tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36861951183139896232024-03-13T10:06:27.938+00:00Fractal StanzasSally Douglas: Poetry and Visual ArtsSallyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15734731472624651213noreply@blogger.comBlogger91125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3686195118313989623.post-42614179639306108322018-01-17T09:41:00.002+00:002018-01-17T09:41:44.564+00:00Taking a BreakFractal Stanzas is taking a break at the moment, but I'll be back soon.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTfm3Ryjz-eaEr9pUKvYx4zkhNgAw_0BcPNs_esdLPuctzO8q66ezhFrNUqgI6_OGrXDHH7wiWkdJ6UvqB5h-IqaCydDbHRxpnBLoXajUOXwViJIdRjLYdDRWCcShKwQVZYNu1d7ZCt5fI/s1600/IMG_7959.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTfm3Ryjz-eaEr9pUKvYx4zkhNgAw_0BcPNs_esdLPuctzO8q66ezhFrNUqgI6_OGrXDHH7wiWkdJ6UvqB5h-IqaCydDbHRxpnBLoXajUOXwViJIdRjLYdDRWCcShKwQVZYNu1d7ZCt5fI/s400/IMG_7959.JPG" width="300" /></a></div>
<br />Sallyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15734731472624651213noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3686195118313989623.post-9907231900811858202017-05-31T14:11:00.000+01:002017-05-31T14:17:18.489+01:00Review: Andy Brown's 'Watersong'<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
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The title of Andy Brown’s new
chapbook from Shearsman might suggest a lyric rurality, but this collection
takes as its subject matter something rarely treated in either poetry or song and
sets it firmly in the urban. Brown’s
topic is disease: disease caused by
water contaminated by human faeces – not quite what the reader might have
expected from the title.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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The collection falls into two parts. The longer, first section, is a sequence of
untitled poems grouped together as ‘Watersong’, and deals with the Exeter cholera epidemic of 1832, which killed over 400 people.
This is followed by a short set of poems which address the issues of water and
disease in the twenty-first century. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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The ‘Watersong’ sequence is full of
the grisly detail of the realities of cholera, much of it employing a lexis and
register which gives an impression that some of the words might be
incorporations from original texts. We
are given lists of fines for keeping insanitary conditions: <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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The Widow
Barrier, for a nucence by keeping a mound<o:p></o:p></div>
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of filth and
nastiness beneath her court, amerced 5l.8s…<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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lists of deaths <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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On July 24<sup>th</sup>,
at Bury Lane – <o:p></o:p></div>
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the wife of a journeyman
cordwainer.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Cholera 3 days…<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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and lists of symptoms<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Skin cold and
clammy. Cramps, emaciation.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Abnormal smell.
Intelligence entire.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Vomiting and
purging now profuse.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Jactition.
Diarrhoea. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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and we are given stories. The
subject of these poems is not just cholera – it is people. So we hear of the
grave digger who was attacked for carrying a coffin ‘underhand’, and the
surgeon who before sewing up a dissected body ‘strokes the black heart’. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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The poems in the sequence have no
titles – they flow into each other in a way that creates a sense of fever and
unreality in the reader – yet even as
they do this, the poems are also
formally distinct. These are poems that fall (sometimes uneasily) into the varied
form of song. They use songlike features such as refrain (‘<i>Sing: </i>Water from the wealthy, private well…’) and chant (‘’Plague. Plague. Plague. Plague…’). <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Other poems utilise poetic forms
which have their roots in song. ‘In Bury Fields’, for example, is a rondeau which closely follows and interacts with the
form and structure of John McCrae’s ‘In Flanders Fields’. Most noticeably, six of
the thirteen poems in the main sequence,
including many of the list-poems, are fourteen-liners, each structured in such a way as to invite the
reader to see them through the lens of ‘sonnet’ (a term which, of course, has
its derivation in the Italian ‘little song’).
<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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The subject matter of these sonnets
is, however, far removed from the form’s traditional themes. This tension
between form and subject is both witty
and disturbing, as is the uncertainty engendered in the reader as to whether
these texts are ‘found’ or imagined. One
sonnet is a list of public orders, while several are a series of medical notes:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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20<sup>th</sup>.
10. A.M. <i>fiat pilula<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i>quarta quaque hora sumenda:<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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Cupri Sulphatis,
gr. ¼ <o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>Pulveris Opii</i>, gr. ¼ <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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The final four poems of the
collection, the poems that deal with contemporary cholera deaths and the
present-day attempts to address the problem of contaminated water, have titles.
But they are titles which reflect the continuing problem of naming, and the way
in which this results in an inability to address the central issue. In ‘The
Unnameable Taxonomy’, we are given another list – this time, two pages of jauntily
rhyming euphemisms:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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...Room 101, or
Number Two.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Auditing Assets,
Doing the Do,<o:p></o:p></div>
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Taking Some
Weight Off Your Troubled Mind,<o:p></o:p></div>
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Seeing How
Things Turn out Behind…<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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In the final, unrhymed sonnet of
the pamphlet, ‘The Flying Toilets of Kibera’, Brown moves the form forward into
something more lyrical, and something that more closely relates to the sonnet
as an image-led structured argument: ‘Because the politicians can’t discuss/ toilets
for fear of breaking taboo…’ children such as ‘Kanja (Sanskrit, ‘water born’)’
and ‘Nafula (African, ‘born in the rain’) have to get rid of their faeces into
the reservoir from which they drink. Their names are of the beauty of water,
but their deaths are waiting in its contamination. <o:p></o:p></div>
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</div>
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<br /></div>
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The underlying message, made
explicit in these final poems of the collection, is that because society still
shies away from talking about ‘answer[ing] nature’s call’, people are still, nearly
two hundred years after the Exeter epidemic, dying of cholera. Andy Brown, however, is not shying away, he’s ‘singing’ about it. This
is an intelligent and witty collection, which throws the reader into the
gruesome details of an historic tragedy, while at the same time addressing an
important contemporary issue. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
<br />
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<b><i>Watersong,</i> Andy Brown</b></div>
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Shearsman, 2015<o:p></o:p></div>
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30pp</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px;">
Review first published at Canto Poetry</div>
</div>
Sallyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15734731472624651213noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3686195118313989623.post-14629526771932448802017-04-22T17:29:00.000+01:002017-04-22T17:29:51.083+01:00The Torrey Canyon and Jos Smith's A Plume of Smoke <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.shipwrecklog.com/uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Torrey-Canyon-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="330" src="https://www.shipwrecklog.com/uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Torrey-Canyon-1.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo: www.shipwrecklog.com</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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Radio 4's excellent poetry programme <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08lgbx2" target="_blank">The Echo Chamber</a>, hosted by Paul Farley, recently examined poetry's responses to the Torrey Canyon disaster. One of the poets featured was Jos Smith. A while back, I reviewed his pamphlet <i>A Plume a Smoke </i>and though I'd share it again here<i>. </i></div>
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In 1967, when the Torrey Canyon ran into rocks between the
Isles of Scilly and Lands End and spilled over 100,000 tonnes of oil into the
sea, I was four years old, a small child
living in Cornwall. I don’t remember the disaster itself, but I do remember
people talking about it. And I remember how even years later, clumps of oil,
looking like black rubbery pebbles, could be found washed up on our favourite
beaches. So I was very interested to read Jos Smith’s pamphlet, ‘A Plume of
Smoke’, which draws on oral history accounts of the disaster.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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The collection starts with poems rooted in the character of
the Cornish coast and waters. ‘Remembrance
I’ uses the patterns of Biblical
language to depict the power of the sea and its relationship to the
people of ‘this place of saints and
graves and mines,/ of harbour bells and broken-winged gulls’ who work on it:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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The water giveth and the water
taketh away.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Of the thirty-one lost out of
Fowey last year,<o:p></o:p></div>
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wheeled into silence by the clock
of the tides,<o:p></o:p></div>
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none survived.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Here, the people are vulnerable, and the sea is powerful. The
environment Jos Smith is writing about is an entity in its own right, something
huge and awesome. In ‘Trawler’, we hear that<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Some nights there’s the feeling
of stalking a god,<o:p></o:p></div>
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diesel rattling over the waves
towards a presence…<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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… it hangs like a thought in the
gulf stream,<o:p></o:p></div>
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blowing in and out of the dark:
animal,<o:p></o:p></div>
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theological, cold.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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One of the strengths of this collection is the way it
realises landscape as a living thing. ‘Herbivore’, a fabulous poem, rich with
sounds and images, describes Cornwall’s coast as ‘one long animal/ laid down in
the slopes of cove and cliff,/ bristling with sea life like nerves in the
skin…’. Everything that the coastline consists of is part of the one entity:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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An animal drifting in and out of
view,<o:p></o:p></div>
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breathing and sleeping, sniffing
and eating,<o:p></o:p></div>
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grazing the outer edge of a
volatile world.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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The environment is overwhelmed by a dark, unnatural force,
which is in turn, given the characteristics of a living entity. In ‘The Smell
was the First Thing’, <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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The weight leaned in and
belittled you.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Every part of it found you out…<o:p></o:p></div>
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[…]<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>intimate</i> long before <o:p></o:p></div>
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any kind of explanation<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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This, and many other images will stay with me a very long
time: the slick as a ‘black rind on the water still as leather’; children
trying to stop seabirds landing from in the oil, shouting from the beach
‘“Don’t land! Don’t land! Don’t land!”’; the flaming slick ‘Primal,/ like land
forming where there was no land.’<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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These are poems filled, as one might expect, with voices : the voices of sailors, of the
Cornish people, of the workers brought in to try and contain the disaster. But
this is a collection which also deals with memory. The 30,000 tonnes of oil
that were pumped into a quarry in Guernsey in an attempt to save the coastline keeps
bubbling up, despite efforts to process it, like memory itself:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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A memory that we have been
ill-equipped to meet<o:p></o:p></div>
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with anything but indefatigable
helplessness<o:p></o:p></div>
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[…]<o:p></o:p></div>
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sleeping digester of unliftable
wings,<o:p></o:p></div>
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you have been on the coastal edge
of all our thoughts.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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The two poems entitled ‘Remembrance’ use the language of
ritual to suggest a way of dealing with these memories. The dead are remembered and in the living,
some kind of healing begins to take place. In the last poem, ‘Afterwards’, there
is a quiet hope, but it acknowledges that a price will be paid: <o:p></o:p><br />
<br /></div>
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All
that repairs, repairs quietly.<o:p></o:p></div>
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All that heals, heals in silence.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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The wet head of something will
rise from the pools,<o:p></o:p></div>
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dripping and lonely and not what
it was.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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‘A Plume of Smoke’ is
itself a vehicle for remembering.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>The Echo Chamber's <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08lgbx2" target="_blank">programme about the Torrey Canyon</a> is available to listen online until 14 May 2017.</i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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<i>A Plume of Smoke is available to purchase from <a href="http://andybrown5.wixsite.com/maquette/publications" target="_blank">Maquette Press</a>. </i></div>
Sallyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15734731472624651213noreply@blogger.com0United Kingdom55.378051 -3.4359729999999912.203021 -86.05316049999999 90 79.18121450000001tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3686195118313989623.post-61464844116503175842017-04-21T07:53:00.001+01:002017-04-21T07:53:26.759+01:00On a Roll and On the Buses!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
<br />
At the beginning of the year I decided that, instead of submitting to magazines, I'd enter a few poetry competitions. I've never really got into the competition thing, but I have some friends whose names seem to pop up on every shortlist and winners' list, and I thought I'd have a go.<br />
<br />
I spent several weeks agonising over which poems to send where, reordering words, fiddling with commas, changing titles and changing them back again, and eventually sent off entries to five competitions. And it seems it was worth it, as I'm really chuffed to discover I have won or been placed in three!<br />
<br />
My poem 'Dead Things I Have Seen While Walking' was placed joint fourth in the <a href="https://kentandsussexpoetry.com/2017/04/18/open-competition-results-2017/" target="_blank">Kent and Sussex Open Poetry Competition</a>, judged by Catherine Smith. The winner was <a href="http://janetsutherland.co.uk/" target="_blank">Janet Sutherland</a>, with her amazing poem 'Braided Wire'. You can read all the winning entries, and the <a href="https://kentandsussexpoetry.com/2017/04/20/open-competition-2017-adjudication-report-catherine-smith/" target="_blank">adjudication report</a>, on the Kent and Sussex website, and I am very proud to be placed among such a fabulous group of poems.<br />
<br />
'My Glass Father' was placed third in <a href="https://www.theploughprize.co.uk/index.php/2016" target="_blank">The Plough Prize,</a> judged by Philip Gross. First prize was won by Vicki Morley, and second prize by Millie Guille - two fantastic poems. Once again, I am honoured to be placed in the company of such great work!<br />
<br />
And in the <a href="http://www.guernseyliteraryfestival.com/index.php/2015-04-07-09-46-01/poems-on-the-move" target="_blank">Guernsey Literary Festival's</a> Open Poetry Competition, judged by Gwyneth Lewis, my poem <a href="http://www.guernseyliteraryfestival.com/images/pom-winners-new.pdf" target="_blank">'Demeter's Lament' </a>won first prize, with 'Monsoon' coming joint third, and 'The Cliff' coming fourth. Second prize was won by <a href="http://www.poetgabrielgriffin.com/" target="_blank">Gabriel Griffin</a>, and the other third prize by<a href="http://www.fionaritchiewalker.com/" target="_blank"> Fiona Ritchie Walker</a>. All the winning poems in this competition will be featured on Guernsey's buses and at the airport, so I am absolutely delighted!<br />
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Many thanks to the judges Catherine Smith, Philip Gross and Gwyneth Lewis, and to the competition organisers.<br />
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I guess after this flurry of excitement I'd better get back to working on the new collection and the MA!<br />
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Sallyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15734731472624651213noreply@blogger.com0United Kingdom55.378051 -3.4359729999999912.203021 -86.05316049999999 90 79.18121450000001tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3686195118313989623.post-84470514855060165652017-03-07T18:41:00.000+00:002017-03-07T18:41:10.001+00:00On Sabbatical<div style="text-align: center;">
Fractal Stanzas is on sabbatical at the moment. But I'll be back!</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjs36FDa1esRg_GSDhh2s-d-CDzt0wN-Tfj8XJ9jl9b-2h7t7a6qyWtsFYdvF3lW3u_TbPWI2IgncuQo-G45-8MDWAw1j6zk5hv02SpxCt3gwefL1YyNAEqCJk5RR91HRLrX3mKtTu6Qk8T/s1600/IMG_8101.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjs36FDa1esRg_GSDhh2s-d-CDzt0wN-Tfj8XJ9jl9b-2h7t7a6qyWtsFYdvF3lW3u_TbPWI2IgncuQo-G45-8MDWAw1j6zk5hv02SpxCt3gwefL1YyNAEqCJk5RR91HRLrX3mKtTu6Qk8T/s400/IMG_8101.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
Sallyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15734731472624651213noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3686195118313989623.post-17242631135510712352016-09-29T18:13:00.000+01:002017-04-16T09:06:40.989+01:00Poem: The Cliff<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<b style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;">The
Cliff</span></b></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;">(after Anselm Kiefer)</span></i><b style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I make a lexicon of things that can be white</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> linen
lace sea foam face</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: medium;">but these small
dresses nightshirts
doll-sized robes<br />
</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> are spattered grey and maculate<br /><br />
</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: medium;">stone ghosts of birds snagged on a
wall of ash<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">I wonder </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"> </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"> </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">how they </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"> </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">were stitched</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: medium;">
<i><br /></i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><i><span style="font-size: medium;">smock
shirr pick cross feather<o:p></o:p></span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> but it’s impossible to tell<br /><br />
</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: medium;">their seams have rotted in the spray<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I think how
they once were cut from patterns<br />
<i><br /></i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i> facing yoke placket pocket welt</i><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: medium;">but the waves have flung this flock of empty children<br />
</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> against a squalling bluff <br /><br />
</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: medium;">all memory of making has been lost<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Above the cliff
the sky <i> </i> is cracked like mud<br /><br />
</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I make a lexicon of things that are <i>unravelled</i><br />
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br />
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Sally Douglas<o:p></o:p></i></span></span></div>
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'The Cliff' was a prizewinner in the 2015 Exeter Poetry Festival Competition, and was originally published in the Festival pamphlet,<i> Threads</i>.</div>
Sallyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15734731472624651213noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3686195118313989623.post-26381954285477167622016-06-09T11:59:00.001+01:002017-04-21T08:15:46.495+01:00Nana on a Dolphin and other poems...I'm delighted to have three poems featured at Exeter University's poetry journal, Canto. One is a response to Niki de St Phalle's wonderful 'Nana on a Dolphin'; one has its roots in Russia, and another was described on Twitter by WN Herbert as 'a fine elegiac poem about eyebrows'. (Thank you!) You can now read the poems <a href="http://sallydouglas.blogspot.co.uk/p/poems.html" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
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To whet the appetite, here are a couple of related images:<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Grinling_Gibbons_Hampton_Court.JPG#/media/File:Grinling_Gibbons_Hampton_Court.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Grinling Gibbons Hampton Court.JPG" height="640" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6a/Grinling_Gibbons_Hampton_Court.JPG/1200px-Grinling_Gibbons_Hampton_Court.JPG" width="425" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A carving by Grinling Gibbons</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;">By <a class="mw-redirect" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Camster2" title="User:Camster2">Camster2</a> - <span class="int-own-work" lang="en" xml:lang="en">Own work</span>, <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0" title="Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0">CC BY-SA 3.0</a>, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6521009</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nana_On_A_Dolphin.jpg#/media/File:Nana_On_A_Dolphin.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Nana On A Dolphin.jpg" height="400" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/16/Nana_On_A_Dolphin.jpg" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Nana on a Dolphin, by Niki de St Phalle</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;">By Source, </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nana_On_A_Dolphin.jpg" style="font-size: x-small;" title="<a href="//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Non-free_use_rationale_guideline" title="Wikipedia:Non-free use rationale guideline">Fair use</a> of copyrighted material in the context of <a href="//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nana_on_a_Dolphin" title="Nana on a Dolphin">Nana on a Dolphin</a>">Fair use</a><span style="font-size: xx-small;">, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30813065</span></div>
Sallyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15734731472624651213noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3686195118313989623.post-16805183892679154822016-05-17T11:40:00.002+01:002016-05-17T11:40:55.572+01:00'Writings on the Wall' Reblogged<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I've been thinking a lot about boundaries and borders recently - if you see any news from Europe or the US, and many other places, it's a recurring theme.<br />
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I wrote this piece a few years ago. It was Autumn then, not early summer as it is now, but the walls still stand, and walls are still being built. More than ever, I feel that we should really think hard about why we build walls, and whether all of them are really necessary.<br />
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<b>Robert Frost and the Berlin Wall</b><br />
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This time of year, when all the green stuff is beginning to die back, the bones of the countryside start to become more visible. Here in Devon, the networks of hedgerows and dry stone walls are suddenly foregrounded; their structure and relationship to the land revealed now that the lushness of summer is receding. They seem organic, these boundaries, part of the nature of things, since many of them have been in place for hundreds of years or more, but of course they are all man-made and need to be maintained.<br />
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In Robert Frost’s great poem <a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/44266" target="_blank">‘Mending Wall’</a> two neighbouring farmers walk the length of the dry stone wall which separates their properties, each on his own side, repairing the holes after the winter weather, making the boundary between them once more complete. ‘Something there is that does not love a wall’, muses Frost’s speaker, pondering the damage that occurs when no one is there to see. But he still goes though the spring ritual of mending: one day a year to ‘set the wall between us once again’. 'Just another kind of outdoor game,' he says. <br />
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<a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ADry_stone_wall_in_the_yorkshire_dales_detail.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" title="By The original uploader was Lupin at English Wikipedia (Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons.) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons"><img alt="Dry stone wall in the yorkshire dales detail" height="300" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/10/Dry_stone_wall_in_the_yorkshire_dales_detail.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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This particular wall serves no useful purpose as far as the speaker can see, since all it does is separate one kind of tree from another, and as he says ‘My apple trees will never get across/ and eat the cones under his pines…’. His neighbour sees things differently: insists, as his father did before him, that ‘Good fences make good neighbours’, and as readers we may smile at this old cliche, this unsophisticated parochialism. But then we read Frost's description of him picking up the fallen stones ready to put them back in place and mend the wall: <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
...I see him there<br />
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top<br />
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed</blockquote>
and we realise that to the neighbour this is something far deeper and darker, more primeval, than just a game.<br />
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There’s something very ancient in this need for boundaries, for marking one’s territory. History is criss-crossed by the bones of boundaries: Bronze Age field systems on Dartmoor, castle walls, city walls, Hadrian’s Wall, the Great Wall of China. Frost’s wall, like all these walls, is a social and psychological construct as well as a physical one: to the neighbour it is a representation of ownership, and of tradition, of something which must remain fixed. For Frost as poet, it seems to represent the barrier between two people’s points of view.<br />
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Point of view about boundaries and territory is addressed in another Frost poem, <a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/42891" target="_blank">‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’</a>.The poem starts<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Whose woods these are I think I know.<br />
His house is in the village though;<br />
He will not see me stopping here<br />
To watch his woods fill up with snow.</blockquote>
The speaker is riding through some woods which are not his, but the trespass seems to be implied not in the passing through, but in the stopping and looking. Perhaps taking pleasure from something that is not yours is a crime, even if by doing so you hurt no-one? Certainly Frost seems to feel that his speaker has crossed some kind of moral boundary. ‘He will not see me stopping here/ To watch his woods…’ has a very different implication from a possible alternative that Frost didn’t use: ‘He will not mind me…’. So even without walls, the social boundaries of territory exist.<br />
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In English, the word ‘wall’ is a kind of catch-all. We have to use the same word, whether we mean the internal vertical surfaces of a room, or an exterior dividing agent. German is kinder, and allows speakers to distinguish between an internal wall (Wand) and an external one (Mauer). The most famous German wall is of course the Berlin Wall, a barrier between two diametrically opposed points of view – those of Communism and of Capitalism.<br />
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The division of East and West Berlin took physical form on the night of 12th August 1961, when East German troops and workers tore up the streets adjacent to the border, and laid barbed wire and fences to prevent anyone crossing. The first bits of actual wall (concrete and blocks) were laid by August 17th, and soon there was a wall along the whole border. In 1975, however, the East German border troops started building a new type of wall along the border: the Grenzmauer 75. This was made from 45,000 sections of reinforced concrete, each 3.6m high and 1.2m wide. It was painted a bright, inviting white. Graffiti was of course forbidden in East Germany, but by the beginning of the eighties, artists had decided that the Western face of the wall was a massive canvas waiting to be filled. Many artists, known, unknown, or anonymous, painted on the wall. Sometimes a painting was only there a day before it was painted over. Anyone could paint. The wall, a symbol of oppression, became a place of expression – but only to those on one side. The Western side was riotous with colour, the Eastern side plain and greying.<br />
