Mike Jenkins - Welsh Poet & Author
  • Mike's Blog
  • New Book!
  • About Mike
  • Contact
  • What's the point?
  • The Climbing Tree
  • The Fugitive Three
  • Publications
  • Red Poets

POEMS WRITTEN UNDER THE INFLUENCE (OF MUSIC)

11/8/2010

3 Comments

 

 

    Books are prominent in our living room, but music has always dominated. Cd’s piled on top of my ancient yet reliable sound system, cd shelves and cupboards, tapes in stacks like multiple games of Jenga ready to topple any moment. All them given to me by the Ace Tapeman Andrew  Bartz (to whom my new book is dedicated), who gives them imaginative titles like ‘From Kisses to Concrete’ and ‘Sand in my Pocket’. He should hire himself out as an album namer.

   The piano, played at present by my wife and young daughter, is an anchored boat ready to be played afloat. The half ‘cello in the corner just waiting for its bandages to be torn off, its spirit released. The music of my family plays a vital part in my latest book of poems ‘Moor Music’. There’s a poem about my son’s performance of Elgar’s Cello Concerto, another in memory of my older daughter’s band Gilespi, who brought out one excellent  album ‘Methu Chware Gitar’ and also about my young daughter dancing like  a spinning top to a live jazz band at a family wedding.

   There are poems written under the influence of strongly hallucinatory music, like ‘A Once Strange Face’ written while listening to EST and ‘Insomniac Jazz’ under the darker tones of the Tomasz Stanko Quartet.

   The music of the Waun (or moor) at the back of my house is prevalent: the staves of wires where a large flock of finches once gathered and the many reeds playing in the wind. A well-known photo by the late, great Magnum photographer Philip Jones Griffiths proved to be the inspiration for ‘The Boy & The Grand’, which depicts a young boy setting about destroying a Grand piano. Even the absence of sound plays its part and when we visited a magical place in Brittany called ‘Kreizenn ar son’ (or ‘centre of sound’) in a large forest, it turned into a celebration of multifarious sounds, but silence also.

   Even the sequence about the war in N. Ireland (‘War Stories’) had a curious origin in music. The title being a song title by a forgotten punk band from Belfast called The Starjets, who released one very good single contrasting comic-book fantasies of war with the real thing going on around them. I can still hear the chorus in my head – ‘War stories, Captain Hurricane/ War stories - this is it, this is it!’

   This is the title poem and crystallizes the connection between the moor and the music, all around us in the sonatas of streams –

MOOR MUSIC

              These are instruments you cannot construct

                            reeds in winter wind

                                                                 sinewy nerve-lines

  hollowed tree

                         bass body

                                        owl bassoon

                                                     down  down stream

                                                                                         leaf keys

                                                                                                          blood crescendoing

                     the music you cannot notate

                           duet of ring doves

                                                               echo of the snow

                                           a wind band of starlings

                                                 mimicking the other sections

                        and the sigh

                     always the sigh

                                                      of the oak’s lonely conducting.                             

3 Comments
www.uegva.eu link
2/27/2014 06:54:36 pm

I wanted to leave a little comment to support you and wish you a good continuation

Reply
Alexander link
5/25/2015 07:02:27 pm

This is a fantastic website and I can not recommend you guys enough. Full of useful resource and great layout very easy on the eyes. Please do keep up this great work.

Reply
Natale(Chris) Finocchiaro link
9/24/2016 07:47:58 am

Looks like you had the same title as my subtitle Written Under The Influence Of Music, from Fascination Alleyway, published in 2008, This book of rock poetry began in 1966 and was finally published in 2008.

Reply



Leave a Reply.



    Archives

    November 2019
    September 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    February 2011
    January 2011
    December 2010
    November 2010
    October 2010
    September 2010
    August 2010
    July 2010
    June 2010
    May 2010
    April 2010
    March 2010
    February 2010
    January 2010
    December 2009
    November 2009
    October 2009
    September 2009
    August 2009
    July 2009
    June 2009

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
Photos used under Creative Commons from johnharveypegg, Dai Lygad, joncandy, victoriapeckham, David Holt London, aeneastudio, fromthevalleys-, Metro Centric, andymag, David Bergin Photography, villunderlondon, @markheybo, joncandy, Martin Pettitt, Between the Shadows, joncandy, johnkell, olivia.barrie, villunderlondon, Lake Worth, MittenStatePhototog, frankieleon, robynejay, joncandy, mcaretaker, Thomas Leuthard, Knight Foundation, joncandy, Joybot, brownpau, Iburiedpaul, villunderlondon, amit_gaur, abegum, simonw92, beeveephoto, Aislinn Ritchie, Shannon Green Photography, joncandy, Nick J Webb, Vish Menon, AberCJ, gcoldironjr2003, joncandy, World Can't Wait, jonl1973, Watt_Dabney, petejam70, Kerndav, MJ Klaver, joncandy, Daquella manera, spratt504, joncandy, ashleigh290, Glyn Lowe Photoworks., afanatochka, r.nial.bradshaw, themendingnews, rikkis_refuge, Matthew Straubmuller, joncandy, onnola, final gather, funktionhouse, marioanima, joncandy, Dai Lygad, joncandy, Guttorm Flatabø, brittreints, garryknight, villunderlondon, wonker, Martin Pettitt, joncandy, tnarik, AJC1, simonw92, wardyboy400, joncandy, Bombardier, joncandy, Cargo Cult, joncandy, joncandy, SeanOConnor2010, Feral78, comedy_nose, Abode of Chaos, mkairishstudies, joncandy, avail, Jörg Weingrill, Gwydion M. Williams, Leshaines123, KiltBear, eisenbahner, Capt' Gorgeous, Francis Storr, New Chemical History, Matthew Black, jc.winkler, Gwenael Kere, Karen Roe