This poem says what I mean. It is from my third collection, The City That Moved, which awaits its print run.
Not, as you might expect, a poem about a cat.
My skin feels
As if it’s out for a breather.
The sun’s fingers massage it.
The dazzle of chrome on that yacht
Is a morse repetition of ye.
The sea breathes fire.
The breeze lifts
The pages of my notebook,
Stretches the reach of my words.
I smell an omelette
In the café;
A gas ring smelts gold;
The waiter sharpens his frown,
Like a ferry manfully slbowing
Its way through rough water.
This is where I want to be,
Watching days lap past,
Their touch rocking the mind.
Possible it’s a bit precious, but I think the poem works. ‘Their touch rocking the mind’. Now, I mean something by that? What do I mean?
When I wrote this poem I was working and living in Istanbul as a teacher. To relax, I often walked along the Bosphorous, which is a branch of sea that runs between the Marmara Sea and the Black Sea and which runs right through Istanbul, simultaneously, splitting Asia from Europe. And I often wrote poems as I did so. Which is where this poem came from.
As I walked along that stretch of coast, the day and the scenery would be making their impression on me. I would notice the tang of sea, the touch of the breeze or claustrophobia of the heat, the effect of light on water, the variety of colour, and the sounds that there were, possibly birdsong, often traffic or people. These would concentrate in the mind and later take form on the page as the draft of a poem, which I would then work on.
There were a lot of stresses in my life then, particularly work, and your mind tends to spend a lot of time puzzling its way through them. But on my walks I was able to relax into the sensations, to concentrate on them, and forget everything else. A sort of meditation? Or a yoga of the mind? Zen for poets? Poetry as Zen?
It certainly did and does a lot for me.
Poetry as I learned it then is an exceptionally energising form of relaxation.
And I still take this approach to my writing. I go on ‘Poetry Hunts’. Recently I went to Cawdor Castle Gardens on one. I strolled round the gardens, took in the impressions of my senses, found a quiet spot, let the sensations swirl round in my mind and find their place on a page where, in time, my mind finished shaping them as a poem.
‘All right. I get that,’ I hear you say (I hope), but what does that have to do with cats?
Animals have played a reasonably large place in my life. There always seems to have been a dog or cat about the home. And what you notice about them is that they don’t need a TV or computer game or book to relax. They relax into the moment. They are exactly in it all the time. On a sunny day, as light streams through the windows of my living room, I can watch my cat curling up into a patch of sunlight, yawning, and luxuriating into the sensation of relaxed muscles and warm sun on fur. That cat can spend all day just following the sun round that room and relaxing in it, instead of worrying about whether he has enough money to pay the electricity bill that month, or whether it is time the car was serviced again. And it seems to me that is what I am doing when I retreat from everyday stresses into poetry, Like the cat, I am following the sunshine round the room.
Not, as you might expect, a poem about a cat.
My skin feels
As if it’s out for a breather.
The sun’s fingers massage it.
The dazzle of chrome on that yacht
Is a morse repetition of ye.
The sea breathes fire.
The breeze lifts
The pages of my notebook,
Stretches the reach of my words.
I smell an omelette
In the café;
A gas ring smelts gold;
The waiter sharpens his frown,
Like a ferry manfully slbowing
Its way through rough water.
This is where I want to be,
Watching days lap past,
Their touch rocking the mind.
Possible it’s a bit precious, but I think the poem works. ‘Their touch rocking the mind’. Now, I mean something by that? What do I mean?
When I wrote this poem I was working and living in Istanbul as a teacher. To relax, I often walked along the Bosphorous, which is a branch of sea that runs between the Marmara Sea and the Black Sea and which runs right through Istanbul, simultaneously, splitting Asia from Europe. And I often wrote poems as I did so. Which is where this poem came from.
As I walked along that stretch of coast, the day and the scenery would be making their impression on me. I would notice the tang of sea, the touch of the breeze or claustrophobia of the heat, the effect of light on water, the variety of colour, and the sounds that there were, possibly birdsong, often traffic or people. These would concentrate in the mind and later take form on the page as the draft of a poem, which I would then work on.
There were a lot of stresses in my life then, particularly work, and your mind tends to spend a lot of time puzzling its way through them. But on my walks I was able to relax into the sensations, to concentrate on them, and forget everything else. A sort of meditation? Or a yoga of the mind? Zen for poets? Poetry as Zen?
It certainly did and does a lot for me.
Poetry as I learned it then is an exceptionally energising form of relaxation.
And I still take this approach to my writing. I go on ‘Poetry Hunts’. Recently I went to Cawdor Castle Gardens on one. I strolled round the gardens, took in the impressions of my senses, found a quiet spot, let the sensations swirl round in my mind and find their place on a page where, in time, my mind finished shaping them as a poem.
‘All right. I get that,’ I hear you say (I hope), but what does that have to do with cats?
Animals have played a reasonably large place in my life. There always seems to have been a dog or cat about the home. And what you notice about them is that they don’t need a TV or computer game or book to relax. They relax into the moment. They are exactly in it all the time. On a sunny day, as light streams through the windows of my living room, I can watch my cat curling up into a patch of sunlight, yawning, and luxuriating into the sensation of relaxed muscles and warm sun on fur. That cat can spend all day just following the sun round that room and relaxing in it, instead of worrying about whether he has enough money to pay the electricity bill that month, or whether it is time the car was serviced again. And it seems to me that is what I am doing when I retreat from everyday stresses into poetry, Like the cat, I am following the sunshine round the room.