Electric Ladyland

Burning

2011-12-19T05:51:00.000-08:00

For him, logs are everything, this small town dictator, his battledress undone, the cap barely fitting over his still unruly, though greying curls as his enemies corner him in the backyard just by the woodpile, their grievances stretching back to the very beginning of time, the very start of it. And he can only holler and bluster and wave his arms, expecting instant obedience, outraged that the old magic seems to have worn off. And there he is, naked and bleeding now, stuck on top of a pyre, looking just like Guy Fawkes and it's Bonfire Night all over again ..
But who's this jostling for a place at the top? Joan of Arc. Ah how they both love their logs, both require the martyrdom, for the preservation of their stubborn ideals, the sanctification of their egos. They both love their uniforms - for her, a simple sackcloth shift, covering, shapeless and uncomfortable to wear, her hair cut in a boyish bob, almost a tonsure, with the statement wooden cross around her neck, her bare feet, her white legs. The pious and terrified expression that so becomes her.
And who will light the fire beneath their feet? What will be the final hymn they sing as the smoke rises and the air crackles with heat, their flesh crisping and bursting like popping corn? Come on, baby ..

Are you dancing??

2011-11-23T05:14:00.000-08:00

I've always loved dancing. I wanted to be a ballerina but in my itinerant RAF childhood there were never any classes I could go to - and anyway they were only for officers' kids. Bleat, the injustice, blah blah - I doubt if I could have managed the anorexia. This didn't stop me dancing by myself, a habit I have retained into the dotage. Plus I took classes later - in ballroom, latin american, and modern dance, then more recently in salsa and swing. It's all good, as they say. But when were the best dance times? A manic music mad teenager dancing at rag raves in Leicester, much too young to be out, to The Who, Geno Washington, The Animals, to Motown and Soul at the all night gigs held in sweaty clubs like the Burlesque, chemically enhanced. So many gigs through the 70s - progging out to 10 Years After or drifting to the Third Ear Band and Kevin Ayres, rocking against racism to Aswad and Misty. Then the pogoing to punk and shoe gazing to the Smiths. All that Talking Heads and Modern Dance Bowie, township music, new age trance. I've even danced the techno. But tomorrow night I will be dancing, even if nobody is asking, to all the above at the Forum in Darlington, music provided by a series of playlists and a mighty iPod. Me and my handbag.

The Traveller Unravels

2011-10-22T08:01:00.000-07:00

Sometimes the pavement won't stay beneath your feet, things fall apart, and the physical world rises up against you. It's the epitome of paranoia when you can no longer trust your own furniture. But it happens, readers, it happens.
Maybe it's jet lag - as I was in New York City last week, moving at a speed about five times that of my normal days. Moving and watching and listening and mind boggled by the whole experience: seeing Karen O's Stop the Virgen's. three brilliant movies by Paul Tschinkel introduced by the man himself, playing Poetry Bingo at the Bowery Poetry Club. But mainly just crawling those streets, where everything is surreally familiar from books and songs and movies, giving the whole place a dream-like quality, as if you have been here before, seen these places, heard these voices.
One beautiful moment was in Washington Square on Columbus Day listening to some old boys (ie my age) playing jazz in autumn sunshine. I wrote a poem to commemorate:
Washington Square, Columbus Day

Riffslinger play jazz in a shady corner
of the square. The blue notes ascend
from the trumpet, then fall, like leaves,
just turning. That lift, then the gentle descent
as three old guys combine, offer
the wisdom of their years through
the power of shifted air.

All over the city, different tongues
undulate, clack against palate
emerge between lips, sing songs
from every corner of the planet.
Traffic hums by, sirens zigzag,
construction workers throw metal
against metal, call out like parrots.

New Yorkers wear tight buds, close
their ears to the neighbourhood noise
create a soundtrack to each day
separate and individual, navigate
blocks and avenues, intent,
forward looking, definite,
treading their own straight way.

I’m an old girl in the square, aware
that my ears are fine tuned to hear
these notes, like secrets whispered,
coded messages hidden under benches,
unavailable to the smart couples and
their dainty dogs. The music breathes,
tracks time flowing like water, like sand.

wordles

2011-09-30T07:26:00.001-07:00

Decided just to copy it here - so many wordles, so little time ..

Wordles

2011-09-30T06:53:00.000-07:00

Spent this lunchtime running a workshop in Darlington for older people. It was fun - a mix of people who are already writing and those who had decided they can't, but did anyway. I used pebbles gathered from many a beach to provoke a set of words which people then turned into a few lines. Some beautiful stuff emerged:

searching and finding the perfect pebble
for throwing and skimming its history

pounding for caves - movement of earth
what ages - or is ageless
sun on seashore to smooth time away
(this last Dickinson esque offering from a lady who insisted that as a scientist, she could not be a poet - but she pocketed my pebble all the same).

I put everything into a wordle which you can find by using the link above.

The Future

2011-07-26T07:15:00.000-07:00

I guess I try to live a day at a time. That's not easy, especially on a day like today when my brain is so poorly attuned to its proper business and everything is fuzzy around the edges, minutes melting on Dali clocks. My actual clock meanwhile has stopped (new battery needed) so it has been 9.30 for a couple of days now. Whenever.
But The Future will be here coming at you with its pointy shouldered suits, its transporter tubes, its robots, its artificial intelligence, its food in a pill. Nothing about me and my life will fit into it. The Future despises clutter, favours capsule living, minimalist decor. Spending hours looking for that note you wrote on the back of a receipt whilst in a shopping centre and which is the basis of a marvellous poem you will never be able to recreate will be punishable by extermination, a vapourising of you and all your messy accumulations that will leave the world a cleaner place. You are not productive. You spend your days like a dog trying to follow a scent but being lured off track by other more interesting smells until you are left staring at your own bottom.
The Future will have no truck with The Past and certainly not with the detritus the past leaves, washed up and left on the shoreline for you to pick over endlessly, Robinson Crusoe style.
I found Tricia at a table top sale in Saltburn. I think tomorrow belongs to her.

Wild

2011-06-18T07:02:00.000-07:00

As much fun as I dreamed it would be - finding a piece of river deep enough to swim in, being ladled into the new wet suit and just getting in. Gilde and float, observing the occasional sun make shadows on the overhanging rocks, listen to the birds full throated, not phased by the rubber fish beneath them, the real fish a little more circumspect. A large cranky heron made his magnificent mechanical way overhead. Then to sit naked on the flat stones drying off, unobserved. Wow. Primal moment, haven't felt so happy and in the moment for a long time.

Babel

2011-04-19T09:54:00.000-07:00

Looking forward to Babel - a spoken word event I have organised with the help of the Forum in Darlington. First venture in my town since the dear departed Hydrogen Jukebox. It's not that I want to recreate that (though it was pretty fab) - just have felt for a while we need something going on with words and music and hey, I live here. No point in wishing I lived in NYC is there, since anyway people in cities are blase and unappreciative whereas small towners try to squeeze every last drop from their lives. Don't listen to that Andy Warhol. Local is where it's at.
Just hope people will come. I recently read in a local library (naming no names) to the librarian and a man hiding behind the shelves. It was Shrove Tuesday. The librarian, who was lovely, told me that a pancake making session had stolen my audience. What you gonna do?
Thanks to Ellie Grassick for the poster / flier.

books /e-books

2011-03-01T06:53:00.000-08:00

Have been asked to talk about this on local radio so thought would warm up here. This will also distract me from thinking the lump on the roof of my mouth is cancer, and from scanning all health related websites to confirm this diagnosis. Stop it, Jo.
I don't have a Kindle (I'm not going to add a link) or an iPad, but I would like one especially the latter. So I can imagine the time will come when I buy books this way. But the smell of books as Mat Caley would say, is irreplacable. Sometimes I haul myself up the attic stairs to inhale it. It's the stink of history, my history, from Milly Molly Mandy through Lord of the Rings via Doris Lessing to more poetry than is necessarily healthy. Includes Teach yourself Sanskrit, Marx, Freud and the Critique of Everyday Life, Knitting for Beginners. I like seeing them altogether, rubbing ill-matched shoulders, speaking their different languages, but harmonious, generally, apart from when they deliberately hide each other, or stage a fall off the shelves when I am groping for that old copy of Union Street. I love them like useless old relatives who turn out to be surprisingly intelligent. They are a bit of a fire hazard, except it's so damp up there they'll probably return to moss and mould eventually - which is also nice.
But an e-book might be good for heavy books. And they don't fall apart and lose vital chapters.

How to beat the flu: a poet's guide

2011-01-12T01:59:00.000-08:00

An extremely nasty bout of flu - the swine variety. I think it was a kind of cosmic revenge for my last posting. There is nothing to be done but suffer - and wipe down your tops, as the lad in the call centre informed me. Don't go near your GP or A and E ward or you'll spread it around. Not that there is any way you can move. And who can help? You can't speak or stand. Experimenting with a new language based approach to poetic exercises, I offer this as an example of one friend's attempt to pull me out of the depths.

new year old dog

and how are we to prove
the love of a devious coward
as he powers through the snow
to attend her flu
apply loofah in the shower
merciless as a larded lord?
penniless, his worth is laughter
she, cursing less, admits
he fits her like a shoe.

Pig in the fridge

2010-10-14T08:06:00.000-07:00

At the Job Centre, whilst waiting on the Thatcher blue sofas for a pointless and unrewarding interview, I overhear a fascinating conversation between two employees, both on the large side of large. Think Jobcentreplusplus. The woman, eggy in an eggcup, great stomach encased in expanding trousers, her bum mountainous, breasts like zeppelins. The man, low slung belt, house sized belly overhang, many blubberous chins. They are talking about food. Or, actually, meat. Beef, lamb, pork. Especially pork - how to cook it, how to squeeze out those juices and make gravy, what to serve it with. The lady says,"I've got a pig in my fridge. Not a large pig, but you know, a good size." On the Thatcher blue sofa, myself and a thin guy in a baseball cap and a hoody exchange a look. We are both thinking: you two look like Russian pigs. Break you open and there would be another pig inside, then another, then another until we got to the littlest pig, the size of the piglet runt you had in your farm set, pink plastic perfection, the right size for a pig. I feel nauseous.

poetgirlz

2010-09-30T06:35:00.000-07:00

A weekend spent in a pod in Cove Park with some great poets: Sarah Jackson, Sarah Corbett, Joan Hewitt, Kona MacPhee, Jane Griffiths, Esther Morgan. Weather exceptional and the pod was paradise: my own space to ponder in, a fabulous bath, breathtaking views of the loch. Somtimes I find Scotland scary but this was a perfect weekend. How often can you say that? Of course, re-entry into normal life quite unpleasant but still have a kind of glow (I hope not radioactive).

Jam hot

2010-09-08T10:22:00.000-07:00

I hate the expression too much of a good thing. What good thing can you have too much of? Music? Art? Books? Love? Personally I find getting enough of a good thing more of a problem. And I'm saying this the wrong side of a week of jam making after having harvested a load of lovely Victoria plums from my mum's "garden", the jungle behind her house. In true Exley fashion, the plum tree is next to the pond, so you have to act quickly to prevent concussed newts, followed by the terrible rising to the surface of the bloated, sulphurous casualties. Fortunately I was down there this year with enough time to pick many pounds: hence the frenetic jam making. I'm not a natural domestic goddess. Really I haven't a clue about this stuff, so just surfed up some recipes then more or less ignored them: left skins on, did not add pectin, guessed. One thing I did do though was bash open a few plum stones with a hammer, then add the nut inside to the jam after crushing it in a garlic press. Lovely delicate almond flavour.
Then I tried to make slivovitz, but that looks like aborted foetuses floating in brine.
All this supposed to justify my existence, glue up the rapidly surfacing holes in all parts of the life. Jam is not enough of a good thing. Plus my hands are wrecked.

