Bard's life

As I grow older, a yearning to revisit the past intensifies but the sad truth is that there's no joy to be had from such adventures. The past really is a foreign country, where history has been subtly changed. Road-signs have been altered, doors are locked against the stranger.     REUNION Her children and my children now have children of their own. The man I was, and what she was, that spirited, flamboyant girl, have vanished, all our passion stilled. I hardly thought myself grown old till, in her tearful, wary face I saw my own reflected: weary, drawn. Full forty years of life’s rebuffs have turned us into shadows.

If you're a Guernsey resident, or even a visitor our little island , then haste thee along to Torteval Church Hall this Friday evening to enjoy the inaugural Metivier Night , which promises to be a memorable occasion, not just for poetry lovers, but for those who love to celebrate all things Guernesaise . The br ainchild of the Guernsey Language Commission , Metivier Night promises to become an annual event in Guernsey's cultur al calend a r and a n exciting wa y to brighten up a dreary January evening.

I wrote the original version of The Big Tree more than fifty years ago wh ilst a member of a novice writing group in Northern Ir eland . That version, along with my home and possessions , was destroyed by an IRA bomb in the 1970s . Although I was greatly distressed at the time , in retrospect I realise tha t this was not an un mitigat ed disaster : most writers' juven i lia should be destroyed to avoid future embarrassment.   The framewor k of the story, originally a poem, surviv ed in my notebooks and I decided to rewrite it a few years ag o , managing to recapture much of the spirit of the early piece. Photo by Jane Fleming   THE BIG TRE E The boy was climbing a tree. It begins that way: a boy climbing a tree all those years ago in the green-spring wood that was our world, untroubled as Eden: a small figure ascending through leafscape towards sunlight.  Below, by the tree’s foot, other children gathered and called out encouragement as he climbed through a ...

Like my previous two posts, this rhyming poem is taken from the stock of lost verses that I recently rediscovered. SUNRISE The unmarked page is like a beach that a writer walks at first light, finding no footprints there. I picture you at sunrise, each slim page a small bird taking flight, rising in soundless air. Waking, I find a path inshore, at dawn, where nothing man-made mars clear, endless emptiness, then, moving forward, set my score of verses down: poems like soft-maned stars in lightning harnesses. In silent endlessness we meet, wings skimming over fields of words in a white country, fair, and, like familiars, greet each other easily, as do birds, for it is peaceful there. 

In the 1980s I worked as a Census Enumerator and rapidly became aware that the job entailed far more than simply delivering and collecting census forms. The district I handled, Stranmillis in South Belfast, consisted chiefly of older properties that might best be described as shabbily elegant. The occupants of the houses were themselves, for the most part, elderly and elegant in a timeworn sort of way, having clearly seen better days. Where I’d expected to hand over a form and depart, I found myself, more often than not, having to remain to assist the house-holder with the completion of the paperwork. Many of the people I met during my enumerating stint struggled to complete the document, either because of their unfamiliarity with forms in general or as a result of visual or motor difficulties that rendered them ill-equipped to deal with such a thing unaided. It became increasingly apparent, however, that there was another reason why so many individuals required me to linger to assist ...

I recently uncovered a stash of old poems written around 2008/2009 then buried in a drawer.  The reason they had been buried became obvious when I began to read through them but, happily, there were one or two worthy of resurrection.   TV Blues is one of them.  TV BLUES Ice mountains split apart and weep while deserts stifle fertile hopes. We know: we watch it on the Box along with genocide and soaps, and all the while the chiming clocks fail to awake us from our sleep and as we slumber, all around the stench of death, the buzz of flies, competes with chainsaw snarl, with bombs, to fill our children’s ears with lies, while the cold silence of the tombs has an accusatory sound. The faithful tide, the moon, sunrise, our steady passage round the sun, are touchstones for our fragile hearts as we, our fearful journey, run between the cradle and the cart that wheels us to our last surprise. But switching channels does not save a single life, one damaged soul. Each screen refle...

As our hand-held electronic devices increasingly hold us in thrall, I wonder whether they are the advance guard of an unstoppable enemy bent on enslaving us all. MY ROBOT My Robot brings me breakfast on a tray: fruit juice, toast, black coffee, also my supplements and pills, then later, a mobile screen with news and shopping options. She stands stiffly, recites her tasks in order, purrs softly like an electronic cat. The letters on her chest read A.I.D.A. which stands for Artificial Intelligence Domestic Assistant. I call her Aida and think of her as female. Aida is an indoor robot. There are outdoor types that patrol the streets, direct driverless cars and coaches, sweep pavements, collect garbage. These are municipal robots, MOBOs, noisy hulking brutes with no finesse. Aida cleans and washes, manages household accounts, selects suitable mood music to aid my relaxation. She is assisted by two inferior house-robots. I call them Bill and Ben. Bill is barrel-shaped and slow. ...