'Oranges' - Gary Soto

The first time I walked
With a girl, I was twelve,
Cold, and weighted down
With two oranges in my jacket.
December. Frost cracking
Beneath my steps, my breath
Before me, then gone,
As I walked toward
Her house, the one whose
Porch light burned yellow
Night and day, in any weather.
A dog barked at me, until
She came out pulling
At her gloves, face bright
With rouge. I smiled,
Touched her shoulder, and led
Her down the street, across
A used car lot and a line
Of newly planted trees,
Until we were breathing
Before a drugstore. We
Entered, the tiny bell
Bringing a saleslady
Down a narrow isle of goods.
I turned to the candies
Tiered like bleachers,
And asked what she wanted -
Light in her eyes, a smile
Starting at the corners
Of her mouth. I fingered
A nickel in my pocket,
And when she lifted a chocolate
That cost a dime,
I didn't say anything.
I took the nickel from
My pocket, then an orange,
And set them quietly on
The counter. When I looked up,
The lady's eyes met mine,
And held them, knowing
Very well what it was all
About.

Outside,
A few cars hissing past,
Fog hanging like old
Coats between the trees.
I took my girl's hand
In mine for two blocks,
Then released it to let
Her unwrap the chocolate.
I peeled my orange
That was so bright against
The gray of December
That, from some distance,
Someone might have though
I was making a fire in my hands.

'Shocks of Recognition - The photography of Jan Voster'

We all suffer our own daily deaths - our spiritual stagnation, when our sense of wonders fail: when we are no longer in awe of the Creation. The world is like the sea coming into the fine ports of our senses. God knows what kind of cargo to expect - but too often we erect barriers, we blockade these ports. We send the strange, mysterious ships away. We are wary of encountering the unknown. We become walled in by fixed convictions...blinkered beliefs...arrogant assumptions. I think it is vital for our own well-being to keep opening new doors onto life. Miseosler Holeb, a poet from Prague, urges us to take that forbidding step, to set forth and discover:



Go and open the door:

Even if there's only

The darkness, ticking;

Even if there's only

The hollow wind;

Even if nothing is there

Go and open the door.



A poem like this with it keen vision of renewal, its refreshing lift of enthusiasm, encourages all of us to develop a sense of awareness - a sense of reading, an openess to experience. Poetry/painting/photography of this kind is about seeing. Seeing what others have forgotten to see. In this respect Jan Voster is a see-r. A photograph may only take a split second of execution but it represents, as Susan Santag said, ' a lifetime of preparation' A lifetime of walking around with ones eyes opened. Jan Voster has eyes sharp as tin openers. Art of any kind is like a balloon. It takes you up into the air. It gives you and overview of things, but it also has to function as a parachute to take you down safely to earth again.

October 09

1. 'Untitled' - Hafez. Mitra.
(This poem was Persian - Mitra read it out both in its original form and in translation)

2. 'After Rain' - Jo Bell. Michael.

3. 'Defrosting' - Susan Richardson. Phill.

4. 'Oranges' - Gary Sotto. Juliette.

5. 'Berg' - Hillary Menos. Michael.

6. 'The force that through the green fuse drives the flower' - Dylan Thomas. Phill.

7. 'Go and open the door' - Miseosler Holeb. Juliette.
(This is from 'Shocks of Recognition: The Landscape of Remembrance.' The photography of Jan Voster)

8. 'Lament of Heledd' - Dannie Abse. Michael.

A 14-Year-Old Convalescent Cat In The Winter- Gavin Ewart

I want him to have another living summer,
to lie in the sun and enjoy the douceur de vivre --
because the sun, like golden rum in a rummer,
is what makes an idle cat un tout petite peu ivre--

I want him to lie stretched out contented,
revelling in the heat, his fur all dry and warm,
an Old Age Pensioner, retired, resented
by no one, and happiness in a beelike swarm

to settle on him -- postponed for another season
that last fated hateful journal to the vet
from which there is no return (and age the reason),
which must soon come -- as I cannot forget.

Wild Geese- Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

PS September

Friday 4th September

1. Voyage- Tamar Yoseloff. Michael
2008 Forward Prize Book of Poetry

2. Wild Geese- Mary Oliver. Juliette
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/wild-geese-by-mary-oliver/

3. Inheritance- Evan. Michael
2008 Forward Prize Book of Poetry

4. A 14-Year-Old Convalescent Cat In The Winter- Gavin Ewart. Juliette

5. London- Elaine Fanshaw. Michael
2008 Forward Prize Book of Poetry


Juliette
Michael
Monica
Brian
2008 Forward Prize Book of Poetry

Clown in the Moon- Dylan Thomas

My tears are like the quiet drift
Of petals from some magic rose;
And all my grief flows from the rift
Of unremembered skies and snows.

