Publications and sloth
April 18, 2015
No, I am afraid you won’t get a picture of a sloth engaging in upside down cuteness on these austere pages. But here is one of some dogs. One of them is even upside down, and some say she is a cross between a dog and a sloth.
I have been at the beach for a week or so, and relatively slothful, aided by very dodgy internet access. Although I did enter the best poetry competition, whereby a list of ten words is provided and the entrant/masochist must write a poem containing each of the words. In 48 hours. There are, it seems, very few sloths in Canada. That festival of energetic composition is organised by Contemporary Verse 2. For some poets, this contest would seem overly prescriptive, but I quite like the challenge of using the ten words without them screaming ‘We were given, not found’. It keeps you on your poetic toes.
If you would like to read a poem I wrote which did not derive from a competition, please press this link. The poem deals with space and jazz, and is called ‘Miles and Beyond’. It was just published at Eye to the Telescope, which is the online journal of the Science Fiction Poetry Association, based in the United States, a nation to the south of Canada, also bereft of sloths. Diane Severson edited this issue, which is made up of speculative poetry about music.
Now, to drag sloths into a blog is terribly out of date; a bit like a parent trying to speak to a teenage child and speaking of ‘Instantgram’ and ‘Readit’. (Tragedy often wears a cardigan.)
In fact, including sloths here might be described as slothful.
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The issue of Midnight Echo I mentioned in my previous post is now available for purchase. It is currently only in PDF, but will soon be available in different formats. I wrote a column about poetry and an actual poem for that issue, edited by Kaaron Warren.
UPDATE 21-4
Midnight Echo is now also in epub and mobi.
Tuesday poem: Dogs
August 7, 2012
Dogs
Descartes strapped them down alive, and cut.
Pavlov slit their throats and made them swallow.
Better the ignorant man and his pound mutt
who know love, unadorned, and wallow
in its myriad humble wonders.
Who can see a tail waving, without
her heart leaping in metronomic time?
They exist, I know, but my mind doubts
anyone who could question that airy prayer.
Simpler philosophy is sometimes enough,
Horatio;
that endless love with no thought of death,
this wiser being that knows no half, no grey
knows no lies, no second guessing or stealth,
is constantly re-born whole every day
(except for mini-deaths when we go away).
Baptising trees with presents of smell
reading sun in every squirt,
heaven in dirt; only finds hell
when we clever ones impose it
from high-minded above.
Dig deeper dog,
show us joy
in this moment
that’s forever.
Together.
Fetch.
P.S. Cottier
Scentimental, I know.
Click this link for added poesie:
Flying dogs
July 21, 2010
Do dogs dream of flying?
The paws scrabbling during dreams,
the muffled barks, wrapped in cloud;
could it be they chase sparrows
up beyond tight leash of earth?
How far do their brains stretch,
those companions of smooth aliens,
those interpreters of foreign voice?
They know to find meaty meaning
in nonsensical noise we make,
the complicated sound droppings
we float into blank noseless air.
Why then could dog not look beyond
and dream of wings, of slipped collar
soaring? Little Pegasus of wag,
small brown scented eagle;
scratching blue in basket bliss.
Rainbow of smells is beckoning.
P.S. Cottier
PS Cottier 