Gillian Clarke (b.8/6/37) - Miracle on St David's Day

It has kind of become traditional  of me, on this blog to mark St David's Day (Dydd Gwyl Dewi) somehow. Today I offer you a poem by one of our foremost women contemporary poets. She is considered to be one of our greatest living poets, and is currently our national poet.Born in Cardiff, her work is rooted in our landscape, having lived and worked in Wales for most of her life.Since the 1980s  she has resided here in rural Ceredigion . I like what she writes a lot and find her poems  display her mastery of language with all its lucidity and power.
This one  comes  from her Collected Poems (Carcanet Press, 2008). Here she makes a personal recollection,  a true story after she was invited to read poetry to patients in the Occupational Therapy Department of a mental hospital in South Wales, organised to celebrate St Davids Day. The contrast between her opening quote and the rest of the poem, draws you in. Hers is set amongst enclosed walls, that are often closed to the outside world,that many people are unable to witness unless they have been unfortunate to have spent some time waiting for miracles, diving for stones,an almost invisible world that Gillian Clarke brings to life, providing a rare glimpse of an often private hidden world,  while the Wordsworth (the opening quote) poem which she returns to, looks outside for inspiration. I think it has much power and depth, and I find it very moving. I hope you enjoy.
       
                                                       Miracle on St David's Day
                        
                              They flash upon that inward eye
                               Which is the bliss of solitude
                              - The Daffodils - William Worsworth  

An afternoon yellow and open-mouthed
with daffodils. The sun treads the path
among cedars and enormous oaks.
It might be a country house, guests strolling,
the rumps of gardeners between nursery shrubs.   

I am reading poetry to the insane.
An old woman, interrupting, offers
as many buckets of coals as I need.
A beautiful chestnut-haired boy listens
entirely absorbed. A schizophrenic      

on a good day, they tell me later.
In a cage of first March sun a woman
sits not listening, not seeing, not feeling.
In her neat clothes, the woman is absent.
A big mild man is tenderly led

to his chair. He has never spoken.
His labourer's hands of his knees, he rocks
gently to the rhythyms of the poems.
I read to their prescences, absences,
to the big, dumb labouring man as he rocks.

He is suddenly standing, silently,
huge and mild, but I feel afraid. Like slow
movement of spring water or the first bird
of the year in the breaking darkness,
the labourer's voice recites The Daffodils'.


The nurses are frozen, alert; the patients
seem to listen. He is hoarse but word-perfect.
Outside the daffodils are still as wax,
a thousand, ten thousand, their syllables
unspoken, their creams and yellows still.

Forty years ago, in a Valleys school,
the class recited poetry by rote.
Since the dumbness of misery fell
he has remembered there was a music
of speech and that once he had something to say.

When he's done, before the applause, we observe
the flowers' silence. A thrush sings
and the daffodils are aflame.

Reprinted from :-
Gillian Clarke:Collected Poems
Carcanet 1997
Originally from 
'Letter from a far Country; 1982

Happy St Davids Day/

Dydd Gwyl Dewi

heddwch/peace

Hungry for Freedom

'Donate a Poem for Freedom' is a fundraising campaign for Freedom Bookshop after the firebombing 1/2/13. If you are a poet/know a poet  who would like to contribute, here is a link to the facebook page.
https://www.facebook.com/DonateAPoemForFreedom
The collection will be published via LULU and proceeds will go to Freedom Bookshop.
Submission  topics: freedom, liberty,oppression free speech.
Deadline: 1st March
The following is one of my own contributions.

Hungry for Freedom

So long as a human being thirsts for freedom
and is shackled in a concrete cage
without charge under a policy universally condemned
called administrative detention
I will sound alarms.

and if my poetry drifts towards polemic
I will make no apology
with the absence of the unseen in mainstream news
I will spread their dreams and hopes.

So long as bulldozers
destroy peoples homes
and walls are built that divide and uproot
I will raise my voice.

and when peoples lands are stolen
daily from under their feet
I will not be cowed into silence.