I think, that if I touched the earth,
It would crumble;
It is so sad and beautiful,
So tremulously like a dream.

Everything Changes- Cicely Herbert

Based on the poem 'Alles wandelt sich' by Bertroit Brecht.

Everything changes. We plant

trees for those born later

but what's happened has happened,

and poisons poured into the seas

cannot be drained out again.

What's happened has happened.

Poisons poured into the seas

cannot be drained out again, but

everything changes. We plant

trees for those born later.

He Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven- W. B. Yeats

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

PS August

1. Dylan Thomas- Clown In The Moon
www.bbc.co.uk/poetryseason

2. Cicely Herbert- Everything Changes
(Based on Bertroit Brecht's 'Alles Wandelt Sich')

3. W. B. Yeats- He Wishes For The Cloths of Heaven
www.readprint.com/work-1582/He-Wishes-For-The-Cloth-Of-Heaven-William-Butler-Yeats

4. Sheenagh Pugh- In The Moment
Taken from Poetry Review volume 98:2 Summer 2009

5. Wendy Cope- The Traditionalist
Taken from Poetry Review volume 98:2 Summer 2009

6. Wendy Cope- The Radical
Taken from Poetry Review volume 98:2 Summer 2009

7. Jo Shapcott- Procedure
Taken from Poetry Review volume 98:2 Summer 2009

8. Charles Evans- Libetto
Taken from Poetry Review volume 98:2 Summer 2009


(Link to the Poetry Society's website is as follows: http://www.poetrysociety.org.uk/content/homepage/
You cannot access the poems from there but it has some interesting stuff as well as a list of all the contributors (to the book Michael read from) and a review of the poems too!)

A Boy's Head

In it there is a space-ship
and a project
for doing away with piano lessons.

And there is
Noah's ark,
which shall be first.

And there is
an entirely new bird,
an entirely new hare,
an entirely new bumble-bee.

There is a river
that flows upwards.

There is a multiplication table.

There is anti-matter.

And it just cannot be trimmed.

I believe
that only what cannot be trimmed
is a head.

There is promise
in the circumstance
that so many people have heads.

Miroslav Holub - age 14

A Martian Sends A Postcard Home

Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings
and some are treasured for their markings -

they cause the eyes to melt
or the body to shriek without pain.

I have never seen one fly, but
sometimes they perch on the hand.

Mist is when the sky is tired of flight
and rests its soft machine on ground:

then the world is dim and bookish
like engravings under tissue paper.

Rain is when the earth is television.
It has the property of making colours darker.

Model T is a room with the lock inside -
a key is turned to free the world

for movement, so quick there is a film
to watch for anything missed.

But time is tied to the wrist
or kept in a box, ticking with impatience.

In homes, a haunted apparatus sleeps,
that snores when you pick it up.

If the ghost cries, they carry it
to their lips and soothe it to sleep

with sounds. And yet they wake it up
deliberately, by tickling with a finger.

Only the young are allowed to suffer
openly. Adults go to a punishment room

with water but nothing to eat.
They lock the door and suffer the noises

alone. No one is exempt
and everyone's pain has a different smell.

At night when all the colours die,
they hide in pairs

and read about themselves -
in colour, with their eyelids shut.

Craig Raine

A Few Words on the Soul

We have a soul at times.
No one's got it non-stop,
for keeps.

Day after day,
year after year
may pass without it.

Sometimes
it will settle for awhile
only in childhood's fears and raptures
Sometimes only in astonishment
that we are old.

It rarely lends a hand
in uphill tasks,
like moving furniture,
or lifting luggage,
or going miles in shoes that pinch.

It usually steps out
whenever meat needs chopping
or forms have to be filled.

For every thousand conversations
it participates in one,
if even that,
since it prefers silence.

Just when our body goes from ache to pain,
it slips off-duty.

It's picky,
it doesn't like seeing us in crowds.
our hustling for a dubious advantage
and creaky machinations make it sick.

Joy and sorrow
aren't two different feelings for it.
It attends us
only when the two are joined.

We can count on it
when we're sure of nothing
and curious about everything.

Among the material objects
it favors clocks with pendulums
and mirrors, which keep on working
even when no one is looking.

