Wednesday Night Virtual Poetry Feature - May 11, 2022

 

New Minireading: Sabne Raznik reads Michael Farry's "Molly Courage"

Up and Coming: More Reviews and a New E-zine

It's been quiet on this blog, but busy in the background.

Up and coming:

 -- Reviews of three poetry collections procured at the Appalachian Writers Workshop at Hindman Settlement School.

-- Launch of new e-Zine for the most groundbreaking avant garde in Appalachia and the world.

I've been working on this one since the middle of September 2015 when the idea fully crystalised. My involvement with Wurm im Apfel Press in Ireland since 2010 has demonstrated to me how valuable, even vital, experimentation and the avant garde are to any healthy, living literary scene. The Wurm poets infuse Ireland with a dose of much needed excitement and energy, challenging the established modes of expression and pushing poetry into entirely new territories (Christodoulos Makris' Twitter poem "Chances Are...", anyone?). Then in July 2015 I had the opportunity to attend the prestigious Appalachian Writers Workshop at Hindman Settlement School. There I found a good reception to my work, but generally a resistance to avant garde and indy publishing. Although the literary landscape of Central Appalachia is maturing once again into a more united, supportive community than it was 20 years ago, with a much more contemporary pulse, there do still tend to be certain conventions and traditions too "sacred" to be challenged. As far as I know, there is no publication that directly supports and encourages full experimentation, where rules exist to be broken and made new. Many editors of literary journals and presses told me at the Workshop that "there is a lot of work (they) must reject because it is too avant garde." I determined to create a home for that avant garde.

Introducing: "AvantAppal(achia)"

As you will see, the website has not launched yet. Web design is nearly complete. I may soon have a co-editor to help me with sorting submissions. We meet next week, hopefully, to hammer out the last few details before launch can take place. But it is coming soon! The Kin-folk - Ed(itor)s - at AvantAppal(achia) are proud to fill this gap in the literary scene of Central Appalachia, bring you earth-shattering new work by Appalachia's finest and around the world, and welcome you as Kin. Watch this space for more information!

The Story Behind U2's Song "Miracle Drug"

(Originally published on Yahoo! Voices on July 29, 2011. The link in this article was extracted then)

U2 are famous, among other reasons, for the surprisingly touching and often pregnant with meaning inspirations for their songs. One of their songs that has been most discussed for its meaning is "Miracle Drug" from the studio album "How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb", copyright 2004 U2 Limited. Although never officially released as a single from the album, "Miracle Drug" has quite a devoted following among the band's fan base, and even outside it. Here is the remarkable story that inspired it.

Cerebral Palsy is an "umbrella term" that covers a number of neurological disorders of varying severity and symptoms caused by lesions, and sometimes tumors, in the brain. Therefore, there are various types of CP as diagnosed, and it is not uncommon for an individual to have multiple types of varying degrees in the same case. Because CP is so variable, very little is known about it. There is no cure. And treatment consists wholly of attempts to correct growth anomalies and minimise symptoms and long-term complications. Even this is very hit-and-miss, more experimentation than anything. Researchers and doctors are not able to even agree on what causes the lesions and damage to the brain that results in CP (though oxygen deprivation is the undisputed cause of a small percentage of cases).

Christopher Nolan (September 6, 1965-February 20, 2009) was born with severe Cerebral Palsy. His was a very complicated birth. He was breached and, in order to save the life of both mother and child, a C-section was performed. A second surgery was also required on his mother. He himself was deprived of oxygen for approximately two hours, but somehow he managed to survive. His condition has often been described as paralytic, but that is inaccurate. As he himself wrote in his memoir "Under The Eye Of The Clock" he rarely ever stopped moving. The trouble was that he had almost no control over those movements. He humourously describes his embarrassment when stress and tenseness caused his limbs to fly about unbidden and he punched someone in the face or worse. His spasms were so severe that when he commanded his body to move a certain way it often froze and refused to move at all. Even his ability to speak was affected: his words came out only as moans and shouts. He was placed under the care of the Central Remedial Clinic in Clontarf, Dublin, and when he reached school age his family moved into Clontarf so that he could attend at the school sponsored by the clinic. His family, friends, and school staff communicated with him through a system of meaningful eye movements. After the medication Lioresal became available, he was able to control his head just enough to type using a "unicorn" device attached to his forehead. He immediately began writing letters, short stories, plays, and poems heavy with alliteration. Soon, he decided he wanted to attend school with the able-bodied. He tested as having above average intelligence, but a school could not be found that agreed to take him.

