Getting Back To My Roots!

I miss Totalfeckineejit, you know where you are with an Eejit. I think I miss blogging too.Comparing it to FB is like comparing the first world war to a Friday Night punch-up in the pub car park. No, I'm not really sure what that means either, but I'm sure it means...something. A hate,  a love, a mood, a feeling, that is always preferable to, more beneficial than, ...nothing.
Nothing is (paradoxically) the 'thing' we must avoid at all costs.

'Tis better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all'  Alfred Lord Tennyson

'Ever tried. Ever failed.No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.' Samuel Beckett
'He who dares wins, Rodney' William Shakespeare


You get the gist. I've tried the Barcelona style, very fancy, very expensive, very...irritating. I want to go back to Wimbledon, route one, I want the crazy gang, I want it to be...emotional.

Being a fish out of water is ok for a while, but then you get a bit panicky, specially when size nines are squeezing down on your gills. Deep down I know what this is all about, deep down I have no clue what it is all about.A Dickensian paradox.The best of times; the worst of times. Paradoxes galore this night, brother,sister.

But really we do know it is the worst, we are the lucky ones, which is why we must pluck the best from the gutter, the swamp, the greed, the ego, the abyss.I have stared into the eyes of the poetry Tyger; It is beautiful (I'm lying for the sake of balance), it is ugly, it is ruthless, it sees the world, it promises salvation, it is cold, red hot, knows of everything but cares for no-one but itself. Fuck fearful symmetry.

What does it all mean, dear reader? Unfortunately I have only questions. And the people who have the answers, who stick by them, cast them in concrete, do not like questions. Questions lead to change, nobody wants that?

I don't know what this is. All I know is it feels GOOD!


The weekly prompt is back. It would be the best of times if people joined in. Tell your friends, inform your enemies
.https://www.facebook.com/groups/125558570802681/

New Poem

One Scream

There’s  two screens

One watching us watching you

The other a blank

We should have a gun for melody

As we sink this ship as we

Throw life lines

Like caution, to the wind

Keep it simple

Follow your instinct

We are extinct

Before we know

Go with the flow like dead fish

And the latest a tax

Distracted from the dream degrees from the ideal home

Exhibition stuff

The land's cabin 13

Room for one ‘o‘ one

Tug ‘o’ war man ‘o’ war

There’s a harsh edge to this taste

A machine gunfire the latest light. 

What fresh hell?

Helicopters threatening hope,

blades flashing, twirling,

the knaves are out.

New school is Old school is all,

but twisted, twisted.

And I have to raise my head

to blue skies

above bullshit,

heart above hypocrisy

This new regime that uses the same old machine

and the things we resisted

are now insisted clench-fisted,

blandly or blindly followed.

It breaks my hollowed heart

Fills me with anger

and despair.

Where do we go from here?

Who are ‘we’ at all anyway?

I’ll stick to the lonesome 'I'

The lyrical confession

in hope for a less bitter vision,

a better version of new.

RAHOO,RAHOO,RAHOO!!

At last! PB4 has been bolted together from raw flesh and bone and steel in a well used shed in Co.Wicklow. 130 pages of brilliance will be perfect bound and encased in a matt laminate cover and given electrical charges and vodka until it comes pounding into life!

This may be the greatest creation since the wheel (8000 years BC) and the pop up toaster (1567 AD)
Use the 'Buy Now'  above to order before stocks and the sands of time run out of the house and go live in a commune in Zagreb. Prices are €14 for Ireland and €15 for the rest of the world and include postage and packaging and a MIGHTY 12 track CD of music and spoken word.

I'll tell you more about the magazine when my eyeballs stop bleeding and exhaustion turns to euphoria.

Here's a taster! Illustrations from PB4 plus track by Laura Moody plus a few photos of my own.

The bus has 4 days left to make another €519 to meet its target of €1950 at fundit.ie HERE http://www.fundit.ie/project/pb4-issue-4-of-the-poetry-bus-mag if we don't meet the target we get nothing !


SO! Here is an amazing offer/opportunity. The wonderful poet Kona Macphee has kindly donated a voucher for Darina Allen's world famous Ballymalloe cookery school at beautiful Shanagarry in Co.Cork.The voucher is valid for the whole of September and entitles TWO people to a wonderful afternoon that includes lessons at the cookery school PLUS a gorgeous lunch for TWO!

