Rain Richmond Park

twilight woods
pierced with rain
the cries of birds

Photo Richmond Park by Pixelhut

T S Eliot Poetry Prize 2009

We were at The Queen Elizabeth Hall last night, to hear the ten shortlisted poets for the T S Eliot Poetry Prize 2009 read a selection of their poems. It was a really great evening where the poetry world - or at least the one that has London at its centre all came together.

We bought the books of the poets we thought had a good chance of winning and who we really liked. We chatted to them and wished them all the best for the announcement that was given today at 7.30.

We were really pleased that Philip Gross won. Katy built and manages his website and I've met him at The Troubadour in Earls Court where he read last year.

Another poet we thought was really good was Jane Draycott. I was invited to hear her read last summer at a club in Hampstead Heath along with other members of The Poetry Workshop. Hugh - my colleague and friend at Richmond College - is also a member of the workshop.

Katy also met up with an old colleague who was also shortlisted for the prize. Christopher Reid was poetry editor at Faber and Faber when Katy worked there. And since T S Eliot was one of the founding directors of the publisher, that rather neatly brings us full circle back to the T S Eliot Poetry Prize.

Anyway enough of this.

in blue twilight
the sound of water falling
into gutters

Slow thaw

in the park
the grey remains of snowmen
slowly dissolving

roads choked with snow-
dissolves dirt grey
under exhaust fumes

Richmond Park

fields sown with snow
now a harvest of ice

Photo Richmond Park by BillKatyGemma

London Winter Dawn

London dawn
shrouded in a gauze
of mist - pierced
with red reflected light
from high city windows

Winter Dawn

snow covered
branches shining amber
in dawn light

Photo Winter Dawn at Granchester by mushi_king

Snow Woods

alone in the dark woods
the snow swallows our footsteps
and laughter

Photo The Snowy Evening by Storm Crypt

White Tree

frosted winter trees
a fragile white blossom

Photo White Tree by Jos van Wunnik

Morning Frost

the clear night conjures
iced white washed fields

Photo Morning Frost by Odalaigh

12.30 am New Year's Walk

i

under a blue moon
we walk a milk white path
beside the river

ii

moon swollen river
swallows field, footpath and
crust of blue frost

Photo River Flit by Moonlight by ellyukrm

Ice

the country - a black
plate of ice, sculptured by the
contours of our lives


Photo Ice Rink by Dave Amis

streets glaze with ice
tonight the earth -
a moon mirror

Winter Heat and Cold

inside dry, heavy and smothering heat
outside the cold, fresh, sharp and pure


Photos La Llama - The Flame by Luis Fabres and A very cold day by broodkast

Trees fog

dawn -
dirt grey
smudges a line of trees

Photo Light Fog by technopolitan

Winter Moon

intruder moon
a hard cold blade of light
disturbs my sleep

Photo Winter Moon by 5150fantast

dead leaves
at the front door
a gift of the wind

Climbing Snowdon

All night wind and rain
score the mountain slopes

Climbing Snowdon by Kris Thirty6Red

Quotation & Comment A Streetcar Named Desire

"They told me to take a streetcar named Desire, and then transfer to one called Cemeteries and ride six blocks and get off at Elysian Fields."

Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams

These words are uttered by Blanche DuBois when she first arrives at her sister Stella’s apartment called Elysian Fields in New Orleans.

It tells us she is on a journey. ‘They’ refers to the attendants at the station who give her directions.

Symbolically ‘They’ indicates Blanche is vulnerable and powerless. All the men in Blanche’s life - family and lovers - have always had power and followed their sexual desires. She too has lived like this and it has brought her to rejection and exile which is a form of death.

Here at Elysian Fields Blanche hopes to start again.

beneath the oaks
we walk a bed of dead leaves
crushed fired glass

Photo autumn leaves on grass by pkirrage

Quotation & Comment

I'm starting a new project shortly.

The idea is to take a quotation from a work of literature which may include the Bible. It will probably be from a text I'm studying with my students or a text I've taught in the past. I might take quotations from the Conjured Sunlight blog. It will be a line or a phrase, perhaps even a word.

Then I'll comment on the quotation.

And I hope people that visit the blog will add a comment too. Either a response to the quotation or on my comment. Everyone is free to comment.

Anyway lets see how it rolls out.

Join in

David

dawn, looking west
trees in shadow
beyond a tower block rising gold

the river
smudged by mist and drizzle
dissolves into twilight

wet leaves, limp, black
glistening
a broken mirror

beneath the trees
a corrugated mat
of rusted leaves

Photo Autumn Forest Ground by elventear

Misty Morning

mist rising
along the water line
the river’s breath

Photo Misty Morning by RWM

Canada geese

Canada geese
the summer folded away
in their wings

Photo Canada Geese by Henry McLin

the dead slowly gather
in wind swept corners
and gutters

At Antwerp Station The Sound of Music

Here is a beautiful video Katy found on the web while she was researching a sermon. It is a gift.

David


How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria - Audition Task

Julio Diaz's Story

Katy came across this story while she was researching for a sermon. It seems to have caused quite a bit of discussion on the web.

Any way here is Julio Diaz telling his story.

