'Unravelling' in 'From the City to the Saltings' Poems from Essex.

So I finally have a couple of publications with my poems in and therefore am free to post them here. This is the one that went into the Essex Anthology:

Unravelling

The past stood on my doorstep.

Haloed in the soft glow of Once-Upon-A-Time

it arrived and waited, with apparent hopefulness,

on a grey day in the Here-And-Now.

The woman from the Library kindly brought 

the first communication.

‘A man who remembers you rang us.

He wants to get in touch.’

In touch.

It was such loving, young and eager touch.

Laced with Romance.

Sheer pleasure. Laughter. Happiness.

Such happiness I hadn’t known before

and never since.

Laced with triumph.

The biological imperative.

It was glorious.

A wild romp. Carol singing on a freezing night.

Holding hands and snuggling.

Discovering.

The school play; coffees bars; the back seat at the cinema. 

Waiting for the last bus home.

Walking along the empty promenade in winter

swaddled by darkness, mufflered by silence,

we cuddled in the shelters, for the warmth.

The slabby river bed, tidal ooze, silvered by the moon,

disturbing ghosts of Beowulf and his hordes, 

once terrible, now merely tales

fabricated and refabricated,

played, replayed and edited,

as my memories

which on a future day called up to knock.

an unassuming figure at my door.

We talked. His voice familiar.

It should have been a comfort.

Memories flowed from him, as intense as my own, 

shockingly different, equally treasured.

Tainted for him by a loss I had long forgotten,

being rather of a nature to prefer a dream.

Mistrustful of reality.

It should have been a comfort.

So why did I feel an unravelling?

© carol argyris 2013

published:  From the City to the Saltings. Poems from Essex pub. Arts Council England.

catching up.

The last few weeks have been busy. two of them shop-sitting again gave me the thrill of being retired all over again. Phew what a relief! It did sell some local books by local people which was what it was designed to do but I don't think I shall do it again. Then there was Jane's book launch at which wethe writer's group were invited to read some of our work. I chose to read folk tale - more amusing I thought, because most folk have a limited tolerance for poetry.When it came to the day I was so nervous (unike me, I thought I was thespian manqué) that I nearly copped out with asthma or some south trumped up excuse then pulled myself together and enjoyed the experience after all. It sold me four of my little books which was highly satisfactory.

I needn't have worried about the tolerance of the audience for poetry. I'd underestimated the variations i our collective talents and as almost everyone had gone for something light it held them. jane was, naturally the star with her third book, this time culled from her time as a District Nurse. She is a tiny lady with a puckish face and a sense of humour to match.

 I'm not putting Jane's full name here, or the title of her book, because of internet links, which is a shame but I prefer to preserve some anonymity. It enables me to relate jolly snippets like the following:

A beautiful picnic area in woodland has become notorious site for snagging a shag. It has close access to a long, generally deserted beach, where I used to walk my badly behaved Jack Russell because there were no joggers for her to attack (she hated joggers) or children to frighten (she hated children) or woolly dogs to terrorise (she hated wooly coated dogs).

A Irish lady of my acquaintance went to walk her own dog there one evening en route to pick her children up from the school where Sandy goes. As they don't get out till 9 pm it was getting dusk so she was surprised how many cars there were also parked. On her way back from her walk a man approached her and started a conversation about the weather, but at the same moment her mobile rang. She said she was sorry but she had to go pick up her kids. Later she told a friend how unusual it was to sees many cars in that place and that they all had their boots open. With a laugh her friend told her that it's a signal telling other parkers you are up for it. I have no idea what the term is for this. I knew about dogging but my education has a gap. Maybe it's booting.

Another friend, after howling with laughter, said she could imagine sitting in the car, seeing someone approach and closing the boot hastily if you didn't fancy the person. Then all the cars would be having their boots go up and down. Like a car convention.

I know someone who would have been there like  a rat up a drainpipe if it had been happening ten years ago.

