Well, I don’t usually blog about cycling or holidays, but that’s possibly because I don’t do enough of either! A recent experience has renewed my desire to use muscles other than the grey one and to go to wonderful faraway places in the real world rather than just in Cyberspace! We recently returned from a lovely holiday that I would highly recommend to anyone.

First, I spent ten days with friends in the beautiful city of Lausanne on Lac Leman, Switzerland. They live in a large-windowed, spacious and gracious apartment where they made me very comfortable while I attended a French refresher course at the Institut Richelieu. More of that later.

Actually, we spent the first night at my friends’ wooden chalet apartment in the old village of Evolène. Within an hour or so of our arrival, during a walk around the village, I was privileged to see the fairly disturbing ritual of “Le Combat des Reines”, literally, “The Battle of the Queens”. This is an orchestrated contest between cows to establish leadership of the herd prior to the climb to summer pastures. I was told that it was developed by farmers who observed the natural instinct among this breed of cows to establish hierarchy with a show of force in spring every year. Although they don’t usually hurt each other too badly, on occasion the damage can be severe. Thus, it is thought better to get the battle over with in a controlled situation rather than when the cows are already up the mountain and further away from assistance. I was doubtful about this, until I saw that one of the cows that had recently been headbutting with the best of them actually had a stream of blood pumping from her nostril. Obviously, her opponent’s horn had more than just grazed her. It was rather weird to see blood spurting over the green field grass and to sense the aggro in the air amongst these large female bovine beasties. My comfy stereotype of plump and placid Daisy patiently chewing her way through a peaceful field of buttercups was challenged, to say the least. There’s more background at http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%A9rens_(race_bovine) and http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combats_de_reines. Anyway, this was a very visceral reminder that I was in a different place and a great way to start a holiday full of things that I don’t usually do!

The following morning, we walked up to the Ferpècle Glacier. Well, we walked up to a point on the mountain where we could see where the glacier used to be. It was as far as the trail went and my friend told me that in her youth that was where the ice began. Now, one can see in the distance, higher up, the walls of the two separate glaciers that used to join at this point. Definitely a moment for some global warming pondering, amidst the beauty and the silence.

Oh happy days! Not one, but two poetry-relevant articles amongst all the bad news in the past few days.

First, I was interested to see this ancient debate revived: John Walsh asks “Is there a link between madness and creativity?” in The Independent. See http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/health_medical/article2361028.ece for the full article. The sentence “The idea of creativity as divine afflatus, the breath of God, turns easily into the divine fire, that ignites the imagination but consumes the thinker” particularly caught my eye, because it refers to the mad wonder of creativity and creation that I tried to express in my poem Primeval Watercolour, which is about my surprised discovery in my first watercolour painting lesson of how unpredictable and how intense the colours could be (I had previously thought that watercolour painting was all about delicate, faded, impressionistic landscapes!).

As my poem reflects, the experience made me think of the Judaeo-Christian myth of creation out of formlessness, in particular Genesis 1:1-2: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.”

By the way, while thinking about this again today, I found this beautifully written exegesis, “Making sense of Genesis 1″ by Rikki E. Watts ( http://www.asa3.org/ASA/topics/Bible-Science/6-02Watts.html), which urges the reader to be conscious not only of the worldview brought to the text by its original, Hebrew-speaking, hearers and readers, but also of the writer-reader “contract” that requires the reader to recognise the conventions of genre in determining what kind of truth is being conveyed. The writer asserts that Genesis 1 is poetic and refers to Blake’s burning tiger to suggest a possible approach for interpretation. There is also a good brief overview of other creation myths to support the general argument. One to bookmark, I’d say.

Secondly, I was excited to read “The lost joy of ‘difficult’ poetry” by Roy Hattersley in the Mail&Guardian here:
http://www.chico.mweb.co.za/art/2007/2007mar/070316-poetry.html which contains thoughts related to those expressed in my post Poetry’s Potential and my Comment on my poem On deciding not to marry a priest. Unfortunately, I don’t have time today to summarise any more, but I’m noting the link here for future reference.

Tia Azulay 19Mar07
Copyright © 2007 Tia Azulay

Last night I was browsing through some of my thought-blurts and almost-poems and found this picture-poem combination. I recalled that I had been in a workshop where I made the picture first in response to some classical music (unfortunately, I forget which now) and then the poem in response to the picture. One of the things I couldn’t decide was which way up I preferred the picture, so that’s part of the theme!

