Not mine, Ezra's. Yes, this is Olivia Shakespear, Dorothy's mother and a fine sketch from that much underrated British twentieth century artist: Wyndham Lewis. OK, I know he upset the establishment but really Nick Serota, isn't it time the Tate did the right thing by this artist, writer, poet and all-round genius. Or are you still carrying Roger Fry's flame, Nick?
This is part of the seed change that I was going through, back in the 1970s. The change from adolescent to entrepreneur. I may had stopped creating in the real sense, but in some respects I was taking on more and doing more. Collecting works of art (like this Wyndham Lewis sketch), buying books and making a difference in the business world.
This entry is going to be different from the rest because it will not end-up with a poem. Indeed this marked the end of my writing for some years. You could say I sold out to commerce but, as you will see later, the output afterwards was better than before. It was like my squirrel-time. During that period I was accepted as an Associate Member of the International P.E.N. Club, became a freeman of the City of London and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. Not bad for someone that left school with no qualifications.
When I return I would have come out of this commercial conclave and entered a new phase where rejection gave me a mixture of good and bad. I shortened Waiting for Godot for my son, collected early editions of Joyce's Ulysses, welcomed Gilbert & George and returned to Pound with more than a pound of Poundian.
Sunday, November 26, 2006
Sunday, November 19, 2006
Hello Uncle Ez
I've arrived. In London. Ready to carve out a career. Not true, just playing the game. Truth is, was, I had to bring up a wife and 2 children...and we all know poetry doesn't pay the rent. So, instead, I got as near as I could with advertising. Another untruth. I was still a dreamer, and yet I seemed to drift into the jobs I got. Now, I don't intend to use this blog to tell you of my chequered career. This is a literary based blog. Suffice to say I made it. But at a price. For many years I gave-up writing and concentrated on making a career. But all that time my creative wellspring was filling-up, ready to cultivate a new spring.
Along the way I picked-up Ezra Pound. Not exclusively, my literary taste was, and is, wide. Why Ez? Well he is a giant and his influence touched many people. I then looked at those people and the journey began.
I started this blog with the first stanza of a poem about Ez, I will end it with the complete poem. But right now let me drop in a piece of juvenilia that was published in the international poetry magazine, CORE:
Looking back to Pound
Eye corners, eye corners
always eye corners.
Now, just as then, askance
at usurers and usury.
Gone banker to right from drudgery
or bog eyed stupefier.
Just a botched civilisation
gone in the touch
for a few Sunflowers let loose.
Where then, worse now,
and unCantoed.
A pound of this a pound of that
is just a pound of anything
and not a Pound of Poundian.
He became an important part of my life. He still is. I've been where he lived, where he is buried, where he was feted. I think I have most of the books by him and most of those about him. And yet I only know what I can learn by studying him. That's what fascinates me about him. To know him is to know so much and I am still scratching the surface. Will I ever reach the summit; unlikely. But the effort is worth it because it shows us a great deal about the human condition and our condition.
Meanwhile another poem from that time that was short listed for a prize:
ANNUNCIATION
Into the field, every day
a man walks into the field.
Tell me why, there's a man
in the field tell me why?
Messages to bring, each day
he's got messages to bring.
Who sends them, the messages
he carries who sends them?
People they say, thoughts
from the people they say.
None from us, he carries
thoughts but none from us.
Like to know, the people's
thoughts I'd like to know.
Never ask it, what bones
their deeds never ask it.
Let us leave, we have seen
and know now let us leave.
He'll be back, we can watch
when we need to he'll be back.
So an ad man, a father, an erstwhile poet soon to swing the cape of good fortune across many years. Where will it leave me then? I'll tell you next time.
Along the way I picked-up Ezra Pound. Not exclusively, my literary taste was, and is, wide. Why Ez? Well he is a giant and his influence touched many people. I then looked at those people and the journey began.
I started this blog with the first stanza of a poem about Ez, I will end it with the complete poem. But right now let me drop in a piece of juvenilia that was published in the international poetry magazine, CORE:
Looking back to Pound
Eye corners, eye corners
always eye corners.
Now, just as then, askance
at usurers and usury.
Gone banker to right from drudgery
or bog eyed stupefier.
Just a botched civilisation
gone in the touch
for a few Sunflowers let loose.
Where then, worse now,
and unCantoed.
A pound of this a pound of that
is just a pound of anything
and not a Pound of Poundian.
He became an important part of my life. He still is. I've been where he lived, where he is buried, where he was feted. I think I have most of the books by him and most of those about him. And yet I only know what I can learn by studying him. That's what fascinates me about him. To know him is to know so much and I am still scratching the surface. Will I ever reach the summit; unlikely. But the effort is worth it because it shows us a great deal about the human condition and our condition.
Meanwhile another poem from that time that was short listed for a prize:
ANNUNCIATION
Into the field, every day
a man walks into the field.
