In the first of the ‘In the Time it Took‘ poems, I decided to time various events during the day such as the time it takes for a tube to travel between Angel and Oval and to write poems in those periods and see what crops up. You realise after a while in London that on average about nine minutes of your day is taken up with delay. That’s certainly long enough for a short draft however bad and illegible the first attempt. So in that spirit, I thought that the only way to go would be not to cheat. Sometimes I have ideas floating around in my head for a few days, or even years, and the words gradually form around the idea like ice around a dust particle (or in one of my favourite phrases ‘a snow-forming nucleus‘). So I tried to avoid these ideas and go with whatever happened, turning these rushed bits of writing, however surreal, into poems. Here is the first, a poem in the time it takes to boil the kettle.

Preparation

Starting the stopwatch!

Blurry stopwatch

At 2:56 the kettle grew to a crescendo and then clicked.

2:56 and the poem is complete

Here’s a transcript:

In the Time it Took #1

What was it that took them
out of the wilderness, droning
in through the window
to the silent smell
all hope of shade damaged
by the presence of a glass jail cell.

The nightmares flies must
have of newspapers the size
of old intercity trains
descending on them
the Sunday supplements
stalking them in hot parked cars.

=

And after a post-writing tinker, here’s the poem now:

The Secrets of Flies
What is it that catches their eyes,
a fanciful change of scenery
from the blue blur-wilderness
droning through the open window
to signature smells detected
in their feet, the helipad
of a fingerprint, the crinkled
toffee wrapper? Some how they
are master thieves, and with the door closed,
whole squadrons arrive
and like a victorious F1 driver
who never tires of his pride,
they do the same slow lap over and over.

The nightmares flies must have
of newspapers the size of intercity trains
colliding with them, the looming Kate Moss
face of a Sunday supplement
stalking them in hot parked cars
and after every escape between panes
that same deluge of suggestions
that comes after the event.

A couple of weeks ago I got a call from the poet Dorothea Smartt asking if I’d like to read at the Life Stories Cafe at Woolfson & Tay, a capacious independent bookshop in the heart of Bermondsey. Life Stories is a novel idea, a storytelling event, based on Pecha Kucha, an adapted Japanese presentation form, based on 20 images 20 seconds each.

I didn't know quite how I was going to approach the presentation until I saw this flyer on a friend's noticeboard.

As the theme was RECYCLE I jumped at it, even though I was mad busy and the deadline was short. Some of the images have appeared on Open Notebooks before, but that seemed to be part of the spirit of things. It mixes my poetry and photographs, which as regular readers will know, is an integral part of my process.  Coincidentally, writing a Pecha Kucha (as a straight poem, no images)  was one of the poem a day prompts for this month’s 30/30, which, being the superstitious beast that I am, I took as a serendipitous sign.

How To Build Your Own Gated Community

I’m not going to include the whole presentation here, partly because some of the photos have been seen on the blog before, and also because there were some ‘out takes’ I loved. I was struck by this elegant recycling by the people up the road.

Just when you thought the luxury brand was dead in the water...

I’ve been writing about death and the concept of spiritual ‘recycling’ for a couple of years now.

I wonder if the reason we need to buy things is because we're afraid of death?

I am very ambivalent towards Twitter, but I do like it as a way to get quick links to news. But it’s also a disheartening testament to the extent of our distraction that topics such as THIS are overlooked while people yak on about super-injunctions.

We're facing a 95% marine species extinction in one human generation. The sea is one of our most efficient recyclers, along with our trees and forests.

It can feel daunting, knowing that we are living in such catastrophic times. Yes, we do like our apocalyptic narratives, but environmental devastation is a reality; all we can do is try to minimise the extent of it do what we can to pull us back from the brink. But, as the presentation concluded, I don’t care whether it’s futile, I have to know that I tried. I do my little things: shop local, eat organic, write my poems and work on loving myself so I don’t have to buy stuff to do it for me.

Mandela reminds me of what it can take to make change happen and why it's so powerful to remember that we can.

I’m planning to recycle this pecha kucha live at an event in the autumn, so look out for it. Meanwhile, I need to get on with a bit of actual recycling…

Katharine Hepburn said ‘never complain, never explain’. One thing I try never to do on Open Notebooks is offer excuses for extended absence. I also try to avoid extended absence. But now I have a very dear correspondent in the mix, so it is hard to keep to this resolve.

