidious of devices, the Neuro-Function Reading Mechanism – or earpiece – which is stapled onto every service user’s ear to deliver a constant stream of abuse designed to crush the individual’s self-esteem.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">As a narrative, <i>Sisyphusa</i> works well. I was hooked into the story from chapter one & the unfolding plot had enough intrigue about it to keep me interested right to the final chapter. Having been written by someone with more than a passing interest in mental health issues there is a passion that flows from the author’s pen and drives the story forward. The characters & their roles have been well thought out and everyone from the protagonist to the smallest bit-part player are there for a reason: Dobbsy, Ella, Mr Femuz (who reminded me so much of Chief Bromden in ‘Cuckoo’s Nest’), the splendidly-named Governor Shade, even Gwen’s cats play significant roles as Richmond never misses an opportunity to campaign for improvements in mental healthcare.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Every so often, a novel is produced that highlights the imbalance of power between the so-called sane and the mad. <i>Sisyphusa</i> is a timely reminder, perhaps, that – although there <i>have</i> been improvements made in mental health services over recent years – we still have a system in the UK that devalues difference and stigmatizes and controls by way of segregation and medical compartmentalisation. For those who consider themselves to be standing firmly on the sane side of the line, madness will always be something they can point to as being suffered by the ‘other’ – an unconscious defence mechanism often employed to deny their own emotional vulnerabilities.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Wrapped up in the hyperbole of<i> Sisyphusa</i> is an important Foucauldian message of a disciplinary power that is still enforced within our mental health system through various subtle methods of control. Richmond has piled Pelion on Ossa in order to capture his audience – but beneath those imaginary mountains lies a very real problem and a call to arms for us all. Please do buy a copy of <i>Sisyphusa</i> – I found it to be a fascinating and extremely worthwhile read.</span><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Buy your copy of <i>Sisyphusa</i> <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=sisyphusa&x=9&y=15">here</a> - available as a Paperback or a Kindle eBook.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">You can also follow Michael on <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/Sisyphusa">Twitter</a></span></div>Peter Wilkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12955283590189985306noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8957989888391752290.post-27405416495451848482011-10-02T08:13:00.000-07:002011-10-02T08:13:31.097-07:00The Gift<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">Crouched beneath a rising moon I see them</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">strewn beneath the Firethorns: fallen stars, devil-red <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">and smelling of bees’ wings.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Without a second thought I gather an armful<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">and drop them in my basket, visions of her requital <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">glistening inside my ego.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I wouldn’t!</span></i><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> A voice, sweet as a fig, sings out to me<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">rushing like an unstoppable wave of magma<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">through a congeries of shadows.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">They may be beautiful but they are dying, </span></i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">it sighs<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">as the rain falls, a thin drizzle of mockery<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">that clings to my skin like alamine. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I hurry indoors, eager to lay my gift at her feet<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">but those luminous rubicund orbs have melted<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">into figments of dark matter.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Back in the garden a soft green light cools the soil.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Only night birds now, picking the flesh from the last<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">few fragments of starbone.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div>Peter Wilkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12955283590189985306noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8957989888391752290.post-63587593107788430312011-09-14T06:28:00.000-07:002011-09-14T06:28:08.633-07:00Gloaming: the book<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Following on from my collaborative work with the artist <a href="http://melaneia.com/">Melaneia Warwick</a>, I am so pleased and excited to announce that our book: 'Gloaming - drawings, paintings, poems' is now available to purchase from Blurb at: </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-size: 13px;"><a href="http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/2479245" style="color: #0000cc;" target="_blank"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">http://www.blurb.com/<wbr></wbr>bookstore/detail/2479245</span></a></span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7V97REkqCUCNS8UBkqSCUgFFSIkjOHRoUtW0p2tF_GQ-6ckKSoZKeWzNMxxJUOmjp1qi-7xBaAPiTujmDDs-dSqDpz5wg8OtsrejqWCvoiCHoF9YjYJRH1kjqBJfCkcvN79Jdfn9X_uP5/s1600/book+image+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="270" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7V97REkqCUCNS8UBkqSCUgFFSIkjOHRoUtW0p2tF_GQ-6ckKSoZKeWzNMxxJUOmjp1qi-7xBaAPiTujmDDs-dSqDpz5wg8OtsrejqWCvoiCHoF9YjYJRH1kjqBJfCkcvN79Jdfn9X_uP5/s320/book+image+2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">This beautiful book includes all of Melaneia's artwork from her Gloaming series,the four poems that I created to accompany her paintings and a new poem of mine entitled 'Gloaming', which you can read below: </span><br />
