Archive for the 'Poetry' Category

I have to confess that I’m a secret Country & Western fan. Every time I listen to Loretta Lynne’s Coal Miners Daughter or Dolly Parton’s Coat of Many Colours, I succumb to the sentimental twangs of the guitars and the heart-warming heroism of the poor but plucky families in those autobiographical songs. Tears well up and before long, I’m sobbing into my sleeve.

It strikes me that many C&W songs are about “them good ol’ days when we was po’ but we was happy”. And it’s not just in the family saga songs. There are the songs where even though the narrator is now rich and successful, he/ she and their lover now don’t get on but way back when, back when they was strugglin’ to make ends meet - now those were the good times.

Also, many C&W songs evoke the rugged, lonely and mythical American landscape with their use of US placenames to give a sense of location. Think of Phoenix, San Francisco, Aspen, Denver, Jackson, Tennessee - these are all places I learnt about from listening to C&W songs as a kid in Malaysia.

It occurred to me that you don’t get many Asian songs about “how great it was when we was poor”. Nor are there many international hits that involve lines like “By the time I get to Johore Bahru, you’ll be waking” or “I left my heart in Penang”….

So, to redress the balance, I had a go at writing a Country & Eastern song, which I’ve called “The Ballad of the Lonesome Accountant.”

Imagine some steel string, twangy guitars and a gravelly, mournful Hank Williams sound.

I was raised up in Mud Valley*
Right beside the River Klang
We didn’t have much money
Nor much of any thang.

My mom, she fried hot noodles,
Spicy char kway teow,
Every day in Chow Kit Market,
With hardship on her brow.

My dad, he drove a fancy car
For a big time Mr Boss.
We never made much profit,
Only pockets full of loss.

Chorus:

I watch the cars fly out of town
From our porch by the Gombak freeway.
I dreamt of riches and big houses
And escaping far away.
I dream I’m a fancy accountant,
Driving, driving in my car.
I drive all through the highways
And I’m really getting far.

So I worked hard at my studies,
Gave my life up to my school.
Didn’t do no drugs nor liquor,
Nor girls nor played the fool.

And I got a job in business,
Got me some buy-to-lets.
Made a lot of profit
And paid of all our debts.

I bought my mom a great big house
And she sips martinis now,
While days of ladies lunching
Wipe the hardship from her brow.

I bought my dad a fancy car
And now he’s a big time Mr Boss.
He runs things all for profit
And never makes a loss.

I don’t have time to spend with them.
My wife and kids don’t know me.
They go shopping in the fancy malls
Living it up with my money.

Chorus:

I watch the cars fly out of town
From my Porsche on the freeway.
I see my riches and big houses
And my heart is far away.
I’m just a lonesome accountant
Driving, driving in my car.
I drive all through the highway
But am I getting far?

I wish for days so long ago
When my mom laughed out loud
At her stall in Chow Kit Market
And dad’s kindness made me proud.

I wish my wife would look at me
With eyes and heart aflame
And my kids could learn to love
More than just computer games.

Chorus:

I watch the cars fly out of town
From my Porsche on the freeway.
I see my riches and big houses
And I’m escaping far away.
I’m just a lonesome accountant
Driving, driving in my car.
I drive all through the highways
And I’m going very far.

I drive all through the highways
And I’m going very far.
Going, going, going very far.

All it needs now is for someone to set it to music and sing it for us! Any offers?

