World Poetry Day - March 2016

Bit of a 'two cigarette' effort, done on my phone in January, lying on the sofa (I think) on the one snowy afternoon of the year in Nottingham and then briefly tidied up on Sunday evening.

Not sure about the bear and not the ideal time of year for the subject but let's see how it goes...


Snow

I wish the snow would fall and not stop.

Tuck the houses up and draw a hush tight around them.

All the movement and bustle fading.

All the paths hidden and footsteps erased.

 

I want the snow to smother the world.

Bury our mistakes deep and numb.

The birds could carry on,

the wind prowling restless,the cloud streaking the blue sky.

 

I'll sit alone with the unwritten page

and gazing out at a world unmade.

Peering into the whiteness for a shrouded figure.

Waiting for them to stamp their feet on the mat and knock three times.

 

I dream of a hibernation where we can lie good as dead.

Waiting to be reborn into a world wiped clean.

Waking with the clear purpose,

and the clean sharp mind of a sun irised bear.

 

David Millington

March 2016

Nottingham

Snowflake

This is very short but it seems an appropriate day to post it.  I wrote it late in 2011 in response to a painting (not the image above by the way).  I kicked around some other snowflakey ideas but this seemed to hit the mark I was aiming for in a very few words.  Snowflake's not the actual title of the poem but it'll do.

Snowflake

I looked for you

as a man searching for blossom in a snowstorm.

For a heart to cradle

that would not melt away.

David Millington
14th January 2013
Nottingham

Heartbeats

Someone once observed that each animal, large or small, has about the same number of heartbeats over its lifetime.  Animals with shorter lifespans have hearts that beat very quickly, 450 times a minute in the case of a hamster. Hamsters don't usually make it past 3 years. Sorry hamster lovers.  Long lived animals like whales, than can live to 80, have hearts that only beat around 20 times a minute.  A lifetime can be measured in a lot of ways, but it's about a billion heartbeats for most of the animals on the planet.

The exception to this rule of thumb is us.  About a billion heart beats would take us to 31 years of age.  We get around 2.2 billion heartbeats.  So think how lucky you are and don't waste them. And think how many of us are living on borrowed time.

I've posted this before but it'll stand posting again.

This has been kicking around for ages in my head so I thought I'd try and get it down on paper.  Possibly a waste of everyone's heatbeats.

Heartbeats

Only so many heartbeats,

Leaking like water from a drum.

Strewn like confetti over damp cobbles,

Or carried like blossom on the breeze.

Stamped into the brickwork of that midnight doorway,

Scorched into the table by the unfinished drinks,

Spinning like leaves in the rain-tide of the river,

caught in the station’s eaves with pigeons and announcements.

Yours and yours and yours all mixed with mine,

fading away until in a hundred years

all that’s left of us will be the echoes in your child’s breast.

David Millington
Nottingham
4th November 2012

St Michael's Mount

I am planning on writing a series of blogs about various books but in the meantime I thought I'd post this as I'm quite pleased with it. 

Simon Armitage said that as a poet he looks for patterns and synchronicity.  I think I had that in somewhere in mind when the idea for this bubbled up to the surface when I was in Cornwall over Christmas.  At least it gave me something to think about as I walked by the sea in the hail!

 

St Michaels Mount         

A mile or more of Mounts Bay and the billowing wind

leave only a rain carved shadow in the mist.

I can’t see where the water meets the cliff

or the crag stiffens into wall.

Just grey on grey on grey.

But I can picture that sea-glistened causeway,

leading to that midnight island,

where we were the only people in the world.

It was as if the deeps had parted for us

and the path ahead was moonlight clear.

Now the years have piled up in front of me

like so many emptied glasses at a pub table.

The memories finger-smudged

and the paths we might have taken

are long since lost to the incoming tide.

The insistent hail at my back drives me along the promenade.

Storm hood tugged low to a letter box view of the world

hunch shouldered and fists stuffed into pockets.

The wind’s grip a tender doorman

escorting me firmly onwards.