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Gloaming</span></b><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Rummaging <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">in moonless cupboards<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">beneath a filament<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">of thin gold light<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">a curio<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">catches your eye.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Intrigue lifts it<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">like a soft skull<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">from the clutter<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">of dull green books.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">In that instant <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">faulty clocks<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">chime the hour;<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">camphor balls <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">clatter to the floor<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">this junked<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">piece of lumber<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">gasps and melts<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">like warm rhetoric – <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">a new story<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">to be squeezed out <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">fat over lean<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">in swatches<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">of invented colour.<o:p></o:p></span></div>Peter Wilkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12955283590189985306noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8957989888391752290.post-60266190220583852272011-08-21T06:09:00.000-07:002011-08-21T06:09:23.222-07:00The Mystery and Melancholy of a Street<br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The painting above this posting is by Giorgio de Chirico and is entitled 'The Mystery and Melancholy of a Street'. The original artwork is oil on canvas, painted in 1914. Heavily influenced by the writings of the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, De Chirico painted familiar objects but juxtaposed them in such a way that his paintings took on an alien, often haunted affect that engaged immediately with the unconscious mind: <i>Pittura metafisica </i>or Metaphysical art.</span></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">'<i>Underneath this reality in which we live and have our being, another and altogether different reality lies concealed.' </i>Nietzsche</span></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>The Mystery and Melancholy of a Street</b> </span></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">As dayspring swallows darkness<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">light hangs curdled, olivine<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">like the toxic breath of gods.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">On the piazza’s edge<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">a callous sun splits the arcades:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">white hot stucco; charcoal ashlar.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">A wagon stands iron-wheeled<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">and empty, the beast not long gone<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">its warm dung still steaming.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">In the street a clockwork child<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">bowls her hoop along an egg-yellow<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">avenue of innocence. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Her pulse is clotted, beatless<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">her childhood stiff as a stick.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Dissonance rapes the stillness.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The poke of a growing shadow<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">looms black as sin, its saurian tail<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">flicking the ground with lust.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Lips curled, hackles matted<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">the prowling creature drools<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">behind the cool colonnade.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Inside the box I crouch, twisted</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">flawed, braced in the corner<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">waiting for the scream.</span><o:p></o:p></div>Peter Wilkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12955283590189985306noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8957989888391752290.post-86145745156428198442011-07-09T13:25:00.000-07:002011-07-09T13:25:02.231-07:00Cinders<div class="MsoNormal"><i>The older/ i become/ the more/ i believe/ in dragons </i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Swaddled in a blanket</div><div class="MsoNormal">of green smoke</div><div class="MsoNormal">I believed</div><div class="MsoNormal">yet did not fear them</div><div class="MsoNormal">their scuds of flame </div><div class="MsoNormal">benign as moonlight</div><div class="MsoNormal">on my amianthine skin.</div><div class="MsoNormal">When the time came</div><div class="MsoNormal">I ditched them easily</div><div class="MsoNormal">until not long ago</div><div class="MsoNormal">when I found one</div><div class="MsoNormal">smouldering</div><div class="MsoNormal">in the garage</div><div class="MsoNormal">its breath reeking</div><div class="MsoNormal">of hot rubber.</div><div class="MsoNormal">I tried to slip away</div><div class="MsoNormal">but it spotted me</div><div class="MsoNormal">its sickled eyes </div><div class="MsoNormal">oiled by amber</div><div class="MsoNormal">membranes.</div><div class="MsoNormal">Since that day</div><div class="MsoNormal">we have drunk</div><div class="MsoNormal">Oolong together</div><div class="MsoNormal">deconstructed Derrida<span style="color: red;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal">even spun around </div><div class="MsoNormal">the church steeple</div><div class="MsoNormal">a time or two</div><div class="MsoNormal">and though it has kept </div><div class="MsoNormal">its flambeau capped</div><div class="MsoNormal">in such a highly</div><div class="MsoNormal">flammable area</div><div class="MsoNormal">when the raven</div><div class="MsoNormal">taps on my window</div><div class="MsoNormal">I will be cinders:</div><div class="MsoNormal">gleanings and bone -</div><div class="MsoNormal">a grim ending</div><div class="MsoNormal">to any fairytale.</div>Peter Wilkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12955283590189985306noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8957989888391752290.post-7424861391243647232011-06-06T07:03:00.000-07:002011-06-06T12:15:25.875-07:00Shell<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">'Shell' is the final poem in a series of four, all created as poetic commentaries on the 'Gloaming' series of artwork by the visual artist <a href="http://melaneia.com/">Melaneia Warwick</a>. This being the last poem, I wanted to address the issue of ekphrasis within it and, in particular, <a href="http://mariabuszek.com/kcai/PoMoSeminar/Readings/BarthesAuthor.pdf">Roland Barthes</a>' claim that the creator of a work of art is merely a functionary. He postulated that the real artist was the person who viewed the work: a postmodernist point of view that strips the author/artist of all her power, breaking it into fragments and issuing a piece to every member of an ever-expanding audience.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">What Barthes seems to be saying is that the meaning of a text/work of art owes nothing to its creator and everything to its interpretor. 