writing | Marie Marshall

June 11, 2012

Ode to the Olympic Torch

It’s parody time. The Olympic torch is passing through Scotland at present, and I recalled that four years ago, during the previous Olympiad, I wrote a parody of an ode for a little competition. Basically it is twenty-four lines split into two stanzas, but the underlying structure is six quatrains in alternating lines of iambic tetrameter and pentameter. It limps and hirples like mad and it occurred to me, after starting the first four lines with the apostrophic ‘O’, to start every line with that letter – but remember, this isn’t serious art, it’s a total mickey-take. Enjoy.

O Torch, O thou eternal flame,
    O thou Olympic, ever-burning spark,
O ardent one of Attic fame,
    O thou who lightest up the noisome dark
Of ignorance with searing fire,
    Oh draw’st thou nigh me like some little sun?
Or art thou that bright, burnished lyre
    Osiris bears, who through the heav’ns doth run?
Occult and cryptic, arcane match –
    Obsidian thy sky – thou twinkling star;
Obtuse am I – may I thee catch?
    Oracular, as all such visions are,
Of stuff unknown to mortal mind…
    Ought I to kneel, ought I to bow my head
Obsequiously? And dost thou find
    Our dully-mortal clay both cold and dead?

O Torch, I’ll carry thee by hand –
    Oceanus’ waves must not put out thy glow –
O’er hills; through ev’ry foreign land
    Or continent my feet shall boldly go.
On, on, and onward still I press,
    O’ercome by naught but pride – I shall not tire!
O Torch, illuminate and bless…
    Oh bloody hell – my chiton’s gone on fire!

3 Comments

June 6, 2012

Thoughts on ‘Ozymandias’ by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I have been in conversation with a friend – I could say I met a traveller from an antique land – about Percy Bysshe Shelley’s famous poem ‘Ozymandias’. I shall let you share a small handful of my thoughts from that conversation. First of all let me transcribe the poem for you to read:

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away”.

This is probably Shelley’s best known and best loved poem. It is often said to be Shelley in sobriety; the ecstatic artist has been quieted, the revolutionary parlayed into the observer of history, the poet distanced from his subject. I believe otherwise. I see Shelley deeply engaged in this poem.

Shelley is often seen as a poet with a multiple and fragmented identity which emerges in the various personae of the ‘speakers’ of his poems, as well as being imposed on him from outside – the Victorian image of the ethereal versifier, for example, as fostered by his widow, is one such imposition. There is Shelley the inflammatory radical, doling out measured insults to the head of state, ‘an old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king’. There is Shelley the outraged father, spitting barely concealed bile at the Lord Chancellor. There is Shelley the Romantic observer of the Sublime, the inaccessible ‘secret Strength of things’ at Mont Blanc. There is Shelley the grasper for ultimate inspiration in ‘Ode to the West Wind’, begging ‘Be thou, Spirit fierce, my spirit! be thou me, impetuous one!’

To me this is not a random kaleidoscope, not a tumult, not a product of an unstable psyche. To be sure Shelley’s poetry develops through his career, changes, but it remains true, artistically resolute throughout. He is simply not a one-trick pony. He is clever and accomplished technically – hell, who these days could successfully write a wild, ecstatic poem and do it in five cantos of terza rima sonnet form, and make it good?* Like any of us, his mood can change, he can sit and look at things from a different perspective, he can step outside his own thoughts and emotions and observe them as much as he can experience them in the moment.

In ‘Ozymandias’ there appear to be four distinct voices. People normally identify three. Firstly there is the author/speaker; this voice is most often attributed to Shelley himself, and the fact that he only allows the speaker one line is held up as evidence of detachment. Secondly there is the traveller from the antique land, whose taking-over of the narration of the poem is considered to be further indication of objectivity, of Shelley’s status as an observer of history rather than a participant. This voice is contained in quotation marks, deliberately, and again this is taken to indicated distancing. Thirdly there is the voice of Ozymandias – Pharaoh Rameses II – whose inscription raises him above kings, commanding all who consider themselves to be powerful to look on his works and despair. The fourth voice is the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus, the supposed inscription being Shelley’s rendering of a phrase in Diodorus’s historical book on ancient Egypt. Two things should be noted here, firstly that Diodorus used other sources for his own historical works, and secondly that imagination played a part in classical history, with the result that what famous figures ‘said’ is often what the historian felt they ought to have said.

