Battle in Ruimte X

What huge fun and what an honour to be able to step up to the mic with Nick J. Swarth on Thursday in Ruimte X.

I only got the 3 poems ready on the day itself. They seemed to go down well.

Big shout out to all the poets / performers that night!!!

I felt utterly comfortable in Ruimte X.

The Hall of Fame

Funny listening to 60s and 70s hits while the lads skated.
It was a din in there.
Noisy, dirty, great.
Wish I could skate.

Never mind.

I saw a discarded cardboard beer container. Which cheeky youth sneaked beer in? I resolved to drink beer tonight.

protect and serve

I cycled home yesterday, a dog in the rain. I laboured to protect my yellow headphones from the rain.
My solution: raising the collar on my coat and hunching down on my seat like a a goblin.
I was listening to the Aphex Twin.

HIS ANGER AT BEING CALLED SUKKEL

Marnix spilled sugar puffs all over the cushion floor

little evil kitchens scattering into the dirty margins of the room

"sukkel!" I bellowed but not really mad

Marnix then sulked, like he was aggrieved, like, it was my fault? (Australian questioning intonation)

Willem licked them up

INAPPROPRIATE DANCING

My dad's retrospective exhibition

Dad, (Peter Cartwright) will be having a retrospective exhibition in Derby this year. I want to be there for the opening.

PRIDE!!!

http://www.derby.gov.uk/LeisureCulture/MuseumsGalleries/PeterCartwright+Retrospective.htm

A retrospective of Derby-born artist Peter Cartwright’s drawings and paintings as he celebrates his 70 birthday. The exhibition spans five decades of work by this important figure of late 1960s British abstract painting whose new work made a big impact at the London Art Fair in 2008.
“In my work I am preoccupied with the endless question of issues of abstraction and imagery. I make intense unpremeditated responses through drawing, to fragments, objects and situations, creating a stock of images that feed the working process.”

2 university reminiscenses

1. Liverpool; the tutor who was annoyed at my facile comment that an extract from Thomas Hardy expressed the 'same old transience' idea. "It's not just the same old transience!"
Fair enough

2. Keele: the tutor (Ian Bell) who sneered at my 'onanistic proclivities'. I was responding to a poem and had been over-enthusiastic about images, probaly in a gushing way.
An academic put-down.
They weren't too friendly at Keele, with the exception of Mark Jancovich, who is a great bloke. Richard Godden was ok.
I felt insecure because I was severely under-read in critical theory and Marxism.

appropriate punishment
Dante
Something for TV assholes
Meet the Fockers - Asssss----hooole!

in perpetuity for.....
Dr Phil
Must think of something fitting for this cunt

Said to Daan today ''I'm re-reading Ezra Pound". He said he had got the modernists (Eliot, Pound, Yeats etc) out of his system and much preferred post-modern poets.

2 by Pound


In a Station of the Metro

The apparition of these faces in the crowd
petals on a wet, black bough.

&


The Jewel Stairs' Grievance

The jewelled steps are already quite white with dew,
It is so late that the dew soaks my gauze stockings,
And I let down the crystal curtain
And watch the moon through the clear autumn.

I am noticing trees ina very general sense. Come spring, I'll start to pick out gingkos, elms and nut trees, figs.

I am noticing indoor things, like a brass candlestick in Meesters.

Here are some of the names that we have been considering for our advanced English course in the Language Centre. I think 2 of them might stand a slim chance of being adopted

English: Operational Command Force Go!
English: Fast track to Fluency
English: Dinner with the Natives
English: Approaching the Natives
English: Native Horizons
English: Extreme!!!
English: Evolution / Evolved
English: (Taking it) Up a Notch
English: Livin' It Large
English: Beyond the limits

I once asked Daniel 'Would you like to live somewhere for the rest of your life?'

His reply: 'As it's a certainty, it's pointless talking about desire'.

He is on the left in the photo:

Lao Tse

Today I set about gathering ideas for a poem, to be written in Dutch and to 'feature' the path past the pond that I can see from my window. I will need to do a little research into Taoism.

I will be eating soup this eveing but I'm tempted to grab some soup on the way home too. The later I leave the office, the less likely I am to get some soup.

Life

I once had a drunken argument in South London about value judgments in art. I was claiming that it was perfectly reasonable to say a piece of music or a work of literature or other art was better than another. (see the dog roll blog on my profile for examples of so-called 'bad art')

I was then asked to define what I meant by better.

I can't remember what I said.