I really enjoy artist collaborations. They end up so much more than the sum of their parts.
A friend and filmmaker, David Bugeja of Catmari Productions, was inspired to create a video clip for my recently recorded poem Darksparkle.
To be honest, it makes my reading sound a bit shabby! But I adore what he’s done here.
hold the wind in my arms
ghost trees toss
their shrouds of
pale cloth
while wave-feathers trail
white-peacock fringes
behind surges
irreparable
over rocks
as my tin-can heart
soaks up
songs from
half-forgotten harmonicas
I’m poised
a broken-bevel jewel
seeking kintsugi
to gild old scars
kintsugi is the Japanese art of mending broken pottery with strands of gold lacquer
Photo: Claire Doble
I’m wired for sound
reading books from a supplier named for the rainforest we’re destroying, a queasy joke like
enjoy the silence
these days I read mostly e-books (same supplier, same quease) and my music is stored
elsewhere, while shelves sit full of dusting jewel cases, oh! that sounds more precious than MP3s
I’m wired for sound
can’t listen when I’m writing, so many hours of
words falling quiet through my fingers, thudding soft into keyboard squares; sometimes my thoughts pause –
enjoy the silence
composing lines in my head on the morning tram, smells aggressively of RedBull and cigarettes
produced by twitchy men I protect myself from with cheap headphones, thank goodness
I’m wired for sound
sometimes when I can’t fall asleep from stress, I try the meditation app,
she says soothingly ‘simply notice sounds around you’ but it’s 22.47 in Zurich, Oerlikon
enjoy the silence
I run away from my life, I run into my life, I run into the forest
and there is my life waiting for me underneath my legs my two feet keep going, one in front of the other, and it’s music I’ve found
I’m wired for sound
to enjoy the silence
Today’s GloPoWriMo Day 5 challenge was a difficult one. But I love the challenges! To write a poem that incorporates at least one of the following: (1) the villanelle form, (2) lines taken from an outside text, and/or (3) phrases that oppose each other in some way. If you can use two elements, great – and if you can do all three, wow!
I managed this using “Wired for Sound” (originally Cliff Richard but I’m thinking of the Bi(f)tek version) and “Enjoy the Silence” by Depeche Mode.
I have to give an extra shout-out to Napowrimo for putting me on to this incredible mashup by poet Kyle Dargan of the Lord’s Prayer with Grandmaster Flash’s “the Message” – wow! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjzaGqGqkMY
Photo by Sai Kiran Anagani on Unsplash
I’m doing GloPoWriMo / NaPoWriMo again this April, since I had such a great time of it last year.
It’s kind of fitting that I’m at a writer’s retreat this weekend. So I’m looking at the Alps (above) from my hotel room window, but I’m thinking about my life back in Sydney because I’m doing this writing course about memoir.
This poem came from the GloPo prompt, which was to write a poem in the style of Kay Ryan, the US poet laureate from 2008-2010. According to GloPo a Kay-Ryanesque poem is: short, tight lines, rhymes interwoven throughout, maybe an animal or two, and, if you can manage to stuff it in, a sharp little philosophical conclusion. (I actually think a lot of my poems work out like this anyway, so this wasn’t too big a stretch!)
My course prompt was to write using your special knowledge of something. I thought about the walk I used to do everyday from home to school along a straight street, listening to my music. Then, a few years later, my walk from home to work along another long, straight street – Wilson Street in Newtown/Redfern – usually listening to Elephant by the White Stripes. At the end of this walk, one morning in Februrary 2004, I passed through the aftermath of the Redfern riots over the weekend.
Plus – the added bonus of spoken word! (link below)
After today, I’ll put this explanatory stuff at the bottom, underneath my poems. Enjoy!
Elephant
the steps I took
to walk to school
were only mine
no other fool
could walk it as I did
listening to songs
my footsteps
tapping along over
concrete where
my name was scratched
several times
then
on another tread
the street beside
the railway tracks
where at the end
the bricks
did meet
and clash terrible
while
I
(and Jack & Meg)
strode on by
with our nice lives
Soundcloud link: https://soundcloud.com/user-808707280/elephant
clairevetica 