a measurement of silence in one hundred words

a measurement of silence in one hundred words was chosen by Fish Publishing to be third in the poetry section of their Lockdown Prize.

The Lockdown Prize raised over 4000 euros for Oxfam's Coronavirus Emergency Appeal.

Poetry Reading: Martina Evans

Martina Evans, as the youngest of ten children growing up alongside a petrol station in Cork, uses all such life experiences in her poetry. Today Martina read some of her poetry and discussed her writing life with a Royal Literary Fund reading group in the Whitechapel Ideastore,

Why Poetry?

Although, also a novelist, Martina says she prefers poetry, partially because, as she says, she is 'better at it.' She talks about how people say that everyone has a novel in them, she, more realistically believes 'Everyone has a poem in them.'

Audience/Reader

When asked, 'Would it matter if no one read your poetry?' she answered, that she would still write, 'but it would be different.' This is most apparent considering her recitation of her poems for the audience that day. Carrying on an oral tradition, Martina's poems, especially came to life with her Cork accent and the particular tones and rhythms she had had in mind when she first wrote them (with a little poetic license taken, in an organic editorial). This coupled with the insights into her stories joins the audience more robustly in the contract or relationship, that is other side of the balance of writer and reader. 

Form

Although Martina's poetry is mainly freeverse, she told her audience 'I hear a very strong rhythm'. This,  she considered to be from her mother. She said, 'I sometimes think my mother is speaking out of me.' 'I like the music of voices,' she told her audience, 'like Joyce.' Martina recalled overhearing her mother, a widow amongst widows, saying, 'Now we can talk openly about men'  and realized later how this was iambic pentameter, a form she is working with at the moment. The physical shape of the poem on the page is also a consideration for Martina's when it comes to form. It is part of her process, as she said, 'like building a house on a page.' When talking about how conscious she had been of falling in recent times, she mentioned a poem she wrote about going down into the basement with some rhyming couplets like the steps going down into the basement. 

Memory

Memory plays a large part in Martina's work. From the memories she uses of her childhood in Cork to those more recent of London. Research into first-hand accounts are the backbone of some of her more historical or political poetry while at the same time Martina talks of how her mother would freeze in the middle of a story realizing, if she was not careful her words would appear in print in one of Martina's poems. Martina even talked of the initial  difficulties of memorizing her poetry, and the benefits of this kind of activity as a brain exercise and to prevent memory loss in the long term,

Personal Stories

I talked to Martina about my own difficulties with memory, ie; that I could recall very little of my childhood, like she was able to. And that her work inspired me to make those 'links' she talked of. When she spoke of a poem 'Horses in the Basement', I thought of one I had in mind called 'Turkeys in the Attic'. I had a memory of a nightmare I'd had as a child where I could hear the movement and trilling of turkeys overhead in the attic and the appearance of white feathers at strange times. However I found out this wasn't something I imagined or dreamt but did happen. The turkey's ended up killed and plucked and I had thought it was just a dream (perhaps to disassociate). I have been inspired by Martina's poetry to investigate my memories more deeply and ask the questions of family that might be part of some stories of the future. Like Martina's ones of taking cats to the vets in velvet bags or run ins with dentists or 'anti-erotic' oysters. Martina's stories are those celebrated in Kavanagh's poem Epic where the local stories of times, places and events are promoted to a glory, in her poetry, on a par with any epic story.

Note: Martina is also a teacher of creative writing and suggests using the exercise 'I remember...' as a memory jogger. Write the words 'I remember' and write whatever comes to mind (example here).

What Can I Do To Help

Thinking of the various meanings of the word 'mean' and working as a community worker in a Brexit-Britain, this is what came to mind:

What Can I Do To Help?

Why are you mean?

What makes it seem

Like the right thing to do

Are you only thinking of you?

Why are you mean

What does it mean

When it seems you don't care

Enough to share

Why are you mean?

Now meaning is lost

And understanding past

Selfishness and greed

Set in and outlast

And people in need

Are the ones to ask

What can I do to help?

