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Poems of war…

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There was an interesting discussion on the radio a few days ago about war poetry, during which the question was asked again about why the voices of the Sasoon, Brooke and Owen are so powerful and evocative even so many years (and so many wars) later.

They capture for us the humanity and inhumanity of war in language so vivid and immediate that it resonates still.

But what of the war poets since? Can you name one? What poems told the story of the second world war, or the countless ones since? How many names can you bring to mind?

I read some poetry, but I can name none.

Perhaps this is because the voices of the world war poets bring something to us of a different time, when gentlemen went to war and discovered that there was nothing gentlemanly about industrial slaughter. A time when poetry was at the centre of literature and the arts, and when other forms of media were limited and closely managed.

Wars since then have increasingly been media events. Propaganda became as important as bullets, and image is all.

I wonder, in our mad information overloaded world, if the modern day equivalent of the poetry of Owen and Sasoon is the website Wikileaks.

But I am a poet (if that does not sound too pompous!)

So as we approach another remembrance day, here is a poem about war, and a poem hoping for peace-

A time for war

There is a time for all things under heaven

.

A time to dig trenches and put up barbed wire

Then run to our deaths into withering fire

A time for mass graves, for mums to wear black

Time to kill and to maim- a time to attack

.

A time to dehumanise, a time to breed hate

A time to decide the whole nations fate

A time when all truth is wrapped up in lies

For secret policemen and neighbourhood spies

.

A time to manipulate the news and the media

A time of unassailable powerful leaders

A time of expedient centralised power

Cometh the man in this our dark hour

.

A time for Guantanamo, a time for Auschwitz

A time of gas chambers and motherless kids

A time to throw rocks and let loose the rockets

A time for dead eyes fixed in dead sockets

.

A time for insurgents, a time to suppress

To disappear dissidents, and people oppress

Of brave freedom fighters and terrorist cells

A time for Robin Hoods and William Tells

.

In some foreign field or in our back yard

In red sucking mud or ground frozen hard

Lie the bones of our children who answered the call

Now glorious dead with their names on a wall

.

A time to break up and time to destroy

A time to make men of every small boy

Over by Christmas or just a bit more

Now is the time for us to make war

A time for peace

There is a time for all things under heaven.

.

There must come a time when canons will fall silent

And men start again to look beyond the battlements

Into the scarred and empty fields

Seeded still with land mines

.

There is a time to strike the white flags of surrender

And put away the banners of victory

A time when triumphalism

No longer seems to honour

The broken bodies

And the freshly dug graves

.

There must also come a time when displaced people

Dare to step beyond the bounds of the refugee camp

And walk the long road home

.

Surely too the day will come when guns will be melted into garden forks

And tanks will pull the plough

A time for doves instead of hawks

And lions to learn care for the cows

.

A time will come too when borders are open

And bitterness and hate are eroded by the resilience of a new generation

Who begin to replace fear with hope

And the need for revenge recedes

.

But for now the shadows cast will lie long

Across these broken houses

And the empty streets

In this brand new time of fragile peace.

Both poems from ‘Listing’, available from http://www.proost.com.)

In celebration of working hands…

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My hands are sore this week- lots of shaping and cutting and shaving- and I am more used to soft office work. Repetitive strain injury has nothing on vibration white finger.

I came across these words today, from the book Ecclesiasticus (or Sirach) chapter 38

The writer appreciated people who make things with their hands, even if they are not very bright.

So- for craftspeople everywhere-

With what wisdom shall he be furnished that holdeth the plough, and that glorieth in the goad, that driveth the oxen therewith, and is occupied in their labours, and his whole talk is about the offspring of bulls?

He shall give his mind to turn up furrows, and his care is to give the kine fodder.

So every craftsman and workmaster that laboureth night and day, he who maketh graven seals, and by his continual diligence varieth the figure: he shall give his mind to the resemblance of the picture, and by his watching shall finish the work.

So doth the smith sitting by the anvil and considering the iron work. The vapour of the fire wasteth his flesh, and he fighteth with the heat of the furnace.

The noise of the hammer is always in his ears, and his eye is upon the pattern of the vessel he maketh.

