Too Vibrant for Verse

Just back from a sunset saunter through a green and golden sea: the meadowland behind our house. Half way round I realised that its splendour was beyond capture, as so often with nature: that no poem – no words, picture, film, music, dance – nothing could catch and contain it. It wasn’t for capture; it was for flying free.

Yet here I am, trying to do something about it, almost before the back door has shut behind me. No poem though.

A poem, or any written description, would leave out the sound and feel of the soft, warm breeze curling round my cheeks, cooing in my ears; a photo would freeze the rolling ripples of high young grasses; a video would leave out their feathery feel on my ankles, and the honeyed smoothness of the air down my throat; it would miss the haunting hum-hum-hum of the oaktrees along the brim of the hill too; and nothing could record the shouting of those buttercups!

What were they saying, those buttercups? Nodding, bowing, rolling their bedazzled faces at me from their tall, tipping shoots, they seemed to be yelling at the tops of their yellow voices.  “We’re alive!” they seemed to be screaming and laughing, as they sailed the summer tide.

I found myself mentally shouting back, or – I don’t know – singing, calling, sighing, all sorts – to the beat of my treading shoes. But my words were too idiotic and inadequate to admit to here: I just didn’t have the vocabulary to match.

The sun, dipping behind that humming treeline, slipped into magenta, and the sky lowered its tone.  As I strode home down the hill, the buttercups piped down: dropped their dazzle, sank their heads down with the sinking breeze, let darkness take over for a few hours before their next May dance.

Perhaps someone else could do justice to those fields as they were then, whether with pen, crayon, camcorder, or concert, but it’s beyond me. Still, I’m going back up there tomorrow evening with a camera: it’s human nature to try to catch and keep.

Here they are next afternoon, still fabulous, but lacking that twilight, breeze-swept, magic.

Kate

Olympic Poetry

‘Olympics’ was my topic in a recent school workshop, and very Olympic it was, too!  It bounced its way round the classrooms with Olympic resilience – well, it had to: it was a day of hurdles.

I’d throw the theme at a class of kids, they’d catch it, and between us we’d spin it about, send it up the walls and round the ceiling, keeping it high and dry while all sorts went on below.  With a mix of muscle and magic, we’d leave it up there, too, hovering, for the next lesson, for next week, for next year…

Would the spark peter out, I wondered now and then. I feared for it as I feared for the Olympic flame (justifiably, as yesterday’s mishap in Devon proved!).  No breeze in the classroom, but a tornado’s worth of other hazards…

There were the interruptions by youngsters from other classes, bearing messages, supermarket vouchers, my picture display from next door’s whiteboard, enquiries about a lost lunch box. Then there were the usual physical hurdles – the low-hanging art display, the fallen garments between tables, the tipping, leg-catching chairs, the wobbly towers of flotsam and jetsam on top of which my 32 poetry frame sheets were balanced – or once or twice, unbalanced.  And behind all these, a continuous low murmur, like that of the sea, generated by the hushed talk of busy teachers at the back of the room.

Poetry, after all, is just one of 101 components of a school’s ticking heart – an invisible one…  Although, actually, the kids could see it, and follow it too through thick and thin, and between us, we’d keep it afloat.  Visible or not, it’s more durable than an Olympic flame!

Kate

Song-birds, poetry-birds, or multi-media-birds?

Thanks to the dawn chorus, I woke up smiling this morning, despite the instant sight of the memo I’d stuck on the wardrobe door the night before: “DO ACCOUNTS!”  For me, tax returns are an annual dread.

So what is it about birdsong that we humans find so cheery? I pondered, delaying the maths a bit longer.

Several answers came to me that had never occurred to me before:

Song-birds sing in a key – and a major key at that (what other animals do that?).

They don’t just sing – they talk too, with intonation remarkably close to ours.

Their communication seems to ask questions and answer them, to comment and react, to mourn and rejoice, ruminate and decide.

Their chorus sends out a message: “Never mind life’s hassles! Let’s get on and make the most of it!”

And they do! They put on a good old entertainment every morning. (Okay, they don’t have tax returns to do, but they have plenty of other bores to contend with – human beings for one, and all their baggage.) Yes, they set their gossip to a syncopated rhythm; then they bring on the operetta and the theatre company.

No wonder these hollow-boned, hollow-brained little creatures give us a lift!

Popping into the garden (another accounts-delaying tactic), I met a whole performance: baby birds cheep-cheeping in the background, parents answering from afar, a couple in a squabble round the apple tree, and one solo blackbird, just singing its heart out. The result was something like this:

Back row:  TWEET TWEET TWEET TWEET TWEET TWEET….
Next row: CHEEP – CHIRRUP – CHEEP – CHIRRUP – …
Centre-stage drama: 
CHIRRA-CHOO / CHIRRA-CHIP / CHIP-CHAP-CHIP-CHAP-CHIP-CHAP-CHOO!
Solo soliloquy at the footlights:
LARRA-LU!  – -  LARRA-LIE! – -  LARRA-LEE!  – - LA-LA-LA!

Then I went back inside to hear the news headlines, just starting on the radio… but from a distance, I could make out nothing of their substance, whether disastrous, wonderful, or what. The monotone mumble of the reader’s voice told nothing.

Kate

Blog page

To those receiving LinkedIn invites from me on 18/5/12:

Being a novice at LinkedIn, I pressed the wrong button and invited 165 people instead of one!  So if you’re one of the 165 and don’t know me, apologies!

Perhaps it’s true that poets are up in the clouds.

Kate

Blog page

Welcome to my new blog!

I may move it elsewhere, but it’s sitting here for now.  Here’s my first entry:

The music of poetry.

School children are wonderfully welcoming hosts, as I find on my workshop visits, but they tend to turn pale and back off at the word ‘poetry’.

“I’m not very good at poetry,” a little boy warned me anxiously the other day. His friend had already sloped off, pulling a face at the prospect of it, and the rest of my followers, who’d been blithely pinning back double doors for me and steering my guitar through the corridors, stood gaping.

But five minutes into the session, when I called for ‘describing words’ to fit into a song, all angst was transferred to the possibility of not being chosen to contribute. The song had accompanying guitar chords and a tambourine beat (thanks to a helpful teacher!), to which they were all gently rocking, eyes glazing over dreamily.

The song was about a summer’s day sea, and the words they produced were wonderful. When I put the guitar down and asked for more words, some of the children sang them, several carrying on into extended similes, and it was such a small step from there to the writing, they seemed to scarcely notice.

At ‘reading out time’ , out at the front of the class, the boy who’d thought he couldn’t ‘do’ poetry swayed to the tune of his chosen line, sliding it deftly between those of his classmates and begging to be allowed to read an extra one.

Adults are the same. I read a bunch of poems to an over 60s club last week and, like those children, I sensed a little apprehension behind their welcome. But half way through, I noticed a couple of tapping feet and a swaying shin or two – and that was between poems! They’d found a tune to follow – whatever its ups and downs and pauses: they were fine.

It’s observations like these that convince me that the place for poetry is off the page, rather than on it -  for some of us anyway.