I will

 

 

 

                                     pick up the pen
                                     nothing to write
                                     almost the end of term
                                     arguing with people
                                     in my mind I come
                                     to the end of my
                                     full-time career

                                     I will create still
                                     in teaching but I will write
                                     and I will sit I will infuse
                                     my work through
                                     writing and in sitting

                                     I will dwell in
                                          creating
                                          teaching
                                     and only do that

                                           I will not extrapolate
                                           I will not extemporise
                                           I will not extreme
                                     but I will express
                                           I will exist so
                                           I will not expire

                                                       I will create the centre
                                                 I will open the centre
                                           I will centre the centre
                                     the very same centre of
                                     sitting and writing and teaching
                                     and I shall live there where
                                     I have not been living now
                                     for twenty four years

 

 

 

breakdown & career wormholes: pep talk
creation wormhole: wriving

 

wriving

 

 

 

                                                              wriving

                           when I try too hard people just get annoyed
                                I only got average grades at school

                           my writing is not to prove me to the world
                                not to be sent through boarding school

                           not in writing not in teaching not in my career
                                that touch the lives of people

                           I do not have to raise a flag in the world to be
                                I create privately sufficient unto themselves

                           sufficient for to see, sufficient for to breathe …

                                          write
                                     write a huge book of poems
                                          unorganised and all over the place
                                                   sufficient just to be

 

 

 

part of >>> writing and being
breathing wormhole: LET’S GO!
career wormhole: returning home
creation wormhole: “crop / rotation”
others wormhole: preee- / senting // en- / senting

 

Versatile Blogger Award

The rules are:

1. Thank and link back to the person who awarded you
2. Nominate fifteen bloggers for the Award – link to their site (and notify them)
3. State seven things about yourself

                                                                      ~~~ “O” ~~~

1. Tazein gets up every morning and showers in … awards!   She is inundated with them at the moment (have a look at her site).   She has bestowed one of them on me, which is very sweet of her.

2. I would consider a versatile blogger one who plays with the endless diversity of being in all the forms it comes in.   It is not necessarily a blogger who treats of a wide range of topics.   Here are my nominations; I am not sure I will get to fifteen of them:

Daphne Ogyen
omrum
Jessica leBaron
bussokuseki
miriam louisa
ania
not all the English drink tea
emina redzic

3. Acceptance Speech (including – possibly – seven things about myself, or at least my writing; or not)

I think there is a symbiotic connection between writing and being.   By themselves, writing is just reporting and being is unnoticed.   When writing and being come together there is … breathing.   And poetry.   There is a marvellous alchemy that takes place when the word is invoked on the [inner or outer] breath, whether it is written or sung ‘makes no difference; the word coagulates the reality like a culture in yogurt (‘in the beginning was the word …’); to be ‘inspired’ – etymologically – is to breathe in the smoke of the offerings to gods; I started writing when JD Salinger offered me a blooming bunch of parentheses, when Steve Englehart included me as integral to the climax of Dr Strange #9 (Aug 1975), when Basho’s frog jumped into the old pond, when Allen Ginsberg showed me what it meant to be angel-headed in utter candour; these eminences showed me that there was an immanence in words which I could explore … which I could be; later (… rather, eventually) I began to sit and found that the being that I sought to am [sic] was the very words I wrote to see               sometimes, when it came together (when it stayed on the spot and I didn’t blow it all by trying too hard to write).   Therefore the practice of poetry is neither to report, nor to forget, but to create reality aware-ingly.   Not egomaniacally (which is impossibly omnipotent) and neither psychotically (a box trapped by its own six walls) but aware-ingly – the centre-less play, endlessly (here it comes …) VERSATILE, between the mind and the endless void of potential it finds itself in.   This is a theme I am fascinated with and have collected a lot of the more ostensible pieces together: writing and being

preoccupied

 

 

 

                                          preoccupied

                                                      can’t write
                                          not flowing
                           wondering what line to
                           follow as rejoinder staring
                           off trying to be insightful losing
                           the thread fearful that
                           there never was a thread other
                           than the next conjunction …