Mount Temple is a secondary school in Clontarf, Dublin which was established in 1972. It was an experimental school for its time. It was the first public school in Ireland to be nondenominational and one of the first to enroll both sexes. The faculty employed a very liberal, tolerant attitude toward the behavior of their students and in the teaching methods they used. (Interestingly, it also has the distinction of having the most star-studded alumni in its period of Irish history, the most recent of which being actress Eve Hewson, Bono's daughter.) It was thus the school to which to send children who didn't fit anywhere else. After a brief interview with Nolan, they agreed to take him on. He was the first disabled child to be taught there. For the first week, he attended half-days in order to build up his stamina for the full-day schedule, to give him time to become relaxed in the public school setting, and to give his able-bodied student helpers time to adjust as well. In time, he adjusted very well to the format of Mount Temple despite the great fatigue that the long days gave him and he had a large body of friends there. When he was fifteen, his collection "Dam-Burst Of Dreams" was published which established him as a school legend to this day. Eventually, he went on to Trinity College, Dublin and published two more books: "Under The Eye Of The Clock" (a reference to Mount Temple Comprehensive) and the novel "The Banyan Tree". He died after choking when he was 43 years old.

The boys that became U2 also attended Mount Temple Comprehensive School. They were also put out of other schools because of being children of bi-national and/or bi-religious parents and/or having behavioral issues. Fourteen-year-old Larry Mullin, Jr. posted a sign up there for auditions in his family's kitchen. Seven boys answered the post and the Feedback was born. Mount Temple allowed the boys to use a classroom there to practice in. In time, the lineup was whittled down to its four current members and the name was changed to the Hype and, finally, to U2. It was by winning a talent contest at Mount Temple that the "baby band", as fans now affectionately call that stage (originally coined by U2's manager Paul McGuinness), was able to cut its first EP with CBS Records: the now very rare and sought after "U2 3". All of which is now the stuff of legend.

It was just as U2 were enjoying their last year of school that Nolan arrived. He must have left a mighty impression on the boys of this band, for there you have the possible roots of Bono's least discussed and longest held cause: disability advocacy in Ireland, particulary for those with CP. And the inspiration for "Miracle Drug" which is written as if from the view point of Nolan's mother.

"Miracle Drug" by U2 ("How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb", 2004)

http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=RNm7P2lY9DA

How I Met Nobel Prize Winning Poet Seamus Heaney

Just about everybody has a Seamus Heaney story. Prior to his death on August 30, 2013, he was the most generous, humble, and well-traveled living poet. Here is my story.(Originally posted on Yahoo! Voices on July 19, 2010 in response to an assignment asking for first-person accounts of meeting celebrities.)

Seamus Heaney is a Nobel prize-winning poet from Ireland who has published at least eleven distinct books of poetry. His work is almost universally accepted with pleasure. His popularity has been compared to that of W.B. Yeats before him. He was born on April 13, 1939 in Northern Ireland and much of his writing is about his memories of childhood in a time that is all but gone. It also addresses such generationally and nationally important events as the "Troubles" and his collection District and Circle contains what could be called a response to the world-shaking events of September 11, 2001.

On May 5, 2006, he gave his first (and, as it turned out, only) reading in the state of Kentucky, U.S.A. at the Great Hall of the King Library at the University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY. U.S.A. This was to support the release of District and Circle, which was officially released in the U.S. on the date of this reading. Also, it was to be a major part of an exhibition to celebrate Ireland's Nobel laureates called "Four Irish Nobel Laureates - W. B. Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, Samuel Beckett, Seamus Heaney."

A colleague of mine who teaches at the University of Kentucky knows that Mr. Heaney is my favorite poet. Paul Evans Holbrook, the director of King Library Press and Special Collections & Digital Programs Division, informed me that Mr. Heaney would be at the University, what day, and where. He also emailed me an official invitation to the event.