‘Ozymandias’ is taken to be a work of political satire, in particular a retrospective gaze at the rise and fall of Napoleon Bonaparte. Ancient Rome took the best part of two millennia to go from the expulsion of the Tarquins to the fall of Constantinople; France realised its equivalent during the adulthood of a single man, Napoleon. The poem is considered a warning to those who would carve out temporal power for themselves, to the effect that such power will not outlive them. it will fall as surely as the statue of Rameses II fell, worn away by the sands of the desert and by time.

But as I said, I believe that to be a superficial reading, and that Shelley is deeply engaged emotionally and intellectually in this poem. It is a self-referential and introspective work. The second voice, the traveller, is no one external to Shelley. He has given his pen to an inner voice of his own, which will pass judgment on him. I see this because many of Shelley’s familiar themes are actually expressed in this poem. The Sublime is there. Some of it is found in artifice rather than nature, but the words ‘vast’ and ‘colossal’** are there and note a sense of awe that is unmistakable even in a ‘wreck’. The Sublime in nature is in the ‘boundless’ desert, as awesome in its silence and ‘secret strength’ as is Mont Blanc, as relentless and powerful as the West Wind. Imagination is there – imagination of Diodorus on the one hand, and that of Shelley on the other. The face of the statue of Rameses is impassive, yet Shelley imagines a ‘frown’ and a ‘sneer of cold command’. Striving for greatness is there, as Napoleon the revolutionary turned emperor strove, as Shelley the revolutionary turned poet strove when he yearned to be made one with the West Wind, to be, in his artistic power, the Spring to the West Wind’s Winter. Politics certainly is there, even if direct and inflammatory agitprop is not.

But subtly Shelley’s inner voice of judgment mocks, as the hand that framed the statue ‘mocked’***. Ruefully Shelley must acknowledge that he, like all the Romantics, could not quite achieve the quasi-divine power of expression that he wished to. The Sublime desert, the expression of the unattainable, stretches far away.

Because this is all expressed in a short, tightly-wrought sonnet, it is missed by many readers. Scroll back and read it again, think of Shelley’s inner voice, still and small, gently charging him with trying to steal fire from heaven, think of Shelley himself as Ozymandias the failed worker of mighty works, think of him also as the sculptor whose stonework is now brought as low as the king’s power, and think on. When the poem has worked on you, play the arguments out in your own mind…

__________

*I hear some resolute modernists counter ‘Who would want to?’

**From the Colossus at Rhodes, one of the ancient Wonders of the World.

***In the context of the poem, the word has the likely meaning of sculpting, rather as we would use the term ‘mock-up’ today, and not necessarily the meaning of scorn, though that is an implication too, a double-meaning…

7 Comments

May 12, 2012

Axe

All the girls call me ‘Axe’. Tough name, but nah need fe aks me why, coz of me accent, ell-oh-ell!

They’re like to me – We were gonnay give you a kicking. Two days I’ve been in Glasgow, two days! I go out to a club, and these girls come over and they’re looking mean like they mean business, right. But the music is loud and the girl who’s doing all the talking has this accent, this Scottish accent, and she’s shouting over the music, and I’m like – What? What? And she’s back to me like – What? What? And then the music stops and all you can hear is her shouting what and me shouting what, and suddenly everyone’s laughing.

So the girl who’s doing all the talking, this is her to me – Come over to our table. And I’m like – Okay, cool. So we all get to be mates, and we’re laughing, and I can’t understand half of what they’re saying. I can now, though, later. I’m used to their accent, they’re used to mine though this is one of them to me back then – Oh. My. God. Your accent is weird!

