{"id":187,"date":"2009-04-09T20:13:29","date_gmt":"2009-04-10T04:13:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/onelife\/?p=187"},"modified":"2009-04-09T20:13:29","modified_gmt":"2009-04-10T04:13:29","slug":"the-fun-never-stops-poetry-his-and-mine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/?p=187","title":{"rendered":"The fun never stops! Poetry, his and mine."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Listening to Miguel Migs playing Bump Selectra, a dub selectra mix on the Beat Blender play list on Soma FM<\/a>, recalling the meeting Josef and I had with the RDI consultant this morning. It was a fairly productive meeting though I suffered a headache the entire time. We need to work on Junior\u2019s non-verbal communication skills. Less talking on our part as well, so that he is forced to reference, check in with us. An over-reliance upon words keeps him in his own head in a sense. It\u2019s so frustrating that he was misdiagnosed and not identified as ASD until age 10! He was prescribed years of speech therapy which turns out to be the last thing he needed. Vocabulary does not equal communication. We want him to look at us before talking, before launching into a topic. It is imperative for him to shift his attention to the person he is interacting with. Get in his face, literally, is what we need to do. There are techniques like pausing until he references us, feigning incompetence and doing something unexpected. All these things force him out of his static thinking mode. Our objective is to help him develop flexible thinking and dynamic communication.<\/p>\n

The fun never stops! As we all recover from our fabulous AURAL Heather<\/a> performance enthusiastically recieved at the Violet Femmes 2 compilation showcase, I now must focus as well on a grant application for the next week, for the Canada Council Spoken Word and Storytelling program. I want to write up a proposal for a multimedia performance piece based on my poetry and our AURAL Heather work. Haven’t a clue! Do I write a *script* or can I just enclose the cds and text of the poems? I asked my performance artist friend Victoria Stanton and she had some helpful suggestions so I\u2019m a little less worried and feel like I can tackle it this weekend, have an approach now. I think!<\/p>\n

I applied for a videopoem last year, was unsuccessful. I apply every year and every year I am turned down. (A hummingbird just flew up to my window! There are so many birds around right now, being spring, and they’re actually flying into our doors too. I had to put up some decals but one robin still insists on attacking his rival, his reflection, no matter how many decals I put up. Spring fever! I should open the door but it’s not warm at all yet.) Josef encourages me to write the damn proposal every year anyway and apply in order to “crystallize my vision.” Still need funding for Christ’s sake! Anyway, when I get this out of the way I can go back to the novel. Looking forward to my writing retreat in Gibsons next month. Rehearsing and working on a video too. We have several performances coming up and the Al Purdy A-Frame Trust Fundraiser we’re hosting here at our place April 26.<\/p>\n

Wow it\u2019s blustery out there! Chimes are making lots of lovely music and the umbrella on the deck just blew over. It was so warm yesterday, Brinda and SamIAm sprawled out being sun dogs on the deck. Today it\u2019s as if we\u2019re back to winter and they\u2019re huddled in their beds and indoors. My mutts as weather barometer.<\/p>\n

Wednesday<\/p>\n

Well I managed to escape the kitchen and tear myself away from Facebook, now let\u2019s see if I can accomplish some writing on one of my two designated weekly writing days. I will have to work on a grant proposal I\u2019m afraid, as much work as there is to do on the novel. I am going away next month for a week minimum to work on it in order to meet Mother Tongue\u2019s BC Novel deadline. I hope I make it. It\u2019s a long, hard overhaul involving much slogging and heavy lifting. I also need to continue working on Bushwhack<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In addition, I am toiling on a tribute to Al Purdy for an event in the city and then for the fundraiser we\u2019re hosting here on the island later this month. I was lucky. I had a teacher in high school, Mr. Carter, David Carter, who gave us contemporary Canadian poetry to read. I doubt that this was part of standard curriculum at that time but fortunately for me I was exposed to Susan Musgrave, bp nichol, Earle Birney, bill bissett and many others, including Al Purdy. I was so jazzed, I started to write poetry. With my working class roots, I could relate to Purdy, truly the voice of the land, a versifying Everyman. I could also relate to his anger and black humour. I love his work. I\u2019m going to read What Do The Birds Think?<\/em>, a poem he wrote in the 60s while traveling in the high arctic. Then I will perform my poem Habitat<\/em> with its birdlife references. What is it with poets and birds? I know watching them in flight fills me with desire. See both poems below.<\/p>\n

