Poem 11 Shooting stars, the great abyss and Sheffield Mandolins with David Lochner

It's fascinating to see what insights people bring to your own poems. 

When I heard David's voice in the Arts Tent at Youth 2000 Festival,  saying hello, I knew I was in for a treat. 

The last time we met, had been a few years ago,  on a beach in Nice, looking at the sea with his sister Jenny.  But now we're chatting about the sky.  

The prayer tent at the Festival looks beautiful under the glorious harvest moon.  And after a night of prayer, there's a host of people up for some joyful Irish dancing, lead by Emmett Glynn and a violinist.  

Over the sound of the impromptu ceilidh, we're talking about poetry and David reminds me that he used to come to the Poetry Cafe in Covent Garden to see my Friday Night Poetry shows (with Sarah Larkin) when he was 15!!!  15???  Yes, he came with a school friend all the way from Ipswich.  (Now I'm feeling like Goodbye Mr Chips)

So, yes, he's more than happy to tell us what he thinks of the next poem in the book, which you can hear here.  (The Garden at La Villette - on the night we sat back in deck chairs, as the night fell and all the shooting stars came out to play)

I love his first reaction - 

'When you say

"The garden like a cradle hangs

Suspended in deep space", 

I really relate to that, because, if you look up at the sky for any length of time, when you look down again, the ground is the sky.  It's all changed!

The ground feels different, because you've put yourself up there in the cosmos. So looking up, you do "risk a fall into the great abyss".  

I'd never thought about the ground becoming the sky.  It's sounds a bit terrifying. 

Well yes, but it's exhilarating - the impression of the infinite majority of reality being 'out there' and us being this infinite minority. 

But doesn't that make you feel insignificant, like the character at the beginning of 'Rebel without a Cause' with  ... what's his name, James Dean, who is found trembling under his cinema seat in the planetarium? No doubt with a dose of existential anguish to add to his teen angst.

No, quite the opposite! Where's that bit about the galaxies merging... with Andromeda approaching our galaxy at a hundred miles a second - 

"Our Galaxy approaches hers at this tempestuous pace
Till noble Pegasus, the winged horse, dives in victory
Towards the sea-beast in a tide of stars.

One day our galaxies will wholly merge
And quieten every sword.
The drama of the heavens 
Tells the glory of the Lord."

That's the thing I feel - God's in charge of all that and the truly amazing thing is the fact that even being so small, we can comprehend it, at least in part. It tells us something about who we are, that we can do that. 

Yes, it's true. I wonder what the evolutionary imperative of that would be? If you read the 'New Scientist', they assume that everything has to have an evolutionary imperative, as though comprehending the majesty of the unimaginable vastness merely  helped you to survive.  But surely there's more to it than that.  At any rate I enjoyed combining all the scientific facts in the poem with the mystery and the myths.

And by the end we really have managed to

'Feel the earth

 Precipitous,

 Up end us

 Into Awe'

That's great.  So do the children in your Year 5 and 6 classes get to hear some poetry?

Well I always try to give them something meaty - a bit of TS Eliot - the Journey of the Magi.  I think they like things that are a bit more challenging.  

So what are you excited about when you go back to Sheffield? 

There's a new thing starting for young people, called Mission Hub.  There'll be a cinema and cafe, and chapel with 24 hour adoration.. it's going to be right next to the university and there'll be loads of opportunity for creativity.

I know you go on Thursday nights for Guitar and Mandolin sessions already.  But that's at the Cobden View.  

Oh yes, and did you know that we are always invited, each and every week, by a text that is an original poem by Steve, the organiser.  That is poetry in everyday life as encouragement and community building! Marvellous. 

And very hobbity. 

And that reminds me,  that I've got a performance in October that I must start inviting people to.  It's the St Michael's Arts Festival and my show is actually on National Poetry Day - October 4th - Poetry and Prosecco -  Please come, it was wonderful fun  last year and they've asked me back! There are loads of events over the 10 days and a festival ticket for every event costs only £50.  You can get individual tickets too though for each event. There's comedy, an art exhibition, a Macbeth workshop, Lemon Wedge Film club for kids, opera, talks, food..  go explore!   www.stmaf.org

It would be great to see you there, but I think you'll be among the guitars and mandolins in Sheff!  Cos it's a Thursday. 

Never mind, we'll raise a glass of Prosecco to the North and the Cobden View!  

Thanks so much David.  Have a fantastic term!

Sarah's book and accompanying audio book are now available on Amazon.

