Oscar Sparrow's Blog, page 4

The Poet Lorry Park Drives On.

I have been working. Poetry calls for periods of intense idleness during which I cut grass, drive lorries, fix bicycles, service cars and test the contents of corner shop beer cans for strength and quality. I talk about football and have opinions about deep or attacking mid-field play. Most of this is pure fake ( re-cycled punditry and remembered phrases) but no one seems to notice or are too polite to say. Poetry is not on the radar of my day to day life and I always feel very self conscious about being one. I think there are quite a few others who are like this.

Imagine then my disquiet at setting out to film my favourite subject (me) reading a poem in a public place where anyone could see me. At any moment some person could start pointing at me and declare that I was that old geezer who mends bikes. I bet the poetic  Greats did not have this issue. All the same, I did it and here is the result

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My motivation was an invitation from Jeff Hansen to join the team on the at the Altered Scale blog. Here is the man himself talking about his creation. 

Now, for someone like me, this magazine gives me an insight into what artists are doing. The breadth of talent and imagination are staggering. Some of it is on the outer reaches of avant-garde but don’t be shy. Just relax and enjoy. A few days ago I came across Donna Kuhn on Altered Scale. Check this out.

What I love is that this kind of Art gives permissions. We are all squeezed into narrow roles of self consciousness and inhibition. Magazines like Altered Scale open up a whole new trunk. Dip in and dress up.

National Poetry Day

It has been so long since I passed by. Today is National Poetry Day here in the UK. Maybe the wider world did not know that. To be honest, I chanced to hear of it on the radio a couple of days ago. The trouble with being a poet is that I am just not engaged with the world of poetry. I used to try and even joined the Poetry Society. I joined the John Clare Society. I hung out with the National Poetry Foundation.  I went to poetic gatherings and felt entirely out of it. I used to feel as if I should be delivering the wine or looking in while cleaning the windows. I wanted to write poems that were about not being a poet. If I write anything at all which is worthy of the name poetry, it is because I do not feel like one. My ideal reader is someone who does not feel like a poetry reader. This means that my target audience is immense. As a young writer I wanted to say something profound about 10mm and 13mm spanners and their special relationship with nuts. I did not get accepted by editors but I picked up some handy car servicing work. If you are a big tough guy out there and know what I mean about the strange satisfying symmetry of those spanners please get in touch. We could create a special website.

To mark the occasion, the famous landmark advertising display at Piccadily in London  is carrying a poem by the Cornish writer Charles Causley. It is a wonderful poem and if you check out the Poetry Day web site you can see some great poems awarded prizes in honour of the event.

The only way a poet can celebrate a special poetic day is by producing a poem. I have been working in my poet’s overalls at the back of the cave on some new poems. I am compiling and editing a collection involving a number of other writers. I am so excited by the quality and range of the submissions. I’m also going to feature audio and there’s a couple of tracks that just give me a big WOW.  The great thing is that being the self appointed editor, all my stuff goes in without any tears, hate mail or counselling sessions with my rejection therapist. Just between us, I’ve been thinking of getting rid of him but I’m not sure how he will take it.  Here is my poem.

Falling.

Raindrops hitting the river flow

collision of birth death,

a  coming home to die.

Identity sweeping on and away;

a fluidity of self.

Ripples spreading on

the moving face of time

reaching forward

reaching back

helpless.

We watched the rain

from the river’s edge,

not lovers then,

two selves as yet

un-drowned in each other.

Let us kiss

and fall as raindrops

to be water, time and no one

but our love.

Anoraktic Relapse

1959 Mk 2 Zodiac: We dared to dream and dream we did. 

I really cannot help this but I do feel I left out a very important portion of my blog yesterday. There were no pictures of the Mk 2 Zodiac. My cousin Jeff had a mark 2 Automatic. Zodiac Executive in a maroon colour called “imperial red”. Oh yes – the Empire had not struck back in those days. The mark 2 Ford Consul and Zephyr range were distinguished by having a three speed gearbox when everyone else was moving to four. They also retained the vacuum operated windscreen wipers. These devices used the inlet manifold vacuum to “suck” the wiper first one way, then the other. This was great when the engine was cruising, but with a wide throttle position, the vacuum “inlet suck” was drawn into the engine leaving the wipers stranded like a Tea clipper in the Doldrums. Going downhill with the throttle closed would have the wipers oscillating like a Euro politico in a money crisis.

