yes, it all seems to have come through in an odd order
I don't think I'll say anything
they've been werry good to me they have
L
On Sat, May 19, 2012 17:34, Douglas Barbour wrote:
> Yes, it did, at least to me
>
>
> (but then I cant see much of the time if mine get through, so...).
>
>
> Doug
> On 2012-05-19, at 7:04 AM, Lawrence Upton wrote:
>
>
>> didnt seem to get through
>>
>> ---------------------------- Original Message
>> ----------------------------
>> Subject: Re: Perconger
>> From: "Lawrence Upton" <[log in to unmask]>
>> Date: Sat, May 19, 2012 11:45
>> To: "Poetryetc: poetry and poetics" <[log in to unmask]>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> --
>>
>>
>> Hi Chris (and Sheila) and thanks for your comments.
>>
>>
>> I am not quite sure what constitutes English in a good way poetry; but
>> I'll not argue.
>>
>>
>> I shall now tell you more than you may want to know
>>
>>
>> This is England but... It is Scilly. Scilly is in the extreme
>> south-west of Britain, about three hours off the coast of Cornwall, or
>> twenty minutes if you go by air.
>>
>> Cornwall is not England whatever the English say. Scilly is. Not that
>> it matters except in terms of dealing with the buffoons who rule us.
>>
>> Relate it, if you will, to my many poems about the bar between St Agnes
>> and The Gugh. That bar creates two coves, bays, whatever between the
>> two islands - there is basically a drowned valley between in which a bar
>> has formed. (Two asynch tides)
>>
>> The southern cove is called The Cove. It used to have a different
>> Cornish
>> name which I have either forgotten or never knew. The Cove is undeniably
>> an English name and Cornish hasn't been spoken on Scilly for many
>> centuries. The Gugh, too, is English, I believe, though not current.
>> Agnes
>> means off-island and is nothing to do with a female saint -- something
>> like ek enes, but there is no surviving record of that formulation
>>
>> Off The Cove is Covean (from Cove Vean, one word English, one word
>> Cornish, Cornish syntax): small cove
>>
>>
>> The northern cove is called Perconger, and we arrive by swerve or shore
>> and bend of bay at my title. Perconger is what the islanders have done
>> to "Porth Conger".
>>
>>
>> Porth is landing place. Can't tell you what conger means. (I have
>> posted poems about Periglis where I like to spend my time stroking a
>> cat. Porth Eglos, landing place by the church -- of, if you translate
>> sloppily, Church Cove)
>>
>>
>> You come in to Perconger past the rock that looks like Queen Victoria's
>> old age profile, between the sometimes islands and go to the quay on
>> the west side of the porth
>>
>> When there's a bar, and there is something of one for much of the day,
>> it is due south and you can sit and look at it on a bench on the quay,
>> where I sat writing en plein
>>
>>
>> Geologically Scilly is related to Cornwall, mostly granite and in some
>> places littered with erratics from the big glaciers which didn't quite
>> make it that far.
>>
>> Speak of The Variscan Orogeny if you want to sound knowledgeable, a
>> geologic mountain-building event caused by Late Paleozoic continental
>> collision between Euramerica (Laurussia) and Gondwana to form the
>> supercontinent of Pangaea. Unquote. I just looked it up because I
>> couldnt remember when it was. Times blur as you get old. Laurussia was
>> of course named after me; where I lived in those days; but I missed most
>> of mountain-building because of writing.
>>
>> It's pretty poor as mountains go, these days, but there is a noticeable
>> granite spine, here and there from Devon westwards -- no distance in N
>> American or Australian terms, but it sometimes defeats First Great
>> Western
>> Railway.
>>
>>
>> The granite goes under the sea between Lands End and Scilly, so tough
>> do-do to all those who expect to see Merlin floating in on a leaf, and
>> forget all the stories of a hundred and forty churches and the city of
>> Lions drowned
>>
>>
>> Almost everything I have written about, in what you have seen here --
>> apart from the 575s a while back, which were from when I lived in
>> Cornwall
>> -- relates to places within a mile of each other on Agnes
>>
>>
>> Right then. That'll teach you.
>>
>>
>> It is an ancient mariner
>> He stoppeth one of three
>> The other two go on ahead
>> He stoppeth only me
>>
>>
>> (Frank Muir)
>>
>>
>> I am though happy to speak of this all day and night should you consent
>>
>>
>> best
>>
>> L
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sat, May 19, 2012 07:57, Chris Jones wrote:
>>
>>> I hesitate to say this, but, I am finding these very English in a
>>> good way, or perhaps a way I like. I haven't seen this coast but find
>>> myself wanting to go... is this south west coast?? Maybe, I could make
>>> it there, but not now. But I searched and found some photos.
>>>
>>>
>>> On 19/05/12 04:32, Lawrence Upton wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> The bulky slip for the revenuer's boat,
>>>> here still, unused for its purpose now, steep, with a more
>>>> salubrious paved landing place out to the left, a boat on there,
>>>> angled.
>>>>
>>>> An extensive tumble of rock, weed-blackened,
>>>> up to the height of another boat, on grass, upon a trolley, an
>>>> inflatable, and then there's overgrowth of dense bramble right to
>>>> the top of what is visible here.
>>>>
>>>> A concrete quay, atop and round the old,
>>>> white markings for hoi polloi; and steel posts for chains to control
>>>> crowds; parcels; packets to be collected; plastic sheets and sacks
>>>> of various forms; all most tidily clean in a way suggesting work's
>>>> getting done and life is being lived with good effort.
>>>>
>>>> A slightly rippling sea through burnishing light,
>>>> scatterings of markers upon its moving shine, tethered rowing boats
>>>> in scintillation up to the shrinking tombolo. Columns of Scilly
>>>> Whites near to The Gugh coast edge, cultivated plots
>>>> outweighted by noise from others which have self-planted for years
>>>> of being untended, unstraightened, left.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> [Scilly Whites are a type of daffodil]
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> -----
>>>> Lawrence Upton
>>>> Visiting Fellow, Music Dept,
>>>> Goldsmiths, University of London
>>>> New Cross, London SE14 6NW
>>>> ----
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> -----
>> Lawrence Upton
>> Visiting Fellow, Music Dept,
>> Goldsmiths, University of London
>> New Cross, London SE14 6NW
>> ----
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> -----
>> Lawrence Upton
>> Visiting Fellow, Music Dept,
>> Goldsmiths, University of London
>> New Cross, London SE14 6NW
>> ----
>>
>>
>
> Douglas Barbour
> [log in to unmask]
>
> http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/
> http://eclecticruckus.wordpress.com/
>
>
> Latest books:
> Continuations & Continuations 2 (with Sheila E Murphy)
> http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?LID=41&bookID=962
> Wednesdays'
> http://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com/2008/03/new-from-aboveground-press_10
> .html
>
>
> The postliterate sensibility is offended by anything that isn’t
> television, views with suspicion the compound sentence, the subordinate
> clause, words of more than three syllables. The home and studio audiences
> become accustomed to hearing voices swept clean of improvised literary
> devices, downsized into data points, degraded into industrial-waste
> product.
>
> Lewis Lapham
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
-----
Lawrence Upton
Visiting Fellow, Music Dept,
Goldsmiths, University of London
New Cross, London SE14 6NW
----
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