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Monday, January 19
Sunday, January 18
Playing Greenwich Village soon - the poster says it all
by
Charles Christian
on Sun 18 Jan 2009 04:51 PM GMT
Saturday, January 17
Great gig in Bungay
by
Charles Christian
on Sat 17 Jan 2009 05:10 PM GMT
It was a cold dark Friday night in Suffolk but we still managed a good turnout at the Fisher Theatre in Bungay for the Dic York and Friends
gig. On the music side we had Phoebe, plus The Librarian Girls (who
produced what many said was their best performance to-date) and
headliner Dic York, the former front man of the 1980s mod revival band
Sta Prest (think The Jam with attitude) who turned in a high energy
performance. On the spoken word/live literature side we had Christine
York plus your's sincerely Charles Christian who previewed his new
monologue/story Sex, Drugs & Rock 'n' Roll. Yanny Mac was on good form as compere and retired poet.
I read the news today
by
Charles Christian
on Sat 17 Jan 2009 05:00 PM GMT
Been some deaths reported in the papers over the passed week, killing off some of the entertainment and cultural icons from my youth. Goodbye to the creators of The Prisoner and Rumpole of the Bailey – and to the founder of Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Titch...
Patrick McGoohan Dave Dee and John Mortimer all dead – the same week Wednesday, January 14
New haibun - with added illustration
by
Charles Christian
on Wed 14 Jan 2009 01:41 PM GMT
I was browsing the shelves at my local Waterstones' bookshops and – after indulging (unbeknownst to my diet) in a mocha and a pannini – I happened to notice the unusual groupings of titles in the biographies section. And then I thought: hey let's add a couple of pictures to the mix. I call this Literary Lives – altho non-UK readers may need to google some of the less-than A-list celebs mentioned.
 Sunday, January 11
The 'American sentence'
by
Charles Christian
on Sun 11 Jan 2009 10:32 AM GMT
Leafing thru a copy of the American lit mag Poets & Writers
I came across the following comments by Kim Addonizio... "It's easier
to start with the goal of writing one short sentence than an entire
poem. What interests me is how a short sentence can have all the
qualities of a poem... Allen Ginsberg, inspired by the traditional
Japanese haiku, invented the 'American Sentence' – one sentence of
seventeen syllables... What's key here is the moment sharply observed,
a brief 'aha !' of pleasure or recognition or awareness."
Quite an interesting idea this – I think – although it can mean your. Sentences have unusual line breaks to stay within the seventeen. Syllable structure but it could be something to throw into the mix. Saturday, January 10
Seen at the gym
by
Charles Christian
on Sat 10 Jan 2009 03:56 PM GMT
This is based on a recent real-life observation at a gym – I wrote the haiku and then asked concrete poetry/calligram specialist Chris Major to come up with an illustration...  Wednesday, January 7
New gig in Suffolk
by
Charles Christian
on Wed 07 Jan 2009 10:19 AM GMT
I'm taking part at a gig in Bungay (Suffolk) next week. The Fisher Theatre is a great venue. Dic York has put together a great line-up – so do come along. Oh, and I'm going to be doing some new material.
 Tuesday, January 6
A recycled haibun
by
Charles Christian
on Tue 06 Jan 2009 01:26 PM GMT
I was watching a TV programme about 'prog rock' the other night – as you do – alright, as I do, that was one of my adolescent weaknesses – I've still got a shelf full of vinyl albums by The Nice, Emerson Lake & Palmer, King Crimson and Yes – and there was a story about how Justin Hayward of the Moody Blues was once struggling with two songs that had good openings but weak endings. His solution was to combine them and the end result – Question (1971) – proved to be one of the band's most successful singles (No.2 in the UK and No.21 on the Billboard Hot 100). And then I thought: "Hello, I've got a couple of poems – one that starts well but ends weakly – and one that ends well but has a weak opening. Oh, and also a haiku that needs a good home. I wonder if I can pull off the same trick?" So here we go – one recycled haibun...
