Sea / Iron / Haiku
May. 21st, 2013 10:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustMost of last week was taken up with the Iron Age, the small but perfectly formed festival organised in the seaside village of Cullercoats to celebrate 40 years of Iron Press, one of the regions more idiosyncratic independent publishers. As it happens, we had other engagements during the week as well, but they got swept away by an iron tide and assimilated into the maritime theme. We had inadvertently double-booked ourselves for one evening of the festival, and while I bore with equanimity the prospect of missing Ian McMillan, I was sorry that we wouldn't hear the Keelers - because one of the features of the festival was that every event offered music as well as words. No problem, serendipity promptly provided an opportunity to hear the Keelers on Monday at the Lit & Phil.
I've brought away two things from that session: one is that I hadn't previously realised what four men singing a cappella could do with the downstairs room at the Lit & Phil: as one of them remarked, what magnificent acoustics - and no volume control. The other was the life and work of Cicely Fox Smith: I hadn't come across her before, and was particularly taken with their setting of Copper Ore.
And then we were into festival mode: Wednesday was play-readings in the Fishermen's Mission church, Thursday was humorous poetry in the upstairs room of the lifeboat station: "If there's a shout, stay put and you won't get in the way..."
On Friday we went to see the Zombies, on the basis that we had both enjoyed several of their singles in the 60s, and knew nothing of what they had done since, nor indeed what they had done at the time in between crafting those cool and perfect pop moments. Turned out they were a noisy and enthusiastic rock band. You can't expect musicians to keep on turning out the stuff they were playing fifty years ago; but those were the parts of their act I found most enjoyable. So now I know. Also, I have known the band for so long, I completely failed to recalibrate how people would react to their name in the current zombipocalypse.
Saturday morning was squally and grey: I love the seaside in this mood, and had a big silly grin on my face as we walked down to the RNLI for the morning's session. One of the morning's plans had been to take small groups of poets out for boat trips, so that they could gather the following day at Bill's Fish and Chip shop, and write sea haiku from authentic experience; this had had to be abandoned. Overcome, I started writing haiku:
Iron Press is very keen on haiku, and one of the morning's readers was Mike Wilkin, whose book of Venice Haiku is one of the press's smallest, a dinky little A7, just room for one haiku per page. Listening to him, I thought first that the experience was like being shown someone's holiday photos: Here's St Mark's Square - and look at my ice cream in this one..., then that it was like Twitter. I was rather pleased with this perception, and felt more positive about both haiku and Twitter as a result, but I was talking later to one of the sea haiku team who told me this was wrong - or at least deprecated by the British Haiku Society. I can't blame them for not wanting people to approach their preferred poetic form as a sort of crossword puzzle, I suppose.
The itinerant banners which marked each venue in its turn were lined up on the jetty, an iron motif was traced on the beach, the band played under an awning - in the sleepless small hours I rephrased that:
Music that evening was from Bridie Jackson and the Arbour, a bit sweet and ethereal for my taste, but generally well received.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
durham_rambler said "They're playing wallpaper strippers!" and they were, too, golden ones (bell plates, apparently: they talk about them here). Follwed by David Almond, whose first books were short story collections published by Iron.
Still misty the following morning, when a small band of runners met to run from St Mary's lighthouse to the Fishermen's Mission, where Andy Croft was to read the 13-mile long poem which grew from his residency on the Great North Run - so misty that Andy managed to miss the finishing line. Listening to poet S.J. Litherland reminisce about visiting Russia in 1987 to collect poems for Iron's Poetry of Perestroiks collection, I wrote one last haiku:
Still not the end, there was more eating and drinking and a film about Peter Mortimer's House, and hanging around chatting to friends until hard-working volunteers were putting away the chairs and sweeping the floor around our feet - because that's the sort of party it was!
I've brought away two things from that session: one is that I hadn't previously realised what four men singing a cappella could do with the downstairs room at the Lit & Phil: as one of them remarked, what magnificent acoustics - and no volume control. The other was the life and work of Cicely Fox Smith: I hadn't come across her before, and was particularly taken with their setting of Copper Ore.