'The birth of the reader,' he hypothesised, 'must be at the cost of the death of the author.'</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">For me, creating an ekphrastic poem without acknowledging the artist's intentions is both pointless and disrespectful. Whilst the poem will always be my interpretation of the artwork, it must still pay homage to the art and be driven by the visual narrative played out upon the canvas. I can put my own personal spin onto it - even use it as a metaphor for my own experiences - but I must never lose sight of the fact that it is the artist's creativity and hard labour that have spawned and inspired my poem.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">With this in mind, I have attempted to celebrate the existence of a truly wonderful artist within the body of my poem. Not only does Melaneia 'live' inside her painting, she is 'pulsing with feminine light' as the creator of a stunning piece of art.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to Melaneia for inviting me to collaborate with her on this project. It has been such a privilege to step inside her works of art and, driven by emotions generated by her incredible creativity, produce this series of four poems. For those of you who have connected with Melaneia's artwork and my accompanying poems, we will be publishing them together in a commemorative book - hopefully during the coming summertime. Look out for more details on this blog and Melaneia's website.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZcK9cdpi0oBMTSFI2IGX4UCJEErA_E1_er7vv6fq9FI07bbHP2fsZB2RAkWndnmhUkRlqc2sozIWrgBlId2icMa2tcKOBuc7mQx6MO1NSkCyP-A6zkmj8jQ7Q59zgushMZ608kH2EEtt2/s1600/IMG_0552.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZcK9cdpi0oBMTSFI2IGX4UCJEErA_E1_er7vv6fq9FI07bbHP2fsZB2RAkWndnmhUkRlqc2sozIWrgBlId2icMa2tcKOBuc7mQx6MO1NSkCyP-A6zkmj8jQ7Q59zgushMZ608kH2EEtt2/s320/IMG_0552.jpg" width="228" /></a></div><br />
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<u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Shell</span></u><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Should I prise open those pleached fingers</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">and snatch you from the grip of the beast?</span><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Nudged by the catchlight in your ironbound eye</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I think again. Perhaps that scalloped hand</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">pumps your lung, holds you together</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">in the absence of bones?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">You see, it’s all oxblood and mahogany in there,</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">hardly the bar at the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Folies Berg</i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ére</i>:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">no mirror, no reflective gaze of the audience,</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">only you and your invisible gods in their boxes.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I step back inside to search for ekphrastic stars,</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">gaze at the red and blue fronds of<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> la gerbe</i> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">wilting beneath a window of broken colours,</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">your lips spring-clipped in silence,</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">that bloodless limb skidding in white impasto.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I delve under layers of paint, burrowing beneath slithers</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">of warm oil to spawning grounds pulsing with feminine light</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">and there, in the catacombs of your painting, I find you</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">offering your art up to the angels, leaving your shell</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">to careen through space. Only the pigment</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">of you remains, unconscious material oxidizing </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">towards a more stable state.</span></div>Peter Wilkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12955283590189985306noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8957989888391752290.post-36013474472056100242011-05-26T05:45:00.000-07:002011-05-26T05:45:42.024-07:00Sections<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Rumblings of thunder tumble from the clouds like grumbles of doom as the doors of Heaven creak open. A crescendo of rain splatters the flags and ricochets in coronets of water. Wands of lightning scream like missiles, zinging across the carbon sky. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">In the centre of a drunken town a young man raves to a gathering crowd: ‘And I, the mighty Heracles, I feel the Hydra’s poison seeping like acid into my veins. How piteous my plight! My skin corrodes; flesh melts and sinew dissolves. See the cream of my bones poking through the gore.’<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Electric domes spin silently, strobing cobalt blue on rubber-stretched faces. The looming officers are dressed for war and have back-up: a tinny voice and an alien language spat through the nostrils of an automaton woman: ’Negative Yankee Bravo 3. No record of anyone matching that description. Suggest you action Section 136 and take him to nearest designated place of safety.’<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">‘Leave me you creatures, return to your mountain,’ the wailing man begs, dropping hard on his knees in splashes of gutter puddles. ‘Send me Poeas to torch my pyre that I might fling my dying body in the flames.’<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">‘What is your name?’ the chief centaur demands, his thick arms inked with ancient symbols. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">‘My name?’ the man mocks, leaping to his feet. ‘My name is Heracles!’ he screams into the centaur’s face, his words flung fearlessly in gobs of spittle. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">The officer’s face contorts with anger and disgust. He and his comrades grab the man’s arms and wheel him round, crashing him face first onto the pavement with a sickening thud. Wrists lashed tight, they drag him to their chariot and bundle him inside.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">The throng of people begin to disperse. Some are laughing and shaking their heads, some are singing and making lewd comments. Others drift away, unconcerned. One person, a woman, weeps softly as she holds the man’s tattered jacket to her breast.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">‘Yankee Bravo 3, disturbance reported on the Mount Oeta estate, please detour and attend.’<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">‘Roger Charlie Echo 7. On our way.’