Of leopards and ghosts

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Anglo-Boer War, black leopard, Dullstroom, Highlands Meander, Mpumalanga, South African War

Tomorrow we’re headed for the Highlands in Mpumalanga. I’m writing a story about some of the small towns in this undeniably ‘green and pleasant’ province. I know it’s an area renowned for its fly-fishing and rock-climbing, its outdoor pursuits – I think, though, that what teases my mind is the fact is that the region is home to Africa’s only breeding community of wild black leopard. Or so I’m told.

And the region’s back-story is this: a number of South African (Anglo-Boer) War battles were fought here a century ago – in fact, Dullstroom was torched by British forces. I’ll keep my eyes open for ruined forts and trenches in the area. The Highlands Meander is, in fact, a war route; though now it’s more well-known for its farm-stalls, restaurants and scenery.

I’ll let you know if I see a black leopard. Or the ghost of a soldier. Or something. That’s if I’m not wholly sidetracked by the quiet streams and stone lodges.

 

 

We are all musicians

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Bosnia, Edward Said, Orientalism

For one reason or another, I haven’t given my blog much attention of late. Work has consumed me; financial worries have plagued me. Not that this has allowed writers to deter them in the past. I am guilty of dissembling.

But having said that, I have, at least, been reading more. Rediscovering Edward Said has been particularly important to me. His writing is an antidote to the soundbites of social media and all the nervous afflictions that accompany those compressions. I feel people are more interested in throwing verbal stones than having conversations nowadays. Being something of a political animal, I am sometimes drawn into debates, though I feel, now, that these are essentially futile. For the vast majority, the aim is not to understand but to judge or confirm a prejudice. No wonder, then, that the world is in a state of perpetual, toxic war.

From now on, I resolve to stay as far away from the poison that is ideology ruthlessly applied.

About 20 years ago, a BBC reporter asked a Bosnian refugee, “Are you Muslim or Croat?”

“I’m a musician,” he responded.

In his introduction to the 25th anniversary edition of Orientalism, Said writes:

Rather than the manufactured clash of civilizations, we need to concentrate on the slow working together of cultures that overlap, borrow from each other, and live together in far more interesting ways than any abridged or inauthentic mode of understanding can allow. But for that kind of wider perception we need time and patient and skeptical inquiry, supported by faith in communities of interpretation that are difficult to sustain in a world demanding instant action and reaction.

Tipping my hat to John Burnside

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Alice Oswald, Eavan Boland, John Burnside, John Kinsella, Rita Dove, Robert Lowell, T S Eliot Prize, Ted Hughes

I couldn’t have been happier that John Burnside won this year’s T S Eliot prize. The Scottish poet is one of my favourites – I have his ‘Selected Poems’ next to my bed, along with Robert Lowell, Ted Hughes, Eavan Boland and Rita Dove. All are more or less fixtures there.

I’m also a big fan of David Harsent’s poetry – he was short-listed for the award.

In fact, it was a strong field of contenders, notwithstanding the fact that Alice Oswald and John Kinsella pulled out.

With 11 collections to his name, Burnside is a heavyweight, inhabiting his language like a boxer whose fists are probably most at home in his gloves. Here is his account of why he writes – and why winning the T S Eliot prize made him rethink his purpose.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/poetryandplaybookreviews/9020436/How-poetry-can-change-lives.html

Poets say no to hedge-fund sponsorship

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Alice Oswald, Aurum Funds, John Kinsella, John Pilger, Naomi Klein, sponsorship, T S Eliot Prize

When two of the 10 British poets shortlisted for the T S Eliot Prize dropped out of the running because Aurum Funds, a hedge fund, was named the sponsor, I wondered if there was something sinister about Aurum Funds that I didn’t know about.

Does Tony Blair have something to do with the company? It appears he doesn’t. Good. That’s all right then.

Apparently the company is in bad odour for being at ‘the very pointy end of capitalism’, according to John Kinsella, who withdrew from contention along with Alice Oswald, who said that ‘poetry should be questioning not endorsing such institutions’.

Anyone who knows me will know I’m a sometimes fiery left-wing activist who devours books by Naomi Klein and John Pilger and has a very harsh view of some corporations.

But I’m also not completely stupid. I work as a financial journalist. Like it or not, big business has money. What they do with that money is a moot point and I’ll be the first to protest against companies that trash human rights or don’t pay at least a minimum wage.

On the other hand, I do know that nobody is poor like a poet. Believe me, don’t even think of making money as a poet. Do it for love, or not at all, and any royalties or prizes you collect along the way are a bit like the 13th cheque a good employee gets – not owing to you, to be sure, but a very welcome recognition of all your hard work.

The arts are struggling all over the world and quite frankly a company whose only sin appears to be investing clients’ money in a range of funds of hedge funds – including public sector pension funds – is welcome to sponsor a prize in my neck of the woods.

Don’t forget that T S Eliot worked in a bank (Lloyd’s) and he would probably have enjoyed the delicious irony of having poets sponsored by financiers.

I won a poetry prize sponsored by a life insurer when I was a student, still naive about precisely where such disparate worlds could and did intersect. That prize – a modest sum of money and a certificate – showed me that poetry can be, and is, valued by humanity. Poetry has value beyond a grimy coffee shop or a bedsit in which one spends hours trying to find the perfect rhyme or phrase. If it takes a bank – or a hedge fund company – to remind one of this, then so be it.

