Five Bats

At dusk,

Screaming louder

than you can hear; dancers,

Jauntily in the air, catching

insects.

You will

see-not-see us

flying, sounding out our prey.

Food for furry tummy eats, treats.

Tasty.

Back at

our habitats,

We hang out together,

Chatting though tired; upside down

sleeping.

Look out

for us with care,

We will be there flying.

We're elegant, we're beautiful,

We're bats.

"Sometimes the best part is what if?"

Review: Oceans of Ink by Sheldon Sinnamon (available here and here and here, elsewhere)

This review is a year in the making, not that it has taken me a year to read Sheldon Sinnamon's collection. There have been many barriers and boundaries that cropped up, life's great effect on plans kicked into affect, though in the back of my mind I kept coming back to wanting to complete my notes and review.

Sometime Autumn, 2016, I was approached by Sheldon Sinnamon and asked whether I'd be interested in reviewing this collection. This would be my first proper review, not me writing about something I had read, someone asking me to review their work. I was rather chuffed to be asked. The plan had been to read through the collection during a trip to Belgium, make notes then type these up. It would all be done by December...

Oceans of Ink is a very enjoyable read. As another review noted, the poems are presented in five parts, with each part taking a theme. There's hooks in the writing, there's so much care and detail in the words. There are so many good lines and turns of phrase, I had trouble trouble picking one or two from my notes, so randomly, from Man With No Title:

So now, I have all these memories I need to repress.
My life became a disconcerting mess. 

The poems had a certain familiarity to them, while the come from Sheldon's perspective they had a way of conveying the themes and ideas. Boundaries and barriers were especially strong for me, Sheldon's personal perspective presented perfectly in poems. 

As I said, this review is a year, though I've read through this collection a couple of times. It's really enjoyable, approachable, and has a way of rattling around ones thoughts long after putting it down.

Notebook substitution

Slip in hand, wager set,
It only matters when there's money in it.
Tell that to the social worker, the nurse on the end of a shift,
Tackling a case load spread ever thicker.

No one ever stole services,
They were just chronically underfunded.
If the collective We don't want to pay for unused services,
Can we start with nuclear weaponry?

What We do with what we have 
is all we have as our legacy.
And the legacy we fight against is the one that         starves services, communities, people.
What equality there is is the level of inequality,
And still we have nuclear weapons that are more likely to see rust than action.

Note: I left my poem notebook at home, and decided to start recording my first drafts here. What will happen to this is it will make its way into my notebook, wait a few weeks while I write other poems, then I'll return to it and see how I can improve it and make it work.

Public information about public houses

You might not be aware of this but there's a couple of areas of Leeds 'history' that I'm fascinated by. Architecture, obviously, and the changing streetscape, cinemas and theatres, and the evolving public spaces. One of the really big fascinations I have are public houses. I've heard so many tales about them, descriptions and locations, clientele and staff, and I find them creatively inspiring. It might be a long way off though a project about these places is a distinct possibility. Public houses often serve multiple functions, meeting rooms, folk clubs, a liaison for the evening or long term companionship, and are often located in places that link communities. However, I often hear these tales in other public houses, so have no notes to reference. I know someone told me about a Roxy, though am I getting confused with similar public houses in Nottingham, London, Norwich? I've been in market taverns in London, you know the ones that open at 5/6am for the porters, and I think someone else told me about the Leeds ones, but I can't recall. In an effort to start collecting this information I'm going to start carrying a small notebook. In this I will jot down the things people tell me, any tales I get about the current and lost pubs of Leeds, their locations and the location in which I get the research. I might spend a bit of time explaining what I'm doing but think most people I've met in public houses, friends and strangers alike, would probably be happy imparting their stories.

Competition time

It's the last day of the month so far had a look at the Poetry Kit website's list of open competitions. There's a few going on in August, with more all the way through to the end of November.

I counted at least ten I would like to enter. Thinking about entering poetry competitions was something recommended to me as a means to get inspiration and work to deadlines. I may not enter all the competitions, in fact I guarantee I won't, but I will keep those ideas bubbling up under my writing process.

It is the same with magazine submissions and poetry/spoken word events. I have a slowly growing list of interesting items, and when I am going through my notes and completed work I often think whether I could/would/should submit my work.