Strange Days

2010-05-20T02:00:00.000-07:00

Both macrocosmically - election mayhem, volcanic dust, tumbling europoor bank balances - and microcosmically - new job, palpitating heart, emotional upheaval all round. But yesterday I stood among bluebells for half an hour overcoming the primal terror of going into the woods alone (little girl) but still not daring to close my eyes. Rabbits running around look scared when they see me - this is logical, rational, pie-based. Blackbirds sound the alarm - but they have babies to look after. In this wood, I am the dangerous one, my clumsy feet slaughtering thousands at each step. I sat on the trunk of a fallen tree breathing that elusive not quite hyacinth scent, trying to be still and calm. The bluebells stood in platoons as far as my eyes could see, ramrod straight, an army on parade. Slant sunlight through the new beech leaves. I wish I knew how to live without fear.

Long Good Friday

2010-04-02T07:10:00.000-07:00

I'm in Scotland, spending a week on the Fielding Programme, trying to move on a bit with the next collection. I think there should be some special service offered to the writers of second collections - a therapy that helps you wade through the void that seems to open up insidiously after the first one comes out. Not pamphlets - they are OK. You can survive a pamphlet feeling quite chirpy and optimistic. After Weeping I was in the writing doldrums for at least 18 months - but pleased to say things have improved. It certainly helps to be away from the wear and tear of everyday life - up here, surrounded by mountains and water, you have to do something to amuse yourself. And Polly Clarke is a fantastic mentor. This morning I watched a couple of mallards in a full on gay romp in the little pond outside my cube, and some very hairy cows nearly fall in it. I've rescued some frogspawn, eaten a lot of biscuits and sat on my glasses. I have been thinking about feminism and its current place in my life and work. Find myself going over old ground, worrying about the personal / political relationship, what it means for me now. But yes writing too. Birds, aviatrix, WW2 Russian aces - and me mutha. Plus reaching the reminiscence stage, so doing a fair amount of looking back, like this:

Apres moi

That weekend, the north west sky
opened on us like a bible:
lakes puddled round our knees,
downpours mocked the gortex,
a deluge showed us
we were less than watertight.

The sky cried for us: all
the stored up tears of decades
burst through that heroic membrane,
like the time the ceiling fell on us
when we were young and strong.

The rain seems drier now. My raincoat
hangs forlorn, wellingtons unworn
for years. I look at my hands.
The skin is cracking like the desert floor.

Radio On

2010-03-26T08:48:00.000-07:00

Just watched two excellent movies by Chris Petit, Radio On and Content set apart by more than 20 years but conveying the same mood of eerily tranquil movement through a landscape going nowhere in particular. Essays on the state of the nation and, certainly in RO's case, the state of the British film industry, they are beautiful, puzzling and transporting. I can't believe I have never heard of this artist until now - is this my own ignorance? Both have wonderful sound tracks too and an obssession with the German which I love - like CP I spent time as a forces child in Germany when missiles pointed east. He conveys this pointless paranoia and maybe he also is able to tap in to the British suspicion of and fascination for German - the language, the people. Germans are sexy, intellectual, sinister. RO reminds me of my own fascination with the Baader Meinhof gang and those frighteningly cool women with political attitudes that made my feminist badges and reclaiming of the night look paltry.

The German narrator (one of several) in Content is older: an inhabitant of "the flat featureless plains of late middle age". His slow accented voice blends with the world seen through car or computer screen, gliding past us with minimum involvement on our part. We are passive viewers of a passively observed universe. It's soothing - or deadening, pointless - depending on your point of view. The soundtrack is the cool electronica with German overtones that would work well in a euthanasia ward. The images are of urban landscapes and deserts, postcards from nowhere. But the commentary, by CP, is both universal and very English. I feel akin to this persona as if he were my brother, comrade: his lack of fixity, his no-place attachments (the car, the service station), his dour humour and self-mockery, his acceptance that anticipation thins like hair on an ageing head.

Watching the movies in reverse order was probably not ideal but it doesn't matter - as I will be watching both of them again many times. As a poet, these are the films I want to both see and make. I'm surrounded by both of them, the way you are after a really powerful dream. I put them with my Patrick Keillor movies and My Winnipeg as films that you really need to see. So glad I found them - by chance - as a recommendation from one of my very dearest fellow travellers.

American Voice

2010-02-11T07:43:00.000-08:00

Listening to Mark Lawson's excellent Capturing America on Radio 4, I'm in love with Kurt Vonnegut all over again. So it goes. No future in a relationship with a writer, alive or dead. It's not just about his work - something about the voice, the warmth, the intelligence. Same listening to all these old guys: Heller, Updike - even Mailer, with whom you would probably have had a bar room brawl - sounds so funny and interesting. The finest of them all though is Gore Vidal. Dry as a martini, sharp as a slice of lemon. He would definitely be at my fantasy dinner party. Obviously, he wouldn't speak to me. I have always loved the American voice, since Little Women. They have hold of some idealised notion of romance and beauty in my head which no amount of rational British cold water can extinguish. Maybe it's a country of outsiders and that's the appeal.

David Thomas Broughton

2009-09-27T14:42:00.000-07:00

Went to the Waiting Room in Eaglescliffe. Had a lovely dinner and also watched Twi the Humble Feather trio of guitarists from NYC whilst enjoying my lasagne. Then a nice young man with nice hair sings like a choir boy (imagine Anthony of the Johnsons if he had been raised in West Yorks and was the love child of Jake Thackeray) plays lovely acoustic guitar – and then goes into some kind of psychotic episode involving looping our applause, his own voice, added in other sounds, feedback madness Hendrix style so your ears scream for mercy .. then back to the lovely mellow guitar, hypnotic singing. Add in lyrics about Gregg’s pasties and broken hearts. Genius. Really. It was an amazing evening.

2009-09-22T07:05:00.000-07:00

Trapped

2009-09-08T02:02:00.000-07:00

No it has never been like this before - has it? Maybe way back in the darkened rooms of childhood, the powerlessness, the impotence. There must be a way to reconnect with your own power: consider witchcraft? flower remedies? counselling? Oh no not this old wander off into the byways of pointlessness - still impotent, but distracted. No. Keep your enemies closer, and bide your time. Forget the self-pity, just a version of self-hatred. Let the anger cool and harden whilst you sharpen it into appropriate and effective weapons. Discipline is the key here. Ha. Irony.
Thinking about the world, thinking about little boys who torture little boys - was it always like this? Probably, to a degree. Were children always abused? Oh yes, for sure. But we know no boundaries now. Limitless. I guess I had an idea that our common humanity would provide those limits once we all realised we were mortal. Don't want to turn into Cassandra with sackcloth ashes and dismal predictions about the future. This morning, early, the light was golden and the air filled with millions of tiny, busy insects, pirouetting in the glow. Ecstasy.

Jack out of the box

2009-08-25T07:24:00.000-07:00

There is a reason for the closed lid. For keeping the lid down. Complacency sets in - how bad can it be? Surely you are bigger now, stronger? Why not open the box? You open the box. And he is bigger too, stronger and more out of control. Out of your control. You're chasing him round and round with a massive butterfly net but it's no good - he's always a jump ahead on you, bouncing like Zebedee on the coiled spring of his being, laughing like a maniac at your pathetic attempts to coral him. It's exhausting and ridiculous. If you stop chasing him, he'll stop running - without you to taunt, he might even climb back into his box by himself. How do I persist in the belief that I have any measure of control over anything? Madness, complete madness.

Secret meeting

2009-08-05T09:21:00.000-07:00

This place is full of spies - I think they're on to me. Surreal lift experience in Liverpool this week. And what the hell is she doing with her hand? That's fooling nobody Jo. However it is good to have a picture of my several identities - I just need to eliminate a couple of them, then everything will be fine, just fine.

London Poetry School

2009-07-29T07:50:00.000-07:00

I had a brilliant week at the Poetry School summer camp - managed to do four classes with some amazing poets and meet some very nice southern bods. Lambeth not a part of London that I know at all so extremely nice to discover that too, it's Blakean connections and the pottery history. I particularly loved the Jane Draycott class - she really knows how to run a good workshop, with the right mix of reading, exercises, and time to work on something decentish before reading out. She also got us all to record our piece and has promised to send us a CD of that so that will be excellent. I was nervous and shy but I loved the feeling of being a full time writer for a week, especially away from the usual stresses and strains (you KNOW who you are). Then I had a few days in Suffolk talking myself into swine flu (idiot) but wondrously spotting Jarvis Cocker standing outside The Old Curiosity Shop in Walberswick. He is a bit of an OC actually - the beard has transformed him into another kind of character, something slightly seedier and more psychiatric but just as attractive (to me anyway). The old head is awash with north/south nonsense, an obssession with Middlesbrough, and the need to be near water. But now the rubadub world has claimed me again and I feel paralysed and depressed.

cake

2009-06-05T08:27:00.000-07:00

These flew all the way from London to be with me on my birthday - sweet little fairies, so pastel, so girly. My hand feels huge as I pick one up to convey it safely to my mouth. Mmm - it tastes like a real sponge cake, substantial but not heavy: the supreme mix of butter, sugar, egg and flour. The artistry of the decoration, as if each one had been handmade with a different recipient in mind: a flock of little girls all in their party dresses and each cake will match. I want to wear the cake and eat it. They came from here. I still have two left. Thank you, lovely Bea.

Save Our Salt

2009-05-22T05:21:00.000-07:00

Some of the best contemporary writers from the UK (e.g. Anthony Joseph pictured here) and abroad are published by Salt Publishing. Chris and Jen Hamilton-Emery have a remarkable knack of finding excellent writers of prose, poetry and criticism from across the globe and producing beautiful books. But times are hard and they need our help to keep going - if we all buy a book, just one book, this could make the crucial difference to whether or not they survive. Go to their website and browse - you'll be spoilt for choice - so buy two. A world without Salt would be a poorer, duller world all round.

England, my England

2009-04-24T03:04:00.000-07:00

St George's Day - as I walk through Newcastle City Centre I come across a flag waving crowd under Grey's Monument - the part of the city where people gather to make a point. The flag wavers were men, close cropped hair, levis, cherry doc martins. Ah just like the old days: the cherry red bovver boys of yore, the same old uniform of the nationalist. Surely they could be dressed as Morris Dancers for a change? The red and white, the chanting, the sound of male voices united in rage - they are like low end football supporters - and give most football supporters a bad name by association. They were singing "Here we go" for goodness sake. Did St George sing this? They do not represent me as a statement of Englishness. They only represent themselves - and it's hard to see how they could ever attract people other than those who look and behave exactly like them.
The small group of people in opposition were young, women and men. different skin colours. Not uniform, except in a not conforming to conventional fashion sense. They looked frail but brave and steady as they tried to persuade the on-lookers that racism and fascism was not a good response to an economic downturn. Their arguments too subtle for a Thursday morning crowd on their way to TK Maxx. But as the police removed a young woman, curled up like a hedgehog on the pavement, I sensed an unease. People (myself included) have believed we can do without politics, don't need to stand up and be counted, use our work to make the points we want to make. I don't know. It has made me feel worried about what might be coming. Will the lights go out in ways that I haven't even thought of yet?
On a slightly brighter notes, I saw Stackridge at the Cluny last night. Wasn't expecting to enjoy but did - apart from that whimsical stuff (which I think has some relationship to the flag wavers and the audience was mainly men). I prefer it when they play harder and don't mention dragons.

