A second review for Smudge in Write Out Loud an amiable introduction to the verse, and, as a follow up, invited along by Greg Freeman and WOL company to join their monthly session at the Lightbox, Woking. Thursday 26 May. Gargling and voice exercises resume.
In an upcoming review of SMUDGE it’s put, Louis MacNeice’s poet had better deal with the incorrigible plurality of life, but James won’t have anything to do with it. Maybe not. I find the duality in all things, comparison in opposites, but my aim, should I focus on such a thing, perhaps is more the unity of the moment. “…James is the poet of the moment.”
We must interpret meanings in their
own light. Blake’s The Sick Rose, has strong religious or psychological overtones. Dylan might be singing of
Christian promise in Shelter from the storm, Or is it simply a love
song? Is it in the heart, or mind? In the distance between those poles: room to manoeuvre.
If the opposite of time is eternity, there’s unity, even purpose in a world we
are part of and cannot long ignore.
O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.
Opinions
will vary. To say the least: the included poems have
appeared all over and I am glad to bring them together here. There's a process going on and I judge this is a full step forward from Pilgrim Station.
Chris’s coincidental creation and
unveiling of A Darker Quay, the cover painting, which arrived by email on the MS's week of send and acceptance is apt and it is Dark, yes, but the augurs are good!
Distribution
falls to me and copies are available. Do get in touch:
£10 inc pp, by paypal: djamesdom7@gmail.com
Meanwhile, a first review at The London Grip, 19 Feb.
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| Where be your silver branches now, your jibes, your gambols, flashes of merriment |
Proofs
approved for a new collection, SMUDGE, coming out next week, i expect. It has been five years since Pilgrim Station,
and the work’s moved on. A very good
reception from Littoral Press, and a stunning blurb from David Cooke of The
High Window – I was stunned – among other high points, celebrating my sense of sound and rhythm; that great
bugbear, calmed.
The MS was read and approved In the first week of the year, and by chance I was sent this entirely appropriate picture in the same week: instant, classic poetry cover. It’s a good month for the poet! More to follow, you bet there is. Dom.
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| A Darker Quay - C.A. Hutchens |
With videos of David Cooke and Adam Horovitz joining Katie Lloyd-Nunn (on the brink of 1,000 hits), another of my own slips through as i prowl the internet for more candidates. This film touches on a walk in the Welsh Hills, with a picnic in a hayfield, a paddle in the river Lugg, the core of it being my old buddy David's guitar.
If you are in reach of Gloucestershire and interested in making a poetry video, I still have time and resources available, get in touch
To keep him in mind something else will do, this from,
Pig Island Letters.
From an old house shaded with macrocarpas
Rises my malady.
Love is not valued much in Pig Island
Though we admire its walking parody,
That brisk gaunt woman in the kitchen
Feeding the coal range, sullen
To all strangers, less one should be
Her antique horn-red Satan.
Her man, much baffled, grousing in the pub,
Discusses sales
Of yearling lambs, the timber in a tree
Thrown down by autumn gales,
Her daughter, reading in her room
A catalogue of dresses,
Can drive a tractor, goes to Training College,
Will vote on the side of the Bosses,
Her son is moodier, has seen
An angel with a sword
Standing above the clump of old man manuka
Just waiting for the word
To overturn the cities and the rivers
And split the house like a rotten totara log.
Quite unconcerned he sets his traps for 'possums
And whistles to his dog.
The man who talks to the masters of Pig Island
About the love they dread
Plaits ropes of sand, yet I was born among them
And will lie some day with their dead.
