After Dunbar

I'm reprinting below a poem I wrote some years ago, published (and still available) in my 2010 collection: The floorshow at the Mad Yak Café (Red Squirrel Press).

I've always been very fond of Dunbar's poetry. To me he's the most accessible of the post-Chaucerian Scottish Makars. The range of subjects he covered is very wide, and I find him very readable. Some of his relatives held lands at Biel, near Dunbar, and it's been suggested that he took a surname from the place he came from - William of Dunbar.

The poem which follows came after reading one of Dunbar's most famous poems. It's important to say that this is not a 'translation' from Dunbar's Scots into modern English, nor is it a 'version' of the the original poem - it's very different, and goes off in different directions. It reflects on Dunbar's times - what you could and could not do in winter - but it also contains my own feelings and experiences, as an original poem should.

It's appropriate to the time of year, so here it is:

The Low Point
(after ‘A Meditatioun in Wyntir’, by William Dunbar, c 1460- c 1520)

“Dirk and drublie days” right enough,
but the heavens are not always sable –
some days there are true skies, and a wind
shifted from Siberia, to seek unfurnished skin.

Today the longer dark hours are filled
with entertainments then curtailed. It’s hard
to imagine what true darkness meant
for plays, poems, music – summer pursuits all.

Scratching by candle, each scrivener wrought
on quires of deckled paper, by goosequill and gallol,
words of wisdom, terms of love and learning,
some meters of beauty to catch future’s eye.

Warring motives lay on from every side.
Despair’s the easy one now, so much bad news
in these cold times, suggest the one
begets the other. Patience dismissed,

and fortune damned – predestiny leaves no room
for innocent actions. We may as well be doomed
as blessed, and with an equal chance. Causality
is on a winter break, along with warmth and light.

Slyly, with some pretence of favour, chilly whispers
question why I carry forward a life that soon
I’ll leave behind, with loves and friendships
broken links, unconnected leads and empty ears.

The forgetfulness of age is a brotherly service,
for remembrance of ourselves in youth
would give us pain – the way we were,
the things we did, the chances missed.

And death to come is final leveller;
low or high, we similarly stoop to enter
the same one-way system, a singularity,
the dimming doorway to a hall of nothing.

But yet, four minutes today, five tomorrow,
the nights imperceptibly shorten, and at some point
I’ll know times have changed, that summer pleasures
lie ahead, and will return. The ball rolls round.

Copyright © Colin Will, 2010

The burial of the Count of Orgaz

I wrote this haibun for a prompt from the Eyemouth Writers' Group. I don't think I'll publish it - it shares some elements with one in The Book of Ways - but here it is anyway.

The burial of the Count of Orgaz, 1586

‘A very parfit gentil knight’, by all accounts, and a generous donor to the church, the death of the old Count caused much lamentation in Toledo. Fortunately, Domenikos Theotokopoulos, later to be known as El Greco, - the Greek – had settled in the city and had begun to paint there. He was commissioned to record the death of the Count, and he produced what is undoubtedly his masterpiece, then and still displayed in the church of Santo Tomé. The painting is in the shape of an arch. In the lower half we are in the realm of humanity. Portraits of the local nobles form a long line of mourners, rendered in recognisable detail. At the centre of the lower half is the body of the Count, and on either side of him Saint Stephen and Saint Augustine, descended from Heaven as a mark of special favour, to bury the Count. They are very colourfully dressed in religious vestments, a contrast to the more sombre phalanx of local dignitaries.

It is the upper half of the painting, however, which astonishes and mystifies me. Never having been a Christian, I am often confused by paintings of religious themes depicting specifically Christian iconic elements, which may be obvious or well-known to those having grown up in the faith, but about which I know nothing. The top half of the painting is a depiction of Heaven, with Christ in Majesty above all, surrounded by the winged angels and the remainder of the heavenly host. Mary is in a central position, holding open a funnel-shaped fold in the fundament. At the lower end of the funnel an unformed figure, looking like a swaddled baby, is being helped into the narrow passage by an angel. This, we were told, was how the soul was often depicted in medieval and Renaissance paintings. It looked, and was obviously meant to look, like an inverted birth canal, through which the Count’s soul would ascend into Heaven. Not for the first time, and probably not for the last time, the imagery baffles me.

It’s some years since we visited Toledo, that wonderful city set high on red rocks above a bend in the Rio Tajo, but I’ve never forgotten it, and El Greco’s masterpiece springs to mind whenever I think of it. It was raining when we arrived, and the colours were El Greco’s colours – deep greens, blues and greys. By the time we left in the afternoon the sun had come out, and the city was bathed in light. From the cliffs overlooking the plain, we watched a pair of vultures circling, a new tick in my bird book, a reminder of mortality.

an art pilgrimage -

in a hot Spanish autumn

a cool oasis

Copyright © Colin Will 2014

08/12/2014

This blog

The poem I posted yesterday was written in 2010 following a visit to the battlefields and cemeteries of the Somme area in 2009. It was published in Snakeskin in 2010, and included in my 2012 collection The propriety of weeding (Red Squirrel Press, 2012).  I posted it here at the request of a friend on Twitter. I suppose there might have been a techie solution to the 140-character limit, but what I came up with was to post the link to the blog post in the tweet.

However, I'm wondering what to do next with this blog. I've finished more than 100 poems so far in 2014, and many of them have been posted in a private, closed Facebook group as drafts. In a sense that group has taken the place of this blog as a place for posting drafts for comments.

I'm thinking I might convert it to a blog for previously published, copyrighted poems I want to draw attention to. Or I could use it for events, readings and so on - things I don't usually post on my other blog (Sunny Dunny).

So I'll develop my ideas, and eventually make this a public blog again.