Afterwards some of them are hammered and throwing up in the street, and we’re helping them. And she, this girl who was doing all the talking, she’s like – My name’s Marie, what’s yours? Only the way she says Marie is all Scottish like MAH-ri. And I’m like – I’m Shayla. And she’s like – you wernay scared when we came up to you, Shayla, we were gonnay give you a kicking, you didn’t back down. So I’m like – Why was you going to give me a kicking anyway? And she’s like – It was the way you were looking, looking at the lads in here, looking at us, just the way you were looking.

And she slips her arm through mine and we walk off down the street, and she’s like – Woot! That’s when we’re dodging round one of the other girls who’s not walking straight coz she’s hammered.

Then this is Marie to me when we’re walking down the street – Can you fight? Wannay be in the krew? This is me back to her – Yeah, all right.

So we’re The Gherls. The Gherls, right? They explain it to me once, it’s coz the krew started with, like, Celtic supporters’ girlfriends, and Celtic are called The Bhoys, yeah? But we’re not strictly Celtic supporters or Celtic supporters’ girlfriends any more, not Catholics. Well, Rosary is Catholic. We call her Rosary coz she gets her beads out before a fight, and like counts them with her thumb, then she puts them away and crosses herself. But Shireen is in our krew, and she’s a Muslim and Asian, and she wears a hijab thing and doesn’t drink, and it doesn’t matter even when we’re fighting Asian girls, so just the same it doesn’t matter to me if we’re fighting black girls. It’s the fighting that matters.

There’s ten of us hardcore, and there’s the also-rans, like girls who sometimes are there or girls we can call on, and some of those girls have mates who are okay and will help out. But like most of the time we don’t need them. The hardcore krew got loyalty.

And one day Marie’s like to me – How old are you? And I’m like – Why you aks me that? And she’s like – Axe? Axe? Ell-em-ay-oh, that’s what we’ll call you, your name is Axe. And I’m like – Laughing. My. Effing. Arse. Off.

When you’re fighting, like when I’m fighting, everything is so clear. Lights get really bright and white, and everything like stands out with this hard, black outline, and I feel really alive. I mean really alive, like my whole body is tingling and I can feel everything, and even when I get hurt it’s like the feeling takes over. It’s not like getting hurt normally. It’s different, better. I know that sounds weird, but I know what I mean.

There’s this girl, this Gherl, called Paysh, that’s like short for Patience which is her name, right. She’s cool, really quiet, never says nothing, never says nothing much. When she fights it’s like her fists go really tiny, and when they hit someone they must really hurt. I saw her once, and she’s really fast, and she’s fighting this other girl, and this other girl’s going down coz Paysh punches her in the face three times. Just like that, it took half a second. Bang bang bang. And these big red marks come on the girls face, and the rest of her face is pure white, and she looks like she’s going to cry. So all her mates are coming over like they want to kill Paysh, so we go and stand round Paysh and dare them, and they all back off.

And I’m like – that was sick, Paysh, really sick!

And the rest of The Gherls are like – yeah that was totally sick! And they’re all grinning.

And Paysh is suddenly all excited, and she’s like – Yeah it was sick, fuck yeah, did you see her face? And she’s making those tiny little fists. So anyway one day we’re in this bar, and I’m like – Where’s Paysh? And the others are like – She’s got her finals tomorrow, so she’s studying. And I’m like – What, no, Paysh is a fucking student?

And then the week after that I’m with Paysh shopping, and we go to Marks and Spencer’s café for a coffee, and this is me to her – Paysh, you’re really clever, so why’re you in a krew? Why’re you not, like, at the student union or something?

And she’s very quiet for a while, like she always is. She’s sitting there and I’m thinking how slim she is, and how she looks tall even when she’s sitting down, and how she always wears green but not bright green, not Celtic green, but sort of faded green, and how her hair is somewhere between blonde and red.

