Ghosts in slip
June 7, 2011
Further to my last post (now that sounds lawyerly!) here is another poem about cricket which was highly commended in the Adult Poetry section of the Kernewek Lowender Writers Event 2011. That’s an event celebrating Cornish culture in South Australia. I’m not Cornish, and I don’t know if cricket is popular in Cornwall, but here’s the poem, which actually rhymes. It was a pleasure to try something different in form (and tone) from my usual palette (aka bag of tricks). I wanted to try to write something almost like a ballad, and although it’s not perhaps my best work, there are images in it that I like.
Above the river-flats
That night I fell asleep after my customary ‘one or two’,
(which somehow numbered three, or four, or more than just a few)
and I awoke at half-past-nothing to the thump of ball on bat,
so I rolled over to watch the cricket ground, above the river-flats.
Cricketers wear whites, it’s true, but these glowed like a full moon,
and no-one had to run, for the players floated like balloons.
Above the grass they hovered like angels, or at least anaemic owls,
and something had muted their grunts and usual sporting growls.
‘Howzat?’ was quietly asked and somehow that old appeal,
sounded like Hamlet’s queries when he ponders if he’ll
be or end it all with a sudden bodkin that is bare,
and I wished I hadn’t laid my swag down, just exactly there.
The ghostly game played itself out, as all games must do,
and I lay and watched the players fade, and felt the showery dew.
Then I raised myself, and shook myself, like a dog come from a dam,
but knew that this attempt to forget was a feeble, wishful sham.
At the pub, later that day (and who wouldn’t need a beer
having watched ethereal cricketers for what seemed like a year?)
I raised the topic of the sports-ground, and what teams use that green,
all casual and circumspect with no mention of the scene.
‘There’s no teams play there no more’, my informant said.
‘All the young blokes have moved away, and the old ones are dead.
I was the greenkeeper, and I still keep it all mowed flat and nice,
but no-one uses it, ‘cept wombats. And the bloody mice.’
The truth tingled on the edges of my beer-loosened tongue,
to tell that immortal cricketers still sent the ball down, and swung
an elegant bat in a strange, beautiful moon-lit ritual,
but such a tale would mark me as a liar quite habitual;
So I shut my mouth, then opened it, and swallowed down my tale,
with the comforting blanket of my pension-purchased ale.
But each night now, as the visions toss and smash and frolic,
they are applauded with enthusiasm not entirely alcoholic.
For a man remembers many things, though he may forget more,
and I recall my own lost days, as I keep the spirits’ score,
before I left my home and love, when I played a different game.
And the exercise of the ghost-team now warms my tired cold frame.
P.S. Cottier
Bat and ball and pen
May 31, 2011
There’s currently a great poetry competition on called the Cricket Poetry Award . For members of full member registered ICC countries only, of course, and if you don’t know what that means, you’re probably not going to be that interested in cricket. There’s a list of the countries on the site. For my American friends, cricket is a kind of baseball with rules. Lots of them.
I was short-listed for the prize a couple of years back with my poem ‘DIY’, about the way we act as famous sports-people when we play cricket, (or basket-ball, or football; Lionel Messi is a fallen angel, isn’t he? One who looks like an accountant after the Christmas party). The entry fee is $20, which may be a little steep for some cricket fanatics in developing countries such as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh or Sri Lanka. But the first (and only monetary) prize is $2000. That’s Australian dollars, which are currently worth more than the greenback. And short-listed poems are usually published in some form, although this is not in the rules (that word again).
The poetry can be about social cricket, and there is some information at the site about types of poetry. I enjoyed the opportunity to write about a sport that dominates Australia’s summers, particularly when we are playing England (who seem to have a team made up mostly of South Africans).
Here’s my poem from 2009.
D.I.Y.
In the backyard I was always David Gower.
I opted for an easy nonchalance,
the sweep you could weep for, the air cut
with a wooden knife of sudden elegance,
(when it could be bothered to dance the dance).
Truth is, I couldn’t bat at all, but that
is merely a fact. In the suburb of dreams,
I was graceful and quick and David Gower.
Why would anyone opt to be Dennis Lillee?
Grunt-powered, facial hair fallen to chest
where it grew into rain-forest, sweat-sprinkled.
There was nothing of the lily about him;
nothing quiet or lovely or sweet-scented
(although he always bowled as if he meant it).
Yet everyone else chose this dubious flower,
right-handed terror to my imaginary Gower.
P.S. Cottier
Better than green: Beating OPEC
May 13, 2011
Here’s my suggestion for a new power source. I’ll be registering a patent soon.
must speak to my accountant...
Beating OPEC
Harnessing the energy of horror fans at cinemas
as dread zombies excavate warm bodies for dinners,
or vampires provide certain proof
that red and black fit neck in tooth;
this was my brilliant idea for a new power source.
Tingling fear explodes as the thick crimson sauce
splatters, or green mutant rats emerge from sewers.
Darker than oil, those cries of shivering viewers,
tinged with the delicious free energy of fear.
The true beauty was that they had no idea
that they generated watts with loud gusts of ‘No!’
and their howling winds of scream. I watched them grow,
my bank accounts, fed on those quivering masses
whose renewable angst was cheaper than gases.
