Dulwich College, London, 1871

Tags

1871, 2018, 5*, afternoon, autumn, brick, college, education, gothic, knowledge, leaves, passing, Pissarro, red, rooftops, spirit, windows

                past the high windows and gothic
                finials of the college

                which kept its knowledge steeped
                like a redbrick afternoon as

                autumn leaves hurried
                like a badly-summoned spirit

 

Dulwich College, London, 1871 by Camille Pissarro

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

afternoon wormhole: ash leaves
autumn & passing wormhole: {reading right to left}
education & knowledge & red wormhole: SPRING AND ALL XXII by William Carlos Williams
leaves wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – pageant of the trees
rooftops wormhole: early // Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum – diptych
windows wormhole: blister on me thumb

 

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SPRING AND ALL XXII by William Carlos Williams

Tags

1923, 6*, art, being, categories, chickens, education, existence, form, imagination, interdependent origination, knowledge, life, nature, poetry, quote, rain, reality, red, water, wheelbarrow, white, William Carlos Williams

                so much depends
                upon

                a red wheel
                barrow

                glazed with rain
                water

                beside the white
                chickens

 

from Spring and All, 1923; “wait, is that it, one of his most famous and quoted poems, and that’s it?”; well, no … this poem was actually nested within a whole weave of contemplations and exclamations to the contrary (quoted liberally, tatteredly and patch-workly – sorry, Bill): “the fixed categories into which life is divided … exist – … not as dead dissections … but in a different condition when energised by the imagination … but at present [early 1920s, America, and hence the upcoming androcentrist reference, I do apologise] knowledge is placed before a man as if it were a stair at the top of which a DEGREE is obtained which is superlative … the inundation of the intelligence by masses of complicated fact is not knowledge … it is on imagination on which reality rides … it is a cleavage through everything by a force that does not exist in the mass and therefore can never be discovered by its anatomisation … it is for this reason that I have always placed art first … art is the pure effect of the force upon which science depends for its reality – Poetry … poetry has to do with the crystallisation of the imagination – the perfection of new forms as additions to nature …”

 

taken from Ali Shapiro at http://blog.pshares.org/index.php/poetic-analytics/: I hope she doesn’t mind – those venn circles, they were so cold and so sweet

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

being & life wormhole: on facing the Have
education wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – On Doing Nothing
knowledge wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Trees
poetry wormhole: oh, alright then
rain wormhole: THE GREAT FIGURE by William Carlos Williams
reality wormhole: coagulating
red wormhole: SPRING AND ALL I by William Carlos Williams
water wormhole: sun setting over a lake, 1840
white wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – pageant of the trees
William Carlos Williams wormhole: SPRING AND ALL XI by William Carlos Williams

 

The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – On Doing Nothing

Tags

'scape, 1967, 4*, awareness, bees, bench, blackbird, blue, body, breeze, calf, clouds, colour, contemplation, cottage, cows, cuckoo, daffodil, doing, echo, education, foxgloves, garden, green, grey, knowledge, leaf, leisure, life, Michael J Redford, mind, morning, movement, nature, non-doing, now, puzzle, rhythm, shadow, sky, smell, sociology, Spring, summer, sun, the Boats of Vallisneria, time, trees, wood, woodland, work

 