I was still a young poet then. It was the first time I had ever attended a literary event, and it was also my first time on a college campus. I was very nervous, not knowing what to expect. I came armed with the first Seamus Heaney book I ever owned: Opened Ground: Selected Poems, 1966-1996, a gift from friends of mine who also love poetry and support my writing. And, in perpetuation of a cliché in Heaney's life, I also brought the manuscript for what became my debut poetry collection Following Hope (Xlibris, 2007).

The King Library is kind of tucked away on the U.K. Campus. My Grandmother, Mother, and little sister, and I had some difficulty finding it. We definitely got our exercise walking the sprawling campus in search of the old building. Once inside, I was immediately charmed by it. It had a stateliness about it and was filled with the beautifully musty smell of old books. The rare manuscripts, books, and miscellaneous writing paraphernalia on display was irresistibly fascinating. The Great Hall itself was a cavernous white space with hard wood flooring and a delightful echoing effect.

Copies of District and Circle were on sale upon first entering the King Library, but an attempt to secure one proved impossible. They were sold out by the time I got to the table. I later ordered a copy on the Internet.

The exhibition was mostly in the Great Hall itself. By the time my party and I arrived, there were already many present in the Hall. Mr. Heaney himself was taking a look at the exhibition with a young man. So screwing up my beleaguered courage (I am naturally shy and therefore prone to getting "star-struck"), I approached him as he was looking at a picture of his much younger self and a copy of "Digging", a poem widely regarded as his first mature work and his emerging manifesto as it were.

"Will you sign my book?" I offered him the copy I had brought of Opened Ground, opened to my favorite poem of his to date, "Station Island". The young man with him (who I later learned was Heaney's son Christopher) looked down at me (I'm short) and said with an Irish accent: "Usually, books are signed after the reading." I was devastated at having committed such a terrible faux pas! I dribbled out some kind of apology, explaining that this was the first event I had been able to attend. I'm sure Christopher Heaney meant nothing by it, but I was that fragile in the moment. Mr. Heaney looked as embarrassed as I was and graciously signed the bottom of the page. Apologizing again, I took my leave to find a seat.

The Hall was soon packed. Eventually, my party had to be split up in order to find seats. My mother and I sat together about mid-way of the Hall and my grandmother and little sister sat together a couple of rows behind us. By the time the reading began, there were people lining the walls of the Hall and crowded in the corridor outside straining to catch a word. The official tally of the audience that day is 300.

Mr. Heaney's entourage of family and friends was briefly introduced to the audience and applauded. Then he began to read. Mr. Heaney's deep, musical voice carried well throughout the Great Hall despite the lack of sound equipment. Sometimes, it was a little difficult to follow the commentary and introductions to the poems because his accent was much thicker in person than the recordings I had heard of him up to that time. He read a wide selection of his work. Some were old favorites ("Mid-Term Break", "Digging", "Postscript") and some were new poems from District and Circle. He carefully covered the whole spectrum of his career. He read for at least an hour and was given a standing ovation. He humbly declined an encore.

There was a reception following in the room where the books had been for sale and the Special Collection displays were. Mr. Heaney was seated at a table and people lined up to have their books signed. It was clear that this was his first visit to the University. He looked as nervous as I was!

At this point, my family began urging me to get in line and give him the manuscript I had brought for that purpose. But what little confidence I had had received a fatal blow during our encounter before the reading. I was overwhelmed by everything into near-paralysis. Eventually, my mother all but dragged me into line and up to the table.

"Oh, it's you again!" Mr. Heaney said, smiling. I found I had no ability to speak, which only served to further embarrass me. My mother snatched the manuscript out of my hand and held it out, saying something along the lines of "This is my daughter, Sabne Raznik. She's trying to have this published. Could you, please, read it over sometime and tell her what you think?" He took it and gently said: "I can't promise anything. But I'll take a peep at it." This emboldened my mother who then asked: "How about a picture together?" He agreed and I stepped behind the table and leaned over so that our heads were as even as I could manage without his having to stand. Mom took the picture.

And I insisted we leave as soon as possible. I had thoroughly enjoyed myself, but was a definite fish out of water. In the years since, I have attended several literary events, mostly in support of that manuscript now known as Following Hope. I hope that I would be more comfortable if I ran into Mr. Heaney again. Who knows?

