Poetry

Travel Poems by a Guest Blogger

This post contribution is from my Randwick Writers colleague Garth Alperstein, originally from South Africa, but obviously a citizen of the world now, who delights in other places, faces and cultures. Garth says: When I travel, I have of late written short poems, in an attempt to encapsulate the essence of a place, an experience or a memory. Photographs are by his partner, Melissa Becker.

istanbul

On the day of Kurban Bayrami
The Imam’s piercing chant cannot mask
Bleeting cries of sacrificial death

(On this day animals are sacrificed in the streets in certain parts of Istanbul)

Pamukkale, Turkey

Warm spring waters fill travertine pools

Cascading down the blinding white mount

The Romans in Hieropolis above, no fools

(The Romans built a city Hieropolis on top of the mountain – not visible in the photo)

Antalya, Turkey

Limestone topped mountains

Towering above the blue seas’s shimmer

Blinding the midday sun

Cappadocia, Turkey

cappadocia

Pale green hills
Moonscape rocks erect
I see planet Earth at the end of time

Bursa, Turkey

beauty-in-turkey

Breakfast on the terrace
The mists reveal mountains and minorettes
The call to prayer, the smell of Turkish coffee

January 8, 2014 0 comment

Poetry Writing

Cargoes

A Spanish Galleon. The Galleon was a tough fighting ship of its time. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I woke up the other morning with an old verse I’d learnt at school–not sure which year, but it was at least half a century ago–playing in my head like on a tape recorder. And the rhythm was still there! I’m sure some of my readers will have learnt this poem at school, also: “Cargoes” by John Masefield? Even the foreign words were still intact and popping up out of the subconscious like bubbles from a geyser.

It took me some days before I got around to Googling the poem and finding the three oral renditions of it on YouTube. I think what I liked about the poem (and still do) was the exotic sounding words and the rhythm of the seas and the wind in the sails. It lifted me out of the dreary classroom and into exotic romantic places faraway.

Also the contrast with the last stanza when the rhythm changes to mimic the type of sturdy industrial age vessel and its more prosaic cargo. I read somewhere that the cargo items in Stanza 2 were taken directly from the Bible.

Cargoes
Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir,
Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine,
With a cargo of ivory,
And apes and peacocks,
Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.

Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus,
Dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores,
With a cargo of diamonds,
Emeralds, amythysts,
Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores.

Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack,
Butting through the Channel in the mad March days,
With a cargo of Tyne coal,
Road-rails, pig-lead,
Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays.

by John Masefield, 1878-1967

Which rendition of the poem do you prefer?

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgBvDyY4fms&w=420&h=315]

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlDPnpxByXQ&w=420&h=315]

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSbQ0qwQwuk&w=560&h=315]

January 22, 2013 2 comments

Poetry Writing

Writing Haiku

English: Haiku of Basho (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Kyoto Gardens

Photo by Paul Atroshenko

The Kyoto Garden photos were taken in 1977 by Paul Atroshenko, an old friend and artist whom I met in Bondi during the sixties. He spent five weeks photographing some of the most beautiful gardens in Japan. See his website at http://www.atroshenko.com/

I am not an expert on writing haiku, but I am fascinated by this form of poetry. What I like about this form of poetry is the discipline it requires. You must write, using the minimum of words, about an experience often set in nature, often linked to the seasons, without using similes or metaphors, rhyming, punctuation, personification or abstract images and language. A haiku is always untitled. Juxtapositioning of images, typically oppositional ones, is usual, as is the depiction of a moment in time (an aha! moment).

This latter aspect was driven home to me recently when a member of a haiku group arrived by car with an egg-bound spider, exclaiming: ‘Help! A haiku moment!’ as she proceeded to take the creature carefully outside into the garden.

When I googled “Haiku” and “How to Write A Haiku” recently, I found surprisingly good, if a little technical, summaries under Wiki. The Wikipedia article points out that “the essence of haiku is ‘cutting’… often represented by the juxtaposition of two images or ideas and a cutting word between them.” And, according to Wikihow: “The Japanese haiku and the English language haiku have several critical differences. In Japanese the haiku is composed of 17 sound units divided into 3 parts–one with 5 units, one with 7 units and another with 5 units. Since sound units are much shorter than English syllables, it has been found that following the Japanese example results in a much longer poem.” The haiku in English has been written for about seventy years and the form is still evolving. It often contains around 8-12 syllables. The trend has been to shorten the number of syllables in each line, and to represent the ‘cut’ by way of linking two of the lines, either the first two or the last two.

Basho (1644-1694), considered by many to be the master of haiku in Japan, wrote: “Haiku are a way of seeing, hearing and feeling, a special state of consciousness… Learn from the pine about the pine, from the bamboo about the bamboo…No matter how well worded your poems may be, if the feeling is not natural, if you and object have not become one, your poems are not true haiku, but merely imitations of reality.”

September 27, 2012 2 comments