And then this is her to me – I don’t know, Axe. It’s as though when I’m at uni I’m on an island, or I’m behind bars, or I’m in a room with no windows full of mirrors. No one can see out. No one takes any notice of anything except what’s going on inside. No one sees that there’s a whole city outside of the uni. Yeah, it’s like I’m on an island and I want to see fish, but I can’t see fish unless I jump into the ocean, unless I make a conscious decision to jump into the ocean and swim and look for fish. So let’s take something simple: if I want a drink and a dance I go into the city, and there’s a club. If I want mates I go into the city, and there’s my krew. Some students if they want to do something dangerous and exciting they climb the big uni spire. When I want to do something and dangerous I get into fights with my krew. Do you understand, Axe?

And I nod, like I kind of understand. Then this is me to her – Yeah, I think so, it’s like when I’m at work it’s all brown and green, but when I’m out with The Gherls its bright yellow and bright blue, and when we’re fighting it’s brilliant white and there’s like wind-chimes going off in me head.

And she’s like – Synaesthesia. And I’m like – What? Whatever. Then we’re smiling at each other.

So one time I’m in our usual club and I’m fixing me makeup in the ladies, and Marie is standing next to me washing her hands. I’m sort of looking at her sideways and comparing her to Paysh coz they both have the same colour hair. But she’s shorter and like wider across the shoulders and hips, and she’s a little bit butch maybe, though not really stone just a little bit. And she’s taking a long time just washing her hands, and she looks over to me.

And she’s like – I really like you, Axe.

And I’m like – I really like you too, MAH-ri.

So then she leans over and kisses me right on the mouth, and her mouth is sort of nice so I kiss her back. Then we stop, and she’s like – Sick, or what? She’s grinning and I’m grinning too, and I’m like – Yeah, sick! And then we go back into the club to our mates.

Then there’s the time I see Rosary in the distance and I follow her, and she goes down streets I don’t know, where I’ve never been, and there’s this big Catholic church all brick and concrete, and she goes in. So I follow her, and there she is sitting in one of those long seats they have, and I go and sit next to her. She’s praying or something coz her eyes are closed and her hands are together and those beads of hers are between her hands. Her lips are moving but she’s not saying nothing. Then it’s like she realises I’m there or she finishes praying, coz she opens her eyes and crosses herself.

And I’m like – Hi! And she’s like – Hi. What are you doing here? And I’m like – I followed you. What are you doing? It’s not Sunday or nothing. And she’s like – I’m going to confession. And I’m like – What’s that? Coz I don’t know nothing about being Catholic.

And she’s like – I go into that box there, and there’s a priest in the other box, the one right next to it, and we cannay see each other but we can hear each other, and I tell him all the bad things I’ve done since the last time I was here. And he makes me promise no to do them again, and he forgives me like in God’s name, and tells me to go and say a bunchay Hail Marys or something as a penance.

So I think for a while, and then I’m like – Do you tell him about the krew and all the fights? And she’s like – Yeah of course.

So then there’s a creak and the door of the box opens and an old woman comes out and walks back through the church. Then Rosary gets up and goes into the box and closes the door behind her, and I suppose she’s telling the priest all about the things she’s done, and it makes me feel a bit weird because I’m sitting there and I’ve been part of the things she’s telling him. And I wonder what I would tell a priest if I was Catholic.

Then there’s this one big fight. There’s been another krew hanging out in the places we like to hang out, the mates of the girl Paysh punched. They’re like to everybody – we like it here, we’re gonnay keep coming here. So we’ve put the word round, Marie’s put the word round, that if they’re there on Friday then they are gonnay get a kicking. So on Friday there they are, and there’s more of them than before, and they’re really loud, they think they are so cool and tough. And Marie goes over to them and she’s like – Outside, round the back, ten minutes. And they’re like – Fuck you Missis Woman, but yeah.

So ten minutes later we’re all in the wynd and we’re thinking like – Where are they? Then we see them coming in at both ends of the wynd, and they’re grinning because they think they’ve got us trapped. And some of them are picking up stuff from the wynd, like sticks and stuff, and someone’s like – Watch out, that blonde hoor’s got a malky.