And before I do actually hang up my anorak, I do feel we ought to mention the Vauxhall Cresta PA.. This car was the vehicle as icon, an object of worship. It had more to do with possession and style than it did with transport. The guys who developed these cars understood the lure of bling long before the term existed. This was the high point of common taste becoming classic beauty – a bit like the American film musical.

A 1958 Cresta: Nothing exceeds like excess. 

The cars we drive hold up a mirror to the way we are. A glance at a 2010 car park in the UK would have shown nothing but grey and silver. I am beginning to note a slight move back to fun colours of red and yellow. If the two tone comes back it’ll be time to invest my friends. If I were world dictator I would be seeding the economies with two tone finned cars. In two years we’d be dancing in the aisles.  I would go on about the Vauxhall Victor but if you really care you can check out “Fashion Footwear” in my collection “I Threw A Stone”

If any of you guys out there are struggling with the term Anorak, here is a link. In a minute I’m going to take it off and go out wandering as a sensitive poet. I won’t even look at a car I promise. I’ll probably keep a piece of oily rag to sniff if things get tough.

 

 

My Name Is Oscar – I’m An Anorak.

A matchbox toy Zephyr 6 – as close as I’ve ever got to a Zodiac

Standard Vanguard

Years ago in the 1950′s folks were not very cool. Simple pleasures such as car spotting were enough to entertain a young poet such as me. In his “Prelude” Wordsworth talks about his young life with beauty and fear. As an urban Anorak child I would only be able to talk about the 1952 Standard Vanguard and also that day when I spotted an Austin Atlantic. In those days the motor car was still unattainable to most working class people. All the same they represented a dream of the future embodied in sculpture. The Vanguard and the Atlantic influenced my young malleable psyche but eventually fell away as the mass production of vehicles presented ever more objects of beauty.

Then, one day I came home from a day of car spotting to our artisan’s terraced home. In the road outside was a fawn coloured Mk.1 Ford Consul, registration number MCR 992. The year was 1955. My father had got a job that needed a car. I only had one thought which has remained unexpressed all these years. “Why Oh why could it not have been a Zephyr Zodiac?” OK – I knew we were plain folk who never expected to win – but a Consul was so close to a Zodiac that we could have crossed that divide. If we had had a Zodiac I would have had an Oboe Of The British Empire and been made Poet Lorry Park by now. That fawn Consul Mk1 set the limits of my aspirations.

Why could it not have been a Zodiac?

Ford Zodiac MK1. Straight 6 leading straight to the stars.

My 1962 Zephyr in 1973

For years this anguished disappointment has festered in the pocket of my anorak. Imagine then my mixed feelings when Emma Calin called me to say that she had book by Terry Ravenscroft called ” Zephyr Zodiac”.  The book is in fact a skilful look at British social attitudes and history from 1962 to 2012. It plots the history of a 1962 Mk 3 Ford Zephyr Zodiac as it passes through a succession of owners. Changing attitudes to sex, race, celebrity and work are interwoven with a series of short plays dealing with everything from teenage pregnancy, the police, retirement and gangsters. The events are often hilariously surreal, yet at other times touched with a sincere pathos and empathy. As an ex cop I did find myself laughing aloud at Mr Ravenscroft’s evident disdain for certain aspects of police behaviour. I would have to concede that he is spot on in his critique.

For fellow younger anoraks who may not be aware of the Zodiac, this vehicle was the top of the range Ford in the UK from 1950. It had four separate manifestations, the best of which were the Mk 2 and the Mk3. The Mk 4 was an ugly brute and for me was not in the same spirit at all. I began work in a Ford dealership in 1964 – the year they introduced the Mk4. My bread and butter work were the Mk 1,2 and 3 cars. Sadly body corrosion was an issue and I have lost count of the number of welding jobs I have done of the sills and front suspension strut mountings. I would have to point out that beyond the Zodiac was the Executive – some options including gold hub caps and bumpers.