The cookery lessons alone cost €140.Lunch there is very rare and by invitation only so this may be the ONLY chance you might get to have this experience!! It is not possible to put a price on it as there are no prices!!
I'm looking for offers to pledge to the poetry bus.The highest offer over €140 will get the voucher and a copy of PB4!! Please share this and spread the word!

 

Here's a taster from Ballymaloe
 

'When you step through the little wooden side gate­ and into the courtyard of Ballymaloe Cookery School you enter a different world. A world where the whole emphasis is on food - growing it, preparing it, cooking it, eating it and, crucially, enjoying it. A world that feels wonderfully cut-off because it is in the middle of ten acres of organic market gardens'

 

PB4 with 90 perfect bound pages of poetry (Lemn Sissay, Ian Duhig, Noel King, Lyn Lifshin, Alan Jude Moore plus many many more including new and exciting voices!) cutting edge illustration, articles, reviews, cartoons PLUS free audio CD of spoken word and music tracks INCLUDING James Yorkston!!
All this packaged and posted to your door for a pledge of €10! Sure ye'd be mad not to!

Bertie Bassett or Bertold Brecht ?

Or both? Or neither?
Find out as the wonderful Niamh Boyce interviews me on her lovely 'Words A Day' blog with some soul searching questions on life, the internet, poetry, and me book 'Jewel' (Currently SOLD OUT at Amazon UK, but still available direct from Salmon, (hint, hint) HERE http://www.salmonpoetry.com/details.php?ID=259&a=220

IF you have a few moments pop over to Niamh's blog HERE! 
http://niamhboyce.blogspot.ie/2012/07/poetry-is-broad-church-and-everyone-is.html

Rachel Fenton interviews the Eejit!

Alls ya gotta do is clickety
HERE

Jewel is let out

So my book, my first collection of poetry 'Jewel' is back from the printers and out in the post. I should get my copies tomorrow. It's a weird feeling. The real sheer unadulterated joy,the magic,the relief, the release, was when I was offered a book deal. Nothing before or since quite compares to that life changing moment. And it is life changing, not world changing, not a big deal in the great scheme of things, but in the little moments of an ordinary life it's a cosmic shift. Anything else good that happens now is an added bonus. So I'm really looking forward to seeing my book in the flesh. And flesh is the right word here. The catalyst, the tender hurt, the anger , almost half a century of emotion is laid raw here in 68 pages. Some of it is not pretty. Sometimes life is not pretty. And still this is a lovesong for hope and for, well, love. People like me don't often get heard, I was on the verge of oblivion, Jessie Lendennie of Salmon Poetry plucked me from the abyss. I could not be more overjoyed, I could not be more grateful.I could never thank her enough. This was the only party in town. If you'd like a copy, you can order it
HERE

RACHEL FOX'S POETRY MOPED!

How soon is now.

I’m hearing mellow but I’m not feeling it

Yet

And then ? Well then.

So I listen

to now put then away,

another broken piece of yourself.

How much is left,

when every tiny victory in a hill of defeat

Is phyrrhic?

Poets are cracked pots broken in translation.

Now sun streams in the window

as sense goes out.

Pieces of a man.

Pieces of eight.

Put creation in the drawer.

Lock away vulnerability.

Shelter kindness.

Ambition has walked in the door.

I listened to Gil Scott Heron's song on Rachel's blog and wrote this at the same time. Great to be back in the saddle! Well done Rachel!

 

Take a look here and join in! HERE

Miracles do happen

So here it is. Well almost! This is the front cover of the book itself that I will be shamelessly and relentlessly promoting til everybody in the world is beaten into submission and buys it or runs screaming to hide away in a remote cave in the Outer Hebrides.

It can by the magic of the interwebbyweave be pre-ordered
HERE

Lord knows what people will make of it. This is all very exciting but nothing will match the sheer almost overwhelming emotionally charged joy I felt when Jessie Lendennie asked if I'd like to publish a book with Salmon. It was like the whole waste of my life suddenly dropped into place and was no longer a waste after all. It had meant something and led to something. In this regard I think Jessie saved my life. In that moment I was no different yet I was changed, changed utterly, there's no doubt of that.
At 49 years of age I had been nowhere and was still heading nowhere slow.Clearly miracles don't always come in a lightning strike, sometimes they take a lifetime!