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!