2011 ~ Helen Hagemann

Friday, December 23, 2011

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all my friends, followers, readers, sneak peekers! More poetry to arrive in 2012. I am currently working on an e-book for you to read about my sojourn & writer's residency in Ireland (produced by ISSUU). The e-book will contain poetry, photography and art. Stay tuned!

Recently we found a stray kitten (only 5 weeks old) and the only group who would take it was the Cat Haven. I hope little Smokey is happy in her new home. You can donate here http://www.cathaven.com.au/donate/

Here are my two scallywags!

Poem for the Day - My Tao Name

My Tao Name

What do you think of my name, Joyous Lake,

I asked my daughter over the phone,

when I had finished deleting

another sex site on my Twitter account.

A loud burst of laughter followed. It

descended down the line, over the waterfowl

paddling the lilies and into the rivers beyond.

Further still from the poems I had created with the
Chinese I-Ching, an ancient Taoist symbol. The Lake

regardless of change can achieve tranquility in

disturbance, Chinese scholars say. Why can't

"Bliss" and "Jude in the Mood" tell this apart

from a whorehouse of sexual arousal. Nothing

surprises me in this virtual world, these ladies

imagining 'Joyous Lake' as a red light district.

Might they compare the deeper soft petals of silk,

black-stringed corset to a lotus flower on a lake,

magpies in taught suspendered trees, caroling.

Poem for the Day - Fireworks

Fireworks

They slumber in their corners,

In soft light, till the wind lifts

Till a first spark propels them away.

Into the new century or year

They rise half blown, exploding sombreros,

Wide-brimmed hats, ribbons of colour.

Fireworks, caught in the moment,

Pulled into voluminous splays

Of fire, handwriting the night.

Adorned by the moon, and the soft

Hands of stars their memory

Drifts onto children’s faces their small

Fingers languidly pointing

To the sky.

Poem for the Day - Repainting the Scream

Repainting the Scream

How pretty fine it is to be born

under a blue sky.

To watch garden roses unfolding

their 'double delight'. The ones

crimping out their pink skirts,

giggling in the wind ─

their cream undies showing.

How terrible, then, an expression on a face,

standing on a bridge, swirl of dark water beneath,

a red sky full of pain. And so many

steadfast hours going into the work

of a silent, yet unsettling scream.

Nothing about Edvard Munch’s scene

will ever change. Yet, I want to repaint

that unhappy face. Swirl his body around,

zero in with just a tiddly-wink of smile.

The bridge gone, water gone, blue sky

now shouldering disheveled dobs of cloud.

I want the man to see exquisite

lady beetles burrowing into double delights.

I want his eyes looking out on this urban

garden where rough beds thirst and the

stocky butcherbird on the tippy

buoyancy of a branch, sings.

The Attitude of Cups, MPU Anthology - Out now!

This is the front cover of the latest anthology from the Melbourne Poets Union of poetry about tea, wine & coffee (however, I'm still waiting for the book to be listed in bookstores for real cover). Nevertheless it's a beautifully presented work by many well known Melbourne poets, and I'm proud to have a poem in there called "Left Over Wine". Here's part of the poem only, because the anthology would make a great Christmas present.
Contact MPU for details.

Left Over Wine

   it's fragile
and rehearsed in this mind cask
home pleasures are like the sentiment
of crisp, summer wine

it mouths get help!
so you dive unexpectedly
into the freezing brook
through wooded trees
          perfectly still
only you've had more wine than usual
and distortion wins

the grass is intense
and there's plenty of green
it's like having a bottle
          you've saved all these years

blackberries hedge the railway bridge
          mulberries give a whole new meaning
          to bottled jam
          the purple avenger stays before tea
you say 'no' to this dream in your head
it's a letting down of home-field
the school team
you approach fewer each year

you let the grader scrape the voices in the glade
swing the river rope you missed
          hold your breath longer under water

you can't remember how many silkworms you kept
or when the blackberries disappeared
          but the wine tastes sweeter than it used to

the old neighbourhood has disappeared in brick
the weathercock is a stable dish
and backyard pickets no longer talk

          you turn over, wake in a different world

Saturday Poetry Workshops at the Grove (Cottesloe) for 2012

Saturday Poetry Workshops were successful at the Grove Library in 2011 and OOTA will again offer this after-hours course in 2012. Tutor, yours truly, Helen Hagemann.