On Doing Nothing

I wish I had more time in which to do nothing, but then I don’t suppose for one moment that I am alone in this wish.   I must however confess to liking hard work – a certain amount that is.   I like the resultant effects produced on body and mind of digging the garden or pitching bales of hay and sheaves of corn amid the shimmering heat of the summer sun.   The sweat oozing forth and leaving the inner body clean; the muscles toned up and aching with effort, the very rhythm of the work itself (I sincerely hope I can say the same twenty years from now).   Then at the close of a long day, an hour’s soak in the bath, an easy chair and a pint of beer, mundane items perhaps, yet nevertheless most satisfying.   The sweat has been replaced by the energy infusing rays of the sun that now emanate from the body with such a glow that you feel sure that those close to you must feel its radiant effect.   The mind is also cleansed, refreshed with the knowledge and satisfaction of a job well done.   On the other hand if total automation were to arrive tomorrow, I would not be alarmed at the prospect of so much leisure.   The future in this respect is viewed with some concern by the sociologist whose biggest headache is to educate the masses into finding something to do with their spare time.   This I should imagine, is one of the outcomes of our present way of life, the pace of which has accelerated to such a degree that one rarely has time to step off the whirling carousel to take stock of one’s surroundings and turn the eye inward upon the self.   How little we know of ourselves and our immediate surroundings.   There is enough untapped learning in my small garden alone to last me all my years without venturing further afield.   Even so, I don’t spend all my spare time digging, hoeing, planting and studying in the garden, for one can never come to the end of the toil produced when one steals a little piece of nature and imposes upon it the conformities of human requirements.   More often than not I am sitting, standing or leaning somewhere in the garden staring at a dead leaf sailing slowly across a sky-blue puddle, or a daffodil petal trembling in the breeze, or entering with the fuzzy humble bee into the heart of a foxglove.   I am not looking to learn, just looking, appreciating the colour and the movement, the scent and the touch, unfettered by a too enquiring mind, seeing the thing as a whole.   Study by all means, study deeply, specialise if you wish, but not all the time; come to the surface occasionally, sit back and view things as a whole.   Specialists we must have; the probing minds and microscopes of the entomologist, histologist, ichthyologists and all the other ‘ologists’ have benefitted us greatly and made us more aware and appreciative of the wonders and complexities of nature, but there is still, and always will be, room for the botanist who is like the manipulator of a jig-saw puzzle, fitting all the detailed parts together to form a complete and beautiful picture.

I find I am very contented when doing nothing and experience no sense of guilt if branded idle and time wasting.   If there is nothing of great import to attend to and I am in an idle mood, then I take advantage of the circumstances and indulge in idleness without shame.   Some months ago I made a garden seat of some timber taken from an ancient cottage close by that was being demolished.   Upon this seat, the wood of which must be some six hundred years old, I have spent many hours in idleness, fingering its rough grey armrests, unaware of time or responsibility; thinking not of tomorrow or yesterday, but experiencing with all the senses the eternal ‘now’; being aware of the warmth of the sun and the movement of the passing breeze; hearing the distinct low of a cow bereft of her calf, or listen to an echo mocking the cuckoo in the woods below.   I gaze at the coloured mass before me drinking in the riot of perfumes; look at the green pastures and the distant trees and see the blue shadows within.   The picture is complete, touching upon all the senses to produce a harmony that is deeply satisfying.   There is nothing out of place, no harsh discords, no roaring traffic or industrial smells.   Even the little cottage at the end of the lane, tree bound and heavy with thatch, gives the impression that it has grown naturally from the soil upon which it stands.   The senses and emotions are not funnelled into a microcosm but are given free range and allowed to accept all that comes within their range, creating in the mind an awareness and realisation of a complete and perfect whole.

One cannot be accused of day-dreaming under such conditions (though surely a little day-dreaming is not harmful) for no conscious thoughts are involved.   I have on occasions been surprised at the lightning passage of time during these moments, when the ‘moment’ has in fact turned out to be all of three hours.   This essay, which would normally have been written in a morning, has taken all day for this very reason.   Being a fine spring morning with but a few puffs of broken cloud adorning the sky, I took pen and paper into the garden, but despite my earnest intentions, I soon fell prey to the magnetism of a blackbird singing in the copse behind the piggery and my attention was lifted from the paper.

I walked through the piggery, crossed the brook and shouldered my way through the cow parsley towards the wood.   I didn’t meet anyone on my perambulation, I didn’t want to.   In fact I would have been most annoyed if I had.   I was perfectly happy in my immediate world of the ‘Now’; it was too lovely a world to let slip by unnoticed, or to be dimmed by the oppressive shadow of chores that had to be done.   Now, as I sit writing, the clock on the mantle shelf is striking eleven thirty p.m. but I am not at all alarmed at working until such a late hour even though I do have to rise early to milk the cows tomorrow morning.   At least I shall have the memory of a beautiful spring day during which I was alive and conscious, and will not be left empty handed as most of us too often are when we let the days of the living present slip through the sensory fingers to the dead past.

