Lynne Rees's Blog, page 4

The Sealey Challenge

(All my daily posts from The Sealey Challenge 2023 can be viewed via the link on my home page.)

The Country Between Us, Carolyn Forché(Jonathan Cape 1983)

I have only two references for the country of El Salvador. Oneis the Oliver Stone movie, Salvador, from 1986 starring James Woods,which was strongly critical of the US-supported military dictatorship. It isharrowing in parts, as the truth can be. The second reference is Carolyn Forché’spoem, ‘The Colonel’, written after visiting El Salvador as a human rightsactivist in the late 1970s. It’s a poem you should read. It’s a poem you shouldn’tread. If you do it’s a poem you’ll never forget. If you do, then also read herown account of writing the poem – links to both at the end.

In his poem, ‘In Memory of WB Yeats’, WH Auden famously said,‘Poetry makes nothing happen’. But then he went on to say, ‘…it survives/in thevalley of its making… it survives,/ A way of happening, a mouth.’ He’s notsaying that poetry is ineffective only that it doesn’t directlyinfluence things. It survives, its voice is preserved, it remembers; that’swhere its power lies.

Because if poetry was really ineffectual, poets would not bearrested and persecuted by regimes. An article in The Guardian from a couple of years ago sheds both anhistorical and contemporary light on the subject, link at end.

I will not say that the rights and liberties we experiencein this country are perfect. But I will say we are more blessed than others. Andperhaps that’s a reason for speaking out, against injustice, against prejudice,against wrong-doing, when we perceive them. Because we can.

Movie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvador_(film)

Poem: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49862/the-colonel

Forché’s account:

‘The Guardian’, Flogged, imprisoned, murdered: today, beinga poet is a dangerous job: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/jul/05/flogged-imprisoned-murdered-today-being-a-poet-is-a-dangerous-job

 

The Sealey Challenge - Douglas Dunn

(My daily posts for The Sealey Challenge 2023 can be find via the link on my home page.)

7th August

Elegies, Douglas Dunn (Faber 1985)

Apart from a Welsh poem I memorised, while at Sandfields Comprehensive School for a recitation competition at the local Urdd (Mae Abertawe yn yr haul/ Yn cysgu’n dawel ger y lli./ Traeth o aur o gylch ei thread/ A Browyr wrth ei hystlys hi... - I came second), the only other poem I’ve memorised, successfully in its entirety, is Douglas Dunn’s, ‘The Kaleidsoscope’.

It was several years ago when I was running a couple of performance workshops at Simon Langton Grammar School, Canterbury with some of the 5th and 6th formers who were entering Poetry by Heart, an annual national poetry speaking competition. And there was no way I could stand in front of a group of young people offering advice on memorising and recitation if I couldn’t do it myself! Dunn’s poem is a sonnet, so only fourteen lines long and with a regular rhyme scheme and memorable imagery, which was a doddle to imprint onto my memory in comparison to some of the poems to choose from on the PBH list.

When I picked up the book again today, I couldn’t quite get through it without glancing at the page in a couple of places. But the overall shape of it was still there, hanging like a comfortable, old winter coat in the attic of my mind.

Dunn wrote Elegies after the death of his wife in 1981. I mentioned in my last post about most poetry being written in response to sadness, loss and despair. But it’s not only written by practicing poets; people who may never have read or written poetry in their life find themselves turning to it when they are grieving. It’s as if poetry, words shaped on a page, offers a receptacle for that overpowering sense of grief. For its expression, translation and communication, to self and others.

I’ve written over 20 poems about Mam and Dad in the last two and a half years and the closing line of the last poem in Elegies, ‘Leaving Dundee’, reminded my of a line in one of mine. ‘My love, say you’ll come with me,’ writes Dunn as he plans to move back home after spending time in Dundee after his wife’s death. We want our memories with us. ‘Wherever you are, there I am,’ I wrote. ‘Wherever I am, there you are.’ When I say the words out loud they ring with truth and comfort. 

The Sealey Challenge

(My daily posts for The Sealey Challenge 2023 can be find via the link on my home page.)

7th August

Elegies, Douglas Dunn (Faber 1985)

Apart from a Welsh poem I memorised, while at Sandfields Comprehensive School for a recitation competition at the local Urdd (Mae Abertawe yn yr haul/ Yn cysgu’n dawel ger y lli./ Traeth o aur o gylch ei thread/ A Browyr wrth ei hystlys hi... - I came second), the only other poem I’ve memorised, successfully in its entirety, is Douglas Dunn’s, ‘The Kaleidsoscope’.

It was several years ago when I was running a couple of performance workshops at Simon Langton Grammar School, Canterbury with some of the 5th and 6th formers who were entering Poetry by Heart, an annual national poetry speaking competition. And there was no way I could stand in front of a group of young people offering advice on memorising and recitation if I couldn’t do it myself! Dunn’s poem is a sonnet, so only fourteen lines long and with a regular rhyme scheme and memorable imagery, which was a doddle to imprint onto my memory in comparison to some of the poems to choose from on the PBH list.

When I picked up the book again today, I couldn’t quite get through it without glancing at the page in a couple of places. But the overall shape of it was still there, hanging like a comfortable, old winter coat in the attic of my mind.

Dunn wrote Elegies after the death of his wife in 1981. I mentioned in my last post about most poetry being written in response to sadness, loss and despair. But it’s not only written by practicing poets; people who may never have read or written poetry in their life find themselves turning to it when they are grieving. It’s as if poetry, words shaped on a page, offers a receptacle for that overpowering sense of grief. For its expression, translation and communication, to self and others.