Tell me why, there's a man
in the field tell me why?
Messages to bring, each day
he's got messages to bring.
Who sends them, the messages
he carries who sends them?
People they say, thoughts
from the people they say.
None from us, he carries
thoughts but none from us.
Like to know, the people's
thoughts I'd like to know.
Never ask it, what bones
their deeds never ask it.
Let us leave, we have seen
and know now let us leave.
He'll be back, we can watch
when we need to he'll be back.
So an ad man, a father, an erstwhile poet soon to swing the cape of good fortune across many years. Where will it leave me then? I'll tell you next time.
Sunday, November 05, 2006
Bye David, bye George, hello real world
Difficult to let go, there was so much creative activity. We were working on a new lit mag called The London Bay of Pigs, GPS was dashing back & forwards to the US to try and get money to keep Proudstage (his creative 'factory') going. We gave a Sound and Image presentation of David's book WITHDRAWAL at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. The book then gets British Film Institute backing for filming. But it was difficult to keep the creative mercury together.
By this time we had 2 children and our first house in the country (Hertfordshire) and I was on the career ladder. But I didn't let go without trying real hard to be a writer as well as a bread winner. I even wrote a play inspired by one of the people I worked with in an ad agency in London. Called MORNING ISSUE, it was a parody of everyday living set against the clown-like comedy of life. I can see now that I was looking to the future.
Perhaps this too was a mixed-up scene setter for what was to come. Called THE ROOM (an idea for a film) it went on to be published twice and appear in a poetry anthology later:
The general light upon the eyes
blessed Madonna, freedom of slaves.
Room - curtains open; dark,
small, close pressing upon ...
table, coffin, dead man in a chair,
an armchair - face pale, bones broken
a feast of feeding flies
cuckoo claws his shoulder.
Woman - arranging cups and glasses
icing the beer, combing the hair
on the head of a dead man
sitting in a chair - an armchair.
Boy - handsome with white legs
wearing blue shorts and shirt
strokes his hair, blond hair
bounces on the dead man's knee.
Criss-cross the arms of men
dancing on a parrot's swing
drinking beer, fondling girls
asking for a loan, echoing a cry
all together in a room
knocking on the walls
listening to the dead man.
As you can tell, I'm doing all I can to push to one side the real world that I keep alluding too. So much better to let the poet speak. But I will tell you about life in a suburban situation and about London ad land. Because, although I left my poetic garb to one side for some years, I took-up a rich galaxy of literary luminaries, if only as an audience looking on, instead of sharing the limelight. Next time I'll bring-in Mr. Pound, for it is he that ultimately replaced George et al - in a way I think George and David would be pleased to have moved over for the mighty man, although I am fast approaching the year when Ezra Pound died and I started my first real business. It's that word again: real. What is it:
On the rim of the mind:
running as fast as backwards
the steel band that clamps the mind
that saves us from splintering
- just gets a little tighter.
Get behind me Muse ... I'm about to catch the 8.15 to London.
By this time we had 2 children and our first house in the country (Hertfordshire) and I was on the career ladder. But I didn't let go without trying real hard to be a writer as well as a bread winner. I even wrote a play inspired by one of the people I worked with in an ad agency in London. Called MORNING ISSUE, it was a parody of everyday living set against the clown-like comedy of life. I can see now that I was looking to the future.
Perhaps this too was a mixed-up scene setter for what was to come. Called THE ROOM (an idea for a film) it went on to be published twice and appear in a poetry anthology later:
The general light upon the eyes
blessed Madonna, freedom of slaves.
Room - curtains open; dark,
small, close pressing upon ...
table, coffin, dead man in a chair,
an armchair - face pale, bones broken
a feast of feeding flies
cuckoo claws his shoulder.
Woman - arranging cups and glasses
icing the beer, combing the hair
on the head of a dead man
sitting in a chair - an armchair.
Boy - handsome with white legs
wearing blue shorts and shirt
strokes his hair, blond hair
bounces on the dead man's knee.
Criss-cross the arms of men
dancing on a parrot's swing
drinking beer, fondling girls
asking for a loan, echoing a cry
all together in a room
knocking on the walls
listening to the dead man.
As you can tell, I'm doing all I can to push to one side the real world that I keep alluding too. So much better to let the poet speak. But I will tell you about life in a suburban situation and about London ad land. Because, although I left my poetic garb to one side for some years, I took-up a rich galaxy of literary luminaries, if only as an audience looking on, instead of sharing the limelight. Next time I'll bring-in Mr. Pound, for it is he that ultimately replaced George et al - in a way I think George and David would be pleased to have moved over for the mighty man, although I am fast approaching the year when Ezra Pound died and I started my first real business. It's that word again: real. What is it:
On the rim of the mind:
running as fast as backwards
the steel band that clamps the mind
that saves us from splintering
- just gets a little tighter.
Get behind me Muse ... I'm about to catch the 8.15 to London.
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