He setteth his mind to finish his work, and his watching to polish them to perfection.

So doth the potter sitting at his work, turning the wheel about with his feet, who is always carefully set to his work, and maketh all his work by number:

He fashioneth the clay with his arm, and boweth down his strength before his feet:

He shall give his mind to finish the glazing, and his watching to make clean the furnace.

All these trust to their hands, and every one is wise in his own art.

Without these a city is not built.

And they shall not dwell, nor walk about therein, and they shall not go up into the assembly.

Upon the judges’ seat they shall not sit, and the ordinance of judgment they shall not understand, neither shall they declare discipline and judgment, and they shall not be found where parables are spoken:

But they shall strengthen the state of the world, and their prayer shall be in the work of their craft, applying their soul, and searching in the law of the most High.

First outing for the crafty stuff…

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Michaela, Pauline and Helen spent a day behind a stall today, selling crafts. Pauline is an old hand, but for the rest, it was a new thing.

We made all together around 250 quid, which ain’t half bad, considering two of the three crafty contributors where experimenting with prices and ideas.

I chickened out- reserving my energies for being the removal man.

It is hard work this commerce- up at 7, and I sat down again 12 hours later.

A good start though…

 

 

A different kind of Christmas…

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Collecting ivy in the snow last year.

Michaela and I have been talking about Christmas.

I know, it is only the beginning of November, but we for several years now we have been really struggling with the whole commercial aspect of what for us, ought to be a celebration of much simpler much less worldly things.

Christmas is for many a time of debt as we feel such pressure to buy ever more expensive stuff.

It is a time too when many are lonely and the enforced pressure to consume just underlines the isolation.

Last year, I posted several pieces about this on this blog (here and here for example) but in the end we were carried along with the tide, as a choice to do Christmas differently would not just affect us, it would also affect our kids and our friends.

But this year we would like to start to do things differently, if we can.

So below is an open letter to our friends-

Dear friends

Last year many of you bought us so many lovely things for Christmas. We are so grateful that you think so much of us that you would take the time to buy gifts.

We know that it is good to receive, and even better to give, but the most important thing to us is your friendship, and in this we are blessed.

But this year, we want to try to make Christmas a little bit different- for these reasons-

  • We have so much, and others so little
  • We think that the meaning of Christmas as a festival has been lost under all the commercial madness
  • Christmas can be so stressful for people- the pressure to shop and spend money at a time when things are very tight
  • We have talked about wanting to do something different, but have decided that it is now time to actually time to do something

So we would like to humbly suggest that you do not buy us gifts this year.

Some of you are very organised (and very kind,) so may already have bought things with us in mind. If so, it might be possible to give these things to other people, or if not- give them to us anyway!

If some of you would still like to give some kind of gift, then we are intending to make a collection for Oxfam- purchasing some ‘Oxfam unwrapped‘ gifts in the new year.

We really hope to find a way back to a more simple way of doing Christmas- and so most of the gifts we give this year will be things we have made, or commitments/promises. Please know that we think very highly of you, and hope that this Christmas is your best yet.

Love

Chris and Michaela

Preparing for commerce…

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So- time to announce to the world the start of a new business!

You may recognise the photo- see here.

We have spent some time over the past few weeks gathering things we have made to display at a big Christmas craft fair in Dunoon next weekend. Yesterday, Michaela, Helen and Pauline set up a table in our lounge, with me running in an out making brackets and prop-ups and rails.

It is quite an involved process- my inclination was to pile the table high, but Pauline, who knows about this stuff, pointed out that the idea was to draw people to things they could actually see, rather than a tangle of stuff.

All this is another step towards our co-operative craft venture. It is exciting, because everything is new. ‘Sea Tree’ will be the name of my contribution to the whole- we still have not found a name for the co-operative. Any suggestions?

I will not be manning the stall next weekend- I am rubbish at salesmanship, particularly when it involves things I have made. It is a skill I need to learn though I suppose- although it is a big leap for a public servant wage slave…

So- here we go.

Sea Tree

images . words . sculptings . crafts

Coming to the Queens Hall, Dunoon, Saturday 6th of November

commissions taken

All Saints Eve meal…

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We had our monthly Aoradh family day meal tonight- which happened to coincide with the dreaded Halloween.