On the sad side I also heard, about three months late, that a good friend who went to the USA and married, finally very happily, for the third (or fourth?) time, died of prostate cancer. He had survived for 6 years at stage 4 which is phenomenal. Losing touch at our age is NOT a good thing. He wasn't much given to chatting on Facebook, just set links to Youtube talks on enlightenment which I tended to ignore and when he went silent I just thought he'd given up trying to help people who weren't responsive... and perhaps I didn't think at all, being obsessed with my own life. When I heard I checked out his site and read what his local friends said. He found the enlightenment he had been seeking  for many years toward the end and was wonderful to be with. Hope to see you in the hereafter Barry!

Culture Day in the bookshop

Brian and Tez, two jolly readers.

Miriam's book is doing so well - self-publised first as an ebook, now  as a real book, she has  had a positive review in the Mail. the death of her husband whilst her children where very young is the beginning - but not the end. she's aware Irish woman with a wealth of humour and uncommon good sense. The title was to be 'Jesus Farted'  but this is a more modest choice that reflect her iconoclastic yet respectful attitude to - a lot of things!

A friend has put just a few of his exceptional life into this book. the time he spent in South America gives an insight into cultural ways that have probably long since disappeared. No less interesting are his memories of childhood in Scotland.

.......and here are some of Fiona's cards

Crawford's cards

and more of Fiona's....

A mind-stretching book, not for the narrow of vision. Based on an ancient text it tells why women should have always been in charge.

Friday 13th

To cut to almost the end first, it hasn't been a Bad Day, the denouement to this tale is cheerful.

 Without realising it was the 13th I had been dreading Friday all week because I'd agreed to drive a friend an hour or so along the coast to a nice town with books and antiques. I didn't want to, but hadn't the heart to tell him.

Yesterday I texted him to suggest we left earlier than usual (the tradition is for an 11am kick off when questing for real ale and soup more locally). There was no reply, which is unlike him. This morning I kicked my heels a bit, phoned him several times, got no answer, started to worry.... went round... curtains drawn...no reply... he isn't a well man....

There was a cryptic text on Wednesday. 'Nice window. Might have to fly south.' I thought he was being sarcastic as it was raining heavily, and that he poetically imagined himself flying south with the birds. I was totally sure he would have been clearer if he meant anything else - after all we had a firm appointment with fish'n chips this week (and real ale.)

So I tried the neighbours. No answer. So I went to the police station. They told me it was the Right Thing Do Have Done.

Of course it was. But I still feel like a duffus. They raised a neighbour (surely I don't look THAT English or like a Witness?) They got a key, found no collapsed person, rang NHS, no admittance.... He must be OK

But he won't be when he gets home.

Quandary.

Wednesday was a thought-provoking day.The first Nadfas lecture of the new season was a presentation of Joaquín Sorolla, a Valencian Spanish painter working at the turn of the last century. He is chiefly famous for his depiction of light, and the paintings he is best known for are beach scenes with children and women in gossamer clothing. I loved them. As far as I could tell everyone else at the lecture seemed to love them too. My friend, who is herself an artists, hated them. She thought them shallow and kitsch. I might have heard her mutter ‘chocolate box.’ For me on a grey day at the end of a beautifully bright and light-filled summer they were as welcome as the bowl of sunflowers, mimicking the missed sunshine in my living-room.

In one of those lightbulb moments I realised I’ve been having the same feelings of irritation as my artist friend about ‘nice’ poetry that seems to me shallow, and whatever the verbal equivalent of kitsch is. Once they would have been disparagingly termed ‘low-brow,’ but now that term sounds snobbish, so very unfashionable. The buzz-word is ‘accessibility.’ Poetry has to be ‘accessible.’ Easily understood, immediate in its impact, with obvious, sentimental or overly dramatic imagery that doesn’t cause the reader a furrowed brow. Poetry like this is proliferating like dandelions and ragwort, both highly successful weeds.

At school we read Chaucer in the original. It was a challenge and I loved it. I loved the sound of Middle-English. I loved Shakespeare and Milton. They could be a challenge too; we had to learn a little of the language and culture of their days to fully appreciate them. William Blake - not a magazine read! T.S.Eliot. Virginia Woolf. Yeats. James Joyce. Not pool-side reading but all opening our minds into new worlds. 

