I’m working on a couple of fairly large collections of poems and songs at present. So here’s a collection of pieces from before these:
Songs of Another Age
09 Tuesday Apr 2024
Posted Publications
in09 Tuesday Apr 2024
Posted Publications
inI’m working on a couple of fairly large collections of poems and songs at present. So here’s a collection of pieces from before these:
16 Tuesday May 2023
Posted Love songs, Publications
in
Not long before my wife died, she asked one thing of me: to remember her after she’d gone. My first thought was: “Well, I’m hardly likely to forget you, am I?” Then she said she wanted me to remember her the way she was before she “blossomed”. My first thought here was that she had already blossomed when I first met her. And I said so. But she was convinced she blossomed later. And she should know. She then said that she wanted me to write poems/songs about her, so “remember” was already then given the nuance of “commemorate”. She added that she wanted me to describe her from before I met her as well. No problem!
Today is our 36th wedding anniversary, the third one since Ann’s death. On the first one I was one of nine of her family members that scattered her ashes at sea from her cousin, Carsten’s, boat just off the island of Hirsholm, which houses the lighthouse she could see from her childhood home.
Family became all-important to Ann in 2012 after the death of her eldest brother, Anders. At her wake I found the speech she gave for him at his funeral in my jacket pocket. She’d learnt it by heart. I read it aloud for the gathering, and we could all see that what she’d said about Anders applied equally well to Ann herself. Here’s my translation:
Dear Anders – we are gathered together around you here today.
And it is with deep sorrow. Mum has to say goodbye to her son. Peter, Pia, Christian, and I – to our big brother. Dun and Else – to their brother-in-law. And Mads, Maja, and Anne – to their uncle. Grethe – to her soulmate and partner. Knud, Ingrid, and Viggo – to their nephew. Søren to his friend and fellow student – and many more along with us…
You were so alive – yes, so full of life and enthusiasm. And so strong. Now we are grieving, and our loss is a great and painful one.
We have lost someone who gave us so much. For us – your loved ones – you were the someone who gave us most. You were the one who was there for each and every one of us and played a part in our lives. The one who helped us, supported us, taught us so much – and understood us. You gave of yourself. And that is the most beautiful thing we human beings can give each other.
Anders – you were a good person! A true human being! And a beautiful person!
You were well-balanced and had integrity. That’s how you found your path in life. And it WAS YOUR PATH. And what a beautiful path you showed us – and so sublime! Even though it ended far too abruptly.
But you were you, Anders! In a class of your own, a unique individual. And the life that was yours was the life that YOU created. Your farm, your forest, and your barn, with your glassmaking and pottery and your creative courses – you created it all.
You did well in life, Anders! So well that you were admired and respected by many others. But for you it was never about the money, the prestige, or the success. No, because you were modest. You never made a big noise – never used big words. Your actions said so much more. They said it all.
For you it was about playing, curiosity, the desire to create, the challenge… that was your motivation – AND THE JOY OF CREATING AND WATCHING LIFE UNFOLD AND BE FULFILLED.
Anders, you always insisted that you were a craftsman. YES! And in all that you created, all that you accomplished IN YOUR WAY, HERE IN LIFE, indeed in the whole way you lived your life, you were also an artist – and a great life artist at that.
And what a gift that the most important thing for you in this life was us – your family, your partner, and your friends! I know I speak for all of us when, with love and gratitude, I say:
Thank you, Anders! Thanks for everything! For everything you were! And for everything you gave! And thank you for letting us join you on your beautiful, sublime path through life.
On our paths – throughout the rest of our lives – we will carry you in our hearts!
THAT’S WHERE YOU BELONG FOREVER!
Ann wrote her final book, a children’s book, Den smilende Kamel kommer til søen (The Smiling Camel Comes to the Pond) while she was terminally ill with cancer, publishing it herself just 3½ months before she died. It meant a lot to her that it was her cousin, Christine, that illustrated it, and that it was designed and printed by her second cousin, Erik. All the animals are representations of real people. Ann’s the duck, and I’m the owl.
