Poet of the Week

I am totally delighted to be one of the two Poets of the Week on the Poetry Superhighway! I am sharing the honour with Christine Bruness, who co-incidentally has featured on my Poetry blog magazine Bolts of Silk.

See us both at: http://poetrysuperhighway.com/potw.html#fp2

Snow - Orhan Pamuk

Well, soon after putting down Kafka's The Castle, I picked up Snow by Orhan Pamuk. The first thing that struck me was that there are a lot of similarities between the two books. In each of them it is snowing constantly, the main character (K. in The Castle, Ka in Snow) is more or less new in town and the focus of both novels is political. Snow is an interesting book, a political novel looking at the tensions between secularists and fundamentalist Islamic groups in Turkey. It also considers women's rights, the relationship between poetry and politics and is a love story too. It is a little dense in parts and the plot is often convoluted but it is an important book to read for its insights into important issues. There is some humour too, I particularly like the fact that the main character, Ka, a poet, has to keep rushing into tea shops whenever he feels a poem coming on to write them before they disappear.

Orhan Pamuk has written several other novels, including one of my favourite ever novels My Name is Red.

A Personal History through Dance

Were my parents trying to
keep up with the Joneses
Or did I really want to be a ballerina?
There I was, primary school age
In miniature tutu
Contorting myself into impossible poses

Secondary school brought some sense
Saw me tear off the tutu
And don a leotard for tap
A dance not needing quite so much grace
But still my feet could never
Keep up with the lightening fast beats.

Studying in Scotland I discovered ceilidhs -
Wearing jeans and a jumper is just fine
- elegance matters less than enthusiasm
But too much of the latter
Leads sometimes to bruising
And a body the worse for wear

A couple of years in Malawi
Wrapping round my hips a chitenje
That always fell down
When I tried to keep up
With the traditional dancing
That my body is just not built for!

Now you'll find me on Saturdays
Down in the darkness of goth club
Dressed in glamorous black
My body lost in the music -
Finally I know how to dance!


Poetry Thursday theme - The Body
National Poetry Day theme - Identity

Skin

They only touched once, skin on skin, brushing past each other on the dancefloor, dancing too close in the press of the crowd. Being that close they didn't dare look at each other, they were already under each other's skin and in each other's dreams. But now there's a heat in that piece of skin on her hand that touched the skin of his hand. A heat and a constant memory of all the times they never were together. The poetic necessity of him and that touch of skin on skin.

Then she found herself in his country, drowned in the sound of his beautiful language. But if they were never to be together, wasn't this the wrong way, wasn't she supposed to hate the place, her skin crawling at the sound of a harsh discordant language?

Passing in the street, back home, pretending not even to see one another. Her skin calling out for his touch......


Sunday Scribblings, This weeks prompt: Skin.

Unblinded

Once, you heard space as soundscape,
tasted the difference between red and green
smelt the changing of the leaves,
touched to interpret shape.

And now the newly seen is mystery
a confusion of beauty
too much miracle.

You close your eyes, read the Braille
of your lover’s face,
feel her breath on your skin.

Her heartbeat in the dark.


Poetry Thursday prompt: synaesthesia.

Haiku - windows and doorways

On One Deep Breath this week we are asked to write haiku about windows or doorways:

your blue eyes
full of gentleness and love -
windows on your soul.

Das Schloß - Franz Kafka

Ich lese jetzt Das Schloß auf Deutsch!! Einige Deutsche haben mir gesagt Kafka wäre zu schwerig für mich auf Deutsch zu verstehen. Find ich aber, daß Kafka nicht ganz kompliziert beschrieben hat. Mit Kafka, sind es immer die Ideen die kompliziert sind. Egal in Deutsch oder English. So die Wörter sind nicht das Problem. Das Problem ist was hinter die Wörter liegt. Und das ist manchmal fremd und kompliziert..... Glückerlicherweise sind es viele websites über Kafka:

http://www.xlibris.de/Autoren/Kafka/Interpretationen/Schloss.htm
http://www.dieterwunderlich.eu/Kafka_schloss.htm
http://www.franz-kafka.net/das-schloss/

I'm reading Kafka's The Castle at the minute - in German! Some native German speakers had said to me that Kafka would be too difficult for me to read in German. However, Kafka didn't use particularly complicated language, rather it's the ideas that are complicated - in German or English! So the words aren't the problem. The problem is what lies behind the words, and that is sometimes strange and complicated. Luckily there are some helpful websites to help the reader understand Kafka:

http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=11503
http://www.answers.com/topic/the-castle-1

Tanka

On One Deep Breath this week we are asked to write a tanka. A tanka is a Japanese poetic form often written in the form of five lines with syllable counts of 5.7.5.7.7 though as with haiku the syllable count doesn't need to be strictly followed, though short, long, short, long long is to be preferred. Tanka often link the natural world with personal emotional reflections. This is only the second ever tanka I've written:

the shortening days

and long gloomy autumn nights

hibernation

I snuggle under blankets

to write poetry all day.

Haiku - solitude

This week's prompt on One Deep Breath is Solitude. This is my haiku:

snow in the churchyard
behind a wrought iron gate –
woman in black.

Edinburgh International Film Festival 2

The Film Festival ends tomorrow, but I saw my last film there today. It was How Is Your Fish Today? a Chinese documentary film about a screenwriter, intertwined with a film that he is trying ti write. It offers interesting insights into China and into the writing process, particularly the prose writers relationship with their characters.

Other films I've seen since my last post on the Film Festival include:

Sieben Himmel - a bizarre German film about the unlikely relationship between a young goth and a nightwatchman who seem to be stuck in a time loop (though the siginificance of this is never explored). I enjoyed the film but the experimental camera work was too much for me.

Interkosmos is another German film, this time a mockumentary about the fictional East German plans to colonise the moons of Jupiter and to set up a permanent space library of communist literature. Excellent film, truly bizarre with a wonderful cameo appearance from the Space Guinea Pig animation.

Skin is a Portuguese film that had great potential in terms of exploring issues around race and gender in a post colonial society, but the wonderful art direction and attractive cast were let down by the clumsy dialogue and the clunky character development.

So which of the films that I saw will come back to UK cinemas? I would guess Skin will come back and I would be surprised if Wristcutters doesn't. The others however probably won't. Which is a shame in a lot of ways, but personally I always consider my money to be best spent in the Film Festival if the films don't come back - ie I use it as a way to see rare films.