<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Sirens howl down waterlogged streets, spraying eerie shifts of Doppler in their wake. Revs of adrenalin, tyre-screech turns in a macho blaze of thrust.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">‘Charlie Echo 7, arrived at the Mount Oeta estate, vehicle alight behind disused garages but no sign of suspects or any other emergency vehicles. Will take a closer look, over.’<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">A quantum crackle of energy jumps the gap as two realities bump edges. Storms break again and the driving rains of Philoctetes’ tears skid in angled slides down the window of the centaurs’ chariot: a thousand teardrops, each holding precious the sodium glow that soars many light years to the world of the man’s ancestors who have abandoned him now.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Hissing gases, mauve-blue-green. Ash clouds, licks of palsied flame, yellow twists of yang. Splats of falling water fizzing on hot iron. Up in the realms of midnight, a judder, a monumental bang as the firmament is exposed in a blinding flash of glory. Steam. The reek and choke of miasma: burning flesh fusing with hot metal.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">‘Yankee Bravo 3, requesting an update from the town centre disturbance. Are you still en route to place of safety?’<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">‘Negative, Charlie Echo 7. Young man clearly thought-disordered and hallucinating. Aborted section 136, chose parallel section of immolation. It’s what he would have wanted. We have served Zeus.’</span></div>Peter Wilkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12955283590189985306noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8957989888391752290.post-345062405734178692011-05-16T04:28:00.000-07:002011-05-16T04:28:03.363-07:00Merope<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Below is my very first attempt at writing a sonnet. After completing the poem I was convinced it was a pretty average piece of poetry but, after some encouraging & supportive comments from my twitter chums, I've decided to offer it up for comments on my main blog page.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">It is a Shakespearean sonnet written in iambic pentameter & the rhyming scheme is: <span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d, e-f-e-f, g-g</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">In Greek Mythology, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merope_(Pleiades)">Merope</a> was one of the seven <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleiades_(Greek_mythology)">Pleiades</a>. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merope_(star)">Astronomically</a>, she is one of the seven sisters in the star cluster Pleiades in the constellation of Taurus.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">I believe the correct pronounciation of Merope is 'Me-ro-pee'.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 18px;"><b>Merope</b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; line-height: 18px;"></span></span></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">When I behold the silver crusted sky</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">you turn away, too shamed to meet my gaze.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Oh Merope, I bid thee do not cry -</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">What kindles your sidereal malaise?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Is it Orion’s chase that makes thee weep?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Did marrying a mortal bring you shame?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Each night before Erebus fosters sleep</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I seek the wellhead whence your sorrow came.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Amidst the navy cloth of night you gleam,</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">A glowing sapphire stitched on heaven’s cloak.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Yet pulchritude does not beget esteem -</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Your heart lies scorched ‘midst clouds of stellar smoke.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Switch off your starry light and let me be</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">your constellation for eternity.</span></div>Peter Wilkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12955283590189985306noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8957989888391752290.post-21884587546622062122011-05-09T14:05:00.000-07:002011-05-09T14:05:59.750-07:00Recession<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">This is the third of four <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ekphrasis">ekphrastic</a> poems inspired by the wonderful artwork of <a href="http://melaneia.com/">Melaneia Warwick</a>. Before I reveal the poem I thought it might be interesting to share some of the process involved in its creation.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">As with the previous two poems I sat myself down, took several deep breaths and stepped inside Melaneia's painting. I wandered round, gazing at the remarkable images and artefacts contained within it, even stopping to speak to them at times.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">When I stepped back out I had little idea where to start. I had not connected to the painting like I had on previous occasions. I felt unable to find my place within it. Something was troubling me, preventing me from beginning. Although the artwork intrigued me, I was aware that it also disturbed me. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I looked at it again from the outside, confounded by its surreal quality. It reminded me of a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvador_Dal%C3%AD">Salvador Dali</a> painting entitled <a href="http://www.artst.org/salvador_dali/dali-sleep.jpg.html">'Sleep'</a> which is a painting of a monstrous head propped up by crutches. And then it struck me: <i>Recession </i>was the narrative of a nightmare. Now I had my starting point. I could climb back inside & start to gather all the symbolism & allegories together in order to create my poem.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">For a whole day I toiled to create a blueprint of my poem. I could sense a journey of individuation, as if the dream contained unconscious material that, when interpreted, would somehow enlighten me. But I struggled and struggled to identify a coherent pathway from art to poem. I began to write but my words were laboured and forced. After two more days I began to despair until the strangest feeling began to consume me. I felt as though I was trapped inside painting and poem and could not find a way out.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">And then it suddenly dawned: this was about death! My resistance to face up to this ~ my own mortality ~ had prevented me from engaging with the artwork. The painting was loaded with scary, deathly images but, having realised what was happening, I was able to surrender to these images and, in doing so, transcend the polarity of the life-death split. As Jung wrote, acknowledging the imminence of death and the limits of our existence allows us to let go of our egos, freeing the way for our creative Self to discover true meaning.