Space for the reader to wander through

A pleasure shared gives the pleasure of time to ones soul

In my talk on In Search of Beauty I wanted to let the Phoenix Writers know about the poet Thomas A Clark. I played them Track 9 from the album I send you this Cadmium Red by John Berger and John Christie with music by Gavin Bryars. The audio interlude gave me time. The same sort of time that I had taken earlier in the week, on the shingle at Dungeness, where I saw Derek Jarman's Prospect Cottage with its sidewall poem; a landmark tracked down among the beautiful dereliction. The musical presentation set me thinking. I concluded that what Gavin Bryars had given to the readers/listeners was the time and space to wander through, time to sojourn among the writers/readers words. How then am I now to capture this atmospheric into words alone?

Saturn the imperceptible star sign

So there I am reading Mister Moore's Care of the Soul and loving his words about Saturn (the chapter before his words on the body's poetics of illness!). Sinking slowly into sleep I determined to follow his themes up in the morning. How disappointed then not to find Saturn among the signs of the zodiac in the plethora of internet horoscope websites. It's made a complete bugger of my poem, but boy have I discovered some new words, and encountered some wonderful but completely incontrovertible barmpots along the way...thank heaven for mankind, not that I believe in that celestial stuff of course.

Resolution Number 1 (Thanks to Spandau Ballet's Chant Number 1)

It is the last day of the holiday. It is the first day of a new tidier life. Today the study is to be attacked with venom, after I have been to the post office and taxed the car if I can find the documents that is. Already you say you can see me mid afternoon reading an old letter or an old poem; more likely to have abandoned the sorting regime for a numerical indexed computer base model; all my life soon to be on the mac air flash memory is the dream. But first a car, for without a car there is no work, and without work there is no disposable income (as the Americans say) to buy the aforesaid computer.

Sound of Music

Insecurity and insincerity stand side by side at the gatepost
The CD player's drawer will not open
Another nail in the mid life, late life, riseable crisis coffin
It doesn't amount to much does it
The result of a technical fault, combined with low blood sugar

Does anyone really believe or are they just words, for how long should the endurance be measured to satisfy the title of believer, thus to be endowed with the moniker of an altogether satisfactory chap
Not at all to my satisfaction, no news yet from the car insurance
A dull wet mist to look out on
Yet the beat from Jim Moray might beat me back to life, as might reading Alexandra Harris's book Romantic Moderns

A longer poem (or not)

It is a time of year when a working man such as myself finds the luxury of a few hours in which to play. This year I also had the unexpected surprise of youtube advising me that I was now privileged to be able to upload videos lasting longer than 15 minutes in length. The result is a recording of poetry written earlier in the year whilst I was working on secondment in Devon, returning home to Lincolnshire only at weekends. I specifically didn't title any of the poems at the time of writing with the intention that they would be at some time in the future be connected together. It is not a seamless integration but I hope it does move some way towards that longer poem that my tutor Mahendra Solanki said I ought to try and write.