David

Julio Diaz's story

Orion Rising

quietly
in the growing darkness
Orion rising

carried on the wind
dead leaves
in her greying hair

under the hazel
cobnuts are raining now

I'm putting
on the shoes I took off
in July

between grey depths
of sea and sky
a white sail rides the wind

all night
under a thin skin of canvas
the tail of a hurricane

Stormy Weather

a rough sea
breaks on the beach,
a thousand
knots unravelling
in my weary head

Photo Stormy Weather by Peter Adermark

Red Deer Summer Grasses

Red deer hidden
in the brown crust
of dry grasses


Patrolling Red Stag by bbodien

5 am

across the deer park
patches of mist -
the ghosts of dawn

THE BACK ROOM

The back room is always a mess. We do not visit it and are hardly aware of its existence. But it is there, each day more and more things are thrown in. It is a very crowded and cluttered room. We stumble through it blindly in our sleep, searching, full of yearning, reaching out. It is a room full of fear and desire.

By day we barely know that it even exists. But it does. We carry it around with us where ever we go. It secretly and invisibly dominates whatever we think, whatever we say, however we act. There is always the room, hidden from view, shameful, obscene. But it is ours. It is us.

So we live our lives in the front room. That is where we invite our guests, our friends our lovers. We keep it dusted and clean. Everything is neat and tidy. Everything is on show. This is the best of us. It’s comfortable, filled with things we like. It is like a mirror reflecting our heavily made up faces.

At the church, by the alter, on our wedding day when we say “All that I am I give to you” we are offering our partner not only the front room of ourselves but also that hidden and messy back room. And when we say “I do” we are accepting our partner’s back room. We are saying I accept you – even that part of you that I don’t know, accepting even the part of you that you don’t even know exists. And we accept that we will probably never know what is in that room.

Occasionally we may stand at the door and prize it open and let a little light in. We may stare into that gloom, with fierce and bitter tears streaming down our faces - but not for too long.

It is a massive act of faith, a leap in the dark, a step across an abyss.

Suburban Summer Nights 3 am

a flickering patchwork
of shadows -
moths around the street light

Suburban Summer Nights 2 am

still now -
rows of blank houses
and defiant foxes watching

Suburban Summer Nights 1 am

humid blue night -
close together watching
Play Misty For Me

while the midnight sky
tore itself apart
with lightning -
my barefoot chidren
danced in the puddles

Two Concerts in One Week

First I saw James Taylor at the NIA in Birmingham on Sunday 5 July with two colleagues – escaping from three days of IB training at the NEC, and secondly I saw Leonard Cohen at Brooklands Mercedes Benz World in Weybridge on Saturday 11 July with a friend.

After we had booked the concert for James Taylor I checked him out on youtube – just to get a sense of the man again. I watched him in his twenties clearly uncomfortable and uneasy in front of the camera. His long 1970’s hair was a kind of shield hiding him. But the simple guitar man played beautifully.

And so fast forward 30 years or so to a rainy July evening in Birmingham and the NIA.

It seemed that everything needed was here to make a good evening, a great band, a good singer songwriter with a solid American folk pedigree.

But the evening fell flat as the songs unfolded. I think this was due to a number of problems. Firstly the location, the NIA is a vast soulless place. It was built as a sports arena, I think and it lacked atmosphere and warmth. Secondly the set was a soup of unnecessary colour and light. There were at least four things going on behind the band at any one time.

We thought he was trying to satisfy the needs of the half a dozen audiences he was trying to attract – the traditional folkies, a country audience, a young audience – the children and grandchildren of those first hippy listeners, the oldies – the grown up hippies themselves and those easy listeners who had stumbled across his latest CD.

I’m easily pleased really. I’m a simple consumer.

But the final nail in the coffin of the evening was James Taylor himself. His script that bridged the different songs was slick and polished enough. The one liners were delivered in a quiet unassuming voice. But he lacked raw exciting energy, strutting uncomfortably across the stage. At times he looked like a parody of an aging rock star from the sixties. He was a man going through his well worn performance. He could have done the concert blindfolded - a rock concert by numbers. At times I thought he was boring himself.

Leonard Cohen was different. I spotted an advert for the concert in a discarded Metro on a train back from London. Walking home I popped in to see my friend – a Leonard Cohen fan since the 1960’s. We despaired at the ticket prices; we reassured ourselves that they had sold out. We parted resigned to the fact we wouldn’t be seeing him.

But there we were on Saturday night. Two middle aged men queuing up to watch a 74 year old man hold an audience in the palm of his hands. And he did it for over two hours, with a sublime ease, as if he had been born for the part.

I knew we’d made the right decision to come as the first notes reached us. For Cohen had brought together musicians that produce a rich, tight and accomplished sound. I love the way he has fused beautifully electric and acoustic instruments.

I felt at home here with people that swapped seats with us so that I could sit next to the aisle – more leg room. At home with people that talked easily about the last time they’d been to a Cohen concert, then mentioned Nick Cave and The Boatman’s Call.

And he played everything on our wish list. I wanted to hear The Partisan - it was the absolute highlight of the concert for me – Boogie Street – where Sharon Robinson, Cohen’s co writer, sang a solo and Famous Blue Raincoat – a stunning performance. Of course he did Halleluiah but he must be pretty pissed off with that song by now.

A week earlier we had sat in the soulless National Indoor Arena, sheltering from a rainy July evening, watching an accomplished James Taylor go through his paces. But unlike that concert a week later we were outside under a grey sky that eventually rained down on us. We were captivated, totally enchanted – lost in the labyrinth of his songs and the gracious spell that Leonard Cohen cast.

Deer Shadows

at midday the deer
cluster under the shadows
of ancient oaks


Photo by r0b1

Purple Clematis

purple clematis
so dark it swallows sunlight


in the shadows
something darker
purple clematis

Photograph Purple Clematis by KTDEE

Sunset

the river writes its name in gold

the bracken
fully grown
swallows sign posts, park benches, Fallow deer