 

read the collected work as it is published: here

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

awareness wormhole: while walking
bench wormhole: up on the hill
blackbird wormhole: fine
blue & breeze & green wormhole: Elektra
clouds & mind wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – A Precious Moment
doing & grey wormhole: my seat // now
echo & morning & shadow & time wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] by Mark L. Redford – moment
education & knowledge wormhole: listen willya
garden wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – A Bowl of Gourds
life wormhole: Doctor Strange II – … things are the same again
sky wormhole: El Palacio, 1946
smell wormhole: The Boats of Vallesneria by Michael J. Redford – Autumn Thoughts
Spring wormhole: first Spring storm
sun & trees wormhole: one day / in 1956
wood wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] by Mark L. Redford – the soft canticle of the gourds:
work wormhole: ashramas

 

listen willya

Tags

2012, 7*, allowing, anxiety, budget, buildings, business, care, communication, consumerism, creativity, David Cameron, education, evaluation, exploration, extension, flag, Have, history, inclusion, innovation, investment, justice, knowledge, learning, lesson, life, listening, love, management, Margaret Thatcher, market, money, nurture, ownership, politics, privatisation, professionalism, prospect, public service, public service cuts, reform, slogans, society, speech, statistics, status, talking, teaching, time, tolerance, Tony Blair, understanding, value-bled education, value-led education, values, vision, wisdom

                                listen willya

                David Cameron, Tony stupid Blair, Margaret bloody Thatcher,
                and all your snivelling Secretaries of Career, and learn this, now –

                                                   don’t go!__
                                business ) education

                you’ve created a RIGHT MESS trying to make it go
                and you’ve spent a QUARTER CENTURY trying to make it go

                trying to work it out with long division, taking everything apart
                to make it go; it just has no value anymore

                nothing has any value anymore, no one cares anymore, we are
                all just anxious; dy’know

                you said KUE* every lesson, I said don’t be so silly,
                I spent five years making it work, I said I’ve made it work

                you said don’t be so silly – it doesn’t influence the statistics;
                I have to go to school now and pretend I’m a professional

                in all sorts of ways to make it look like it goes,
                but it just doesn’t; y’know we’re going to have

                to start all over again if we want anything like education in society again,
                right back to the drawing board; and no history; let’s see –

                                                           _creativity_
                                              nurture ) education

                                               exploration_
                                listening ) education

                                                          _wisdom__
                                              tenure ) education

                           _inclusion_
                vision ) education

                                                                    _innovation_
                                              management ) education

                                                    _extension_
                                exploration ) education

                                 _allowing_
                creativity ) education

                                                            _tolerance_
                                              wisdom ) education

                                                       ___love___
                                              care ) education

                                   _prospect_
                investment ) education

                                        __justice_
                                love ) education

                oh I could go on and on; and – no offence – but stuff your statistics
                and your statuses and your budgets and your slogans

                and your privatisation and your reform, screw them up
                into one huge ball and throw them

                in the bin, and let’s just have some
                honest communication now; you, all of you, went wrong

                as soon as you thought that public service should be value for money,
                (should save money, should make money), but no –

                                               ___don’t go!___
                                business ) public service

                a society that is alive, and rugged, makes money
                to build public service, not own it, to run public service,

                not demand of it, gives service to the public, not a market,
                gives life to society, not just consuming it

                you lot don’t know the first thing about big society, none of you,
                public service should absorb money, it should be

                soaked with money, it should lose money: the only reason
                money should exist is for public service,

                because the service it gives is always far more important
                than a big building and a flag;

                so, stop playing your endless games of balance and measure –
                you’re wasting far too much human –

                and start saying something alive, start doing something truthful;
                c’mon now, you look ridiculous

 

* Knowledge Understanding Evaluation

                                                   don’t go!__
                                business ) education

it might well be that the above format won’t make any sense if you are anywhere under the age of 45: it is the revered and ancient way of setting out division calculations in Mathematics; it ‘reads’, “business [divided into] education [=] don’t go”, where you might more readily have “5 [divided into] 60 [=] 12” … the result appears ‘on top’, leaving the space below to do the working out of long division (“17 [divided into] 43.6299 [=] 2.56646470588”; ‘show your working-out, boy’ thwackk)

I first wrote this in 2012 when there was industrial action over teachers’ pay and conditions – just about the time I started completely losing my emotional marbles at work; I have slightly reconfigured the piece and re-posted it on the day that the NUT is taking industrial action over teachers’ workload, pay and budget cuts: what does the government respond: ‘we are spending more than ever on education’!? … ‘show your working-out, girl’ thwackk!!!

