October 2011 ~ Helen Hagemann

Monday, October 31, 2011

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.