Chris Murray

Pierre Joris ‘Homad’

December 22nd, 2009
I have been meaning to write a little about Joris for some time, the old PH (Poethead) site carried links to his Nomadics site and to an essay on Heidegger and Celan. I will add in those links at a later point in this small piece.

The current PH bloggie does not support widgets, as it has been toned down whilst I decide on either a re-design or a domain. The widgets are a bit of a loss but the idea this year was to focus on Poems and sometimes an image from transcribed books (mostly out of print) or from my own pieces.

Therefore I am adding in the links here to the wonderful Homad and Nomadics sites for people to read Mr Joris, who has sometimes visited and read here also.
The Blasphemers Banquet, excerpt the second.

December 21st, 2009

Gaze of the Gorgon.

” This isn’t paradise but the Bradford Square
where Rushdie’s book got burnt, just over there.
by reading it, where fools had it cremated
I bring it whole again out of the air.”

ex The Shadow of Hiroshima and Other Film Poems, Tony Harrison, 1995, Faber and Faber.
Lorca, Le Brocquy and Madden.

December 19th, 2009
I thought to do something on the failed attempt to find the grave of Federico Garcia Lorca this morning; but I find that do not have my wee paper copy of Gypsy Ballads to hand. I believe that there are other images related to both Madden, Lorca and Le Brocquy on PH anyway, I used Le B’s scathing criticism of successive Irish governments’ approach to the arts in an IELA item and an image of a Le Brocquy head in this poem :
Megalith 14, 1971 by Ann Madden
The Blasphemer’s Banquet : Part the First (excerpt)

December 13th, 2009
The Blasphemer’s Banquet is a film poem, it’s here excerpted from the Bloodaxe edition of Shadow of Hiroshima and other film poems, 1995.

“When I see bigots wanting Rushdie dead
burning a book I’m sure they’ve never read,
marble bust or not, Voltaire’s got stored
a much more critical book in his old head.

I too heard bigots rant, rave and revile
books of mine, which after a short while
were canonised as classics, which is why
you always see Voltaire with this wry smile.

A boy in Abbeville for having sung
a mildly blasphemous ballad had his tongue
ripped from it’s roots, and on his blazing body
my Philosophical Dictionary was flung”.

In one part of the poem, Tony Harrison (who I very briefly met) reproduces the burnt book out of air –

There is another Harrison Poem on Poethead and it is linked to the Guardian open source platform A Cold Coming :
- A Cold Coming
I also recommend V, The Collected Tony Harrison, and my personal favourite, The Mysteries (most of the above and early Harrison is via Faber and Faber)
Aminatou Haidar.

December 8th, 2009
Aminatou Haidar– The importance of place.

I saw this last week and indeed suppose I have followed it a while. Many of us are familiar with names, the naming of things and have a sense of place. Indeed, mostly when a parent names a child , they know that they will carry that name through their life and possibly have it etched onto their gravestone (unless they happen to live somewhere where people
disappear or get brutalised by governments).

Morocco has taken the woman’s identity cos she is not Moroccan and she has been on hunger-strike at Lanzarote. We all know about Passports too (they get traded by people with influence or nicked for the black market, mostly travel is impossible without them and those who don’t possess them are called Sin Papales in that part of the world).
__________________
“Hide” by Catríona O ‘Reilly.

December 1st, 2009

Hide

Because it tells me most when it is most alone,
I hold myself at bay to watch the world
regain it’s level-headedness, as harbours do
when keels are lifted out of the in autumn.
This is not unconsciousness. Seen from above,
the trees are guanoed sea-stacks in a greeny cove
full of gulls’ primeval shrieks and waves’ extinctions.
Here birds safely crawl between the bushes,
wearing their wings like macs with fretted hems.
The air’s a room they fill to bursting with their songs.
All day the common warblers wing it up
and down the scale , see-saw, hammer-and-tongs.
This is not aimlessness. It is something industrial.
A starling cocks its head at the blackbird’s coppery notes.
All I hear of them in the hide reminds me
that the body must displace itself for music,
as my body has, inside this six inch slot of light.
What converses in a thrush’s throat, burnished, tarnished ?
It’s news endures no longer than the day does.

Catríona O Reilly ; Hide taken from The New Irish Poets, publ Bloodaxe, 2004, Ed Selina Guinness.

Proto-Sinatic Alpha-Bet , Via Wikipedia.
‘To Revive the Wind’, on René Crevel’s ‘Babylon’.

November 28th, 2009
“Summer.
The grandfather and the mother had to remain in Paris because of their work. The grandmother settled in with her grand-daughter on the family property in the Seine-et-Oise. Queen of a box-bordered garden, the old lady drenched her roses with a syringe, as if those persnickety creatures had need of a clyster to preserve the pretty colour, the natural delicacy of flowers. The hour of the daily apotheosis rung, and the intricate task once performed (which for nothing on earth would she abandon to the uncouth indifference to mercenary hands), the grandmother ascended in great dignity the steps of the belvedere from where each car she perceived gave her a pretext for regretting the magestic and dustless era of victorias and princess gowns “.

from To Revive the Wind, Babylon , by René Crevel, Trans Kay Boyle Quartet Encounters, 1985. Illustrations by Max Ernst.
- Babylon, Art and Image .

