Poems 15 and 16 Tyrrell Hector Anthony, mountains and monsters

Tyrrell!  (Pronounced Tie Rell)

Welcome to England, fresh from Canada!

When you  messaged me from Canada, I think you'd just left your job on the railways in the Rocky mountains.  It sounded like you were looking for more than just a change of scene. After all, the scenery must be pretty amazing from those trains in the Rockies. 

Sure,  you can look out and see elk, moose and bears…It’s really beautiful.

So you’re not regretting being here in Victoria, London? 

Well, to be honest, I thought it was time for a real pilgrimage.  Like Bilbo Baggins, it was hard to leave, but I needed to do it. 

So it looks as though the poems that have come to you today are quite appropriate then?  'I will go out now' and 'I must leave you'

Let’s have a listen…  to the first one. 

So yes, these lines especially  

'and the straw we would have spun to gold, is straw still at the last, and breaks in my hand'  ..I really relate to that because there comes a time of recognising that you are truncated. Life might have been good, but it isn't  making you a better person.   I know I was repressing my desires for my dreams, just for the sake of just making a good social image, You can end up feeling like a zombie.. the living dead. 

Did you know that zombie walks are really popular now? And growing? A poet friend of mine Sarah Fordham  told me there’s a huge Zombie Walk gathering in Crouch End.. maybe it’s an image of a contemporary experience - lots of people staggering along in a group, but all alone.  There was an really perceptive talk by Symbolic World on that very topic – I think you’d be fascinated. 

The weekend after I heard the talk on youtube, I was on the pier in Brighton.  And there was a booth with a father with his little curly haired daughter (who was about 3 or 4) on his knee and they were both shooting zombies in the head with guns – with plenty of gore and sound effects.

 I couldn’t help photographing the outside of it, because I could hardly believe it!  Just another contemporary day at the seaside.  How did we get here?  I suppose it's an effort to make the break from the group. 

I read this book called 'My Name is Asher Lev'
He made that journey to express himself in art and he had to make the sacrifice of being rejected from his community, but a lot of people benefitted from it.
That’s what you experience in the second poem.. The Freedom after the pain of departure.

Let’s hear I must leave you - 

 This summer I heard a talk about Disturbed Discipleship.. It’s like Mary’s Fiat. Her Yes to God's proposal.  You have to be disturbed.  Only when you surrender everything... Only then are you running beneath the sky.

You've lost so much but you're cleaving in order to cleave to something better.  What’s the name of that word, that means both itself and its opposite? 

Auto-antonym (I had to look that up!)

Well 'cleave' is one of those!
So there’s this nostaligia, the yearning for the true homeland.  And geography awakens that. And you have to go out to find it, in order to return to a true home inside yourself.  Like also in your other poem about the sky – La Villette. (Poem 11) Looking up at Pegasus, you become part of his realm and suddenly you get a taste of the real.
I guess it’s sacramental.

It sounds very Tolkien too… and CS Lewis.  Let’s see that book you have there! Tolkien's sacramental vision, discerning the Holy in Middle Earth.  I'd love to read that.

So have a magnificent pilgrimage to Oxford and also to Wales and then hopefully back to London,  because I’m longing to hear this segment of the Frankenstien play you put on in New Brunswick - when you were at University.

Yes, I took the script from the  Nick Dear adaptation..

And your production too became a legend!  Everyone was talking about it back in Bruno Saskatchewan, when I was there this May teaching Bard School. 

Thank you.  It was a monster!  I'd love to do a monologue based on it, when I'm back from Wales.

There and back again.  Thanks Tyrrell and congratulations for making the leap. You're booked.  We'll let people know when that monologue gets an airing. 

‘I walk towards the mountain

Till I hear another cry

The waterfall calls distantly

And I run beneath the sky.'

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If you've enjoyed these this,  you might enjoy these too -

1) The Audio book, out now on Audible for only £5.59 or free if you join Audible.  The only reason it's so cheap is that they price according to length, which isn't too sensible for poetry. However it is the length of 3 albums - at 2 hours and 35 mins.  But it does mean that the book and audio together are very affordable, which was the point of making the audio, so that you could listen and then read if you wanted to remember or study one poem in particular.  You can also listen as you read;

2)  My Poetry and Prosecco night at the St Michael's Arts Festival in Stockwell - Invite friends and let's have a poetry party with plenty of discussions afterwards.  You can book here - Books will also be available to buy on the night. Places limited.
The Artistic Director of the Festival writes on the Eventbrite page -

An evening of seemlessly blended sparkle, profundity and joy, with performance poet and inspirational story-teller Sarah de Nordwall, back at the 2018 Festival by popular demand.

Sarah held us spellbound last year with her wisdom and wit, poetry and sheer delight at the universe, and StMaf18 is thrilled she has agreed to come back to charge our glasses for a second time...

Learn more about the Festival and book here!