A journey begins with a small step

Welcome to my own weblog, where I will use the space perhaps once or twice a week to explore poetry, music and all things associated.

Friday 13th June is a rather inauspicious day to begin posting! Well, it’s always worth challenging the superstitions.

Poetry – who? The predictable list:

Seamus Heaney
Ted Hughes
Margaret Atwood

Not so obvious:

Robert Bly
Tomas Transtromer
Rainer Maria Rilke
Charles Bukowski

So, a blog then! Well, this is going to be a place for comments and ideas to develop. I’m interested in poetry as writer and reader – I’m interested in music as an absorber of sounds, not yet a musician. But with the technology all around us, it is less about technical competence, and much more to do with the flair of creative ideas.

Great music I am listening to this week:

1. David Sylvian – blemish
2. Porcupine Tree – in absentia
3. Darkroom – freefall
4. Captain Beefheat – Safe as Milk / Mirrorman
5. Terje Rypdal – :rarum

There’s five to be going on with then! The choices tend to reflect whether I am in the car or at the desk. This week I have been at the desk more than I have out and about – so, the choice is more ambient in feel. This gives the brain space for a little thinking…

The new Sylvian album only arrived on Monday. It’s an internet only release (available here), so it came from the USA. It’s a weird album, takes several plays to get anywhere near what is going on. After six plays I am beginning to feel the underlying structure and melodies. There are some beautiful, stark and painfully open songs on this album. The final track ‘a fire in the forest’ is beautiful.