am I inside....outside....balanced on the edge of both sides

sounds like the beginnings of a song....
no seriously this will be one of the small few philosophical posts I have to deliver and so ... this morning I had a Glastonbury feeling, and not the fling a ragged tent, dented pack of beer and blanket wrap cardigan sort of festival feeling but the feeling I had back in 94'  on the brink of the Glastonbury (free) experience; suspended on a 16 foot corrugated metal fence in denim shorts; where there was no time to think about a safety roll to the field down below as another three revellers were making there way up the make shift shoe lace rope (I kid you not). I had a mere split second to think 'tip'.....

That's how I'm feeling - do I tip over into the poetry community, brassy and bolshy - present myself at every 'session' to read aloud, express my words and then onto a Saturday morning share and be subjective group at the local library. This is all that's on offer (or so it seems) but where are the non-poets? Where are the public who just like to be given to: the gentle caressers of words in a scented bath or on a Sunday afternoon to help digest the roast or even the pissed up students who want to rant in rowdy fashion but not in 'Beat' mode or Byron snipe but with the new, the now, the next in line, I am not the nemesis just the light....

Some of what has helped piece my theories together is a book by the American poet Dana Gioia, Can Poetry Matter? (1992). His summarization of what has concluded from the network of professionals teaching creative writing and the growing body of poets themselves has formed a 'new world' within a world where poets read poetry (not such a new theory) and some even go on to become notably qualified to publish many books and papers on the merits, substance and relevance of the craft and who produces the finished article well.

Consequently, the energy of American poetry, which was once directed outward, is now increasingly focused inward. Reputations are made and rewards distributed within the poetry subculture. To adapt Russell Jacoby's definition of contemporary academic renown from The Last Intellectuals, a "famous" poet now means someone famous only to other poets. But there are enough poets to make that local fame relatively meaningful. Not long ago, "only poets read poetry" was meant as damning criticism. Now it is a proven marketing strategy.
(http://www.danagioia.net/essays/ecpm.htm)

Sounds cosy? The question for me is am I pulling out the black ball? In other words how can I get past all this mass congregating  bullish tag teams of poets and find a little space to let the public see that they are not obliterated, poetry can still be enjoyed if you don't write it yourself, (newspapers get back in the game please). When I don't want to write I take the gift bestowed upon us from the past and present poets and divulged in glutinous joy.
I am weary of all the poetry competitions that employ the talents of the published elite. They backstroke through the oceans of submissions sinking a few here and casting a pile out to oblivion, the winner carefully watching from the shore dry and home free. This is not the cynic at thought but I find all the inclusion and welcomed diversity a veil of hypocrisy, when the audience is a select committee and the poets of the realm 'unheard' are simply left there to jump up and down trying to catch a glimpse of what the 'real' poets look like.
Look at things differently - if your highly respected as a poet and critic whatever is placed before you
should be a challenge to your sensibilities. Start to read again and enjoy the words, take bold steps out of trendy comfort zones and again read like you read before when it all kicked off in your head and certain poems that struck a cord stayed with you for days, weeks.....
I don't want to write about the seaside for a while, or the clay landscape, or being a woman....all these things are around me, are me but its not quite enough because I can't reach out to an audience beyond the restraints of so many poetical departmental demands.....
BUT I can write a poem about the North, about Lowry's painting Discord(1943)...so I did...and its a good one....

Welcome to the wonder-room....

Back again so soon and with weird and wonderful tales of odd curiosities...
I have, for as long as I can remember, had morbid fascinations with curio artefact's which would explain my love of the Victorian age with there automata, taxidermy, conjuring and magic shows, contraptions and hidden fetishes.....My favourite of all is locks and cogs - engineering at its finest and if its employed into puzzles then so much the better...All I can say is if one gets a chance to return to the Science Museum in London to see there interlocking devices again it would be heaven.
And so.......
It was delightful to see an announcement on the Truro College website for a production called
Wunderkammer:

‘Wunderkammer’ fuses both satirical and downright absurd comedy, physical theatre and puppetry alongside perception changing philosophical theory to tell this psychological tragicomedy, a moving yet humorous story.'

