The official start of winter is 1 December. However, given the extremely cold bouts we have been experiencing here in the UK, coupled with winter’s impending onset, I wanted to share with you a number of my poems with a wintry theme:
As a writer, I try to keep one room in my flat free of technology (so far as that is possible in today’s increasingly connected world). The majority of my writing occurs in my spare room which, when guests come to stay reverts to it’s original purpose as a place where the weary may lay their sleeping heads. The room contains 2 large bookcases, a desk, bed and a wardrobe. On my desk sits a laptop.
I rarely move the laptop into either the master bedroom or the living room as I believe it is important to separate my relaxation time from that spent writing. While the living room contains a television and a hi-fi system, my bedroom has no technology other than a rather ancient talking alarm clock. Apart from the furniture one would expect to see in any bedroom, my place of rest also contains a tall bookcase containing my favourite books. Apart from it’s obvious function as a place for me to sleep, the bedroom is, in many ways my sanctum, the spot where I can relax away from technology, read and, of course “wrap up the ravelled sleeve of care”.
While I do often read in the comfort of my living room, the presence of the television can act as a distraction, hence my liking for the bedroom where technology rarely enters. Our heads are so full of information (much of it fed into it by technology in it’s various forms) that having a retreat where one can be apart from the distractions of the online world and television is, in my view vital to a balanced life. Do I always achieve this balance? The honest answer is no. However having a place where I can recharge my batteries (oops one can not escape from technology) undoubtedly helps me to relax and switch off (so far as that is possible) from my writing.
Cold autumn.
Leaves scent
Tease
And please
Senses dulled
By too much brain smoke.
A couple of days ago, an acquaintance asked me whether poetry needs to rhyme. My response was that there is no necessity as regards the use of rhyming in poetry. Eliot’s The Wasteland springs to mind as a poem where free verse is employed throughout large portions of the work.
Most of my own poetry does utilise a rhyming scheme. I feel most comfortable expressing myself in rhyme. This does not, however mean that my poems rhyme throughout, (there is no point in sticking to a rigid rhyming scheme if by so doing the poet loses the sense of what he is trying to say. It is better to have a line which doesn’t rhyme than force one and thereby garble the essence of the poem).
I would, as always be interested in your views. Does poetry need to rhyme? And at what point does poetry become poetic prose or simple prose as opposed to poetry as it is usually construed?
Kevin
If you call up a demon, don’t be surprised
When it does arise
As some monster from the deep
And into your heart creep.
We at our own creations weep
But can not keep
Our desire
To play with hell’s fire
Under control.
The devil we did create
And, he will our soul take.
—
Rhodes is in his grave
Long since.
Oxford students wince
And call
For his statue to fall,
Yet continue to take the cash
Of one they would consign to history’s trash.
We all have feet of clay.
How easy it is to judge
And bear a grudge
Towards those who have passed away,
For the dead can nothing say
To mitigate
The hate
Of callow youth,
So convinced are they of their own rectitude and truth.
It is easy to look back through an opaque
Glass and take
The high moral ground.
‘Tis a truth throughout history found
That yesterday’s hero
Will into the garbage go
For they were not “progressive” (although they thought themselves so).
Do those sitting in student bar
Congratulating themselves on how far
We have come, ever pause,
look beyond the self-applause
And ponder
On yonder
Setting sun.
—
I agree with the historian Mary Beard that the attempt to remove the statue of Cecil Rhodes from Oxford is a dangerous attempt to erase the past, (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/mary-beard-says-drive-to-remove-cecil-rhodes-statue-from-oxford-university-is-a-dangerous-attempt-to-a6783306.html).
I will be spending part of the week preparing for my interview this coming Saturday (26 November, at 5:15 pm, on Croydon Radio). The interview will be streamed live on Croydon Radio’s website and will also be available as a podcast, (http://croydonradio.com/).
During the programme, I hope to read a couple of my poems. I have yet to determine which of them to recite. I am, however considering reading my poem “Owl”:
“I have lain awake listening for the owl’s cry.
A note that chills
Thrills
Then does die.
One day
This bird of prey
Will carry my soul away,
Or so the supersticious say.
Mice hide
While I, in my pride
Decide
The owl’s erie cry
Signifies that I will die.
The bird has no interest in me
So why can I not be free
From his cry
That to my window nigh
does rise, then, as suddenly, die?”
You can find “Owl” in my recently published collection of poetry, “Refractions“.
I hope you will join me on the evening of Saturday 26 November.
Kevin
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Kevin
My old clock I wind
And much philosophy therein find.
I can bring
The pendulum’s swing
To a stop With my hand,
Yet I can not command
Time to default
On his duty and halt
The passing of the years.
He has no ears
For our laughter and tears
And his sickle will swing on
Long after we are gone.
Foth is the Egyptian god of wisdom. I recently came across this wonderful retelling of the Egyptian myth, “The Book of Foth”, in which 2 royal personages go in search of Foth’s book. The book contains all the wisdom of the world and as one might expect the consequences for those who find and read Foth’s work are dire, (http://www.egyptianmyths.net/mythbookthoth.htm).
The site contains many other marvellous retellings of the myths of ancient Egypt, including “The Girl with the Rose-Red Slippers” which is, perhaps the earliest example of the “Cinderella” story, (http://www.egyptianmyths.net/mythslippers.htm).
For anyone interested in ancient Egypt or in mythology I recommend checking out this excellent site, (http://www.egyptianmyths.net/index.html).
