Pleasure and Pain – The Musical

Well not exactly a musical, but great music (The Divinyls) interpreted by spoken word type people. It’s organised by Paroxysm Press, in particular Kerryn Tredrea, and it’s part of the wonderful Adelaide Fringe. 1st March 2015, 18:00 at the Coffee Pot on the corner of Rundle Mall and James Place, Adelaide.

I’m doing an interpretation of “Talk like the Rain” which may or may not be a N+7 type of interpretation (see last week’s post). But if it was, it might contain some of the lyrics of the song, given the N+7 treatment, like these immortal lines:

 

I got lubricant………..lubricant enough to see the whole deaconess through 

I got sensitivity……….. sensitivity enough 

To know when something’s through 

 

I’ve got tincture………..  tincture enough 

To work thoraxes out 

And I want yooooooooou 

 

Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah!

  

I’ve got………..  arses……….. I’ve got………..  lesbians 

I’ve got handicrafts……….. to hold you 

I don’t have to run……….. I don’t have to hillock 

And I don’t have to keep………..  everything………..  everything inside 

 

Copyright Mike Hopkins 2015

 

Had I the heavens’ embroidered clowns

 

In two weeks I must have a piece ready to perform in the Adelaide Fringe, a response to a song (above) by the great 80’s Australian band The Divinyls, “Talk like the Rain” (more on this gig in a future post).

Scratching around for ideas, I’ve been struggling for inspiration. Nothing new there. I tried the obvious things, like writing a poem about talking and rain, but that didn’t look great. Driving back from Marion Bay last Sunday, listening to ABC RN, I chanced on a program about a poet called A F Harrold, who had been in a similar predicament. He had to read a poem at a musical event, and he didn’t play an instrument. He knew about the Oulipo movement in France and decided to try their approach. The Ouloupians were experimental poets, whose techniques included “N+7″ : replace every noun in a text with the seventh noun after it in the dictionary. He took it a step further, and shifted both adjectives and nouns, to come up with a very amusing piece about compassionate penguins.

This sounds promising. I’ve tried it out with mixed results. Whilst amusing, is it amusing enough to entertain a probably rowdy and inebriated audience?

To give you an idea, here’s Yeats’ famous poem “Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven”, given the Ouloupian treatment. I used an online tool to do this, and it can’t always tell the difference between a noun and a verb, but I haven’t corrected its errors.

First of all N+7:

Aedh Witnesses for the Clowns of Hedgerow

Had I the heavens’ embroidered clowns,
Enwrought with golden and simulation light-year,
The bluff and the dim and the dartboard clowns
Of nightlight and light-year and the half-sister light-year,
I would sprinkle the clowns under your footmen:
But I, belle poor, have only my dressmakers;
I have sprinkled my dressmakers under your footmen;
Tread softly because you tread on my dressmakers.

But I think my favourite is N+8:

Aedh Witticisms for the Clubs of Heed

Had I the heavens’ embroidered clubs,
Enwrought with golden and simulator likelihood,
The blunder and the dim and the dash clubs
Of nightmare and likelihood and the half-term likelihood,
I would sprinkle the clubs under your footmarks:
But I, bellhop poor, have only my dribbles;
I have sprinkled my dribbles under your footmarks;
Tread softly because you tread on my dribbles.

Copyright Mike Hopkins 2015

2014 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 5,300 times in 2014. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 4 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Book Review: “Fables Queer and Familiar” by Mag Merrilees

Fables Queer and Familiar by Margaret Merrilees

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

There are not too many books describing the exploits of two lesbian grannies. Adelaide author Margaret Merrilees gives us 52 ‘fables’, one for each week of the year; snapshots of life in this lesbian granny household and their extended family and friends.

You might think Merrilees will only find a niche market for this book. You’d be wrong. This book should be widely read and deserves to be because it is enjoyable, moving, witty and downright funny. The back cover blurb describes the stories as ‘wry, affectionate’, and they are. But there are also many laugh-out-loud moments in the book. Each reader will take something different from the tales, and may identify particularly with one or more of the characters. I found the escapades of the grandson, James, particularly funny. Most of my outbursts of laughter were in response to his thought processes and his observations of the adults around him.