Poem for Remembrance Day 2014

Missing


David Will was the first name I read,
same name as my first son.
I breathed again after a long gasp.
Missing, and the date and place.
Regiment: Gordon Highlanders of course,
because that’s the one they all joined,
the ones from Buchan, the hinterland
behind the coastal towns, places
my forebears lived and laboured.

Remains not found or identified,
fragments of anonymous bone,
strips of nameless flesh,
meat for the trench rats, a red stain
in the puddles that quickly dribbled
into pools of mud, churned by incoming shells
or the boots of marching men.

John Will was next, and in the lists
another John, four Jameses,
a Duncan (my other son’s name),
two brothers, William and George.
Grandmother’s maiden name produced
a new batch, adding Mutch to Will,
folk from Strichen and the Newburgh..

Twenty-five names in all, men who travelled
from Huntly to Ypres, Ellon to Cambrai,
and did not come home. My grandfather made shoes
in Aberdeen and Edinburgh, never spoke
about his service, but he marched back
and fathered my father, the year after
hostilities ended, but didn’t.

Walled gardens feature frequently
in this landscape, each with their strange crops:
ranks of identical upright slabs
with simple inscriptions, books of lists.
Planting poppied crosses doesn’t work for me;
commemorating isn’t what I want to do.
I try to make personal connections, but I can’t.

That happened later in a farmer’s field.
A drainage ditch in the chalky soil
had opened an unmapped trench,
and in the bottom we found bullets,
a belt buckle, and a few white bones:
a shiny rib, and the smooth head of a femur.

Copyright © Colin Will 2010
Published in The propriety of weeding, Red Squirrel Press, 2012

What is haibun? Version 2

This is the introduction to The Book of Ways, to be published in Autumn 2014 by Red Squirrel Press.

What is haibun?

Japanese literature began with the tanka poem form in the 8^th century, the first novels (by Sei Shonagon and Murasaki Shikibu) in the 10-11^th centuries, and the verse form renga in the 11^th century, from which hokku and haiku later emerged. Haibun evolved from haiku.

The best known example of the form is Matsuo Basho’s Oku no Hosomichi – Narrow Road to the Interior – a poetic record of a journey made in 1689. His friend and fellow poet Sora accompanied him on part of his journey, and they composed together in the manner of renga – linked verse – with Basho’s narrative. Many other Japanese writers have used the form since then, but its popularity in the West dates from the late 20^th and early 21^st century, when European and American writers discovered it for themselves.

So what exactly is it? The magazine Haibun Today has on its website a collection of diverse and often contradictory definitions. Basho simply says it is haikai no bunsho – writing in the style of haiku. Shiki’s followers equate it with shaseibun – sketching in words. Most commentators agree on two things: they should contain prose written in the spirit of haiku; and they should contain, often as a conclusion, a haiku. The haiku should parallel but not epitomise the prose. ‘The prose becomes the narrative of an epiphany, while the haiku is the epiphany itself.’ (Bruce Ross: Narratives of the Heart, World Haiku Review, vol 1, 2002)

Most haibun contain one haiku, some more, fewer none. The prose section is often, but not always, the record of a journey, real or allegorical. That has led some to characterise the haibun as a waybook, and that is the reason for the book’s title. The risk is that a haibun collection becomes a series of travel notes, which I have tried hard to avoid: this is poetry.

You may think that, given the flexibility of the form, that anything goes. Far from it. As with any other poetic form, there are techniques – things which work and things which do not. There are skills to learn, and styles to develop. There are fashions too, especially in Western haibun. There’s a recent tendency in some quarters to drastically shorten the prose sections, but I can see no logical reason for this, and it loses a lot of the poetry. The length of a haibun should depend solely on the needs of the narrative.

Some of these haibun relate to wanderings in other countries, but I’ve also included poems written at home in Scotland, together with poems reflecting my scientific background.

In this collection some haibun contain tanka and other short verse forms rather than haiku, but by and large the structure of prose plus one or more haiku has been adhered to, as has the 5-7-5 haiku structure. Some haiku are non-seasonal; some are closer to senryu, and many do not have the kireji – the cutting word. But there is precedent; Basho himself sometimes experimented in these ways. ‘In the spirit of haiku’ usually means present tense, direct speech, and first person narrative. I have mostly followed this, but occasionally I’ve used past tense. Sometimes I’ve used second person, making them conversations with my wife Jane, my companion along many of these ways. I think the form is robust enough to accommodate such diversions.

The collection has been cast in four parts, but the boundaries between them are flexible. The first poem is a non-linear reflection on places I’ve been, things I’ve seen or thought about, and forms an introduction to the first section. The second section features Scotland, wilderness (including mountains), and some travels; the third adds more travels plus some science-influenced poems; the fourth contains the most personal poems.

Colin Will

Hawthornden Castle and Dunbar

November 2013 – February 2014

Too easy

I don't normally write poems about writing, but this one wrote itself this morning.

Too easy

Once I wrote in language

dense as earth, full of words

gleaned from years of learning, reading,

and fancy turns hand-picked

from the poet’s holdall of tricks –

allit-, asson-, half-rhyme, and bucket-loads

of metaphor.

One critic said I was ‘showing off’

but I wasn’t. I took delight

in the possibilities of words, sounds,

ideas, special effects.

Still, the injustice stung.

I’ve pared down, am leaner,

but maybe I’ve gone too far;

too many simple gifts, too many

babies slipped through the shower’s

hair filter, too many straight lines.

What do you think? You were there.

What do you think?

Colin Will

01/01/2014

Changes for 2014

I started this as a private blog for NaPoWriMo 2013, so I could date-stamp the poems without making them public, which would have infringed the 'no prior publication' condition set by many editors.
However, I've decided to make it public, so I can put drafts up.

I'll also put up information, workshop tips, prompts and exercises here.