The Birds

2009-03-22T07:19:00.000-07:00

This film - which we watched a week or so ago - was the last of the Hitch movies under discussion. I have always been fascinated by this film - not allowed to see it as a child - watched many times since - and written about in poetic form. I love birds, and don't find them at all scary except in majestic sense when it comes to the great birds of prey - eagles, buzzards, ospreys, owls. I've been swooped on by them in the Farne Islands during breeding and it seemed quite easy to politely step aside. So it isn't the birds attacking that I find frightening about this movie but what happens to Melanie - how she is given her comeuppance in a cruel and what seems personal way. I hadn't read anything about the making of the movie until quite recently and am not at all surprised to read (in Donald Spoto's Spellbound by Beauty) that Hitch was totally obssessed by Tipi Hedren and made her life hell during the making of this film, in a way which we assume just could not happen today. The absolute power of the director and his manipulation of the actors, especially the women. Hitch kept TH isolated from other members of the crew and exploited her lack of experience in horrible ways. Something of that sadism comes through in the attic scene, where Melanie is attacked repeatedly by the birds which were tied to her. I'm not sure I'll be able to watch this film again, even though I am also reading Camille Paglia's take on the movie, which is brilliantly perverse (to me anyway). But then she's a woman for whom no means yes - I'm sure she and Hitch would have got on great.

Vertiginous

2009-02-27T06:20:00.000-08:00

Vertigo last night - a dreamy, surreal movie with surprisingly modern touches, including the swirling vortex used to denote mental collapse in poor old Scottie. James Stewart plays another broken man - this time with a terrible obsession for a woman who never really existed. Although it is a great film in many ways, it's a disturbing one to watch and hard not to cringe (and feel implicated) at the humiliation of both Midge and Judy as they are subjected to an unforgiving male gaze. The Midge type characters in Hitchcock never get their man - but on the other hand, they are unlikely to end up dead. I was thinking about this film when I wrote this poem:

Hitchcock Blonde

Ice cool.
A frosted Barbie
hard and cold to the touch
her hour glass figure
infinitely breakable.

Examine her carefully.
The painted blue eyes
with built in tears
(press button A)
the immaculate underwear
uneasily prised
from her brittle carapace.

Shoe her in black
lay a tailored suit
on a firm foundation
restrain the breasts
(remove nipples first)
contain the ample derriere.

But still she will run
shackled for our entertainment
hobble to the nearest lake
the highest tower
fling herself in
or off.

Drama queen.

Torture her
against a backdrop of nuns
an op art chorus line.
She will raise a tiny hand
gloved in pearl grey.
Listen.
“Scotty,” she will murmur.
“Don’t let me go.”

( from Weeping for the Lovely Phantoms 2007)

The Lady Vanishes

2009-02-13T01:24:00.000-08:00

Last night's class was The Lady Vanishes - a movie I've never seen before and which I enjoyed very much, but more in the way you would enjoy a Marx Brothers movie than a typical Hitch. The opening sequence in the Tyrolean style hotel is very funny and saucy - lots of girls getting dressed and undressed, the Morecambe and Wise duo of Caldicott and Charters (they sound like a pair of dodgy accountants), the lovely Iris (Margaret Lockwood) getting ready to return to England for her wedding and Gilbert the musicologist (played by the deliciously louche Michael Redgrave) getting hotel staff to perform (very badly) local folk dances. It's frankly daft. Peter Ustinov should have been in this part. Most of the action takes place on the train itself with lots of claustrophobic squeezings past people in the corridor and several people vanishing. There's a very untypical shoot out with krypto nazis and everything comes right in the end - if you ignore quite a high random body count. The class divided along gender lines - the women mostly enjoyed it very much - the men were in doubt as to its true Hitchcockian nature (the heroine is a brunette for God's sake!). Sometimes I think I couldn't be happier than I am on Thursday nights at the Tyneside. Check out this video made by a real fan.

Young and Innocent

2009-02-06T05:22:00.000-08:00

I'm having a wonderful time attending a class about the films of Hitchcock, held at the Tyneside Cinema. Last night we watched Young and Innocent, which, although not the best film ever, introduced me to a young actress called Nova Pilbeam. Helluva moniker for a film star. But ah she was lovely! Only 17 when she made the movie. All luminous and big eyed with a very slim figure in typical Hitch tailoring. Her character is the only woman in a family of men - the five brothers and the police chief father - she is like a rural English Snow White surrounded by public school dwarves. She is very practical and can start her old Morris with a handle and a piece of string. Why she would want to get mixed up with such a boring hero is beyond me, even though he has some of the right credentials - wrongly accused of murder, floppy hair, the knack of stealing clothes. This movie is like a Famous Five adventure, although with great moments like the car chase and crane shot at the Grand Hotel at the end (but the blacked up band - outrageous!) It's lovely talking about movies.

Shadows

2009-01-12T03:19:00.000-08:00

I made this movie a while ago using my own footage taken in various locations, a piece from Psycho, and some footage from a beautiful film I saw on Youtube - I used a piece of it and can't remember the name of the person who made it! So if anybody recognises let me know so I can credit. The poem is part of a series I wrote using Hitchcock poems as a stimulus - this one is based on a film called Shadow of a Doubt, quite an early film (1943). But of course I've just hijacked it for my own purposes.

The more I see her ...

2008-12-17T08:36:00.000-08:00

Perhaps after all I have stepped through the glass into a new land in which none of the things I believed make any sense - the ideas of loyalty, hard work, achieving your outcomes, representing your company - ha! Idiot! You should have been doing your own work - you've spent a lifetime (almost) doing theirs. So now what? Find somebody else you can enslave yourself to? Or take the chance that your own work is worthless? Oh the terror the terror. But is it better than drowning in a see of phlegm which is what the alternative now seems to be? The end of the world is nigh. Do I want to see it from behind a thick screen of corporate nonsense, knee deep in paper covered in words that don't add up to much? Could I dare at this late hour to consider throwing my own words into the sky, see how they come down. Have a little faith? I am quite frankly afraid, though I hate to admit it.

Durcan at Durham bookfest

2008-10-20T04:14:00.000-07:00

I was very nervous about meeting Paul Durcan. His book The Berlin Wall Cafe is one of those companion volumes of poetry, an essential part of your life that you have to have somewhere near you at all times. He's such a great poet - sharp, funny, idiosyncratic not afraid to walk an emotional knife edge. He takes you into his world, draws you along effortlessly up side roads and country paths, digressions and sudden precipices. You would follow him anywhere. The reading in the Gala Studio on Friday evening was utterly spell-binding. And he is the most charming man in the world (though I was still scared to ask him about Van Morrison and why they let the goldfish go). His latest book is The Laughter of Mothers and it's brilliant. (this photo is by Simon James)

plastic orchids

2008-10-10T06:52:00.000-07:00

National Poetry Day and I'm in a hotel in Telford - finding inspiration in the ladies - wondering why plastic orchids are now the flower of choice in such amenities - and why something as exotic as an orchid is needed to distract us from the more basic workings of our bodies (especially for us ladeez) I like the privacy of privvies - one of the few remaining public spaces where you can be alone and not hear people on their mobiles (though I have heard ladeez talking on their phones whilst using said amenities - shocking shocking). There are some beautiful ladies rooms. The one at the Lit and Phil library in Newcastle springs (or perhaps seeps?) to mind.

Gimme shelter

2008-07-16T03:46:00.000-07:00

Listen as the wind shakes the trees makes them rattle and sway their long arms outstretched for balance as you stand beneath them a little frightened by the energy that hums insdie each straining trunk. You are a child hiding in this garden, sitting in the fork of a branch, clinging on as the wind whips itself into a fury. Holding on to the tree, like a child holds on to its father, believing that he is stronger than any force of nature. In this garden you came to believe that nature provides the better option. Here, in the branches, under the deep green concealing leaves, is your escape, your salvation. Like diving into a stormy sea, down beneath the froth of the waves, to where it's cool and quiet.

Mick Standen

2008-06-08T04:52:00.000-07:00

It's been a really sad week - Mick Standen died on Sunday and that fact has removed all the colour from the week even though the sun has been shining and the summer is in and it was my birthday and friends were all wonderful. He was such a lovely man: elegant, witty and kind. So good at making things flow smoothly in a kind of unobtrusive but determined way. He just made things happen, worked really hard at this but made it seem effortless. He just didn't let obstacles stand in his way. I'll miss him so much. He really made me laugh and there are not enough people in the world who can do that. Too many losses this year. I feel so sad for his family.

influenza

2008-02-05T04:05:00.000-08:00

like wrestling a crocodile underwater for days. He was huge. Gripped me tight and spiralled me down to the bottom of the murky lake. My skin was flayed by the tail raked by the claws. He banged my head repeatedly on a rock, breathed fish breath into my gasping mouth. In the end I just gave up, submitted to the whole process, no point in resisting. He got bored - slowly loosened his grip - my now rather thinner self slipped out of his grasp and floated to the surface. I'm just hanging there now waiting for the energy to drag myself out of the slime. I can see the sky, at least. It's a beautiful sight.

oh vienna

2008-01-12T03:43:00.000-08:00

Being in a city cold enough to set the muscles of your face into a permanent grimace - the nose lighting up like Rudolph and only the gluwein keeping you from complete collapse - is strangely nostalgic. The Germany years as a child - seeing St Nicholas give his magnificent red cloak to a poor man in the street whilst we stood with our home made lanterns making faces at the German kids - and were given little paper bags full of cinammon biscuits - cinammon! a novelty to English tastebuds more used to our mothers' jam tarts and victoria sponge - bland and conforting - not spicy and exotic and mysterious. Meanwhile, in my house santa and his drunken brothers beat a path to our toilet, permanently destroying any illusions in my little overloaded head that there is magic at work in the world.

touching

2007-11-22T06:20:00.000-08:00

Lying on our backs under the blue skirt of the sky we are Hansel and Gretel noses touching tickled by spritzy autumn air and a hint of the sweet stickiness of liquorice. Leaves are eveywhere - under us like a thick layered mattress, falling down on us like coins emptying from a busted open treasure box. The birds are singing in a complicated code I can't crack. Somewhere deeper in the woods the witch is waiting, biding her time. I can smell gingerbread baking. Not feeling that hungry, actually.

Falling

2007-09-24T10:22:00.000-07:00

It's beautiful really - the way the leaves gently turn another colour before they detach themselves from the mother ship and float down. And just before that, there is a still time, when they know it's over - the cartoon character poised over the cliff edge, the moment in the gym before you go into reverse on the cross trainer. The pause. What happens next is inevitable, but before you go, you take a breath, a last look around at all the things you love, then submit to the dark. It's part of the process and pointless to fight it - no railing against the dying of the light for me. Just a few tears, maybe, and some inner notion (possibly delusory) that I fall to rise again. My father's birthday RIP.

Latitude 2007: loving the Jarve

2007-08-30T08:22:00.000-07:00

I may not have mentioned the Latitude Festival this year. It was lovely and I didn't even need the posh muji pacamac that a friend had graciously supplied. Had anticipated Somme conditions but Latitude is in a climate zone all of its own and is full of peace and love, poetry and music, except for the toilets which are just full. Walking to said facilities one night, after Jarvis Cocker set, with three gorgeous girls in their 20s it turns out that we are all in love with Jarvis. Yes all of us, all with different star signs and everything. We admitted we would leave home and family at a stroke if he asked us to - not all at once, obviously, although actually, yes even then, we would share. The Jarvo charm - you can feel it radiate across a crowded field - the full on geekiness of him, the specs (signifying high intelligence) the endless out of control legs, like an ADHD spider, the weird OCD gesturing. We love it all and there is just no knowing why. Skinny, northern, funny, intelligent, mad as a badger - this is my ideal man, and the ideal man of many. I would settle for being his cleaner. This photo comes from my pacamac friend's flickr site - see more:
http://flickr.com/photos/bearpark/

the dark dark wood

2007-08-05T08:13:00.000-07:00

Flatlands - the sunrise coast - sounds so hopeful, optimistic, sunny. All of these things it is - until you find yourself lost in its dark woods, trapped between the fathomless interior of the forest and the soggy quicksands of the estuary. Making the choice between the chin high ferns their curled fingers poised to clutch your ankles, your wrists, to ensnare you truss you like a partridge for the pot - and the breast high reeds waving seductively in the sea breeze beckoning you in until you sink up to your knees in the glutinous salty black mud. Life is full of these choices - the devil and the deep blue sea - the reassuring thing is either one is equally disastrous. And nobody knows where you are. Sometimes you put yourself beyond help. In a clearing a stinkhorn like a seaside postcard leers at me, surrounded by its fly hangers on. A dark moment of the soul which has made the ordinary light of day brighter.