I’ve written over 20 poems about Mam and Dad in the last two and a half years and the closing line of the last poem in Elegies, ‘Leaving Dundee’, reminded my of a line in one of mine. ‘My love, say you’ll come with me,’ writes Dunn as he plans to move back home after spending time in Dundee after his wife’s death. We want our memories with us. ‘Wherever you are, there I am,’ I wrote. ‘Wherever I am, there you are.’ When I say the words out loud they ring with truth and comfort. 

Poem ~ Harvest

HARVEST
When I pick the beetroot, I think of my Dad.When I pick the green beans, I think of my Dad.
I will think of my Mam when I cook them,the conversation we would have had about 
how long I'd have to sauté the chopped stems of the beet leaves, before adding the leaves, 
how much garlic to add, and how the beans might not need any salt. So tender. So fresh.
This is what binds me to them still, the harvestof what I have planted and grown, the earth
under my nails, beneath my knees. This morning,rain on the back of my neck, softer than tears,
while I parted leaf from leaf to find what the worldwithout them keeps on giving back to me. 
On the shelf above the sink, the wild poppyI picked a day ago has shed its petals. Oh, beauty. 

Poem ~ from my ongoing run/write series

run/write(words constructed and remembered while running)


there is nothing quite like meeting a baby elephant in the woods even if, from the back, he turns out to be a shattered tree stump
what matters is the momentyou first see him when somethinglike magic happens in youthe transformation of ordinary
into extraordinary, the sudden lifting of your heart, and the rest of your run is filled with gifts: poppies, barley, oh, look, the beginnings of blackberries

Poem ~ Footbridge

Footbridge
Each time I run here I stop to love it a little more, its broken concrete walkway 
and crooked handrails straddling the Leybourne Stream that, even in winter, 
is never more than a brusque current and today is as calm as the pond 
it once fed, a century ago, at a corn mill half a mile from here. It reminds me 
there will always be streams and rivers to cross, some times tentatively 
through cold and unforgiving water, our bare feet trying to find purchase 
on the bed, negotiating tree roots and silt. But most times we are like heroes, our journey 
uninterrupted, confidently striding the span of wood and stone between banks. 
One day I will take off my shoes and wade through, remind myself to be grateful. 

Reflection ~ On being the next in line to die

The Last Uncle
The last uncle is pushing off
in his funeral skiff (the usual
black limo) having locked
the doors behind him
on a whole generation.

And look, we are the elders now
with our torn scraps
of history, alone
on the mapless shore
of this raw new century.
Linda Pastan

From her collection, The Last Uncle, W. W. Norton & Company (2003)

My last two uncles died a couple of months apart, at the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023. At one of their funerals a cousin expressed the same idea that Linda Pastan so eloquently describes in the second stanza of her poem: we are the older generation now. 

The idea of being next in line 'to die' does not bother me. I am deeply grateful for all of my own 'torn scraps of history' and I do not feel alone on any shore. I don't know what lies ahead and I have no need to imagine what it might be. Not beleiving in any kind of afterlife, or second chance, is a comfort rather than the source of any fear. Having survived to be a part of the older generation feels like a gift, not a burden, or riven with loss. 

While we were waiting outside the chapel of rest for Uncle Michael's coffin to be taken inside I heard the ubiquitous, unintelligible call of the rag and bone man along the main road beyond the cemetery's gates. The juxtaposition was both startling and somewhat reassuring. Is there always some use for what is thrown away or discarded, what is unwanted, abandoned? Even our bones and flesh, once our consciousness has departed?

It's not something I shared with my cousins. I understand that hymns and prayers are what a lot of people need at funerals rather than any practical rationalisations. 

At the wakes, at both funerals, we took a photo of 'all the cousins'. Two different sets from my mother's and father's sides of the family. It was as if all of us, maybe unconsciously, wanted a record of who we were now. The grown-ups. The elders of the tribe. Let's celebrate this, the photos seem to say. And we did. 

 

Haibun ~ clich��s I keep living through

clich��s I keep living through
carpe diem, life is a learning curve, what doesn���t kill me makes me stronger, time heals, be the change I want to see in the world, the exhausting relentlessness of trying to be motivated, generous, at peace, forgiving in the presence of things happening for a reason, and lemons and fucking lemonade, because sometimes I don���t care that it���s over and I just want to cry because it happened, so it���s a good thing I can throw the latch on a small door in the corner of my mind and say hello to Robert Frost and ask him to tell me, again, in three words, what he���s learned about life: it goes on, he says.
things that happen when I least expect oak saplings 




                

Haibun ~ clichés I keep living through

clichés I keep living through
carpe diem, life is a learning curve, what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger, time heals, be the change I want to see in the world, the exhausting relentlessness of trying to be motivated, generous, at peace, forgiving in the presence of things happening for a reason, and lemons and fucking lemonade, because sometimes I don’t care that it’s over and I just want to cry because it happened, so it’s a good thing I can throw the latch on a small door in the corner of my mind and say hello to Robert Frost and ask him to tell me, again, in three words, what he’s learned about life: it goes on, he says.
things that happen when I least expect oak saplings 




                

Prose poem ~ When cats curl up in your heart and fall asleep there

It is strange how an absence of weight makes me feel heavier rather than lighter. Her warm, black-furred body, usually pressed against my hip all night, has been replaced by emptiness when I reach out for her in the dark and fall into a depth of grief I thought had passed. Perhaps that one small grief for a cat calls out to the others that are still sheltering in my heart. And maybe all they want to do is shake off their sleepiness for a while, take a walk around my bed. Still here, they say, proving to me, once again, that grief is the proof of great love. But this addition of a cat's life to the parade seems, for now, almost unbearable. This will pass, I know. We owe it to ourselves, the living, as well as to the memory of the dead, to turn our faces to the light of the world, remind ourselves of the joy we have gathered, the joy there is yet to be gathered.