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

allowing wormhole: need
anxiety wormhole: what I am about to say is true / what I just said was a lie
buildings wormhole: the policies came to nothing
communication & politics wormhole: B le tch l ey P ark
creativity & life & love & society & teaching & time wormhole: ashramas
education wormhole: the coming of ‘The Boats of Vallisneria’ by Michael J. Redford
evaluation & understanding wormhole: the Apple
Have wormhole: Jericho
history wormhole: currency of generations
justice wormhole: dedication
knowledge wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – introdepthion
learning wormhole: aghh – we’ve been infected / it’s spreading through the system / we’re losing our files … / it’s taken out the processor … / I, I can’t open with this program anymore … / it’s scanning me – / I’ve got to buy a Virus Protection Program / from it …
listening wormhole: plop!
management wormhole: dry rot
money wormhole: tired
professionalism wormhole: dash
speech wormhole: a crack of lightning / in the dark of night
talking wormhole: “Darling” – poewieview #28
value-led education wormhole: Totnes
values wormhole: Dear Sir/Madam,

 

the coming of ‘The Boats of Vallisneria’ by Michael J. Redford

Tags

1960s, 1967, 1970s, 2007, 2016, Billericay, birdsong, childhood, colour, cottage, education, Essex, evening, farm, garden, grandfather, green, image, John, Kenya, life, London, love, morning, Ramsden Heath, South Africa, uncle, war, windows, writing

 

 

 

I have come into possession of a piece of work that my Uncle Mick did during the 1960s.   He was in his thirties when he wrote the ‘Boats of Vallisneria’ having survived a childhood of war and evacuation, having completed what education was available then, having completed a period of military service in Kenya and South Africa and returned to London, to move to Billericay in Essex, to begin his life proper.   His father (my grandfather) died early in the 60s and he spent the rest of his life living with and looking after his mother living in the tied cottage to the farm he worked.

He completed this work because he wanted to explore the shape and pattern of [his] life.   He completed it even while the changes in farming brought his work there to a close.   [He went on to become a gardener and eventually set up his own business framing pictures].   He submitted the manuscript to Dent & Sons for publication, but they declined.

He let me have a look at the script when I was in my late teens and visiting and whinnying on about wanting to be a writer.   This was in the later 1970s.   I was way too green and cursive to read it with great discernment or generosity and commented that it was OK but quite amateurish (a youthful candour with which I hurt many a person close to me when I was young and arrogant – I’m sorry, everyone).

The dear man died in 2007, and I had long since forgotten his work (although I remember being honoured that he had shown me his work – it confirmed to me that being a writer was a noble thing to be).   I had a visit recently from my brother who brought a whole case of artefacts from my uncle, one of which was the original manuscript.

… I think I’d like to publish it on my blog.   Share the work with the world that he was not so able to do during his own time.   In his honour.   In memoriam.   To preserve and celebrate the green-paint-on-sturdy-wood life of Ramsden Heath during the 1960s and 1970s.   To celebrate the linen-atmosphere of small-pane cottage window looking out on the garden in all facet.   To listen in on the darken-colours of morning and evening and bird-call in Essex countryside, every one different and newly-miraculous found.

While typing it up I felt I could tap the kernel of what he was exploring and cut in to his images and experiences within – and sometimes behind – his writing.   I would also like to explore his writing through my own.   And publish them alongside each other like a healthy pair of framed pictures above the mantelpiece.   To celebrate my love for him.   And make the contact with him that I was too gauche to make while he was alive.   (How much I appreciate people the most, once I have lost life with them).