What can I do to help?

In the flotsam and jetsam

I'm the seaweed and kelp

I float in a commune

I am helped when I help

People with the least

Will share their last crust

They know what it's like

When needs must

They know how to rely

On their fellow man

And when someone's in need

They do what they can

But sometimes desperation

Seeps up from below

And the powerful forget

Or pretend not to know

And feather their beds

And build up their walls

Razor-wire their loved ones

And bubble-wrap their falls

And the fear of loss

Overcomes the will

And the ultimate cost

Is not in the till

So we go from baby

To child to teen

And arriving at adult

We are suddenly mean

Just wanting to keep

Our fears hidden deep

In the power we feel

In control of the keel

Of our seafaring boat

While others can't float

We let the sun cast our eyes

To brighter blue skies

While fishing for castaways

And gutting their lives

In the flotsam and jetsam

I'm the seaweed and kelp

I float in a commune

I am helped when I help

Why are you mean?

What makes it seem

Like the right thing to do

Are you only thinking of you?

What can I do to help?

What can I do to help?

Why am I mean?

What makes it seem

Like the right thing to do

Why don't I think of you?

Why am I mean?

What does it mean

When it seems I don't care

Enough to share

Why am I mean? 

What can I do to help?

Let the Albatross Fly

'Water, water, everywhere,

Nor a drop to drink.'

 Coleridge, S. T.  (1798, 1817) Rime of the Ancient Mariner

We may thirst for knowledge but not be able to use it, understand it or be sustained by it if it is tainted, like the becalmed sea water of our life's journey coming to a halt.

Coleridge's (1798, 1817) Rime of the Ancient Mariner , a ballad form which seems allegorical in nature, creates an air of ancient folklore passed down in the oral tradition, interpreted as heard and retold according to that interpretation. We can read it in many ways, even in modern times. As a debunking of eye-witnesses testimony or as a way to say what is past is past and whatever you learn from it will be your choice. That no matter how terrible the experience, what is important is what is learnt. And how our very reading of the poem itself is a choice, including what we take from it, what we understand by it and what we learn from it.

We can see it as a moral tale, a fable, a parable if that is what we choose to see. We can choose to see it as an entreaty to love and appreciate what you have, lest you lose it. To treat all 'creatures great and small' with the care. Or as a reminder that we will be borne down and burdened by the harm we do in life until we understand and change our ways. Or that we must not only learn from our experiences but be an example and teach others from them too.

Of course we could just see an albatross as an albatross. If we could do that maybe we wouldn't try to kill it as an ill omen much like we do to anything we fear. Perhaps we are being told, rather than killing the thing we fear, that we should kill the fear itself or we will continue to carry it about and see everything in its darkened hues. We read into our experience what we perceive to be true and then judge further experiences with prejudice to fuel our discrimination.

On our individual paths in life, to continue on, we must not keep looking over our shoulders in fear, but instead keep up the forward momentum knowing that it is not what we fear, that is following us but just fear itself, which we are instead leaving behind.

'Like one that on a lonesome road

Doth walk in fear and dread,

And having once turned round walks on,

And turns no more his head;

Because he knows, a frightful fiend

Doth close behind him tread.'

Coleridge, S. T.  (1798, 1817) Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Eroded

I feel eroded
Like an oxbow lake
Cut off from the main stream
That used to be
U-shaped
Changing current
Classic
Abrasion
Undercutting
Leaving sediment
Debris
Deposits on memory banks
Forgotten
Abandoned
Out of the loop
The river runs without me
Meandering
Into the future
Leaving me behind
Running water slows
To standing still
Fresh water
No longer flowing
Left alone
Turns stale and stagnant
Forming
The ox bow lake
A foetal cast off
Umbilical cord cut
Torn in transit
From the womb
Lying prone
Like a metal kidney dish
Holding
What has been removed
Dead
Torn from the body of water
Discarded
By the slow river of life
Seeking out the sea