June 1 WET WET WET Actually, this post is overdue not just because I had a couple of days in Guangzhou (it used to be called Canton) and got sick and wet but also because I had some technical difficulty with the picture here and had to call for help ..... but anyways, Guangzhou is I think maybe the third largest city in China after Shanghai and Beijing. It rained almost all the time. It'd been raining here for most of the week and it didn't stop, but it was rain in a really good way: loud and noisy storms with thunder and lightning and that great heavy sub-tropical rain that absolutely pounds down, and it was so warm that when you got wet you dried out pretty quick -- at least, you did if you got the chance; when it wasn't raining it was so humid you're wet with sweat ...... and now the rain has more or less gone away but the humidity remains. And it's so hot .... but I'm not complaining. Hot is good. And the wet weather reminded me that Sandra Tappenden sent me something a while back and I've been waiting for an apt moment. This is as apt a moment as there is ever likely to be. © Sandra Tappenden, 2007 (Here's a little update, 24 hours later: it's pissing down. The kind of rain you can't see through. How do butterflies stay airborne in this? Because they are. OK, no more about the weather. That's enough weather.) June 5 A SONG A Poem by Mark Halliday SONG OF THE I-SELF I swing my feet to the floor each day the I-self pursues satisfactions that wither instead the I-self floats imagining thirteen thousand days -- one night eight years ago in Morgantown, West Virginia O stupid I-self afloat outside a series of dreams © Mark Halliday, 2007 June 11 EARLIER THIS EVENING...... ......... I was chatting online with a student here at the university – not one of my students but someone I know pretty well, and she said it was weird when I messaged her because at that moment she was reading this and (although she didn’t say it in these words) trying to make head or tail of it. I think she wanted to say “What the fuck is this about?” but was too polite. When I explained that all the names were of female British singers (or almost; I’m not sure Winfred Atwell ever sang) from my childhood and teenage years, and if you ignore the names almost all the situations in it are genuinely autobiographical, she was a little clearer as to what it was about, but I think she’s still a long way from Clarity City, which puts her pretty much in the same place as me a lot of the time. But she’s also in a good enquiring place, and it’s beautiful to see someone tackling something with a genuinely enquiring mind (not to mention in their second language). June 17 SECRET LIFES Poems by Rupert M. Loydell THE SECRET LIFE OF THE SKY Even on the darkest night the moon is around a dramatic monologue waiting to soon happen. paper textures stand out: tones of beige and bone A woman on the other side of the mountains and you water, darkness in the soil. A single frog visits our pond, THE SECRET LIFE OF THUNDER A sailboat in a tiny pond. Away from lightning's flash, a tall and neon privilege Between storm's shout and silence, a new form of accommodation. THE SECRET LIFE OF POLEMIC An unending stream of deceptive signals, You could call it compulsion or vitriol, I have spent a lot of time thinking the opposite is true. Where is meaning, Whisper to preserve my secret: I am THE SECRET LIFE OF MY FATHER Model trains in boxes in the loft, Photos of now-demolished buildings, Unreadable notes towards a book That day is not yet here. The situation has turned to tears and remembering, © Rupert M Loydell, 2007 June 23 IN THE MILLS OF THE MUSE
(from “The Looks of Billy The Kid”)
(from “I Cannot Love The Deserving”) June 30 BLOCKED Bloody hell! Suddenly I cannot get to any Typepad-based websites from here in China, which means I cannot see what you are looking at now. The word “blocked” comes to mind. And the words “China” and “freedom” do not always sit comfortably in the same sentence. Whatever. I can get to the Typepad admin site that lets me post things, but I cannot see the end result. I get to see a so-called preview, but experience tells me that a preview is not always the same as the final product. So, if there are any glitches in what you see now, it’s because I can’t see anything at all. My apologies, but blame someone in Beijing. They have their people to protect. Anyway, this slight technical hitch will be temporary because I’m returning to the UK at the end of July, and normal (sic) UK-based service will resume instead of this somewhat remote-controlled from the other side of the world stuff. There may be some interruptions in service while I find my way around England again, spend some time homeless and try and find somewhere to live, deal with the culture shock, and all that malarkey, but I’ll try and keep things moving along. Having said all of which, maybe trying to post a YouTube thing on here is a little ambitious because I won’t be able to test it and make sure it works. Let’s see what happens. This is a clip I found via “The Guardian” yesterday. I have the original version of The Knife’s “Heartbeat”, which was released back in (I think) 2005. This video is of the new live single version. I hope it works. A voice in my left ear is saying this isn’t poetry. Another voice in my right ear is saying this isn’t poetry. The space between my ears, which is largely unexplored, doesn’t give a shit.
|