It will consist of fortnightly Saturday Poetry Workshops for casual participants. Each Workshop will introduce contemporary poetry for those poets wanting to write contemporary poetry.

Participation in the Workshops will cover the study of poems, discussion and several writing exercises. In a recent survey the consensus was that most writers wanted to continue with the same 2011 format, with a minor introduction of the classics and traditional poetry and its forms. Poets wishing to attend can view the times and dates on the OOTA blog (Out of the Asylum Writers Group) and also Writing at the Centre blog. Classes are earmarked to start in 2012 on Saturday 4th February. 1.30pm-3.30pm.

The Grove Library now has a coffee shop and we will continue to incorporate this social side of our poetry group after class.

OOTA Click here for more information
Writing at the Centre Classes

My Irish Pics, Annaghmakerrig & Dublin

Poem for the Day - Her Blue Dress (artwork by Janice Mason Steeves, Canada)

Her Blue Dress

for Janice

You will want to know

the season

how a gown can slip itself over nose and cheek

and be visible from art

how Emily Dickinson stood by a window

pressing her pink hips

through a passage of time

lifting a blue taffeta dress

over her shoulders

to reach

cool, upturned toes

where poems lay like stepping stones

on the hardwood floor.

The long blue dress

was too big for this slip

of a girl

but she proceeded down the hall

where a mirror

motioned her to look

at the poet she would become.

I was instantly drawn to Janice's artwork at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Annaghmakerrig, Ireland where we met and were housed in rather large cottages. Her series included separate paintings joined as one. I have used one panel only from her work titled Thoughts of Stones to represent a mirror and a blue dress. I saw Emily Dickinson's blue dress inside the painting (and, I guess, I was also inspired after reading Billy Collins' poem Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes

So there we were ( including Rebecca Crowell from Wisconsin- another fine artist!) each in our separate units, inspiring each other, and both encouraging me to visit the Megalithic art at Loughcrew. I have many more poems to come! Janice's Thoughts of Stones and her full art work can be viewed at Janice Mason Steeves

Cartoon for the Day - I Love this Irish One!

Three Poems in Eureka Street!

Three poems published today in Eureka Street. Must be the luck of Ireland still on my shoulders. Thank you Mr. Tyrone Guthrie for bequeathing your house to artists. What a wonderful place it was, the people more so. I now have lots of Irish friends and others too, from all over the world! The Tyrone Guthrie Centre
You can read the poems at Eureka Street
Poems are also read by broadcaster Peter Thomas with the gorgeous radio voice.

Helen is Back from the Land of the Leprechauns!

The Return of Saturday Poetry & A Possible Hands-Up Count
This is a hands-up count to those of you who are interested in attending Term 1 of the fortnightly Saturday Poetry class at the Grove Library in 2012. The library is once again very supportive of OOTA and is requesting a confirmation from me regarding the booking. (Apparently the Flax room is in high demand for 2012!). It would be great to secure our original space – that lovely quiet room with the plush-red chairs!
Once again this class is "drop-in-style, no booking required". Saturday Poetry is suitable for community writers/ OOTA regulars, part-timers and casual attendees. So you can go off on holidays when you choose and we will still be there when you get back!

• Dates: 4th February to 7th July, 2012 (Saturdays & fortnightly thereafter) TBC

• Time: 1.30pm to 3.30 pm.

• Where: The Grove Library, 1 Leake Street, Peppermint Grove.

• Cost: $15 OOTA Members $20 Non-OOTA members.