Tail fins to beat the Reds

I have owned one Zephyr in my life – a 1962 Zephyr4 – a poor substitute by comparison. It did have a four speed column change gearbox, bench seats and fins. And fins is what the whole concept was about. Was it a coincidence that it was in 1965 that development of the F15 fighter plane began. Just as Ford scrapped the Zodiacs, McDonnell Douglas hit on the design to defeat Communism and the Russian Mig jets. Just check out the photos. It is obvious to me that the Ford Zodiac led directly to the triumph of the West  by inspiring the twin fin back end.

F15 inspiration

And finally – guess what has been on my desk these last 25 plus years. The only 6 cylinder Zephyr I have ever owned. It used to belong to my son but he had no respect for it and I had to repossess it. Now that is sad is it not!

If you are any sort of petrol head or just have a memory of the last fifty years, check out Zephyr Zodiac by Terry Ravenscroft.

Being some kind of poet I cannot leave this subject without a short poem about cars with fins. It is called Independent front suspension strut.

Beatle songs and whitewall Nation

with column change sophistication,

We had arrived in Telstar space,

where there was no welded place

beyond the strut type front suspension..

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Yes – the last finned cars were the end of history. Post modernism and sociology began with the Mk4 Zephyr.  I do know that the above is a exceptionally naff poem, but when you are hoping to be the poet Lorry Park you just have to churn the stuff out.

Music For The Eyes

see that blue perfume

A few years ago I wrote a poem entitled “Bluebells”. I tried to address the central problem of  bluebell type phenomena – namely that what you see is not what you get. If you try to see the detail, the picture runs away from you. If you try to take a photo, you capture the picture but not the vision. I believe that moments of a particular point in time and space require both the reality and the human mind to draw the whole picture. I think this is why we have poets and I am sure this is why we still have painters. These days you could take a photo of a bluebell wood and photo-shop it with all manner of effects. At the end of it you could know everything about frequency curves and contrast balance. And it would not satisfy.

I had gone to the wood with granddaughter. In the morning it had rained but at that moment the sun was warming the air into a perfumed blue mist. It was that vision that gave rise to the poem. It is now a few years later that I have had the chance to possess a picture not only of a bluebell wood, but of my emotions at that time. The artist is  Sara Barnes and you can check out her art here.

One of the most wonderful things to have happened in my lifetime is that technology has handed the open mike, not only to the cognoscenti already in the club, but also to the guys pressing their faces to the window outside. The establishment bouncers can but look punchy in their one size too small jackets as the mob get their moment. I have felt for many years that straight forward representational  ART has had too little attention. Sara Barnes paints the scene and what she feels about it. The result is emotional and delicious.

Here is my little poem about Bluebells:

Too much too thrilling

This gasp of blue

That as a child I picked

And tried to hold in vases.

Now my child and I

Come to the bluebell wood

In the perfume of their afternoon,

In the drifting aching aria

Of their final vanity.

The cool life larva flows

From all that has known

The rhythm of this Earth –

This soul of blueness.

I think to snatch a prisoner

But this beauty does not rise from blooms

Nor from any labelled plan.

It teases singing through the trees

Melting from the conscious mind

Like fabric from a flame.

My child goes now to gather them –

I acquiesce now knowing that

Our growth, this mortal flower

Is rooted in our winters past

Our sorrow, our bluebells.

Sara holds exhibitions, sells paintings and will accept commissions. She has produced a painting for me which is as transcendent as the moment when I stood at the edge of a blue poem. It will be a treasure.

Freezing The Frame

Sometimes you just have to stop. We try to answer more questions in life than we ask. Essentially we try to answer other people’s questions:  questions posed by the bosses and the faceless systems. The hoop-meisters keep us jumping. The time servers steal our time and keep us servile. The image makers hold us up against their images. What survives of us, if we did but know it, is the poetry of ourselves. The true light of life is lost in the glare of packaging, marketing and business. To the dirt poor survivalist, the focus is the next meal or gulp of water. Such a one is the greatest poet. He knows the taste of water. The business man knows only the price per litre and how he can max out his margin.

