Looking at Japanese Poetry

In due course I will be running a workshop as part of the Whitleigh Words Festival 2015 on Japanese Poetry.  Below is a poem which caught my eye several years ago and was written by Tamura Ryuichi, Japan's most popular modern poet:

A Man Who Writes a Poem

A man who writes a poem
floats in space
No one can tell
where the buoyancy comes from

A man who writes a poem
is like a pianist
whose hands are already moving
before the key's been chosen consciously
His hands precede him
His hands caught by the sound cannot escape
which is why they struggle

The sound guides the hands
and the hands
trying to escape the sound
drag him along
somewhere

    Where?

To see the shape
of a man writing a poem

Jump off the highest place in the world
upside down

And then your falling eye the wrong way up
might catch a glimpse
of a man writing a poem
floating in space
inside the gloom

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We will look at this and more traditional styles of Japanese Poetry.  Workshop details available through the Whitleigh Words Festival website.

Plymouth Poetry - Past and Present

Poetry about Plymouth - Past and Present.  Well, I wonder who started the ball rolling on that one then?  It always makes me smile when someone 'borrows' an idea you have had (and published) by then masquerading it as their own.  When I published Inspeximus:  Poetry from the Manors of The Roborough Hundred I realised I was writing for a very niche market.  Not everyone likes history.  Few understand specific local history and even fewer people these days read poetry.  So, when I see a certain 'historic' institution in Plymouth deciding to have an open evening for people with 'Plymouth Poetry Past and Present' as a grand theme, I fall off my chair in laughter.

Remember.  You heard it here first.

Remember also that nepotism rules in some cities which have refused to unlock their minds but want all the benefits when things go right.  Truth is stranger than fiction in Plymouth.

Whitleigh Words Festival

I am pleased to have been invited along to the Whitleigh Words Festival 2015.

My memories of the Whitleigh area are good ones.  My father lived there for a few years after the Second World War in what was then a 'new estate' and my Grandmother lived in Lancaster Gardens from around 1973 to 1984.  Both of them had vivid memories of Whitleigh when it was rambling green countryside and ancient woodland before the war changed so much in the Plymouth area.

I will be running a Poetry Walk and a Japanese Poetry Workshop as part of the Festival events.  Dates and details can be found on the Whitleigh Word Festival website.  Bookings for all workshops with myself and other writers need to be arranged through the contacts shown.

In particular, we must all thank Sandy Wager for working so tirelessly to make the festival happen.  She has lined up a galaxy of different activities which all come down to words - and their importance in our lives.  Her achievements have been huge in grasping such a wide undertaking and putting the special community of Whitleigh people into a higher profile.  Thank you Sandy.

Keep on writing!

Ruth

The 'i's' and the eyes have it for Poetry and Pictures ...

Poetry and Pictures - how do we 'see' them and what is the link?

Imagery:  The meaning of Imagery evolves from the Latin 'of a likeness' and covers the use of language to represent a sensory or extra-sensory experience. Through pushing out our descriptions of what we see, the use of simile and metaphor is very effective.  Look at this extract from Lazarus and the Sea by Peter Redgrove ....

'They spread like whispered conversations
Through all the numbed rippling tissues radiated
Like a tree for thirty years from the still centre
Of my salt ovum. ...'

Illusion:  What writers create to make the reader feel they are sharing in the experience of hearing, feeling, tasting, seeing and smelling.  The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge is a good example ...

'My lips were wet, my throat was cold,
My garments all were dank;
Sure I had drunken in my dreams,
And still my body drank.

The important element of illusion is for the writer and the reader to appreciate together the pace and element of content in the work.

Ideograph:  This is rarer in English but means 'a picture of the thing itself' - or is more applicable to a written symbol.  The Chinese and Japanese languages are ideographic.  The symbol is generally drawn from a picture of representation.

So there are above, three literary words for you which all begin with 'i' and work on how poetry and wider literature is perceived through how we see through what is written.

English: The Best Language in the World ...

English:  The Best Language in the World ... also classed as one of the most difficult, ambiguous and tricky.  Perhaps.  One of the joys of the English Language is the variety of the vocabulary sources.  Flick through a Dictionary and what do you find?

I = from the Old Saxon of 'ik', Old Norse of 'ek', Indo-European of 'ego' (check out the Latin too).
Will = from the Old English of 'willan' or 'wyllan', Old Norse of 'uilja' and Germanic 'wel'.
Telephone = from two words: tele and phone.  So we look at 'tele' from the Greek of 'far off' and 'phone' from the Greek of 'phone' meaning 'voice' or 'sound'.
You = from the Old English 'eow' and the Old Saxon 'ju' and the West Germanic 'iwwiz'.
This = from the Old English 'thes', Old Saxon 'these' and the Old Higher German 'dese'.
Evening = from the Old English 'aefnung'.

Now say the words in bold aloud replacing them with one of the original archaic words.  You will 'hear' some similarities to the modern sentence but it will also demonstrate how much English has evolved over the years.

We haven't even touched on some of the French or Celtic words which filter into our everyday lives.