Poem 10 - Maria and baby Jemima reflect on Lost Words and The Container of Abandoned Minds

So here is Jemima, whose name reminds me of gingerbread and all things beautiful and Beatrix Potter. Her mum Maria assures me they ARE big fans of the enchanting Miss Potter and the family have just finished the whole 23 book series. Maria also homeschools Lani, Rupert and Hugo, whilst managing to run a health and wellness business on the side AND read poetry.

When I find her in the Cafe tent at Youth 2000 Summer Festival in Walsingham, she tells me she’s been enjoying ‘The Making of Mankind’ – poem 25. But today it’s poem 10 and she’s all up for commenting on The Container of Abandoned Minds, whilst the kids play and Jemima snoozes.

You can also hear the full poem here on Soundcloud - the whole track taken from the AudioBook

This is the one for the United Nations Rapporteur who came to a meeting at the House of Lords, to hear from various groups in Britain about whether freedom of conscience was alive and well in our land. My reponse was a poem inspired by a phrase by Paul Hoggett. You'll discover it in the poem..

‘There is a place
Where standardised thought
Will lead, if you care to go.
Why so few see where the path leads on
Is hard to say or know..

The road takes little effort
As it slopes and twists and winds.
But when you arrive, you’ll know the place:
The container of abandoned minds.

Ooh spooky… it’s like a void, sucking people in!

Indeed!


Its walls are sheer consensus,
Their surface entirely flat
They almost seem to absorb the light
They’re so utterly grey and matt.

And all the sounds are deadened
The many voices stilled

For the container of abandoned minds
Is shockingly, crushingly, filled..

Ooh you know what this is reminding me of. I can really see how this Container of Abandoned Minds is a danger for children too; when they aren’t encouraged to debate, when they aren't taught how to use logic and reason, when they are left with only their emotions.

Teenagers really need these tools too because they have what you might call a gift of questioning! They want to 'fight it out' and I want to embrace that by helping them to be able to dig into the deep questions with some really solid reasoning. And for this they need a wealth of language.

It's true, one of the dangers with political correctness, is that someone else has done the thinking for you. They've made the choice of what can be discussed and what can’t.

One thing we are going to do as a family, is use a beautiful Home Education programme called Mother of Divine Grace. https://modg.org/

Something lovely I saw the other day (and bought) was a book of paintings and poems for children called the Lost Words. Robert McFarlane and Jackie Morris have ‘told in gold’ the words from the natural world that were taken out of the Children’s Oxford Dictionary in 2013.

These words such as Acorn and Ivy, Goldfinch (and also Bishop!!) have been taken out, whilst phrases such as ‘cut and paste’ and ‘analogue’ have been put in. The Lost Words aims to summon back the vanishing words and the presence of the worlds that they evoke.

I was talking to a parent who was surprised to find their feisty and recalcitrant teen sitting peacefully, listening to my CD 'Lipstick is a Spiritual Experience'. But the fact is, that young people tend to love language and ideas that contain presence and promise, beauty and wit. The culture has too little of this for them to enjoy and we start to expect too little of them.

“No healing there
Through pain or joy
They are offered this instead;
That all the world become the same

And the living obey the dead.

There is a place
Where standardised though Will lead, if you care to go.
The container of abandoned minds.
Don’t say you didn’t’ know."


I was blessed that my parents continually challenged me to think and formulate opinions that I could articulate. And my mum read poetry to my sister and me from an early age. It looks as thought Maria's children are enjoying the same doses of delight and beauty. Maria tells me that she is committed also to sharing her health and wellness products because they are a great way of helping the family to keep up the homeschooling, whilst sharing products that she knows to be pure and beneficial. No containers of abandoned minds or toxins in her house!!

You can find her products here at Arbonne ...enjoy!

You can also hear the full poem here on Soundcloud - the whole track taken from the AudioBook


All 50 poems can be found here on Amazon, together with the book. You can enjoy reading and listening at the same time - Just like we used to do when we were listening to those 'Little Long Playing Records' from Disney. How we loved them! And we had to turn the page when Tinkerbell rang her little bells like this... Check out the nostalgia if you were young in 1970 ...

Poem 8 and 9 - A 7 year old Chelsea fan Muses on the universe and the use of images

I had the great pleasure of kicking a ball around in the park with a 7 year old friend of mine today;

Here's the evidence, because we think he's a bit too young to be online, but he wants to show you his football.

Now, I know he's great at reciting poetry, but I'm intrigued to see what he thinks of the next two poems in '50 Poems'.

We begin with 'The Universe Was Not at Home'; not by any stretch an easy poem to understand, but as soon as he's heard it, he responds at once.

I love that!

I like the expressions and the tempo and I think that if you do that for people who are feeling sad, it will make them happy.

On the negative side.. I think you need to change the title.