His work will come first … soon

 

read the collected work as it is published: here

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

1967 wormhole: 1967
childhood & morning wormhole: currency of generations
education wormhole: aghh – we’ve been infected / it’s spreading through the system / we’re losing our files … / it’s taken out the processor … / I, I can’t open with this program anymore … / it’s scanning me – / I’ve got to buy a Virus Protection Program / from it …
evening wormhole: constant hummm
garden wormhole: diligence
green & life & love wormhole: being in love – poewieview #26
London wormhole: tag cloud poem IX – haiku is awkward / the more that is left in / like uncombed hair
Ramsden Heath & uncle wormhole: Michael Redford: triptych
war wormhole: just saying, is all V: // … systematic and consistent disempowerment
windows wormhole: between thoughts
writing wormhole: balancing // with a whole lot of deft

 

aghh – we’ve been infected / it’s spreading through the system / we’re losing our files … / it’s taken out the processor … / I, I can’t open with this program anymore … / it’s scanning me – / I’ve got to buy a Virus Protection Program / from it …

Tags

2012, advert, assessment, belief, boredom, bureaucracy, education, education system, educational behaviourism, expectation, identity, learning, measure, process, processor, program, pupils, relevant, slogans, speech, system, targets, teaching, training, uniform, virus, water

 

 

 

                                              aghh – we’ve been infected
                                              it’s spreading through the system
                                              we’re losing our files …
                                              it’s taken out the processor …
                                              I, I can’t open with this program anymore …
                                              it’s scanning me –
                                              I’ve got to buy a Virus Protection Program
                                                              from it …

                we process education
                                and pupils get measured
                we condition education
                                and pupils find their selves
                                defined or confused
                we target education
                                and pupils lose their trajectory
                we measure education
                                and pupils believe it
                we make education relevant
                                and pupils get bored
                we sloganise education
                                and pupils wear uniforms
                we teach education
                                and pupils ‘don’t get it’
                we teach learning in education
                                and pupils just remember
                                at best or not
                we train ourselves in education
                                actually we don’t anymore
                we workshop education
                                and pupils fill out forms
                we expect in education
                                and pupils leak like water

                here and there a teacher teaches
                                and a pupil learns
                but that soon stops because everyone
                                is too busy
                we teach, pupils learn … something
                                but there is no
                                education

 

I published this a while ago and no one noticed it – it probably went in to most peoples’ spam box; as I go through my haemorrhage from school some of these pieces will re-surface, I’m afraid … wait ’til you see ghosts with opened wounds again – it’s coming, can’t you hear it rattle; ‘well no, that’s the whole point!’ …

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

education wormhole: Dear Sir/Madam,
identity wormhole: my / superpower
learning wormhole: the stance of Buscema // qualitatively
speech wormhole: impressionism
targets wormhole: just saying, is all – III
teaching wormhole: dream career // groggy
water wormhole: clouds

 

what I am about to say is true / what I just said was a lie

Tags

2012, anxiety, career, education, identity, managerialism, offer, practice, time, truth

 

 

 

                           what I am about to say is true
                           what I just said was a lie

                           when you spent
                           eleven years being
                           too busy deciding and
                           leading my career
                           to consider what
                           I had offered
                           even while you
                           were asking of me
                           what I had to offer
                           you created an
                           anxiety in my
                           practice which
                           couldn’t be resolved
                           unless I ignored myself

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

anxiety wormhole: David Bowie – Iris
career wormhole: dream career // groggy
education & time wormhole: the ancient tree
identity wormhole: 1964
managerialism wormhole: dear clown’s face
practice wormhole: because

 

the ancient tree

Tags

2012, birds, branches, crows, education, educational behaviourism, magpies, measure, performance management, time, trunk, value-bled education

 

 

 

                      once upon a quarter century
                      the beat and heart of teaching
                           thousands of birds
                           through all time
                           come to the ancient tree
                      was quantified immeasurably
                      inverse to a fading quality
                           generations now of
                           magpies and crows
                           who bring dispute
                           and change and sit
                           in the tree making
                           loud noises
                      all the better to make the numbers rise and fall my dear
                      consistency and behaviour to within an inch of its life
                           droppings in the branches
                           droppings down the trunk