Bologna

2007-05-25T04:44:00.000-07:00

Beautiful city clositered so that the sun catches you obliquely tapping you quite forcefully on the shoulder as you cross the road, avoiding a swarm of vespas, making for the next cool stone corridor. People are busy on their way to work, serious looking, with every now and then a familiar look - where have I seen that guy before? Oh yes - it's Jesus! So many faces could have been the models for Renaissance paintings of saints. On the roof of the office building where work is in progress, I sneak up the spiral staircase with an espresso and a perfect pastry to stand and watch the swallows scimitar a cloudless blue backdrop. I should be discussing moodles and rss streams and the best way to learn Latvian 0n-line - but I'm up here, like a person from the 60s on acid who believes she can fly.

still life

2007-04-11T12:43:00.000-07:00

Thinking about objects and what they symbolise. The contents of a handbag or the stomach of a dead man. Last meal last handkerchief last book read last dress worn. Cut up the clothes of your unfaithful lover. Shoot his dog (the resemblance is too close). Wear the face cream of your husband's girlfriend which you stole from his bathroom. It's as good as eating her liver (especially if you are a vegetarian). Keep the shoes your children wore as infants. Their shape fills you with love. Your mother's poison bracelet. Your father's pewter tankard. Auntie Dolly's dressing gown. Still life.

flotsam

2007-03-12T06:19:00.000-07:00

Clutch bag as oyster opening to show a set of perfectly matched pearls spilling into the sea. Evidence. What happened here? Was it a wonderful night of champagne and romance, culminating in a from here to eternity coupling as the waves ebbed and flowed over naked ecstatic bodies? Was there drunkenness, a terrible fight and a girl running from the beach, unaware of the loss of her bag in her grief? Or was it a deliberate saying goodbye, clothes piled neatly, pearls and earrings removed and safely stowed as she stepped naked into the sea and struck out for freedom from all worldly cares? But the bag misses her, follows on the next tide, mouth open crying - wait! wait for me ....

The red shoes

2007-03-06T09:47:00.000-08:00

Identity - what does it consist of? am I my red shoes, sling backs, pointy, so delicate that they look like the shoes of a fairy - not at all the kind of red shoes that would dance you to death, cling to your poor constrained feet until they bled and your little heart exploded? No - but still, they are dancing shoes - and you can become exhausted by all the dances that are expected of you - the formal pavanne of grown up life, the retro twist of nostalgia, the hectic jive of conversation, the over-heated proximity of the smooch. I'm longing for a slow waltz, calm, dignified, just intimate enough, nothing sweaty or revealing, just an elegant to-ing and fro-ing with a handsome, co-ordinated chap who doesn't stand on my feet. Yeah but hang on missy - what are those pants doing there?

2007-03-01T04:45:00.000-08:00

the sky is an astonishing blue the view from the pier so beguiling what is she to do but remove her coat and hat drape them over the old metal rails as if she were hanging up the washing (such a great washing day perfect balance of sun and breeze seeing her mother in the back garden her mouth full of pegs the basket of wet clothes at her feet the rhythm of her bending and lifting and pegging a domestic dance that makes its own music) and take note of the seagulls - how hard can it be to fly? She puts a foot on the bottom rung - it's like climbing a ladder! First one foot, then the other. She is poised on the top of the railing her eyes so full of sea and sky she is already drowning before she hits the surface of the waves.

crafting with the hands

2007-02-06T08:54:00.000-08:00

She's learning about hands - their intelligence and ingenuity. Their clumsiness and lack of skill. Their life. The new world of craft - manipulating needles of various kinds, spreading fabric, smoothing, cutting, selecting, teasing, pressing, rolling, squeezing. Joining things together. Intense pleasure of texture under the hand, of colours seducing the eye. Intense satisfaction in a completed garment or accessory however humble and clumsily made. The sense of your own work.
The connection to writing - using a set of experiences and a toolkit of words to assemble something that anybody might want to try on. It might not fit - or you might see that it would fit with a little alteration. Or you might think - no way I'd ever wear that. Or that girl hasn't a clue how to knit.
When I was a child, sewing was so fraught. In every fairy story, things went wrong, fingers were pricked, spells were cast. In the classroom, wicked old witches laid their gnarled hands on your work and derided it. I knitted a dishcloth, not understanding the concept. I made a pair of baby doll pyjamas - but my mother had chosen wincyette - wince being what I did as the lovely Miss Whittaker held up the fabric and made the whole class laugh at me. Ha but now, yes, now Miss Whittaker - who's laughing? At least you taught me that I would never iron as it seemed to be the most pleasurable thing in your life.
Something went wrong. The false dichotomy between the hands and the brain. As if you ever use one without the other.

East Side Story

2007-01-22T08:43:00.000-08:00

The long shadows in this photo - the long shadows of a soviet past hanging over you as you strive for a 21st century capitalist future. In the hotel foyer fake animal fur covers the seating and young girls with hair as black as coal drink diet coke (though they are whippet thin) and smoke cigarettes, dreaming of Cheeky Girl futures in towns where not everything is made of concrete. The men, dressed in black leather jackets and jeans with indecipherable labels, their coal black hair in pony tails, drink 40% proof brandy and think of ways in which they can make Cheeky Girls work for them.
In the Mining Museum, a man who looks like Roy Orbison shows us around the dusty exhibits, featuring photographs of the faces of unsmiling men ranked in rows and although he is speaking a language which I can't understand, I can tell they were shot - but who by? the communists or the Nazis? The Turks or the Greeks? It's a country with so much more past than future - like the world. Like me. I would like to celebrate with the people, their pride in joining the rest of us(or those who celebrate thievery), but there doesn't seem much to celebrate. The race is on for scooping up the last remnants of wealth before we disappear under a slag heap - they want to be in the race too. Why not? Capitalism is the human default mode. Survival of the cruellest.
On the way to the airport, girls who have given up being cheeky wait by the road side wearing puffa jackets and pragmatic expressions. In the bushes I glimpse a man with his trousers down. Hey ho, business as usual, girls. We'll never be stuck for a job.

The Tree Wife

2006-11-13T06:41:00.000-08:00

There was once a man who married a tree. When he married her, it was spring and her slender branches were covered with succulent green buds. Gradually, each bud opened and delicate green leaves appeared, fresh and bright. The leaves burgeoned, so the tree looked like she was wearing a perfectly shaped ballgown, which moved seductively in the breeze, providing tantalising glimpses of her lovely lines. It seemed that the summer would go on forever, the days long and golden. Then the light began to change and the days to shorten. The leaves changed colour, so her dress was red and orange and gold, blazing in the later light. But the wind began to blow, chilly and northern and slowly the leaves fell from her branches and she stood naked before him, notched and gnarled with the years.
He chopped her down and burnt her in his fire.

Lost

2006-08-21T05:47:00.000-07:00

Just when you think everything's going well, idling the days away, plaiting new versions of your grass skirt, weaving tropical flowers into perfect, intricate necklaces, listening to birdsong, swimming in a gentle ocean .. they come bursting out of the jungle brandishing their weapons.

The men. They look similar - but each of them has an apparently different intention.

One of them wants to look after you - hand you handkerchiefs when your nose is running, offer advice, have exactly the right expression of attentive interest when you speak, take you to lots of nice places he knows .. what, you don't WANT to go to nice places?

One of them wants to build you a house - but first, he has to knock yours down, carelessly swinging the wrecking ball in your direction, feeling aggrieved when you complain about the mess and the fact that you can't sleep for the cold wind blowing in where the windows used to be. Ungrateful! Carping! Can't you see all the work he's doing, just for you?

The third one flatters you - he adores your voice, wants you to sing exclusively for him .. wants you to sing his song. Your own is a little too scary and people might get the wrong impression. If you just do things his way ..

Your only hope is that they will argue amongst themselves long enough for you to make a sharp exit back into that jungle. Flight better than fight has always been your motto. But how much longer will those little legs carry you?

RL / SL

2006-07-11T09:19:00.000-07:00

I'm wondering about the real world and how I would define it. I'm wondering why people want to create a strange second life in virtual land where they work and play just like they do in RL. Or do they? Having sorted yerself a nice blonde and pneumatic avatar, maybe SL is different? Maybe you can be wonderfully successful in SL - get a great job, trade with all that pretend money, listen to SL music (shite), dance to U2 look alike bands, whilst remaining at the bottom of the heap in RL? But SL is a truly horrible place, airless, claustrophobic, like the inside of an aeroplane on a long haul flight, only where all your fellow passengers have this weird elongated streamlined look and cartoon faces. No need for a toilet though.
On the other hand - I have been listening to voice recordings of ruth weiss beat poet and voice jazz artist in her 70s but cool as a frozen cucumber or an ice cold mexican beer on a hot day - her voice is so rich and throaty, her timing immaculate her words are like a jazz prayer. I'm so happy to have discovered her work. http://voices.e-poets.net/weissr/poems.shtml is where you can hear her - inspirational.

bluebellissimo

2006-06-09T06:35:00.000-07:00

The bluebells in the wood - the lavender cloud of them almost toxic - you can hear the faintest of tinkling all the tiny bells gently sounding with the movement of the morning air. She's out of her tiny mind. Experiencing happiness - summer at last, sunlight on the skin, a hand to hold in the woods, Hansel to her Gretel, cleverer, with more breadcrumbs, charged with her care. But he blew it in the blue - the responsibility too great, she is too demanding, the path through the woods gets darker and more fraught with mystery. He bottles it, leaves her sleeping in the shade of a blackthorn, its white blossom covers her like a shroud. She wakes up alone. But after the initial cold hand around the heart - what? Birdsong, the bluebell scent fresher and cleaner, the path through the woods as plain as the nose on her face. She stands up, dusts off the blossom, inhales. As she walks on, she finds him, hanging by his ankle from a rowan tree. He smiles hopefully, cheesily, but she can't hit the compassion button. Maybe it's stuck. Too many breadcrumbs.

holy baloney

2006-05-21T12:42:00.000-07:00

So this is Lindisfarne - or actually the view from - the outer limits of this tiny claustrophobic chunk of land which is almost sinking under its impossible load of trippers / pilgrims, cream teas, fudge, meade, st cuthbert fridge magnets and worst of all, the burden of hostility that the local inhabitants seem to have towards anybody who is not a resident. It was a wicker man experience. I had a narrow escape really - just an unpleasant encounter with a vicious elderly couple because I had parked improperly (no sign to tell me that) - then a smashed windscreen which Mr Autoglass tells me was definiteley an act of vandalism. That's Christianity for you. So territorial, so violent. Sad really - I had been seeking at least a little spiritual calm but it was impossible to find it there. Although listening to some beautiful new work from my poetry friends was as near to spiritual as I'm ever likely to get. Suits me. Most poets I know don't go in for violence - unless it's absolutely necessary of course.

