Sunday 10 December 2017
The High Window, PS Review
THE HIGH WINDOW
Saturday 2 December 2017
CITN December 17
Poetry Kit CITN 168: it's a comprehensive list.
Sunday 12 November 2017
Voronezh Notebooks
from book III, translated by Andrew Davis:
I'll sketch this out, I'll say this quietly -
Because its moment is still not evident:
The game of the unconscious sky will be
Accomplished later, with experience...
And beneath the time-soaked sky
Of Purgatory, we frequently forget
That the blessed storehouse of the heavens
Is our home, limitless and present.
That last phrase may have heaven as "the lifelong house" of our consciousness, in David McDuff's translations.
It is difficult to get the form from the translations, I'd gather the writing, rich in technique, is peppered with alliteration, thickened by rhymes and assonance, probably with its social reference too, even if Mandelstam never got the tone in trying to atone for his attacks on Stalin.
All that aside, without Russian we can still enjoy the high points of his translated verse in their un-apparelled meaning.
Sunday 8 October 2017
Thursday 5 October 2017
Chops II
of the perennial Redgrove
groping with lingam and yonii
in ancient, undoubtedly beautiful caverns
wet in the ever so slow movements
of his latest book was penned in
somewhere near Kingston on Thames
where I also lived sometimes
fifteen years ago.
from initial thought, completed
to conversations with his wife;
the resultant verse on paper
was inevitably half opaque
but Osip shines, he shines.
Saturday 30 September 2017
The Writers' Room
Sunday 3 September 2017
Chops I
Struck to the core, the heart’s red core by
Liardet’s
Self Portrait as Shamdeo – I misread as Shenandoah –
Talking to his Future Self I
find myself faced by two antagonists:
Ferocity and Sorrow. I comb jasmine, waterlily in my hair,
rub the bristles on my jaw, removed from
this apparent world,
pursued by gods of earth and air, a demons pack, setterragic a ssalc
of backwards hunting carnivores jacketed in
smoke, foul breathed
and wide, extraordinary yawning. Spirits of the claw.
I lick my paws. Tormented by the yap of
wolves Sophia’s dream,
her wisdom finally devolves from dust in twisters of the wind
Air-tunnelling the Roman gardens, on the
enlightened Parthenon,
long-emptied theatres of the dead and gone who ushered in
their own loathing, doubt and hunger. How
wearisome you are.
For a spell raised on all fours and now to rise on simian feet,
it is a shaky progress to your clothes line
on the water’s edge,
the moonlight shore where hangs a scarecrow article,
your battered coat, removed so long ago that
now we struggle
to adorn ourselves with human clothes. You contemplate,
I whine and fawn, bite at your heels. You
draw me back,
would hold me down in the struggle of twin entities
who squabble over worry bones, our knuckles
strewn
on appetite, rune stones whose scattered grammar claims
a god whose lamb lies in the ruins of the
first recorded text,
unaltered yet. slant-wise in your mirror let me write it down:
Red in tooth and claw the neighbour at your
door,
the baying dog who knows you is your own reflection.
Wednesday 14 June 2017
Sigurd and the nuthatch
Also this week: a poem included in the Ver Poets Comp. Anthology 2017, out in July
AND a poem on the theme of shoes, to be included in the inaugural edition of the Northampton Poetry Review to be launched this summer by poet, Tom Harding. The day's so hot right now.
Monday 22 May 2017
Illustrated man
the tears are running
he's pouring water on his head
like an animal that burrows,
like a savage in the dirt
escaping from the world,
crouched, rocking back and forth,
scooping soil loose enough
to pull the earth above him
or like the flightless, desert bird,
burying his head
wishing he were dead.
Thursday 11 May 2017
Interview with Rosie
Paxos - Dom & Geranium |
Saturday 22 April 2017
in the courtyard of the vic
Black Book Café, February 2017. Dom, Clare and Nick |
Saturday 15 April 2017
WOL Review
Thursday 13 April 2017
Words & Music II, Sunday 23 April
Danica is coming over from Newbury and we look forward to welcoming Mandy, Ely and Kim. Cas has definitely put the word out: Stroud News & Journal, PrLog – and I will see about hanging a few posters, don't they look great?? I must overhaul the blurb on the blog.
Saturday 1 April 2017
The Lake Review
My first review appears in ezine, The Lake, April 17. I think it's okay. It is a bit alarming to be quoted back at myself from the blog, and with no fit way to react to this or that observation which seems not-properly observed; but plenty were, and it is a good thing to have the poems in Pilgrim Station singled out and weighed differently as they are passed from hand to hand. Okay, there maybe an error or two, I know, I know. But, my first review. The grin of cheese!
Saturday 28 January 2017
Words & Music, Saturday 25 February, Stroud
Come to the Black Book in Stroud for an evening of wine, cake, acoustic sets and song interspersed with raconteuring and poetic celebration. Casimir and Sandra bring Mike and Nick, highly recommended, and we have visiting poets Paul, whose stock is rising and Clare, who carries the fire.
More information on facebook page, wordsandmusicstroud and soon to be posted on black book site and generally around. There will be corkage at the café, bring a bottle by all means, bring your effervescent self.
Maybe pick up a copy of Pilgrim Station. music from Cas and Paul's poetry also available.
Sunday 15 January 2017
PS Arrivals
Poetry Library Write Out Loud
Black Book Café, Stroud, Glos, “Words & Music” with Cas Greenfield
Wednesday 4 January 2017
Little Theatre
Our first reading of the New Year is a real adventure: we welcome two poets who rejoice in the twists and turns of language at the same time as bearing sharp witness to the weight of experience.
PP