In 13 Ways of Making Poetry a Spiritual Practice, (a title borrowed from Wallace Stevens’ poem  Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird) Buddhist and poet Maitreyabandhu urges us to Cultivate Uselessness. I like the idea.

I for one spend too much of my time wondering about what I can achieve with my writing, about how it will be received and if it will be successful -is this poem, story, novel good enough to win a competition, publication – a contract?

Maitryabandhu  admits that  We probably need some success in order to carry on with the “stitching and unstitching” of serious writing  but warns of the dangers of success. The more success we experience the less it satisfies, and the more disappointed we feel by lack of success .

Not seeking success does not however mean that we don’t have to work hard, develop our imagination, read deeply, read well, be open to criticism and disappointment, all of which I am striving to do as I enter the world of poetry writing

I am also finding instinctively that life has become quieter more contemplative perhaps I’ve dropped beneath the racket of thought – the repetitive mental chatter, the worry and flurry – into direct, unmediated sensation. Then the richness of life, rather than the hubbub of thought, will find it’s way into your poems. I hope so – maybe that’s why I’ve given up on Twitter!

Read the whole Maitryabandhu piece here

From – Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

By Wallace Stevens

XIII

It was evening all afternoon.

It was snowing

And it was going to snow.

The blackbird sat

In the cedar-limbs.

Part of my plan for 2012 is to read more poetry. I want to write poetry but know that one of the first things I need to do is read more.

A collection I’ve been reading and returning to is Not Saying Goodbye at Gate 21 – Kathleen Jones publishedby Templar Poetry.

This is a collection that ranges across the geography of a poet’s life; that explores the push- pull of a deep attachment to place and a desire to escape.  No matter how far we travel with Kathleen Jones including into ‘the impossible distances of history,’ we come back to the Cumbria of her childhood – to the hitch and drag of the fell gate ‘strong enough to pull /a whole life down.’  The attachments are strong, often darkly ambivalent, the language is spare. There is so much to admire here from the moving The Laying Out of the Dead  which reminded me so acutely of my own mother’s death, to the understated Terremoto  from Camaiore in Italy where the poet lives for at least part of the year.

These poems spoke to me of my childhood, my attachment to place and my desire to escape- for me they do what the best poetry does: connect with us, touch us and give fresh and unique expression to both shared and new experience. Highly recommended.

Do take a look at Templar Poetry if only for their fabulous covers – and why not treat yourself while you’re there?

I blog once a month on the 24th at Authors Electric – so today I put up my Christmas Eve post – if you would like to read it there – here is the link

This is the post:

Any soldier in the trenches  in 1915 who happened to read a copy of The Times for 24th December might have seen Thomas Hardy’s poem  The Oxen. It was first published in this edition and printed alongside news of the devastating conflict that was ravaging Europe. It appeared alongside an advertisement for Bovril -which claimed to give strength to the men in the trenches!

When I was seventeen I was given this poem by my English teacher to read aloud at the Christmas Carol Service. I learned it by heart and every Christmas Eve without fail it comes back to me. I didn’t know, until recently, when and where it was first published, or that ‘in these years’ referred to the years of the Great War. I hadn’t fully grasped its context. But I instinctively felt its poignancy, its air of regret and I understood the folk traditions from which it came and which meant so much to Hardy. I loved its language too: the comfort of words like ‘combe’ which were a part of my West Country heritage. I understood the desire for something magical, something to believe in.

Now it seems as poignant to me as it did then at seventeen, perhaps even more so. After all we are still at war and the spiritual messages of Christmas are easily forgotten.

So I offer you this beautiful poem as a Christmas gift and I hope you come to remember and enjoy it as much as I do and I hope you have a wonderful – happy and peaceful – Christmas wherever you are and whatever you do. 

The Oxen

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
“Now they are all on their knees,”
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease.

“In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
Our childhood used to know,”
I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.

Thomas Hardy

AUGUST

cloth from Dehli

around the table

family

————

white bamboo on black frayed silk

dressing gown as old as my children

——————————–

A man of insight

is not easily persuaded

of cheap solutions

————————

looking for the northern lights

on the high wind blown hill

——————————————

three shooting stars tear

across my night vision

wishes for you

—————————————–

I used to think freedom meant

doing whatever you want ( N.Goldberg)

———————————————–

a man and a woman

meet at the beach hut

a novel begins  *

———————————————

summer’s fireweed stands

sentinel beside the railway track

* more of this later!

Recently I found myself captivated by the poet Linda France’s Book of Days – in which she set herself the challenge of writing a renga verse every day for twelve months – so much so that I have set myself an identical challenge. I began it on July 25^th.

Renga is a traditional form of collaborative verse dating from 10^th century Japan where poets would gather and write verses together, whilst drinking tea or saki – subjects were the natural world, love, the moon and all phenomena vulnerable to change. The first verse of 3 lines – the hokku is the origin of the haiku and is followed by a two line verse.

In renga each verse must have some connection with the preceding one but also depart from it, avoiding repeating a word or an idea. So the renga is carried forward, mirroring the flow of our lives, always changing, never still.

France says it is the – ‘authenticity and integrity’ that she ‘most appreciates about renga – the way it refuses to fix things into easy categories, how it resists personal ownership and control. It has ideas of its own.’

After only eight days I find I am fascinated by the way in which renga has such ideas of its own, how out of a simple two or three line verse inspired by the particular: one’s own world or daily life, emerges a greater truth that at times may sound and behave like an ancient proverb, that may contain a simple but unexpected universality.

When I began I found that when I tried to sleep that night my head swam with words  – hence

Silver scales fall from my eyes

renga fish in the net of night

And the next day -

The closed mill race

forces the flood waters

inside

Renga should of course be collaborative so please add your own 2 or 3 line renga – I would love to publish it for my 100th post which is coming up next!

Not quite my field or cows - unfortunately my camera is broken.

Last autumn I wrote a poem In The Field of Cows, about loss and the ‘disappearance’ of  the beautiful cows I’d watched all summer in the field opposite my house. Later, Jan, my sister-in-law, who is an artist, etched some of the words in glass.

Four days ago the cows came back! As beautiful and new as ever, and  as well as indulging my new found passion for crime fiction I am writing about them again – here is my poem in progress…

In The Field of Cows 2

You come back, surprise me

-velvet black, copper, grey-ghost

water stained stones-

show me the sky of

billowy cloud, trees turned

beech, salmon pink and lime

leap across lady’s smock

head nuzzle, tail flick you huddle

a troupe not yet separate you

swagger and play, remind me what it is

to jump the moon, seize the day

in praise of summers to come

oblivious to the wind tarnished

blossom yesterday blown