I’ve continued to like a challenge in my literature, something that make me think, gives me a new gestalt of life around me. My almost complete lack of formal education in visual art (I’ve been to a shed-load of exhibitions in my time) means I’m generally content to be pleased with a first impression that doesn’t make me exercise my brain or open new windows of enlightenment. I’m generally happy for visual art to be merely ‘accessible.’ 

But not poetry.

Of course it does mean that my own poems are acceptable. But is a club that will let me in worth joining?

Later. I came across an interview with Mary Oliver who a poet I sometimes admire and sometimes and bored by. At the end of the interview she said:

"One thing I do know is that poetry, to be understood, must be clear," Oliver adds. "It mustn't be fancy. I have the feeling that a lot of poets writing now are, they sort of tap dance through it. I always feel that whatever isn't necessary shouldn't be in a poem."

There were several waspish comments about this on the NPR site but none said what I thought: Quite often all M.O.herself gives is a picture of what she has seen in the natural world around her. She doesn't give a new experience at all. So does this mean her poems are all unnecessary - at least unnecessary to me? We all make remarks without thinking but this one I find rather provocative.

Faslane and Festivals

A friend of mine has just returned from two months at the Faslane Peace Camp, outside the Naval Base where the Trident missiles are stored. The camp has been going for 30 years or more now and she feels a new approach is needed to raising awareness. The probability is they've been there so long everyone is used to them so they are seen as a harmless fact of life by the authorities and mostly ignored. If Alex Salmond has his way the warheads will be moved from Scottish waters in time (at eye-watering expense) but that will only makes them ‘Someone Else’s Problem’ (see ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’) and isn’t going to help the British Isles much if the wretched things blow up.

 It’s a laudable way to have spent the summer. Not one I would ever choose - far too basic and uncomfortable.  Most off-putting of all to me, a squeamish person, is the way they subsist by dumpster-diving. It could, she admits, be a smelly experience, but they often ate very well. Tesco in this area fence everything round and don’t let it happen; fortunately not all supermarkets are so uncharitable. Stall-holders at the local weekly market in the town near the camp give them boxes of unsold fruit and veg so cherries, grapes and good fresh green stuff were frequently on the menu. A fishmonger gave them crabs. She claims to have an iron stomach and came to no harm; went to sleep nightly dreaming of the possibility of avocados. 

She didn’t write any poetry but lots of diary entries so we may suppose she will have something to contribute to the writer’s group soon. There was a party on Friday to celebrate one of our members whose submission to the BBC Proms Poetry Competition was accepted as a runner-up. We hoped to hear it read but they boringly talked too long with the winner. Still, we celebrated with brandy cocktails and blinis which Mine Host had concocted to  set us a puzzle. Each tiny blini was topped with delicacies that had the initials of a famous poet, e.g: Rabbie Burns = radish with beetroot relish. W.H.Auden = watercress, hummus, avocado. Walter Scott = watercress and shrimp. Samphire figured somewhere, perhaps Stephen Spender - I got a bit addled after a while, what with all the brandy.   

For the first time ever I read a poem at a poetry reading event in the neighbouring town that’s been having a Book Festival. I braced myself, read it, sat down shaking at my own temerity, wishing I hadn’t been so bold. Someone looked me out after to say she had really enjoyed it so that made it all worth while.  I’ve had a poem accepted for the Essex Literary Anthology which will be launched on 5th October at the end of their Literary Festival, and had I been going down south as planned I could have been there. Never mind. I’m chuffed.

A good summer.

Enhanced to show ripples. The small shivering figure didn't get much further in - I think he had reached that critical  depth when strong men blench.

No enhancement. I wish I could paint.

Again - wishing I could paint.

15 year old boys have no hips to hold up shorts......

Just launched.

Autumn is on its inexorable way in. The heating went on for an hour or two yesterday and the lights were on in parts of the house by 8.30pm. The beginning of the dark days. With that in mind it was important to add photos to remind me of what has been a wonderful summer. Neither too hot, nor too wet, and only recently rather too windy, it has been the best I remember for a long time.