You will see I include Secret Number 6. This is because it is the not doing of this thing that has kept me away from the blog this month and a bit.

One thing that has happened since I received this letter with its fantastic back of envelope instructions is I have lost my notebook that contained the requested haikus. Losing the notebook was DEEPLY disruptive to my process. It threw me off kilter. I lose things more often than most people – this past 6 weeks I’ve lost: a Canon point and shoot camera, a SECOND pair of new prescription sunglasses and an expensive new badminton racquet. But the half-filled notebook was the thing that really got to me. What does it mean? Is there a larger significance to the things I let slip through my hands? The answer is undoubtedly too lengthy to contemplate here and now. Suffice to say I decided to start again with the haikus.

I resorted to a tried and tested formula: buy new stationery. In this case a rubber stamp kit where you set each character, like a hot metal press.

It was a wonderfully painstaking process and made me think about how much more slowly we used to live our lives.  Having to select each character with a pair of plastic tweezers and squash it into place really makes you think about what you’re saying.

I also wanted to make something for Miriam so she would know how important our correspondence is to me. Making something with your hands is one of the ways we express love. Maybe that’s why people get so passionate about modern conceptual artists who don’t make their own work. But love is also in ideas. And maybe even in Twitter?

Although I suspect that is pushing the point a little too far. But working with my hands helped connect me back to the heart, and that, for me is where the poetry lies.

I am writing a sequence about the moon. Today I am thinking about the colour blue.

I have been reading Louise Gluck (sorry, don’t know how to do umlaut here). I made a note of the word ‘cerulean’ in my notebook, along with some other words I wanted to look up for clarity: tenebris, bathinet, Shadrach. Etymologies, as well as definitions, can carry rich stories with them.

Louise Gluck has a cerulean quality in her voice. It is clear, pure, celestial, exact.

I just went downstairs and got a cup of tea. I was thinking about how I want to go out and find a blue flower, but it’s a little early for blue flowers. Then I noticed in my tea, that I have Earl Grey with bergamot and blue mallow flowers.

The little white cloud is feeling blue.

I’ve noticed that at home in the garden flowers seem to have an order. White is first (snowdrops), then yellow (forsythia, daffodils), then blue (hyacinths, forget-me-nots) wth hotter reds, purples, oranges coming after. Not an exclusive pattern, but a cycle I’ve noticed.

We went for a hike and ended up in a sea of gorse. I was surprised to find it here in Spain.

I’m thinking about Blue Mallow. What its properties are. I’m also resisting googling it. There’s a big library over the road and I wonder what will happen if I go down and have a look.

I couldn’t find anything in the library about blue mallow. It is clearly rare. As is a blue moon. Or perhaps something the tea company invented. Mallow is usually pink. This isn’t mallow, and it’s not almond either.

Almond blossom.

My running off to the library to find out about blue mallow did not yield anything other than the distraction that it was. Although I did see Fina, a beautiful white Alsation who lives in the blue house over the road. She likes a lot of attention. Which suits me.

I threw Pluto in the pool while playing with Christopher & Marisa’s other dog Lula. He looks a bit like a sun in the sky. But let’s not forget I’m after the moon. It reminds me though of a note in my book that came to me ‘out of the blue’.

Why is this tree growing out of a wall?

Here it is: ‘Blue Moon, Oh Patron Saint of Swimming Pools and all things azure [could that be cerulean?] who protects us from inauspicious odds, and the stuff we never expected to happen, hear our prayer…’ Hmmm. Well it’s something to start with…Oh, and a secret…I too am feeling kind of blue today.

I was supposed to go to Egypt on a residency. I was excited at the prospect of writing to Miriam from a new location. But the timing was off. So I came here on retreat instead.

I really wanted to send a postcard, but it’s a very small village and they don’t sell postcards.

The Post Office, or correos, is not much more than a hole in the wall.

You can't buy stamps here. You state your destination, hand over the cash, and the amount is written on the envelope and despatched to the local metropolis, in this case Alicante, where presumably a stamp is affixed. Singapore warranted a phone call to head office. A good thing too, as the original quote of 2€ 90 was considerably higher than the 80 cents it turned out to be.