It’s fitting that it’s Ann’s cousin, Claus, a fellow sæbynit (someone who lives in Saeby), playing the trombone in this recording of “Remembering Ann”, the third of ten pieces in this second edition of my pamphlet, Remembering Ann, with six new pieces:
Claus and I intend to record the two pieces not yet showcased here soon (“Ann Gone” and “Simply Standing There”). I would love to perform the ten songs in concert as well as – Dream on, babe! – do a proper album.
I have a few unsung pieces for Ann too:
12 Tuesday Jul 2022
Posted Publications
inI have just had five more sonnets printed in Beth Houston’s second sonnet anthology, Extreme Sonnets II. As I explained last time, the point with the epithet is that the sonnets are extremely formal. They all employ iambic pentameter, full rhymes and traditional rhyming schemes.
My five sonnets are, in the order that I wrote them:
2008 The MUV Affair & I Sing the Sonnet
2009 On Our Silver Anniversary
2011 Mum’s the Word
2021 A Karen Blixen
The first four can be found in my collection of sonnets online. The last one is here.
Beth is now going to do an anthology of extreme love sonnets. Submission details will soon appear on the Rhizome Press website. All sonnets included in Extreme Sonnets, Extreme Sonnets II, and Extreme Formal Poems will automatically be considered.
02 Sunday Jan 2022
Posted Publications, Songs
inTags
Ben Okri, Blood on the Tracks, Bob Dylan, Dunkeld, Edinburgh Book Festival, George Mackay Brown, Kenneth Steven, Pitlochry, Robert Burns, Snakeskin
My poem, “Soon to Be Sixty”, has been published in this month’s Snakeskin.
Here is the song version, followed by a recording:
Soon to Be Sixty
I discover a favourite writer
with every new decade that turns.
At ten I would gladly recite a
“Some hae meat…” by the bard, Rabbie Burns.
“Some hae meat…” by Rabbie Burns.
At twenty Bob Dylan disarmed me
with “Tangled Up in Blue”.
“Simple Twist of Fate” really charmed me.
“You’re a Big Girl Now” turned the screw.
“Tangled Up in Blue”.
At thirty I chanced on a master,
an Orcadian, George Mackay Brown.
He mingled success with disaster.
He knew that the king was a clown.
George Mackay Brown.
At forty I heard Kenneth Steven
bring a Christmas Day in at Dunkeld
with a story he seemed to believe in
of a baby that he almost held.
Kenneth Steven at Dunkeld.
At fifty I witnessed Ben Okri
in Edinburgh at the Book Fair.
Perhaps he’ll be on at Pitlochry
one of these days while I’m there.
Ben Okri at the Fair.
I’m due to hit sixty next summer.
Whose talent will thicken the plot?
A poet, a singer, a strummer?
I love all of these guys such a lot.
I love all of these guys a lot.
I love all of these guys a lot.
23 Tuesday Feb 2021
Posted Publications
inI have recently had ten sonnets printed in an anthology of sonnets called Extreme Sonnets, edited and published by Beth Houston. The point with the epithet is that the sonnets are extremely formal. They all employ iambic pentameter, full rhymes and traditional rhyming schemes.
There are 42 poets in the anthology, 37 from the USA, and five from the UK. And I’m one of five that have the maximum of ten sonnets. There are 194 sonnets in all.
It’s been done very well. And there’s a foreword by an acclaimed formal poet, Rhina P. Espaillat, who will be 90 next year. She mentions one of my sonnets. If you click on the “look inside” function on the top left of the Amazon page, you can see the Foreword, the Preface, the Contents, the first six sonnets, and the back cover.
My ten sonnets are, in the order that I wrote them:
2007 Shades of Venice & Dunderhead
2008 On Esperance Bay
2009 Just Rain
2010 Regret, Lisa Leaving, No Bloody Way! & The Big Smoke
2013 The End & Chess with Monsieur Joffroy
They can be found in my collection of sonnets, which is online.