When rules of law are twisted
that allow voices to be unheard
I will not feign blindness
pretend ignorance
I will try to be an echoe.

and if some are allowed
to steal the richness
from peoples souls
I will stand up
and stamp my feet.

and will proudly raise my fist
proudly raise my fist.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti( b.24/3/19) - Poetry as Insurgent Art

Lawrence Ferlinghetti I consider to be  one of my favorite poets, a legend who in 1953, founded the City Lights bookstore.A prominent voice of the wide-open poetry movement that began in the 1950s, he has written poetry, translation, fiction, theater, art criticism, film narration and essays. Often concerned with politics and social issues. His work countered the literary elites definition of art and the artists role in the world. Though  imbued with the commonplace, his poetry cannot be simply described as polemic  or personal protest, for  it stands  on his craftmanship, thematics and grounding in tradition. Born in Yonkers, New York in 1919 , an activist whose beats still goes on, still brave enough and daring to challenge peoples beliefs, a painter too, but still active as a poet 90 plus years young. His life  has seen him act as a catalyst for numerous literary careers and for the Beat movement itself, publishing the eaerly work of Allen Ginsberg, Kerouac and Gary Snyder.
Making poetry accessible to all, with his lucid views he has long watered my senses. His bookstore quickly became an iconic literary institution that  has embodied social change and literary freedom. A truly remarkable person, and a great inspiration.
What follows is what   I would regard as his tour de force,although a work in progress, it is a a fine poetic manifesto nontheless, that  proves he's still got the edge, still got the force.His innovative poetics incorporate slang, pop cultural references wry humour to examine the human condition. Here he  shows us his purpose, I guess its up to us to do it ourselves.

I am signalling you through the flames.

The North Pole is not where it used to be.

Manifest Destiny is no longer manifest.

Civilisation self-destructs.

Nemesis is knocking at the door.

What are poets for, in such an age?
What is the use of poetry?

The state of the world calls out for poetry to save it.

If you would be a poet, create works capable of answering the challenge of apocalyptic times,
even if this meaning sounds apocalyptic.

You are Whitman, you are Poe, you are Mark Twain, you are Emily Dickinson and Edna St. Vincent Millay,
you are Neruda and Mayakovsky and Pasolini,
you are an American or an non-American, you can conquer the conquerer with words.

If you would be a poet, write living newspapers.
Be a reporter from outer space,
filing dispatches to some supreme managing editor 
who believes in full disclosure,
and has a low tolerance for bullshit.

If you would be a poet, experiment with all manner of poetic, erotic broken grammers,
ecstatc religions, heathen outpourings speaking in tongues,
bombast public speech, automatic scribblings, surrealist sensings,
streams of consiousness, found sounds, rants and raves-
to create your own limbie, your own underlying, your ur voice.

If you call yourself a poet, don't just sit there.
Poetry is not a sedentary occupation, not a "take your seat" practice.
Stand up and let them have it.

If you would be a poet, invent a new language, anyone could understand.
If you would be a poet, speak new truths that the world can't deny.

Through art, create order out of the chaos of the living.

Make it new news.

Write beyond time.

Reinvent the idea of beauty.

Question everything and everyone, including Socrates who questioned everything.

Be subversive, constantly questioning reality and the status quo.

Strive to change the world in such a way that there's no further need to be a dissident.

Hip Hop and Rap your way to liberation.

Your poems must be more than want adds for broken hearts.

Words can save you where guns can't.

Give a voice to the tongueless street.

See the rose through world-clored glasses.

Be an eye among the blind.

Be naive, non-cynical, as if you had just landed on earth,
astonshed by what tou have fallen upon.

Dig folk singers who are the true
singing poets of yesterday and today.

Think subjectively, write objectively.

Like a field of sunflowers, a poem should not have to be explained.

Haunt bookstores.

Cultivate dissidence and critical thinking.
First though may be worst thought.

Sow your poems with the salt of the earth.

Don't ever believe poetry is irrelevant in dark times.

Make new wine out of the grapes of wrath.

Be the gadfly of the state and also its firefly.