*Kuala Lumpur means “the muddy meeting place of two rivers”

~~~

Photo: of line dancing in Singapore, thanks to csc.gov.sg

PS. Come back on Monday for some videos of other Asian C&W fans doing their thang ….

For all you poets and poetry lovers out there, Poetcasting.co.uk is an enterprising project by a young poet to record and podcast poets in the UK.

The website says:

“The PoetCasting project was created by Alex Pryce, an 19 year old student and poet. She was concerned that performance and academic poets were becoming increasingly isolated from each other, and felt that the poetry community wasn’t aware of the potential the internet holds for the future of all media, including poetry.

The aim of PoetCasting is to work with poets throughout the UK to podcast their work. The project will work with performance poets, published poets, new poets, established poets and everything in between.”

If you’re a poet looking to widen your audience, this project could be a great opportunity to reach out across the internet. There’s a contact page for Alex on the site.

If like me, you like poetry read out loud, you can go and listen to their podcasts - no more trundling out on cold, rainy nights to poetry readings in smokey cafes or pubs , just pure poetry in the comfort of your own iPod…

~~~~~~~~~

UPDATE: I heard from Alex Pryce this morning (that was quick!) with the following:

“Hey!

Just a quick note to thank you for the heads up on FusionView for
PoetCasting.

If you know any poets you’d reccomend for PoetCasting, I’d be more than happy to follow up any suggestions!

Yours,
Alex”

I hope you’ll contact Poetcasting with your recommendations - please mention Fusion View if you do.

In the city,

we make the walls we live in,

yet long for the spaces in between.

Photo: thanks to oceonidas from flickr.com

This is a beautiful and moving project. The Wilfrid Owen Multimedia Digital Archive has been created by Oxford University in conjunction with The Imperial War Museum. Wilfrid Owen was one of the poets of the the First World War, alongside Siegfried Sassoon and Rupert Brooke. This project is particularly timely as the last remaining few of that generation of young men will soon be all lost to us - there are only three surviving First World War veterans now in the UK, all over 100 years old.

The Wilfrid Owen Digital Archive puts online a vast collection of Wilfrid Owen’s poetry, including fascimiles of his original hand written manuscripts - in some cases, you can follow the drafts as he amended them and tinkered with the wording. You can see how The Anthem for Doomed Youth, for example, was developed from the original piece which he named Anthem for Dead Youth .

There is also an archive of contemporary film footage taken at the time - there are numerous clips from the infamous Battle of the Somme, such as one showing the young soldiers fixing their bayonets.

What is especially interesting is the examples of publications circulating at the time. The Hydra was published by patients of the Craiglockhart Military Hospital, to which Owen contributed when he arrived there after being wounded at the front. There are also a number of mazazines published by the soldiers such as Poison Gas, the unofficial ‘Organ of 3rd Battalion Queen Victoria’s Rifles’. The last century and our present one both opened with wars. In today’s wars, soldiers blog from Iraq. Back then the urge to communicate was just as strong and these magazines are the blogs of their day - satirical, critical and also moving.

The memory of the Great War is a particularly Western/ European cultural memory. There isn’t a similar mythology and ritual around the Second World War in Asia. I think, though, that the First World War has shaped the sensibilities, culture and anxieties of the 20th century across cultural boundries. It was horrendous and brutal and affected millions of people. It happened to nations that were supposedly civilised. And it had a group of young men and women who could articulate the personal horrors in moving and powerful prose, poetry and symbolism that has lasted through the generations. The Great War was the war to end all wars. It was the war that created the two minute silence every November 11th and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. We will remember them, we promised, we who lived in the 20th century, repeating the mournful and beautiful words of another war poet Laurence Binyon.

And yet, wars have ravaged the last century and will continue into the next. As those who lived through it finally leave us, it becomes more important than ever to remember - even though wars still explode around us, remembering means that we do not become immune to the horrors and the human tragedy that they bring in their wake.

Photo: thanks to oucs.ox.ac.uk

My interview with Rob Mackenzie has been picked up by poet Andrew Philip on his blog TongueFire in a post called “What is Scottish Poetry?”. There is a lively discussion in the comments to that post about Scottish identity, which I’ve added to, asking what would the identity of a Chinese poet writing in Scotland be.

Andrew has responded with some interesting points:

There’s a poem called “Young, Chinese and Scottish” written in the voice of a young, Chinese-Scottish woman by Kevin Macneil, an obviously male Gaelic and English-language writer. How’s that for complex identity politics!