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Finally, having overcome the obstacles that had prevented me from 'letting go' of my ego, I realised who the serene looking lady was at the bottom of Melaneia's painting. She was my anima, my <span style="line-height: 115%;"><i>femme inspiratrice, </i>waiting patiently to accompany me back from my nightmare to a new space brimming with creative potential.</span></span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEja-PZnYB1gn_OMZNTSSZTMgkkRRgkpyPqscnGE77AoYrZgye4QSMiZRBknRvENdSJ9_13146V30Xh1yWOpkRCYFUw2BrnTr8GMUtfn3zUfVqTbP3OANGfpn6eIMpdqQeUgzq_wrPhk5G1E/s1600/Recession.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEja-PZnYB1gn_OMZNTSSZTMgkkRRgkpyPqscnGE77AoYrZgye4QSMiZRBknRvENdSJ9_13146V30Xh1yWOpkRCYFUw2BrnTr8GMUtfn3zUfVqTbP3OANGfpn6eIMpdqQeUgzq_wrPhk5G1E/s320/Recession.jpg" width="228" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Above is Melaneia's incredible painting entitled <i>Recession</i> from her <a href="http://melaneia.com/#/gloaming/4544845693">'Gloaming'</a> series ~ and here is my poem:</span><br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>Recession</b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">Like Coppelius, you lurk behind my eyes</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"></span> waiting for darkfall.</span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> <div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;">Palsied by sleep I fail to hear your crutches <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;">clack across the slick red mezzanine in my skull.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;">It is the reek of your breath that rouses me.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;">Looking up I see your voluminous head, <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;">glimpse your mantic forearms as you loom above, <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;">an incubus of pink gristle </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"> spewing spoonfuls </span>of curdled dreams</div><div class="MsoNormal"> into my brain.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;">I strain to squall, to fling away the sheets but I lie</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"></span> zip-tied like a corpse.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;">One final retch and your sphincter blows </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"></span>blasting out your gullet, spilling melted muscle</div><div class="MsoNormal"> through the hole in my id.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;">In the underworld, death smirks like a bullet-riddled clown.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;">A cartoon phantom sings in oblivion<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 72.0pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">scragged by threads of luminous plasma.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;">Yet under your jib an ageless lady sits gracefully</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"></span> waiting for wakefulness.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;">I blink hard and find myself at the edge of my nightmare<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;">grasping the last few drops of allegory that slither</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"></span>from the brim of your hat.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;">Soon, I will wander beyond the mortality line</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"></span> back into the blue bag of night</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;">towards a purpose glowing with afterlight. <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div></span>Peter Wilkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12955283590189985306noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8957989888391752290.post-35373344310091466382011-04-23T04:26:00.000-07:002011-04-23T04:32:38.407-07:00White TulipsThis poem has been languishing on my 'poetry' page for some time ~ so, after amending it slightly, I thought I would give it another airing on my main blog page.<br />
<div><br />
<div><br />
</div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">White Tulips</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">You always said he would be early -</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">kidded by a false spring that, one morning,</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> broke inside you,</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">hormones melting in quick thaws</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> of pulsed muscle.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">During those seven moons you were touched</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">by so many luminaries, some shining all the way</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> from Eden.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">With waters spilling on every pain</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">you saw those stars sink</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> inside the doctor's eyes.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">After two days you hauled back your body</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">and shuffled down corridors,</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> stepped out through those glass doors.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">And the world was big with cars,</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">the weather gentle</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> with feminine light.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">'No more frosts now,' you said</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">as white tulips settled in their beds,</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> eggshells cracked in sunlight.</span></span></div></div>Peter Wilkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12955283590189985306noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8957989888391752290.post-24138189292568959762011-04-08T13:01:00.000-07:002011-04-08T13:03:17.072-07:00Static<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Following on from my <a href="http://peterwilkin1.blogspot.com/2011/03/trapped-memories-invented-truths.html#comments">previous posting</a> the poem below<i> </i>is also part of my collaboration with the visual artist <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/Melaneia">Melaneia Warwick</a>. After wandering around inside a specific piece of her art I have tried to create a poem that engages with the narrative of her painting. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">This process is known as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ekphrasis">ekphrasis</a> and there are many examples of poets creating such poems that have been inspired by works of art: <a href="http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/sylviaplath/1443">'The Disquieting Muses'</a> by Sylvia Plath, which is based on the painting by the same title by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Disquieting_Muses">Giorgio de Chirico</a>, <a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171273">'The Starry Night'</a> by Anne Sexton based on the hugely famous painting by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Starry_Night">Vincent van Gogh</a> and, much more recently, the absolutely stunning <a href="http://www.pascalepetit.co.uk/index.php?f=data_poetry_collections&a=0">'What the Water Gave Me'</a> by <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/pascalepoet">Pascale Petit</a>, which contains fifty-two poems in the voice of the Mexican painter<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #ff3300;"> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frida_Kahlo">Frida Kahlo</a>. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #ff3300;"> </span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #ff3300;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Here is <a href="http://melaneia.com/">Melaneia's</a> painting 'Static' from her 'Gloaming' series that inspired my poem:</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7k-T6kRGMBNHUQFwJEPrzU_O9m0qI6FXLn5gHbdjzX0wy2aCAij8lIbWKydxOK9YqLyBYFeKJm28StWB-9iDDdXJxLMxWJkPMTY4s0iDdEfld5eqPKjoTvc51UjggzMGFUa8Vvre-HOU8/s1600/Static+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="245" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7k-T6kRGMBNHUQFwJEPrzU_O9m0qI6FXLn5gHbdjzX0wy2aCAij8lIbWKydxOK9YqLyBYFeKJm28StWB-9iDDdXJxLMxWJkPMTY4s0iDdEfld5eqPKjoTvc51UjggzMGFUa8Vvre-HOU8/s320/Static+1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">And here is my poem:</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<div style="text-align: left;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Static</span></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></b></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Dread was a concept you never really understood.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Only the sweet iron of stars and summer lightning</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">coloured your days as life straddled you, rode you</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">bareback and bitless over a switchback of tragedies.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">When people spoke of the coming storm you saw</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">the twist of their lips but heard only tinkling cymbals.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Even the sweaty lick of their appled palms failed</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">to draw you from the reverie of your malted bed.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">As the hours passed, you stared into a blackening sky</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">and waited, your skin frothed with latherin as prongs</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">of hot silver darted through your mane. At long last</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">you began to smell the stench of your own immortality.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Spooked by the rumblings of a distant thunderhead</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">you jittered with ignorance as the first sparks fizzed</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">about your hooves. Hobbled and haltered, you gasped</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">as licks of yellow fire pulsed along bone-dry timbers.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Rafters, blazing like crazy now, collapsed and crashed </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">to the ground as the next bolt struck your blistered ego.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Veins popping, breath bloody and sputtered, you wept</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">black tears as the final explosion ripped off your legs.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">That’s how I found you, petrified and smoking with insight,</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">a broken mustang, static beside the brightest blue ocean.</span></div>Peter Wilkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12955283590189985306noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8957989888391752290.post-63460099087791459272011-03-17T15:25:00.000-07:002011-03-17T15:29:21.521-07:00Trapped Memories, Invented Truths<div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">When <a href="http://melaneia.com/">Melaneia Warwick</a> recently invited me to collaborate with her on a limited edition book I was overjoyed. I had 'discovered' her and been following her as <a href="http://twitter.com/Melaneia">@Melaneia</a> on Twitter for months, intrigued by her wonderful artwork.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Melaneia is a rapidly emerging visual artist who currently has a solo exhibition entitled 'Trapped Memories, Invented Truths' at the Butetown History & Arts Centre in Cardiff. Her artistic practice is concerned with the nature of oral history. She draws and paints in the way stories are told: there is a narrative, yet the characters are not figures but objects borrowed from friends’ houses – a top hat, an angel’s dress, a gourd.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">These objects are not chosen for their formal properties but for the tales they could tell. Each bibelot (curio), whether a treasured or neglected possession, invites speculation about its history and, by association, our own: where does it come from? What has it endured? How will it be remembered? </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Melaneia’s artistic process contains clues to her own history, one informed by her mother’s prowess as a storyteller, her dual nationality and her mastery of linguistics. In childhood she began painting with her fingers on woodchip paper. Now, she continues to forge a visceral connection with her subject. Rather than only drawing from observation, she uses her hands to explore its contours and its inner recesses and then draws from memory and sensation. It may take weeks to effect the object’s transition from a stranger spotted in a dusty store to a casual acquaintance to a much-loved friend. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Our collaboration, which we hope will come to fruition by the end of 2011, will focus on Melaneia’s <a href="http://melaneia.com/#/gloaming/4544845693">'Gloaming'</a> series and include giclee prints, reflections, observations and word sketches:</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> fairly brief interpretations of each of the four paintings in the series.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Although I have already written a number of preparatory haikus & senryus about each of the four paintings, I wanted to write a longer poem about a single painting that would afford me the space to word-paint my own invented truths. The painting I have chosen is called ‘Protective’: </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2NT7qdkH8Pg6ZkFQW3P0bqlrLjwosaNGjPqsAKw1FIVk8L76Rm4yxGjZEq2z4_LCdYz0ejcszAElMSSZK0O2r1VOu_fppnvMFl38mPGnPVxuUJ7lbiK0iP8cX7Dfb6Zz8Dr-NwBd6aeG9/s1600/Protective.