• Class numbers required: minimum 6 – maximum 10

So here are the questions as a sort of poll to gauge your interest about the class. Please feel free to answer all of the questions or as little as you want.

• Does the time suit you? Yes / No
• Are you happy with the cost? Yes / No
• Do you wish to mainly workshop contemporary poetry? ⁯ Yes / No
• Would you like Readings or Workshopping each other’s poems introduced? Yes / No
• What about more of the Classics, Traditional Poets, Traditional Forms? Yes / No
• Other – please feel free to add further comments

You can add your answers in the comments section below or alternatively for privacy & confidentiality you can email me at hagemann.helen@gmail.com

Many thanks for taking the time,
Helen Hagemann

Poem for the Day - Bull's-Eye (revised at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Ireland)

Bull’s-eye

The whole house turned wild
took a deep breath
with the noise of it
like snapped wood

It was before the dartboard
before father fixed a flywire door
before anyone thought
of a startled death

My young brother
too sick of dying
from archaic flow of arrows
from Robin Hood’s deathly yowl
from behind the staghorn wall
where a graceful thrust of sword
pinched him to the floor

took
the sharpest tool from the shed
and with a garrulous burst from the woods
cried ─ ‘Bull’s eye, you're dead!’

Missing the older brother by an inch
the knife split the wood
writing the veranda door
back to a Celtic myth

My young brother vanished
for most of the week

My older brother
sucked awe through his teeth
gauged the battle scar

This was what he wanted
to stand
as one peels back armour
in pride of his life
saved

Poem for the Day - Camping (revised at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Newbliss, Ireland)

Camping

We pack after Christmas,
a band of pilgrims heading out
on the open road.

This is the best time of year when nights
are full of stars and clouds have slung
their guy-ropes across another town.

Cruising Walpole, trees cast their long shadows
like mesh across insects and streams. We explore
pioneer camps, axe handles in old markings,
phantom footprints of an agreeable time.

We have the night sky all to ourselves. It warms
us like saplings around the glow of fire sparks.
We join the moon couched in tangerine, all
asleep under the heavens and all tucked in.

Now, this is something different. The children’s
grown-up diction makes bittersweet an absent
father, a Ted Hughes. And echoing Plath’s words,

The man was a lion and had the voice like the thunder of God.

But none of this can be wasted. It’s part of time, the memory
of young children fishing, coursing mountain walks, spider
webs that hung their sticky tremble on narrow paths.

Our surfcat leaving the shore, the dog’s abandoned bark
filling the bay, his black body slapping forward in a confusion
of wind and wave, as we sailed further away.

Poem for the Day - Kewpie Doll (revised at Annaghmakerrig, Ireland)

Kewpie Doll

            And nothing that moves on land or sea
           Will seem so beautiful to me – Equestrienne, Rachel Field

Little doll, carried home from carnivalé,
rustles her Giselle skirt in the wind.
She is as old as Ray Lawler's
Summer of the 17th Doll.

Her faded lipstick pouts an "O" as the mouths of girls,
words forming seduction in their heads.
She has lost her wand, her diamond ring
but not her good luck charm.

At the windowpane she raises her suppliant wings
and reaching for the stars
taps her ballet shoes against glass.
Fairy wings dispersing dust, as if she is back there

circling the Ringmaster’s voice
body upside down, pointing toes in the air
         - a girl in pink on a milk-white horse
           cantering over a sawdust course.

I just love the names of these northern Irish towns. e.g Cootehill, Clones, Rockcorry. I'm in thick pastoral country, a rich green canopy of trees, cows and emerald fields. The roads are like winding narrow pathways. Suddenly you come into a town, like a time-warp, Irish architecture as solid as its stonework frontage. Immemorial, its land and its culture dating back to the Late Stone Age. No big shopping complexes here, just traditional shop fronts, with pubs along the street, just a few paces with your feet and you have a bar, then another bar, and a bar & grocery shop!

Video poem for the Day - Wild in the Dry Grass

Wild in the Dry Grass by Helen Hagemann from H2 Design on Vimeo.