Synchronicity? I was talking to Josef the other day about David Lynch and how I wanted him to watch Blue Velvet <\/em>with me. I had just ordered a DVD of it, wanted him to see the opening especially, with all that hyper reality-neo-Technicolor and most visceral audio. We have starting work on a new video and Josef is producing again. Later in the day as I was driving around Vancouver, I heard David Lynch being interviewed on CBC radio! He was talking about TM-Transcendental Meditation, explaining that it wasn\u2019t a cult, why would he, as an independent thinker, an artist, being involved in a cult? He\u2019s organizing a huge benefit concert with Paul McCartney and others to promote TM to teach the technique to a million kids. The other odd thing is that I had looked into TM as a way to relieve stress, which has been having an adverse effect on my health, but I got sidetracked and didn\u2019t pursue it. Now I will, am going to go to an introductory seminar next week. If it\u2019s good enough for David Lynch, it\u2019s good enough for me. He discussed as well how it helps him as a creator, to be clear and intent on his vision and he certainly achieves that. The interviewer had to ask, naturally, “Well how can you be so happy and then create such dark and disturbing work?\u201d I get that all that time, “Oh, your work is so dark,\u201d and have said before, that\u2019s like telling me my hair is red. He explained, \u201cYou don\u2019t have to suffer to depict suffering, you just have to understand it.\u201d I try hard not to suffer anymore. Been there, done that. Paid my dues. It\u2019s a romantic notion, a misguided, outdated notion that the artist has to suffer for his art. All that drinking and drugging, it\u2019s over.<\/p>\n

Tuesday<\/p>\n

Feeling so stressed, like I can\u2019t catch up though determined to do so. I got to teach yesterday, facilitated my Word Games poetry writing workshop for kids at Junior\u2019s school, Island Discovery. I write out a poem on the board, perform it for them, (kids are a tough audience) and then we have a lot of fun together engaging in neo-dada games and activities. Most of them get it right away, children being natural born poets. I sit down and work with the ones who don\u2019t, encouraging them to free associate, reminding them there are no rules, especially at the outset, that it\u2019s more important to just get some words out, down. It went well, the kids got excited. Several parents kindly made a point of telling me that I inspire their children and that\u2019s a good feeling. It doesn\u2019t feel like teaching, more like sharing, my passion for language, poetry. This is the poem we wrote together. It\u2019s a little obtuse. It would have been nice to have more time to flesh it out but the doing was a good demonstration of the writing process.<\/p>\n

ANTIDISESTABLISHMENTARIANISM<\/strong><\/p>\n

Coyote season.
\nSilver grass people migrate
\nto a golden spaceship,
\nyellow sky unfolding before them.
\nSpiky roses grow blue fruit.
\nJanuary blossoms.
\nLattes are scarlet and flow in rivers.
\nMusical cookies.
\nDragon boats glide across a violet ocean.
\nPomegranate exploration.
\nThey happen upon a road in triplet.
\nSuddenly a pink giraffe appears.
\nWho are you?
\nAs he speaks emerald butterflies
\nflood the sky.
\nI don’t quite know myself.
\nWe are life’s officials
\nhunting down floating bubbles
\nof rainbow
\nunder the Bermuda sky.<\/p>\n

I found a pleasant surprise in the post today, five Rockin’ Moms cds, featuring AURAL Heather and How To Remain<\/em>. I knew they had selected us, wasn\u2019t expecting copies. It\u2019s run by a woman in California, Tiffany Petrossi, who also broadcasts the cds on a podcast. I wish we had these tools when I was 24. Young musicians are so lucky.<\/p>\n