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

birds wormhole: Jon
branches wormhole: like ink – poewieview #23
crows wormhole: ‘in the midst of winter …’
education wormhole: new year’s eve 2014; train up to London to / walk the bridges across the Thames, and / listen to the voices say it is, and was, like, / but get back home before the fireworks / obliterate it all in the emptying twilight
performance management wormhole: the MagOO Effect Effect
time wormhole: Doctor Strange I – the trashcan tilted the better to see now the street

 

new year’s eve 2014; train up to London to / walk the bridges across the Thames, and / listen to the voices say it is, and was, like, / but get back home before the fireworks / obliterate it all in the emptying twilight

Tags

2014, 8*, anxiety, architecture, being, bench, birch, blue, Bob Hoskins, bridge, buddleia, buildings, Carol, change, crane, dark, doing, education, emptiness, experience, faces, field, fireworks, frost, glass, glasses, green, grey, Have, horizontal, houses, hyperbole, identity, impermanence, journey, life, lifetimes, light, listening, London, love, mouth, not knowing, openness, orange, others, passing, pastel, phone, pink, poetry, pointlessness, politics, red, scaffolding, silver, sky, speech, St. Paul's, station, staying, study, sun, table, talking to myself, Thames, thinking, thought, time, tired, train, travelling, trees, twilight, Uckfield-London line, voices, walking, white, windows, work

                                   new year’s eve 2014; train up to London to
                                   walk the bridges across the Thames, and
                                   listen to the voices say it is, and was, like,
                                   but get back home before the fireworks
                                   obliterate it all in the emptying twilight

                                   look out for the throwing up of hands and
                                   the want-only doing it anyway without thought
                                   or fibre thinking you deserve the better after
                                   all the point and anxiety of thinking; rather
                                   stay with the pastel openness of not knowing

                                   what to do; “it’s like they’re doing this to wind
                                   me up” all the mouth-open listening and loud
                                   hyperbole of their being, all app’d and down-
                                   loaded they, obbviously haven’t finished studying
                                   or whatever it is they’ve been bought into

                                   college to do these days; their time’ll come;
                                   frost covers the passing fields and trees, equally;
                                   “t’b’fair-r-rr, I’m not gen–you–in–lee concerned;
                                   I think, if you always stay in the same en–vie–
                                   rhon–meant …” gaze-mouth open … “I think,

                                   you need to have new ex–peer–re:–NCs
                                   nyoopeople nyooplaces” stopping waiting
                                   starting ten-ta-tively slow gliding, while another
                                   train shifts approaching the same station priority
                                   passes for a long time; then on another train,

                                   “it’s like we’re on another train”; frost thawing
                                   equally on the waste grounds between lines,
                                   green and horizontals return, except for the
                                   bare silver birch; so they no longer store parcels
                                   at London stations look how much they’ve

                                   brightly opened them up no more dingy offices
                                   and partitions where people lived their long
                                   and working life; on the stepped bench by the
                                   river across from the Poetry Library somewhere
                                   in the Southbank Centre I struggle with the

                                   vacuous way things have to change but forget
                                   the dark silt accumulated in unused yards
                                   where not even the buddleia grow, as St. Paul’s
                                   becomes dwarfed by glass and leaning building;
                                   all the sun across the riverside architecture –

                                   depth from finial cupola and scaffolding except
                                   the red cranes up into the grey-blue-blue-grey
                                   sky concrete counter-weight and lifting-hods
                                   catching light despite orange lights clean atop each
                                   arm and elbow; crowds walking the bridge under

                                   suspension ties leaning towards the last pillar; tired
                                   now we travel home under neon light on exasperated
                                   faces with no expression past turning houses and
                                   raised embankments, a passenger stands suddenly
                                   to leave, “oh, he’s dropped a tooth” quips Carol out

                                   loud, “I’m joking; it was a mint imperial” rolled
                                   under the table, look, the man with pink-frame
                                   glasses chuckles into his phone like Bob Hoskins,
                                   love him; “this is coach number five of twelve”
                                   we need to make sure we are travelling in the

                                   correct part of the train otherwise we cannot alight;
                                   “please mind the gap”; I cannot retain things that
                                   have passed (I can’t help it: “that are past”) no matter
                                   how much they may chime with the time in
                                   retrospect, during the last leg of “whatever” journey

