for
my colleagues & comrades of Writers Forum (New Series), who have tasted
what this recipe produces, monthly at The Fox, underneath the maroon lincrusta
And why do I do this, then?
well, if I didn’t, it wouldn’t be; – so
dumb necessity claims - it’s like the
experimental
- thank you Andrew Duncan
and was
that Ian Brinton?[1]
because this means not mastery but learning
not predicting how the words will fall upon
the page
letting what is in & beyond them speak
through
and it’s like too avoiding writing The Poem
-
bless it!
all
proper a
golden
little bowl
but letting in the dirty cracks of human
experience now
which I don’t understand[2]
try and live within
involving them in this writing as I also
seek its origins to escape – we must know
first what has been paid for all our poetry
as here in Stortford, birthplace of Rhodes[3]
but what did you expect then? - fucking holy
innocence?
my arse!
welcome
everyone
to the here-and-now[4]
So you need just to start, yeah
unfolding stories in wonder, picking
at scars[5],
at dreams, all
seeming discarded, itchy & painful
forms the apprehension to proceed
One touch over all you’ll need
improvisation to rearrange everything
as it comes at you to pick it up
place it as it says where it says
so it says aloud its name thus:
the
dogshead of rage arises
ends
up all decollated upon the pole
where
Stafford & Warwick fight
& you try to get that energy
not to fit it into the schedule
but continually grow what you’re doing
until it becomes the place you are travelling
to
The delicious game is to do this
with ingredients fresh & of the best
ones that fly around your head
untrammelled & unplanned but direct
open to all the stinking country-rock
yes, of ambient experience,
thus:
reading & thinking thru the reading &
writing of the poems of yr contemporaries
the last moment before the baby wakes &
you’ve got then to attend
all the texts you have already written
all the texts you’d wished you’d written
the facts & legends of a family’s growth
all the benefits you can gather from the
company of poets
just what you encounter on the train to a rundown
seaside town
the geography of that town, suffused with
external memories
taking a postcard & ask who is it? who is
it? where is it & why?
adding nothing
what you hear in a coffeebar, or a pub, or
wherever – let it force itself in
the refusal to do what you ought – very
important
using all those precise techniques for the
making & raising of actual things
invent! with fortitude, the basis for all
magic working & of all good cooking
the cultivation of your non-neurotypical self
high-status elites – focused on closely &
continually[6]
openness to games, swimming, floating away
all your friends (real & imaginary)[7]
the weather
never forget a touch (or more) from Dom
Sylvester Houédard
just playing about with your computer[8]
any system of magic that seems to work for you[9]
an attempt at out-foxing Vanessa Place[10]
fucking fucking rage
the pleasures of narrative
what appears to you in the night
scars
entoptic patterns
Walter Benjamin – read what you like[11]
itself – turned in & turned out[12]
& use of these what you want & in what
order
or none at all & add whatever you wish
that’s pleasurable, nourishing & good fun
together
Now, if a thing ain’t coming
- create its
preconditions
then there’s no backward, let it stop with us
& inhabit too this vagrant sanctuary
- do this
- or however you like for all I care
the
number of ways of acting is infinite
but
this
here you can see[13] is operative now:
write
10 poems sequentially
each
following a different pattern
then
numbered 1 to 10
decide
by dice roll the order of forms
that
you’ll use in the next run of 10
(purely
as permutation – never 2 of the same successive
really doesn’t work![14]
&
with one of them changed to a fresh recipe
which
determined of course stochastically
while
binding across these strutting runs
let
each poem bequeath 1 or 2 chosen words of power
to
its successor 10 units on
&
so on, building up as they proceed
-
this has very interesting effects
+
2 further turns
-
whatever ingredients you choose of course
crucial
is openness to all language & image
as
you find them swimming thru this world
supersaturated
with meaning as it is
let
it crystallise out as it chooses
-
& challenge yourself in your making of instructions
to
go beyond what you think as poems