Oddly enough, then I spoke with my Luddite, neo-surrealist friend Jhim who is astounded at the number of FB friends I have. I reminded him that I\u2019ve been on the net since 1994 so it shouldn\u2019t be surprising but I wont\u2019 text. I refuse to go there, have my limits, boundaries. I just have to watch my niece with her thumbs flying, then think I\u2019m already susceptible to carpal tunnel syndrome, have a fucked up neck, and soon we\u2019ll all be suffering from numb thumbs. Jhim and I also discussed an artist he was very familiar and impressed with, Unica Z\u00fcrn, who began writing after World War II, short stories and radio plays. In 1953 she met surrealist painter Hans Bellmer in Berlin. She moved with him to Paris, becoming his partner and model. \u201cTogether with Hans Bellmer, Unica Z\u00fcrn frequented surrealist circles and befriended people such as Man Ray, Andr\u00e9 Pieyre de Mandiargues, Henri Michaux and Max Ernst. From 1957 onwards she suffered from depression and was treated at various clinics in France. One of her doctors was Gaston Ferdi\u00e8re, a friend of the surrealists, who was also psychiatrist to Antonin Artaud. Her illness inspired much of her writing, above all Der Mann im Jasmin, written between 1963 and 1965. She killed herself in 1970 by jumping out of the window of the apartment she shared with Bellmer.\u201d Wow. That\u2019s what I said. I suffer depression too, cannot imagine it taking on such epic proportions, in my life or anyone else’s, feel compelled to keep it in check. Of course, I have been close to that edge, can understand how we spiral out of control. Not surprisingly, spirals keep persisting in my writing. I remember ex-boyfriend Jeff Isaak, a brilliant artist who was obsessed with spirals, Tesla and his coil, and often depicted them in his work.<\/p>\n

Just saw a raven near the bird feeder, for the first time. Do ravens mess with songbirds? I know they\u2019re not predators in the same sense as an eagle, though an eagle is a scavenger as well as a predator. Bend both ways, work it both ways.<\/p>\n

I am working on a poem for a CV2-Contemporary Verse 2 contest, something I rarely do but this one appealed to me because it involves using a list of random words, something I like to do often when composing verse. So it seemed a natural, a good fit for me to enter, plus they weren\u2019t charging a lot of money. Here is the poem, I\u2019ve emboldened the words I was given.<\/p>\n

DIVERSIONS<\/strong><\/p>\n

Learn how to eat a kumquat<\/strong>.
\nWatch giant sink<\/strong> holes
\nchow down on suburban family homes,
\nor floods that force
\na Fargo wedding party to improvise<\/strong>.
\nGiggity Giggity Giggity!
\nBird dog with Glenn Quagmire<\/strong>,
\nnoxious<\/strong> as hound\u2019s-thistle
\nor do it yourself.
\nRight single-handedly
\nDial<\/strong>-A-Lover.
\nGet a second life.
\nCome out.
\nAll aboard
\nthe tattoo parlour<\/strong> car.
\nFly your freak<\/strong> flag
\nout the window.
\nEvolve by gradation<\/strong>,
\ncolour or tone, your choice.
\nMaster effervescent<\/strong> technology.
\nRide a ride.
\nTilt-A-Whirl,
\ntumult on the horizon
\ncausing you to retch.<\/p>\n

I was also relieved to hear that my niece who took off for California the other day arrived safely and is blithely toasting herself on the beach. We were all so worried though I admire her gumption, spirit. You go girl. I try to remind her that she has one hide and it has to last her a lifetime. She\u2019s such a sun bunny. Yes, we are different. I take my sunshine, Vitamin D in small doses. With my red hair, I endured one too many brutal all-body sunburns as a child.<\/p>\n

Here are the poems I am going to read, perform in tribute to Al Purdy, his and mine:<\/p>\n