                                   home looking for more to add to the poem greedy
                                   through the darkening windows, ah, but it’s too late
                                   now, the arc has already formed the spine, all the
                                   particulars falling in fitted pattern like feathers giving
                                   the illusion of lift and flight amid pervasive dissolution

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

anxiety & identity & time wormhole: re lax // me
architecture & bench & buddleia & glasses wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich 121114
being & doing & houses & openness & sky & sun & windows wormhole: lobby
birch wormhole: Eridge Station
blue & glass & green wormhole: the silent night of the Batman
bridge & trees wormhole: Kirby’s landscapes
buildings & Have & speech wormhole: great underbelly to the rooftops
Carol & pink & politics wormhole: Luisenplatz
change wormhole: the Last Day of Morecambe Illuminations
crane & grey & light & London & mouth & red & walking wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich – Plumstead 290508 – / the breath of London
education wormhole: poessay IX – … just saying, is all II
emptiness & pontlessness wormhole: never there
faces wormhole: – sigh! –
field wormhole: tag cloud poem VII – form new freedom:
life & others wormhole: career came to naught …
lifetimes wormhole: transition
listening wormhole: there are patient listeners
love & poetry wormhole: sometimes
orange wormhole: Christmas
passing & travelling wormhole: dawn
silver wormhole: across the room / through the patio doors / through the conservatory windows / at the bottom of the garden / the still bifurcated trunk of / the oak / before the let-grown hair and fringes / of the fir tree / blown every lifetime in a while by the winter sun // actually
study wormhole: letters to Mum I – a walk / and talk
talking to myself wormhole: yet another sprain / of ‘Jingle Bells’ straining / to propagate yet another / tired Christmas spirit – … / ‘sanner clawsis coming t’ taunn – yeah’ in a / coffee shop with condensation / running off the snowflake transfers / and the iphone at the next table / talking how 50 means 900 a month – not worth / the drive (left his scarf behind – / collateral) … about my age
Thames wormhole: 1967
thinking wormhole: thinking wide enough
thought wormhole: breathe it all / in
train wormhole: is she / looking at me?
twilight wormhole: dream / 301197 // home
Uckfield-London line wormhole: Hever
voices wormhole: ‘green post …’
white wormhole: letters to Mum V – carrying on in duty and love
work wormhole: corroboration

 

poessay IX – … just saying, is all II

Tags

2013, 5*, career, conformity, consistency, dialogue, education, expectation, managerialism, outcome-led education, poessay, practice, professionalism, rhetoric, speech, teaching, value-bled education, value-led education

 

 

 

                poessay IX – … just saying, is all II

                                              listening
                to a teacher delivering to his group: “… them’s the rules and regulations … it is vital that … looking smart …”
                                … something about school uniform
                                                              I guess

                                                              it is this corporate appearance-led rhetoric in education
                which I can no longer even pretend to back
                                because career-long I have not been able to engage any
                                              dialogue with it

                being ‘professional’ has ceased to be a practice
                                              it is now a conformity
                                                              it is now a consistency
                                                                                 no dialogue
                                                                                 just expectation
and we all know what happens to consistency when the lead shifts
                from value-led to outcomes-led
                                (yes … value-bled)

                                              I have not been able to work out a position
                                              behind the rhetoric because
                I have not been allowed the ‘give’ (of course the ‘take’ is ‘rivers deep mountains wide’)
                                              the ‘call’
                                and certainly the ‘response’
                                                              has been dodged and bluffed like a poker hand

                the exercise and practice of teaching professionalism
                                has been ‘chumped’ up down and sideways
                                                              never to be listened to again and again and again

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

career wormhole: first a mishap then clear vision
education wormhole: I could step / more open
managerialism wormhole: what I am about to say is true / what I just said was a lie
poessay wormhole: poessay VII: // true revolution
practice wormhole: should is good when / too used to cruise
professionalism wormhole: just saying, is all – III
speech wormhole: a cup of tea, gov
teaching wormhole: letters to Mum III – ongoing-term // eventually
value-led education wormhole: teaching: which is it going to be, procedure or nurture?