By former A-level student Jimmy Addy from the Wild Oak theatre company that was started with his fellow college acquaintance Alan Neve. The title of said production is pulled from, I believe, the 'Cabinet of Curiosities'

The 'Cabinet of Curiosities' was originally a personal collection of things of wonder (the cabinets were also referred to as Wunderkammer - or Cabinet of Wonders).These cabinets reached the peak of their popularity in the 17th Century; they were the personal and often idiosyncratic collections of individual, wealthy owners and contained both natural and man-made objects:

The main function of cabinets was to provoke a sense of curiosity and wonder in the viewer; in many ways they represented a world-view that valued the 'wonder' in an artefact much more than the need to analyse and classify that artefact. There were not yet universal systems of scientific classification and each collection sported its own unique organisational structure. The specimens in one corner of the Anatomical Museum in Leiden were grouped by type of defect. Sitting side by side were "separate pickling jars containing two-tailed lizards, doubled apples, conjoined Siamese twin infants, forked carrots, and a two-headed cat." The cabinets displayed their owners' notions of Art (man-made artefacts), Science (natural artefacts) and    Spirituality (sense of wonder at God's works) in a physical form. [http://www.middlestreet.org/cabinet/whatisa.htm] Two of my particular favourite takes on this area of interest is of cause Dickens' Old Curiosity Shop and Stephen King's Needful Things. There is also a blog link opposite to a few weirdly exquisite objects if you dare..... Wunderkammer is on in the Mylor Theatre, Truro Campus, next Wednesday 19th June at 7pm

A slow start...a sad end...a new beginning..

It has taken me a while to get on with this post, mainly due to sorting out my three sons with sport days, exams and a lot of new adjustments for my middle son who is now living with us again. Both myself and my husband have celebrated big birthdays and amongst all this came the Jack Clemo conference. I did mange to get my pieces finished and the end result was a little flustered but I grew to like them more once they were up in Wheal Martyn's foyer and more still once I'd reflected over the many talks and celebratory moments of the weekend.

My art work was displayed along side numerous old photos; Clemo and Ruth's diary; letters from fellow writers and poets and other artists who had either found inspiration in the poets characteristics or from the actual poems. It was pretty overwhelming really especially the images of Jack as a younger man. I had never seen photo's of him in that period of his life; so now I could connect the earlier poetry to a face - it became right for me at last. On Saturday night we sat in Trethosa Chapel for local stories and the memorial for Jack - and the chapel too, as it will be no more in a few weeks. A mixed bag of sorrow, loss and the hardship of change (am I now gaining a Cornish temperament with this reaction?) was felt within me as I stood outside Trethosa and watched the sunset over the fields of the clays.

I took a few pictures whilst milling amongst the old and new folks that came to catch up and remember and regardless of how little comment was left regarding the display on the feedback sheets at Wheal Martyn, personally I feel that I have gained some ground with this constant struggle with Cornwall.

 

 TRETHOSA CHAPEL

                                  
Maybe its my stubbornness and perseverance to want to make use of what this place has to offer and bypass the grumbles, doubt and ever widening divides between rich and poor. I even find that I have stumbled across new understandings on the margins of academic shifts that involve change; (Alan Kent mentioned 'Ecocriticism' and Clemo's impact with words: a witness to man's intervention on our natural surroundings. Further renewed discussion on the clay's landscape/environment is necessary to determine where future decisions will lead, something which I brought to the fore whilst delivering a talk on Thomas Hardy) whether we like it or not it has been happening for a long time. All this nostalgia mingling with the emergence of the new reminds me of Gabriel's speech from Joyce's 'The Dead' in Dubliners,

"Ladies and Gentlemen,
"A new generation is growing in our midst, a generation actuated by new ideas and new principles. It is serious and enthusiastic for these new ideas and its enthusiasm, even when it is misdirected, is, I believe, in the main sincere. But we are living in a sceptical and, if I may use the phrase, a thought-tormented age: and sometimes I fear that this new generation, educated or hypereducated as it is, will lack those qualities of humanity, of hospitality, of kindly humour which belong to an older day.
(Joyce, James 1993. Dubliners, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions Limited )

I can safely say that the organisers of the conference, Gemma Goodman and  Luke Thompson showed tremendous humanity and humour to their guests and never more so than at the chapel where a large proportion of them were elderly and obviously feeling the sad regret of seeing such a loved local institution filled for the last time, so the three h's from above can be passed on to the next generations.
My last words on this event is for the minority of residents who although not born in Cornwall take part and contribute to the people and places that are regarded as an embodiment of Cornish culture and heritage - keep seeking insight, there are those who want to include everybody it's just a matter of time before they are the majority.

I'm getting back on with my two short collections of poetry this week 'Endless Lesson' and 'Marriage' only stopping my own creativity to watch the wonderful Miracle Theatre's production of Beckett's Waiting For Godot in its 60th year of performing.