Chris Murray

O Where did I leave it Now?

June 27th, 2008

This Frances Castle image is ‘The Green veggie Monster 2‘, was going to write Mark2, but that would be rude…,

The email conversation with Frances resulted in a discussion (largely in my head) on Sheelagh no Gig, ‘cos there’s one in Tara churchyard and young men have given her a rub for luck in the National Museum of Ireland. There is a Sheelagh-na-gig Image further down the blog, the best contemporary one I can think of is by an Irish artist which depicts a pope tussling with her and she is greeny like ET!!!

I have decided to publish the lyrics of PJ Harvey in the Saturday Woman Poet section of Poethead to honour the Tara women (and men) who have worked so hard to elucidate the importance of our culture over years now.

Unlike successive governments who’d steal and sell the family silver to make a quick buck –
Our Voice, by International PEN Women. V4(IV).

June 26th, 2008

The IV Anthology of the Tri-lingual ‘Our Voice’, a journal of Women’s Writing is hot off the presses. The press release is available at the PEN Women Link on the Righthand column of this page.

Works from 40 PEN Centres globally are collated and published in English, Spanish and French. Dr Judith Buckrich, Chair of IPWWC edited it.

The Anthology comprises works from Germany, Finland, Mexico, Zambia, Turkey, Scotland, France, New York, Kenya, Estonia, Malaysia, Sweden, India, Venezuela, England, Pakistan,Australia, Bangladesh, Romania and Bulgaria.

International PEN is a worldwide association of writers with a special consultative status at UNESCO and the United Nations.

[Writers in Prisons Committee and translation/Linguistic rights are linked in the blogroll on the right column- if you suspect you might be a writer, poet, translator-:go and take a look at what PEN/IPWCC gets up to].
The Green Veggie Monster.

June 25th, 2008
$Castle\'s Strongman$

I got a pressie of the Stuckists book- Artists whose ideas travelled the globe, from a friend of a friend (very unexpectedly) and within the pages is a beautiful Green Veggie Monster with a cunt like a Sheelagh-Na-Gig.

So I did contact Frances Castle for permission to publish the image (I like Sheelagh-Na-Gigs) they have a resonance and also Look like little inannas. Frances said ‘Yes. Publish the image on the Blog and stick in a link’

Only thing is I cannot find a workable image of the famous veggie monster but hope to have one by week’s end. it had the wonderful honour of being donated to and rejected by the Tate Gallery. The Tate Rejection lists are available in PDF from both the Tate webpage and the Stuckists Site.

So I am temporarily publishing an image from the Small-moon valley site cos it’s very funny and one must not spend one’s life giggling alone at Steve Bell.
- I put a little Sheelagh-na -Gig on the page too!
As Haikúnna, Le Máire nic Mhaoláin.

June 25th, 2008

” Heiliceaptar Airm
Ar Foluain os Loch hEathacha
Snáthaid an diabhail.”

Translation:

“An army helicopter
hovering above Loch Eathach,
The Devil’s Needle”

It’s weird growing up with a language and then under-using it. For info on Co Down : Loch Eathach and folkloric tales in the area. (use google).

The image reminds me of the Fallujah battle when the battered words on the roadsign indicated the name of the Town:- “Lake “.
‘Sheep In Fog’ by Sylvia Plath.

June 22nd, 2008

The hills step off into whiteness.
People or stars
Regard me sadly, I disappoint them.

The train leaves a line of Breath,
O slow
Horse the colour of rust,

Hooves, dolorous bells-
All morning the
Morning has been blackening,

A flower left out.
My bones hold a stillness, the far
Fields melt my heart.

They threaten
To let me through to a heaven
Starless and fatherless, a dark water.

by Sylvia Plath

First Published in ‘Ariel‘, ed T Hughes. (1965) ‘The Evolution of Sheep in Fog’, by Ted Hughes, from ‘Winter Pollen‘. F+F.

( for discussions on editing Plath, cf ‘Winter Pollen’, ‘The Restored edition of Ariel’ and ‘The Collected Plath’.) I am linking here to my recent post Restored Music, Sylvia Plath’s ‘Ariel’
‘Dreamboats’ a Ballad by Margaret Atwood.

June 18th, 2008

Sleep is the only rest we get;
It’s when we are at peace:
We do not have to mop the floor
And wipe away the grease.

We are not chased round the hall
and tumbled in the dirt
by every dimwit nobleman
Who wants a slice of skirt.

And when we sleep we like to dream;
We dream we are at sea,
We sail the waves in golden boats,
So happy , clean and free.

In dreams we are all beautiful
In glossy crimson dresses
We sleep with every man we love,
We shower them with kisses.

They fill our days with feasting
We fill our nights with song,
We take them in our golden boats
and drift the whole year long.

And all is mirth and kindness
There are no tears of pain;
For our decrees are merciful
Throughout our golden reign.