This poem also runs at the end of the video (best viewed small)

Wild in the Dry Grass

in wide brim hats

they rise from the

crest of earth

meet discreetly

cousins in white coats

like lovers

man & woman
the soil, a container
to look briefly into

as if they had eyes

as if they had lips

to share under umbrella or table

before

the blue heat of day
curls them into the soft crest

from which they came
---

Music: The Queen by Taylor Hayward. Listen to Hayward's piano renditions
@ http://taylorhayward.org/

This is one of many and new collaborations of photography, poetry and music, self-produced. Pics downloaded firstly from a Sony Cybershot HX9V digital point & shoot, then uploaded to Windows Movie Maker, and finally transferred toVimeo - early days!

Melbourne Poets Union 'The Attitude of Cups' launch at Collected Works

Melbourne Poets Union's anthology The Attitude of Cups (about tea, wine & coffee) will be launched at Collected Works on Saturday, 15th November. Left Over Wine is a poem first published by Walter Ruhlmann in English/French @ mgversion2>datura and will be in the publication. I'm absolutely pleased to be in the book with such notable poets as: Ron Pretty, Jennifer Harrison, Kevin Brophy, Alex Skovron, Mike Ladd, Ivy Alvarez, Peter Bakowski, Ross Donlon & two other WA poets Rachael Petridis & Frances Macaulay Forde. Carmel Macdonald Grahame (my old ECU tutor) is in the book & hopefully will be at the launch, so I can say hello. All this is worth a trip to Melbourne & to visit my daughter!

Poem for the Day - On Entering the Strands of Trees

On Entering the Strands of Trees from evangelyne on Vimeo.

On Entering the Strands of Trees

You walk towards a landscaped field
which raises your heart level. You leave

behind bad news, broken geraniums.
The park is freshly mown and the winter

so green it's no longer a rogue patch
of kindling and leaves, February heat,

and you’re avoiding the mobile phone
while listening to Natalie Merchant.

The grass trees are damsons twitching
amongst the strands of trees and there

is order in the urban vortex, a magpie and
willy wagtail morphing their visual song.

The park opens a pathway to an artist's future,
newfound aesthetics in Cedar, Olive Green

and May. A mimesis. The scene rises slowly
into itself, methodically in Derwent tips.

French and Gunmetal change the symmetry of
a blank page. The bush, a drug of infinite

detail, permeates a calm of egg and bacon plant,
purple wisteria, a photosynthesis of bark.

You scrape the page, and almost hearing the
struggle, the shade reaches out like a hand.

Music by Taylor Hayward, http://www.taylorhayward.org
PS: I've removed the video clip, but still practicing!

Heading to Annaghmakerrig too in September!

Anuna : Whispers of Paradise from Anuna on Vimeo.

Michael McGlynn produced this video of his time at The Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Annaghmakerrig, Newbliss, Ireland. I'm hoping to film the same lake, grounds & also the house soon in September. Magic! You can find out about Michael on his website.

Poem for the Day - Odd Blocks by Kay Ryan

Odd Blocks
by Kay Ryan

Every Swiss-village
calendar instructs
as to how stone
gathers the landscape
around it, how
glacier-scattered
thousand-ton
monuments to
randomness become
fixed points in
finding home.
Order is always
starting over.
And why not
also in the self,
the odd blocks,
all lost and left,
become first facts
toward which later
a little town
looks back?

From "The Best of It" by Kay Ryan. A good poet to read for her quirkiness, turns of phrase and that have you thinking 'why can't I do that?'

Poem for the Day - First Burn by Tracy Ryan

First Burn
by Tracy Ryan

All day she has pitched dry grass, Hardyesque,
perched on the stack, helping to raze the block
in a race against shire deadlines: fire risk.