One day this may become a standalone poem, but it needs further development. There’s just something about it that I like… I hope there’s enough here to catch your imagination too.

Leadership

Am I emergent or exhumed,
Birthed or rebirthed,
Now dangling below,
Now arched above
Damocles’ sword?

With hair root-startled
And sucked-in stomach,
Breath whisked away
By words yet unformed,
Briefly balanced,
But naked,
In thought’s blue waters,

Is it with rhythm and poise
Or by sweet accident
That I somersault
(am catapulted)
over today’s death?

Do I swim under that sword,
Or is it beneath me?
Is this my dagger that I see before me?
No matter.
Tomorrow, a thousand deaths await me.

Tia Azulay 14Jun03-28Feb07
Copyright © 2003, 2007 Tia Azulay

I am so excited to have found, via Very Like a Whale, this exquisitely expressed post called “Defining Difficulty in Poetry” by Reginald Shepherd.

I highly recommend this post, but I do wonder about the impact of declaring that “poetry is difficult”! That is what so many of its potential readers fear. Of course, this is due to a basic assumption that it ought not to be; that somehow poetry, uniquely among the art forms, should not use techniques, devices, materials and skills that require knowledge and mastery to achieve or comprehend its effects. Stephen Fry suggests in The Ode Less Travelled that most people believe that because words are a universal currency, art made from them should be instantly, universally accessible:

“Unlike musical notation, paint or clay, language is inside every one of us. For free. We are all proficient at it. We already have the palette, the paints and the instruments. We don’t have to go and buy any reserved materials. Poetry is made of the same stuff you are reading now, the same stuff you use to order pizza over the phone, the same stuff you yell at your parents and children, whisper in your lover’s ear and shove into an e-mail, text or birthday card. It is common to us all. Is that why we resent being told that there is a technique to its highest expression, poetry? I cannot ski, so I would like to be shown how to. I cannot paint, so I would value some lessons. But I can speak and write, so do not waste my time telling me that I need lessons in poetry, which is, after all, no more than emotional writing, with or without the odd rhyme. Isn’t it?”

Like Mr Fry, I say No! Poetry is so much more than that. Poetry can be narrative and is usually (but not exclusively) emotional, yes, but it also uses visual and musical forms, as well as semantic suggestions which, in the best poems, enhance their meaning. It paints pictures and caresses or startles the ear. It engages the intellect and the imagination as well as the emotions.

Besides language, the poet must have something of the visual artist, the musician and the philosopher in her. The poet-artist appreciates the form of words, sentences and lines, and the value of negative space, for shaping a thought. The poet-musician revels in the sounds of words and letters, composing melodies from them, and feels the pulse of speech, drawing it out to make its many possible rhythms audible and compelling. The poet-philosopher understands the force of rational argument and the epistemological limbo in which truth eternally seeks a home, the subjective impulse toward individuation and the objective need for civil cooperation, the power of verbal accuracy and the pleasurable mysteries of contextual ambiguity—the thought-tangents that may open whole new worlds or parallel universes.

Poems written by such poets are worthy of “payment” for one’s enjoyment of them. People quite readily pay hard-earned cash for art gallery entrance fees or concert tickets when artists they value are showing their work. Could they not be encouraged to spend a little time learning the tools of poetry appreciation, which costs very little financially for something very rewarding?

Perhaps, to invite such readers to engage with all of poetry’s potential, rather than fearing it, some alternative semantics might be in order. Rather than referring to it as “difficult”, could we choose words like “challenging, intricate, profound, complex, sophisticated, rich, essential (of or relating to essence), multi-layered, nourishing, fertile, verdant, intriguing, fascinating, mysterious, stimulating…”?

Tia Azulay 16Feb07
Copyright © 2007 Tia Azulay

Primeval Watercolour

Primaries pounce on the primitive page,
usurping space with bizarre pizzazz:
Opposing waves squall and break,
brim-brilliant crests crash, create a jazz
of chaos!
Interference drags a screaming thread of blue
across the careful splotches;
panicking through cooling pools of sulphur,
a purple pulse breathes whirls of fire,
willing them to swirl against the caking air,
to savage expectations, flay the fair
and even strokes of intent
with edges of the depths,
fan water into flame
with split-atomic spatterings
of aquamarine and shame
and shatterings
of line, design and reason—
Oh, Image, imagine
Imagination’s breathing:
Ruwach!

Tia Azulay Nov94–22Sep07
Copyright © 1994, 2007 Tia Azulay