h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hello Chaiwallah; I'm Pin.
I came here after Ben posted a link to your poem about "flowers" in Iraq to a 'Just War' thread (see this week's front page Talking Point).
So much of what you've written here is wonderful.
Thank you.

Hi Pin,

I just went and read Solomon 2003. That's a tough poem, tough in its implications. Really excellent. I have addressed similar stuff in a poem I wrote after Sept.11th 2001. I've posted it into the Justifiable War thread under poems. See what you think.

Ciao,

Chai

I did take a look.
What do I say? It's certainly technically accomplished. To be honest, though, some of the other stuff that you've posted affects me more. The poem about child abuse is remarkable.
In this short time, it's already plain that you've an extraordinary tale to tell, as well as a gift for recounting your experience. I feel quite chastened.
Please stay and tell us more, Chai.
Pin

Cor, Pinniped, what do I say, in my turn? Thanks for your kind words. Re-reading the Demiurge poem was quite weird for me, because my own mind has gone through some profound transformations since 2001, and that poetry seems alien to me now. But I don't really "write" poetry, it seems to have a life of its own, and surfaces, rather like fish in a lake, when it chooses. It's only when writing doggerel, limericks etc., that I actually sit down and think,"OK, what shall I write."

Usually, with "poetry" a line will emerge, or words will be "heard" that demand release, and there's no rest till they're out. The form usually emerges with the words/feeling/thought. For some reason, for me, rhythm is integral to how I "hear" it, sometimes, not always, rhyme as well. I try to get it down on paper before it gets messed up by my intellect trying to impose form on it, or the critical voices in my head start anylysing it critically, judgementally.

Strange business, innit?

Cheers,

Chai

PS, My problem is that having done a degree in Eng Lang and Lit all those years ago, I have rather severe ideas as to what constitutes "good" poetry, ie "literary quality" work. And I would include almost none of my poems in that category. Certainly not in line with contemporary "literary" poetry. But, honestly, I don't care too much. We each have our own particular voice, and mine seems to be inclined to the "mystical," and that's just the way it is.

That's the catch with an Arts degree, my son. Academic training in an aesthetic field only encourages the Wrong Part of the Brain.

Just an inflammatory opinion from Blubberboy, you understand. But I don't think poetry can withstand dissection. We cut up Shakespeare along with the formaldehyde-steeped frogs at school, and it's taken me all these years to put him back together. (I'm sure I've still got some bits in the wrong places, poor Bard).

Not that I'm a poet, heaven forfend. We have a mutual acquaintance in Ben, and in my case I think I can legitimately claim it was her wot put me up to it. (You lurking B? Serves you right...). Anyhow, the Solomon piece is the only example so far that can really stand daylight.

For me, writing is the tidying up and putting away of the ideas that take over my head. To look at it another way, it's the formalising and articulating of a personal philosophy - no, that's too grand...outlook, perhaps. Mostly I write prose, but of a fairly rhetorical kind that hovers on the edge of poetry.

Do you always drift back to Dark Stuff, too? I came here trying to be funny, but also (I now realise) trying to escape from something. The blackness always seems to reappear. One day I mean to exorcise it.

Hootoo is awesome though, don't you agree? Almost every time I'm here, I find things that raise my spirits and that kindle my imagination. Every week, there are new tyros expressing themselves in new ways, and expressing the same urge to be heard that I felt and still feel. New soulmates on tap. I love it.

Pin

Indeed, Pin, the old Lit Crit bit is a total drag. It is part of the whole judgemental thing which I was brought up to. It goes along with "good taste" and other exclusivisms and elitisms. But the critic in the head is very hard to exorcise, and it pursues me through all my various "creative" occupations, even my pottery. So I tend to be a bit apologetic about my poetry, and hopelessly idealistic about my pottery. Somewhere in the future, there is a good pot! Well, actually, in the last two years ( and I've been making pottery since the age of 12 )I have finally succeeded in making some pots that I like, ( ash-glazed stoneware, if that means anything to you.) So I assume I'm going soft in my old age. And, of course, they're not in the least "conceptual" or even "cutting-edge-contemporary." They're just beautiful, so I can die ( as a potter ) happy.

Blah blah blah

Much more interesting is the draw of the "darkness." The Demiurge poem, as I re-read it after nearly two years, was a visualising of the kind of spiritual pain a being has to be in, in order to inflict pain on others. And I recognise much of the imagery as coming from a particularly horriffic acid trip I took back in about 1970, when I felt completely trapped within the orbit of my sense perceptions, so that there was no "outer world" at all. Everything was as solid as a rock from the end of my nerve onwards. It was utter hell, terminally claustrophobic.