But when the morning wakes us up:
Once more we toil and slave,
And hoist our skirts at their command
For every prick and knave.”

From, Margaret Atwood‘s The Penelopiad. Published by Canongate, 2005.

The maids were bought or acquired for Penelope, and being of the slave class were companions to Telemachus from his infancy to his manhood (and their childhoods).

The maids sing post-mortem tunes interspersed within the narration of Penelope’s tale. They were hung on Odysseus’ return from his adventures. Other maid- songs include a Sea Shanty; and an Idyll to mark Telemachus’ birth.

Poor Maids, always getting the shitty end of the stick!
A Charlotte Salomon image.

June 16th, 2008

I would like to thank Susan for sending me the information on Charlotte Salomon, I am looking at her images, and although I had studied History of Art. I am ashamed to say that I knew very little of her. I am fast becoming a huge fan of Salomon’s beautiful images and of her use of colour.

The art of Leonard Baskin and Rb Kitaj , were, I suppose known to me through their engagement with books and literature. I was lucky enough to travel to London to See Kitaj’s retrospective at the Tate and to spend some time examining His work on Holocaust and Shoah. His Manifesto was available at the exhibition thus whetting the appetite to learn more.

Leonard Baskin’s close relationship to the poetry and ideas of Hughes and Plath provided that introductory to his art, that virtually overwhelmed my interest for quite some time.

I shall be looking out for Litographs and exhibitions of Salomon.
“I Am in Need of Music” by Elizabeth Bishop

June 14th, 2008
I am in need of music that would flow
Over my fretful, feeling fingertips,
Over my bitter-tainted, trembling lips,
With melody, deep, clear , and liquid-slow.
Oh, for the healing swaying, old and low,
Of some song sung to rest the tired dead,
A song to fall like water on my head,
And over quivering limbs, dream flushed to glow!

There is magic made by melody:
A spell of rest, and quiet breath, and cool
Heart, that sinks through fading colours deep
To the subaqeous stillness of the sea,
And floats forever in the moon-green pool,
Held in the arms of rhythm and of sleep.

by Elizabeth Bishop (1928)
- From, http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/i-am-in-need-of-music/
Julian of Norwich, a literary midwifery

June 13th, 2008
When Julian of Norwich describes her mystical experiences and her visions in her Revelation of Love, she describes them in three parts, thus:

‘That is to sey, be bodily sight and by word formyd in my understonding and be gostly sight. But the gostly sight I cannot ne may not show it as hopinly ne as fully as I woulde’

There are sixteen ‘Shewings’ – ‘Showings’, a term that midwives and those experienced in the process of birthing would recognise as the first indications of imminent birth.

Julian Of Norwich was an anchoress, she went through a process and experience of visionary state which she then communicated in a non-theological manner. The visions emanated from her experiences in spiritual writing and in an illness that threatened her life. The writing is astounding in descriptive terms, this is how a vision began:

‘and the bodily sight stinted and the gostly sight dwellid in mine understonding. and I desired as I durst to see more’.

The introductory to the folio editions and mss of Julian of Norwich is in print by The Exeter University Press and introduced by Marion Glasscoe. Glasscoe compares the writing of Julian of Norwich to the experiences of Isaac Luria ( a 16th Century Kabbalist) in trying to vocalise his experience. Indeed, Simone Weil and others like Paul Celan have hit upon the same type of writing, although discussion on this topic of mysticism is severely limited and often in the essays accompanying their major works. Its an area of interest that I have threaded throughout this blog in pieces about Weil, Karlen, Julian, Celan, and Marguerite of Porete (who was unfortunately murdered during the Inquisition for refusing to disclaim her works).

Someone entered ‘Penelopiad Rubbish‘ into the search engine and ended up on the site! I suggest reading the ‘Suicide Angel’ by Margaret Atwood before embarking on her lively engagement with mythos, the stringing up of the abused maids might be a little heavy on the palate as an introductory to Atwood and her waddling Penelope, whose shrewish hatred of Helen and thirst for blood might be off-putting to the faint-hearted.
- Funny Bones. By Margaret Atwood.
- ‘A Revelation of Love‘. Julian of Norwich
- Isaac Luria texts and Tzimzum on Wiki.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
‘The Octogenarian’ by Edith Sitwell.

June 13th, 2008

The Octogenarian
Leaned from his window,
To the Valerian
Growing below
Said, ‘My Nightcap
is the only gap in the trembling thorn
where the mild unicorn
with the little infanta
danced the Lavolta
(Clapping hands: Molto
Lent Eleganta).
The Man with the Lantern
Peers high and low;
No more
than a snore
as he walks to and fro…

Il Dottore the stoic
culls silver herb
beneath the superb
vast moon azoic.

From: Facade, by Edith Sitwell.

by Elizabeth Bishop (1928)