Googling the poem (which I can’t find online), I’ve just come across an online essay “Infinite Diversity in New Scottish Writing”, by the Scottish-Pakistani writer Suhayl Saadi, who was born in Yorkshire. I’ve not read it, but it might well be enlightening.

Thanks to Andrew, we have some really juicy diversity writing to go and explore!

I am reminded of the early days when I first came to the UK. Back then, I clumped all white people from the UK together as “the English”. When speaking to an Irish/ Scottish/ Welsh person, I sometimes referred to them as “English” - imagine their outrage! It was then that I started to see the differences between the various tribes that make up the UK. It still fascinates me and I feel I have a lot to learn.

While in Slovenia, I was chatting to one of the other IABC (International Association of Business Communicators) delegates who was from Doncaster. She has a mild but noticeable northern accent. She recounted a rather disturbing story that shows the boundaries that exist even between the tribes of England, let alone between the English and Welsh/ Scottish etc.

At Uni, she heard about a party that a group of friends was going to. “Great,” she said to the host, “Where is it?” He replied in stiff, Southern tones, “You don’t have the right accent to come.”

Wow.

But to end on a lighter note, my colleague told another more amusing story of the North-South divide. She was setting up a meeting room in her company’s sleek offices in Soho recently. The technical assistant was an East End bloke who asked her if she wanted “sand” for the meeting.

“Sand?” She couldn’t work out why she’d need sand in the room.

“Yeah, d’you want me to set up the sand system?”

“Ah, sound!” She cried, understanding at last….

Photo: thanks to Hamed Sabir from flickr.com

Concluding my email interview with poet Rob Mackenzie:

YM: You also spent 4 years in Italy. What were you doing there? Do you speak Italian?

Rob: In Turin, I worked for the Waldensian church, a tiny Protestant denomination which holds claim to being the oldest Reformed church in the world. Much of my work involved giving support, advice, and help to asylum seekers, refugees, and those who were in Italy illegally.The church ran a support project, which linked up to other projects and organisations ran by the local council, the government and the Catholic church. I do speak Italian, although Im not fluent, and Im probably getting worse after two years in Scotland. I translate Italian poetry now and again, partly to keep fresh whatever language skills I have left.

Was there a cultural difference/ culture shock when you were in Italy? I would imagine there to be less of a difference as Italy is in Europe but perhaps there is more of a difference?

I think there was less of a difference, but because I could understand the differences more easily, it sometimes felt as if there was more of a difference if that makes any sense at all. To be honest, I think most British people would be very surprised to find how very different living in Italy is from the UK, as we tend to go on holidays to Europe and not notice the differences other than the obvious ones i.e. food, sun, wine etc
The bureaucracy drove me crazy, the TV was awful, the emphasis on family felt exclusionary at times to outsiders like myself (although the Turin people have the reputation as the least friendly people in Italy), and Italians shared with Korea this idea of letting you hear what you wanted to hear, irrespective of what they actually planned to do.

On the other hand, Turin was a beautiful city, my daughter couldnt go ten yards along the street without being fussed over by complete strangers (and its true that children and young people are far happier and valued morein Italy than in the UK), and we did make some good friends there. Not to mention the food and wine!

How has having lived in three cultures influenced you? What have you taken away from each of them?

From Scotland Ive taken a misguided pride, a black humour, and a stubbornness that must be a national characteristic. From Korea, Ive learned what generosity and hospitality towards outsiders really involve. From Italy, I can identify strongly with the sense of being European more than just Scottish, and I also have this grim sense that when our politicians say they are going to tackle the problems affecting young people in this country (drink, violence, hanging about the streets bored etc.), they are starting from entirely the wrong perspective because the problems go deeper than they think, and no change will come unless they tackle the root problems. I think they could learn a lot from looking at Italy.

What was it like coming back to live in the UK? And specifically in Scotland?

At first it was good. Everyone spoke English, which was so much less effort than Italian! And we could get things in the shops that were hard to come by in Italy. But soon we began to realise that these things didnt matter so much. I liked my local grocers shop and the market stalls in Turin where all the staff knew me. I liked the way you could hardly find a ready-cooked microwave meal, and I really, really missed the dry winters and the warmth of the other seasons. Would I go back to Italy in the future, given an opportunity? Yes.