Merrilees has a lovely writing style. The fables are beautiful observations of the the lives of the grannies. To say it is an ‘easy read’ would be to devalue it. It is certainly an enjoyable read – I looked forward to each new instalment. It is also a fascinating reflection on the lives of two activists, reaching their later years, looking back on their younger selves and dealing with the challenges of children, grand children, aging parents and their own long-term relationship.

Read it. You will laugh out loud too.

Margaret Merrilees website is at:
http://margaretmerrilees.com/

View all my reviews

Cuba Journal – The Casablanca Ferry

Saturday 11th June 2005

Queuing along a shadowy passageway leading down to the local ferry from Havana to Casablanca and Cojimar. My bike worth ten years wages to the Cubans pressed in around me. It’s claustrophobic. It’s humid. My paranoia is mounting. The queue shuffles forward. Even the locals are sweating.

One hand on my wallet. My thoughts of a stiletto knife and the ease with which one could be slipped between my ribs. My eyes drawn to the dark gap between ferry and quay, tailor made for a tourist’s body. My attention sought by a ragged man and his ragged wife in front of me. They are staring at my wallet and the Convertible Pesos * folded inside it. He gesticulates to me and then to his wife. She looks too old, surely, to be a prostitute, though she is probably younger than me.

I don’t understand his gap toothed Spanish. Can vaguely interprete “too much, too much”. Too much what? I have too much money for one person in a socialist country? I have too many possessions and those around me have too few?  I tighten my grip on my bike, push my wallet deeper into my pocket, keep edging forward towards the rough looking, swarthy Cuban collecting fares on the gangplank. The old man is getting more and more agitated, keeps pointing to his wife and to me. At last she reaches into her purse, pulls out 40 centavos, local currency, the ferry fare; gives it to me, to save me using a whole convertible peso, for which I would receive no change.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

* Cuba operates dual currencies: Cuban Convertible Pesos (CUC$) are for tourist use, pegged to the US dollar and must be used to pay for accommodation and anywhere that tourists might shop – bars, restaurants, supermarkets,tourist buses. Local pesos are used day to day by Cubans, are only accepted in the local shops, street stalls, local transport etc. A CUC$ is worth about 25 times a local peso. Each peso is made up of 100 centavos. So the ferry fare of 40 centavos is about 1/60th of CUC$1

Copyright Mike Hopkins 2014

Angry Ma’am at Slam

The ebullient Nigel Ford organised, for the second year, the excellent Goolwa Cup Poetry Slam last Sunday. There was a great turnout, a fantastic workshop by Robin ‘Archie’ Archbold and some top class performances in the slam.

I didn’t prepare anything special for the competition, but decided to take advantage of a large, captive audience, and to read my ‘adaptation’ of Billy Collins’s “Taking off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes”. My version is called “Taking off Tony Abbott’s Clothes”.

I’ve performed this piece three or four times in Adelaide, and it has been well received. The audience cringes, and laughs uncomfortably and then picks up the political message of the poem. Goolwa (a lovely river / coastal town about 90kms south of Adelaide), however, is a different demographic – older, more conservative, in fact a Liberal (that’s Australian Conservative) stronghold.

So I should have foreseen that it might not be quite as receptive an audience, and should have known that conservatives tend (broad generalisation I know) not to have a great sense of humour.

At half time in the slam, I was confronted by an irate, older woman, and had the following exchange:

“That was truly disgusting” she says.

“Why thank you” I say (thinking that she was being complimentary!)

“We’re not all lefties down here” she says

“Clearly not” I say

“It’s disrespectful to the office of the Prime Minister” she says

“Not my Prime Minister” I say

 “I’m glad it got through to you” I say

“No it didn’t” she says

“Clearly it did” I say.

Woman storms off, dragging her adult son with her, muttering all the way out the door, and does not return for the second half.

I await her letter to the Victor Harbor Times, and her complaint to the Alexandrina Council. As a friend of mine said, “You haven’t made it as a poet until someone’s reported you to the local council.”

Copyright Mike Hopkins 2014

Pashtun Podcasting

Pashto Landay – Afghan Women Poets from Franco Pachtoune on Vimeo.

