Pilgrim Station

I am entirely delighted to confirm Pilgrim Station will be printed this week to come and available from various sources, including: http://www.spmpublications.com/ Nnorom has come up trumps, reviews are underway or volunteered, and I am clinging to a career milestone, waving my scarf in the breeze and singing, as the man put it, my favourite Spanish Revolutionary song.   

 

Every dog has his day!  Love Light and happiness,
Dom.

Peter at Hungerford

 

 

Bright Scarf Poet Peter Pegnall on the last night of the Hungerford Literary Festival,   23 October 2016. The right man for the job. He puts me in mind of his old mentor, and that ancient yardman poet from further up the east coast.  A case of Whitby sur Moyola, though it strikes me Peter starts with clearer intentions even than Caedmon. 

Soller Station

the bright scarf contingent gathers at Hungerford on the weekend. We're going to see that Jenni Murray on Saturday, then probably paint the town red.  At a literary festival all doors are open and all wines flow. Isn't that so?  Meanwhile, anxious delays on my collection, this is no picture of me loaded down with paperbacks, in any case, wrong station...

                         

When I stepped out into the rain today
with head bowed down and collar turned
against the wind set lightly at my door,
an Autumn wind, I saw you standing,
waiting on your platform without end,
waiting for a North bound train.

Hungerford Literary Festival, Sunday 23 October

Rounding off the festival’s exciting programme of authors and events an evening with the Bright Scarf Poets, which includes an open mic element.  “This will be a really fun, welcoming event for anyone interested in the spoken word. There will be a stage, a microphone, tables set-up cafe style and the all important bar to help calm any nerves. What a fantastic way to spend a Sunday night”

Tickets available, with reduction for speaking poets.

Eρεβος

Here's a shadowy coincidence.  Next week on holiday in Majorca, we will be going to Deya, Robert Graves' old haunt and now I hear, beside the naked mud pools, an artistic colony for the monied.  Graves' star is waning in my firmament, but his index of the Greek Myths and the White Goddess are on the shelf beside me.

The coincidences:  I am writing up a poem based in Brompton Cemetery that reflects on the Port of Erebus (entry to the underworld) and have just read Norman Cameron's collected poems, John Norman spent time with Graves & Co in Deya, he wrote it up in passing "A Visit to the Dead." The first stanzas quoted below.  Now looking out the poem I find Cameron was buried in the Brompton Cemetery. Occasionally the coincidences mount up.

I bought  (I was too wealthy for my age)
A passage to the dead ones' habitat,
And learnt, under their tutelage,
To twitter like a bat

In imitation of their dialect.
Crudely I aped their subtle practices;
By instinct knew how to respect
Their strict observances.

Pilgrim Station, soft proof

We have a running order for production with Sentinel and printers, figuring an on sale date of 17 October.  I hope to have copies to cart along to the Hungerford Literary Festival on 23 October, see below, and above, soon [if not already].  Meanwhile I am reminded of Dylan Thomas after a good lunch:  my ears are full of peas and my smiles are all gravy. 

Cover design to be confirmed, meanwhile draft includes an Arizona hand carving, a tourist piece I am sure, which a Stratford evacuee bought his young daughter in later years, that is, a household charm.

Hungerford Literary Festival, 23 October 2016

Bright Scarves will be unfurling nicely at 7pm, Sunday 23 October, The Croft Hall, Hungerford. The top venue for a top show at this year's Literary Festival.
More details to follow, meanwhile:
Reach for those diaries!

WH Auden

I have been slow in coming to Auden, aware of him the light that shines on him, his manner of speech.  Now, poetry I like most is often the poetry which makes me rhyme and so the easiest way in to a poet’s work -  or the most fun, for me - is the declamatory stuff.  Blow winds, crack your cheeks.  etc.


This from The Age of Anxiety,

Well, here I am but how, how, asks the visitor,
Strolling through the strange streets, can I start to discover
The fashionable feminine fret, or the form of insult
Minded most by the men? In what myth do their sages

        Locate the cause of evil?
        How are these people punished?

How, above all, will they end?  By any natural
Fascination of frost or flood, or from the artful
Obliterating bang whereby God’s rebellious image
After thousands of thankless years spent in thinking about it,

        Finally finds a solid
        Proof of its independence?

compadres

Simply for the pleasure of it, this talkative group: Peter, Dominic, Quentin.

The Photo was taken the afternoon before the event below, and is a souvenir of a few days together that week on the East coast.

A happy time with Steak and Kidney pie, Norfolk sausages, Cromer crab, flashes of merriment, occasional seriousness and as much Yeats as anyone else, apart from ourselves of course.

Bicycle Shop, Norwich

Last Wednesday; an evening full of expression underground at the Bicycle Shop, a groovy café bar on Benedicts St, Norwich. It has been some time since Peter, Quentin and Rosie performed together, here, Tista joining the group. Good performances all, and good material.  It's a pity for me Norwich is a long haul from the Cotswolds but Peter's back on form and there should be more to come at the Bicycle Shop, and in Sheringham, well worth the visit.

Bright Scarves 25 May

A happy day for the old brighter scarfers, a reunion with Peter Pegnall in the lead, ready to roll. Watch that man!  There has been a lot of loose bicycle talk the last couple of days, Peter wants to hire more, Quentin doesn't want that whole Butch & Sundance rigmarole.  We're a three gear bunch, or none at all.

After a wordy warm up in Sheringham the boys will meet up with Rosie in Norwich for a fun packed evening of poetic entertainment.  Make your way to the bicycle shop one and all, I don't know if there will be bicycling, but the wheels still in spin.

Wiv'air larndun airs n graces.  Blimey.

Bard of Hawkwood 2016

		Hawkwood College, 02 May Open Day, rain, wind and a busy common room before 5 story tellers, poets, song writers competing at the 2nd Hawkwood Eistedfodd, although Peter is not pictured here he can probably be found on Kevan Manwaring's bardic site - instead, me handing over the applebough, and our gorsedd, Katie, Anthony, Chantelle, yours truly, Steve and Richard about the incoming Bard of Hawkwood. It was a closely fought contest and a well deserved win for Anthony Hentschel with a stirring performance of his own grand, redemptive verse. It might be a good year for the bards, I can offer my sympathies to the runners-up, they should know full well their stuff is winning material, but it was Anthony's day: goose bumps.  & No more live judging for me, I think.  Awen.

the great and the good

The blog is a beast needs feeding.  The other day I found an anthology, Firebox, in a second hand book shop, treasure hunter, and picked it up this evening with half an hour to kill. I was immediately inspired by Heaney.  Gradually I understand what these poets achieve, and daresay I may slowly gain on them, a little.  We all respond to competition, here though,  it wasn't even a case of No hurry worry, since good poetry at the very least encourages. Meanwhile:

I was reading Heaney and Muldoon
though I’m not so keen on Muldoon,
really, but these boys fly:
they fly with thought on words, where I,
I am again the parapenter
too heavy for his rig sometimes taking
giant leaps, great, ungainly bounding steps
on Brecon's boulders;  strange, wild bird,
a goony chick, let all description founder.

Heroes

I see Bowie @ his execution
archly poised, a pointed gun,

his gentleness in isolation
exuberant and fine;

hadn’t heard from him in years,
a loved one, standing  by the wall

The speaker was an angel,
he coughed and shook his crumpled wings

            moved his lips: 
It’s time we should be going.

His song: I’d not be done with Heroes
for all I’ve tried and written,

sadly now when Bowie plays the shadow
turning on a screen, he's gone

I know.  I hear it on the radio,
I feel it in my soul.