He was never able to get back to me regarding the manuscript. He had a stroke later that year, and was forced to completely clear his calendar for a year while he recovered. He did eventually make a complete recovery and is even now very busy with new writing, new projects, and appearances. He turned seventy last year (2009) which was a cause of national celebration in Ireland. And I have the picture on the nightstand next to my bed- a reminder that: yes, I am a poet.

Updated from original: I was completely shocked and undone by Seamus Heaney's unexpected death last year, and am still mourning it. I'm not sure if I can bear the inevitable eventual printing of his "Collected Poems". The finality of such a volume is unthinkable even now. To assuage my grief even a little I have been slowly reading through all his works again and attempting to acquire those I do not yet own. Because it is chiefly through those words that I came to know the man - and they were enough, for I feel as though I have lost a father of sorts. An artistic father, if you will. I have also inscribed some words from "Station Island" on a partition half-wall in my apartment. These are a reminder of the poet's duty: "You've listened long enough, now strike your note".

Friend of Heaney and fellow poet Paul Muldoon said in the eulogy what for me is the most touching quote of the funeral mass: "I flew into Belfast International Airport yesterday morning…. The border security officer was interested in what I was doing in the US. I told him I was a teacher, and he asked me what I taught. I said, “poetry.” And he looked at me directly, and he said, “You must be devastated today.”

A Short Conversation with Poet Kit Fryatt

(Originally published on July 10, 2008 on Yahoo! Voices.)

I first met Kit Fryatt through Livejournal.com (I have since deleted my account there) when she wrote an entry regarding an event she attended at which Bono of U2 fame read and gave her thoughts on the whole affair. Being an avid U2 fan, I was highly entertained by that entry in which she was not at all pleased. Since we share a common love of poetry, we continue to correspond and I have learned much from her over the last few years. She is an unfailing support to me poetically. She is also a very good writer as well as teacher and has been published, among other numerous journals, in the Poetry Ireland Review. As a way to give back to her, I asked her for an email interview to be published here on AC (Associated Content, later Yahoo! Voices). Without further ado, here are the results of that interview:

S. R.: Where and when were you first exposed to poetry? How did you come to love it?

K. F.: I don't remember: the first poems I heard were nursery rhymes, probably. I remember laughing and laughing at a silly rhyme my father used to say: "Spring is sprung, the grass is riz / I wonder where the birdies is?" I never got tired of that. I have memories of writing poems on a paper napkin in a restaurant when I was 7. One began "A knight / In sight / On a horse / Of course", which I think has a certain modernist flair. I learnt poems by heart at an American school for military children in Izmir, Turkey. Rose Fyleman:

I think mice are rather nice,
Their tails are long, their faces small,
They haven't any chins at all.
Their ears are pink, their teeth are white,
They run about the house at night;
They nibble things they shouldn't touch,
and no one seems to like them much,
but I think mice are rather nice.

When we were still in Turkey, my mother brought home a copy of the New Golden Treasury, not Palgrave but a new selection chosen in the 70s by Edward Leeson. Books were a special event: even in Ankara, the capital, there were only a couple of bookshops that sold English-language books. There I found:

Sumer is icumen in
Lhude sing, cuccu!
Groweth sed and bloweth med
And springeth the wude nu,
Lhude sing, cuccu!

Awe bleteth after lomb
Lhouth after calve cu
Bulluc sterteth, bucke verteth
Murie sing cuccu!

Cuccu, sing cuccu
Ne swik thu naver nu!
Sing cuccu, nu, sing cuccu,
Sing cuccu, sing cuccu, nu!

That's from the 13th century, and it's really just a slightly -- ever so slightly: note that farting buck -- more sophisticated version of my dad's rhyme. I had a cult of Old England going on at the time, despite or because of being surrounded by the remains of much more ancient cultures in Asia Minor, and I was hooked. I think rhyme and repetition hooks children into poetry, but it's a sense of the strangeness of language that keeps them reading.

S.R.: Which poets are the greatest influence on your work and why?

K.F.: Not for me to say, I think. Influence is a slippery thing. You might think a poet is heavily inflected by Auden or Yeats and I mightn't hear it at all. I've never tried consciously to imitate anyone, except in parodies, but I find I'm always unconsciously imitating. Sometimes imitating very bad stuff.