Do you feel that you are now “home” in Scotland?

No, although there have been advantages. Ive made contact with the UK and Edinburgh poetry scene that I felt far away from in Turin. HappenStance may not have been as interested in publishing my poetry chapbook if I had been based in Italy, as selling it requires doing readings etc. My wife is firmly part of the amateur theatre scene in Edinburgh, which is what she loves more than anything. My daughter is getting on well at her nursery school. So well be here for a while yet, but I dont think well stay in the UK for ever.

Will you share a poem on Fusion View as my other poet contributors have done?

Will this do?

TAXI

We take the Eurostar from Oulx and shift
two Filipinos from our pre-booked seats.
Outside the Porta Susa station, roadworks
attack the tarmac and the senses, force
the taxis fifty metres from their rank.
Kebab and couscous overrun the pavements.
A Lega Nord pamphlet pins robberies
on refugees. Our daughter shades her eyes
against the winter sun that casts white walls
in negative. Two black women arrive,
toggle their overcoats to sap the chill
from the wind’s whine, and then a cab draws in:
we gather cases, cot and pushchair,
a dropped teddy bear. Footsteps slide past us -
the women test the taxi doors. The driver
waves them away. ‘Priority for kids,’
he says. Only in Italy, I think.
‘And we were here before you anyway,’
I tell the women. They shrug their shoulder pads
and claim to head some queue. ‘So are you blind?’
I ask. They turn towards the newsagent
where billboard headlines hawk the evening scoop
that boats sank close by Sicily, fifty
clandestini dead, and thirty-five
half-starved. The driver shakes his head, observes,
‘They are not blind, but African,’ and bangs
our case into his boot. ‘Priority
for whites,’ he really means, and at our gate
the price is way too high, and still we pay.

from The Clown of Natural Sorrow (HappenStance Press, December 2005)

Copyright Rob Mackenzie

Photo: thanks to unep.org

I’m delighted to introduce you to Rob Mackenzie, a poet based in Scotland whose blogs at Surroundings . We got rather carried away when I interviewed him as he had some many interesting things to share so this interview is in two parts.

Rob was born in Glasgow in 1964. He lived in Seoul, Korea for 18 months around 1989-90 before returning to the west of Scotland. He read poetry at the Bar Brel in Glasgow through the mid-nineties. Then he and his wife and moved to Turin, Italy for 4-5 years, where their daughter was born. For the last couple of years they have lived in Edinburgh. He has published poems in many literary magazines in the UK, in a few webzines, and in a poetry chapbook, The Clown of Natural Sorrow, on HappenStance Press www.happenstancepress.com

YM: What drew you to write poetry? When did you write your first poem?

Rob: I wrote my first poem aged 13, but it took me twenty more years before I got any accepted for publication. That first one was set in English class at school. We had to write a rhyming ballad, so I wrote one about a mouse that chaseda terrified cat around a house. Then I fell under the spell of Gerald Manley Hopkins. I loved his sounds and rhythms and I wrote some awful imitations.

In my twenties I got into French existentialist fiction (Sartre, Camus, de Beauvoir) and made the mistake of trying to write poetry that took its bearings from their ideas. It was really pretentious stuff! But in my thirties, I began to find that I had something to say of my own and that language could be utilised to do interesting things without all the pretension.

How often do you write now? What inspires you/ gives you the idea for a poem?

I write more or less every day. I am quite disciplined about it. I dont always write poetry, but Im always jotting down ideas, phrases and thoughts. A poem can come from a real life event (although I tend to change things if change helps a poem), from a title, image or line that pops into my head and seems to demand continuation, from snippets of conversation, or from thoughts Ive had on any given issue. I tend to write best if I let the initial idea simmer in my brain for a few days or weeks and then sit down with the opening few lines already in my head.

