Orphans

 As something a of a lockdown project, I've been trawling through old journals and transcribing them, with a little tinkering*. A journal is a pretty messy thing, half-ideas, fragments of lines, sketches of ideas. I've always used them as a jumping off point, and a way of keeping in rhythm, but too often I become distracted by an idea, and what was sketched out, or half-drawn, or floated as an idea remains just that, forgotten, as I charge off after the next shiny which, this time, will be the one I can truly stick to.

A recurring theme of these intermittent posts is the equally intermittent nature of my writing. Never prolific, the time consuming way I earn a living pushes even my best of intentions further into the margins, evidenced by the way that the journal I'm currently typing out began in 2019 and still has a few blank pages left at the back (in my defence I often work straight onto the computer, but it's still fairly paltry).

What's good about the exercise, though, is the discovery of what I often think of as orphans. The journal gives you licence to goof about, it's a more immediate and personal practice than typing. I always suspect that when typing you've already got half an eye on publication. The less professional, more immediate world of the writing journal is fertile ground for the creation of texts which, in all honesty, wouldn't have survived the computer's more rigorous standards. daft jokes to yourself, silly flights of fancy, the precis of a novel which would never work as a book, but reads quite well as a hundred word idea . These are the ones which don't really fit with your normal practice, which don't really belong anywhere, the sort of poems, or texts, which are unlikely to find a home anywhere other than in-house

Well, this is my house. And so here are a couple of my orphans, rescued from the obscurity of the half-forgotten journal, because I might as well as not:

Sketches from the glorious new dawn  (2/10/12)

 

Seasonality for all

A sourdough in every home

 

(clashed banners engage

A river-rally, think dappled sunlight)

 

Full Union rights for superheroes

for talking animals and cars

 

One woman. Two votes

One robot alien. Ten votes.

Pan-Universal suffrage

 

10% less refraction

Taxidermy breaks

Moving forward together

While glued

 

Fun nation under God

The nice God, though

 

Moving crablike together

Reclaiming our ancestral birthing grounds

 

Placards for all!

In the event 

 

Of an event

Deny all knowledge

Refuse credentials

Delay acknowledgement

Check papers

Re-check

Re-file, head back

 

Ask what constitutes

An event

Ask if this applies

Qualifies, fulfils

Criteria -as events

Go, is it going?

 

Is it an event in a

And of being an event is

It eventuating, actualising

Has the event realised

It is in fact

An event has it checked

Its own credentials?

Its risk assessments?

Its fire policy?

Qualifications, residential

Or otherwise? Have the

Forms been filled

Have they been checked

By a teacher a rector

A sea captain a First Minister

A PPS an attacking

Left back minor

European royalty a

Leader writer or other

Person of responsibility

This or

Is it acceptable spare for

For events has there

Been precedent a

Chain of events the

Historical factor needs

Factoring in the ring

Of truth needs ponying

Up is this in truth

An event for the family

Or merely portions thereof

Catered? Self-catered?

Full board? Half board?

Quite bored?

Fret not, we’ll take donations after 

or set a test, we're as yet undecided

*alert readers will note that I did something similar a few years ago and called them "Rescued Poems". Which just goes to show that there's no such thing as a new idea, or at least that it's a shame to let a good old idea go to waste. This is slightly different though, honest!

Trawling the archives pt 3: 99 Postcards for Georges Perec

I'm not having to go too far back for this one, as my most recent chapbook 99 Postcards for Georges Perec came out two years ago. This isn't to say it's still fresh in the memory though, it was a long time being written.

The idea for it first came to me in about 2010-ish when reading the eponymous Perec's collected essays and odds and sods Species of Spaces. Regular readers of here or sister blog Coastalblog, will probably be aware of my fondness for M. Perec. So it should come as no surprise that I decided to rip him off royally for this chapbook, imitation being the sincerest form of flattery and all that.

I may be being slightly unfair on myself here. Let's say that I was inspired by him. "99 Postcards" does something quite different from Perec's piece. His "Two Hundred and Forty-three Postcards in Real Colour", was a procedural piece, generated according to a strict constraint, as befits this writer synonymous with Oulipo. The end result was, therefore, quite regimented (albeit with traces of Perec's sly humour intruding, and after a while the overall effect is comic). The texts consisted of five elements: Place, Consideration, Pleasures, Particulars and Greeting. For each of these Perec gave himself three options (For example, "Greetings" could be love and kisses, regards, or the date of return). Five components, each with three possibilities generates 3 to the power of 5 options, so 243 postcards.

The end result of this is such "postcards" as:

                                  We're in the Aegean. Getting ourselves a tan. I go water skiing.

                                   It's smashing. Expect to return the 11th.

For this reader, the overall effect of this carefully basic detail was to wonder what else had happened on that holiday. There is, presumably, a story behind the water skiing. The strict generative method also ensures a degree of repetition. Given Perec's subtlety, the generative process isn't easy to spot, but you get the impression one's there (I am indebted to Mireille Ribiere's excellent blog here), and the whole effect, of repetition of structure, of recurring vocabulary, adds to the mystery.

It's at this point that I'm reminded that my first chapbook L39 was, in no small part about the the absurdity and fantasy of every-day life, the idea that the humdrum hides the transcendent (more on this here). So Perec's piece was catnip for me.

But I did something different, a simple recreation of Perec's idea would have resulted in similar texts, but I loved the idea of the compression, of each postcard containing multitudes. So, for me, the postcards were essentially a series of short lyrics, which is what I set out to write.

I didn't follow a process to generate the texts. Rather, each postcard is a discrete event (though reading back through it, I can see that there's a nod to Perec's process in my repetition of sign-offs "kisses" "miss you" "see you soon" recur. Some are rooted in reality, others are works of pure fiction, not that it's necessary for the reader to discern which is which.

The poems were written over a period of roughly eight years. Aptly enough, I started writing them while on holiday, and each trip away added to the pile. But there were also memories of childhood, current affairs and even conversations with other poets, in a sense, as Skip Fox, Ian Duhig and Alec Finlay were all referenced.

The form meant tying to do a lot with a little. Whether it be commentary or a joke. Two of the most successful ones for me are one of each, the serious:

                                                    Quick note from Gaza

                                                    This is murder

                                                    Please Stop. Love.

And the definitely not-serious

                                                    In Stoke

                                                    Not sure how

                                                    Will write soon

This mix can read unevenly, as I lurch from absurd joke to social commentary to family memories, but overall I rather enjoy the chaos. The aim was to cover a lot of ground, but always stay grounded, and I think I pretty much pulled it off. Ironically for a globe-trotting selection of  poems, it's the one which is centred most resolutely on home, with my wife and children making rare appearances. I think, reading it back, that it follows on from the first two quite nicely, the absurdity and goofiness of L39, followed by the harder edges of Delete Recover Delete and then this, more grounded, gentler and reflective. I can see myself growing older through the three chapbooks. And it only remains to ask myself, what next?