Oh, really? Any suggestions?

Something a bit more mysterious.. like "Where is the Universe? Knock Knock Knock".

Oh, interesting.

And I think that you need some props. So, when you go camping tomorrow, you can take a picture of the sky when there is no light disturbing the universe. And then that can be your backdrop.

And when the universe in the poem drops the pictures off, he can say - 'Here are the constellations - take good care of them'.

I love that idea.

Well perhaps the universe is God.

In the poem, though, the universe goes visiting.

Ah yes

So in the part where I look up and there's light on my face. Why is that?

I think that is God's face looking right down at you. You're looking into God's camera.

Really? Well I didn't fully understand that at first, when I wrote it. But it does actually remind me of something from the psalms.

I've heard of those.. you spell them P-S-A-L-M-S

Yes that's true. And one of them says 'In your Light we see light'

That's like 'In your Love we see love".

Oh. Let me think about that. I think you're right. That's a very illuminating thought.

So how about this second poem, "Wondering what I'm talking about". I'm afraid it doesn't rhyme.

Oh

(he looks very disappointed)

But there are images for you to interpret and there's a kind of music to the lines. You might call it a prose poem actually.

When he's heard "Wondering what I'm talking about - or Why your own poems are worth listening to" he says

Are you going to write this all down like a conversation; like looking into the past?

Yes, though I hadn't quite thought of it like that before.

I see. Well, I think this poem shows that there is a secret garden in everybody's heart.

And why do you think there is a bird in the poem, leading us to the rusted lock... why not a rhinoceros or a giraffe?

Well, because a bird is better than a rhinoceros for that kind of thing because it isn't harmful. And it flies.

That is an excellent response.
So, what do robins represent to you?

Biscuits.

Biscuits?
(his mum comes in)

I think he's hungry.

A child can always be relied upon to change the conversation.

You can find the audio book "50 Poems for my 50th
- A Beginner's Guide to Opening the World with Words - here.

Thank you to my delightful young Chelsea fan. May we have many more poetic conversations on which you shed your special light.

Poems 6 and 7 - An astrophysicist has the Last Word

"Sitting on indented marble cuboid in front of entrance…"



It's definitely a text from Dr Gareth. And indeed, there he is sitting at the entrance to the British Library. I normally catch up with him in Wales, but he's passing through London on the way to a new assignment and I remember to ask him about the difference between a cosmologist and an astrophysicist.

I only do individual galaxies. I can only handle 10 billion stars at a time…

Good to have cleared that up. But 10 billion - per galaxy?

Well let's get this into perspective. I'm about to lift 1 billion, billion, billion atoms into the air..

He takes on a serious expression and lifts the water bottle.

Dr Gareth I've just realised you are the ideal person to comment on Rimelda Urban Mystica, because there's a verse that goes

'She wondered, as she held her broom
What lay beyond life's temporal room.
In a quantum physicist's particle spin,
She'd ask 'Which universe am I in?'

He smiles as he listens to the poem and when we get to the end he says

I could just imagine her clutching her broomstick about to take off on a flight of fancy.

Yet she's intent on her mission to reach for the real.

Yes, it evoked those moments when I’m thinking about mathematical mysteries and I’m on the brink of seeing how it works… If I could just see the connection… I’d see what it was all about. You hope you're on the brink of a wonderful new insight, but there's this danger of it being a false pattern.

I think the stand out line is "She spent the morning wondering when
She'd find the reason for purposeless Zen'.

Which reminds me. Did you hear the one about the Dalai Lama who goes into a pizza shop and asks the man at the counter - Can you make me one with everything?'

That's actually quite funny.

Well this is the line that reminded me of it

'She prayed that though Buddhists say all is one
She could still worship God as second to none.'

You can't help thinking that she's not going to find what she's looking for quite yet.

So how about Felicity Fastrack?

A girl on top with a mind to match her
Fewer U turns than Margaret Thatcher.

She had it all and delivered it too
She was GQ IQ babe come true.

Well she's so certain, she's leaving me way behind. She and Rimelda are poles apart.. Or rather quadrants apart

.

Quadrants?

They are at a right angle from each other. You see, things that are poles apart are actually quite similar.

Really?

Well, you know, the weather in the Arctic and Antarctica... or New Zealand and England... Similar. In fact I'd never thought of that before.

but now you mention it, I think they are in fact a bit similar because they are both pursuing types of power that leave them on a road out of reality.

I think that the fact that we are not God is the great message of Christianity. I do not have the responsibility of running the universe and yet I’m called to be a member of His body… I’m called to be as close to God as it is possible for a creature to be without becoming God. And that will do for me.