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<a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ABerlinermauer.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" title="Noir at the German language Wikipedia [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons"><img alt="Berlinermauer" height="300" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/Berlinermauer.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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In the Bible, (Daniel 5: 1-31) the ‘writing on the wall’ foretold the demise of the Babylonian Empire. While it would be pushing it rather to pretend that this is directly analogous with the Berlin Wall and its graffiti art, given the events of 1989 and after it’s quite a pleasing idea to prop, rather like some flimsy but decorative ladder, up against it.<br />
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More than twenty years after Reunification, few parts of the Wall remain, although on those stretches that do, the Eastern face is now covered with graffiti too. Pieces of the fallen Wall have made their way all over the world and can be found displayed in embassies, parks, schools, hotels and museums. But there is still a vestigial wall, albeit invisible. Germans talk about the ‘Mauer im Kopf’: the wall in the head. (Incidentally, it’s interesting how the spatial specificity the German noun – its externality – makes its paradoxical placing within an internal space – the head – so much more striking.) Polls have indicated that some Germans regret Reunification, and feel that the erosion of cultural differences between the East and West is a negative thing. In other words, they wish the Wall was still there.<br />
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Which brings us back to Robert Frost’s neighbour, who wanted the boundaries kept solid, visible, unbroken. Knowing that the boundary was there in abstract was not enough. To him, the wall in the head needed be made manifest by the wall on the land, even though to Frost’s more pragmatic persona, there seemed no point at all.<br />
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So, what is the 'something' that makes the gaps, the something that doesn't like a wall? The something that<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
…sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,<br />
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;<br />
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.</blockquote>
It’s frost.<br />
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<b><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Image Credits</span></i></b><br />
<i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>Image 1, Drystone wall</b>: Lupin at English Wikipedia (Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons.) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>Image 2, Berlin Wall:</b> Noir at the German language Wikipedia [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons</span></i>Sallyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15734731472624651213noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3686195118313989623.post-77593880015197105202016-03-28T09:39:00.000+01:002017-04-16T09:07:28.309+01:00Poem: Mid-Autumn Moon<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbPv4WeIdxi0_VbHydiqQwMNhRYyF7eD81579r5c7ovPc2seYzOaFk7c7Sa6tUFvFJ0KFDwEKfamNJ5aZDSD7sEAtP2whzqnTRC8G6_OCL8BAvCM7yin3SK8ivZlGcjhSFjTRY30WF52tb/s1600/Scan0043a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbPv4WeIdxi0_VbHydiqQwMNhRYyF7eD81579r5c7ovPc2seYzOaFk7c7Sa6tUFvFJ0KFDwEKfamNJ5aZDSD7sEAtP2whzqnTRC8G6_OCL8BAvCM7yin3SK8ivZlGcjhSFjTRY30WF52tb/s640/Scan0043a.jpg" width="508" /></a></div>
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I <a href="http://sallydouglas.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/chinese-poetry-su-shi.html" target="_blank">promised back in February</a> to post my version of Su Shi's 'Mid-Autumn Moon'. And here it is. </div>
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<br />Sallyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15734731472624651213noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3686195118313989623.post-65533250125539309612016-02-09T12:56:00.001+00:002016-02-09T13:51:21.042+00:00Chinese Poetry: Su Shi<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjReI9rvGvHLowBc_0RJ6hh8fSlhEgIz_qlCd8VCZDhN2IKOAEcmnJ6lYvNYRo268pHbjlecxMo5UD_0-U4-cwKpBlfty9_El_pJpZcKNmScZ39YTnKq08gS7JIRCGZ7ErtPEWXJlUm5Y-o/s1600/IMG_6024+su+shi+b+%2526+w.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjReI9rvGvHLowBc_0RJ6hh8fSlhEgIz_qlCd8VCZDhN2IKOAEcmnJ6lYvNYRo268pHbjlecxMo5UD_0-U4-cwKpBlfty9_El_pJpZcKNmScZ39YTnKq08gS7JIRCGZ7ErtPEWXJlUm5Y-o/s320/IMG_6024+su+shi+b+%2526+w.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">Su Shi, also known as Su Dong Po (Detail, Fei Lai Temple, Qingyuan)</span></td></tr>
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I had not really read much Chinese poetry until I went to China earlier this year - just some by Du Fu, and a couple of really well-known ones by Li Po - but obviously, if I visit somewhere, I've got to get to know at least a bit about its literature. So I bought the Penguin Classics edition of the poetry of Li Po (also known as Li Bai) and Tu Fu (also known as Du Fu), searched out my copy of Jonathan Waley's <i>Spring in the Ruined City</i>, translations of Du Fu, and bought <i>Chinese Literature: A Very Short Introduction</i>. I was glad I had read a bit, because when our hosts found out I wrote poetry, they were very keen to discuss the subject with me, and having done a bit of research I was able to not come across as entirely ignorant!<br />
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It was on a trip to the Fei Lai Temple, near Qingyuan, that I was introduced to Su Shi (1037 - 1101 CE), also known as Su Dongpo or Su Tungpo. I loved the frieze that depicted him reading his poetry among the mountains and the winds, so when I returned home, I added him to my reading and research list.<br />
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As I read more about Chinese poetry, I became more and more excited by it. As far as I understand it, Chinese is an almost totally uninflected language, so the relationships of words to each other in a poem are far more fluid than in English and other European languages. This allows a translator a lot of freedom in the rendering of a poem into their own language.<br />
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Here is Su Shi's Mid-Autumn Moon in Chinese and in Pinyin:<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Text from http://www.chinese-poems.com/s10.html</i></td></tr>
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And here is the literal translation from the excellent website <a href="http://www.chinese-poems.com/index.html" target="_blank">Chinese Poems</a>:</div>
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<span style="font-family: "calisto mt" , "serif";">Sunset
cloud gather far excess clear cold<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calisto mt" , "serif";">Milky
Way silent turn jade plate<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calisto mt" , "serif";">This
life this night not long good<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calisto mt" , "serif";">Next
year bright moon where see<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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I am now working on my own version of this almost thousand year old poem, and will post it here when it's done. In the meantime, I would encourage anyone with the slightest interest to have a look at Chinese poetry. I certainly wish I'd known more about it sooner.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsqfpBm-qSSDQzOFeKlKVUB2pvq1kN51d8WSQW1POL0jWL431jXYOKx5asTEXehSLb_9fQIx9AFUfaf9r1Q9Cc81DmOLcGovnWXEp3QbrR0bpX3oGwuvOTDR0ZrWbiQ7X3jsEYQZR7U-U8/s1600/IMG_6024+Su+Shi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="172" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsqfpBm-qSSDQzOFeKlKVUB2pvq1kN51d8WSQW1POL0jWL431jXYOKx5asTEXehSLb_9fQIx9AFUfaf9r1Q9Cc81DmOLcGovnWXEp3QbrR0bpX3oGwuvOTDR0ZrWbiQ7X3jsEYQZR7U-U8/s400/IMG_6024+Su+Shi.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Su Shi,(Complete panel, Fei Lai Temple, Qingyuan)<br />
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<i>Poems, Li Po and Tu Fu</i>, tr Adam Cooper, Penguin Classics<br />
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<i>Spring in the Ruined City, Selected Poems of Du Fu,</i> translated by Jonathan Waley, Shearsman</div>
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<i>Chinese Literature: A Very Short Introduction</i>, Sabina Knight, Oxford University Press</div>
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Sallyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15734731472624651213noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3686195118313989623.post-48848498611540558482015-11-30T21:44:00.001+00:002015-11-30T21:44:51.502+00:00Ekphrastic Prompt 7 - The Rucksack by David Inshaw<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ADAVID_INSHAW_The_Rucksack_(Anticipation)_1994_1995.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="By David Inshaw (the artist) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons"><img alt="DAVID INSHAW The Rucksack (Anticipation) 1994 1995" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ad/DAVID_INSHAW_The_Rucksack_%28Anticipation%29_1994_1995.jpg" width="512" /></a></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>The Rucksack (Anticipation) </i>by David Inshaw</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Today's prompt is a picture by the British artist David Inshaw. Inshaw was a member of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brotherhood_of_Ruralists" target="_blank">Brotherhood of Ruralists</a>, a group which included Peter Blake, Jann Haworth, Graham and Annie Ovenden, and Graham and Ann Arnold. It was formed in 1975 and placed itself 'in opposition to the scholarly nature of contemporary art which believed that paintings were only really valid if they addressed social questions' (Peter Blake).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I first came across the Brotherhood of Ruralists when in the late '70s my parents bought a pencil drawing by Graham Ovenden, but I know a lot more of their work from the front covers of the second edition Arden Shakespeares that I still have on my shelves.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But back to the image. There's a lot here that could grow into a poem. The rucksack of the title which is barely in the picture; those gulls all looking in the same direction; the white towels; the hidden face; the strangely claustrophobic landscape. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Perhaps you'd like to bounce this image off another poem. Have a look at Matthew Arnold's <a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/172844" target="_blank">'Dover Beach'</a>, or Les Murray's <a href="http://www.lesmurray.org/pm_ohb.htm" target="_blank">'On Home Beaches'</a> where 'You peer, at this age, but it's still there, ridicule,/ </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the pistol that kills women, that gets them killed, crippling men/ </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">on the towel-spattered sand.' Think about the contrasts and the potential confluences. Think about your own experiences around beaches and coastlines.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You can see more of David Inshaw's work, his intense, often erotic and sometimes almost surreal pastoralism, on his website <a href="http://www.davidinshaw.net/index.html" target="_blank">here</a>; and an article about him in The Guardian, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/oct/02/david-inshaw-changed-landscape-of-art" target="_blank">here</a>. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Happy viewing, and happy writing. </span><br />
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Image Credit: The Rucksack. By David Inshaw (the artist) </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">[CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">via Wikimedia Commons</span></i>Sallyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15734731472624651213noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3686195118313989623.post-26616977096644572032015-11-29T12:08:00.000+00:002017-04-16T09:07:51.371+01:00Poem: Schrödinger's Cat<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiF1uDUuU_6Dwlfi8eOmIaT2NpPTXJH6_gDWlwCgHsWaEQRBA7nCHU_S2ub7Y1QGYMr6PQWCycVe1guf0ZIlFQ9egSsea5gtwVp2eoARwl93pQ7FhG6oPpZKEon4_Tltoi99QIOntHgg0qK/s1600/cat.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="292" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiF1uDUuU_6Dwlfi8eOmIaT2NpPTXJH6_gDWlwCgHsWaEQRBA7nCHU_S2ub7Y1QGYMr6PQWCycVe1guf0ZIlFQ9egSsea5gtwVp2eoARwl93pQ7FhG6oPpZKEon4_Tltoi99QIOntHgg0qK/s320/cat.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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On 29th November 1935, Erwin Schrödinger published his famous <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger%27s_cat" target="_blank">thought experiment</a> about the cat. That famous cat in the in the steel box, the cat which is at the same time dead and alive until the box is opened and the cat is observed. I can't say I fully understand it at a scientific level, but at a poetic level, it's just my thing!<br />
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I started thinking about how surely, unless the cat were asleep, it would be able to observe itself. And if it did, what would happen? Would the 'psi-function' collapse and, in effect, the cat kill itself via its own consciousness? Let's hope it's asleep, I thought, so there's no danger of that happening...<br />
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So, to celebrate its 80th birthday, here's my ode to Schrödinger's Cat, complete with suitably unscientific 'footnotes'. Imagine it with a bit of a rap feel...<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguVZxVqGyNiGBPgjRckLhYHRBmOcjk1LAc6OBnXaa8sq-tmQke-ygfOi1NqwK9dFTVvKZ2FnBCqInArSowiFlyv5PXRaUcZOKIPpdTefAGEefcRA_d9fBmy-3dygxE06-d5FbhOX4fxNYT/s1600/Schr+cat+again+ed.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguVZxVqGyNiGBPgjRckLhYHRBmOcjk1LAc6OBnXaa8sq-tmQke-ygfOi1NqwK9dFTVvKZ2FnBCqInArSowiFlyv5PXRaUcZOKIPpdTefAGEefcRA_d9fBmy-3dygxE06-d5FbhOX4fxNYT/s640/Schr+cat+again+ed.jpg" width="420" /></a></div>
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Apparently, in later life Schrödinger wished he'd never mentioned the darn cat. I bet the cat wished so too.<br />
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Sallyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15734731472624651213noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3686195118313989623.post-49730280287360143712015-11-28T07:07:00.001+00:002015-11-28T07:07:53.382+00:00The Sound of Silence Reblogged<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
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<i><span style="color: #134f5c;">As Christmas is approaching, I was reminded of this piece I wrote in 2010. It was only the third post on this blog, and has had the most page views over the years, so I decided that, </span></i><i><span style="color: #134f5c;">with a few minor edits and updates,</span></i><i style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: #134f5c;"> it was worth sharing again. </span></i></div>
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<span style="line-height: 150%;">John Cage, Edwin Morgan and the finding of meaning</span></h3>
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<span style="line-height: 150%;">Christmas is coming. I can read the signs. There are sparkly decorations in the shops and department stores have started displaying bizarre ‘gifts’ such as electronic talking monkeys that you can clip to your shoulder. (Thank goodness there weren't 'gifts' like that 2000 years ago, or the Three Wise Men might have arrived bearing Gold, Frankincense and Talking Shoulder Monkey...) What else? Oh yes, </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">X Factor</i><span style="line-height: 150%;"> fans are thinking about the Christmas Number One. And on Facebook, a campaign against anodyne manufactured pop is once more underway. </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="line-height: 150%;">There’s a group which wants to try and get John Cage’s 4’33’’ onto the Christmas Number One spot. I have to confess, I’ve clicked the </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Like</i><span style="line-height: 150%;"> button.</span></div>