Mozza misunderstood

2006-05-13T08:15:00.000-07:00

But of course what did I expect? Seeing Moz at the Sage with a load of what appeared to be gay Lindisfarne fans (didn't know they existed), wrapped in england flags to keep off the fog from the Tyne - like national front afficionados - why would I be surprised that he was greeted with a chilly reception - booed, even after failing to do an encore? And who could blame him - they wanted Shoplifters not the new stuff - which he did, mercilessly, ignoring the shouted requests from the back catalogue - making them hear if not listen to every track from the new album - ringleader of the tormentors indeed. It must be a pain to be constantly asked to do old stuff when you want your fans to understand where you are at now - to come with you to the next stage.
He's arrogant, maybe - if he had thrown in just two or three more favourites - the crowd would have been more accepting of the new material? maybe? But no, not him - no compromises - apart from Girlfriend in A Coma and a couple off You are the Quarry.
He looked great, mind - I even like the slight paunch, corseted in a smart suit with a wonderful purple shirt that made me think he was dressed in honour of Angel Readman whose favourite colour it is. And who, like me, adores Moz and would like to be the lady who made his cocoa/polished his shoes/did up his cufflinks. The band were amazing, tight, youthfully energetic and respectful in equal measure. They were having fun for a while. But the atmosphere felt strange, from the beginning. They love him like a man loves his unfaithful wife. They want things to be back the way they were, when they could really trust her. They're scared she's taking the mick. They're angry.
He can do whatever he likes as far as I'm concerned. I just enjoyed being in the same room as him. And I'm supporting Italy this year.

Identity Crisis at the chicken factory

2006-04-13T04:26:00.000-07:00

This is a crop from a photo taken by a Canadian photographer called Edward Burtynsky - his exhibition about China currently showing here (www.bocamuseum.org) It struck a chord or two with my current thinking about repetition identity and the meaning of everyday life. Am in that state where thoughts are swilling about in some kind of philosophical soup in my head and I know eventually the flavours will blend - but it could turn out to be undrinkable. The industrial revolution and mass production brought these repetitive processes and procedures - factory work - I did this for a while packing soup in Symington's factory in the midlands - but I knew I wouldn't be doing it forever. Maybe the rhythms of industrial processes are not that different essentially from the rhythms of agricultural processes - the tilling and hoeing of peasant life. Maybe that's why the move from one to the other is being so cleverly effected in China - and of course there are a lorra lorra people there (most of them apparently working in this chicken factory). But that's stopped here more or less - we don't make much stuff anymore in the UK. We are part of the "knowledge economy". I can't say this without a sneer don't know about you (who?)
So my working day must be endlessly invented and reinvented and is often structured in response to an email or a phone call as different priorities assert themselves. I think this invades my head even more than the soup factory did. I used to be free to think my own thoughts. Now I don't have any it's not allowed my head is the intellectual property of my company and even writing this blog could become a capital offence. Bodies or minds? Which is the easiest to enslave?
Also connected to questions of identity - have two thoughts - one you could say that the people in this picture lose their id as part of the industrial process two you could say that doing this kind of job which is no different to what anybody else does - leaves you free to create an identity of a different kind. I am thinking about the whole blx about the individual on which our culture rests - so we are special, so we can be sold lots of stuff so we can look / feel better than our fellows. But sadly we don't. So we have to spend some more.
I have just tried to prove my identity at the HSBC bank. They don't believe me. The passport and letter from npower not enough. They need to see evidence that money has left my account from this address - I only exist in so far as I spend.
Individual / community? The apparent failure of socialism suggest we are made to be this unpleasant competitive greedy species. I think it might be time to leave my clothes on a beach and swim off. Or maybe I could flog my identity on ebay? Can't think why anybody would want it.

Losing face

2006-04-03T05:05:00.000-07:00

A doll without a face - hmm this is an exciting prospect. A face you can create and recreate with a wipe of a sponge - a fresh canvas every time. How wonderful if we could do this - wipe off our painted on faces make ourselves new on a regular basis. No unpleasant carving or pulling or stapling - just wipe and go again. The stuff about character, the much loved lines and wrinkles - bullshit, isn't it? They don't want to see the marks on our faces, the so-called laughter lines which are really about screwing your eyes up against the sun against the light which glares but does not illuminate a whole lot. The lines on our foreheads caused by the down pressing of a million worries and anxieties - our poor little brows trying to hold them up - collapse is inevitable. The face muscle exercises in the gym - people give you a wide berth after a few Tourettes like grimaces and there is always room on the weights machines for you as the tattooed heavies head for the exit scared you might try to engage them in conversation.
But it's pissing into the wind of time - erosion is inevitable. If I were a mountain or an Indian Temple sculpture then it would be a different story ...

Sea view with invisible woman

2006-02-20T08:03:00.000-08:00

Like a dog let off the lead she runs around the beach trying to take it all in with one last glimpse before it all goes dark one last look at the sea the light on the waves delicate the colours a perfect blend of dove grey sand bleached wood and a deep marine blue - these are my favourite colours some early memory of Burnham swimming before I could walk in Egypt the sound of water the most elemental restorative music I know. The air is so sweet so fresh the birds stand up to their ankles in the waves looking out to sea racers on their starting blocks poised for flight.
Footprints in the sand which you are scared to follow - they take you into a cave which has been prepared for you - holds some dark knowledge for you alone - a set of symbols only you can interpret - the paper nylon petticoat, the doll's house, the wedding ring, the shoe bearing the shape of his foot, the baby's dress, the keys to a Peugeot 309.
If this were a movie, you are watching the final scene the enigmatic ending when the main character wanders out of view and the camera self-importantly takes in the splendid sea vista - she is small, insignificant her story melts into the eternal ocean. She's gone. She was never here.

everything is american now

2006-02-01T15:58:00.000-08:00

This is a photo of the girls who were controlled by Charles Manson - and who carried out the Tate and LaBianca murders in 1969 - or is it? The photographer is a guy called Charlie White who does really odd things with fotos - spends time and money making them hyper real, believable. Maybe they are just actors dressed up in these interesting Quaker clothes - their heads freshly shaved reflecting the harsh courtroom light. I just came across this photo on a website - so I went to see the exhibition in Southwark yesterday - tiny gallery behind the Tate - very snooty and London in its we never get any viewers and we don't care kind of way - like to view art is so naff obviously - to be really cool you should just ignore it or look at it secretly on the web like pornography - except it would have been easier for me to have done some porn in Soho - just down the road from the meeting I was at - than cross the bleedin river on a freezing January day. Worth it worth it. I really wanted to see this photo - and I also got a lot more out of the other works - not many, but each so finely crafted and with a million stories - who is Jody? why has she been crying - how did she get that cut on her face? The gymnast girls somehow mirror and echo the Charlie girls - another set manipulated by men, this time their trainers/abusers - no doubt the girls love them to death. There's something about the girls the moment captured - and even if it never really happened we believe it did just exactly as it looks here frozen solid not some wafty little dream. Get down there and give those snotty southern girls a hard time.

the wizard and the wardrobe

2006-01-10T14:17:00.000-08:00

look at this poor sap with her smiling lips and glazed eyes transported via the snow king's buggy to a land where everything looks perfect for just the amount of time that it takes for snow to melt - for a while the world has a crystalline sparkle - it fizzes with delight and joy and you are compelled to believe every word he says for the duration - laughing gaily as you whizz down the snow covered hills - roasting chestnuts by an open fire - then the snow melts and the dirty brown earth pokes through and you are back in the world that is called real - and it's not good. he's not smiling anymore but accusing you of capital offences. Things get nasty quickly. He thinks you have poisoned him. Time to get back into that wardrobe close the door tight and inhale the smells of mothball and old sweat until you feel a bit brighter. Time in fact to make the decision never to go to nar nar land again to refuse the ice toffee no matter how beguiling the offer seems. perhaps a trip to Ikea will offer an alternative piece of furniture with less painful consequences - but there's something about their clean lines, their functionality, their wholesomeness that you resist. There's a path somehwere that is neither Ikea nor skip, but a new bright and beautiful primose path calling - just find where it begins and take the first step.

winter light

2006-01-03T07:33:00.000-08:00

Took this whilst walking by the river on Christmas Eve - the light was so intense, much more blinding than in the summer. Kinda makes the notion of dark days redundant. Have discovered that if you leave your house you are more likely to encounter light. Ha! There is more to life than the screen - unlikely idea, I know - but there might be something in it? A big clockwork heron flew over me. I could hear the working of its wings, mechanical, straining for flight. Most of the walk I was in a foul (sorry) temper - just angry, angry, angry. Then I fell off a wall and sprained my ankle badly - the pain was intense but somehow it made me feel better - obvious stuff really - a pain with a clear cause/effect situation going on. Mostly things aren't like this. Limping along the rest of the way I felt great. That blue sky. The tailor on hand for running repairs. Logs for the fire. Mud on my boots. 3D stuff. Weird.

Ripping

2005-12-19T07:11:00.000-08:00

It doesn't get much darker - but after that, the light. I'm thinking about Jack the Ripper's victims - surprised to learn that four out of the five were women in their forties, women with sad stories to tell of dead husbands, destitution, drink. It's such a short fall to the gutter for some - boththen and now. Just one young woman of 25, his final victim and the one who got the most - er - attention. You know that feeling in a dream when the worst thing you can think of is heading towards you? There's no escape this is it - all you can do is make yourself wake up? But what if you can't? What if you can't?
Poem so far:

Cheap

Dark Annie, Long Liz, Polly and Kate
A sisterhood of victims, down on their luck
Down on their backs in the alleys of Whitechapel
Working girls wearily plying their trade
Bleary with drink in the gathering dark.

The monocled mutilator
takes his place in the drama
Immaculately turned out

They called him Leather Apron
The master butcher, royal ripper
Seeking easy meat in the careless streets
He plucks each one from the filth
like a dying flower

From boudoir to abbatoir
He reels her into his realm
Slits her throat for the silence
Fillets her like a fish
Spills her guts on the threadbare floor
A lifetime’s menstrual blood
All her periods come at once
Period

Then he vaporises,
Vanishes for all time, hidden
Behind a gallery of aliases
Notorious, glorious Jack
The women loll like broken dolls
Their many mouths stitched silent.

panto season - he's behind ya!

2005-12-16T03:47:00.000-08:00

got the light off just a mimsy little candle between me and complete black out the candle being the last sputtering of my sense of myself my identity on the waver as the winds blow and everything shimmers and shakes threatening complete extinction. myself alone v my self with others all the mysteries that this brings up when you rub that lamp what sighs out of the spout what djin do you call up? probably ur-djin the man in question the first genie who brought his own bottle or two and proceeded to down them as a prelude to acts of atrocity. such a big bastard of a djin that avoidance tactics required my own cloak of invisibility leaving a goblin child as a replacement - wow she's done her duty over the years, most people cannot detect the join, are happy with her quiet, adoring obedience whilst invisible woman is off on her own adventures. hardly anybody knows how to sew me to my shadow. instead of seeing this as a sadness i glory in my isolation like some injured child. but there are moments when a peace descends. the tailor arrives with his magic sewing kit, fits all my elements into place and the afternoon segues into evening - come a little closer ...