Dr Gareth became a catholic priest 10 years ago and has a unique style of preaching, you can also read his thoughts on the New Age here..

Poems 4 and 5 - Sally loves Microwave Man and Microwave Man's woman

They say little creatures crawled out of the slime
And became human beings in a matter of time
So that that which once wallowed in primeval bogs
Now thrives in society’s civilised cogs.

Which cog you engage with, you choose if you can
And one I've encountered
Is Microwave Man.

For me this story of Microwave man is one of your best. It’s so accessible. And I can't help picturing some of my colleagues at the Stock Exchange where I used to work.


Poetry doesn’t have to rhyme but this does and it’s hilarious.

I've never seen a Lara Croft game but I know just what you mean.

As she springs divinely from chasm to pool
Microwave Man can adventure and drool
And the graphics are stunning and all in 3D
So who needs a social life, or Web TV?

Once Microwave Man asked if life had a goal
Now he's happy with Lara Croft's Dive Forward Roll;

So perfectly pleasing, so aesthetically whole
And you just press the arrow key, shift and control.

It does make me giggle. I just love the cleverness of the lyrics.

And it also makes me reflect how people can think they are making progress when in fact they are secretly longing for a much simpler life.


And I can't help thinking, as I know you so well, that the bit about well nuked food might have something to do with your own experience?

And he pierces the film of his plastic tray meal
And he microwaves full power
But he must have got distracted
Cos he leaves it in an hour.

And as he watches his well nuked food
In electric light revolve
He wonders
Cosmologically
What does it mean
Evolve?"

Sally has moved from the London Stock Exchange to being Vicar of St Margaret's in Edgware. She also has an MBA, plays Bass guitar and is married to Hammad Baily, who is now fast asleep, having just come back from Usbekistan where he's been playing guitar in a gig with Ariana Sayeed. It's a busy household.

So here's Hammad and Xena this evening.. and I forgot to tell you that it was Hammad that wrote all the music on the audio book and did lots of the editing in his studio here in Edgware. Thanks Hammad!

You can hear him here and enjoy exploring his wonderful music that is very much celebrated in Pakistan and around the world (espcecially in Edgware!)

I love this one


You can hear Microwave Man and Microwave Man's woman on Bandcamp as part of Lipstick is a Spiritual Experience, or buy the whole 50 poems on the Audio book from only £5.59 here.

Poem 3 Time Will Tell - with Joe and Roisin

So after a weekend off enjoying the Evangelium conference in the very school where Tolkien wrote some of the Lord of the Rings! We entered the black room to pay hommage. Apparently his son taught there for a while and so Tolkien and his wife came to visit their son..

But now to Joe and Roisin who were in my Bard school poetry workshop and I couldn't help asking them for their comments bcause they always seems to be beaming or laughing! This is what Joe had said about Lipstick is a Spiritual experience (I wanted to find out why men always seemed to like this one)

"It’s satire but there’s not a bitterness to it because we enjoy the thing itself… it’s just hilarious – Rouge Extreme… (is that Real? Yes) but we realise this is what capitalism tries to sell us but it’s still refreshing because I’m somehow enjoying the lipstick along with you. It’s ridiculous but funny too.

Now don’t think I’m a cheap laugh, but honestly there’s something about that.. "

So how about the poem 'Time Will Tell?',

Roisin is doing a Master of Fine Arts in comtemporary art curating and Joe is teaching English at the The Cedars School.

Roisin

I feel a great sense of space.. and it’s almost like you lay out the picnic blancket and you invite people to the feast,

Your'e allowing the people into that space of time and living it.
Each time has its everything in it.

Joe -

I had the image of the sea… because the tide keeps time… on the shore in and out… and so the sea is silence but it listens to us… in a pagan kind of way but pointing us to God. It made me think of Wordsworth talking about the sea "the mighty being is awake,
And doth with his eternal motion make a sound like thunder, everlastingly'

So that‘s the romanitic poet on the verge of divinising nature but

(now they’re talking together and I’m not sure who is saying what)

You get the sense that there’s something beyond all this joy and suffering. Something beyond the events around you,

Time won’t show you.. it’s silent.. at first.. You don’t see it, but somthing in you is responding to what’s there.

It’s holding the birds who sing.

There’s a hidden love."

Picture - The Black Room at The Oratory School, Reading where Tolkien wrote part of the Lord of the Rings


You can find the audio book here

Poem 2 - Lipstick is a Spiritual Experience and Joanna Bogle

It's almost midnight and I'm tapping on the glass - "How do I get out?" And there in the dark outside is a familiar face. It's Joanna Bogle! '"There's no key" she says.

Great.