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Born in 1912, John Cage was an American composer, philosopher and artist who became famous for stretching the bounds of music. His <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnOIlsZOH70" target="_blank">4’33’’</a> is probably his most famous work. It was composed in 1952, and is for any combination of instruments. The score basically instructs the musicians to not play during the piece’s three movements – it is four minutes and thirty three seconds of absence of instrumental playing. However, it is not four minutes and thirty three seconds of silence, but of environmental noise, of expectation, of aural space.<br />
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<span style="line-height: 150%;">Cage had been considering the idea of silent music for a while, but was pushed into writing the piece by the example of the artist Robert Rauschenberg, who had produced a series of paintings which were basically large white squares. The point of this was that even if they just looked like blank canvases, they would change according to the conditions in which they are viewed: the quality of the light, or what other colours there might be in the room in which they were displayed. In a similar way, Cage’s 4’33’’ uses the silence as a background canvas for the ambient sound and atmosphere: the sounds to which we are usually too distracted to pay attention. Both Rauschenberg’s pictures and Cage’s music required the audience to pay hyper-close attention in order to experience them. Viewers and listeners had to make an effort: it wasn’t all laid out there in front of them. In fact, this requirement of effort meant that they had to become part of the creative process themselves.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">White Painting (seven panel) by Robert Rauschenburg</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">S<a href="http://pastexhibitions.guggenheim.org/singular_forms/highlights_1a.html" target="_blank">ource Credit: Guggenheim</a></span></div>
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John Cage said ‘I have nothing to say and I am saying it and that is poetry’. Edwin Morgan, the Scottish poet who died this year, and whose tribute event, organised by the Poetry Society is taking place at the Southbank Centre, London, on Nov 3<sup>rd</sup>, took those fourteen words and made his own poem of them. The poem, <a href="http://spaniardintheworks.blogspot.com/2008/04/edwin-morgan-opening-cage-14-variations.html">'Opening the Cage'</a>, is a fourteen line variation of those fourteen words, each line creating new meanings through new combinations.</div>
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It takes effort to tease meanings out of these lines, and I’m sure different people will find different things. To me, the first line seems to state the poet’s need to write, his uncertainty about whether that writing has any worth, and the fact that this dilemma is what he is considering:</div>
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I have to say poetry and that is nothing and I am saying it</div>
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By line 7 the words seem to have assembled themselves into an invitation to strip away all the fripperies of life and perhaps also of language to get to the bare bones:</div>
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To have nothing is poetry and I am saying that and I say it</div>
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And after a sonnet’s worth of variations, the poem concludes (if a conclusion it is) with the decisiveness of a manifesto:</div>
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Saying poetry is nothing and to that I say I am and have it</div>
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John Cage was very interested in aleatoric music, the music of chance. Morgan’s poem is very much in that spirit – the randomness of word-shuffling produces chance combinations from which meaning can be derived. Morgan chose the fourteen he felt made the meaning he wanted. It’s an interesting paradox, however, that while the poem is punningly entitled ‘Opening the Cage’, implying the freeing of language and meaning, Edwin Morgan might be considered to have imposed a cage of his own by using the sonnet form. (If it <em>is</em> a sonnet – certainly Don Paterson includes it in his 1999 Faber Anthology <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">101 Sonnets</i>.) <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, a more controlling poet might have added punctuation to clarify the meanings he wished his reader to derive. Morgan does not do this. He lets the meaning of each line stay fluid and free. (Have a look at the similarly constructed <a href="http://www.ompersonal.com.ar/ompoetry/cope3.htm" target="_blank">'The Uncertainty of the Poet'</a> by Wendy Cope, a poem also derived from another artist's work, to see how punctuation pins down meaning.) It seems to me, also, that implicit in the poem are all the other possibilities which Morgan did not use. For these reasons the sonnet-shaped cage is only an illusion. It’s a poetic Tardis: the inside is bigger than the outside.<span style="color: red;"></span></div>
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If one accepts this notion, ‘Opening the Cage’ is a poem that could continue, inside the reader’s head, for a lifetime. With 14 words there are 14! (that is, 14 factorial: 14 x 13 x 12 x 11 x 10 and so on down to x 1) possible combinations – in other words, 87,178,291,200 different ways of arranging those words. Well, you might say, some of those combinations will just be gobbledygook. Okay, let’s go for a gobbledygook one: the purely alphabetical</div>
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am and and have I I is it nothing poetry say saying that to</blockquote>
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Is there any meaning to be found in that? Of course there is, of you look hard enough. The ‘am’ separated from its implied ‘I’ has a plaintive, questioning tone, while the repeated ‘and’s and ‘I’s reinforce this feeling of uncertainty. Then we have the question around which this line revolves, the shaky, inverted ‘is it nothing, poetry?’, followed by an imploring ‘say’ – <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">tell me the answer</i>. Next comes a phrase that implies no confidence in the received answer, ‘saying that to…’. This seems to me to question the motives of the unheard speaker: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">You’re just saying that for some other motive. Whatever it is, it means I can’t rely on your answer to help me in my search for whatever I’m searching for.</i></div>
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And I’ve derived that ‘meaning’ from listing those fourteen words alphabetically. You, dear reader, might derive a completely different meaning – it’s up to you. All it takes to derive meaning is a reader with the willingness to do so.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Edwin_Morgan_by_Alex_Boyd.jpg#/media/File:Edwin_Morgan_by_Alex_Boyd.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Edwin Morgan by Alex Boyd.jpg" height="320" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/91/Edwin_Morgan_by_Alex_Boyd.jpg" width="246" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small; line-height: 24px; text-align: start;">"</span><a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Edwin_Morgan_by_Alex_Boyd.jpg#/media/File:Edwin_Morgan_by_Alex_Boyd.jpg" style="font-size: x-small; line-height: 24px; text-align: start;">Edwin Morgan by Alex Boyd</a><span style="font-size: xx-small; line-height: 24px; text-align: start;">" <br />Licensed under </span><a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0" style="font-size: x-small; line-height: 24px; text-align: start;" title="Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0">CC BY-SA 4.0-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0</a><span style="font-size: xx-small; line-height: 24px; text-align: start;"> via </span><a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/" style="font-size: x-small; line-height: 24px; text-align: start;">Commons</a><span style="font-size: xx-small; line-height: 24px; text-align: start;">.</span></td></tr>
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This kind of poetry, poetry that demands so much of the reader’s participation in the act of creativity, reminds me of the writing of someone I once met in a critique group. She was severely dyslexic, and had come to poetry, and literacy in general, quite late in life. For her, her poetry was mostly therapeutic, but for her readers, it became something quite exciting by virtue of her dyslexia. I can’t give any actual quotes, because I’m not in touch with her now, but, for example, in a poem about domestic violence, she might write things like ‘meating’ instead of ‘meeting’, and ‘burned’ instead of ‘born’ – changes which often added a startling and completely unintended complexity to her poems. When she was alerted to this, she was often delighted with the effect that she had created, and would let it stand. Her meanings were created in an aleatoric way, and the initially chance significances found by her readers were then fed back into her later revisions of the poems.</div>
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I’m not sure that Cage’s 4’33’’ will make the number one spot*. Nearly sixty years after it premiered it still provokes angry responses, as can be seen by some of the comments on the <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1320787/Facebooks-silent-Christmas-1-Cage-Against-The-Machine-John-Cage.html">Daily Mail's coverage</a> of the Facebook campaign. One person even rants about how the people who support the campaign should be locked up. What amuses me, though, and would probably have pleased both John Cage and Edwin Morgan, is the fact that the Cage piece must have suggested itself for this year’s campaign simply because of its chance sonic relationship with last year’s successful campaign band. Rage Against the Machine – Cage Against the Machine. A chance rhyme from which such appropriate significance and meaning has been derived. How could it have been anything else?</div>
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<span style="line-height: 150%;">The making of </span><i style="line-height: 150%;">Cage Against the Machine, 2010.</i></div>
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<span style="line-height: 150%;">*In fact, </span><i style="line-height: 150%;">Cage Against the Machine</i><span style="line-height: 150%;"> made it to number 21 in the UK Chart Singles.</span><i style="line-height: 150%;"> X Factor</i><span style="line-height: 150%;">'s Matt Cardle took the Number 1 spot with </span><i style="line-height: 150%;">When We Collide</i><span style="line-height: 150%;">. Hey ho, never mind. </span></div>
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<em style="line-height: 150%;">‘</em><em style="line-height: 150%;">Opening the Cage’ </em><span style="line-height: 150%;">can be found in</span><em style="line-height: 150%;"> <b>101 Sonnets, ed Don Paterson</b>, </em><span style="line-height: 150%;">Faber 1999</span><em style="line-height: 150%;">.</em></div>
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Sallyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15734731472624651213noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3686195118313989623.post-40191948667634505642015-11-27T21:26:00.001+00:002015-11-27T21:29:23.755+00:00Christmas Recommendations - Poetry for Children<div>
As December is bounding towards us with tinsel between its teeth I thought I might get into the festive spirit and recommend a few books for Christmas presents. Today's selection is for children, but any <b><i>sensible</i></b> adult would also enjoy any of these!</div>
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<b><i>The Day I Fell Down the Toilet</i> </b>was my oldest daughter's favourite poetry book when she was at primary school. Funny, thoughtful, great illustrations - and nearly twenty years after publication, still in print! Published by Lion Books, who have also published two more collections by Steve Turner, <i>Dad You're Not Funny</i>, and <i>The Moon Has Got His Pants On</i> - both equally appealing.<br />
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Ted Hughes' poetry for children is just as good as his 'grown-up' stuff. In his <i><b>Collected Poems for Children</b></i> there are people and animals (Crow makes an appearance), and a series of Moon Poems which are absolutely stunning. The illustrations by Raymond Briggs seem completely organic to the text - it's like he's just sat down with each copy and drawn them on specially for each individual reader. This is a beautiful book, which I have just discovered is currently out of print. But I'm still going to feature it. Faber, what are you doing? Get it back in print asap! In the meantime keep a look out for it in charity shops... or find the individual collections by Hughes such as<a href="http://www.faber.co.uk/9780571280636-meet-my-folks.html" target="_blank"><i> Meet My Folks</i></a> and <i><a href="http://www.faber.co.uk/9780571274499-nessie-the-mannerless-monster.html" target="_blank">Nessie the Mannerless Monste</a></i>r.<br />
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<i><b>Ring of Words </b></i>features a fabulous selection, chosen by the inimitable Roger McGough. Poets range from Walter de la Mare to Stevie Smith, Wendy Cope to Donald Justice, George Szirtes to Grace Nichols. This is an inspired selection. If some totalitarian regime passed a law that a child should only have access to one poetry anthology, I would say let it be this! Give it to them while they're at primary school and they'll still be reading it when they moving up through secondary.<br />
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Update: I have just discovered that this is also no longer in print. Faber, what are you doing - again? However, there are lots available at the moment for mere pence at a certain online book retailer's 'marketplace'...<br />
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This one, thank goodness, <i>is </i>still in print. Edited by another Liverpool poet hero of mine, Brian Patten, <b><i>The Puffin Book of Utterly Brilliant Poetry</i></b> features a selection of poems from ten different poets, plus an interview with each of them. Poets featured are Spike Milligan, Kit Wright, Michael Rosen, Charles Causley, Roger McGough, Benjamin Zephaniah, Brian Patten, Jackie Kay, John Agard and Alan Ahlberg. Apart from the gender imbalance - which is made rather obvious because of the small number of poets featured - I think this is a great representation of a range of poetry for children. The illustrations are bright and stylish, with a different illustrator for each poet, and here the gender imbalance is the other way, since more than half are female. Great for primary school aged children.<br />
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<b>Okay, slight failure on the <i>recommending books that people can actually buy</i> front. Sorry about that.</b><br />
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But there's some brilliant children's poetry out there. One I'm going to give to someone this Christmas (shhh! Don't tell!) is <b>Carol Ann Duffy's <i>101 Poems for Children: A Laureate's Choice</i></b>, (Macmillan, 2013)<i> </i>with poems ranging from Emily Dickinson to Alice Oswald and ee cummings. However, before I wrap it I'm going to have to read it myself. I have to test it out, don't I?<br />
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Sallyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15734731472624651213noreply@blogger.com0United Kingdom55.378051 -3.4359729999999912.188318000000002 -86.05316049999999 90 79.18121450000001tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3686195118313989623.post-61352197721517421572015-11-26T06:54:00.001+00:002015-11-26T06:54:47.913+00:00Ekphrastic Prompt 6: The Mask of Agamemnon<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MaskOfAgamemnon.jpg#/media/File:MaskOfAgamemnon.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="MaskOfAgamemnon.jpg" height="400" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c8/MaskOfAgamemnon.jpg/1200px-MaskOfAgamemnon.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
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Isn't this an amazing image? A golden mask, life-sized, flattened, with eyes which are at the same time open and closed. Beard, eyebrows, ears, hammered and chased into fine detail - simultaneously naive and strangely sophisticated.<br />