Poetry is making something out of nothing, and can be about nothing and still mean something.

from Poetry as  Insurgent Art
New Directions Press 2007

http://www.citylights.com/book/?GCOI=87286100900740&fa=author&person_id=4854

Côr Cochion Caerdydd - Not in my name

This weekend marks Bradley Manning's 100th day in captivity without charge.
This track  is by Cor Cochion Caerdydd a Welsh Campagn group who work timelessly to raise awareness about world injusstices and illegal acts of war, which we have been witnesses to in recent years.
 Profits from the sale of this single go towards the legal defence case of this heroic Welsh America, and thereafrter to the international peace movent via C.N.D Cymru.
Blowing whistes on war crimes is not a crime. While criminal bankers enjoy immunity because 'they are big to fail,' Bradley Manning faces life for exposing the truth.

http://www.corcochion.org.uk/

http://couragetoresist.org/

http://www.cndcymru.org/



Collateral Murder

Upon a Lunar Sea (for Kevin Ayers 14/8/44 -18/2/13 R.I.P)

A tribute to one of my favourite
singer, songwriters.

Upon a Lunar Sea 

We sailed upon a lunar sea

passed cracks in horizons, 

with submerged dreams 

plunged the depths of oceans. 

Under the influence of heady, sweet wine

moved towards nearest perimeter, 

primal navigators, looking like stowaways

taking many directions

we couldn't find our way back home. 

Following  blossoming fragments that made    

                                                         us  sway 

as the wind tore the clothes right of our 

                                                         backs,

lost kind souls kept on calling 

in the distance we saw the twinkling of lights,

heard bells that softly rang, like voices of the      

                                                         elements. 

A rainbow tribe joined the congregation 

our playground full of adventure, 

helped rid ourselves of staleness 

as we tumbled, roared  through time and space. 

Stars sang, as we sailed on through 

with our slurred words of endurance, 

as pages rained down, littered with inspiration

and riptides toar us away, from deep swells of trouble. 

While a shaman blew his wisdom, with soft gentle breath 

the music of the spheres played on and on, 

and  the deeper we sang, we discovered 

everyone is love.

Boycott Apartheid ft M1 (Dead Prez) and Lowkey

Thia video was made in the land of the Gadigal people of the Eora nation, whose sovreignty never ceded.

The video was  made by the following BDS supporters

Camera: Fabio Cavadini

Lightning and Sound: Amanda  King

Music (oud and daf): Mohamed Youssef

Music recordist: Richie Belkner

Music composer: Osloob of Katibeh 5

Video editor: Adrian Warburton

Produced by: Rihab Charida and Aamer Rahman

Thanks to Salwa El-Shaikh, Jason De Santolo, Stephen Dobson, Fred Deveson, Sally Osborne and Theo Fatseas.

Video in order of appearance:

Mutulu "M1" Olugbala

Peter Manning

Milan Ring

Lowkey (Kareem Denis)

Tuva El-Shaikh

Kerrie McGrath

Fatima Mawas

Awate Suleiman

Anthony  Loewenstein

Anika Moeen

Asmer Rahman


Currently consumer confidence has plunged as a result  of the horsemeat scandal  and supermarkets are desperately trying to reassure shoppers that the food we buy is safe and correctly labelled.
But mislabelling in supermarkets is actually a wider issue- and in the case of produce from illegal Israeli settlements it has been systematic and long standing.
All Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories are illegal under international law. Many shoppers  who wish to buy ethically avoid buying  from suppliers who profit from the crimes of occupation. To do that you need to know where the food you buy is coming from. Recently their have been thousands of emails sent to supermarket CEOs calling  on them to follow the Co-operative's lead in implementing an ethical sourcing policy, and not using companies which deal in produce from the settlements. 
Their is a broad consensus among Palestinian civil society, about thhe need  for a wide and sustained Campaign for Boycott, Disvestment and Sanctions. These kind of actions are effective economic, political and cultural expressions of action, with many people  joining this call.  As a means of expessing their dissatisfaction with Israels apartheid policies.

More infomation on this subject can be found below

http://www.palestinecampaign.org/information/factsheets/bds/

http://www.bdsmovement.net/2013/farming-injustice-briefing-10547

At home with Dave - Divide and conquer

The real Tory policies,  catch up with  Dave, as tells it how it is.