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="218" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2NT7qdkH8Pg6ZkFQW3P0bqlrLjwosaNGjPqsAKw1FIVk8L76Rm4yxGjZEq2z4_LCdYz0ejcszAElMSSZK0O2r1VOu_fppnvMFl38mPGnPVxuUJ7lbiK0iP8cX7Dfb6Zz8Dr-NwBd6aeG9/s320/Protective.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">And here is my poetic interpretation, also called 'Protective', of Melaneia's painting:</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">You stood back at first, stunned by its opalescence</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">and nacreous pinks. Slowly, as if to spin out the thrill,</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">you raised it to your ear and gasped as Etesian winds</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">picked up those apple-scented murmurs of Eden.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">It was when you peered inside and drew your finger</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">over its satin lamina that realisation began to dawn.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">This was no discarded carapace. This was the creaking</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">frustration of compressed wings, a floundering Throne.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">And then you saw her, the whole unfolding of her body</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">as she levitated in the gathering storm: a dithering angel</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">with coralline pinions, each laboured flap flinging droplets</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">of holy water, splashing a sacrament on your soft skin.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">You smiled and held out your hands, invited her to stay,</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">said she could sleep in the room purged of all shadows.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">That was when Truth raised her eyebrows in disbelief,</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">when the squall struck, sweeping<span style="color: red;"> </span>her back to the sea.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div></div>Peter Wilkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12955283590189985306noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8957989888391752290.post-58742674547092831232011-03-04T04:18:00.000-08:002011-03-04T04:18:44.426-08:00Latching<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">In a theatre of green sanitized people<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">you lay blocked into submission,<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">screened from the red-soaked gauzes<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">piled like sandbags round your belly.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">‘Is she alive?’ you asked me,<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">your eyes crushed with disbelief.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Four days later (your milk<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">still oozy droplets of yellow)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">I watched the pain raid your face<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">as you softly trod the cobblestones<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">in our street, sunlit puddles<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">of mud steaming like butter-rich stew.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Driven by moon tides, your baby<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">(all ribs and thin flesh,<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">her navel clipped in pink plastic)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">lurched blindly to your swollen nipple.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Your eyes, blue as stars<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">blazed gently on her artless fumbles.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">When morning yawned we huddled<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">like hostages, her tiny breathings<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">captured beneath soft blankets.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Pillow-propped, you offered her your milk.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">I caught the heft of your sigh<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">as she suckled to the lick of your flow.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div>Peter Wilkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12955283590189985306noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8957989888391752290.post-24427680914328523962011-02-23T06:27:00.000-08:002011-02-26T13:16:53.494-08:00Endings<div class="MsoBodyText2"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">In the last of a series of therapy postings, I have chosen to write about endings.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Every therapeutic relationship needs to end at some point, though the ending itself can be difficult. If the issues brought to therapy were those of loss and abandonment, then they are likely to resurface as the final sessions draw closer. In fact, endings can generate trauma irrespective of the issues that have surfaced during the sessions. We are talking about a deeply emotional human relationship where the two people involved are about to part company and, quite possibly, never see each other again.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I have decided to focus on the very last session of the therapeutic relationship, when both the therapist and therapee are faced with that final ‘goodbye’. As opposed to using dialogue, I have crept into the minds of both players & created a dreamlike sequence, drifting in and out of their unconscious thoughts. Once again, my <b>imaginary</b> therapee, Riadne, has kindly agreed to join me in my rhapsody on the final hour.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Finally, it is probably worth mentioning that I have created a ‘good’ ending, where the therapeutic relationship has been productive and the ending positive. In the real world this is not always the case. Sometimes, for some people and for a multitude of reasons, therapy just does not work out.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><i><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">‘Let it be so,’ I said<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><i><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">And my heart laughed with joy<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><i><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">To know the death I must die</span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><i><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b>Kathleen Raine</b></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>R </b>'Will you miss me, I wonder?' <i>(tearbirth)</i></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><b>P </b>'</span><span style="color: black;">I will miss you … you who landed here a distance ago, tumbling down from the heavens … crashing, crumpled, broken, empty. Here – this smile has lived in my soul since you arrived … it’s yours now. Please take it … for always (you can never lose smiles once you have accepted them).'