Only her colours are wrong — curls a stark
hedge in English autumn, young fragile skin
dead-of-winter white. But she will work

to feel she's useful, wanting to fit in,
all my cautions thrown to the easterly,
hot from the desert. I've done all I can —

this is the point, the moment beyond me
for which we've struggled, locked like Gabriel
and Jacob, though the outcome may not be

a blessing. She is tall and capable,
strong on the outside — surely that's enough.
To look at her now no one else could tell

what tinder, what touchwood she was made of.
By evening there appears a subtle glow
upon her shoulders, imprinted as if

someone had held her fast; by morning so
reddened and furious she is aflame
with reproaches, and cries: You made me go

to England and then you made me come home.
Non-sequitur, she knows, but all the same
I am the mother, I must wear the blame.

Currently reading Scar Revision and The Argument by Tracy Ryan. A great poet, highly understated and overshadowed. Her poetry is rhapsodic according to Geoff Page, but it's more - concise, succinct, accessible, minimalist, enough intertextuality without the whole academy. Poetry that engages the reader with form and feeling, and interesting subjects as well to simply enjoy. Precisely what poetry is meant to do! Check out Fremantle Press

Poem for the Day - Some Ordinary Flower

Some Ordinary Flower

If the body could float,
of course you might ride motionless
on the breeze,
skydive aerial arms slowly
down this ravine
feel the fuzzled damp
of foam
lightly touch rock
some ordinary flower

Clip of the Day - A Wild Experience

Poem for the Day - Between Wheat Fields : a cinquain

Between wheat fields

river,
rich, belly-up,
dunks a wild duck at noon,
and tree shadows dissipate the
dive ring

Poem for the Day - A Perfect Perch : a cinquain

A Perfect Perch

July

with faint, bush sounds

like leaves crisping below,

a heron sits in winter's sun

seduced.

Two Poems published in French/English in mg2_68: Indian Ocean Voices

Just published by mgversion2 at ISSUU, Calaméo and Lulu.com. You can purchase mgv2_68: Indian Ocean Voices @ LULU
There are photographs and an article on Western Australia by moi. Page 103.
Here's the beginnings of "Paperbark Owl & No-Ghost Mountain" in French - ooh la la, mais oui, merci beaucoup to Walter Ruhlmann.

La chouette du paperbark - Paperbark Owl

Ta vision n'est qu'un ciel du soir cramoisi
après une journée de sommeil dans le creux d'un banksia des marais
Paisible obserateur sur fond de lune,
tu tournes la tête: un cadran cyclopéen.

----
Pas une montagne fantôme - No-Ghost Mountain

Blackwall, tu ne's plus un fantôme
mais un souvenir vert de jeunesse.
Montagne rusée! Quelle surprise.
Tu t'es cachée des promoteurs,
une seule route où des pneus brûlent passe à ta base.

Par écrit: poetry of the feminine - e-book by Helen Hagemann

Open publication - Free publishing - More from Evangelyne

Latest Westerly Journal 56.1 out now!

This issue is officially announced on Westerly's website. The cover is impressive - once again - so is the list of contributors. I find myself published alongside so many "ladies", poets I know, have met or been on poetry webs with. Congrats to Annamaria, Caitlin, Renee and Janet! Check out the latest journal here...

Poem for the Day - from the Mawson Poems

The Aurora

A Summer Visit to Caroline Cove
December 1911

Caroline Cove, and away from the strong westerly’s, the Aurora
anchored its length and breadth in a plateau-like interior. In a channel
no more than eighty yards wide, Captain Davis knew what to focus on.
He was a man who knew the reefs from earlier days. Although
anchorage quickly changes identity, we were circumspect, eager to
rendezvous with what we’d heard. We rowed towards the entrance,
leaving the ship’s masts, sails drawn, skeletal. The landscape painted
us in, thick tussock-grass, steep hillsides, rocky shores and a crowded
sunlight swirling with sea-birds. The land was a treasure trove of
primitive nature, rookeries of eggs, nests of giant petrels and
thousands of penguins. In mild weather we were a band of schoolboys
on excursion. Royal penguins called to us as slaves, they
pecked our legs, chattered at the highest pitch, and as if we were
marched to court, we followed their whirring flippers, their crested
eyebrows pointing us south. Massed in uniforms of long golden
feathers they filed into rank, lead us away in haste, not by
danger from waves, but with their own desire not to swim.