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This mask was discovered in 1876 by Heinrich Schliemann, a C19th German businessman who became a famous treasure hunter/archaeologist, and is now in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens. Schliemann had previously excavated the remains of Troy, where, as told in Homer's <i>Iliad</i>, an epic ten year war was fought between the Greeks and the Trojans. The leader of the united Greek armies was Agamemnon, the king of the Mycenaeans, whose brother's wife, Helen, had been abducted by the Trojan prince, Paris.<br />
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When Agamemnon returned from the war, the legend is that he was killed by his own wife's lover, Aegisthus, or perhaps even by his wife Clytemnestra herself. This mask was found in a royal grave at Mycenae, and Schliemann was convinced that it was the death mask of Agamemnon himself, although some have claimed it to be a fake, and some archaeologists now believe it pre-dates the Trojan War by several hundred years. It is made of beaten gold, with the fine details chased out using a sharp tool. It is an amazing artefact. I saw it in Athens nearly thirty years ago when backpacking around Europe and it remains an iconic memory for me.<br />
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<b>Today's prompt is to take this mask as a starting point for a poem.</b> There are so many directions in which it could take you! You could just think about masks in any or all of their forms; you could concentrate on Agamemnon and his story; you could think about Schliemann; you could explore ideas of real and fake. You could even link back to what is often considered the first piece of ekphrastic writing: the description of The Shield of Achilles' in <a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Homer/iliad.18.xviii.html" target="_blank">Book 18 of <i>The Iliad</i></a>.<br />
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If you are interested in some background, there's an interesting <a href="https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/ancient-art-civilizations/aegean-art1/mycenaean/v/agamemnon-mask" target="_blank">discussion here</a>, and an article about the authenticity question <a href="http://www.ancient-origins.net/artifacts-other-artifacts/questioning-mycenaean-death-mask-agamemnon-003435" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
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If you fancy reading or rereading <i>The Iliad</i> the translation by Richmond Lattimore is the one to go for.<br />
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And here's what Google has to say about the word 'mask':<br />
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<span data-dobid="hdw">mask</span></div>
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<span class="lr_dct_ph">mɑːsk/</span><span class="lr_dct_spkr lr_dct_spkr_off" data-log-string="pronunciation-icon-click" jsaction="dob.p" style="display: inline-block; height: 16px; margin: 0px 2px 4px 5px; opacity: 0.55; vertical-align: middle; width: 16px;" title="Listen"><input height="14" src="data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAABwAAAAcCAQAAADYBBcfAAABN0lEQVR4AZ3UT4vNYRwF8M+dieS3uNtb7r1lKZPNTNlMWY13gDeBrih7L2A2yka2ItlZYWGrjBJF+VdYjEJTFsI1x9qTX/Ptfp716dmc71m2tzfGPvmibAaI+OOmiZLTdgERETtO2dMJPwVwzHVzEbsu64cVOyIAWPNCRJzVa+yjNEGGHoj4bd1/DT2XNgg6WyJeO6Blv0fSE2Tqu4iZxsBtaYPuOQTgkogPlgGATWmDiG1HAZ1vIjZI/wNEvNMBronYXFJz2HnAQ3C8+mM8BUxEbA9EvwEI+OEg2OcX5ksWVA++AozA13rwDmANvK0G37sK2ACPawX4bKUpwMlK5e4aAbjYVG6xktfP6klzVqVD7twXMbdenw5WPRMR5+pjtepG/1jV5vGMkgv/DPItU3XgpSuOaPwFsUTQA47vSZQAAAAASUVORK5CYII=" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;" type="image" width="14" /></span></div>
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<i>noun</i></div>
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noun: <b>mask</b>; plural noun: <b>masks</b>; noun: <b>masque</b>; plural noun: <b>masques</b></div>
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<strong>1</strong>.</div>
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a covering for all or part of the face, worn as a disguise, or to amuse or frighten others.</div>
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<tr><td class="lr_dct_nyms_ttl" style="font-style: italic; padding: 0px 3px 0px 0px; vertical-align: top; white-space: nowrap;">synonyms:</td><td style="padding: 0px;"><a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIITAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+disguise&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIITAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">disguise</a>, <a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIIjAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+veil&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIIjAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">veil</a>, <a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIIzAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+false+face&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIIzAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">false face</a>, <a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIJDAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+domino&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIJDAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">domino</a>, <a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIJTAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+stocking+mask&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIJTAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">stocking mask</a>, <a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIJjAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+fancy+dress&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIJjAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">fancy dress</a>; <span data-log-string="synonyms-more-click" jsaction="dob.m"><span class="lr_dct_more_btn" style="color: #1a0dab; cursor: pointer; padding-left: 4px;">More</span></span><br />
<div style="display: inline;">
<div style="display: inline;">
<div class="lr_dct_more_txt xpdxpnd xpdnoxpnd" data-mh="15" data-mhc="1" style="max-height: 0px; overflow: hidden; transition: max-height 0.3s;">
<span data-log-string="synonyms-more-click" jsaction="dob.m"><i style="padding-right: 4px;"></i><a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIKDAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+visor&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIKDAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;"></a></span></div>
<div class="lr_dct_more_txt xpdxpnd xpdnoxpnd" data-mh="15" data-mhc="1" style="max-height: 0px; overflow: hidden; transition: max-height 0.3s;">
<span data-log-string="synonyms-more-click" jsaction="dob.m"><i style="padding-right: 4px;"></i><a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIKTAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+vizard&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIKTAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;"></a></span></div>
<div class="lr_dct_more_txt xpdxpnd xpdnoxpnd" data-mh="15" data-mhc="1" style="max-height: 0px; overflow: hidden; transition: max-height 0.3s;">
<div class="vk_gy">
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</div>
<span data-log-string="synonyms-more-click" jsaction="dob.m">
</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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</div>
</div>
</div>
</li>
<li style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.2; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div class="lr_dct_sf_sen vk_txt" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif-light, sans-serif; font-weight: lighter !important; padding-top: 10px;">
<div style="float: left;">
<strong>2</strong>.</div>
<div style="margin-left: 20px;">
<div class="_Jig">
<div data-dobid="dfn" style="display: inline;">
a covering made of fibre or gauze and fitting over the nose and mouth to protect against air pollutants, or made of sterile gauze and worn to prevent infection of the wearer or (in surgery) of the patient.</div>
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<table class="vk_tbl vk_gy" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: rgb(135, 135, 135) !important;"><tbody>
<tr><td class="lr_dct_nyms_ttl" style="font-style: italic; padding: 0px 3px 0px 0px; vertical-align: top; white-space: nowrap;">synonyms:</td><td style="padding: 0px;"><a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIKjAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+matte&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIKjAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">matte</a>, <a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIKzAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+photomask&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIKzAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">photomask</a>, <a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoILDAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+shadow+mask&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoILDAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">shadow mask</a>, masking, <a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoILTAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+masking+tape&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoILTAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">masking tape</a><br />
<div style="display: inline;">
<div style="display: inline;">
<div class="vk_gy">
"a mask that blocks out part of the image"</div>
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</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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</div>
<div style="margin-left: -13px;">
<ul style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">
<li class="xpdxpnd" data-mh="111" data-mhc="1" style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.2; list-style: none; margin: 0px; max-height: 111px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; transition: max-height 0.3s;"><div class="lr_dct_sf_subsen" style="display: list-item; font-size: xx-small; list-style-type: disc; margin-left: 25px; padding-top: 5px;">
<div class="_Jig" style="font-size: small;">
<div data-dobid="dfn" style="display: inline;">
a protective covering fitting over the whole face, worn in fencing, ice hockey, and other sports.</div>
<div>
<table class="vk_tbl vk_gy" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: rgb(135, 135, 135) !important;"><tbody>
<tr><td class="lr_dct_nyms_ttl" style="font-style: italic; padding: 0px 3px 0px 0px; vertical-align: top; white-space: nowrap;">synonyms:</td><td style="padding: 0px;"><a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoILzAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+face+mask&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoILzAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">face mask</a>, protective mask, <a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIMDAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+gas+mask&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIMDAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">gas mask</a>, <a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIMTAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+oxygen+mask&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIMTAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">oxygen mask</a>, fencing mask,iron mask, <a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIMjAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+ski+mask&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIMjAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">ski mask</a>, dust mask; <span data-log-string="synonyms-more-click" jsaction="dob.m"><span class="lr_dct_more_btn" style="color: #1a0dab; cursor: pointer; padding-left: 4px;">More</span></span><br />
<div style="display: inline;">
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<div class="lr_dct_more_txt xpdxpnd xpdnoxpnd" data-mh="30" data-mhc="1" style="max-height: 0px; overflow: hidden; transition: max-height 0.3s;">
<span data-log-string="synonyms-more-click" jsaction="dob.m"><a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoINDAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+visor&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoINDAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;"></a></span></div>
<div class="lr_dct_more_txt xpdxpnd xpdnoxpnd" data-mh="15" data-mhc="1" style="max-height: 0px; overflow: hidden; transition: max-height 0.3s;">
<div class="vk_gy">
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<span data-log-string="synonyms-more-click" jsaction="dob.m">
</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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</div>
</div>
</li>
<li class="xpdxpnd" data-mh="20" data-mhc="1" style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.2; list-style: none; margin: 0px; max-height: 20px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; transition: max-height 0.3s;"><div class="lr_dct_sf_subsen" style="display: list-item; font-size: xx-small; list-style-type: disc; margin-left: 25px; padding-top: 5px;">
<div class="_Jig" style="font-size: small;">
<div data-dobid="dfn" style="display: inline;">
a respirator used to filter inhaled air or to supply gas for inhalation.</div>
</div>
</div>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</li>
<li style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.2; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div class="xpdxpnd" data-mh="55" data-mhc="1" style="max-height: 55px; overflow: hidden; transition: max-height 0.3s;">
<div class="lr_dct_sf_sen vk_txt" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif-light, sans-serif; font-weight: lighter !important; padding-top: 10px;">
<div style="float: left;">
<strong>3</strong>.</div>
<div style="margin-left: 20px;">
<div class="_Jig">
<div data-dobid="dfn" style="display: inline;">
a face pack.</div>
<div class="vk_gy" style="color: rgb(135, 135, 135) !important;">
"this exfoliating mask helps clear your pores and leaves your skin feeling soft and healthy"</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</li>
<li style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.2; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div class="vk_gy" style="color: rgb(135, 135, 135) !important;">
<br /></div>
</li>
<li style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.2; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div class="xpdxpnd" data-mh="101" data-mhc="1" style="max-height: 101px; overflow: hidden; transition: max-height 0.3s;">
<div class="lr_dct_sf_sen vk_txt" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif-light, sans-serif; font-weight: lighter !important; padding-top: 10px;">
<div style="float: left;">
<strong>4</strong>.</div>
<div style="margin-left: 20px;">
<div class="_Jig">
<div data-dobid="dfn" style="display: inline;">
a likeness of a person's face moulded or sculpted in clay or wax.</div>
</div>
<div style="margin-left: -13px;">
<ul style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">
<li aria-hidden="true" class="" data-mh="-1" style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.2; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div class="lr_dct_sf_subsen" style="display: list-item; font-size: xx-small; list-style-type: disc; margin-left: 25px; padding-top: 5px;">
<div class="_Jig" style="font-size: small;">
<div data-dobid="dfn" style="display: inline;">
a person's face regarded as having set into a particular expression.</div>
<div class="vk_gy" style="color: rgb(135, 135, 135) !important;">
"his face was a mask of rage"</div>
</div>
</div>
</li>
<li aria-hidden="true" class="" data-mh="-1" style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.2; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div class="lr_dct_sf_subsen" style="display: list-item; font-size: xx-small; list-style-type: disc; margin-left: 25px; padding-top: 5px;">
<div class="_Jig" style="font-size: small;">
<div data-dobid="dfn" style="display: inline;">
a hollow model of a human head worn by ancient Greek and Roman actors.</div>
</div>
</div>
</li>
<li aria-hidden="true" class="" data-mh="-1" style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.2; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div class="lr_dct_sf_subsen" style="display: list-item; font-size: xx-small; list-style-type: disc; margin-left: 25px; padding-top: 5px;">
<div class="_Jig" style="font-size: small;">
<div data-dobid="dfn" style="display: inline;">
the face or head of a fox or other game animal, as a trophy.</div>
</div>
</div>
</li>
<li aria-hidden="true" class="" data-mh="-1" style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.2; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div class="_Jig" style="font-size: small;">
<div data-dobid="dfn" style="display: inline;">