Amongst all this undergrowth lies the hidden boulder of beauty. It is simply there. Property rights may restrict access, but there is beauty in the smallest of things and moments. I am working on a little project at the moment. It is a collection of short poems that attempt to freeze the frame and give some time to reflect on what we are thinking or simply what we are. Such poems need have no references or belong to any school. Today, I received a poem from the American poet Jo Von Bargen. She certainly has no identifiable posture or influence. She can be transcendently folksy or richly austere. Her poems can be death by a thousand cuts or joy with a single lunge. You always know that the boulder, honey or rapier is there and that it will get you. Here is one of her poems:

Child.

your hand hesitantly tries

the keyboard,

eyes reading impossible signs

on the score so that

every chord is suspended

like a voice grieving

all around you goes tender

at seeing you stop, helpless,

ignorant of the language

most your own

beyond, window ajar,

a breeze murmurs back

hummingbirds hover,

framed in blue sky,then vanish.

a branch rustles in the sun

nothing around us finds words,

and your youthful unknowing

is mine, is ours

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I love that poem. It freezes the frame with the warmth of humanity. So far I have lined up four established poets to contribute to this collection. There are many poets out there and if you feel you could be in it or know someone who might like to be, please let me know. I will be editing the final selection. I am looking for short “beautiful” poems in the sense that they stop time at those moments when we have a transcendence that no one could ever sell you or tell you that your model of beauty has just been outdated by the latest design.

There is no format or fashion to the poems. My own publishers, – Gallo-Romano have agreed to produce the book. All I can say is that it will not cost contributors any money. Anyone expecting to make money as a poet is not one. The loot will be shared. If my own profit on poetry is a guide I think a cola and a pack of straws is about right.

one whole plantimal

I’ve been in haiku mode again. It is about the scene in this photo.

Sun on rose open

to bees transferring life code.

A buzz blooms wholeness.

Pasta Maldonado

Sponge Bob

I know a bloke called Bob.He was not always called Bob. He was christened as Robert – except that he was was not christened on account of having been accidentally spawned on the back seat of a Ford Capri by unmarried atheists. Last night I saw him in the pub. He works with young disadvantaged kids. After we had downed a pint or six (thereby exceeding the Librium/ Conservatory Government health regulations by a considerable margin),he confessed to his murderous and sadistic tendencies towards children who called him “Sponge Bob” or “Bob the Builder”. To my Latvian,South Sudanese and Azeri fans I must point out that both names relate to TV comedy cartoon characters. After a further pint of Old Cirrhosis Bowel-Buster Ale, I was suffused with shame. A man of my poetic sensitivity and high minded correctness would never entertain a cheap and derisory play on a fellow human’s name just for his own entertainment!

Pasta Maldonado

O.K. I made a mistake. The other day when Pastor Maldonado won the Spanish Grand Prix I had never seen the hero’s name in print. As far as I knew he had no human features other than his helmet and no body other than his torso de logo. In an orgy of fusion – illusion and filled with passione and hutzpah,  I went to the gas ring at the opening of my poet’s cave and created my latest dish –  ”Pasta Maldonado”. In the tradition of our Euro-Feetballing heroes (yes – these days you have to strike it with either foot), I have dedicated this dish to Sir Frank Williams, Renault engine designers and to anyone actually called Pasta. I have added a picture of the dish. It is a tribute to Venezuelan Verve and ASDA hot sauce.

My dear friend, the shameless and adorable Emma Calin (Romantic Novelist and lapsed poet) called me a couple of days ago. As always she wanted something. I agreed of course. Then she told me she wanted me to do the audio for a story she had written. It required being a Londoner and some sort of northern character. I did it of course – but I fink I mighta been a bit Dick Van Dyke wiv the accents. It will be out soon.