Quintilian (Marcus Fabus; 35CE -95CE) - How the orator should employ a lie

Quintillian was a Roman writer on rhetoric, and during the reign of the Emporor Domitian he was charged with the education of the Emporor's two great-nephews. It is with their training in eloquence that Quintillian concerns himseld in his Institutio Oratoria -  the most thorough treastment of an orator's education in classical literature. Here Quinttilian deals with how the orator may make the best use of falsehood. Politicians take note.

' Sometimes, too, we get a false statement of facts; these, as far as actual pleading is concerned, fall into two classes. In the first case the statement depends on external support; Publius Clodius, for instance, relied on his witnesses, when he stated that he was at Interamna on the nght when he committed abominable sacrilege at Rome. The other has to be supported by the speaker's native talent, and sometimes consists simply in an assumption of modesty, which is, I imagine, the reasonwhy it is called a gloss, while at other times it will be concerned with the question at issue. Whichever of these two forms we employ, we must take care, first that our fiction is within the bounds of possibility, secondly that it is consistent with the persons, data and places involved, and thirdly that it presents a character and a sequence that are not beyond belief: if possible, it should be connected with something that is admttedly true and should be supported by some argument that forms part of the actual case. For if we draw our fictions entirely from circumstances lying outside the case, the liberty which we have taken in resorting to falsehood will stand revealed. Above all we must see that we do not contradict ourselves, a slip which is far from rare on the part of spinners of fiction; for some things may put a more favourable complexion on portions of our case, and yet fail to agree as a whole. Further, what we say must not be at variance with the admitted truth. Even in the schools, if we desire a gloss, we must not look for it outside the facts laid down by our theme. In either case the orator should bear clearly in mind throughout his whole speech what the fiction is to which he has committed himself, since we are apt to forget our falsehoods, and there is no doubt about the truth of the proverb that a liar should have a good memory. But whereas, if the question turns on some act of our own, we must make one statement and stick to it, if it turns on an act committed by others, we may cast suspicion on a number of different points. In certain controversial themes of the schools, however, in which it is to be assumed that we have put a question and recieved no reply, we are at liberty to enumerate all the possible answers that might have been given. But we must remember only to invent such things as cannot be checked by evidence: I refer to occasions when we make our own minds speak (and we are the only persons who are in their secret) or put words in the mouth of the dead (for what they say is not liable to contradiction) or again in the mouth of someone whose interests are identical with our (for he will not contradict), or finally in the mouth of our opponent (for he will no be believed if he does not deny).'

Quintillian, The Institute, trans. H.E. Butler, Heinemann, 1921

Listening Post - Game of drones

From Al-Jazeera English

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), better known as drones, have crept into modern warfare as quietly as the airborne killing machines themselves and on the whole, media reporting on them has been just as subdued.

Last week, the veil of  silence was finally lifted when two of the most important and influential newspapers in the United States - the New York Times and the Washington Post - ran stories on a secret airbase in Saudi Arabia from which the US military has operated its 'drone war' campaign over Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen for the past two years.

However, as the story broke, it also came to light that reporters at both newspapers had known about the base long before the story went to print. They had agreed to conceal newsworthy infomation at the request of the US intelligence establishment, on the basis that reporting the truth would have harmed American national security interests.

The complicity of journalist with government officials to keep the base a secret has been justified on grounds of national security but the issue has raised troubling questions of when military secrets- as defined by the government - pull rank on the public duty of the fourth estate to inform.
-

A different kind of Love song

Picture by Banksy

trouble, trouble,boils and bubbles
with the bedroom tax, a storm is brewing
as the government makes their friends rich,
while making the rest of us poor,
with their voices of capital  drown our song.
Time for some love making, time to keep warm,
feel the touch and comfort of raptures  arms,
taste and feel the anchor of love,
that makes their power redundant,
in acts of unconditional embrace.
Surrender to gentle heartbeat,
that simultaneously melt and mend,
in the morning awake,
paint the days with  passion,
follow ports of possibility.
We wake make buds,
then petals, then leafs.
outside darkness drives
in the other direction,
we struggle on,
connecting others.
hand on hand
shoulder to shoulder,
draw breath, reach out
resusicate hungry mouths,
ah, it's a beautiful feeling
this thing called love.