Clip of the Day: Russian Newsreader in Fits of Laughter

Acknowledgement: A big thank you to Carol Novak of Madhatter's Review http://www.madhattersreview.com/
http://carolnovack.blogspot.com/

Australian Poetry Library

Australian Poetry Library
A great resource for poets, students, teachers. Needs filling in some.
http://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/ Poetry Library
Acknowledgement: Thanks to Andrew Burke at High Spirits

Helen Hagemann's new e-book "The Joyous Lake"

Open publication - Free publishing at ISSUU - More Australian

You can view my new e-book at
http://members.iinet.net.au/~helen.hagemann

and also at

http://issuu.com/evangelyne/docs/par_ecrit/

Poem for the Day - Good Wine is a Familiar Creature

Good Wine is a Familiar Creature

When the sun goes down we meet

for an evening meal.

We bring three bottles of wine, one champagne

their depth soon to be released absolutely

enjoyed on the tongue

Unsure of which

succulent dish arrives first,

we pop the champagne, froth in the glass

bringing us back to life.

Curried chicken with rice has a status of its own

strikingly familiar

with the one at home.

The waitress brings the pork, then the fish. Something

spills on the table as minute as a bead.

It rolls under the carousel

and is gone.

White wine is the fruity kick of glass.

Three of us are very drunk.

The fourth, who drives us home, who doesn’t drink,

enjoys the evening just the same

and marbles

the glazed eye of a fish

through the wet space

of the coffee table

spilled with roiled droplets…

Poem for the Day - a haiku

at the Perth airport
a comfortable-trouser family
a row of tracky dacks

Acknowledgements to Joanna Preston for her prompt on "comfortable trousers".
http://jopre.wordpress.com/

Happy Mother's Day to all those mothers in control!

Poem for the Day - The Ship inside the Cavern

A glimpse of the Aurora
from within the cavern in the wall of the shelf-ice
of the Mertz Glacier Tongue,
Commonwealth Bay, Adelie Land,
Australasian Antarctic Expedition,
December 1913. Photo by Frank Hurley.

The Ship inside the Cavern

The Aurora is caught
in a clamped iced year,
an amphitheatre of walls,
a large cave that puddles
each time winter leaves.
The great opening of ice
looks out as if the ship
has been emptied into the sea.
A chiaroscuro of light and dark
shadows and dims the bridge,
the sail-less masts, the hull
buoyant above the water-line.
Accompanied by great clumps
of ice there is a scent of brine,
damp boots in circuitry
from anchorage to sled.
Beyond, distance looms like shallow
breath. Mawson and Hurley
catching up with the shuffle
of Adélie penguins.

Poetic Graphic for the Day

Poem for the Day - Penguins in Frost

Penguins in Frost

Ice cased Adelie penguins
after a blizzard at Cape Denison
photo by Frank Hurley,
National Library of Australia.

White glossed, unbearably chilled
these penguins are piqued in glare

nothing moves except shadows
the music of the ice as it drips on

fur and face. The north wind
sings, unbuttons their coats.

Their statuesque flippers defrost
as water leaks from their stance.

These pensive birds are used to the
frost, snow, the sudden flood

of blizzards. Look! flakes shimmy
and the buried one is no longer

a totem pole and moves ahead
from a stiff wall of ice.

Poem for the Day - Bon Voyage

Bon Voyage

The day we buried grandma
the day of five funerals

a day when fun hid itself
behind the trees

with the bees

yes, that day of dark cloud,
mounds and rounds

of soft grey earth
I wanted to say to the lowering,

to the box in the ground
to the white lilies going down

Where Gran? Where to now?