Lie in water truth

Since my partner’s mother (not a fan of the godless drunken poet tendency) was popping in today for a familial chat, I went off to be a poet. I have the good fortune to live in rural England, yet with access to industrial dockland. I am revving myself up for some poetry centred around the work of Sara Barnes – a seriously talented visual artist. In the meantime I took a few photos and meditated upon a theme for a haiku. I’m quite new to the haiku form but I appreciate  its idea of focus. I like to play with the idea that a thing is what it is because it is not all those other things around it that define its outline. It’s like the calf sucking at its mother’s teat. The nipple is defined by the sucking  mouth and its need. The mother is defined by the flowing milk and it’s gift. This sense of fit and pattern have always been part of my poetic landscape. Probably, I’m going on a bit but I’ve been wandering as a lonely cloud and you’re the first to get the download. I watched huge cranes unloading a ship in the docks. Here is my humble haiku:

Hull, defiant steel

Imprint of what you are not

Lie in water truth.

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 Oh No! Pastor Maldonado has distressed the kind, humble and moderate Formula Uno Lewis in some kind of shunt in Valencia today. Lewis has thrown his steering wheel from the pram. On the horizon I see a dish delish of Ham-il-tone Baloney. Watch this Renault  Espace.

Lyrical Salads

A while ago I was listening to a learned radio programme about the ground-breaking publication of “Lyrical Ballads” by Wordsworth and Coleridge, thus kicking off the Romantic Movement in poetry. In those different times, the two young poets wandered off into the wilds, in full poetic flow, discussing art, beauty and philosophy. They needed some cash and brought out a book to fund the trip. Somehow it seems that those opportunities have gone. Even if one did wander poetically and bring out a book of poems, there would be little chance of main stream publication and even fewer people to read it. I suspect that these days the poets would have filmed themselves for You tube with Coleridge hamming up the Ancient Mariner in full Caribbean pirate flow, hoping to go viral. Wordsworth would be tweeting  - “Just seen river near Tintern #mortality #pantheism.”

In that case very little has changed. Although I have never invited poets to wander off with me, (not even the pretty ones), the internet has allowed me contacts, stimulation and influences beyond anything available to the Great and the Dead. A while ago, an American poet Jefferson Hansen mailed me a copy of a small book entitled “The Branded Woman & Other Poems” ( This gentleman had already deranged my satisfied sense of music by introducing me to a band called “Purgatory Hill” play it LOUD!). Inside the book of poems was an invitation to recite them and so I have chosen one called “The Meditating Cougar”. You can hear it here. It is one of those poems that is about nothing much in so far as suffering, chance and mortality are not about anything much. The language is plain and poses no barrier to a reader also just idling in neutral, our own food chain hidden from view, sanitized and packaged. It is a poem that raises the question of determinism and causality in a quiet flat tone that hides the claw hammer of time striking the bell of chance. If that last sentence sounds out of place it is because I am also thinking of another poetic wanderer who has turned up in my cyber salon.

This week, another American poet Jo Von Bargen has published a collection of some of her work “It Ain’t Shakespeare But Oh, How it Glows” which I had the pleasure to review. Whilst Jeff Hansen’s poem is bare of image, JVB’s work is a feast of imagery. I have written of her before and often one of her phrases pops into my idling consciousness. In her poem “Hissing Like Fire” she also chooses a moment from the unscheduled natural world. As an experiment I have recorded it as both a complement and a contrast to the first poem. You can hear it here. I do not think either of these writers belong to a “movement”  as such. The internet has no manifesto but infinite manifestations. Perhaps we are at the dawn of “Manifestism”. I feel so lucky to be here.

I have always needed to read poems aloud in order to come to terms with them. It is a process something like peeling an orange as if you had never seen inside one before. Even then – do you understand an orange? Poets send off their little poem creatures as if into a river – perhaps flowing on to the ocean, catching up in an overhanging branch or circling in an eddy. Some may sink dead for a thousand years until some silt bed dries and a tiny body becomes a treasure. A poem with truth from the polished or the rough hewn hand has an ever enduring voice.

I had a big sky day this week. I was doing some familial child care on a windswept beach, conscious that I had written so little of late. I wanted to do a perfect classic Haiku but in the end I just did what I did. It’s legitimacy is simply that I was there and I needed to justify being one of those old guys mumbling to themselves.

Dome sky stretching day

My thoughts fly out to fill you

But you fill me first.

Sock It To Me Babushka.