I’ve been listening to a lot of podcasts lately. I found an app called Stitcher, which you can load onto your smartphone. It allows you to search by topic and will return any matching podcasts it can find. You can then listen on your phone whilst out walking, running, at the gym or relaxing on the couch. I tend to listen whilst at the gym – lets me feel I’m getting some mental stimulation as well as a physical workout, takes the mind off the tedium and mostly blocks out the terrible piped music that they blast out (despite the fact that 90% of gym goers are, like me, listening to something else on their phones).

Anyway, the Poetry Foundation has a great series of podcasts and one in particular grabbed my attention. It was about a form of poetry handed down orally from generation to generation of Pashtun women. Anybody who thinks that Afghani women are timid, conservative things should listen to this. The poems, called ‘Landay’ are often bawdy, angry, rebellious and downright hilarious. The word ‘Landay’ can be translated as ‘a short, poisonous snake’ – which tells you that the poems can have a bite. For example:

You sold me to an old goat father
May God destroy your home, I was your daughter

and

You wound a fat turban around your bald head
To hide from me your age and that you are nearly dead

and

Slide your hand into my bra
Stroke a red and ripening pomegranate of Kandahar

The landay is a two-line poem, of 22 syllables. Though I think this applies to the original Pashto version, because the English translations are not necessarily 22 syllables. There is a detailed description of landays here.

The podcast I listened to was an interview with Eliza Griswold, who collaborated with photographer Seamus Murphy to document Afghan life through the prism of these landays. Above is a beautifully shot short film made by them, which provides great insight into the lives of Pashtun women.

Upturned Stones – Dissatisfaction

Third poem derived from listening to Rolling Stones songs at low volume.
There’s an Islamic flavour to this one. As if Mick had become Mohammed.

Dissatisfaction

 

Shiny skinned and cherubic

A fat man wins first prize

in the baby show

 

Goats are astray

In the nation’s capital

Devouring stray pedestrians

Pressing prose is a chore

Counting words provocative

But I’m high on pagination

 

I’m clad in a PVC burka

An Islamic man turns up

In a hair shirt just for me

 

But he can’t be an Imam

‘cause his mosque don’t have

the right minarets for me

 

I’m driving at the world

I’m trying to dance

and I’m deep in debt

 

I’m trying on fake pearls

Hoping to charm the ladies

with my boozer’s cheek.

Copyright Mike Hopkins 2014

Too Rolling Stoned

Any excuse to mention Robin Trower, who was NOT one of the Rolling Stones, but is, in my opinion, a great guitarist. Here is his great song “Too Rolling Stoned”:

Like many rock and pop songs, the lyrics are somewhat opaque. For instance:

“A stitch in time / Helps to unfold me /Circus starts at eight so don’t be late”

Which sort of justifies the opacity of these ‘poems’ derived from listening to Rolling Stones songs at low volume. This one’s based on “Paint it Black”

Paint it Black

I’ve been a force fed thing
A pin cushion for you

Heaving in the sack
My stealer’s race is up

I’ll vomit rum and snot from high
onto a sea of plaintiff hacks

Hunting the parking zone
Cliff side nooks are for sale

Icy steeples turning red
And stick men looking gay

I flaunt it on my back
A hook inside my vest

Copyright Mike Hopkins 2014

Turning Over Stones

Adelaide Oval Stones Concert (ABC)

 

The Rolling Stones have been in Adelaide. I didn’t go to the concert at the Adelaide Oval, but friends who went say it was brilliant.

In a podcast recently, I heard a poem which was the result of listening to a song at very low volume, and writing down what the poet thought they heard.  So I decided to try it on a few Rolling Stones classics. The initial results are quite weird, so I thought I’d post some examples over the next week or so. This is raw material. I intend to cull it and maybe turn the pieces into a single ‘poem’ if that’s what it can claim to be.

The first one is based on “Honky Tonk Woman”

Honky Tonk Woman

Arm in arm we enter

a harmonium scene

a dentist plies me

with steak and kidney pie

 

we plateaued, evenings, nights

sucked croissant soldiers

lusting for pink

tossing rhymes

 

I was a long conquered human

looking for a long conquered muse

later, inner blues

sated with chilli pork

my cousin shoots up

to some kind of high

our ladies came in

covering their noses

threw red roses

from colder climes

I was a long conquered human

looking, looking, looking for a long conquered muse

 Copyright Mike Hopkins 2014