And Marie’s like – It makes me MAD when someone pulls a malky on me! Then we’re fighting our way out and they can’t keep us in, and Rosary’s up against some girl with a piece of wood, and I’m up against the girl with the malky, it’s a Stanley knife or a box-cutter or something and she cuts me across the face with it. And everything is brilliant white like camera flashes and ringing like bells in me head, and it’s like everyone is dancing and I’m breathing really fast. And I’m hitting the malky girl and she’s running and they’re all running, and we’re like – Woot!

Except Rosary is bent over with her hand on her knees and then she falls over, and someone’s like – She got hit over the head, someone with a piece of wood or something. And I’m like – Look, everyone, get out of here and I’ll stay with her. I’ll call an ambulance on me mobile, it’ll be all right, I’ll say we was mugged or something. Move! Get out of here! Before someone gets the coppers. Move!

So the ambulance comes and takes us to hospital, and Rosary is lying there with a blanket over her and a mask on her face, and I’m like – Rosary! Rosary! And the paramedics are seeing to me because of me cut face and they’re like – Look, keep still, you’re arm’s cut too. And me sleeve’s all wet and dark as they cut it away.

Then we’re at the hospital and there’s a woman doctor puts stitches in me face and me arm, and she’s like – We’ll keep you in overnight. And I’m like – Okay Miss, whatever, but can I have a bed next to me mate? And she’s like – I’ll see what I can do.

And the police are there and they want to talk to me, but I don’t tell them nothing, and I’m just like – We was mugged. We was jumped on. No I didn’t see who it was. It was dark. And they’re like – All right but we might want to talk to you again. And I can see they’re thinking, like – Black girl, black girl, blacks always equals trouble.

So then I’m sitting on this bed and Rosary is on the bed next to me with one of those drip things in her arm and bandages on her head where she got hit, and we’re talking to each other really quiet, and I’m like – You did really good, Rosary, at the fight, and you’ll be all right now the doctor’s seen you. And she’s like – You did really good too, Axe, and I’m glad you’re here. And then her voice goes even quieter, and she’s like – Hail Mary, full of grace. And it’s like she’s counting with her thumb but there’s nothing there, and suddenly her eyes roll and she starts to shake, and I’m like – Nurse! Miss! Miss!

Then there’s people running and pulling the curtains round her bed, and that’s Rosary dying, and I’m crying and I’m like – Rosary! Rosary! And there’s two nurses trying to make me be quiet, but I’m crying and I’m like – Rosary! Rosary!

So that’s when things go brown and green for me again, and the stitches in my arm and my face began to hurt, and Rosary dies and I never get to talk to her again, never get to tell her how great she is.

So we’re all standing round Rosary’s grave, The Gherls are here, and Rosary’s family that I’ve never met before, and there’s a priest and he’s like – And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you. And he calls Rosary Christine McCluskey, because that was her name and I never knew it. I never heard it before. And Shireen isn’t there, she’s standing over by the path coz she can’t be at a Christian burial. So I walk over to her and I put my arm through hers, and Marie turns round and frowns, but I give her a sort of secret wave to let her know it’s all right, and she turns back again.

And this is Shireen to me – I really liked Rosary, I really liked her. And this is me back to Shireen – I really liked her too, we all did. And Shireen doesn’t know what else to say, so she’s like – La ilaha illallah, Muhammad rasulu-llah. And I don’t know what else to say either, so I’m like – Amen.

I’m standing there thinking the priest at Rosary’s church isn’t going to hear any more about us, about me. Now I won’t be in nobody’s confession.

And afterwards when Rosary’s parents have all gone, Marie’s like – No time to waste, we’re dressed in our best all in black, we are gonnay go and find the wee skank with the plank and we’re gonnay do to her what she did to Rosary, and we’re gonnay find the wee hoor who cut Axe with the malky, and we’re gonnay … we’re gonnay… something… like if they can pick up sticks we can pick up bricks.

And we’re all like – Yeah let’s fucking do it.

So we’re walking along in our best all in black, and inside me head there’s this rhyme, and inside I’m like – One two I love you, three four out the door, five six pick up bricks. And I’m looking at Marie and she’s looking back at me, and she’s like – This one’s for Rosary! And it’s cold and me teeth are chattering, and there’s bells in me head, and I’m angry but I’m smiling, and it’s all brilliant white, shining light, and I’m really alive again. Really, really alive.