Poetic Graphic for the Day

Poem for the Day - The Green Wall

The Green Wall

From my window
I see a green wall.
A quiet space with only the sounds
of shoes passing by.
In Sendai, one thousand two hundred
people have lost their shoes.
They float by windows
like tiny boats sailing
on a splintered sea.

In the time I've been visiting
this grove
I've never noticed
the green wall
never known the faces
of the shoes
passing by.

I've never known so many people
losing their shoes
in one day's
drowning holocaust.

So many taken in a quake of 8.9

Poem for the Day - Sand Dunes

Sand Dunes

Close to the ocean
lying on a slope
we hugged towels into sand.
At the back, in the holiday house we rented,
my mother distributed fairy bread.
A tiny pebbled meal.
On the beach, we ran green
with salt and spray.
Half way up the dunes
under a sackful of clouds
we bombed our candied mouths
into the dune’s caress. Three kids stomping
to the tune of the grand old Duke of York
marched to the top of the hill.
We were neither up, nor down. Myself, and my
brother aged nine, his arm pulling the day
from my legs; pushed me forward to tumble
like Spinifex. I rolled with the custom,
down into the loft of a thousand grains,
sand in my hair and teeth.
My cousin stayed up there,
crumpling her skin into laughter.
Until she too was pushed, headlong
into the bug-eyed stare
of olive lovers.
We ran home,
gritty with shell-flint,
our bright grins, ready to spill.

Poetic Graphic for the Day - Poetry Slam

Poem for the Day - The Monroes

The Monroes

Back in the 50s I grew up
with the Monroes.
There were so many children
in the family you lost count.

I remember Billy, the eldest,
Bobby, Jane and Susy, then there were
two sets of twins. Later, more

babies, a boy, a girl, another girl
as in Cheaper by the Dozen.
Most of all, I remember Rex,
and their bare feet swinging

on the front gate. How different
they were in glamour to the buxom
lady in Some Like it Hot.

They didn't own shoes. During summer
their dresses holed, and their denim
overalls frayed and fringed
like water over sea anemones.

They hardly said a word. They didn't
laugh, or smile, or cry, but performed
tricks for us kids and the neighbours.

After several handstands, bodies piled
high like a pyramid they gobbled fairy
bread, or our grandmother's hot scones
bubbly hot from the oven.

Next, it was Rex who called for their
Saturday lunch. Back on all fours
and with a cue from the boys,

the dog would howl the rising octaves
of a Tarzan call. It was more a wild
jungle call, like the big man
pounding his chest amongst the vines,

and more memorable than Marilyn's
rippled skirt on a vent. We criticized
those scrawny, unkempt kids and never
did see the poverty above the laughter.

Ways to the Metaphor

Back in 2010, I conducted a workshop called "Ways to the Metaphor". I used a model by Patrick Lane, a Canadian Poet, (partner to Lorna Crozier).

The Metaphor Model by Patrick Lane

You want you to compare each member of your family. If you have five brothers and sisters of course that is too many, but make a choice & stick to your smaller family of mother, father and at least two siblings. eg.

My oldest brother is a wasp, cleaning his body on a bulrush above the pond’s still water. He is almost ready to take flight.

My sister is a small white stone in the clay pot by the kitchen fire. She is so still only the dark can find her.

My youngest brother is the first leaf on the wisteria vine in spring. Already he is thinking of winter the yellow he will become before he falls.

My father is the window box in winter. Everything is waiting for the first flowers to bloom in his wide hands, but where are the seeds, where are the spring rains?

Eventually you will have a poem, especially when you answer, in lines, what they think of you! Finally you write your own personal reply.

More to come...

Metaphors!

Poem for the Day - One Size Fits All

One Size Fits All

You know when you bring
your garment home
it isn't going to fit.
It fits your youngest daughter
of which you have one.
You take it back to the store.
Ask for a blouse, extra large.
They have one, in grey.
You want to write to China.
Tell them your measurements,
that you have never bathed
in the Yangtze, worked in
the paddy fields or
owned a rickshaw.