Can you tell us something about the kind of poetry you write?

I tend to try my hand at lots of things. Im comfortable with free verse, rhyme, loose metre, strict form, even the occasional experimental piece. People tell me my poems can be quite complex, which might be true. I always write to communicate with readers, but sometimes a poem can take more than one read through to become clear. I write a lot about relationships, identity, faith and doubt, political issues, endings of one kind or another. That sounds very serious, but I use a lot of humour in my poems too!

Is being Scottish a strong part of your identity? What does being Scottish mean to you?

I’m not particularly nationalistic, until someone criticises Scotland. I am Scottish and Im sure thats shaped me in all kinds of indefinable ways. Its not something Ive explored all that much. Maybe I should. That might well be a future project.

Is your poetry Scottish poetry? (as opposed to English poetry/ Welsh poetry or just plain old “poetry”)

I feel its just plain old poetry. I dont write in Scots or Gaelic and while Ive written a few poems about Scottish identity, its not a theme Ive majored on. I know some of my poet-colleagues here are far more interested in doing this than I am and are influenced mainly by other Scottish poets. I like several Scottish poets John Burnside, Edwin Morgan, Norman MacCaig, Don Paterson, Roddy Lumsden they are excellent writers. But my influences come from all over Rilke (Germany), Roy Fisher (England), Charles Simic (USA), Miroslav Holub (Czech Republic), and many others.

You spent 18 months in South Koreain 1989-90. What were you doing there? Do you speak Korean?

I did various things. I studied Korean Minjung theology, a kind of liberation theology that incorporated bits of Korean folk tradition, Marxism, and the Bible. I worked a couple of days a week in a smallish church, and I taught English to a few people. But I spent most of the time meeting people, travelling, eating the fiery food, and drinking maccoli (rice-based alcoholic drink). I learned enough Korean to ask for things in shops etc very basic stuff, nearly all of which Ive forgotten. It was a very difficult language.

What cultural differences did you notice?

So many of the cultural differences were in the mind and kept there. Sometimes people would grin at something I said or did, but when I asked why, they would never tell me. Its OK. No problem. Just Korean culture. Its OK, you are a Westerner! The Koreans were such hospitable people. I made a lot of friends there.

Relationships with women were fraught with problems. I found it impossible to know the etiquette, the rules of engagement. Korean women often seemed to flirt with me, but I think it was because the idea of going out with a westerner was so ridiculous to them (due to family expectations and tradition) that they felt safe getting close to me.

But sometimes it got confusing. I remember a woman called Hae-jang. I went out with her a few times and had no idea of how to progress the relationship. Then I met another woman, Jeung-wha, who I fell in love with in a matter of days.In fact, probably within five minutes! I didnt think it would matter to Hae-jang. I was convinced she saw me as only a friend. How wrong I was! Apparently she was furious, but she, and all her friends, refused to speak to me ever again.And then it didnt work out with Jeung-wha who ended up going off to a Zen temple in the countryside and.. well that was the last I saw or heard of her.

I once invited a woman named Gil-sun to have a coffee in my room (we were standing outside it at the time). It was an entirely innocent invitation. Yes, she replied, as she began walking away.

Well, lets go, I said, pointing. Its up here.

Yes, she said, and kept walking in the other direction. Life was full of moments like that! The answer to any question was always what you wanted to hear, even if what then happened was in direct contradiction.

How has that time in East Asia influenced you?

Yes. It made a huge impact on me. I learned what it was like to be utterly clueless, unable to understand a language and culture, and to be far away from home. And Korea was only just emerging from years of military dictatorship and there were strikes, protests, and trouble all the time. I learned the effect of tear gas the hard way. But at the same time, I had a fantastic experience in Korea and I learned the meaning of hospitality for the stranger there.

Did you write poetry while you were in S Korea? Or later, looking back on that time? How do you think the East influenced your writing?