CARGO PANTS ARE OUT I’m on the 5:30 from Liverpool Street. Oblivious to any sense of irony or self-awareness, the overweight guy – sitting opposite me in the carriage – orders a Mars Bar and a large bag of cheese ‘n’ onion potato crisps to go with his Diet Coke. As we pull out of Manningtree, he phones ahead to an Indian restaurant in Ipswich to order a takeaway. If we are what we eat, then he’s about to become a Prawn Dansak, with side orders of Bombay Potato, Saag Aloo, Bhindi Bhajee, Pilau rice, two Peshwari naan – and a couple of vegetable Samosas thrown in for good measure. I am reminded of all this the next day... when I pull on a pair of freshly laundered jeans and find they are a little bit tighter than they were the last time I wore them. I’d like to think they’d shrunk in the wash. I’d like to think a lot of things. I’d like to think I still had the body of a 19-year-old. But I know that, short of kidnapping a 19-year-old, those days are over. It’s on days like this you wake up and know you’ll never again wear Madrass-check cargo pants, skater boi shorts, snakeskin cowboy boots, biker-style leather jackets, Liberty-print fitted floral shirts, horizontal stripes nor Chuck Taylor Converse All Star sneakers. It’s a coming of age acceptance that you can no longer pretend those straining button-holes are a deliberate fashion statement. And that you are never going to lose those extra two inches that'll make your clothes fit more comfortably. It’s a coming of age recognition that some colours now make you look more washed out and washed up than you already feel. It’s a coming of age admission that some of those clothes never fitted even when they were brand new and their purchase was always going to be an act of blind faith. It’s a coming of age thing, I say, as I finally pass over a bundle of little-worn clothes to the lady in the charity shop. middle age calling... designer jeans out stretchy waistbands in Sunday, January 4
Tales from the Digital Slow Lane #1
by
Charles Christian
on Sun 04 Jan 2009 06:47 PM GMT
Why do I call these postings Tales from the Digital Slow Lane? Let’s start at the beginning…
You need to know where I live. It’s in a rural part of the UK called East Anglia. That’s the sticky out bit approximately 100 miles and 20 years from London. If you approach my village from the North, along the charmingly-named Triple Plea Lane, you inevitably find yourself playing chicken with the kamikaze pheasants that lurk in the hedgerows and delight in running in front of your car – causing you to take violent evasive action, breaking, swerving, skidding to avoid them and generally ruining the rest of your day. If you approach my village from the West, near to the equally charmingly-named Misery Corner, you all too often find yourself playing chicken with the kamikaze cattle that have escaped from their pens and loom out of the early morning mists in front of your car – causing you to take violent evasive action, breaking, swerving, skidding to avoid them and generally ruining the rest of your day. These cattle are such good escape artists – and their death-wish so deeply ingrained – that on one, now legendary, occasion they escaped overnight – route-marched 15 miles due west – safely crossed the dual carriageway section of a major road – found their way onto the tracks of the main railway line into London – and then ran out into the path of an approaching express train. Thereby causing the driver to take violent evasive action, breaking, swerving, skidding to avoid them and generally ruining the rest of the day for the tens of thousands of commuters at stations further down the line, whose journeys into work were delayed while the emergency services cleared away mess – and what remained of the cattle. Better make that the dearly departed and pretty much rendered in hamburger patties cattle. They didn’t call out a veterinary surgeon, they called in McDonalds. If you approach my village from the East, along a long, winding, narrow country lane, there are no stray animals to trouble your journey. This is because they have already been turned into roadkill by crazy, homicidal little old ladies – and when I say little, I mean they are so small and shrivelled that when you first see them approach you think there is nobody in the vehicle – but then you spot their wrinkly faces peering vacantly out through the gap between the dashboard and the top of the steering wheel. Crazy, homicidal little old ladies who drive their cars at unfeasibly fast speeds down the middle of the road, forcing everyone else to take violent evasive action, breaking, swerving, skidding to avoid them and generally ruining the rest of your day. Not surprisingly, my favourite route into the village is now from the South. There are no kamikaze animals nor crazy, homicidal little old ladies to worry about. Instead, it takes me by the home of The Very Famous Author Who Had One Of His Books Turned Into A Hollywood Movie Starring Nicolas Cage. And then on past the village church – where the clock on the tower is always 23 minutes slow. There again, it may be the clock on the tower is correct and that the whole village occupies a time-zone 23 minutes askew from the rest of the world? Perhaps that why we still celebrate wassailing – look it up on Google or Wikipedia – in a fortnight’s time with molly dancers – look them up on Google or Wikipedia. Or, as the landlord of a local pub said – and I’m quoting from a newspaper report: “Out here we know that you dismiss the old ways and celebrating the turn of the seasons at your peril…” Although he then spoiled things by going on to plug the beers, soups and food his pub would be selling on the night. |
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