Grim Tales

2005-12-11T10:55:00.000-08:00

Darkest time of the year, darkest time for the soul. SADness everywhere. A v close friend has cancer and I'm working out a way to deal with this, especially that I now know he reads my blog. It's so much better when you don't know that, isn't it? This house is full of spies - and I think they're on to me.
So I will have to revert to code and poetry and see where that gets me. It's made me wonder really about blogs and specifically this blog and its purpose in my life, one among many diaries, journals, writings - all with just a slightly different set of information - not deliberately tailored - or not consciously, anyway - but there's summat goin on here.
You put up this blog in the same way as you accidentally left your notebook hanging around for your husband to read. Take the consequences, like you had to last time. Don't you think that being honest might be simpler? Or is that just a little bit too obvious?
Hmmm. Talking to myself on a blog. For chrissakes.
In spite of the dark and the sadness and worry and phantasmogoria piece I am working on with Jack the Ripper in central position - just every now and again - I feel a strange glimmer of excitement. What's that then? What on earth is that?
Certainly nothing to do with the UB40 gig I went to last night - a friend made me, alright? Brought on a bout of extreme depression. Was sandwiched between two large ladies dancing. Felt like I was in a car wash. They have been doing those numbers for 25 years. It all felt lifeless and mechanical. They chew while they sing. I guess it relieves the boredom. Wished I'd brought some gum myself. What a contrast to the National gig (pic is of Matt the singer) I went to in Leeds recently - they are poets. Passion, wit, tunes. Everything you need. http://americanmary.com/

per ardua ad astra

2005-11-21T01:23:00.000-08:00

Punchdrunk is well and truly launched - both over here and in Finland. You can read a review of my set in it on Tom Kelly's website http://neukol.org.uk/tyneblog/index.php/tomkelly- and you can download an mp3 (click on link) http://s55.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=3A69AQ2MSX3S10OKPIURRP3XVZ of me reading a piece I put together using visuals and music (with the help of Simon James and Sony Acid Pro 6 - and to brendada for her lovely photos of skies and birds)
It was all a bit mad but enjoyable to do a set supported in this way - in the end the words are the most important thing - but maybe it sometimes helps to appeal to the senses too? I dunno. Maybe it's all a bit cowardly because I am not a natural performer and feel so shy on the stage even now - distracting the audience from me always seems like a good idea.
Finland was cold dark and wet but I swam in the Baltic with my friend and saunaed afterwards - it's a huge buzz better than that vodka rubbish.

who knows where the time goes

2005-10-25T07:16:00.000-07:00

but you feel you should know - or I will become as the emptiness of my XDA when I ran out of memory - a whole life lost. So much happens now in each day from week to week that I am unable to store the info. On the way home from somewhere or other last week I forgot my address. The taxi driver looked wary. I told him to start driving and I would direct him then it came back to me. A strange fugue moment.
So better list stuff - the Durham Litfest - highlight for me Gillian Allnutt and Peter Bennet - excellent contrast excellent poets (and scones - how genteel). But we are all a bit elderly and cosy aren't we. Needed a bit of Ginsberg up its bum imho.
Hydrogen Jukebox had Sean O'Brien and Angel Readman - both of whom read brilliantly well - it was a top night - band also excellent - Panic in Style - really good young band.
Amnesty gig at the Bridge last Thursday - a lorra lorra poets reading including me. Had a really moving conversation with Ian who's mum died recently. It was amazing - to be suddenly sharing incredibly personal information. Makes me feel it is still possible to connect because sometimes I wonder if I am turning into a complete weirdo.
The Handheld Learning Conference at Goldsmith's - interesting couple of days - we are no longer the only ones to make this stuff - everybody's at it. It was a daunting stage to present from. Had some fascinating conversations (there was far too much wine at the reception) - met a couple who share an ideas blog - they work together (what else I'm not sure) but use blog to share ideas about projects - separate from their other working collabs. Made me think you could have an argument blog with your mate - just put it all in virtual - in real life all would be sweetness and light. Or a lurve blog for illicit lovers. Oh shut up woman. OK.
New publication from moi - called Punchdrunk with Esa Hirvonen - incredible looking published by Ek Zuban www.ekzuban.co.uk - we are touring regionally then I'm off to Helsinki for a gig or two. Spent the weekend trying to make a audio/visual presentation to go with my set with the help of my teccy and very patient friend. We are using Sony Acid 6 for the soundtrack but then need to hook this up to a set of slides - using powerpoint but wondering if there is anything better I could use? Just want to be able to time some slides to go with soundtrack then I can do the poems over that? This set all about my father/myself - hard stuff but he has been dead long enough for me to address stuff with distance I hope. Wanted the poems to be a kind of tribute - will be better if I can get the show right.
So here's one of them:

Grandmaster

He teaches her chess with a cheap set
bought at the NAAFI
explains each piece, its position and moves
She listens, a serious child,
her fringe pinned back
wary hazel eyes attentive
a fawn receives instruction from a snake.

The pawns are worthless -
Foot soldiers born to sacrifice
Drawn forward by tales of glory
A blinkered band of brothers
With hidden dreams.

Rooks are castles solid as a rock
travel in straight lines cover ground
But they do not move her.
Inside, there’s boiling oil
A tethered princess.

The Queen on her colour, her wayward crown,
her mad ambition, dangerous.
Runs rings around the bishop
Her laughter pierces like shards of glass
Mocks the mournful king
Locked, suspicious, on his square.

She loves the knight, his mounted grace
The magic of his patterned move
Transforms the board to a new world
Where other paths are possible.

Finns arriving tomorrow - better get the vodka in.

Howl for Now

2005-10-11T05:38:00.000-07:00

"Six poets at the Six Gallery. Kenneth Rexroth, M.C. Remarkable collection of angels all gathered at once in the same spot. Wine, music, dancing girls, serious poetry, free satori. Small collection for wine and postcards. Charming event." This was how Mr Ginsberg advertised the first reading of Howl - commemorated last Friday at the Clothworkers Centenary Concert Hall at Leeds uni school of music. It was packed but more academic than angel - except for the beautiful boy reading from Howl - George Hunt - lovely Leeds accent - Allen would have adored him. And the music was extraordinary - a whole range of contemporary jazz pieces enough to blow your mind see www.focam.co.uk. I was entranced by the theramin. Have never seen anybody play one before - wondered why red-haired girl at the back kept lifting and lowering her hands then realised it related to the eerie sound like a 50s horror movie. And there were dancing girls and boys blackhooded and writhing - a tad fast show perhaps. Anyway thanks to route www.route-online.com for putting it on good to remember the old boy and to hear the words hydrogen jukebox spoken in this context again.
But it was brilliant anyway - even though I had just come from Manchester after doing a massively teccy and frightening presentation and was be-suited and at my most serious. Then became clumsy and ticket losing and unable to hold a glass of wine and my laptop at the same time. It's symptomatic of the way my life is just now - the work/more work balance is well out of hand and I'm losing sight of myself as a poet. New pamphlet out this month though so maybe that will help plus Amnesty gig next week.
Have started a new version of Howl but lack the necessary innocence and self belief. But something will emerge.

Cowboy angel

2005-09-28T05:53:00.000-07:00

It's amazing to meet up with the man you first gave your heart to thirty years on and discover you still feel the same about him .. and that he is still having visions of you. I'm talking about Bobby of course. What was so touching about No Direction Home (which you can preorder from www.amazon.co.uk like you haven't already taped it) was seeing him lose his cherry in every possible way- the way his face changed from puppy fat to sharp faced pussy cat in a dudeish suit as the fame and the expectation reached messianic levels, his face going through all those expressions during press conferences (god those people were stupid) like a man finding himself dropped from space and discovering to his horror that a) everybody thinks you are god and b) you are required to tell them the meaning of life not only through your art but in simple easy to follow instructions. And then there's c) - they don't like it if you won't play the game - which is their game - acoustic, political, liberal. He looked shell shocked - "pressed and hammered". I'm amazed he was able to take the piss as much as he did.
What was also brilliant about this movie was the way you could see young Bob in old Bob - haven't been able to do that for a while cos he's so remote on stage. Here he had that old twinkle in the still blue eyes. His mouth - ah, his mouth.
Some great photos on this site: www.bobdylan66-74.com. Found some lovely tiny clips on this site www.tvtalkin.com - amateur, underwater and very appealing. I saw his feet. I would wash them with my hair.

Six Degrees of Separation

2005-09-08T14:14:00.000-07:00

Is it impending autumn that is making me feel excited? I don't know. After the fear of the dark comes some sort of submission. Strange things are happening in my surfing. You wonder how Jung would have factored in the internet to his synchronicity theory. This is what happened to me this week. I got an email about a new exhibition by Ian Forsyth and Jane pollard, two artists whose work I discovered earlier this year (check them out at http://www.ianandjane.com) . They did an amazing set of movies showing people talking about the compilation tapes they made for people they were in love with / were trying to impress. It's called Anyone Else Isn't You and it's brilliant, moving, sweet. Completely restores your faith in love and life. So I went to their site and found that their new work was based on the artist Vito Acconci - who I'd never heard of but sounds like a v cool dude who had done all sorts of interesting work in the field of art and architecture. I checked him out on the web and found myself directed to wfmu radio at http://www.wfmu.org. There was an interesting piece by him there plus another track that intrigued me by a guy called Keith Fullerton Whitman - who makes interesting other wordly electronic music. So I checked him out - and it turns out he's on at the Morden Tower next Tuesday just 35 miles up the road from where I live. God is a DJ and is speaking to me over the ether. I believe. Another side effect of all of this was finding out Acconci had worked with the Cramps - so now I've ordered a dvd of them playing live in a psychiatric ward. Really looking forward to hearing that. Sometimes the world feels full of art, music and inspiration.
There's a lot of excellent music around just now. Missed all the summer festivals but was treated to a flash of the Pixies playing at Leeds via my daughter's mobile. I'm also getting The Decembrists from a friend of mine - odd but compelling. And am loving Maximo Park and the Arctic Monkeys. It's nice to get a bit of regional, innit.
Psyching myself up for another trip to Finland in November - having a new pamphlet published with the mighty Esa Hirvonen and feeling a bit unworthy. Hope I can live up to his standards and that the thermal undies will keep me upright for the duration.
Roll on the fall. Last night, coming back from a wearying few days in Essex, waiting at the station for a lift, leaves rattled across Victoria Road like sovereigns. The sky was moody and dark. I wanna live forever.

Oh for the wings

2005-08-31T07:10:00.000-07:00

Well if that's me holiday I've had it - a few days at the coast which were like bags of 10 pence mix ups only with lots of sweets you didn't like lurking among the sherbert shrimps. The sea is always the sea and that's so brilliant that almost nothing else matters. Loftus was stunning - the path down to the beach is now so fallen away that you have to stride purposefully past those council signs which tell you you're going to die and it's not their fault but written in such complex english you're more likely to die trying to understand the notice. You can still stagger down almost to the beach if you are not too inebriated or off yer heed. Tide really high, waves huge - seagulls finding the bit where the waves swell, sitting there as long as they dare before the surf breaks, then flying off in great swathes before coming down again. You know they are having the greatest time possible and you are filled with envy for that flying ability, that easy movement between the elements. It was so wonderful, scary and magnificent, I was actually laughing my head off just watching, getting soaked by the spray, wishing I was a bird. After that it was pretty much downhill. I'll never learn to pick the right holiday companion. It's a kind of death wish. There should be a big council warning notice on all the blokes I know - not that I'd read it tho, would I? No of course not. Won't be told.

arachnaebotha

2005-08-17T13:49:00.000-07:00

Blimey, wassit all about? Have just had the weirdest week at my mother's house, trying to restore some sense of order whilst she was in London supposedly having an eye op but actually just sitting about in her nightie cos when she got there they discovered they were fresh out of corneas. Sent her home the next day. She's tough and quite enjoyed the outing - but she hasn't got time to waste, and her sight is practically gone. She would never complain as she believes doctors are gods. I want to kill them with my bare hands for puttingher through this and for the fact that she will miss another summer in her garden. Meanwhile me and my barmy bro (see previous posts) cleaned the crumbling mansion - for the first time in several months. Mingin. But a lot of wild life including this little spider duo - I can't remember what they are called tho my bro knows as he is surveying the spiders of Leicestershire at the mo - when not pissed or pilled up - but just look at them. A long leggety one has wrapped up an enormous house spider and is eating it! Isn't nature wonderful? This little snack lasted a coupla days. It's hard cleaning with a naturalist - nothing is allowed to die. No! Not the silver fish! They've been on the planet for millions of years! Best thing was a grasssnake in the garden - about a foot long, with a perfectly shaped head made of molten gold. Only the barmy bro knows where the creatures live. You have to love him for these moments.

