my life as a artist
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questions, questions, questions
Monday 6th August 2007 9:19 PM
In November, I'm doing a couple of readings at the Aldeburgh poetry festival, and having an exhibition of my art in the Peter Pears gallery at the same time. The recognition is quite gratifying, although I do miss the romance of being a criminally overlooked and deeply misunderstood renaissance figure, crying in the wilderness. The festival are publishing a poetry paper and have asked all the participating poets to answer a questionnaire, the questions coming from famous poems. Here are the questions and answers. I don't know how many of them I got right.
a) How is it that you live, and what is it you do? William Wordsworth.
To be honest with you, Willie, I don't know how it is I live. In the words of your fellow bard, Toyah Wilcox, 'it's a mystery'. I can only imagine that God got bored of eternity, and he willed us into existence so he'd have someone to play blind-mans bluff with. I write poems and paint pictures, blindfolded.
b) What manner of man art thou? Why lookst thou so? S.T.Coleridge.
Well Sam, I'm a Yorkshireman/spaceman cross, and there might be a bit of collie in there somewhere, as well. I look like this because I attempted to cut my own hair with some cheap hair-clippers that I got at the car-boot sale.
c) What is that sound that so thrills the ear? W.H. Auden
Glad you like it Wystan! It's a track called 'Moonlight on Vermont', and it's being performed by Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band. You can find it on the album 'Trout Mask Replica', along with other traditional folk songs from other planets.
d) Say, is there beauty yet to find? Rupert Brooke
I think there might be some left in the fridge.
e) What's heaven? George Mackay Brown
There's a few schools of thought on this one, George. Gogol says it's a place 'where angels live in sadness', whereas Google says it's a gay discothèque in London. Until those two get together and sort it out, it's difficult to say. To me, heaven is striding out over Cader Idris, on a sunny day, eating vegetable dansak.
f) Is there anybody there? Walter de la Mare
I don't know Walter, have you tried knocking? It's the second moonlit door on the left… and by the way, it may look like the 'forest's ferny floor' to you, but that's actually my garden your horse is eating.
g) Were we led all that way for birth or death? T.S. Eliot.
Lighten up, Tom! It doesn't matter! With existence being an eternal cycle of death and rebirth, they basically amount to the same thing. Thank your lucky stars that at least you saw silken girls bringing sherbert. We don't get anything like that round here, not since they built the by-pass.
h) Okay, what shall we do now? Roger McGough
Tom's suggesting that we go through half-deserted streets that follow like a tedious argument, but the last time we did that, we ended up watching the smoke that rises from the pipes of lonely men in shirt sleeves. I think I'd rather go to the Lake District with Sam and see if we can't peak under the blindfolds.
Where do your poems come from?
From that luminous, thin strip of beach, where the sand is still wet from the waves.
I think I got seven out of ten.
Posted 9:19 PM | 5 Comments | Permalink
blackburn ravens
Saturday 4th August 2007 7:53 PM
There seems to be some confusion about the maximum length of comment that it's possible to post to this blog. Above the validation box , who's magic word today is 'grow', it says 'comment length 0/500'.
Miss Anthrop, in a finely crafted poem, says that she only gets maximum 250, and as this makes my promise of 500 a hollow sham, I'm obviously a Tory. She then tells me to sort it out, with an exclamation mark. I like to think of her as firm and brisk, but essentially friendly, but not as friendly as her brother Phil.
I decided to ask my web-site provider what was going on. Pi internet is basically an old couple called Kate and Sidney Pi, who run the business from a tumbledown, overgrown cottage, that clings like petrified moss to the wind-slashed slopes of Ben Mor Assynt, in North west Scotland. Surprisingly, they don't do e-mail, they haven't got a phone and maddeningly, they never reply to letters, so on Thursday afternoon I drove up there in a hire car, to ask them about the comment length.
Kate and Sidney were very welcoming as usual, and they shared with me their simple traditional breakfast of porridge and deep-fried battered oat cakes, served with a huge, earthenware jug of chilled Irn Bru. Sidney, who's generous to a fault, sometimes likes to slaughter a goat when someone comes to makes a web-site enquiry, but I told him I was on one of those new-fangled, goat-free diets, so we had another glass of Irn Bru instead.
The lack of pitiful howling from an eviscerated goat created a gentle lacuna of quiet space in which to discuss comment lengths. Eventually we managed to pin-point the source of the confusion. Where it says 'comment length 0/500', it doesn't actually specify what the 500 things might be. 500 pages? 500 lines? 500 novellas? 500 paragraphs? Most people, including myself, assumed it meant 500 words, but with the help of a couple of unusually bright, local shepherds, we worked out that it means 500 characters, with a space counting as a character.
So there you have it Miss Anthrop, I've sorted it out. (!) I've also asked Kate and Sidney if they could extend the comment length, and I think that today's magic validation word of 'grow' is their way of telling me that they're working on it.
There were two other comments on Wednesday's blog. D. Lightedwithanywin wanted me to comment on Huddersfield Town's creditable 2-1 win over premiership high-fliers, Blackbird Rovers. A. Pedant lamented this encouragement, and reckons talk of football, with regards to soul nourishment, is a bit pappy, and not solid food, and is therefore something to be weaned off.
On the whole I agree, but sometimes, when your mind is mewling like a motherless child, a quick blog about Huddersfield Town can be comforting. A. Pedant would do well to remember that to some of my regular readers, talk of Andy Booth is breast milk.
A. Pedant writes that they think I might have been weaned off football, but the fact is, there hasn't been any for two months. It all kicks off, in earnest, next week. Premiership, Championship, League 1 and York and District over 35's. It's more or less the same set up as last year, except that John Terry has negotiated himself a pay rise, up to £135,000 per week , and York Corinthians over 35's have put their subs up to a fiver.
Posted 7:53 PM | 2 Comments | Permalink
a foreign reader writes
Wednesday 1st August 2007 11:46 PM
A foreign reader writes 'What does 'chavvy' mean?' When I say it refers to a chav, who's an uneducated, uncultured youth with a leaning towards anti-social behaviour, I suddenly feel a bit judgemental and Daily Mailish, ( for foreign readers, the Daily Mail is a right-wing English newspaper, known for it's intolerance of interesting people) but that's what I was getting at.
I feel strangely excited by the idea that I might have foreign readers. Maybe you're from Mozambique,(muli bwanji!) and you're reading this blog on the shores of Lake Malawi, sitting on the smooth sand, underneath an impossibly bright canopy of stars. Maybe your sat in the stygian gloom of a sombre Swedish forest, seeking solace from your grief at the death of Ingmar Bergman, (Skol!) ,who's greatest films were 'The Seventh Seal' and 'Flipper', mysteriously comforted by the fact that today's magic validation word is 'sad'.
There is no such thing as a foreigner, they're just friends you haven't met yet, because they live abroad and often don't speak English, and there's millions of them, and to be honest, what with pottering and crosswords and stuff, you just don't have the time. (You're too busy thinking about your baby, and you aint got time for nothing else)
,
Posted 11:46 PM | 4 Comments | Permalink
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