S.R.: Are there non-poetic influences, such as environment, other interests, etc.?

K.F. : Of course: anything and everything can be material. That said, the Irish bardic schools allegedly encouraged their pupils to compose indoors, in darkness. There's something to be said for sensory deprivation, too.

S.R.: As an academic, do you feel that is beneficial to poetry or not, and why?

K.F.: I'm lucky: I get a lot of pleasure out of close analysis. Sometimes a poem won't really ravish me until I've done the forensics on it. That's not true for many people I think, even some who end up studying English at university. Students often complain that they dislike "dissecting" a poem; a revealing metaphor, because they see the poem as a corpse to start with. I tell them it's not dissection; it's vivisection, except you can't hurt a poem by torturing it, luckily. As for poets making their living in the academy: poets need their patrons; always have.

S.R.: Give a brief anecdote of an experience in your life or at a literary function that has impacted you as a poet.

K.F.: I think all the experiences that have made an impact on me poetically are experiences of reading poems, which isn't very interesting to talk about. Literary events are usually the reverse of inspiring, though sometimes there is free wine. The poets I know personally -- I think I should like them as well if they weren't poets.

S.R. What is it that you most hope readers will take away from your work?

K.F.: Words. In their particular order.

S.R.: Are there any projects you are working on or ideas for future projects? What makes these appealing to you as a poet?

K.F.: I'm sending myself to poetic boot-camp for the summer. Formal exercises, that sort of thing. Starting over is always bracing.

S.R.: If you could could give an aspiring poet advice in only one sentence, what would it be?

K.F.: I *am* an aspiring poet! I saw this on a medieval mazard bowl in the Cloisters in New York: "Reason bade that I should write, think much and speak little".

S.R.: You are originally from Britain, I believe, but have also lived in
Ireland and Scotland. Would you consider yourself a British poet or an
Irish or Scottish one? How do you think that experiencing these
different perspectives has shaped you as a poet?

K.F.: That's a big and dangerous question. I'm bound to offend someone. I was born in Iran, to British parents. I left when I was ten months old though -- no memories. I spent some time in the south of England, and then my parents travelled with me to Singapore and Turkey. Then I was at boarding school for a year before they finally came back when I was ten. I spent my teens in the south of England and moved to Ireland when I was 21. I've been spending a bit of time in Scotland over the last few months too. National identity -- whatever some critics may say -- I think is rarely to the forefront of a poet's mind when he or she is writing, and yet poetry turns out marked by the regional -- perhaps, rather than the national -- in all sorts of ways. Politically, I'm not a Unionist: I think the United Kingdom has come to a point now where it is no longer really sustainable. I would be happy to see an independent Scotland -- making the island of Ireland a single country has particular political and social difficulties which I think would have to be negotiated very carefully, but given that it's done equitably I think it would be desirable in the end. England and Wales will probably remain as a unit: an independent Wales isn't viable economically. The cultures of the British Isles have their distinct differences but they also share a lot. England is often (especially in Ireland) seen as a monolithic imperial nation, but it's actually very various. I see myself as English within a wider british culture. The small b is deliberate. I think the imperialist conception of Britain, along with English domination of the United Kingdom, should and will come to an end. English people often don't think about this stuff. Their relative power insulates them from it. Well, white English people. There's a very different usage of "British" by English people of colour, because they often feel that "English" is a racial as well as a national marker, whereas "British" is inclusive. I'd like to make my small-b britishness somehow cognate with that. Living in Ireland and Scotland has made me think about these things, which I mightn't have done otherwise -- they make their way into poems sometimes. Quite a lot of Hiberno-English gets into them too, and the odd Scots word which makes its way in via the Scottish ballads, which I love.


Wurm Im Apfel, a small press that Fryatt runs herself.
Find her on Goodreads.

A Brief Conversation with Irish Poet Michael O'Dea

(Originally published on July 10, 2008 on Yahoo! Voices.)