And then we were into festival mode: Wednesday was play-readings in the Fishermen's Mission church, Thursday was humorous poetry in the upstairs room of the lifeboat station: "If there's a shout, stay put and you won't get in the way..."
On Friday we went to see the Zombies, on the basis that we had both enjoyed several of their singles in the 60s, and knew nothing of what they had done since, nor indeed what they had done at the time in between crafting those cool and perfect pop moments. Turned out they were a noisy and enthusiastic rock band. You can't expect musicians to keep on turning out the stuff they were playing fifty years ago; but those were the parts of their act I found most enjoyable. So now I know. Also, I have known the band for so long, I completely failed to recalibrate how people would react to their name in the current zombipocalypse.
Saturday morning was squally and grey: I love the seaside in this mood, and had a big silly grin on my face as we walked down to the RNLI for the morning's session. One of the morning's plans had been to take small groups of poets out for boat trips, so that they could gather the following day at Bill's Fish and Chip shop, and write sea haiku from authentic experience; this had had to be abandoned. Overcome, I started writing haiku:
Big disappointment:
Stormy weather - boat trip's off.
What? No fish and chips?
Iron Press is very keen on haiku, and one of the morning's readers was Mike Wilkin, whose book of Venice Haiku is one of the press's smallest, a dinky little A7, just room for one haiku per page. Listening to him, I thought first that the experience was like being shown someone's holiday photos: Here's St Mark's Square - and look at my ice cream in this one..., then that it was like Twitter. I was rather pleased with this perception, and felt more positive about both haiku and Twitter as a result, but I was talking later to one of the sea haiku team who told me this was wrong - or at least deprecated by the British Haiku Society. I can't blame them for not wanting people to approach their preferred poetic form as a sort of crossword puzzle, I suppose.
The itinerant banners which marked each venue in its turn were lined up on the jetty, an iron motif was traced on the beach, the band played under an awning - in the sleepless small hours I rephrased that:
On the jetty, fourDoes in work if you need a photo and an explanation to understand it? Perhaps you don't need to understand it. We sloped off for something to eat. Also, there was a book fair with a number of small presses, and books may have been bought.
blue flags beckon the grey waves.
Music in the rain.
Music that evening was from Bridie Jackson and the Arbour, a bit sweet and ethereal for my taste, but generally well received.
durham_rambler said "They're playing wallpaper strippers!" and they were, too, golden ones (bell plates, apparently: they talk about them here). Follwed by David Almond, whose first books were short story collections published by Iron.Still misty the following morning, when a small band of runners met to run from St Mary's lighthouse to the Fishermen's Mission, where Andy Croft was to read the 13-mile long poem which grew from his residency on the Great North Run - so misty that Andy managed to miss the finishing line. Listening to poet S.J. Litherland reminisce about visiting Russia in 1987 to collect poems for Iron's Poetry of Perestroiks collection, I wrote one last haiku:
Jackie remembersI think I've got it out of my system now. The other readers were Charlie Hardwick, Sean O'Brien and Melvyn Bragg, which made for a star-studded finale - and there was music from Henwen, stunning a cappella (isn't this where I came in?) from Robin Hood's Bay:
Moscow: poets, potatoes,
plenty of vodka.
Still not the end, there was more eating and drinking and a film about Peter Mortimer's House, and hanging around chatting to friends until hard-working volunteers were putting away the chairs and sweeping the floor around our feet - because that's the sort of party it was!
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no subject
Date: 2013-05-22 03:19 am (UTC)And I like your haiku.
[edit] and was particularly taken with their setting of Copper Ore.
Okay, I need that.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-22 09:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-22 06:31 pm (UTC)Thank you!
no subject
Date: 2013-05-22 07:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-22 10:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-22 07:23 am (UTC)I write haiku when I get to the stage of thinking that my poetry needs a little discipline!
no subject
Date: 2013-05-22 10:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-22 05:35 pm (UTC)As I say- discipline and as you say, otherwise, what's the point?
That strikes me as a lazy excuse from people who aren't capable of writing either full length free verse or rhyming verse- I essay both at various times!
no subject
Date: 2013-05-23 08:30 am (UTC)Hope the traveling is going smoothly...