Friday 30 September 2016

Again

This poem has been written as a response to the theme of the last meeting of the Barcelona Poetry Workshop - which was "Crime".
     The central idea of the poem was using a dream that I have had more than once, but not on anything like a regular basis, where I think I've killed someone!  What interested me was not the absurdity of the dream (I hasten to assure all readers that I have never committed murder!) but the lingering and unsettling belief when I woke of there being something real about the whole experience.
     Guilt is a feeling which is always near the surface because in a comfortable modern Western life there is much that you should feel guilty about.  
     The keyboard that I am using to type these words, although designed in the United States of America was "assembled" in China.  By who?  How old were they?  What were they paid?  How many hours did they work?  What rights did the workers have?  Although I formulate the questions and have some information about the conditions that the workers have to endure and am pretty sure that not all of their rights are respected - I still use the machine and, let's face it most of the time I do not give it a second's thought.
     There is no need, of course, to stop at technology.  What food we eat, how we get it and what price is paid for it, is also something which gives you pause for thought.  If Fair-trade chocolate bars and tea bags exist, what does that say about those items which are not marked with the logo?
     I live by the side of the Mediterranean and all you have to do is continue south from where I live, cross the Straits of Gibraltar and continue around the coast of that sea to realise that the fatal differences in the way that countries govern themselves and the catastrophic relationships that they have with other countries that are neighbours produce situations that reflect shame on the way that we live and let die today.
     So, possible guilt is everywhere you look!  It is hardly surprising that a sleeping mind's unconscious thoughts look to find a clear example to focus on.
     I remember as a child watching a series of crime B movies in B&W on our first television and I was constantly horrified at how easy and 'accidental' murder was: a bad tempered push, a trip, a head against a mantlepiece, a death.  The story of the film was in how the perpetrators reacted.  Usually they panicked and the situation became more and more complex with the eventual ending making the guilty pay.  In my youth you did not get away with crime in the films, morality would be upheld: the stolen gold dust would trickle out from a tear in the sack and blow away in the storm; the car would jolt over a rock, the suitcase would spring open and the money scatter behind the oblivious driver; the thieving gigolo narrator was dead all the time!  Justice would prevail.  Must prevail.
     Now, such moral certainties are no more in modern films: murderers get any with it; thieves keep the cash.  What does guilt mean today?
     I don't think my little poem gets into much of the ethical relativism that we are surrounded by today, but I do emphasise the uncomfortable feeling you sometimes get when the concerns of the dream world make their way into a living reality!


Again



I sometimes dream I’ve killed someone.
A man I think it is.  I hope it is –
because, even in sleep,
I cannot bring myself to
contemplate alternatives.

But there, perhaps, I just deceive myself.

I recognize the countryside,
the hedge where I (inexpertly,
I’m glad to say) roll through
the corpse.

The dream then ends.

I don’t wake up.

Scenes change to brighter things.

But when, I think, I truly wake,
I’m haunted by the clinging dread
of sticky, slight, realities.

Worlds merge and drip and
trickle into daylight cracks
that gape like graves.

The tightening circle
of a stubborn thought
denies the pardon’s space.

No one comes,
is ever there,
to brush the spot away.






Once again, let me emphasise that I will be happy to respond to any comments.

Thursday 22 September 2016

The Rothko Room - Tate Modern

There is nothing like citing a painting to limit readership, especially an Abstract Expressionist.                
     Though, there again, Rothko is so generally liked it might also be seen as trying to curry favour to choose such a popular painter as the subject matter for a poem.  It used to be the poster of the lady tennis player scratching her bum that found its way onto student walls, now, with the deracinated generation of value-for-money students it is more likely to be one of the easy pastel Rothkos that are the art addition of choice in the non-political, gender-non-specific world that university students are living in.  What do I know!  When was the last time that I even spoke to a real life, digs-living student!
     Anyway, the Rothkos that I am writing about are not the pretty-pretty-poster-friendly ones, they are the monstrous (in virtually all senses of the word) paintings that Rothko was commissioned to paint for an up-market business dining room.  And when someone expressed some scepticism about his approach, Rothko explained that he hoped that the paintings would give the diners indigestion.  Good for him!
     The donation of these paintings by Rothko's widow allowed the Rothko Room in the Tate to exist - and I have had a difficult relationship with it ever since.
     Rothko's work can be seductively easy to like; some of his work can be so colourfully satisfying that you are drawn into the painting before you have had time to work out an approach!  The work in the Rothko Room is not so inviting.  And yet.  And yet, each time I go to the Tate I head for the Rothko Room and sit and look.
     I still, after all these years, do not know if I actually 'like' them; somehow that doesn't seem to be the right word to use.  I am obviously drawn to them and they seem to demand my attention.  And I must get something out of the experience or I would not repeat it so often!
     If you want to check out the Rothko Room you can go to http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/exhibition/rothko/rothko-room-guide and see for yourself.
     I realise that this poem is more about the room than about the paintings, and I do not want you to assume that my description of "splodge and squiggle,/dark on dark" is a dismissive and derisive rejection of what you can see.  The seeming easy of the pictorial expression is something which I find deeply paradoxical when I consider my conflicted approach to the art.
     Anyway the Barcelona Poetry Workshop Group was the stimulus for this draft and I now realise that I have been away from that powerful source of inspiration for far too long!



The Rothko Room, Tate Modern



I look at gaps
and think about the spaces stretched
between the art and that blank wall
that reaches out at angles,
high and low, containing me.

And some communion in this
gloom-curated space,
cathedral-quiet and
supressing sound, seems
not unapt.

It forces me to look,
though not always to see,
that this relationship with
splodge and squiggle,
dark on dark,
is neither more nor less
than what I choose to bring with me.

These are the Elgin Marbles of the Tate:
work wrenched away from purpose
(and the upset stomachs of the very rich)
for the perusal of the people where
I place myself. 

            I gravitate towards
this room each time I come
and sit and wonder
why or what I’m looking at
each time I shift my gaze
from plane to plane
in such a wide and
claustrophobic space.






As I always (and will continue) to say,  I welcome any response and will respond to any comments.