<br /></div>
</div>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</li>
<li style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.2; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div class="xpdxpnd" data-mh="101" data-mhc="1" style="max-height: 101px; overflow: hidden; transition: max-height 0.3s;">
<div class="lr_dct_sf_sen vk_txt" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif-light, sans-serif; font-weight: lighter !important; padding-top: 10px;">
<div style="float: left;">
<strong>5</strong>.</div>
<div style="margin-left: 20px;">
<div class="_Jig">
<div data-dobid="dfn" style="display: inline;">
a manner or expression that hides one's true character or feelings.</div>
<div class="vk_gy" style="color: rgb(135, 135, 135) !important;">
"I let my mask of respectability slip"</div>
<div>
<table class="vk_tbl vk_gy" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: rgb(135, 135, 135) !important;"><tbody>
<tr><td class="lr_dct_nyms_ttl" style="font-style: italic; padding: 0px 3px 0px 0px; vertical-align: top; white-space: nowrap;">synonyms:</td><td style="padding: 0px;"><a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoINTAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+pretence&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoINTAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">pretence</a>, <a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoINjAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+semblance&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoINjAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">semblance</a>, <a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoINzAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+veil&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoINzAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">veil</a>, <a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIODAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+screen&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIODAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">screen</a>, <a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIOTAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+front&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIOTAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">front</a>, false front, <a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIOjAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+facade&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIOjAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">facade</a>, <a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIOzAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+veneer&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIOzAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">veneer</a>,<a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIPDAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+blind&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIPDAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">blind</a>, false colours, <a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIPTAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+disguise&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIPTAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">disguise</a>, <a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIPjAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+guise&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIPjAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">guise</a>, <a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIPzAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+concealment&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIPzAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">concealment</a>, <a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIQDAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+cover&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIQDAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">cover</a>, <a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIQTAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+cover-up&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIQTAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">cover-up</a>,<a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIQjAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+cloak&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIQjAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">cloak</a>, <a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIQzAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+camouflage&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIQzAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">camouflage</a><br />
<div style="display: inline;">
<div style="display: inline;">
<div class="vk_gy">
"de Craon had dropped his mask of good humour"</div>
<div class="vk_gy">
<br /></div>
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<div class="lr_dct_sf_sen vk_txt" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif-light, sans-serif; font-weight: lighter !important; padding-top: 10px;">
<div style="float: left;">
<strong>6</strong>.</div>
<div style="margin-left: 20px;">
<div class="_Jig">
<div>
<span class="lr_dct_lbl_blk lr_dct_lbl_box" style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #777777; display: inline-block; font-size: xx-small; margin-right: 6px; margin-top: -1px; padding: 4px 6px; text-transform: uppercase;">PHOTOGRAPHY</span></div>
<div data-dobid="dfn" style="display: inline;">
a piece of material such as card used to cover a part of an image that is not required when exposing a print.</div>
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</div>
</div>
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<div class="lr_dct_sf_sen vk_txt" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif-light, sans-serif; font-weight: lighter !important; padding-top: 10px;">
<div style="float: left;">
<strong>7</strong>.</div>
<div style="margin-left: 20px;">
<div class="_Jig">
<div>
<span class="lr_dct_lbl_blk lr_dct_lbl_box" style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #777777; display: inline-block; font-size: xx-small; margin-right: 6px; margin-top: -1px; padding: 4px 6px; text-transform: uppercase;">ELECTRONICS</span></div>
<div data-dobid="dfn" style="display: inline;">
a patterned metal film used in the manufacture of microcircuits to allow selective modification of the underlying material.</div>
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<li style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.2; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div class="xpdxpnd" data-mh="43" data-mhc="1" style="max-height: 43px; overflow: hidden; transition: max-height 0.3s;">
<div class="lr_dct_sf_sen vk_txt" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif-light, sans-serif; font-weight: lighter !important; padding-top: 10px;">
<div style="float: left;">
<strong>8</strong>.</div>
<div style="margin-left: 20px;">
<div class="_Jig">
<div>
<span class="lr_dct_lbl_blk lr_dct_lbl_box" style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #777777; display: inline-block; font-size: xx-small; margin-right: 6px; margin-top: -1px; padding: 4px 6px; text-transform: uppercase;">ENTOMOLOGY</span></div>
<div data-dobid="dfn" style="display: inline;">
the enlarged labium of a dragonfly larva, which can be extended to seize prey.</div>
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<div class="lr_dct_sf_h" style="padding-top: 10px;">
<i>verb</i></div>
<div class="xpdxpnd vk_gy" data-mh="30" data-mhc="1" style="color: rgb(135, 135, 135) !important; max-height: 30px; overflow: hidden; transition: max-height 0.3s;">
verb: <b>mask</b>; 3rd person present: <b>masks</b>; past tense: <b>masked</b>; past participle: <b>masked</b>; gerund or present participle: <b>masking</b></div>
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<b><br /></b></div>
<ol class="lr_dct_sf_sens" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 20px;">
<li style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.2; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div class="lr_dct_sf_sen vk_txt" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif-light, sans-serif; font-weight: lighter !important; padding-top: 10px;">
<div style="float: left;">
<strong>1</strong>.</div>
<div style="margin-left: 20px;">
<div class="_Jig">
<div data-dobid="dfn" style="display: inline;">
cover (the face) with a mask.</div>
<div class="vk_gy" style="color: rgb(135, 135, 135) !important;">
"he had been masked, bound, and abducted"</div>
<div>
<table class="vk_tbl vk_gy" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: rgb(135, 135, 135) !important;"><tbody>
<tr><td class="lr_dct_nyms_ttl" style="font-style: italic; padding: 0px 3px 0px 0px; vertical-align: top; white-space: nowrap;">synonyms:</td><td style="padding: 0px;"><a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIRTAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+hide&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIRTAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">hide</a>, <a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIRjAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+conceal&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIRjAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">conceal</a>, <a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIRzAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+disguise&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIRzAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">disguise</a>, cover up, <a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoISDAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+obscure&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoISDAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">obscure</a>, <a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoISTAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+screen&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoISTAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">screen</a>, <a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoISjAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+cloak&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoISjAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">cloak</a>, <a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoISzAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+camouflage&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoISzAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">camouflage</a>,<a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoITDAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+veil&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoITDAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">veil</a>, <a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoITTAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+mantle&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoITTAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">mantle</a>, <a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoITjAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+blanket&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoITjAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">blanket</a>, <a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoITzAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+enshroud&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoITzAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">enshroud</a><br />
<div style="display: inline;">
<div style="display: inline;">
<div class="vk_gy">
"people carried herbs to mask the stench"</div>
</div>
</div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div class="xpdxpnd" data-mh="15" data-mhc="1" style="max-height: 15px; overflow: hidden; transition: max-height 0.3s;">
<table class="vk_tbl vk_gy" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: rgb(135, 135, 135) !important;"><tbody>
<tr><td class="lr_dct_nyms_ttl" style="font-style: italic; padding: 0px 3px 0px 0px; vertical-align: top; white-space: nowrap;">antonyms:</td><td style="padding: 0px;"><a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIUTAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+enhance&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIUTAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">enhance</a>, <a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIUjAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+reinforce&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIUjAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">reinforce</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</li>
<li style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.2; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div class="lr_dct_sf_sen vk_txt" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif-light, sans-serif; font-weight: lighter !important; padding-top: 10px;">
<div style="float: left;">
<strong>2</strong>.</div>
<div style="margin-left: 20px;">
<div class="_Jig">
<div data-dobid="dfn" style="display: inline;">
conceal (something) from view.</div>
<div class="vk_gy" style="color: rgb(135, 135, 135) !important;">
"the poplars masked a factory"</div>
<div>
<table class="vk_tbl vk_gy" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: rgb(135, 135, 135) !important;"><tbody>
<tr><td class="lr_dct_nyms_ttl" style="font-style: italic; padding: 0px 3px 0px 0px; vertical-align: top; white-space: nowrap;">synonyms:</td><td style="padding: 0px;"><a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIUzAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+hide&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIUzAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">hide</a>, <a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIVDAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+conceal&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIVDAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">conceal</a>, <a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIVTAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+disguise&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIVTAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">disguise</a>, cover up, <a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIVjAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+obscure&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIVjAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">obscure</a>, <a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIVzAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+screen&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIVzAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">screen</a>, <a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIWDAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+cloak&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIWDAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">cloak</a>, <a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIWTAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+camouflage&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIWTAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">camouflage</a>,<a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIWjAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+veil&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIWjAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">veil</a>, <a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIWzAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+mantle&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIWzAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">mantle</a>, <a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIXDAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+blanket&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIXDAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">blanket</a>, <a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIXTAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+enshroud&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIXTAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">enshroud</a><br />
<div style="display: inline;">
<div style="display: inline;">
<div class="vk_gy">
"people carried herbs to mask the stench"</div>
<div class="vk_gy">
<br /></div>
</div>
</div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div class="xpdxpnd" data-mh="15" data-mhc="1" style="max-height: 15px; overflow: hidden; transition: max-height 0.3s;">
<table class="vk_tbl vk_gy" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: rgb(135, 135, 135) !important;"><tbody>