5 Comments

May 8, 2012

After the revolution

He had been a capitalist of so great ascent that he had once been called a captain of commerce; now such things were put by, and the jut of his jaw was bravado, belied by the glisten of sweat on his forehead. He was genuinely puzzled when we asked him for his secret dream; having taken a few breaths he said he had always wanted to work with wood, to feel the buzz of the grain against his thumb and the satisfaction of pulling a splinter from his finger when the carpentry was done. We found him a job in a boat yard, the period of his employment was inverse to his aptitude. Eventually he found a niche caring for a girl with Down’s syndrome, who came to call him uncle and to love him. There is no success without attempt; things balance eventually. I have heard that often he expressed something like the guilt of a survivor, which he was until he died of a heart attack; he was found in a water closet, the type that is so small that you have to rest your elbow in the hand-basin and gaze into the mirror. There would have been no pain.

__________

The online literary magazine qarrtsiluni is currently publishing poems in a series themed imitation. The entry for 7^th May is my O great maritime bears, which is an emulation of poet Lisa Jarnot. The theme of imitation continues to the bio note which is an imitation of a telegram by the artist Balthus. From the qarrtsiluni site you can download a podcast of the poem, read by Dani Adomaitis.

2 Comments

April 24, 2012

It stops here!

President Harry S Truman looked around the Oval Office. His eye took in the rich, red drapes, the deep carpet in the same shade, the mahogany of the furniture. He glanced over each shoulder – right, left – to take in the Stars-and-Stripes and his own Presidential standard, and reflected that the room was still very much to the taste of Roosevelt his predecessor. How could it not be? FDR was such a dominating personality. He asked himself whether he had the courage (or the energy, or the time…) to redecorate.

Perhaps at this moment he doubted himself a little, but Truman was indeed a man of character. He looked down at his desk. Yes, here was the new Truman Presidency, ordered, workmanlike, symmetrical – that’s how he would be. A place for his pen, a place for his presidential blotter, a place for everything, yes everything was in order, so why was he frowning?

“Something is missing,” he thought.

His frown deepened when he caught sight of something he had been trying to avoid looking at. A tarpaulin had been laid on the carpet, and on that was the carcass of a freshly-killed white-tailed deer, a fine male with a single bullet hole. It was a gift from an eager, young White House aide who had heard that the President liked hunting. In that the aide had miscalculated – Truman shot grouse, not deer.

The President got up and walked round to the front of his desk. The carcass would not go away of its own accord, it had to be dealt with, a decision had to be made and it was the Commander-in-Chief who had to make it. No one else would make it for him.

“What the hell use would there be in a President who knew how to skin a damn deer?” he asked aloud. The walls of the Oval Office echoed his rhetorical question. He looked down at the white-tailed buck, then to the empty space on his desk. His frown melted. An idea formed in his mind and he made a decision. He lifted the Presidential phone and spoke to his secretary Matthew Connelly.

“Matt,” he said. “Get me the Presidential Butcher. And while you’re at it, get me the Presidential Carpenter and the Presidential Signwriter too…”

2 Comments

April 9, 2012

Be seen reading a book

Be seen reading a book wherever you go. No, not thumbing a hand-held device, reading an actual book. Be seen to laugh, to smile, to frown; be heard to catch your breath. Take out a pencil and make marginal notes in your own, personal shorthand. Use a bookmark, maybe one main one in stiff card or leather, along with supplementary markers torn from a notepad, maybe a brightly-coloured index tab or two which lead to a favourite or important passage neatly underlined. Take the book everywhere. Let people hear you chuckling and exclaiming even during a comfort break; interrupt your lunchtime apple to read out passages to colleagues; hold your book high whilst sitting on the bus or in the park; when at rest on the summit of a newly-climbed mountain, whip out a paperback from your pocket.

No, this is not an exercise in Luddism. The hand-held device is here to stay. It is an exercise in celebrating what must be the most important technological advance of the past thousand years – print. So much has now been committed to ink on paper. Even though the day of the hand-held device has come, the new literature that has appeared only in a form that can be consumed on such a device is infinitesimal compared to the vast canon of the already-published.