Alas! Times changed, and romantic comedy smirks
where once deep slash movies bled. It certainly irks
to see the dark side fade out and my cash-flow cease,
and our total reliance on imported dear grease.
P.S. Cottier
Muse-sick
May 6, 2011
I am about to embark on a fortnight’s total immersion in music. Sounds like acoustic water-boarding, but it’s a matter of choice. The Canberra International Music Festival runs between May 11th and 22nd, and I’ve splurged on a gold pass, which means I can attend all 34 concerts, should I so choose.
I find that the ‘jet-lag’ caused by embarking on the long-distance haul triggers connections in my brain that otherwise lie dormant. That’s once I get past the lurking feelings of inadequacy that great music always creates. Sometimes I feel that poetry is music’s poor relation, being tied too much to meaning. But then another vodka kicks me past this, and the synapses stimulated (or created) by the baptism in sound can be put to good use, emphasising the noise that words make, and twisting meanings into improvised forms.
Here’s a little poem about the feeling that others (or Others Unseen) are somehow more perfectly creative. (Interestingly, I searched Bigstock for an illustration combining music and snails to go with the poem, and found the image above. It’s comforting, in a way, to know that someone else’s mind has been where mine has!):
Even snails
Peg loves looseness, envies river of sheet,
flowing down from plastic clench of beak.
Milk would carve itself into solidity, escape
sloppy white seascape into certainties of cheese.
Poet would be musician, shed sad bad husks of words,
sprout into airier art, so eary and so letterless.
Sliming through house-heavy dirt,
even snails may dream of wings.
P.S. Cottier
Update 11th May
Just returned from sitting in an exposed position on concrete on a wet piece of rubber listening to William Barton and an organist play some interesting music. (Barton’s own composition and some Philip Glass.) But I really couldn’t concentrate or enjoy the experience, as it was just too cold. There’s no way that concerts should be staged in Canberra at 7am at the end of Autumn. There’s a real martyrdom for music attitude amongst some of the attendees at the Canberra International Music Festival. I simply had to leave early as I felt I might get hypothermia. I obviously don’t have the right attitude. And the event was very difficult to locate for those of us who got there early, which added to my general festive spirit.
Unbelievable comment from one fellow attendee when I commented that I hoped the performance was not cancelled due to possible rain damage to the instruments: ‘Oh no, it’s only a didjeridu’. 40,000 years of culture belittled. Hats off to you, dickhead. (Although there’s no way I would have removed my hat due to possible frost-bite.)
Previously I saw William Barton as one of the musicians in a concert at the Fitters’ Workshop featuring Sculthorpe’s Requiem, another requiem by Tomas Luis de Victoria and a setting of ee cumming’s ‘I thank you God for most this amazing day’ by Eric Whitacre. I wasn’t too keen on the last one, perhaps because that poem is so near perfect that the music seemed, for once, to detract from its beauty.
The event was co-sponsored by the Spanish Embassy. A Spaniard (I think she was, anyway) pointed out that there were several red-backs nestling at the edge of the concrete of this old industrial building, including one enormous one. I agreed that it was better to leave them alone, rather than stir them up into possible vengeance (a pun about red-backs and bulls was stifled on my tongue). I found myself explaining how the really big ones are female. I hadn’t expected to become a junior David Attenborough at the concert, I must admit. No doubt she’ll have a story to tell back in Spain: (‘..and they have horrible spiders, even at musical venues…’)
And then there’s Mars…
April 9, 2011
It’s fifty years since Yuri Gagarin went into space (April 12), following a few unfortunate animals who had no choice. No doubt about it, he was brave. There are many events happening worldwide for ‘Yuri’s Night’, go here for more info.
Here’s a little poem about him. This poem was previously published in The Mozzie (Queensland):
Gagarin’s death
Yuri Gagarin, first human being in space, died on a training flight in a MiG jet on 27 March 1968.
Some say it was the weather,
and others far too much fuel;
and of course, conspiracies
always have their murky place.
Personally, I believe it was
a simple swarm of birds.
Not envious, not teaching
a Soviet Icarus a thing or two.
I think they just came to see
a man who’d seen much more
than any stonechat who knows
Summer Siberia and Winter Japan.
At least you died in flight.
Some things just have to be.
P.S. Cottier
***
And then there’s Mars. When are we going to get there? Here’s another poem about space exploration, previously published in this very blog in 2009:
Dear NASA,
When we reach Mars, kicking up red dust,
walking against gusts like Marcel Marceau,
let’s not do what we did on the Moon,
forty leap and leap-less years ago.
Let us not plant any one nation’s flag,
like a toothpick through a lump of party cheese.
Might a woman set her feet first on the planet
so often connected with war? And please,
please, no one takes golf clubs, whether niblicks
putters, drivers or irons. Let Mars stay a place
untouched by sprees of futility, no heady sticks
to launch tiny white balls into circles of space.
Leave no junk; let the plains spread clearly.
Just a few thoughts from
yours, sincerely.
P.S. Cottier
PS Cottier 