A new poem on my poetry blog Coronets For Ghosts. Written the morning after.
The Storm Moves Out pale violet the storm moves out to sea I look for signs in the arranged debris montage of a divine hand the swamped streets bring the latest obsession my way string-of-beads prophecies in the forest of home glass wreckage embryo shards a priest blesses specimen jars sending kisses into sleep ©AndrewJamesMurray
The first storm of the season, named Aileen, is due to hit tonight. For perspective, Aileen is no Irma, but still. I’ve taken down the hanging baskets and an outside lantern which is as much as I can do with no hatches to batten down.
The afternoon I spent working on a second poetry collection I’m trying to put together, while listening to a group from my favourite music period.
I have a friend who loves the eighties, and would instantly recognise the nod given by the title of this post. My own go-to listening preference stretches from the mid-sixties to early seventies. The Beatles; The Doors; The Kinks; The Rolling Stones; Tim Buckley; Cream; Cohen; Dylan, I love all of these and more.
Being born in 1971 means that in my youth I’ve never been in vogue, musically. And don’t even mention my dress sense!
Listening to music helps when I’m writing. The group I was listening to today was Jefferson Airplane. Why do I like these?
Go and ask Alice. When she’s ten feet tall.
A new poem from my poetry blog, inspired by a misheard announcement when traveling on a train across the Yorkshire-Lancashire border, from Leeds to Manchester.
Mytholmroyd The tin voice announced the place as we pulled into the station. I, soon to have my ears syringed, thought it said "Ladies and gentlemen: Marilyn Monroe." I halfexpected to see her sashaying down the aisle of the train, all shimmering platinum between plush, navy blue seats. Wouldn't that have been a sight for a Thursday morning? Not only a Hollywood star, but fifty-five years dead to boot. ©AndrewJamesMurray
I’ve just spent a short time sat in the garden, reading this book:
I read it, quite coincidentally, a week after the ten year anniversary of Sophie Lancaster’s death.
Armitage created this drama-documentary for BBC4, trying to give voice to the girl with the help of meetings with Sophie’s mother and access to her diaries. It was performed live at the Royal Exchange.
Living not too far from Lancaster’s hometown of Bacup, where she was killed, I remember the murder well. Reading this just re-emphasises how senseless and sad her death was. She and her boyfriend were attacked by a group of local teenagers when they took a shortcut through a park. Initially friendly, with Sophie passing cigarettes around, they suddenly turned on her boyfriend Robert Maltby. As she tried to protect him, lying unconscious, by cradling his head in her lap, they then turned on her.
Armitage: Oh God he comes back and turns on me/a plague of fists or a swarm of feet/the boot going in again and again/How he hates my demeanour/hates my braids/how he hates my manner/hates my ways/doesn’t know me from Adam/not even my name/but detests every atom /of what I am.
In the media it was speculated that they were attacked because they looked ‘different’, because they were goths. Though Maltby recently said this was an “oversimplification.”
Both victims were in a coma, but Sophie never emerged from hers. Her killer’s boot print on her swollen face, her life support was switched off thirteen days after the attack.
Her mother Sylvia Lancaster set up The Sophie Lancaster Foundation. (See link below.) Her campaigning has helped violence against what are termed ‘subcultures’ to be classed as hate crimes.
For her work she was given an OBE in 2014.
Rest in Peace Sophie Lancaster. I also hope that Robert Maltby has managed to find some measure of peace.
http://www.sophielancasterfoundation.com
I’ve decided to create a new blog which will contain nothing but poetry.
Fear not, City Jackdaw will go on as normal, featuring the usual mix of various subjects. (And there will still be poetry featured on Jackdaw, too, from time to time.)
But the new blog will be solely for my poems. New ones; old ones; complete ones and works in progress.
The title of the blog is Coronets For Ghosts, taken from a line in one of my poems. For those of you who want to check out my newborn babe, you will find her here:
https://coronetsforghosts.wordpress.com
I hope you will continue to fly with City Jackdaw, too.
Salted Maybe there are choices to be made the cawing crow doesn't seem conflicted undisturbed by harbingers of the future I will roll up the hill drift out to sea taste the salt on my tongue a seasoning to keep me for tomorrow ©AndrewJamesMurray #workinprogress
I spent the morning finishing The Innocents by Ian McEwan.
I felt a great sadness when reading a letter contained within it, suggestive of other lives and other alternatives.
Literature, art, has the power to do this.
I find myself more and more subsumed into the creative life.
I’m currently on the second draft of a novel. I’m not a very disciplined writer. I don’t put aside set times to write. I just decide to go over a chapter when I have a window in time. Although this may seem a quite casual approach, from crude, rudimentary beginnings the book is beginning to take shape.
And yet, amidst this deliberate foray into fiction, poetry is beginning to call to me again. I have long had an eye on a second collection. Not one to multitask, I intended to turn to this after the completion of my novel. But words are beginning to nudge their way in, filter through. Single words, combinations of words, predatory lines demanding attention.
Inspiration doesn’t pay respect to timeframes and schedules.
I have a few new poems written: Judas Kiss, Boathouse, My Father As Child, In Brigantia and others. I’ve not posted much poetry recently on City Jackdaw as I’m holding them back for a possible next collection.
At the moment I’m still deliberating the order of my creative endeavours. My procrastination was given a nudge recently when I received a letter in the post from a great writer and poet that I gave a name check to in the foreword of my debut collection Heading North. Now in his 81st year and still as creative as ever, he wished me luck on my own foray on this open and crafted path.
This path of conjured words, and alternative worlds, that exist long after the demise of their creator.