So I decided to make my own postcard in addition to our letters and post it here.

One of the things I miss most in the winter is colour and light.

Recently my life in London has not had the shape I would like. I’ve had little time for creative work. Writing letters to Miriam really helps me to reconnect to the things that matter.

Look how the lemon points to the sun!

My hosts, the poet Christopher North and his wife Marisa have a stunning home with a 3500 book library. I have been reading Neruda’s Elemental Odes.

And also Robin Robertson’s The Wrecking Light, which includes a new translation/reworking of Neruda’s Ode to a Large Tuna in the Market.

I think this has to be the best wall I've ever seen.

The ravine is full of birds, almond blossom and orange trees.

Oranges have a trace of vanilla in their aroma when you pick them from the branches.

I feel like I have the time and space to think. To absorb. One of my conclusions about Open Notebooks, was that working online makes me want to get offline. But there are real advantages to web platforms. I’m also secretly beavering away at the 30/30 prompts I missed in London. Just as an anchor to keep me on track and help get me in to the rhythm of writing again.

The work I’m doing here needs light and air to come to life. I’ll be editing, redrafting and writing fresh poems and sharing some of the process along the way.

Last Thursday was a big day for my poem Wing which began life here on Open Notebooks. Wing is featured on the Poetry Society’s homepage and is published in the Winter edition of Poetry Review which looks at The Poet’s Progress. I was asked to read at the launch and give a short talk on my process. Trying to uncover a ‘uniform’ process is tricky, each poem is inevitably different, so I decided to zoom in on Wing as an example, and see what unfolded.

As soon as I saw the wing I was mesmerised; it was twilight, January, everything was stripped back. The wing was pristine. I wondered about its owner. The loss.

I started to scribble in my notebook and took a lot of photographs.

Once I'd seen the wing, it seemed as if dead animals were popping up all over the place.

Birds were on my mind at the time: I had been reading Pablo Neruda’s The Art of Birds and they had been flitting in and out of poems. I was still reeling from a life-changing bereavement and loss, death, love and the bird as an emblem of hope and renewal were ongoing preoccupations. The wing really did feel like a gift.

The shift from the physical to the ethereal realm makes the body seem more physical somehow - when the corpse is all that's left.

Decay is an oddly active process.

At this time I was also engaged in a creative correspondence with the young poet Miriam Nash. We were writing letters to each other, sharing our thoughts, poem drafts, notebook entries and thematic concerns.

I send Miriam an early draft.

Looking back I can see that Wing really started to take shape when I introduce the formal construction of ‘Dear Wing’. It elicits the letter form which in turn brings its own diction and visual conventions to the table. This is also the key moment when I start to move from block paragraphs into lineation. The direct form of address also allows me access to a more intimate tone.

Piglets from Karen McCarthy on Vimeo.

I won’t go through every editorial conundrum here, but at this point I’d also say that sound was a very important feature in the poem. The sound of the language, but also the sounds in my head. That afternoon on the farm we also visited some piglets (free range, organic, very very sweet). I’d made a video of them and was obsessed with watching it on my phone. They were cute, but there was also something in the snuffling they made — an intimacy, an innocence, a vitality that made me realise they needed to be there to balance the energy of the poem.

Now the poem is published in Poetry Review, so it has made its journey out there on to the printed page. There are however still a couple of tweaks lingering in the back of my mind…

This weekend I went to Liverpool and wandered in to Sachiko Abe’s performative work Cut Papers. Sat on a ledge above the old ‘office’ in a chilly warehouse, she had the air of a fairy tale princess.

A trail of icy white cascades down from her eyrie. The snow-like peak you see in the foreground is the product of seven years’ paper cutting. The room is silent apart from the slightly amplified sound of the blade on the paper.  Abe has been in residence for the Liverpool Biennale since September and performs for a total of four and a half hours a day. One of the gallery attendants told us she got chilblains, so they’ve installed a heater behind her now.

Apparently she started cutting paper in a mental institution as a way to stay calm and to avoid cutting herself. In an interview with the Guardian she says: ‘It takes 40 minutes to cut one whole paper. The thinness is 0.5mm. During the depressed period, the thinness is about 0.3mm.’

