It’s back! The Sunday Poem I mean. I’m sure there was a bleak hole in your sunday last week when I didn’t post a sunday poem up – for only the second time ever since I started (I think)
I got back from Fermoy Poetry Festival (www.fermoypoetryfestival.com) very late on Wednesday. So most of Thursday was a write off – I got up, went and picked up a pile of books that I’d ordered that arrived while I was away (felt slightly guilty at picking large pile up – it always seems worse when they all arrive together). One of the books was ‘Edgelands’ by Michael Symmons Roberts and Paul Farley. I’m reading this as part of one of the tasks I’m doing for my Writing School course and really enjoying it. It’s beautifully written, as you would expect from two poets, and I like how it’s grouped into sections of the various things you find in the ‘Edgelands’. So far I’ve read a section on ‘Cars’, ‘Paths’ and ‘Dens’ and I’m just about to start the next section which is about ‘Containers’. I’m aware that maybe those headings don’t sound particularly exciting, but they really are interesting and well written.
The two authors went looking for dens built by children – I remember building a den! They report “even though our forays into fields and waste ground were hardly scientific and exhaustive, we didn’t once find anything we could call an active den. Still, it’s possibly all still going on, somewhere out of sight of prying adult eyes…”
After I went and picked my books up, I then went up to Calderdale Bridge to pick the dogs up from the dogsitters. I am pleased to report that they have behaved very well and have not disgraced themselves. Lola was very pleased to see me, but Miles looked at me with disdain, as if to say ‘Oh. You again. You remembered we were here. How kind.’
Whilst I was away in Ireland, I wrote my first poem in quite a while so Friday was spent typing that up ready for Brewery Poets, a poetry critiquing group that meet at the Brewery in Kendal on the second Friday of each month. We had a really lovely night – only a small group this month of seven but it meant there was more time to look at people’s work. I’m quite pleased with my poem but I think I’m going to let it settle in my folder for a while now.
On Saturday I had another meeting at the Theatre By The Lake to talk about the play ‘Cartographers’ which I’m writing part of alongside Ian Hill, another local writer and The Alligator Club. The play will be set in the woods at the back of the theatre and there will be four ten minute plays. Three of these the audience will see in a different order, depending on which group they are in, and then all three groups will come together at the end to see the final ten minute play – which will be my bit.
Last night I was motivated enough after the meeting to sit for about three hours and try to get ten minutes worth of material down so I could then start editing and moving things around. I haven’t looked at it this morning – haven’t got the courage up yet, in case it is rubbish. I’m enjoying writing it, but there is a time pressure – we are all aiming for our first full ten minute drafts to be sent round by Thursday as there is music still to be added in yet. The play is being shown in two matinee performances – at 1.30 and 3.30 on September 7th – and you can find more information here http://www.theatrebythelake.com/production/10963/Cartographers
The other thing I have to get started this week is a commission – my first paid commission! I don’t know if I’m allowed to say too much yet, but I’m off to Lancaster today to do some research – again the deadline for this is September 1st – so everything is feeling a bit tight this summer.
It doesn’t help that I’m off to Ty Newydd on a weeks residential writing course on the 19th August. I’m really looking forward to this – the tutors are the wonderful Ian Duhig and Ruth Padel – but I’d really like to get all the script things and the commission writing done, or nearly done before I go so that I can concentrate on my own poetry whilst I’m there…not that I’m complaining – I am very happy to be busy and sometimes I think – am I really writing a script? Am I really being paid to write some poems? and I remember dancing round my living room when I got my first poem published in a magazine – Obsessed With Pipework (http://www.flarestack.co.uk/obsessedwithpipework.htm) and I feel very happy, but then I also start to panic with a crisis of confidence….can I do this? and then I start to babble, as this last paragraph shows…
AND BREATHE!
Which brings us to Sunday and Julie Mellor’s wonderful poem which was supposed to burst onto the blog last Sunday. Julie Mellor was one of the winners in the 2012 Poetry Business Pamphlet Competition, alongside Rosie Sheppard, Suzie Evans and myself. Julie is a lovely lady and a great poet. I hope Julie won’t mind me saying this, but I noticed that she was shortlisted lots of times for the pamphlet competition before actually winning. I think this is a great testament to her – she didn’t get offended or annoyed, she took it on the chin and just kept trying and eventually she won. A lesser poet would have given up – and maybe that is the difference between being published and not being published – not just talent but sheer bloody minded determination and perseverance.