<tr><td class="lr_dct_nyms_ttl" style="font-style: italic; padding: 0px 3px 0px 0px; vertical-align: top; white-space: nowrap;">antonyms:</td><td style="padding: 0px;"><a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIXzAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+enhance&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIXzAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">enhance</a>, <a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIYDAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+reinforce&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIYDAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">reinforce</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
</div>
<div style="margin-left: -13px;">
<ul style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">
<li class="xpdxpnd" data-mh="96" data-mhc="1" style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.2; list-style: none; margin: 0px; max-height: 96px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; transition: max-height 0.3s;"><div class="lr_dct_sf_subsen" style="display: list-item; font-size: xx-small; list-style-type: disc; margin-left: 25px; padding-top: 5px;">
<div class="_Jig" style="font-size: small;">
<div data-dobid="dfn" style="display: inline;">
(of a taste, smell, etc.) prevent the perception of (another sensation).</div>
<div class="vk_gy" style="color: rgb(135, 135, 135) !important;">
"brandy did not completely mask the bitter taste"</div>
<div>
<table class="vk_tbl vk_gy" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: rgb(135, 135, 135) !important;"><tbody>
<tr><td class="lr_dct_nyms_ttl" style="font-style: italic; padding: 0px 3px 0px 0px; vertical-align: top; white-space: nowrap;">synonyms:</td><td style="padding: 0px;"><a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIYTAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+hide&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIYTAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">hide</a>, <a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIYjAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+conceal&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIYjAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">conceal</a>, <a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIYzAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+disguise&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIYzAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">disguise</a>, cover up, <a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIZDAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+obscure&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIZDAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">obscure</a>, <a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIZTAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+screen&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIZTAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">screen</a>, <a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIZjAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+cloak&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIZjAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">cloak</a>,<a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIZzAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+camouflage&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIZzAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">camouflage</a>, <a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIaDAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+veil&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIaDAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">veil</a>, <a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIaTAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+mantle&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIaTAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">mantle</a>, <a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIajAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+blanket&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIajAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">blanket</a>, <a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIazAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+enshroud&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIazAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">enshroud</a><br />
<div style="display: inline;">
<div style="display: inline;">
<div class="vk_gy">
"people carried herbs to mask the stench"</div>
</div>
</div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div aria-hidden="true" class="" data-mh="-1">
<table class="vk_tbl vk_gy" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: rgb(135, 135, 135) !important;"><tbody>
<tr><td class="lr_dct_nyms_ttl" style="font-style: italic; padding: 0px 3px 0px 0px; vertical-align: top; white-space: nowrap;">antonyms:</td><td style="padding: 0px;"><a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIbTAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+enhance&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIbTAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">enhance</a>, <a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIbjAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+reinforce&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIbjAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">reinforce</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</li>
<li style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.2; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div class="vk_gy" style="color: rgb(135, 135, 135) !important;">
<br /></div>
</li>
<li style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.2; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div class="xpdxpnd" data-mh="70" data-mhc="1" style="max-height: 70px; overflow: hidden; transition: max-height 0.3s;">
<div class="lr_dct_sf_sen vk_txt" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif-light, sans-serif; font-weight: lighter !important; padding-top: 10px;">
<div style="float: left;">
<strong>3</strong>.</div>
<div style="margin-left: 20px;">
<div class="_Jig">
<div data-dobid="dfn" style="display: inline;">
cover (an object or surface) so as to protect it during painting.</div>
<div class="vk_gy" style="color: rgb(135, 135, 135) !important;">
"mask off doors and cupboards with sheets of plastic"</div>
<div>
<table class="vk_tbl vk_gy" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: rgb(135, 135, 135) !important;"><tbody>
<tr><td class="lr_dct_nyms_ttl" style="font-style: italic; padding: 0px 3px 0px 0px; vertical-align: top; white-space: nowrap;">synonyms:</td><td style="padding: 0px;"><a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIbzAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+matte&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIbzAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">matte</a>, <a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIcDAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+photomask&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIcDAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">photomask</a>, <a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIcTAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+shadow+mask&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIcTAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">shadow mask</a>, masking, <a data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIcjAA" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&rlz=1C1BLWB_enGB567GB567&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=514&q=define+masking+tape&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqee1ta3JAhUGWhQKHQ5_B_QQ_SoIcjAA" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">masking tape</a><br />
<div style="display: inline;">
<div style="display: inline;">
<div class="vk_gy">
"a mask that blocks out part of the image"</div>
<div class="vk_gy">
<br /></div>
</div>
</div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
<div class="xpdxpnd" data-mh="228" data-mhc="1" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small; max-height: 228px; overflow: hidden; transition: max-height 0.3s;">
<div class="vk_sh vk_gy" style="color: rgb(135, 135, 135) !important; font-family: arial, sans-serif-light, sans-serif; font-size: medium !important; font-weight: lighter !important; margin: 20px 0px 0px;">
Origin</div>
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<img aria-hidden="true" data-deferred="1" height="134" id="lr_dct_img_origin_mask0" 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" 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mid 16th century: from French <i>masque</i>, from Italian <i>maschera</i>, <i>mascara</i>, probably from medieval Latin <i>masca</i> ‘witch, spectre’, but influenced by Arabic <i>masḵara</i> ‘buffoon’.</div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Image Credit: "<a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MaskOfAgamemnon.jpg#/media/File:MaskOfAgamemnon.jpg">MaskOfAgamemnon</a>" by <span class="fn value">Xuan Che</span> - <span class="int-own-work">Self-photographed</span> (<a class="external text" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/rosemania/5705122218/" rel="nofollow">Flickr</a>), <span style="white-space: nowrap;">20 December 2010</span>. </i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0" title="Creative Commons Attribution 2.0">CC BY 2.0</a> via <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/">Commons</a>.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Definition Credit: <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=mask%20definition" target="_blank">Google</a></i></span>Sallyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15734731472624651213noreply@blogger.com0United Kingdom55.378051 -3.4359729999999912.188318500000001 -86.05316049999999 90 79.18121450000001tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3686195118313989623.post-4992047513847962182015-11-25T16:22:00.001+00:002015-11-25T16:22:48.410+00:00Art from poetry/poetry from art: blueshift<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2gW4WF_AIAd90QeKUHWLR5MeVI9JIvDb3xH1ZCJ0jjdu9gWb-aTwogEdRAHW94NCiSAvi5galudZRLai5eizti6cZQAEDcpqSdgyhUbk_JNX2zHOoxhkxFCX0LE276NE122p43oLRUI9c/s1600/blueshiftfront.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2gW4WF_AIAd90QeKUHWLR5MeVI9JIvDb3xH1ZCJ0jjdu9gWb-aTwogEdRAHW94NCiSAvi5galudZRLai5eizti6cZQAEDcpqSdgyhUbk_JNX2zHOoxhkxFCX0LE276NE122p43oLRUI9c/s640/blueshiftfront.jpg" width="458" /></a></div>
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I've just had the pleasure of reviewing this lovely pamphlet, a linked sequence of original art and poetry responses, at Abegail Morley's Poetry Shed. You can read the review <a href="https://abegailmorley.wordpress.com/2015/11/25/sally-douglas-reviews-blueshift-art-from-poetry-poetry-from-art/" target="_blank">here</a>, and purchase the book<a href="https://kdennison.wordpress.com/blueshift/" target="_blank"> here</a>. It's beautiful, and would make a lovely Christmas present for anyone who likes art or poetry! </div>
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The poets and artists featured in the pamphlet are:</div>
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Stephanie Arsoska</div>
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Becky Cherriman</div>
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Claire Collison</div>
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Karen Dennison</div>
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Sheena Drayton</div>
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Lizanne van Essen</div>
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Saras Feijoo</div>
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Tessa Frampton</div>
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Rebecca Gethin</div>
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Pam Job</div>
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Pete Kennedy</div>
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Agnes Marton</div>
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Sam Smith</div>
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Emmy Verschoor</div>
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Sallyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15734731472624651213noreply@blogger.com0United Kingdom55.378051 -3.4359729999999912.188318500000001 -86.05316049999999 90 79.18121450000001tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3686195118313989623.post-10607333117545712852015-11-24T17:03:00.000+00:002015-11-24T17:03:19.288+00:00Warsan Shire<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="clear: both;">
<b>no one leaves home unless<br />home is the mouth of a shark</b></blockquote>
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I bought Warsan Shire's pamphlet <i>teaching my mother how to give birth</i> on the strength of some of her poems that had been widely shared and quoted on Twitter and Facebook. </div>
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I'm so glad I did. </div>
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It's not comfortable reading. And that's a good thing. </div>
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The poems are brilliant. </div>
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Buy it. </div>
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Warsan Shire has 53.5K followers on Twitter - when you read her poems you can understand why. </div>
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Here's <a href="http://seekershub.org/blog/2015/09/home-warsan-shire/" target="_blank">'Home'</a> which is not in the pamphlet, but which I've quoted from above.</div>
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Warsan Shire: <i>teaching my mother how to give birth, </i>flipped eye, 2011</div>
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Sallyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15734731472624651213noreply@blogger.com0United Kingdom55.378051 -3.4359729999999912.188318500000001 -86.05316049999999 90 79.18121450000001tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3686195118313989623.post-66491644124482682442015-11-23T08:13:00.003+00:002017-04-16T09:08:16.754+01:00Reddled Daysred letter days<br />
red alert<br />
red admiral<br />
red apple<br />
red arrows<br />
red ball<br />
red bull<br />
red blood cells<br />
red cabbage<br />
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red cross<br />
red carpet<br />
red onion<br />
red october<br />
red umbrella<br />
red berries<br />
red ochre<br />
red wine<br />
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red dwarf<br />
red dragon<br />
red dress<br />
red riding hood<br />
red kite<br />
red lentil soup<br />
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red eye</div>
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red ensign</div>
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red flag </div>
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red fox</div>
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red planet</div>
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red giant</div>
red velvet<br />
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red hair</div>
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red herring</div>
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red nose</div>
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red queen</div>
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reddled days</div>
Sallyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15734731472624651213noreply@blogger.com0United Kingdom55.378051 -3.4359729999999912.188318500000001 -86.05316049999999 90 79.18121450000001tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3686195118313989623.post-41064860772630443392015-11-22T09:22:00.000+00:002015-11-23T07:55:11.339+00:00Is My Team Ploughing?<blockquote class="tr_bq">
‘Is my team ploughing,<br />
That I was used to
drive <br />
And hear the harness jingle <br />
When I was man
alive?’ <br />
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Ay, the horses trample, <br />
The harness jingles
now; <br />
No change though you lie under <br />
The land you used to
plough.</blockquote>
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Some A.E. Housman for you today. Above are the first two verses of 'Is My Team Ploughing?', Poem XXVII from <i>A Shropshire Lad</i>, published in 1896. You can read it in full here at <a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/182369" target="_blank">The Poetry Foundation</a>, and below is a video of a performance by Dan Kempson of the beautiful setting by George Butterworth.<br />