Boxed in

2005-08-04T04:28:00.000-07:00

News is terrible, grim and depressing - the feeling that as humans we fail to make any progress - and I hate to say it guys, but it's mainly down to youse. Fed up of the way you go about things - the violence does my head in. The two stark and awful images (among many) - the Liverpool boy who was murdered, then the two blokes being taken into custody. That shiny faced hopeful boy - those shambling lads with blankets over their heads. I also see their mums somewhere in the background - which mother would you least like to be? So many lives completely f***ed up. Maybe it's really hard to be a bloke, combine masculinity and tenderness and compassion (in a Buddhist sense)? What do I know, after all? Think about my lovely nephews and how inconceivable it is that they could do this kind of damage.
So am turning to art. There's a brilliant exhibition at the Baltic - it's called Kienholz and is the work of two American artists who made sculptures/environments/installations out of reclaimed stuff. Their work is political and expresses a view about the above - it's anti-war, anti-violence. Just go, man. You'll love it. www.balticmill.com The piece called Hoerensgracht which is a lifesized version of Amsterdam street of ladeez of the night - showing them relaxing, smoking a fag, reading True Romance in between tricks - each of them with a boxed in head. It's a feminine rather than a feminist statement - or maybe it's both. The personal prison as well as the political. But then there is a part of me (my history, my experience) which thinks that in that box, where they can't get you, that's where the creativity happens.
My fingers are itching to make something - look out Barbies, you may be asked to donate your bodies to art. Words are not always enough.

Angelic Upstarts

2005-07-28T03:53:00.000-07:00

The sun has cleared off again - like it suddenly realised it was at the wrong party - Brits turning into Mediterranean cheerful types with their tops off - it couldn't last, could it? It was wonderful though - highlight was Angel Readman's launch at the Bridge - the late evening sun coming in, everything backlit - her brilliant poems, Shaun Lennox on guitar and Andy Willoughby also reading from his great new collection. I felt exhilirated to be with my friends and their work. A high summer moment.
Since then - bombs in London and I find myself there two weeks after wandering the streets because I keep getting thrown off the tube. Not for skin colour reasons (I always look like death warmed up) or dresscode deviance (sports clothes? moi?) but because people were having another go - didn't realise until finally I walked from Shepherd's Bush to King's Cross that four more attempts had been made. London like a scene from War of the Worlds - baffled populace milling about waiting for the pavements to burst open and deliver annihilation. Lots of cor blimey blitz spirit(this just means people talk to you more and still hate foreigners). Except on the tube of course where everyone is scared and avoiding eye contact with the result that we all look suspicious. Glad as hell I only have to do this every couple of weeks. I love London but never did like being incarcerated (that incident in Milan University toilet - shudder). The tube too like a tomb just now, best avoided unless absolutely necessary.
INP will get you to Angel's and Andy's book. http://www.northernpublishers.co.uk/

Frida n Patti

2005-06-26T09:26:00.000-07:00

Just been to see Kahlo exhibition at Tate Modern - www.tate.org.uk The place was heavin with visitors and it was also the hottest day of the year in the UK - 33 degrees that's way more than normal - appropriate for the Meltdown - event hosted this year by Patti Smith which I got to on Sunday night when she was appearning with Steve Earle. So it was a weekend for hot girls - Frida the more obviously beautiful - her mix of Eastern European and Mexican blood, perhaps. So many self portraits - her serious face - her pain - the acciodent and then the miscarriage documented graphically - but then followed by the emotional pain of being married to Diego who sounds like a bit of a git to me - using politics as a route to as much free love as you can get - the whole concept of free love so insane really. Nowt for free Mista. She's bleeding all over the place. And of course yes yes she was a bit of a goer herself but I can't help thinking this was as a way to comfort herself for his infidelity - not her sista mista that's so wrong! I loved the paintings though. So open and lushly appealing - it reminded me of a mix of Rousseau annd Mexican Day of the Dead stuff, the way death is incorported. Patti was spectacular too - so sexy and full on and somehow childlike in her enthusiasm and energy - not bad for an old girl. Female icons - sure beats Jordan, Kylie or Madonna for me any road up - at least they have some talent and politics.

http://

2005-06-21T05:21:00.000-07:00

2005-06-02T03:02:00.000-07:00

B in Heksinki Harbour

2005-06-02T02:35:00.000-07:00

Blue Helsinki
It's so beautiful - made more beautiful by full on summer weather, the sky ridiculously high and the sun breathtakingly bright - shadows are long, make you feel tall, but nowhere near as tall as those giants, people from Planet Finland, ice blonds or blackhaired with enviable goth white skin, or those strange elfin redheads. All was explored in some detail at the Yrjonkadun Uimahalli - an old swimming bath and sauna place where ya go nekkid. So me and my daughter shared the experience of being the only gals with substantial arses in a confined space. It was actually lovely - all ages of women, some pregnant, so liberating to forget all the paranoid stuff about your body and just treat it well and relax. Saunas are class.
First time I've ever really explored Helsinki - had some help from Kalle Niniikangas, fellow poet and the lucky owner of a Helsinki apartment. We drank in a tiny bar the size of your living room where closing time was flexible but certainly not before 1am. It was the drinking place of Arto Melleri, another great mad poet (not saying your'e mad, like, Kalle) , recently dead.
Also met lovely Tapani Kinnunen in Turku (tho to be fair he was a bit more interested in the Formula 1 driving going on behind my head in the bar). Went to a party in the county jail - well Turku Castle in fact - happy 40th Mats and Thurid - the best party of the year - Mats doing "I wanna be your dog" - highlight of the night. Shame you missed it Michael but was lovely to talk to you and know you are still alive.
Take me back! It's so grey here! I want to be in the city of perpetual light!

2005-05-10T09:05:00.000-07:00

Snow White and Rose Red - two faced or what?

Snow White, Rose Red

2005-05-10T08:50:00.000-07:00

What do you think of these two sisters, the one inner, still, pure, cool: the other wild, energetic, hot? What made me think of them was this: I was at my friend's house in the middle of one of our deadly impasses, staring out of his window which has a weird thick net curtain made up of shapes like a Lancastrian rose, the briar rose of fairy tales, symmetrical, thorny and sweetly perfumed. I was thinking about our incompatibilities: the hot and the cold, the mad and the sane, the whole binary nature of us. Then I remembered the story from my childhood, the two girls who were complements of each other, their differences always in balance. Not like real life at all then.
Wouldn't it be great if differences were celebrated instead of seen as a threat, a challenge, a deliberate attempt to undo you? And also this is about my own split personality, the Gemini curse, first one thing, then its opposite. Love your twin!
So after a terrible evening, I did some thinking about it and started to mellow out. But by this time, he'd taken a mallet to my bike and frankly, that's just way beyond acceptable. This isn't binary it's cross species. Let it go, jojo, let it go.

Death of a poet

2005-04-15T06:30:00.000-07:00

My friend calls me to tell me that Julia Darling has died. Of course we were all expecting it - reading her fantastic blog http://www.juliadarling.co.uk/weblog/has been an obssession with lots of people recently - but still it hits you, the finality. Most recent posting has one of her last poems, End,a real beauty with an unforgettable image of the poet slipping onto a horse whilst her life here folds away like the cardboard images in a child's pop up book. It's such a perfect image. That, and the light from an English teatime, after rain. I hope she's somewhere wonderful, free from pain and restored to beauty - she was gorgeous - the first time I saw her at a party in my house in Jesmond in the early 80s, her hair long then. She was a lovely woman - and her dying was inspiring in a weirdly uplifting way. My friend and I, we talk about death, worry about who will go first like an old married couple. We want to be as brave as Julia. We worry about never seeing each other again, never seeing our families, lovers, gardens, rivers, trees .. it's a long list. But then Saul Bellow talking to Martin Amis in an old interview I watched after his death last week - how much he was looking forward to seeing his parents in the afterlife - but then reflecting "Eternity is a long time". Yeah right. How soon would you get sick of each other?

Madness

2005-04-08T09:58:00.000-07:00

I wrote this poem for my brother a while back - he has an on-going struggle with addiction of various kinds - and at the moment he's back in the bin again. The strain of mental illness - mainly for the sufferer, of course - but also for the family. I see us both as little kids sitting at the top of the stairs listening to my father, drunk, abusing my mum. We were scared. We were powerless. And he still is it seems, stuck in the nightmare with a change of role - now he's the one doing the abusing - and maybe I am still on the stairs - worse - I'm in the room, witnessing, trying to stop it, but still powerless myself. All I can do is tell myself I have a life which is not this, which has beautiful daughters, poetry and beauty, things that make me laugh - sometimes I can't hear this list of blessings, find myself peering into the dark.
But it's quite terrifying how he has turned into my father, his voice, his mannerisms, his self-justifications, his miserable junky whinings - sometimes all my compassion just fades away and I find myself filled with contempt - but listen to yourself - we all have our addictions - just because mine is work don't make it any healthier (well a bit maybe).
How to deal with it? How to feel compassion without drowning in it? The thing is, I don't trust him with my life anymore. That makes me sad as hell.

Madness

You back in here after all those promises
holding my hand over the plastic table
in the cafeteria that calls itself a bistro
but smells of blood.

You don’t blink. Your eyes are full moons
orbiting the planet past
swimming in chemicals
dragging down the drowning tides.

If I slapped you, would you wake up?
Or slide under the table
sunk like an old wreck
headed for the sea bed.

We were children once and suffered.
Our powerless pact was to escape.
You keep going through the door marked backwards
Looking for something you lost.

You won’t find it here.

The corridors are endless
As devious and tricky as your addict’s brain.
I don’t trust you with your life
But I’d trust you with mine.

Showers sweet

2005-04-05T08:13:00.000-07:00

It's been a while - because I've been busy writing and working - a new piece with AWOL (my new poetry girl band! It's so fab working with them all wonderful poets) called Recess then Electric Ladyland played again - with me taking the part of Ethel Rosenberg. So frightening - acting and singing - and especially when it's your own words - to inhabit them from the inside like this?
There has been so much performance there has been not enough time for writing - not enough time for anything, and my head feels full and empty at the same time - full of rubbish - schedules, old clothes, annoying boyfriends, a family slowly sinking into collapse too far away in every sense for me to sort it - and empty of anything to do with me, my writing self, my hopes and dreams - I don't know my arse from my elbow.
This weekend phone off hook smell the spring find the words. And maybe talk to a friend that you love instead of messing with the men. Reading JD's blog - life is so damn short and wonderful.

2005-02-13T06:16:00.000-08:00

Saltburn

2005-02-01T09:22:00.000-08:00

Saltburn by the Sea check for footprints

Mothers and daughters

2005-02-01T09:06:00.000-08:00

Am deep in thought about umbilicals. My mother and I and the deep of our relationship - complex and enduring - an understanding that is sometimes based on a misunderstanding. I'm thinking about my own daughters and how much i love them. Recently my mum stayed and we walked on the beach at Saltburn and I noticed how tiny she has become shrinking now back into herself like my gran. And knowing that this will happen to me too (if yer lucky pal) - somehow I can see this set of footprints in the sand the ones she left for me to follow and that I followed for a bit then veered off on my own path and that my girls are doing the same and that even though I can't stand to see them hurt sometimes I can't prevent that. Sometimes I think I am Demeter chasing after Persephone wanting to drag her up from the depths but knowing that this isn't the way it is that no life can be without darkness.
Hey. That's so deep. Ok it's January right? Oh no - it's February! How did that happen? Bring on the spring the hyacinths in my house already blossoming white as a bride.

hny

2005-01-15T06:31:00.000-08:00

Well I dunno how that happened another year in and I'm well into mid-January blues. Although NYE was a lovely thing - I went to a party in Cullercoats at the house of the lovely Kate Fox. At midnight there were fireworks and champagne and mulled wine on the beach. It was beautiful - that big wide bay, people I like (apart from those ones I don't like) and the sea, the sea - benign on our shores - for the moment. Aware, acutely aware, of how fortunate that makes us. But just wanted to breathe it in and look at the stars and competing chinese rockets.
Kate did my tarot - and it seems as if this will be a year of the usual story. Work hard woman and write your arse off.