Though the prospect of sleeping in a marble floored hall, surrounded by rather impressive Boards of School Captains since 1897 isn't what I'd planned, it does rather remind me of Dead Poets Society. Seize the Day!

But Joanna seems to know the building well and signals to me to run through to the other side. And so, a few deserted corridors later, I'm relieved to see her on the other side of a door that actually opens. I step out into the night and an opportunity to find out what she thinks of Poem 2.


Fortunately she thinks this is fun and amounts to an opportunity for a post midnight cup of tea with the cake she'd saved from dinner. So now we are in a common room of the Oratory School, Reading, and she's stirring her tea with a biro and having a look at Lipstick is a Spiritual Experience.

So she’s pondering

It’s very visual - I saw all the lipsticks.. I don’t use the stuff myself, but I think there’s something in there that’s rather fun and Catholic, because we really do believe that you should become what you are. And lipstick and also lovely clothes have been seen by the church as a Good Thing, because for example the fashion industry was based in once-catholic Paris. Millinery began in Milan. That's why it was called Millinery.

Well I never knew that. But I add that when I was writing it… I'd rather thought it was a satire on commodity fetishim,

But I think it’s more than that. It's an affirmation of enjoyment.

Though I don't love lipstick, I do love hairstyles. And today I rather lament that you're not even allowed to describe someone as beautiful. We’ve lost the pleasure of a charming compliment. There isn’t enough innocent absurdity around.

Well it seems that the commentary on exploitation is triumphed over by delight.

Exactly. Which is why the only thing I disagree with in the poem is throwing the old ones away!



Joanna Bogle blogs at http://joannabogle.blogspot.com/

You can hear the poem here on Bandcamp or dive straight into the Audio book which is here!

Sarah's Introduction and Poem 1 - Fifty Things to Say

So this is my plan - It's 50 days to National Poetry Day and the theme this year is 'Change'.

I'm fascinated by the question - what do poems change?

My poems changed me as I wrote them and sometimes I hear that they've alchemised something in someone else.

So, in order to celebrate launching my audio book of '50 Poems for my 50th - a beginner's guide to opening the world with words', I thought I might spend the next 50 days reading one poem a day (or a couple of poems every couple of days) to someone I meet and just seeing what they had to say!

Today was Day One and I found myself in the gorgeously eccentric Haminados Cafe in Notting Hill (Filled with pictures of Rabbis and Beatles Memorabilia - not to forget the delightful host Joseph, who is always happy to tell you that 'It's just come out of the oven!') meeting up with Theodora Songhai, a wonderful actress, writer and puppeteer, who is preparing to devise a puppetry piece in the Temperate House of Kew Gardens.

She claims that she doesn't really get on with poetry, but was all up for hearing the introduction to 50 poems and also the poem for Day 1.


You might like to have a listen first, here on Soundcloud

Theodora;

I like this bit -
Page 1 "So there it is in black and white, Poetry exists for the purposes of festivity, affirmation and the revelation of paradise. And all of this springs from contemplation"

I love that because I'd never thought about the fact that inspiration and all the things that are good and that art invokes in us, can come from a place not just of silence but of contemplation - sourced in a place from beyond ourselves. That's what I love about that.

It's otherworldly.

And the other part that struck me was when you talk about enchantment and how poetry can place you inside a song. For some reason that reminded me of The Never Ending Story... particularly I remember the scary wolf who terrified me as child. In fact I'm still scared now - black hair and green eyes - and when it's in the cave and opens its eyes the only thing you can see are its eyes. At any rate what I remember is how he said "I am the servant of the Nothing".
The Nothing is about the eradication of imagination and innocence.

...the destruction of the belief that good things can happen. But you're saying that the enchantment that poetry can create is actually a willingness to be open to imagination and beauty and delight. Enchantment is the antithesis of the nothing... it's a tool we have to fight the Nothing. And we do have to fight. You've reminded me that it really does require effort to eradicate the encroachment of the Nothing.

And that's what a poem can do.

Thank you Theodora!

So now the first poem in the collection on day one is 'I put an orchid in my room'

When you read it you just said - Wow, I want an orchid in my room.

But why?

Because I want to experience loveliness as power, power to bless and chase away disorder and chaos. I love that. Something just being itself in its fullness; that is the power. That surety of being happy in itself dispels the chaos. It's encouraging me that when I enter the place of being free to be myself, then I will also have the power to dispel all that tastes of cynicism... of the nothing. Yes!!!

Theodora Songhai blogs at Village Offspring.

Thank you Theodora for joining the first day of the Pilgrimmage to National Poetry Day with 50 Poems for my 50th - A Beginner's Guide to Opening the World with Words. It was a joy!