The printer’s boast was always this: that once something is published in print then it cannot be retracted. If you lie then your lie is nailed forever; if you tell the truth it shines forever. A pomposity, maybe, but do the book thing anyway. For me. You know you want to.

And on no account ever refer to it as ‘hard copy’.

__________

I have just finished what I think is my final input into the selection of poems submitted to The Phoenix Rising from the Ashes and am awaiting eagerly a sight of what the final book may look like.

Meanwhile it is time to turn my attention to another possible editing project, this time the work of a single poet. I will keep you posted…

10 Comments

April 1, 2012

Decanto, April 2012

The April 2012 issue of Decanto magazine is now published, featuring many fine pieces of poetry. It is obtainable from Masque Publishing. Featured poet is Dave Seddon, and I am honoured to have one of my own poems in this issue too.

2 Comments

March 6, 2012

The Stag – a fable*

Deep in the heart of the realm of Angria there was a forest. In that forest lived a stag, perhaps the finest stag anyone had ever seen, his antlers spreading like the winter branches of an old beech tree, his flanks red as the ire of winter dawn. In a house just outside the forest there lived a hunter who had vowed to trap and kill the stag, to wear the antlers as his headdress and the russet hide as his cloak. But the stag was many years in age and full strength, wily, swift. He valued his freedom and would bound away while the hunter was still fitting a quarrel to his crossbow. Season upon season, year upon year, the hunter stalked the stag. Prey and predator knew every inch of the forest, every tree, every thicket, every faint sentier, every clearing, every pool, every shadow. At the beginning of one year the stag lifted his head to a new sound, the steady fall of an axe against a tree trunk. He thought little of it as such things are not the concern of deer, but nevertheless he moved through the forest to a place where the noise did not crowd as badly upon such things as did concern him. The sound continued throughout the year, but still the stag thought little of it. Then one day when he approached the edge of the forest he found that his kingdom was much smaller than he remembered, and his way out into the open fields beyond the forest was blocked. There was a high, wooden fence. The hunter had chopped down many trees to make it, and it was cammed in cruel, sharp points. The stag ran to the other side of the forest and found the way blocked there also. He ran along every path he knew and everywhere his was way barred by the fence. He plunged through thickets and briar patches through which he had never gone before, but the fence always thwarted and confounded him. Wherever he could get a run he tried to jump the fence but always, from outside, came the hunter’s mocking laugh or a warning bolt from the crossbow. At last the stag could endure this no more and risked everything on one last, desperate leap. The fence was higher than anything he had ever cleared before, but he gathered all his strength and courage, fixed his eye upon the blue sky above the cruel, sharpened points, and ran. He left the ground, he flew, he soared, wondering if this is what it felt like to be a bird. In mid-leap he could see the open farmland and the hills beyond. It was at that moment that the hunter, who had been waiting for him, loosed his quarrel. It went deep into the stag’s body, right to his heart, checked his leap, and brought him crashing down onto the sharp points. The stag’s eye was still fixed upon the sky and the far hills but now it saw nothing. When he saw what he had done, the hunter dropped his crossbow and his quiver and walked away. He was never seen again, and his house became a cold and empty ruin.
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* (c) from ‘Branwell’, a work-in-progress.

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February 15, 2012

Intermetricality: a definition

Intermetricality: the persistence, repetition, or recurrence of rhythms, metres, and patterns, especially unconsciously, especially in folk stories, folk poems, and folk songs. Such patterns may have their origin in non-folk forms, such as the Bible, advertising slogans, and so on, as much as in folk forms. The term intermetricality is akin to intertextuality*, but is more specific.

Off the top of my head, here is a possible modern example. Someone posts a picture of a cat wearing glasses on Facebook, and captions it thus: ‘If you’re under 40 this will remind you of Harry Potter… if you’re over 40 it will remind you of John Lennon’. That particular pattern of balancing two phrases is similar to that found in the Book of Proverbs. This does not necessarily prove a direct relationship between the two but readers will likely be struck by the familiarity of both.