Thinking about drinking

2004-10-05T02:42:00.000-07:00

I'm writing about alcohol for a new pamphlet. It's a strangely elusive theme - I'm coming at it from a variety of angles - being the daughter of an alcoholic - having addictive tendencies myself (but mine are manifest in the work zone - just can't leave it alone) - and also being madly attracted to drinkers or substance abusers of one kind or another. Still trying to save my dad? Or get his attention? Still admiring those dreamers, romantics who can only breathe in an atmosphere of illusion, whose skewed perspective on life can only be maintained by quaffing? Anybody can drink - and I can't bear to be downtown at the weekend, the whole place alive and dangerous with roaming pissed up blokes hunting down their equally pissed prey - little girls in big heels and tiny frocks who look as if a pint would drown them. But poets who use drink or drugs to fuel their mad imaginations - Edgar Allan Poe, Dylan Thomas, Jim Morrison, Charles Bukowsli, Shane McGowan - hmm. Not many of them are women, are they? Do I admire Nico or Marianne Faithful in the same way? Er no.
My favourite poets are usually mad rather than drunk - Sylvia Plath, for example. Control freaks out of control. Is this the zone? Is it about control? Or being controlled?
I find it impossible to write if I've been drinking. It just doesn't work for me. I need to amass all the brain cells I can get to write a single line. And I can't bear to have a hangover.
If anybody out there has a view on drinking and writing - let me know.

Lonesome and blue

2004-09-20T09:28:00.000-07:00

My youngest daughter has gone to uni. So that's that with the motherhood thing - or that kind of motherhood stuff, meal cooking, clothes washing, taxi driving motherhood. There'll be other kinds - cash sending, phone call making, letter writing, looking forward to your visit mom. I miss her bigtime. She is so class. Her fish died the day after she left. I wrote a poem:

Moving Swiftly On

After you’d gone, the silence in the house
Changed to a lower key
The tingle of expectancy collapsed around me
Like the cover on a budgie’s cage
Bringing sudden darkness.

The fish died, went belly up
Checking out to avoid the days
Without you, your soft voice
Beguiling as a siren
Offering a reason to circumnavigate the globe.

I listen to my breath, in and out,
Move from room to room
Just checking.
There’s not even a smell of you,
Not even a hair in the sink
No knickers on the bathroom floor
No glass beside the sofa.

This place is clean as a whistle.
Wearing rubber gloves, you have
folded yourself into a suitcase
posted yourself to a new address
kicked over the traces
leaving me with a chill in my left side
as if I am half undressed.

It's all a matter of time, I suppose - it's all a matter of adjustment. Making myself understand that this is good, that she's doing what she wants to do and facing up to my old avoidance tactics - no more excuses for not writing, not socialising - it's all down to me now. Nobody but myself to blame.

2004-09-13T08:29:00.000-07:00

The gorgeous Mat Fraser

Mat Fraser at Hydrogen Jukebox

2004-09-13T07:19:00.000-07:00

I am excited - enough to be spurred into print after two months of blogless existence. Two months spent either sloggin (not bloggin) away at work or taking of the waters at two lovely English seside resorts - I do love to be beside. Swam north(Saltburn) and south(Woolacombe). Very therapeutic.
But the excitement has nothing to do with la mer - just with the prospect of seeing the lovely talented Mat Fraser again - he is doing Hydrogen Jukebox's opener for the season and will be brilliant. Even though this has all necessitsted a row with the local press who want to see him as a "disabled" performer. They think this makes them bold and hard hitting. I think it makes them typically provincial and small minded. It's what happens when you don't live in a city and probably have never left your cosy little backwater. People are one shape and colour only and anything else is a massive shock worth lengthy hacking. Miss out the interesting things about a human being and concentrate on what you see as a defect.
Still at least they've mentioned him. He had to compete with "Rare Moth Found in Airing Cupboard" after all.
If you are down Darlington way tomorrow night do drop in. Arts Centre, Garden bar 8pm. You'll be welcome whoever you are.

2004-08-04T08:54:00.000-07:00

Yeva and China Moon cow by Claire Parker outside Wing's restaurant in Manchester

cowabunga

2004-08-04T08:35:00.000-07:00

Trip to Manchester obssessively counting decorated cows around the streets. Public art thing - so i guess it's both a process and a product - so the ones that were decorated by kids' schools - like the one covered with cow jokes (don't ask) - have a value for the participants - another form of publishing - whereas the more arty ones (like the one outside the Chinese restaurant behind Albert Square) done by professionals maybe have a more aesthetic value. It's all good and certainly made the trip much less a focus on shopping and much more about exploring the city. Made me think about public particpatory art like the people that Anthony Gormley cast recently - tons of them. Their remoulded forms were exhibited at the Baltic in Gateshead earlier this year and when I went there were loads of people taking their friends and families to see their figures. Made me cry, actually. Our feeble attempts at immortality - like this blog.

Dazed and confused

2004-07-02T14:53:00.000-07:00

Not surprising - when you consider a full on week with two performances, a house full of poets (and Finnish moonshine), a presentation to prepare for the m-learn conference in Rome next week and the on-going struggle to get my head around the whole semantic web thingy. I'm kind of worried that swimming too much in this knowledge ocean will result in a drowning (not a waving) - especially from a creative point of view. Tonight on the way home from seeing two movies at local art cinema (Un Chien Andalou and L'Age D'Or - both gratifyingly weird) the sky was unbelievably beautiful - all the rain has given us this bonus - craggy pink cloud formations like bits of the Grand Canyon in space, back lit by last of the sun. Soon I'll know for real if this is a Sistine Chapel ceiling. But it struck me that I need to stay in physical touch with the world to write. I spend too much time in mediated experience. Even this beautiful sight was through a car window. My friend suggested we stopped and got out of the car but somehow I didn't do it. Regret it now.

The Flesh of the Bear

2004-06-29T09:12:00.000-07:00

Do you think launching this book (http://www.literaturenortheast.co.uk/events/Flesh_of_the_Bear_book_launch)in a vegetarian restaurant was such a good idea?
Not that the veggies had turned out in force (maybe Sunday is sacred to them in some way?)- they voted with their sandals and stayed home / went to Glasto/ watched some more footie. In the meantime, an assorted assembly of Teesside and Finnish poets wowed the gathered few with readings from the new collection accompanied by the amazing Kev Howard on didgeridoo and the legendary Shaun Lennox on guitar, harmonica and bongos. It's a beautiful restaurant (The Waiting Room in Eaglescliffe)but I felt like we were a bit of a rabble - we were a better fit in the rock club in Turku. But it's always nice reading with these musicians - both of them are really sensitive to the spoken word and find a new emotional twist with every reading. Also was fun reading other people's work - I love reading the men poets' stuff - it's odd getting your tongue round another man's thoughts - interesting also how some of them are easier to inhabit. And tonight Matthew I'm gettin out my false beard (yes, madam, it IS false) to do the legendary Esa Hirvonen whose work i love at the Hydrogen Jukebox. It's a beautiful life.
Hey Michael - your hair, man - sort of lovely new puppy look - I like to see a man's skull ..

2004-06-25T03:17:00.000-07:00

I'm a poet, me.

We woz robbed

2004-06-25T01:00:00.000-07:00

OK actually I never really watch football - even though I live in the north of England where it's practically a bye law. But I've always liked the drama of the big game and can find myself screaming like a banshee at crucial moments (much to the disgust of nearest and dearests), throwing things at the screen (only cushions - I paid for that TV)and even (occasionally) weeping when we lose. "We" for the purposes of this post, is the England team - that brave bunch of hugely overpaid lads who risk their all to delight and diappoint us time after time.
It's weird. In my rational head, I'm with Chomsky on this. I hate those morons who chant and swear and probably bum each other in the toilets whilst touching up their face paint. (no Jojo Chomsky is not a queer basher - he just hates nationalism - yeah well me too - but I also hate latent gay queer bashers like these inbred undereducated scum) But when they play the national anthem and the camera pans over the boys, mumbling their way through the words and looking daft, I wanna go "Aahhh". And when I see little David wander uncertainly to the penalty shot in front of thousands of people and make a complete arse of himself I wanna - well, slap the back of his legs, actually.
Dangerous stuff. So it's probably just as well that a short-sighted (or wilfully blind) ref disallowed poor old Sol's goal and we're out again. All those flags will have to come down from the bedroom windows of every boy in town and the taxi drivers will have to go back to using verbal abuse to show their support for their country. I'll revert to despising nationalism and all forms of tribe and being the sweet, caring pacifist I always was. No, really. It was just a temporary lapse. I'm a poet, me.

bringing me all back home

2004-06-23T08:00:00.000-07:00

Bob Dylan concert at Newcastle Arena - the fifth time I've seen him but there's been a long gap since the last time. My how you've changed Bobby (hey but who hasn't?)- from strutting folk cock of the walk to strangely elegant, rather fragile old undertaker (one-eyed? surely not)dude, with a beautiful dark suit, red shirt and exquisite cowboy hat. Maybe he is the man in black since Johnny passed. But he wasn't doing country this time - more a kind of R and B (old school) with just a dash of ZZTop (actually, there were several members of that band in the audience - or their lookie likies anyhow). It was well danceable - or at least i thought so - there was nothing in there moving - and I was certainly not alone. The good news was that I didn't know anybody except the person I went with so could boogie until the old legs packed up without fear of countable mockery. Although I've had a really passionate love affair with Bobby all my life, the concert didn't hurt as much as I thought it would. He's in another zone now - and so am I. Respect due to a true poet who's done enough. Why not have a bit of a rest now, me old mate? I think some of the guys in the audience got you mixed up with Wayne Rooney - lots of "Go on Bobby! Go on my son!" and requests for "New Pony". I ask you. Still, the old fella was oblivious. So was I after several pints in the Forth.

Bloom's Day

2004-06-19T06:04:00.000-07:00

Celebrated this year at the Royal Station Hotel in Newcastle with sundry poets and literary hangers on - best was Kev Cadwallender the mighty Prophet of Loss reading his McGod poem a spiritual experience and closest to Joyce we got that night (not that you necessarily want to be that close do yer?)with John Hegley next. Mainly because they are funny, don't take themselves too god almighty seriously and are both good poets. Otherwise it was a bit frightening. Can't think you'd want to meet any of those other people on a dark night. Still managed to catch up with the lovely Joan Hewitt, have Chas Brenchley ignore me completely (we have met four times now and I am clearly completely unmemorable) and got a quick chat with Adam Fish (nice shirt, Adam) and Kate Fox - would love to know what they thought of the evening. Was also great to catch up with Nick B and exchange poetry bitchin...
Connie, love, hold that microphone just a bit nearer yer gob ..

2004-06-08T08:27:00.000-07:00

This is me introducing Electric Ladyland at Darlington Arts Centre earlier this year

first posting rookie bloggist

2004-06-07T06:33:00.000-07:00

Er ... where am I? I decided to start a blog because I wanted to post a comment on another blog ... now I'm here and it's a strangely empty but expectant world. I'm calling this blog electric ladyland because I wrote a poetry/performance piece called this - about Mary Pickford, Sylvia Plath and Ethel Rosenberg. My current (but not sole) obsessions.
Let the blogging begin.