I contacted Michael first through his website. He humored a young aspiring, but somewhat shut-in, poet by agreeing to correspond with me via email. He has always been encouraging of my own writing, even while continuing to publish books of his own. Often he has been the objective reader I needed to get the most of my efforts. Valhalla: blue, as published in my book Following Hope (Xlibris, 2007), was one of those poems he helped to refine. During that process, my hard drive got a virus and I lost the poem. If not for O'Dea it would never have been published. However, he had a copy of the yet unfinished manuscript on his computer and was able to email it back to me, and thus he saved 2 1/2 years (or 3, if you count mental incubation time) worth of work from oblivion. I asked O'Dea for an interview via email to be posted here on AC (Associated Content, later Yahoo! Voices). These are the results of that interview:

S.R.: Where and when were you first exposed to poetry? How did you come to love it?

M.O.: English was my favourite subject in secondary school, I wrote a few bits and pieces back then; we had, for a while, a stunning-looking English teacher. I didn't start writing in earnest till my thirties when a friend suggested, from listening to my phraseology in speaking, that I should try writing poetry. My first attempts were published; I got cocky instantly and it was some time before others were published but I was hooked by then.

S.R.:. Which poets are the greatest influence on your work and why?

M.O.: Patrick Kavanagh is the biggest influence. He, being from rural Ireland and having the same Irish catholic upbringing, brings the same baggage with him. His territory is familiar to me. But he is a marvelous poet and caught better than any other the issues and atmosphere of twentieth century rural Ireland.

S.R.: Are there non-poetic influences, such as environment, other interests, etc.?

M.O.: Yes, so much of what I've passed through has been grist to that mill. I think the people and the countryside of Roscommon honed my sensibilities and my ear for language. Great art from the likes of Goya or Bacon has suggested the material time and time again as have musicians like Brian Eno whose soundscapes leave me free to roam like tumbleweed in a desert.

S.R.: Until recently, you were an organiser for the annual Rathmines Festival. What do you believe are the benefits and negatives of such events for poetry?

M.O.: Festivals events tend to be more casual than other arts-based events, and in festivals like the Rathmines Festival poetry readings are staged shoulder to shoulder with comedy, music, debate or whatever. As such they have the potential to reach an audience that would otherwise consider them to be too stuffy or high-brow. This is the audience poetry should be striving to reach.The biggest danger is that an hour of turgid poetry will kill them stone-dead in their seats, guaranteeing that neither they nor anyone they talk to will ever come within an ass's roar of a poetry reading again. It's vitally important that the poetry fits the audience.


S.R.: Give a brief anecdote of an experience in your life or at a literary function that has impacted you as a poet.

M.O.: There have been a number and I have referred to them during poetry readings or in the blog. An example I haven't referred to before happened when I read the following poem at a workshop.

Attitude.
Who owns the child
with the withered arm-wings,
who carries the mutation that weighs a tonne;
who, when the air is full of flight, hops
and hops and hops.

See how the children littering the yard
launch like torn pages into careless flight.
Like gulls they hog the sunlight
while a sea wrinkles with worries far below.
This is the currency.

But who owns that child;
the child with the withered arm-wings.

I chose it to get the reaction of a friend of mine whose son is confined to a wheel chair. On hearing the poem she was very upset by the image and did not see that I was condemning the objectifying of people with physical disabilities. I was taken aback, and though I didn't change the poem, I am less convinced than previously that my choice of expression is correct.

S.R.: What is it that you most hope readers will take away from your work as a whole?

M.O.: I suppose the truth is I want their admiration but I am usually conscious of wanting to spread my left-leaning political message.

S.R.: You are currently working on an anthology that will showcase the work of poets from Roscommon. Could you tell us a bit about that and what your hopes for it are?

M.O.: Since the Mayo Anthology appeared there has been a number of similar publications around the country. I'm working on a literary (all forms) anthology of writers either born in or strongly associated with the county. These include Douglas Hyde, Percy French, John McGahern, William Wilde (Oscar's dad) and Oliver Goldsmith (a disputed birthplace). I'm expecting it to be a generous beautiful book, accessible, educational and entertaining. I'm also hoping that it's publication will be a boost to Roscommon writers writing currently and to that end have recommended that it's publication be accompanied by a series of readings/workshops.

S.R.: If you could give an aspiring poet advice in only one sentence, what would it be?

M.O.: In the developing years have someone you trust, who knows poetry, to squeeze the water out of your efforts.


Read Michael O'Dea's blog.
Michael O'Dea's Website.
Buy the Roscommon Anthology.