This is all falls into my writing process. Though I write primarily for an audience of one, of me, once I have something I am satisfied with it is nice to show it off.

Not a poetry review

Not really, not possible. I'm not sure if I should review in the way that other bloggers review as I feel there tends to be too many spoilers and not enough actual personal reflection on the text in question.

Elsewhere I have wrote about online book reviewers that are around three quarters plot and press release recycle and one quarter actual response (if the reader is lucky). I know there's an audience out there as the writer of the book writes to someone, it's just I'm not in that audience. This then is not that type of review, this is reflection, and you know what Hesse said about reflection[1]. 

Since the start of the year and taking part in one of Jen Campbell's fantastic writing workshops I've been looking to develop my own poetry. Poetry, any writing, does not exist in isolation even when the writer is primarily looking to write for an audience of one; there are many influences, fuel for the flame, inspirations in awe-inspiring corners. All of these things feed into what will become my poetry, either as a direct reference of a indirect opposite reaction.

One of the new-to-me things about poetry is spoken word events. It's not new, there has always been readings and groups meeting in pubs to share there work, it is just that this idea is fascinating to me. What if I had known about them when I was in my twenties, I say to myself, though know that I would have been crippled by self-doubt that meant I probably won't have shown any work (it took some twenty seven years to do that, pop-pickers).

Spoken word events are wonderful. That people gather to share and support, speak and celebrate (mm, missed out on the 's' alliteration) is a great thing. I am making steps into learning about them and will join them, though I'm behind in doing so. Suddenly three and a half weeks off work watching Vinn Diesel films seems slightly unproductive...

One of the most fascinating groups I've found is Mouth Piece Poets of Lincoln, UK. Though I was born in Derby I consider myself 'from Lincoln', and for all the annoying things about the city, there is far much to love and cherish. A lot of my early writing is a reaction to many of the things Lincoln and Lincolnshire presented me with. This wasn't reactionary writing, it was a progressive examination of me, my thoughts and feelings, and my environment[2].

Anyway, back to the poets. They came together and thought about sharing their work (a read through of their website will give you a better run down than I could, without cutting and pasting text). What drew my attention was their event, they have had two nights in Lincoln's Drill Hall, and I thought I'd like to go along and see them when I can. From this I found their Volume 1 book, and in this I found Sam Harrison's We Have To Build A Bypass! 

Here is a poem that presented a Lincoln I was familiar with, though mine was twenty years ago. Poetry can allow for fantastic travels, in time and space and memory and thought, and with this poem I travelled. I enjoyed it a great deal, the whole volume is a good compilation of work, and I'm looking forward to rereading it soon.

Notes and references

1 - Actually, you don't, not here. While I was making notes for this blog post I was thinking a lot about Steppenwolf written in 1927, and how a great deal of Herman Hesse's novel easily applies today. One particular passage, about how nations who look to externalise their internal problems were quick to war, struck me a great deal in response to the reports of shootings in Munich. This in turn makes me think about Peter F Hamilton's solution to solving humanity's problems in the Night's Dawn trilogy.

2 - Oxford comma, ha, mature enough to vote and drink, immature enough to think, 'well done, James' every time I use an Oxford comma.

Planetine: Yellow-Seventeen

While going through some old notebooks belonging to infrequent writer, sometime poet, and some time musician James Dustjacket, the administrative archivist James Corah found a recurring reference to the planet Yellow-Seventeen.

Yellow-Seventeen is not of this planet. Yellow-Seventeen is unknowable to this planet.

This large body of planetary uncertainty troubled James Dustjacket. What if through words there was a way to explore Yellow-Seventeen, what if we could gain knowledge of the unknowable.

Embarking on a voyage of lightyears' of prose, James Dustjacket left the administrative archivist James Corah the task of finding the best, most descriptive passages about Yellow-Seventeen and Dustjacket's time there.

About the project. I spotted Ryan's intriguing invitation for Planetine and wanted to get involved. Aside from the science fiction aspect there is also the element of how we speculate on the unknown and how we represent this uncertainty. Initially I started with the plan of writing Senryū, hence the planet's name, though as I progressed I found myself fighting my favoured form. Seventeen will feature in some way. So will the word 'yellow.'

But with this yellow no one needs to worry about having their house/planet of residence bulldozed/demolished for a village/hyper-space bypass.

Well, not yet, anyway.

Details: Planetine