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Butterworth composed the his settings for a selection from <i>A Shropshire Lad</i> in 1911 - 12, before the start of the First World War. He died only a few years later, aged just 31, at the Battle of the Somme, and his music is a poignant reminder of what is lost in war.<br />
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A thought: is the setting of poems to music a precursor to the <a href="http://sallydouglas.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/film-poems-poetry-films.html" target="_blank">filmpoem</a>?<br />
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<br />Sallyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15734731472624651213noreply@blogger.com0United Kingdom55.378051 -3.4359729999999912.188318500000001 -86.05316049999999 90 79.18121450000001tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3686195118313989623.post-5395881433420686452015-11-21T09:14:00.000+00:002015-11-21T09:14:18.894+00:00A Bit of Grammatical Light Relief<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I bought 'A Choice of Comic and Curious Verse' in 1975, when I was twelve. It's been one of my cherished possessions ever since. The spine is cracking, the glue is decaying, the pages are yellow and there is a stain on the cover. But the poetry is still brilliant - the complete range from wry to hilarious, with a smattering of rather rude.<br />
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Here's one of my favourites, by the German poet Christian Morgenstern, and translated by RFC Hull, better known for translating the works of Jung! I have no idea how this works in German, but I love it in English.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Werewolf by Christian Morgenstern, tr. R.F.C. Hull</td></tr>
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There's another translation <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Morgenstern" target="_blank">here</a> along with more information about Morgenstern, but I think the translation above is by far the better!<br />
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If anyone knows of an anthology currently in print which contains this (or any) translation of 'The Werewolf', I'd be very grateful if they could give me the details.<br />
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<br />Sallyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15734731472624651213noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3686195118313989623.post-52562327873078507202015-11-20T08:40:00.001+00:002016-02-22T09:19:00.113+00:00Ekphrastic Prompt 5: In Your Own Background <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3APieter_Bruegel_de_Oude_-_De_val_van_Icarus.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="Pieter Brueghel the Elder (1526/1530–1569) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons"><img alt="Pieter Bruegel de Oude - De val van Icarus" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c2/Pieter_Bruegel_de_Oude_-_De_val_van_Icarus.jpg/512px-Pieter_Bruegel_de_Oude_-_De_val_van_Icarus.jpg" width="512" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: start;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">'Landscape with the Fall of Icarus', Bruegel</span></i></span></td></tr>
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One of the most famous poems which responds to a work of art is <a href="http://www.english.emory.edu/classes/paintings&poems/auden.html" target="_blank">Auden's 'Musee des Beaux Arts</a>', which famously zooms in on and out from the figure of Icarus falling to his death in Pieter Bruegel the Elder's 1558 'Landscape with the Fall of Icarus'. Icarus is a tiny figure, and Bruegel's genius is in the way in which this strange death is situated in the 'everydayness' of a C16th landscape, where, in Auden's words<br />
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...the expensive delicate ship that must have seen<br />
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,<br />
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.</blockquote>
This made me think of other pictures by Bruegel - those crowd scenes where all those ordinary people must also have their stories that no one else knows or cares about. And paintings by other artists: the people in background of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Madox_Brown#/media/File:Brown_last_of_england.jpg" target="_blank">Ford Madox Brown's 'The Last of England'</a>, or the followers in Gozzoli's Procession of the Magi, a picture full of ordinary people who are not the main focus of the image.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AGozzoli_magi.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="Benozzo Gozzoli [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons"><img alt="Gozzoli magi" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/be/Gozzoli_magi.jpg/512px-Gozzoli_magi.jpg" width="512" /></a><span style="font-size: 12.8px;"><br /></span><span style="text-align: start;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Gozzoli's 'Procession of the Magi'</span></i></span></td></tr>
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<b>But today's prompt does not use a painting by a famous artist. It uses an image created by you.</b><br />
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Most people take photos - if you are anything like me, you take quite a lot! And when you are on holiday, focussing your camera on a building, or a church, or your child playing on the beach, you quite often take pictures which contain people you don't know. Have a look at your holiday snaps; find one with strangers in it. If it's a digital photo on your computer, zoom in on someone. If it's not digital, you'll just have to make your eyes work a bit harder. Is there someone there who looks out of place? Someone whose expression hides something? That's your springboard, your Icarus. Write about that person, that crowd, that location. Write about your relationship with that person - because you have one now, now that you've noticed them. Or think of it another way - what if you were the stranger in someone else's holiday snaps?<br />
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So this prompt is a kind of echoing ekphrasis, springboarding you, as writer, off the Auden/Breugel motif of people unaware or uninterested in what is happening in the background to their lives, to find the people you didn't notice in a day in your own life. Could be interesting!<br />
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<i>With thanks to <a href="http://www.worplepress.com/category/Sally-Flint/" target="_blank">Sally Flint</a>, whose suggestion to write a poem from an image of someone you don't know led me to this idea. </i><br />
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.Sallyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15734731472624651213noreply@blogger.com0United Kingdom55.378051 -3.4359729999999912.188318500000001 -86.05316049999999 90 79.18121450000001tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3686195118313989623.post-17520742316540899422015-11-19T07:52:00.002+00:002015-11-19T08:08:50.965+00:00Film Poems, Poetry FilmsI've been getting quite interested in multimedia presentations of poetry recently, in particular what has become known as the 'filmpoem' or 'poetry-film'. This is not just a video of someone reading a poem (the like of which I also enjoy watching), but the creative use of film and image to accompany the text and/or a recording of a poem.<br />
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Here is a film created by Alastair Cook, with the wonderful Ian McMillan reading his poem 'The Water Doesn't Move, The Past Does', from <a href="https://vimeo.com/111535760" target="_blank">The Poetry Society</a>:<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="281" mozallowfullscreen="" src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/111535760?byline=0&portrait=0" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="500"></iframe> <br />
<i><a href="https://vimeo.com/111535760">The Water Doesn't Move, The Past Does</a> from <a href="https://vimeo.com/poetrysociety">The Poetry Society</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com/">Vimeo</a>.</i><br />
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The poet Robert Peake has <a href="http://www.robertpeake.com/categories/poetry/video" target="_blank">several excellent film poems on his website</a>. Here he has collaborated with sound artist Valerie Kampmeier to make a film of his poem 'Treatment in Outline'. I think this is an example of how, as Alastair Cook says on his <a href="http://filmpoem.com/about/" target="_blank">website</a>, a film poem 'may be able to open up poetry to people who are not necessarily receptive to the written word', or indeed poetry as a genre. It uses visual image and music to enhance the meaning of the spoken word, the different media all intertwining, reflecting and echoing each other.<br />
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<i>Robert Peake: Treatment in Outline</i><br />
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'Innocent Beat' by Martha McCollough goes a step further than both of these. In this film text, spoken word and image are all inextricably linked. It is hard to imagine them being separated out into their component parts - the film is an organic whole. The viewer has to pay attention at all levels to fully access the poem: text weaves across the screen in counterpoint to spoken words, and the way these interact with each other and the soundscape adds even deeper levels to the experience. This, I think, is extremely innovative poem-making - the poem <i>as </i>film, rather than the poem <i>through</i> film.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/H9hZ4Bup3N8" width="560"></iframe>
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<i>Martha McCollough: Innocent Beat</i><br />
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I think I'm going to have a go at making some film poems myself - but don't hold your breath, they may be some time coming. The last time I tried doing something on Windows Moviemaker my son told me it was like something made by a ten-year-old. So I've quite a way to go before I can even hope to produce something as sophisticated as these!<br />
<br />Sallyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15734731472624651213noreply@blogger.com0United Kingdom55.378051 -3.4359729999999912.188318500000001 -86.05316049999999 90 79.18121450000001tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3686195118313989623.post-51649142626588934242015-11-18T07:56:00.001+00:002015-11-18T07:56:06.258+00:00The Fathers<div>
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Today's post is a link to Catherine Smith's wonderful poem, <a href="http://www.poetryarchive.org/poem/fathers" target="_blank">The Fathers</a> - one of the increasing number of poems that can make me cry. I first came across it in her collection<i> Lip</i> (Smith Doorstop, 2007), and then rediscovered it recently in the Bloodaxe anthology <i>Being Human</i>.<br />
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Having lost my father earlier this year, I find the poem speaks very clearly to me as I sit by myself, drinking coffee, waiting.<br />
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Sallyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15734731472624651213noreply@blogger.com0United Kingdom55.378051 -3.4359729999999912.188318500000001 -86.05316049999999 90 79.18121450000001tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3686195118313989623.post-27624927265874158482015-11-17T09:57:00.000+00:002015-11-17T09:57:31.415+00:00Linguistics and Writing<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
All writers are interested in language. I know that's a sweeping statement, but it's true. They've got to be - otherwise they wouldn't be writing. They would be painting, or making silent films, or crocheting tea cosies or throwing pots in order to express themselves. And I think that knowing more about the tools of your trade is not only fascinating, but vital. So here are three books about language and linguistics that I've found interesting, useful, and quite often inspiring.</div>
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<i>Introducing Linguistics </i>by RL Trask and Bill Mayblin (Icon Books, 2005) is a graphic guide to language theory. Although it's full of quirky cartoons and illustrations, it doesn't compromise on subject matter. It's a great introduction to the subject, covering both the history of linguistics and current linguistic theories. </div>
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Below is a sample page. And this particular one led me to the much more complicated and fascinating <i>Women, Fire and Dangerous Things</i> by George Lakoff (University of Chicago Press, 1987).</div>
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<i>Language Myths</i>, edited by Laurie Bayer and Peter Trudgill (Penguin, 1998), is a collection of twenty one essays exploring misconceptions about language. For example, there are essays that address the myths that some languages don't have grammar, that modern English is being ruined, that women talk too much, and that word meanings should be fixed. A fascinating range, and very readable. Great if you want a quick language theory fix, and good subject matter for dinner party conversations!</div>
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Mark Turner's<i> The Literary Mind</i> (OUP, 1996) is a bit more heavy going, but well worth the read. In it, he draws on cognitive linguistics and literary theory to explore the idea that humans understand life and the world around us through what is more commonly thought of as 'literary' thought. Turner says, 'Parable is the root of the human mind - of thinking, knowing, acting, creating, and plausibly even of speaking. But the common view, firmly in place for two and a half millennia, sees the everyday mind as unliterary and the literary mind as optional'. So anyone who is interested in literature and storytelling in any form will find this book very interesting and highly relevant. </div>
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<br />Sallyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15734731472624651213noreply@blogger.com0United Kingdom55.378051 -3.4359729999999912.188318500000001 -86.05316049999999 90 79.18121450000001tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3686195118313989623.post-56175237979462554972015-11-16T08:07:00.000+00:002015-11-16T08:07:10.164+00:00Shelfie: Penguin Modern Poets<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">The wonderful Penguin Modern Poets series</span></span></td></tr>
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I bought my first <i>Penguin Modern Poets</i> when I was thirteen. I was staying with my uncle and aunt in Dumfries in Scotland, and spent much of my days wandering around the town, revelling in a new kind of freedom five hundred miles away from home. I visited the museum with its wonderful Camera Obscura several times, and I also spent a lot of time in bookshops, where I discovered these slim black volumes. At the cost of 20p or 4/- (both decimal and pre-decimal currencies were marked on the back) I could afford several, so I went home with numbers 2,4,6 and 7, and numbers 13 and 16 which were far more expensive at 25p! I think they must have been old stock, because by the time I bought <i>The Mersey Sound</i> (number 10) six months later, I had to fork out 75p.<br />
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I've been adding to the collection ever since, letting serendipity guide me: I don't seek them out, but wait for them to appear before me in charity shops and village fetes. It's like a very quiet mission: I'm playing a long, slow game. One day I might have them all - I'd particularly like number 24, which features Kenneth Koch, James Schuyler and Kenward Elmslie, and 26 which is Dannie Abse, DJ Enright and Michael Longley.<br />
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But I'm reminded of the old Arthur C Clarke story about the monks who wanted to discover all the names for God. They set a computer running to discover all the permutations possible, but when the program had finished and they had what they wanted, they suddenly noticed that one by one, the stars were all going out. The purpose of the Universe had been fulfilled. So perhaps I ought to make sure that there is always a space on the shelf - just in case. </div>
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Sallyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15734731472624651213noreply@blogger.com0United Kingdom55.378051 -3.4359729999999912.188318500000001 -86.05316049999999 90 79.18121450000001