Are we doing enough to protect the English Language?  In France, the Academie Francais fiercely defends the purification of the French language.  This is the key reason French is so pure and fine when translated; plus it is a remarkably polite language to use.  It is literally all about entente cordiale.

One of the pleasures of writing poetry is to drill down and quarry out each word.  I don't write for performance poetry (I'm not an actress and have no intentions of being one) as to me the word itself has to stand up out of the page and really mean what it says.  That can become more difficult in poetry that rhymes, or like a rendition of 'Under Milk Wood' by Dylan Thomas, the actual sound of each word adds a remarkable weight to the picture formed in the reader or listeners mind.

Poetry and pictures.  More to follow.

Ruth

Magna Carta and Inspeximus .... the Link

We now, in 2015, stand on the threshold of the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta.  A document signed by King John in 1215 after pressure from the Barons - not to mention the church - speaks of freedom and liberty.  King John was a very unpopular King and was eventually pushed into a tight corner at Runnymede where he was encouraged to sign the document we recognize today.  As a legal document, the Magna Carta has never been revoked and English law is founded on its beliefs.

The word 'Inspeximus' means literally in Latin = 'We have inspected' and comes from the right of land owners to show that what they have is legally theirs.  At Domesday, a record was taken of all land holdings (manors) and what they consisted of; from people to livestock and woodland.  In later years, a re-visitation took place and in 1381 when King Richard II was on the throne, an Inspeximus grant of Walkhampton manor took place to certify ownership.  Walkhampton was a Royal Manor and the premier lead manor of The Roborough Hundred.  Plymouth barely existed and was just a small fishing village called Sutton. 

Time has moved on and much has changed.  However, to hold the 1381 Inspeximus grant in the Plymouth and West Devon Record Office was quite a special feeling.  So much can be learnt from our surroundings.  We just need to know how to look.

Creative Writing Before and During Inspeximus - Plymouth and South Devon

I founded Plymouth Proprietary Library Writers Group in 2009.  A literary diamond in the city which doesn't get the attention it deserves.  However, working full time means that any voluntary work (i.e. for library committee ... read unpaid charity work ... and the rapidly growing PPL Writers Group) is limited.  I gave up sitting on the library committee as certain traditional ideas were different to mine.  Never mind; we all move on.  The Plymouth Proprietary Library Writers Group apparently continues to thrive and has now moved into the Plymouth Arts Centre.  I sincerely wish them well.  I rarely spend much time in Plymouth these days unless I have to.

Occasionally I dabble with competitions for poetry and short stories.  Admittedly not as often as I would like to, as the day job gets in the way.  A brief summary of results found in my shambolic filing system is as follows:

2010         National Association of Writers Groups        Runner Up for the Ten Minute Radio Play
with:  THE LAIRA QUATRAIN   (Play)

2010         Delivered Magazine                                  
with:  AN ODE TO WOOLWORTHS (Poem)

2010         Graffiti Short Story Competition                    Shortlisted
with:  GOING HOME (Short Story)

2011         The Herald Plymouth
with:  POETRY PUBLISHED

2011         Poetry Rivals 2011
with:  A CLOCK STRIKES THIRTEEN (Poem)

2012         West Country Writers Association                 Third Prize - event held in Bath, Somerset.
with:  CONTINUUM (Short Story)

2012         Write Around Totnes
with:  THE TOTNES ODYSSEY (Poem)

2012         The Stephen Spender Prize for Translation
with:  THEOCRITUS - (Translation of a pattern poem from the original Classical Greek into contemporary English)                                                     Commended by Professor Edith Hall

2013        United Press
with:  SUNRISE OVER LAIRA MILL (Poem)

2013        EXCite Poetry Festival of Exeter
with:  FORMULA ONE FERN (Poem)                          Shortlisted

2013       Literature Works
with:  NUMBERS (Poem)                                               Published on Literature Works website

2013       Wells Festival of Literature                              Shortlisted
with:  PTERIDOMANIA (Short Story)

2014       The Great British Write Off
with:  RIVER ERME:  DEVON (Poem)

2014      The Yeovil Literary Prize                                  Commended by Judge Annie Freud
with:  FORMULA ONE FERN (Poem)

2014      Fylde Brighter Writers Competition
with:  COFFEE (Poem)                                                   Shortlisted

2015      The Sentinel Annual Short Story Competition  Second Prize
with:  JAIL GRAIL (Short Story)

2015      Carillon Magazine                                             Shortlisted
with:  MISTAKEN IDENTITY (Short Story)


Top Tip:  never take entering competitions seriously.  As someone who has been involved in the judging process, choosing a winner isn't easy and will vacillate considerably depending on who is in your panel of judges.  Supporting competitions as and when you can is important for creative writing as a whole.  But then, not easy for those of us working full time ... so just treat it as a fun hobby but nothing more.

Inspeximus:  Poetry from the Manors of the Roborough Hundred was written over a long period of time and I had no deadline to publish it by, so it was possible to write on other themes occasionally.