The years 2007-2013 were ones of great crisis for me personally. In 2007 my wife and I fled from our home on Fanø because of a stalker. Both my wife and I became ill, in my case mentally (PTSD) and in my wife’s case physically (Graves’ disease). But I stood firm on the rock of my poetry and songs and received encouragement from other poets on the online poetry forum, Eratosphere, which I’d joined in 2005. It gets a shout-out in the Preface.
There are some reviews on Amazon’s American page.
Now just waiting for the good reviews in various literary magazines…
Beth Houston is doing two more anthologies this year. Check out the submission guidelines here.
01 Thursday Dec 2016
Posted Publications, Sonnets
inI’ve just had this poem published in Snakeskin #235. I wrote the first draft over five years ago, then put it aside and forgot about it. I discovered it again by chance about 50 days ago. It will be the first in a sequence of four called “The Four Tempers” in my upcoming, second edition of I Sing the Sonnet, which Snakeskin plans to publish in the near future.
02 Tuesday Aug 2016
Posted Publications, Sonnets
in05 Saturday Dec 2015
Posted Publications, Sonnets
inThis poem, just published in Snakeskin #224, i.e. the 20th anniversary issue, is to be the very first one in future versions of my collection, From Moonrise till Dawn.
07 Tuesday Jul 2015
Posted Publications, Sonnets
inTags
I woke at 4 one night two months ago and witnessed my wife doing exercises while sleeping. After recovering my composure, I found this phenomenon could easily be described in a line of IP: “My wife does exercises in her sleep.” I then began to construct a sonnet. The word “parachute” popped up as a word to conclude with rather early on, which was quite a help, as then it was just a matter of filling in from A to B. At one point I gave myself the advice of reducing the pentameter to tetrameter as the IP seemed bloated.
“Look! We Have Landed!” (a reference to D.H. Lawrence’s poetry collection from 1917, Look! We Have Come Through!) is in this month’s issue of Snakeskin.
03 Friday Apr 2015
Posted Ditties, Publications, Sonnets
inI’ve been playing quite a lot of chess over the last 1½ years, both online and over the board. I played quite a bit as a kid, but other interests, not least poetry, elbowed their way into the foreground. What started me off again was writing this sonnet:
Chess with Monsieur Joffroy
In memory of Frédérique Joffroy (1962-1980)
Losing to me wasn’t the badge of shame
your father thought it was. He couldn’t stop
the stronger player coming out on top.
It came as quite a shock to hear him claim
my proletarian tactics were to blame.
It’s standard stuff to snatch a pawn, then swap
off all the pieces; suicide to drop
the basic principle behind the game.
To think that he was meant to be the host!
We were thirteen, your father forty-four.
Five years later I was told, by post,
that you, my friend, had hanged yourself. Your ghost
jolted my memory. Outplayed once more,
your father kicked the table to the floor.
It was published in CHESS Magazine in January. At my suggestion, I was given a year’s subscription instead of payment.
Chess has now elbowed poetry into the background. Until last month I hadn’t written anything for half a year. Then I wrote this. A friend of mine, Nigel Stuart, has added two more stanzas, which he has given me permission to post here:
Though they might seem distinct, as the white and the black,
xxxchiaroscuro best lights each endeavour –
while the whitest of knights treads a devious track,
xxxpawns transgendered as queens render pleasure,
and a sinuous line, in conception divine,
xxxoften issues in muddles of meaning,
and an image whose shine, past attempts to refine
xxxits expression, turns out overweening.
Though some poetry seems by illumining dreams
xxxto rival the light of the cinema,
neo-realist themes and their verismo gleams,
xxxshow illusory scenes, not dissimilar.
Every struggling art, when considered apart,
xxxseems a separate route to redemption,
yet one finds at its heart there’s inscribed from the start,
xxxfrom exposure – there’s never exemption.