A Poem from Filíocht Uladh by Máire Uí Chonboirne.

November 23rd, 2009

Ceacht

Tá an ghaoth ag séideadh ó cheann, ‘ceann an bhaile,
Tá an fharraige bogtha le neart,
Tá mé féin gaibhte istigh ar an oileán
‘S mo ghrása amuigh ar tír mór
Tá an cleamhnas sé mhí iar a dhéanamh
Bhí an tréigint i ndán dom ón tús
Nuair a labhair sé an focal le m’athair
ba róbhreá leis an bhólacht ‘s an duais.

Ach is gile an spré údaí ‘fuair sé
Nuair a bhí sé ‘dul thart ar an tír
I maoin eallaigh char chuir sé riamh spéis
Ná go dtáinig an annir air thiar.
Staicín áiféise mise ón uair sin
a d’imigh mo leannán dhil uaim.
Cha labhraim níos mó faoi mo mhuirnín
tá mé caite faoi chian ‘s faoi ghruaim.

Pill arais orm a rúin ‘s a chéadsearc
Ná tréig mé ‘s an tachrán seo liom,
Beidh muidbeirt inár suí cois an chladaigh
ag éisteacht le tuaim bhinn na dtonn.
Chann fillean mo ghrasa níos mó orm
Chann feiceann se choíche mo bhua,
an stócach bheas ag súgradh ‘s ag léimnigh
i bhfad thoir ar bheanna an Dúin.”

As Filíocht Uladh 1960-1985, le Gréagóir ó Dúill. Coiscéim 1986

dec1995 — ‘The Last Walk ‘, Basil Blackshaw from Wiki images.

Campaign for Arts in Ireland (update).

November 20th, 2009

The petition which is linked on this blog twice has garnered +9,000 signatures to achieve change in how Arts is funded at all levels. I shall add in that link at the end of this short piece.

I just wanted to publish here a short response I made on the Politics.ie site with regard to how problematic structuring a funding of such epheremal tasks as Arts development can be. Art’s development is (let there be no doubt) an infrastructural issue as well as a heritage and cultural issue. The Government must act in the role of Stewardship with a view to cultivating and encouraging an Art’s sector based in administration, provision of spaces, resources, archives and education to the people of Ireland. This area is problematic given the starvation at the root of that development which has occurred true legislative changes which include the Art’s Act 2003 and the Blasphemy Legislation of 2009. (both will be linked at the end of the Piece).

Here’s the comment referred to above

Thread: National campaign for the Arts Petition 2009

“I am sure when the store is set that an adequate approach to funding will be discussed with those who have an interest in the area, if FF radicalisation includes this type of summit, there’s little hope:

Forum opposes gallery merger – The Irish Times – Thu, Nov 19, 2009*

Art occurs at both a grassroot and developmental level, which I why I referred above to the fight in Mayo regards bringing music to schools, in the past this service was founded by a small group of people who gave us the school orchestras and Feiseanna- thereby encouraging talented members of the populace into artistic development and expression. The Government are but stewards in what is a cultural and heritage issue. Their abysmal lack of understanding of that role has led to an impasse of gargantuan proportions, typified by two minsters who don’t get that its not about influence/affluence; but about cultivation of excellence and passing that on to the next generation.

(Dermot Ahern‘s Blasphemy legislation and some of Martin Cullen‘s appointments to the Art’s Council indicate that problem)

So in short response to Clanrickard’s insertions above ^^^: Should not stakeholders have a say in protest at cuts that are misdirected, ill-thought-out and wrongly targetted??

Everyone else who has interests in fund-cuts have had their say, why should the Art’s sector remain in silence and watch bad decisions being made on behalf of those who will inherit a worsening situation??”

Politics.ie Thread on the Campaign4Arts.

PDF of the 2003 Art’s Act

Irish Blasphemy Laws 2009 (WTF??)

Forum Opposes Gallery merger (Irish Times)*

Campaign4ArtsPetition.

‘Necessity’ by Simone Weil

November 17th, 2009

The cycle of days in the deserted sky turning
In silence watched by mortal eyes
Gaping mouth here below, where each hour is burning
So many cruel and beseeching cries;

All the stars slow in the steps of their dance,
The only fixed dance, mute brilliance on high,
In spite of us formless, nameless, without cadence,
Too perfect, no fault to belie;

Toward them, suspended our anger is vain.
Quench our thirst if you must break our hearts.
Clamoring and desiring, their circle draws us in their train;
Our brilliant masters, were forever victors.

Tear flesh apart, chains of pure clarity.
Nailed without a cry to the fixed point of the North,
Naked soul exposed to all injury,
May we obey you unto death.

This poem from Poetry and Poetics ed Joan Dargan, Simone Weil; Thinking Poetically SUNY, 1999 was first published on Poethead on March 8th 2008 to celebrate International Women’s Day and is republished here to mark the nearing end of Weil’s Centenary year.

I will look at the images in notes attached to comments but just want it read by those inclined to poetics. There is a 180 degree turn from Verse 1 to Verse 3 (line 3, V3.3) . I will look at it in relation to a poem by Paul Celan in notes.

Hide

Ceacht