                           … because I am not where I am
                           I am not in the ground I find myself in
                           smelling the air of the earth moving
                           through the fibre and round the flint
                           feeling my way through probe and take
                           as I rise to the surface to take the first breath

                           to breathe … there
                           a finished piece

 

 

 

part of >>> writing and being
awareness wormhole: Birmingham / 030413
breathing wormhole: a few reflections on / keeping your cow / in a large meadow / while walking round / the streets of Horsham
Horsham wormhole: dropped ’till you’ve shopped
Sylvia Plath wormhole: poets do neither report nor / walk around enrapt in transport but / ’tis when in writing their worlds are wrought

 

‘I can write …’

 

 

 

                                          I can write
                                          as eloquently as
                                          I think I can

                                          and still feel
                                          pissed off
                                          the next day

 

 

 

part of >>> writing and being

 

1976

 

 

 

                                                   1976

                                   I sat in the dark
                                   and wrote a poem
                                   about the moon
                                   across the floor

                                   in secret I had
                                   found the point

                                   I went to bed
                                   late and en-nerved
                                   and slept secure

 

 

 

part of >>> years
existing in … writing and being
meaning wormhole: easily

 

Forword

 

 

 

Forword

the way
I seem
to do

always
have and
always
should

condensed
spontaneous
organic but
scattered

all over
the place
for anyone
else to
find the
connections
yourself

I am not the architect
I am not the fulcrum
I am not the scaffolding

alley oop

 

 

 

part of >>> writing and being

 

covert being

 

 

 

not heard
when Dad left not heard
when friends talked about stuff not heard
when I wrote my thoughts not heard
when I argued an essay not heard
when I floated a ‘why not’ not heard
when I constructed markbook not heard
when I integrated AfL not heard
whenever I reach

and yet

cared for when Dad left
valued for my constancy
referred to for my phrasing
recognised for my approach
relied on for my accommodation
trusted for the field I fence
respected for the freedom I release
loved whenever I just am

don’t strive to be heard but trust
in covert being

 

 

 

poets do neither report nor / walk around enrapt in transport but / ’tis when in writing their worlds are wrought

 

 

 

                                              poets do neither report nor
                                walk around enrapt in transport but
                                ’tis when in writing their worlds are wrought

                it was not
a rapturous contemplation
                                with the elm by the cemetery near her home
                it was not a conversation
                                eyes held by branch and lean

                it was just a glance awhile
and turn it was round-cheek smile and on to something else
                                but later
                                              lingered through dark gap of tooth –
                colossal now –
                                              it was in
                                                         th
                                                         ev
                                                         er
                                                         yw
                                                         ri
                                                         ti
                                                         ng
                                that the tree rooted in the ground below
                                              to find the fibrous voices

 

 

 

part of >>> writing and being
Sylvia Plath wormhole: Sylvia

 

‘I wanted to write a poem’

 

 

 

                                                                      ‘I wanted to write a poem’

                                   sometimes
          I just want to find a poem
                                                   want to have written a poem
                                                                      touch in
                      like the weathered strike of a wind-chime
                                   a poem already-found
                                                                      pre-juxtaposed
                      contrasted to the usual commentary
                                                   sufficient only
                                   to be reported
                      as is

                                   otherwise
          I work through my tragedies and impasse
                                                   like all good poets should
                      and when I have to stretch and yawn
                                   will find
                                                   if I’m observant
                                   a ready-grown organic
                                                                      plant
                      in some need of pruning maybe
                                   but sufficient only
                                                   to open

                                   then
          I read through them
                                   I read through them all
                      like all good poets should
                                                   participating in that to which they point
                      through relinquishing all view in order
                                   to see what is observed
                      and through suspending belief-enough
                                   to breathe

 

 

 

part of >>> writing and being
breathing wormhole: when I sit I am the posture
poetry wormhole: Sylvia
reading wormhole: objective intimacy
thinking wormhole: the last piece of pop