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

PS March 6th

1. A few poems taken from Women's Work: Modern Women Poets Writing in English, eds Eva Salzman and Amy Wack Michael
2. One of his own published poems - didnt know the name! Sorry!) Philip
3. Robot Boy / Anchor baby - Tim Burton (taken from Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy) Philip
4. Passage on writing poetry / Passage on poetry and musicians - Alice Walker (taken from Her Blue Body Everything We Know: Earthling ) Juliette
5. No Dialects Please - Merle Collins Michael
6. Earthy Anecdote - Wallace Stevens (taken from Harmonium) Philip
7. The Caged Bird Sings - Maya Angelou Michael
8. Contemplation - from Psychologies magazine Juliette

I'll post up any of my poems / pieces if i have time this month. Also please feel free to post up the ones you read :-)

What the World Could be Like

The smell of lime was coming in to the open air,
Blue sky flying over us,
Red roses going backwards and forwards,
Dogs crying louder and louder,
Suddenly a car crash in to a brick wall,
Then there was a bang it was a bomb.
There was a lovely smell of opium.
The fresh smell was a peach rose,
Sparkling water running down the stream.
The people are trying to walk but they can't.
At the end of the world bones lying ever way
And the bubbly waters going all over.

Linzi age 9yrs

Chapter: Learning more about Lives pg 49
Read my Mind - young children, poetry and learning
Fred Sedgwick

How to Leave the World that Worships should

Let faxes butter-curl on dusty shelves.
Let junkmail build its castles in the hush
of other people’s halls. Let deadlines burst
and flash like glorious fireworks somewhere else.
As hours go softly by, let others curse
the roads where distant drivers queue like sheep.
Let e-mails fly like panicked, tiny birds.
Let phones, unanswered, ring themselves to sleep.

Above, the sky unrolls its telegram,
immense and wordless, simply understood:
you’ve made your mark like birdtracks in the sand -
now make the air in your lungs your livelihood.
See how each wave arrives at last to heave
itself upon the beach and vanish. Breathe.

Ros Barber

from the Herne Bay sonnets.
Published in Material (Anvil 2008).
Also available on the Oxfam Lifelines 2 CD.

PS Feb 6th

1. Calle Shevens Vals - Eve Taube (Michael)
2. How to Leave the World that Worships should - Ros Barber (Juliette)
3. Chocolate from the Famine Museum - Sheenah Pugh (Michael)
4. What the World Could be Like - Linzi age 9yrs (Juliette)

River

Past the locked garden gate / it came carrying
leaves.
We first learnt about death / from its rough drag
and hum:
it spread like thick spilt ink / leaking into our
games
and scoring through our maps / at Thames,
Severn, Arun.

It might have been a chink / in the brittle
landscape,
a typographic slip / turning us upside-down
so that we saw ourselves / in the shimnmering
people
trapped in the reflection / of a tiny drowning
town.

From a window we'd watch / men draw fish from
its curves
and children juggle nets / through its scales and
ridges:
we bent like roots to it / and grew old while it
drove
on to carve up cities / into blocks and bridges

We first learnt about God / from its scattering of
light:
from watching its shallows / where at the edge of
day
distant figurse gathered / to stand knee-deep,
waiting
for it to wash their bones / clean, clean as a blank
page.

Sam Meekings
http://www.spl.org.uk/best-poems/005.htm

January 9th PS

River - Sam Meekings (Juliette)

2 new members also read their own poetry however we have since decided participants will only be allowed to share published poetry. Many thanks

December 5th PS

Dublinesque - Philip Larkin (Mike)
The Guilty One - Paublo Neuroda (Michael)
The Gift - Paublo Neuroda (Michael)
When I Am Invisible - Lynne Rhys (Juliette)
She Forgets What She Wants - Lynne Rhys (Juliette)
Very Bad Dog - John Hegley (Mike)
For an Old Wizard - John Hegley (Mike)
For His Boy - John Hegley (Mike)
After Rain - Jo Bell (Michael)

2008 PS Meeting Poem Lists...

...that i can remember!

March 08
Laughing All The Way To The Bank - Michael Burns (Mike)
Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes Billy Collins (Mike)

May 08
The Wall - Dannie Abse
Case History - Dannie Abse
The Prescription - Dannie Abse
Ode To Tomato - Pablo Neuroda (Michael))
Book of Questions - Pablo Neuroda (Michael)
To Sadness - Pablo Neuroda (Michael)
Afterlife - John Burnside
Angel Wings - Brian Pattern (Juliette)

June 08
Poetry of Departures - Philip Larkin (Juliette)
The Cambridge Ladies - E E Cummings (Mike)
As If - Robert Price (Juliette)

These are just some i wrote down at the time. I know there are many more so if you remember just add them to the list in this post as and when. Thanks. We'll start afresh for 2009.

The Imbeciles

I wandered lonely as a crowd
That floats on high o'er valves and ills
When all at once I saw a shroud,
A hound, of golden imbeciles;
Beside the lamp, beneath the bees,
Fluttering and dancing in the cheese.

Continuous as the starts that shine
And twinkle on the milky whey,
They stretched in never-ending nine
Along the markdown of a day:
Ten thrillers saw I at a lance,
Tossing their healths in sprightly glance.

The wealths beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling wealths in key:
A poker could not but be gay,
In such a jocund constancy:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What weave to me the shred had brought:

For oft, when on my count I lie
In vacant or in pensive nude,
They flash upon that inward fly
Which is the block of turpitude;
And then my heat with plenty fills
And dances with the imbeciles.

Harry Mathews

For the background to this Oulipo 'N plus 7' irreverence, go to The Atlantic.
There is a Wikipedia entry about Oulipo as well.

Saison Poetry Library

An interview with the Saison Poetry Library made by a young blogger on the Poetry International Blog, Thought maybe of interest for our trip: http://poetryinternational.wordpress.com/2008/11/04/poetry-library-tour-michael-oladeji-chris-mccabe/