Julie lives in Penistone and read English at Huddersfield University and has a PhD from Sheffield Hallam. Her poems have appeared in magazines and anthologies including Brittle Star, Mslexia, The Rialto and Smiths Knoll. You can find more information and poems about Julie at Michael Stewart’s blog where there is an interview and review at http://headspam.poesterous.com/
This is an interesting blog by Suzannah Evans about her residency at Bank Street Arts and Julie has a poem here too.. http://poetrymap.wordpress.com/2013/05/22/white-tiger-julie-mellor/
and another poem here at Excel for charity at: http://excelforcharity.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/another-story.html
The poem I’ve chosen for the Sunday Poem is from Julie’s Poetry Business pamphlet ‘Breathing through Our Bones’. I loved this poem straight away – the language is very thick and heavy and rich. I think it is a masterclass in how to write and closely observe – and each image and metaphor she pushes and pushes at to take it further and further. One of my favourite lines is ‘Clusters of sorcery, we store the sun’. I think that is a brilliant line – an unusual image yet completely right for blackberries. And these blackberries are evil aren’t they? They have a personality all of their own – I wouldn’t like to meet them down a dark alley…
If you would like to read more of Julie’s poems in an actual book rather than on websites, get yourself over to http://www.poetrybusiness.co.uk/shop/791/breathing-through-our-bones-julie-mellor and order a copy of her pamphlet! It’s only a fiver and you will make Julie and her publisher very happy! I hope you enjoy the poem, and thanks to Julie for letting me post it here.
Blackberries by Julie Mellor
We have darkened like the end of the year,
the knuckled hulls at our core
white as a maggot or a baby’s first tooth.
Clusters of sorcery, we store the sun.
The juice of us is a blue flame.
Even the wary fall for our frumenty smell.
Between children’s fingers we bleed black,
store our vengeance until Michealmas
when the devil unleashes himself in spit
and piss, and we rot like the underside
of hide buried in lime, lose ourselves
in softness, sink back into what we are,
almost fruit, almost tar, resist the creeping nights,
the toll of winter curfew, wait
in our thinned clusters like the eyes of the blind,
until eel worms eat at our ingangs,
hang on to the last, juice thick as oak bark liquor,
seasoned, vile,
then shrivel back to seed,
like the mole on the back of the neck
that marks you for hanging.
this is my 3rd and final go at posting a comment. The first two seem to have vanished into thin air. Or even worse, virtual thin air. Anyway, I’m determined because I’m a great fan of Julie Mellor’s poems; lots of them come at you out of left field, like the one about the guy who can hold huge blocks of ice or the one about the train hanging from a viaduct…but to the point. I remember this particular poem getting its airing at a Poetry business workshop, and loving the recklessness (as it seemed) of taking on Heaney in his own back yard, and swaggering off with the prize. I like the unexpected danger of the fruit, the malignancy..and the image of the mole that marks you for hanging. And what makes it work, apart from the relentless drive of the thing, is Julie’s hallmark textured language that demands to be heard on the tongue, the precision and weight of carefully valued consonants. So thanks for picking this one. I enjoyed next week’s,too
JOHN!!!! It has appeared! You are receiving a virtual high five from me for your determination and down right stubbornness and refusal to be vanquished by the fickle wordpress gods. I have your second comment in my notifications, but it is not appearing in public. But never mind, because this one is so much better! I’m glad you enjoyed next week’s as well. Here’s hoping Julie Mellor reads it now!! Thanks for commenting – you are a star.
Hi Kim, I found your blog through a post Neil Astley linked to on Facebook, and am so glad I did 🙂
Spent a pleasant hour or so this morning reading through your posts, and have found some lovely poems here – lots of new writers I haven’t heard of before, which always excites me!
Love this poem in particular – like John said above, it’s reminiscent of Seamus Heaney, but it also reminds me of Sylvia Plath a little, too; the knuckled hulls, the blue flame of the juice…just lovely.
Another pamphlet to add to the To-Purchase list…along with your own, of course 🙂
Can’t wait to read more from you xxx
Hi Cheryl
I’m glad you found the blog as well! And very happy to hear you’ve had a look back through previous Sunday poems – this seemed to be a favourite with a lot of people. And I would recommend Julie’s pamphlet 🙂