I didnt write any poetry at the time. I wrote about 20 songs and the guys in my band told me they were the worst songs Id ever written. Since that time I have written a few poems about Korea, one of which was published in the Avatar Review . I also wrote one about how I fell in love with Jeung-wha and why it didnt work, which is unpublished and will probably remain so.

I think going outside my own culture has given me a deeper understanding of people. Not that I can understand what its like to be Korean, but that I can understand something of what it is like to be a foreigner.I grew up a lot in that period. Even though it was only 18 months, it took me a while to settle back into life in Scotlandagain. The culture shock on my return seemed stronger than when I first arrived in Seoul.

Come back next Wednesday for Part 2 when Rob talks about his time in Italy and returning home to Scotland. He also shares one of his poems with us.

We have now passed the closing date for the prize draw to win a copy of James Wood’s The Theory of Everything. I am delighted to announce that the three winners picked at random from the Fusion View email subscriber list are:

lucy

ella

lenny

(The above are taken from their email addresses and edited to maintain their privacy.)

I have emailed the winners to let them know and to make arrangements for a copy of the book to be posted to them. Enjoy!

Thank you to everyone who has subsribed to Fusion View!

All the best
Yang-May

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For the first post of 2007 here on Fusion View, I interview the poet James Wood who recently downshifted from a high-octane life in London to the more peaceful and arty setting of Edinburgh to devote more time to his poetry.

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You can listen to the interview using the grey podcast-player at the end of this post.

You can also receive this and future Fusion View Podcasts free via iTunes - click on the lavender logo just here.

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James also reads from his poem “Thursday” which is published for the first time here on Fusion View:

Thursday

A man walks out of a station to meet his friends,
Not expecting anything - he’s not hungry or thirsty,
The late summer sky is overcast, but that’s OK.
Cars move past, people are shopping, glasses on the tables

And newspapers in their stands. “How nice to see you”-
But it’s not them. It’s her, her from long ago,
When he’d had half a mind to have a life
So different from what he’d cursed, then inherited.

And all the shapely body no tittle gone astray
Is what comes to mind as he tries and fails
To force himself to look into her eyes, says all the wrong
Things too quickly, too slow in getting in there

With that suggested coffee and quick chat
About old times, or what about dinner? Then, like a fairy
From a child’s play-book, she slips away
And his friends appear. Laughter, forks and glasses follow-

They smile and talk about their house prices and careers
Or where they’re going on holiday. He looks
For her to come back past the station, but she doesn’t,
So he sits and waits. Now he’s been waiting for years.

copyright James Wood 2006

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James has kindly donated three copies of his book The Theory of Everything for the Fusion View prize draw, open to all Fusion View email subscribers. To find out how to win a copy, click here.

If you can’t wait and want buy a copy of The Theory of Everything, go to the website of his publishers www.happenstancepress.com. All profits go to the Pancreatic Cancer Research Fund.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Listen Now:

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Poet James Wood has donated three signed copies of his new poetry collection “The Theory of Everything” for the Fusion View prize draw.

Click here, to find out more about James Wood and listen to my podcast interview with him.

Three winners will be picked at random from the list of email subscribers to Fusion View. To get a chance to win a copy of James’s book, subscribe to this blog. Subscribe now.

Subscription is free and you will receive free email notifications once a week with the latest updates on this blog. You will automatically be entered into the prize draw to win a copy of “The Theory of Everything” and also all future prize draws (unless otherwise stated). For more about how to subscribe/ unsubscribe and my subscription policy,click here.

The closing date for this prize draw is Friday 16 February 2007. You can still subscribe after that date and you will automatically be entered into the next prize draw.

Please read the Rules of the prize draw below.

Yes, please enter me into the prize draw - I want to subscribe now. Click here to subscribe now.

The Rules for the prize draw
1. The closing date for this draw is 16 February 2007. Within two weeks of that date, 3 winners will be picked at random from the list of subscribers.
2. I will notify the winners by separate emails and ask for your name and land address to which to send the prize. I will be entitled to assume that the name and address given is the name and address of the winning subscriber and I will not knowingly post the prize to any other person.
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