Dancing into the new term

So long since I posted here!

It seems like the summer holidays just took over and writing fell off the top of the priority list. I have been writing some poetry through August, but not as much as usual. (There's a little sample below).

There have been no open mic gatherings in my area through this month and I do find that I write my poetry with the live reading of the work in mind – it’s a real incentive when there are readings coming up.

So now that the season is starting again I am getting down to write some new poems and I am so much looking forward to getting out there to read some of the work.

I am still submitting my best poetry to magazines and competitions, so I can’t post it here, as most contributions to publishers and contests have to be unpublished.

There are several open mic events coming up during September, so I have spent some time getting my reading file up to date.

To start off, I am looking forward to going down to Laugharne this week where there is a regular live literature gathering at Browns Hotel, the famous watering hole of Dylan Thomas.

Then there will be the Folk Night at Rhosygilwen, Poems n Pints in Carmarthen and my home base, the Cellar Bards in Cardigan. There are a few others in between too – west Wales really is a great place for live literature events. More info on the Spoken Word Wales website (link below).

Here’s a little piece that recalls the emotion on the day I moved into my new home, over three years ago now …

Kitchen dance

feet on cold slate

in the heat of day,

she dances

in the space

she shaped with her joy

released to move

as she pleases

in her universe

she circles with the music

like she will never stop

opening her breath

to the whispers

the energy

the choice

the abundance

stepping, turning

embracing the core,

the centre place

feeling the space.

©2014JackieBiggs

LINKS

http://spokenwordwales.weebly.com/

Cellar Bards on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/333544513348067/

Poems and Pints on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/139435532758319/

And so it was

This is one of the poems I was prompted to write by events being held around the Dylan Thomas Centenary, which was celebrated to the full in south and west Wales through 2014.

I had the chance to read this at a spoken word event at the Dylan Thomas Boathouse in Laugharne, which was organised by poet in residence Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch.

This was the place where Dylan and Caitlin spent several years of their marriage, and while the celebrations of Dylan’s life were shouting loud, I decided to look sideways and take a look at Caitlin’s story. 

*Warning: contains strong language.

And so it was

We boozed and we fucked our way

through the sixteen years

we called our marriage.

Fuelled by alcohol,

with oaths and curses and infidelity;

            we’d have fallen down

            without the drink,

so we would.

We fell into bed that first day.

Always lovin and fightin,

drinkin and fuckin

            our lives were raw, red

            bleeding meat;

with booze, words,

poems, stories, and  sex - and kids.

            What’ll the neighbours say, you wrote,

            what’ll the neighbours say.

            What he’ll do for drink,

            falling in the gutter.

That’s what they said.

You were a hopeless bloody father,

you drank all the money.

            No Good Boyo,

so you were.

And you fucked all the shameless women.

I could’ve killed you,

I wanted to kill you.

I banged your head on the floor,

again and again.

            It was all our own hopeless war.

I wanted to be worse than you.

I loved the wine and the men,

the wantonness, and more and more.

I had my revenge,

so I did.

And when you died, my struggle was over.

It was a relief, at first,

so it was.

Then I found my leftover life

and I had that to kill.

            The sky is torn across, you wrote,

            Now our love lies a loss,

and so it does.

*With words from Under Milk Wood and On a Wedding Anniversary, by Dylan Thomas and words of Caitlin Thomas from an interview with Vincent Kane, ‘The Leftover Wife’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQzcQ1KVFaM

LINKS
http://www.dylanthomasboathouse.com/
http://dylanthomas100.org/

In praise of journalists

Marie Colvin, National Portrait Gallery

Yes, I did say that -- in praise of journalists. On a day when several people who worked as ‘journalists’ have been convicted of the appalling practice of phone hacking I want to remember some of our number who deserve our tributes, rather than our contempt.

Today also, several Al-Jazeera journalists have been jailed for seven years in Egypt, just for doing their jobs and doing them well.

And many hundreds have given their lives over recent decades in the cause of telling us about countless atrocities across the world. As Marie Colvin, who died while reporting for the Sunday Times in the siege of Homs in Syria in 2012, said:  ‘We have to keep telling the stories or the massacres will be worse, we have to keep getting the information out.’

She and many hundreds of other reporters have died while reporting conflicts in Gaza, Sarajevo, Iran, Iraq, Sri Lanka, Chechnya, Colombia, Israel – the list is limitless. Without them, the traumas may indeed be worse.

These killings aren’t accidents, journalists are rarely victims of crossfire. I am talking here about journalists who worked as war correspondents in modern times and were targeted. They knew they were targeted and they lived with that knowledge every day, every hour, every minute, much of it under fire. Marie Colvin and journalist colleagues from around the world were sheltering in a ‘safe house’ in Homs when it was targeted and blown up. She and a French photographer died.

I wrote this prose poem recently in memory of Marie, who was the last war correspondent in Homs representing the British media when she was killed. She was 56.

The italics are her words in her notes sent home at that time. The rest is based on her reports for the media and on information she sent back to friends and colleagues.

Her last post

Finding the widow’s basement was one of the worst moments. I stopped in the doorway,
and saw women hugging their children as far as I could see into the distance. Three hundred frightened women holding weeping bundles all in the humid dust beneath the factory.
Two weeks they had been there, hiding from the relentless shelling, while their husbands and fathers were killed outside.

And all I feel is cold, ice in my core -
and a terrible need to speak.

Syria - the cruellest place on Earth. I watched a baby die today. I watched as his tummy heaved and heaved, full of shrapnel; the doctors could only stand by - until he stopped.
And all I feel is cold, a stone in my heart –

and a terrible need to speak.

I thought I would die when I was shot in the head; and as I lay in the burning dust, that was when I first felt the cold - winter through my bones – while the hot blood poured out. But I was lucky that day, and I could still see clearly with one eye.  For ten more years of horror and terror I saw it all. I should be hardened by now, but I am feeling helpless, and cold, so cold, as I sit in this house.

There is a terrible need to speak. If we do not tell the stories the massacres will be worse, we have to keep getting the information out.

Homs, February 19, 2012. The scale of the bombing is shocking, shells are going off everywhere in all the civilian areas, all around us; but I don’t feel the fear any more, just cold, cold inside cold, and frozen words block my throat where I should speak.

The house trembles, walls collapse, dust explodes everywhere and fills my eyes and lungs, the ceiling falls, I can’t breathe,

and I can’t see any more.

I need to find my shoes …