David Millington

26th January 2012

Nottingham

Quick hits

I've read somewhere that poetry is the art of saying a lot with a few words.  That seems quite a modern view and probably isn’t something that Homer, the unknown writer of Beowulf or even Keats would have necessarily agreed with but there’s something to be said for it none the less.  Often a book will try to open a door to a particular experience or feeling using sheer weight of words.  And sometimes a poem will fit easily into an unseen keyhole and open it with the slightest twist.

Scots poet Norman MacCaig used to say in reply to the question  "How long does it take to write a poem" that usually it was "about a cigarette" or "two cigarettes for a long poem". I’m rather skeptical about this as I find his work sparse, spare but beautifully crafted and I can’t believe that he resisted the urge to go back later and to tidy up. I think in many ways it’s harder to find a single word that works than it write a sentence or paragraph. When you have the freedom to write you can chase the meaning around the page before eventually pinning it down in submission. A single word is hard.

I’ve tried to be economical and ruthless with the writing and editing of these two poems. Flowers was originally twelve lines long and now it’s down to five. I thought I’d better post them while I still have something.

‘Flowers’ is about a month old, ‘Bookcase’ a little longer.

Flowers

I wished I could have curled the sunlight

around the plain stem of my words,

twisted strips of bright sky into blooms,

and wrapped them in the blue morning.

When I realised it was you that I had met today.

Bookcase

The bookcase looms

Square-shouldered.

Five gaping mouths,

crammed with teeth.

One of us will eat the other

And I’m the hungrier.

David Millington

Nottingham

23rd November 2011

Forthcoming Attractions

I’ve been rather lax about blogging for the last couple of weeks.    I’ve a fair few things I want to write about but none of them are even nearly finished yet so to tide you over until Monday, when I’ll hopefully get going again, I’ve made a few notes on what the next batch will be about.

Elbow

A blog about the gig on the 17^th of March.  I’d say a review but frankly any review of I’d write of Elbow would have all the objectivity of Matthew writing about the Sermon on the Mount.  “Jesus brought us all to the kingdom of heaven tonight and totally dissed the pharisees.  The merchandise was a bit pricey though – 10 pieces of silver for replica sandals! WFT!”. Etc.

Musical taste

A lot of waffle on how musical taste is a more personal preference than almost any other art form and why.  This is half written but it keeps going off in different directions.  It’ll be a companion piece to the already published ‘Lost in Music’.

Thomas Cranmer and Aslockton

I wanted to write something about Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, who was born in Aslockton, just to the south of Nottingham.  He rose from humble beginnings to become the first head of the Church of England and the intellectual architect and powerhouse of the English Reformation.  I’m interested in how he was able to rise so high and I want to draw comparisons to the present day when the middle and upper classes are becoming more entrenched than ever in the best jobs.  I find the protestant reformation fascinating anyway as it’s the real beginning of the modern secular world and also for the parallels with modern Islam.

Offensiveness in Comedy

I’ve been avoiding this one for ages as it’s bound to be controversial and I’m not sure that I really want to stand up for what I believe on this one.  I will take the time to write it but possibly won’t post it.  I have few enough readers already and don’t want to piss any of them off!  We’ll see...

Goldstein and Collier at the Nottingham Contemporary

I really enjoyed the current exhibition at the Nottingham Contemporary.  Enough chords were struck with a few other things I was reading and in particular Alastair Sooke’s excellent recent documentary series on British sculpture and Andrew Graham-Dixon’s series on German Art (both on BBC4) and it’s stimulated me enough to want to write about it.  It’ll be about what I’m choosing to call art and meta-art.  It will probably tie into the 'Musical Taste' blog too.  It’s likely to be a bit massive though.

Fear of Falling

This will be about the similarities and differences between climbing and getting on stage to act.  They’re both activities that tend to draw the comment “you’re very brave to do that” and I thought I’d examine this further, ‘cos I think it’s an interesting comparison to make.  This will almost certainly be the last bit I write about acting for a while and hopefully the start of a few more outdoorsy pieces.

And go on then – a short poem.  Some days it’s called ‘The Optimist’ and some days ‘The Pessimist’. Another from last year.

All I have left of a half-love,

are half written poems,

half-lived.

David Millington

18^th March 2011

Nottingham.