I grew up in the shadow of the nuclear bomb and the cold war. A common form of conversation in the 1950′s was what would you do in your last four minutes of life. Many young people said "Sex" but I was a bit too young to know what that really meant. Nowadays 4 minutes would just about get me out of my poet's overalls. The proposition was that 4 minutes was the length of warning we would have of Russian nukes arriving at a town near you. No one knew why they would be launched and we only knew that our boys were ready to do the same to them. I did not know where Russia was. I was very conscious of Cuba in 1962. When I joined the Metropolitan Police in 1977 we had to receive nuclear war training from two instructors who were dubbed "Nuclear Ned" and "Roentgen Ron" who explained to us about shooting starving looters and dealing with the thousands casualties beyond help. It was at about this time I began to wonder if the world controllers were necessarily the best guys for the job. The 1986  film "When the Wind Blows" which looked at Civil Defence in time of attack makes salutary viewing.

So, let us look at the Eurovision song Contest. The Russian entry has been chosen. As I reported to my American readers last week, the UK has chosen Eurobert Humperdinck (75yrs) to represent this Sceptred Isle, this Mother of Parliaments etc. We may as well give up. The Russians have won and for sure have my vote already. At first the choice of a band of grannies in traditional costume singing in Udmurt and (I think) some English may not have seemed calculated to win. However, their performance is so genuine and full of love that it will sweep the board. Check out the clip and at the beginning look at the old lady on the far left. A younger stronger woman next to her has an arm around her and they exchange a glance which is beautiful. It is about friendship and support. Seeing other cultures, their loves,comedies and struggles is the end to War. Ladies and Gentlemen here is Buranovskiye Babushki singing "Party For Everyone".

I don't know about you but I found that quite emotional. Look at those socks and remember that we were all going to annihilate each other a few years ago.

At this very moment my collection of poems "I Threw A Stone"  is free on Amazon KDP. Come on guys – just click on it. You do not have to read it. This could be the first time a living poet has got into the charts! It comes with MP3 Audio. Here are the links:

Amazon USA

Amazon UK

Unlicensed Poet

Charles Bukowski showing us how it should be done

I don't actually think I am a poet any more. I think I may have moved on to the next phase of slowing down and looking at other people's poetry. Once upon a time I used to be quite jealous when I realised that some other poet had said something brilliantly before my own genius had had the opportunity to grasp the matter. I used to hang around with a bunch of other poets who all felt the same about everyone. I used to be utterly outraged if they did not rend their clothing and gnash their teeth on account of my pre-emptive insights and alliterative allusions. There was one guy (a superior academic) who was such a judgemental fascist that the rest of the sweet loving poets group dubbed him the stanza panzer.

Such politics and struggles fill much of our young and middle years. It serves a purpose – to drive on the mind to create a poem to "beat" the others or to win some competition, literary prize or the pretty girl/boy. A few days ago I was sitting in the garden with my 1883 copy of Wordsworth. I turned to "Lines Written above Tintern Abbey" and realised that in fact until that moment I had been too filled with ego and the white noise of existence to read it properly. Mrs Wordsworth's little boy has always been a great favourite of mine. He had insights – yes, insights. The jazz, the weed, the wine of separation from knowledge into knowing is the business of poetry.

Since I have left the cave for the odd excursion into the world of the cyber-ode I have encountered a few writers who I admire and enjoy at least as much as those old great guys. One of them is Paul Tobin. He is one of those poets who cut straight through to the truth of things with quick stabs of insight. He is not flashy but neither is he ostentatiously stark. He's bloody good. Check out a few of his blogs

Then there is Jo VonBargen. This lady does the image. Her work splashes and tumbles. It sparkles throwing up careless coincidences of ideas and metaphor that you know deep down are the result of  wordless pondering. Long after reading some of her poems a line or phrase will come to you. Her work is a quest – as imperfect as the strained strata of rock lining a gorge. This week I have had the chance to work with a  young composer (Isabelle Fuller) to create a small videotry of one of Jo's short poems. She asks "Where is God?" It was a genuine privilege to read work by another poet and to see how much a young artist could feel in her poem and translate into music.

If you want to know more of Jo's work check out her website.