That was a long time ago. These days, I view my "demons" from the Tibetan Buddhist perspective, as aspects of my self that have yet to be re-integrated ( as Tsultrim Allione puts it in a marvellous tape on the "Chod"- demon-feeding-ritual ) as 'daemons', vital parts of my total psyche. The shadow side draws us until we have allowed the light into it, and it doesn't happen quickly or easily, but the result is liberation. So when my demons emerge, I now welcome them, and ask them what they want, what they need from me, and try to discover what they are trying to tell me.

I'm planning to write a Guide Entry on Chod - tackling one's demons-, now that my entry on Tonglen has gone to sub-editing.

Where can I read more of what you have written?

Here is a poem I wrote about a week before Sept 11th.01. It was deliberately using medieval "Arthurian romance" imagery, specifically about embracing one's shadows, but turned out to be spookily prophetic. What do you think?

THE DARK TOWER

The journey must be undertaken
To the dark tower, over this dreary
Ground whose harsh dry blades
Echo in a heart gripped by chill fingers,
Snagged on splintered rocks
Stained with droppings of carrion birds.
Wind-blackened thoughts stick
In glazed ridges to baskets
Of old bones, forgotten songs
Lie about as dust-notes only,
In the weary voiceless wind.
Damp and all as the mist is
Nothing grows here but
A feeling of uninvited dread
Leeching out a half-life
In this lichen-grey terrain.

On to the tower, then,
Or slip over the unmarked edges
Of a screaming high rock road,
Or turn and carry home the sheer weight
Of cliff and climbing,
The reek of frantic blindness,
Carry home the failure to commit.
Or go through the knot, briars
In the bowels, tangled tight,
Too sharp for severing,
(your sword useless against thorns)
the forward way choked
by the tower-lord’s barbed words.
Challenged, his recognised faces
Change features with impunity,
But each one tells its story
Of unforgivable abuse. Racked tighter
Into tentacled shadow, fettering
Your footsteps, the heart-knot
Loosens only the bowels,
The bowel-knot loosens only
Those intimate demons we deny.
So, we have built our prison-tower
Razor-wired and gantried
With gun-posts, lest memory
Shuffles up on some bleak corner
With a hand outstretched for mercy.

So, do we consign ourselves
To convenient cages, hoarding
Our shriveled packages
Of unacknowledged loathing,
Our consuming compulsion
A kind of cut-price peace?
Or stumble towards a sweeter death
Until we learn to let grace
Overspill our waste-land limits,
And drown us in a torrent of release?

PS. Holy Moly. I just checked in to see your personal space page, and discovered just what a busy bee you have been, writing writing writing whole truck-loads of stuff. Wah. It'll take me a while to explore all of that.

Cheers, mate. See ya,

Chai

I really wouldn't recommend examining the entire contents of the midden. I intended it to be a portfolio once, but it all got a bit incontinent. My Space no longer needs editing so much as drainage.

If you want a quick look, there's a list of about 50 links at the foot of the page and Nos. 2, 12, 41, 43 and 50 would make a fair sample. As good as any, anyhow.

Pottery, eh? A bit out of my experience. I've come across the drying-out of industrial refractories a time or two, but that's as close as it gets.

My one attempt at sculpture was when ~15 yrs of age, and still at school. The teacher described my practice piece as "entrails that fell from the sky", and after that my sole objective was to create something large enough to squander resources. Method : wire armature, draped with plaster-soaked muslin, coated in fibre-glass, surface-textured by Black and Decker.



It was truly horrible, but a friend of my parents took it in and erected it in their garden, where I sincerely hope it fell apart.

As you say, much more interesting is the draw of the darkness. This is another remarkable poem. The formality of the metre is a bit intrusive for my taste, and some of the more modern images and phrases like the gun-post and cut-price peace jar against the medieval overtones. But it's a lot better than I could do, that's for sure.

More a poem to admire than to like, nonetheless. That's as much as you get. Here ends Pinniped's brief career as a critic . I know when I'm out of my intellectual depth, believe it or not.

Never done acid myself, and this is not a good advert. I became a teenager in 1970, and the furthest extent of my narcotics usage at that time was Pomagne and No.6, both of which made me very ill.

Kind of gives the impression that my life's never been quite as interesting as yours, yeah? Probably not as interesting as most people's, in fact.

Still, we're all in this together, right?
Pin

Hi Pin,

Much of the poetry I was writing at that time was more of an exorcism of personal demons than anything else, not really written with thoughts of being likeable. Maybe a kind of midden-clearing, or emotional drainage.

Good to hear from you. Lucky you never to have scorched your neurons with acid. And thanks for the guide to the selected works, I look forward to a quiet browse.

Cheers,

Ciao,

Chai