or
what you feel at ease doing
in
the mood of exploring & improvisational discovery
not
as aspirant formalist – no![15]
then
let it play out
the
great game
of
writing a poem
put
into this world
letting
it swim too
within
the motion of all
that
signifies itself & us
And the varied fortunes wandering through
this poem
could not help me stop from saying what
there is in a poetic sequence:
as a journey
across this dark & obscure terrestrial
star
not mere jumping on the spot
squeaking in the lyric voice
but major working
encouraging
intervention
whatever speaks
Enochian tongues
Questions of lexis here important
avoid ritual purity like the plague it is
write for voice but not as voice
massed choirs or other transitory auditions
root in written words, sober as rain
colourful & nourished, yes, from the
speech
of our Polish
mothers
now too our source
but not our only
also words diurnal & strangely secular
as many out of the dictionary as in
syntax fluidic necessarily as current speech
occasionally conceptually fully logged
but flying, not wading or marching
write too as a bastard or a mongrel
hybrid vigour trumping formal rigour[16]
Return to it again & again
under different aspects
each time receiving illumination
nothing is exhausted
nothing is unfamiliar
arrange it all
into a house of life
study it in detail
& live within it
then write again
Close attention
close unattention
concerned & unconcerned
in close attention
lose attention
always concern unconcern
attracting entities
children twice
to carry on
these difficult times
need is more
than personal;
need is more
than sound or sight[17]
[So I got this out of many sources: Williams’
& Eliot’s complex sequences[18]; Spicer’s serial
poem; heavy flavourings of Oulipo, NY & early Cambridge too, my masters[19]; undigested (or
overdigested) fragments from the forgotten avant‑gardes & alternatives of
the late mid last century[20]. Slowly finally working
through; what can I say? Find your own route, your own diet, your own recipe.
Ignore mine. More from art song & popular song good – structure,
progression & repetition, variation & tone – try these & play.
Freely improvise. Never mind it’s autumn here. We will reach whatever end we
reach.[21]]
[1]
discussion in café in Red Lion Square after the Free Verse Poetry Bookfair,
September 7
[2]
do you?
[3]
“colonist hearts seen in a butcher’s tray”, Doug Oliver, “Remember Stortford, birthplace
of Rhodes”, Oppo Hectic (Ferry Press,
1969), p 12, quoted also in Peter Philpott, The
Bishops Stortford Variations (Great Works Editions, 1976); and still seen
[4]
or hear-and-know
[5]
“Scars are not injuries … a scar is what makes you whole.” China Miéville, The Scar (Pan Books, 2003), p 216
[6]
can only be critically
[7]
you’ve already begun to deal with our enemies
[8]
or your pen, whatever
[9]
well, OK, even critical theory; but when doing this working remember to protect
your skull & its crowning chakra in a foil cap, & to rigorously avoid
impure thoughts (< sigh! > even though these are the best)
[10]
Bert Brecht may be useful here, the cunningest old fox in such games – also
genre prose, the more bastardised the better of course
[11]
then maybe some Brecht, yes, again, some Gershom Scholem – only then a little
Adorno, once you have an educated taste
[12]
ideally both at once; or, just mistakes
[13]
or hear
[14]
think of this as good advice, like the incest taboo
[15]
nor card-carrying oulipist – fellow-travellers only please
[16]
“Thus from a Mixture of all Kinds began / That Het’rogeneous Thing, an Englishman.” Daniel Defoe, “The True-Born Englishman”, in edited
Geoffrey Grigson, Before the Romantics:
An anthology of the Enlightenment (Routledge, 1946), p 137
[17]
yes, do bring in sound poetry & visual poetry or even asemic poetry – all
good things; but never accept any restriction – seize opportunity always
[18]
let's claim them both as the good English poets they aren’t
[19]
also the Beats – oh, the filthy grebos, don’t let those smart college boys
sneer at them (or they’ll clock them alright) – they’re the ones who really set
it all in motion
[20]
who now remembers Fathar & Yanagi, the Duncan McNaughton world; or
Loris Essary’s Interstate & Alan Davies’ Oculist Witnesses; or Opal L
Nations’ Strange Faeces?
[21]
but only if we start & do it, now
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