Aurum Funds can sponsor a prize here in South Africa any day. We’re starving for recognition, sponsorship, funding. Oh, and the company also supports a number of children’s charities, including Paediatric Aids Treatment for Africa (PATA), which provides support for children and their families affected by HIV/AIDS.

Yet ‘such institutions’ are clearly not morally righteous enough for some poets. Perhaps Aurum Funds will sponsor actors or artists next time. Yes, that will really be good for poetry, won’t it?

Zen blog

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poetry, Sakuteiki, Zen garden

It’s my own fault. I can’t complain that nobody’s looked at my blog for a week if I haven’t posted anything. It’s been looking like a Zen garden, my blog: a dry landscape with some carefully pruned outcrops of something that could be wood or rock.

This is the Karesansui garden in Ryōan-ji Temple. I love the garden outside the garden, too.

In the garden book Sakuteiki ‘Creating a garden’ is expressed as “setting stones”, ishi wo taten koto; literally, the “act of setting stones upright.” It sounds an awful lot like making poetry:

Make sure that all the stones, right down to the front of the arrangement, are placed with their best sides showing. If a stone has an ugly-looking top you should place it so as to give prominence to its side. Even if this means it has to lean at a considerable angle, no one will notice. There should always be more horizontal than vertical stones. If there are “running away” stones there must be “chasing” stones. If there are “leaning” stones, there must be “supporting” stones.

Tutoring poetry

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poetry, SA Writers' College, tutoring

Good news – I’ll be tutoring poetry online for the SA Writers’ College. Here’s my tutor’s profile:

http://www.sawriterscollege.co.za/About+Us/Meet+the+Tutors/Fiona+Zerbst.html

Most people associate poetry with the dull, droning imprisonment of the classroom, which is a shame. I think almost everyone has an inner poet – it’s just a question of finding the voice within. I’m looking forward to mentoring some students.

Landscape with crows

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crows, poetry, Ted Hughes

Is it possible to write poems about crows after Ted Hughes? I think so.
This is a new-ish one I finally finished this morning.

Landscape with crows

Crows flew low, their ominous wingspans
dark. The showy harbingers
of storm-air, they lifted up
the greyish, coppery clouds and turned
in lazy motion over the four-lane
highway and our moving car,
heading towards the dark, ridged hills,
cold as fish-gills at winter evening.

If there was light, I didn’t precisely
see it, but I felt it on
the underside of life – a ditch
of contrasts, where the cloud and shadow,
wet marsh and rising crows,
the hum of life beyond the now-stalled
traffic of my thoughts, was just
enough to hold me. In the pitch

and roll of motion: on the edge of storms.

But it’s my bowl, you see. And I love it.

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poetry, Raymond Carver

Now and again, I dip into Raymond Carver’s poetry with a feeling of gratitude. Here is someone who’s lived it – the good and the bad – and come out with a sense of wonder intact. Take this poem, Tomorrow.

Tomorrow

Cigarette smoke hanging on
in the living room. The ship’s lights
out on the water, dimming. The stars
burning holes in the sky. Becoming ash, yes.
But it’s all right, they’re supposed to do that.
Those lights we call stars.
Burn for a time and then die.
Me hell-bent. Wishing
it were tomorrow already.
I remember my mother, God love her,
saying, Don’t wish for tomorrow.
You’re wishing your life away.
Nevertheless, I wish
for tomorrow. In all its finery.
I want sleep to come and go, smoothly.
Like passing out of the door of one car
into another. And then to wake up!
Find tomorrow in my bedroom.
I’m more tired now than I can say.
My bowl is empty. But it’s my bowl, you see,
and I love it.

I suspect that most of us feel this way about our lives – however full of problems, grim reflections or lucid moments we would rather not have, they are also ‘our bowls’, our vessels of being, and precious. You can’t say no to owning your own life, however it may hurt you at times.

Those last two lines are perfect, I think:

“My bowl is empty. But it’s my bowl, you see,
and I love it.”

The silence before and after speech

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Keats, poetry

Writers know what an inner silence means. When you feel you have nothing to say – or nothing left to say – and you could skate over your life quite happily, like a teenage skater loving the feel of new blades on firm ice. It’s a kind of blithe, endless happiness that means there is, quite simply, nothing to explain or analyse, nothing to pay attention to but the light scratchings and scorings of the surface of life itself.

Should one worry? As Keats said, If poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree, it had better not come at all.

The blank page is best left alone, when there is truly nothing that comes to mind. The only light in all this is that there is always a time – well, there’s always been a time, for me – when the words finally come. But for now, I’ll keep skating. Perhaps it’s true that when one is happy there’s not all that much to worry about. It’s often the anxiety that makes the poetry come; and when you spend your life in anguish you have to wonder if the poetry itself, the poetry alone, is worth it. I am not sure it is. And I say that as a poet – as one who has written poetry compulsively since the age of 10.

Sometimes one has to accept that silence is the best form of speech.

Applying to adopt

Today, I experienced a new feeling.

Child Welfare emailed us forms to apply to adopt. As I printed out the forms, I felt a strange, sweet pressure in my chest … these papers represent a life, a life that has already begun, but which is set to intersect with ours, if our application is successful.

We hope to adopt a child, preferably an orphan, that needs a loving home and a chance at something better. We have no specific preferences or requests. We are happy to take the child that’s meant for us, so to speak. It’s a big step, yet it feels like the right one to take. Rest assured that the child will be read a lot of poetry!

Wish us luck …