28 Friday Dec 2012
Posted in Publications
Tags
Christian Meonia George, Dunderhead, Horror Vacui, Just Rain, Mike Burch, No Bloody Way!, On Esperance Bay, On the Quiet, Regret, Sören Jessen's Sand, The Hyper Texts
Eight of my “significant” poems have been spotlighted on The HyperTexts. Thanks, Mike!
The following links will lead you to recorded versions of these pieces: “Sören Jessen’s Sand”, “On the Quiet” (music by and performed by Christian Meonia George). Otherwise here.
11 Thursday Aug 2011
Tags
A Moonflower, Ann Bilde, Candelabrum, car crash, Lucky Charms, original versions, Oxford, posting schedule, Red Moon, Regret
I’m very much a revisionist, and although I do occasionally feel like I’m hacking at a stone that should be left, I soon get over that. Often I see it as a good way of warming up when I want to write something new and don’t have a clue what that will be. Sometimes I’m perhaps fooling myself, but then I do sometimes actually succeed in improving some old pieces. I have made significant amendments to several pieces many years after having abandoned them.
I choose to update some of my pieces so that when/if I recite them tomorrow, they will represent me where I am today in relation to those pieces, rather than where I was yesterday in relation to them. The new versions don’t mean the old ones were inadequate. But I do like to think that when I change something I’m improving it.
One of the very first sonnets I wrote was “Lucky Charms”. I wrote the first draft in Oxford on 23rd December 1985, the day after the events described at the outset of “Regret, and four days after a friend and I had been lucky to survive a wipe-out on the motorway unscathed. I sensed a guardian angel had saved me that day. As the ending of “Regret” records, I fell in love with someone in Italy. Her name is Ann Bilde. I went to Denmark with her, we got married, and in May we’ll be celebrating our silver wedding anniversary. Her birthday is on 19th December.
So this sonnet has meant a lot to me personally. It was first published under the title, “A Moonflower”, in my collection of poems from 1987 called Red Moon. This is how it looked then:
A Moonflower
The sun had folded into clouds swarming in the west,
I felt at peace and thought about the way that I would rest,
The waxing moon reminded me, her messenger by birth
That like a flower I was planted in the listening earth.
I wandered through the dusk without a single fear,
The wind brought different noises to my silver ear,
The future of a car, the sainthood of a brook,
I was a little thirsty, so I went to take a look.
The water was refreshing, and I felt very good,
I decided to enjoy the wonders of the wood,
The precious trees invited me with their smiling charms,
Exhilarated, I embraced them with my gracious arms.
Before I fell asleep, curled up beside a log,
I found a revelation in the calling of a dog.
Please excuse my very poor punctuation for a start.
I later rewrote it, smoothing out the metre and excising the worst poeticisms, and managed to get it published in Candelabrum in April 2003 looking like this:
Lucky Charms
The sun had been surrounded by a gang of clouds out west;
I felt serene and thought about the way that I would rest.
The moon appeared, invigorated by a day in bed;
I sensed I’d better find a place that I could lay my head.
The silence of the countryside was music to my ear;
I listened briefly to a blackbird singing loud and clear.
The roaring of a car nearby turned out to be a brook;
I noted I was thirsty and resolved to take a look.
The water was delicious, and the air was sweet and good;
I walked upstream and came upon the shelter of a wood.
The ground was buried under leaves, a million lucky charms;
I tumbled down and pulled them to me with my legs and arms.
The stars conspired to close my eyes, and there, beside a log,
I found myself enchanted by the calling of a dog.
Here’s a recording (a release, folks!):
05 Friday Aug 2011