In  the room downstairs there is a small gallery of intensely intricate drawings in pen: produced in intense bursts over a relatively short period of time dark patches occur at intervals; giving the work a surprisingly affecting emotional import when viewed up close. See here for more on the work and its aesthetic and philosophical contexts.

What struck me  is the obsessional quality of this work — its extremity only serves to create a purity, of focus, execution and impact. And although the artist says it is neither ‘meditative or beautiful’ as a viewer this is very much its effect. I was also heartened by the transformative nature of turning pain into art.  I wish you could hear the sound of the scissors;  it is utterly mesmerising and hypnotic.

The prompt this week is to write a poem where you do something in an obsessive way and through that action transform the original emotion into something new.

Another month with 30 days and I’ll be prompting for the 30/30 crew (a group of poets working to write 30 poems in 30 days) every Monday, posting some of the result here and also posting up the prompts I set for anyone that wants to join in.

As I write this it’s Halloween — or the Pagan ‘New Year’ festival Samhain (literally meaning ‘the end of summer’). Bonfires were lit all over the country, pumpkins and gourds were harvested, and it marked the passage from the season of ‘day’ (summer) to that of ‘night’ (winter).

Photo courtesy of Naomi Woddis

It was also seen as a time when the veil between the living and the spirit world was at its thinnest. This festival is reiterated all over the world in different forms, from All Saints Day in Eastern Europe to the Day of the Dead in Latin America.

It is  a time of divination, when we honour our ancestors, meditate on the past, think forward into the future and contemplate the cycle of birth, death and renewal. I’ve been thinking about the idea of poetry being an attempt to influence the future…as a ‘spell’ that is cast, momentarily, over the reader.

Write a poem that tells us of an event that will happen in the future…it could be an event that HAS happened in the past, but is written in the future tense, or a poem that intuits the future, as a prophecy…

We decided to continue with 30/30 for the months with 30 days in them, so this is the first prompt for June.

• The human embryonic heart begins beating at around 21 days after conception. It is unknown how blood in the human embryo circulates for the first 21 days in the absence of a functioning heart.
• The average human heart beats 100,000 times a day and weighs the same as a small pigeon (around 10 oz)
• The heart pumps about 1 million barrels of blood during an average lifetime–that’s enough to fill more than 3 super tankers.

WRITE  A POEM WHERE EACH LINE FEATURES A DIFFERENT BODY PART.

I’m posting prompts for the 30/30 Challenge here on Open Notebooks.

This is a rough-cut visual poem I made called Man on Cigarette Break at Bus Stop in the Rain. Click on the video twice to see it full-size.

Cigarette Break from Karen McCarthy on Vimeo.

I was sitting in cafe staring at this bus stop and it was twilight. It was between 5-6 pm, people were leaving offices and hurrying home in the rain; I liked the shiny surface of the road, the way passers by flickered in and out of the frame. So I took shot after shot on my point and shoot digital camera. Then a waiter came outside on his cigarette break which gave me a time frame.

Recently I discovered Brixton Library. I knew it was there but had no idea it was so well stocked. I picked up the excellent Art of Punctuation (Noah Lukeman, OUP) and recommend it. I’m currently reading the chapter – yes, a whole chapter! – on the semicolon. Here’s an excerpt.

<big> More so than any punctuation mark, the semicolon is designed to help the surrounding punctuation. It is the ultimate team player, its very existence relative to others. Thus context must always be carefully considered when employing the semicolon. A semicolon can be called in when a comma is not enough. There are times when the comma has already been used too much in one sentence, when it runs out of steam and simply can’t do its job anymore. There are also times when multiple thoughts in a sentence need more seperation than merely a comma, need more time and space to be digested. But a full-stop is sometimes too strong. A semicolon can step in and save the day, allow a more substantial pause while not severing the thoughts completely.

Note: The semi-colon should never be used to link two sentences unless they are closely related. For example, this could work:

The police station was close to his house; he would have to be careful.

But this could not:

The police station was close to his house; he needed to do his laundry soon.

So, on to the prompt:

Write a poem focusing on an event that takes place in the rain and that occurs within a short time frame; use a semicolon.