By the way, this word and its definition did not come to me out of nowhere. I coined it to explain something after having been asked to read and comment upon an article by the late Dell Hymes, Ethnopoetics and sociolinguistics: three stories by African-American children, in which he wrote of such repetitions. I don’t pretend to be any kind of expert in this or in any of the academic fields I mention here, I just wanted to establish the coining in a recognisable place and at a recognisable time. Others are now perfectly free to use it.

*The word ‘intertextuality’ was coined by Julia Kristeva, although she herself was probably influenced by the work of semioticians Roland Barthes and Mikhail Bakhtin, and linguist Ferdinand de Saussure

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February 14, 2012

Is it too soon to move to ‘planet e’?

I have been part of the editorial team on a poetry-publishing project for some time. It has been hard, slow, but rewarding work, and I have persevered in the knowledge that two volumes of international poetry – the very best of a particular poetry genre – were being steadily accumulated. It has been in most respects a labour of love.

Recently the owner and Editor-in-Chief made the decision that the finished work would be available only as an e-book*. He had several good reasons for this, not least of which was that electronic books are the future, are already replacing the conventional hardback and paperback, and will be the principal if not the sole mode of consuming literature very, very soon. We appear to be on the eve of that cultural state.

But is this the case? I know many people who have either had their poetry and prose published, or who aspire to, and amongst them the great majority see the measure of success of that endeavour in terms of print. Still. I am also led to believe that at this time the e-book and printed book markets are exclusive. People who buy e-books do not buy paper, and people who buy printed books do not buy e-books, with the result that if a writer or publisher concentrates on one medium alone then a portion of the potential readership will not be reached with the product.

I can recall science fiction stories of the past where people spoke of ‘viewing a book’, by which they meant consuming literature on a screen rather than picking up a book in their hands. For decades we have smiled at the idea. A book, after all, is so much more than the sum of the words in it. It is the weight, the texture, the smell, the flip of the pages when you run your fingers over it. It is the size and shape, it is the component of the library shelf, it is the masterpiece lost in the fire at Alexandria, it is the icon. It is the apotheosis of the invention of moveable type. In that science fiction genre the utopia of electronic literacy was balanced by the dystopia of a world devoid of the physicality of the book that burned at Fahrenheit 451. The loss of the book seemed like something that would never happen.

The other day I was given a Kindle to examine. It was an interesting and powerful tool. It had a custom cover with a little light on an extendable stalk, it had a ‘book’ right there on the screen and I could do all the things with it that I could do with a real live book. I could hold it close (magnify the screen image), I could make pencil notes in the margin (annotate), I could put an old bus ticket between two pages (bookmark). It was a totally neat gadget. So why didn’t it hold my attention? Why did it feel as though I was being sold short? Am I simply an old stick-in-the-mud, a Luddite? Should literature go the same way as music – wholly from a physical to an electronic and virtual method of distribution?

I would like to know what other people think, so this is an invitation to people to contact me. Please feel free to leave a comment below, if you have a WordPress account, or to email me at Ms_Marie_Marshall{a}hotmail.com, or (now here’s a thought!) write me a letter. The object of this is not to prove somehow that I am right and the Editor-in-chief is wrong – this is not an exercise in leverage – nor do I imagine that your answers will have the validity of a professional poll. But what you say will inform me and will enlarge the picture that I see from here.

Thank you in advance.

__________

* Amendment 24th Feb. The Editor-in-chief later reversed the decision. When he came to read this particular blog entry he got in touch (on 23rd February) and asked me to replace the sentence above. I was reluctant to do so as it was my understanding at the time and agreed with my recollection of what he had said. I did undertake to post separately that the decision had been reversed. To be scrupulously fair I am reproducing here the words that the Editor-in-chief would have preferred to see originally: “Recently the owner and Editor-in-Chief made the decision that the finished work would be available in print and and as an e-book, perhaps possibly only as an e-book, though nothing is firm for the time being.”

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Tag: writing