It won't say where it comes from
or when it's taking off again,
though it's clearly expecting such questions.

We need it
but apparently
it needs us
for some reason too.

Wislawa Syzmborska
(Translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh)

PS July

1. A Few Words on The Soul - Wislawa Szymborska. Juliette

2. A Martian Sends a Postcard Home - Craig Raine. Juliette

3. A Boy's Head - Miroslav Holub. Juliette

There were 3 of us but i was the only which which read this session.

Don't Say I Said

Don't Say I Said
Next time you speak to you-know-who
I’ve got a message for him.
Tell him that I have lost a stone
Since the last time I saw him.
Tell him that I’ve got three new books
Coming out soon, but play it
Cool, make it sound spontaneous.
Don’t say I said to say it.

He might ask if I’ve mentioned him.
Say I have once, in passing.
Memorise everything he says
And, no, it won’t be grassing
When you repeat his words to me –
It’s the only way to play it.
Tell him I’m toned and tanned and fine.
Don’t say I said to say it.

Say that serenity and grace
Have taken root inside me.
My top-note is frivolity
But beneath, dark passions guide me.
Tell him I’m radiant and replete
And add that every day it
Seems I am harder to resist.
Don’t say I said to say it.

Tell him that all my ancient faults
Have been eradicated.
I do not carp or analyse
As I might have when we dated.
Say I’m not bossy any more
Or, better still, convey it
Subtly, but get the point across.
Don’t say I said to say it.

Sophie Hannah
http://www.sophiehannah.com/biographical.html

Never- ending ardour

so I have loved Africa
With no illusions and no madness
I am woken up by the insomnia
Of the terror of the trembling earth

so I have thought of the sea
Believing that happiness
Was an immense river
Which will flow in the midst of the desert

so I have crossed the Atlantic ocean for the West
In search of democracy
But I am woken up by the insomnia
Of the great disappointment of my loss of identity

so I have thought of my mother
And I believe that maternal love
Is an unchangeable flower – sempiternal
Which flowers in my veins to give me more ardour

Aime Kongolo

PS June 5th

1. Lament of a Teapot - Michael MacKian. Michael
2. Never ending Ardour - Aime Kongolo. Juliette
3. Ingrids Husband - Paul Henry. Michael
4. Paul Henry. Michael
5. Paul Henry. Michael
6. Don't Say i Said - Sophie Hannah. Juliette

Michael please feel free to put the Paul henry titles in - i am unsure of them !

PS May 09

1. For Alistair Darlings New Budget - Andrew Motion (Poet Laurette) MICHAEL

2. On The Exhumation of Seamus Heaney 2020 - Stephen Smith SARA (? think its this title)

3. The Earthling - Brian Pattern JULIETTE

4. Panther Pawed - Ray Bradbury MICHAEL

5. 'What Do Women Want? - Kim Addonizio (Womans Work) SARA

PS April

1. Slate, Oak, Glass - Gillian Clarke Michael
2. Arts Poetica - Archibald McLeish Mike
3. White - WB Yeats Juliette
4. Digging - Seamus Heaney Michael
5. Marching Through a Novel - John Updike Mike
6. Afterlife - John Burnside Juliette

Contemplation

For those unaccustomed to contemplation, knowing where to start can be daunting. One simple method is contemplative reading, a traditional Christian practice known as lectio divina, Latin for divine reading of sacred texts.

Choosing a cherished poem can be a useful starting point. 'Poetry is a great vehicle for contemplation because it asks us top aspire to be better, to stretch mentally and experience deep thought,' says Rick Benjamin, a poet and lecturer at the institute of Contemplative Studies based at Brown University in the US. He suggests that it doesn't matter what poem you read as long as you love it. Read It aloud so you can savour hearing it in your own voice, finding where the inflections and intonations are. Then memorise it. 'What you are aiming for is to have the poem inside you. Something extraordinary happens when you hold a poem in your own body, your own mind. Its a transfer of one thinker to another.'

Every morning when Benjamin awakes, her recites in his mind a poem by the thirteenth century mystic poet Rumi, Across the Doorsill. 'I sometimes say it 10 times a day or more. it begins, 'The breeze at dawn has secrets top tell you / Don't go back to sleep'. It reminds you that life is mysterious and that what we can't see doesn't indicate there isn't a world beyond this one. It is also a way of reminding myself that thinking is important. Its not our actions but the way we think about the world that has real power to transform it.'

Taken from The Art of Contemplation article - Psychologies Magazine March 09