WHAT DO THE BIRDS THINK?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Are they exiles here from the rest of the world?
\nDeja vu past egg and atom
\nfrom the yelllow Sahara-ocean
\nor farmlands in Ontario
\na witness\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 hanging\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 painted
\nin the rural blue
\nwhile a plowman half a mile down
\nin the dark field with a snoring tractor
\nmoves in circular sleep?
\nOr exiles from the apple country
\nwhere Macs and Spies plop soft
\non wet ground in slow autumn days
\nwith the rotten tangy odour
\nof cider rising on moon-wept nights?
\nHave they lists and a summary
\nof things elsewhere and
\nremember the crimson racket
\nencountering tropic strangers
\nor nests of an old absence
\nlined with a downy part of themselves
\nfar south?
\nAnd being south do they think sometimes
\nof the rain and mists of Baffin
\nand long migrations wingtip to wingtip
\na mile high
\nand mate to mate in the lift and trembled
\nof windy muscles pushing them
\npushing them where?
\nAnd do they ever
\nan arrow leader pointing the way
\ntouch wearily down on ships passing?
\n–\u201cRest here a while and go on!\u201d
\n(Forgotten in the hurry
\nof their streaming generations
\nanother captain
\ncalled Noah
\n& Bjarni Herjolfsson
\nin hormed helmet
\nand the sweeps\u2019 silver lifting
\nto a luring Hyperborean ocean
\nor whaling ships\u2019 myopic stumbling
\nfrom dull wave to dull wave and the
\npaint of the bright over-the-horizon gazing
\nwoman flaked with salt)
\nHow are we kept here
\nby what bonds
\nare we always exiles
\na chirping roar in the silences
\nof foxes and watery romp of walrus
\nin the long sea lands
\nor perched on rubbery musket
\nlike blue teacups
\nor lost brown mittens
\nby what agency of restlessness
\nin the driftwood heart?
\nUntil on a day the eggs hatch
\nand the young are trained to endurance
\nice rattles the shroud of summer
\nthe flight plans sent
\nthe log book sand is scribbled on
\n\u201cGoodbye-we are going-Hurry\u201d
\nand mounting a shaft of sunlight
\nor the mizzen mast of the sky
\nthey climb and go
\nAnd that is the way it is?
\nExcept perhaps I wonder
\ndo they ever
\nremember down there in the southland
\nCumberland Sound
\nand the white places
\nof Baffin
\nthat I will remember
\nsoon?<\/p>\n

Pangnitung<\/p>\n

HABITAT<\/strong><\/p>\n

We plan, like architects
\nto bring the outdoors in,
\nparrot like realtors
\nthe charms of a tree house,
\nfor up on this hill,
\nbirdsong is tangible.
\nWe always get
\nwhat we want, camouflaged<\/p>\n

within our mossy cabin, high
\nabove the threshold
\nof discovery. Open sky.
\n360 degree views.
\nProximity to water.
\nReliable food sources. Plenty
\nof nesting material. Gravel flies
\nfrom under the foot of a rabbit<\/p>\n

fleeing a resident eagle.
\nRavens and stellar jays battle
\nover kibble, shit bomb the deck.
\nThey want in,
\npast windowpanes that trick them.
\nFrenzied. Talons flashing,
\nthey enter
\nthrough a door
\nin the firmament.<\/p>\n

I guide them outside, stunned
\nat the feel of wing bones.
\nBanging hearts. A hummingbird goes
\nstillborn in the cup of my hands,
\nthen, buzzers off, leaving a tang
\nin my throat, a ring
\nof ruby dust on my finger,
\nincriminating as pollen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Listening to Miguel Migs playing Bump Selectra, a dub selectra mix on the Beat Blender play list on Soma FM, recalling the meeting Josef and I had with the RDI consultant this morning. It was a fairly productive meeting though I suffered a headache the entire time. We need to work on Junior\u2019s non-verbal communication […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10,12],"tags":[20,21,33,92,255,264],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}