<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i>Twilight: umbra shades, lifting through a bruiseglow of fireflies and owl-light. I reach a clearing and a smouldering of embers where a fire has burned all day. Riadne is there, waiting for me. I drift over to join her (she does not feel me … but our breathings rise and fall in harmony).</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-right: 1.3pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b><span style="color: black;">R</span></b><span style="color: black;"> ‘You are my therapist. At first, I did not trust you. I thought you were smug. I thought you looked down upon me. Slowly, I began to like you. Eventually, I wanted to be with you … forever. Give you the all of me. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-right: 1.3pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-right: 1.3pt;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">But you rejected me.’ <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><h1><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: small;"> </span></o:p></h1><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-right: 1.3pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><b>P </b>'</span><span style="color: black;">As the weeks, months, passed by your feelings changed towards me. I became your saviour, your lover, your perfect other. And I rejected you.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-right: 1.3pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-right: 1.3pt;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">But oh! How I wished I could have flown with you back to your Eden - those balmy times whole testaments ago of figs and almond petals. What you wouldn’t have given to smell those musty hollows, rub fold of flesh beneath your mummy’s arm and curl into the cradle of her thighs, soft pillow bellywhite and shiny rips of skin cleaved by her amniotic sea.'<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-right: 1.3pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-right: 1.3pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><b>R </b>'</span><span style="color: black;">You rejected me. I felt the steel of your resolve like soft armour round my body. I looked up and saw the smiles in your eyes. And I was a child again, grasping that bulging breast between my little hands, that swollen bud of nipple spurting sugarmilk: warm lactose pools that puddled in my folded tongue. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I came to know that you were there when you were missing … and though I have to go now … no, I <b>choose</b> to go now … you will always be alive in my soul … and I know that you will miss me.'<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i>The calmness of a beautiful dying descends upon me. I rise, and smell the rich leaves that break quietly beneath my steps. I am on the edge of a still lake. Upwards, a storm threatens and clouds jostle angrily as heaven’s bells begin to peel their tonic sol-fa … clangs that echo in the distant Sundays of my childhood.</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b><span style="color: black;">P</span></b><span style="color: black;"> 'When you arrived, staggering with the weight of your emptiness, you stood motionless at the margins of despair. You looked down into a paradise of darkness and only the dimmest of lights swayed and flickered in the howling winds that screamed inside your soul. I danced around you with my arms spread wide (did you ever see me?). You followed me around all day. I even took you home with me. I suffered like any parent might … though I knew my arms, my words, my actions would be snapped like twigs if ever you decided to jump.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Now, you have reached an edgeless place. This place has no limits. It is a feminine space, it is everness and it reaches far, far beyond being. So be nomadic, hitch your wagon to the stars … be free to roam in all the places you have been told never to go. Rip up your roots, be rhizomatic and wander through those pathless woods.’ <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><b>R </b>'</span><span style="color: black;">I am. I exist. And I no longer need the slow rip of a blade to prove my existence. I can be … I do not have to hide in the tall grasses of denial, nor do I have to sail my small boat upon a foggy, feathered ocean. I am enough of me, now, to dance between imagoes and long shadows. I am whole.'<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><i><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">A solitary kingfisher skims greenblue over the lake, heralding the dying of us. <o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I feel Riadne’s shoulders loosen, sense the strictures breaking open, hear the tumbling of her Jericho as the most beautiful dawn begins to appear: a hazy lemon light that plays so all-at-once over the late spring frost of a fallowed field … there is birdsong, the most wonderful aria that fills the sky with corals and carmines … and then … twilight breaks, becomes dayspring. <o:p></o:p></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b><span style="color: black;">P</span></b><span style="color: black;"> ‘It is time, Riadne … time for the end of us … for the beginnings of not-us again. Die peacefully … farewell.’<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><h4><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">R </span><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">‘Farewell, my rock.’ *She watches as I crumble into a million particles. She smiles as she feels the mountain rise inside her chest*</span><o:p></o:p></span></h4><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Wingdings;">sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss<o:p></o:p></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Lunch, coffee … letter: ‘Dear Doctor … Riadne, etc.’ … </span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2"><span style="position: relative; z-index: 251657728;"><span style="height: 42px; left: 71px; position: absolute; top: -1px; width: 210px;"> </span></span></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tbody>
<tr> <td bgcolor="white" height="42" style="background: white; border: .75pt solid black; vertical-align: top;" width="210"><span style="position: absolute; z-index: 251657728;"> </span><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tbody>
<tr> <td><div class="shape" style="padding: 4.35pt 7.95pt 4.35pt 7.95pt;" v:shape="_x0000_s1026"><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">TURN OFF COMPUTER<o:p></o:p></span></div></div></td> </tr>
</tbody></table> </td> </tr>
</tbody></table><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoBodyText2"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">5.57 p.m. </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Lock cabinet … lock door … down the steps … air shrouded in the after-rain scent of tea roses.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">*a sigh: bigger than a planet … *</span></div>Peter Wilkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12955283590189985306noreply@blogger.com8