Dreaded in my case, as I find the increasing madness around Halloween difficult to stomach. The ‘traditions’ we are inheriting are very recent ones- which owe more to 1970’s American films than they do to any folk traditions native to these islands. This does not in itself make them bad- but in this case, I struggle to understand the point of the whole thing.

An evening to dress up as ghosts and mass murderers and walk the streets eating sweets and chocolate…

Actually, when you put it like that, it sounds rather fun doesn’t it?

And that is the other struggle. We took a decision years ago that as Christians, we wanted to keep away from it all. It had too much of the darkness, and not enough of the light. It sided with the wrong half of the tradition- preferring the celebration of devils and demons that was supposed to be a precursor to the celebration of All Saints Day– a day which passes unnoticed.

But this means that our kids have always missed out on the fun bit, although we are certainly much less strict than we used to be- William went to the school disco, and Emily is old enough to make up her own mind.

But then I see some of the things going on, and my resolve stiffens again.

In the middle of Dunoon, a local hall has set up a little fake graveyard. And above it, they have strung some stuffed white sheets, hung from the neck and splashed with red paint. Quite creative really. Certainly a lot of time was taken.

Except that when I saw them, it looked like ‘strange fruit‘.

And also reminded me of the people who killed themselves by hanging over the last year. Relatives of whom may well be driving past…

Tonight, we shared a meal with our Aoradh friends, and it was lovely. To mark the evening, we decided to play a game of pass the parcel.

We turned of the lights, and passed the parcel in the dark, and each layer of the parcel had a candle, and some words about light. The candle was lit, and the words read.

And as the game went on, it got lighter, as more and more candles were lit.

Eventually we got to the middle- a large candle, and some indoor sparklers.

Which we lit, and prayed.

It was simple and profound, and once more made me very grateful for my friends.

Silence…

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I have just watched this programme on the i player. I have been looking forward to it for some time, as our friend Maggie, who is a retreat director at St Beuno’s abbey in North Wales, had mentioned that some of the programme was filmed there.

It did not disappoint.

The format of the programme is simple- take a fairly random assortment of people and soak them in silence, led by Catholic monks who are able to guide them on the journey. It is reality TV that seems very real. Then end is not to make people Christian- rather to allow them to encounter themselves, and in doing so, to encounter God.

Here are a few things that hit me as I watched the programme-

Silence is a gateway to the soul, and the soul is the gateway to God.

Yet I find silence hard. For most of us, life is a process of constantly seeking distraction from- life.

It is a lifetimes work to find the silence that allows us to hear the voice of God.

Ah, well perhaps there is hope for me yet. How ever much life I have left…

Both the purpose and the means of the process is- purity of heart.

I know my heart a little- and it is not pure.

My spiritual encounters in the past have tended to revolve around repeatedly saying sorry for things that I know I will do again. As I became older, the pervasive guilt I felt as a young man trying to be Christian has ebbed away- which is good- but perhaps this might also mean that I am more comfortable with my impurity.

If you have not got a pure heart, you can not see God.

Is this true? How pure does it have to be? Or is it just something to do with desiring purity, and genuinely seeking to deal with all the things that get in the way?

The God of Surprises is going to give you some wonderful surprises.

I hope that this is true for these folk in the programme.

And I hope it is true for me, and you.

Because life without the surprise of God is half life, or no life.

 

 

Gunpowder, Empire and old industry…

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I took a walk out into the woods with my friend Simon this afternoon. I had been wanting to explore an old overgrown collection of buildings out along Glen Lean for a while. The last time we tried, the heavens opened, but today the sun was shining- until we got there that is, but this time we decided that a little rain should not put us off.

The old buildings were part of the former Argyll Gunpowder works, which operated over 4 sites in the county from around 1840 to 1903.

There is very little information about the Glen Lean site on the web- apart from this entry on Secret Scotland. There is however a good article by Kennedy McConnell summarising the history of one of the other locations where gunpowder was manufactured in this area (near Tighnabruaich on the other side of the peninsular) here.

It tells of a time when Argyll was famous for its manufacture of fine quality gunpowder, which was exported all over the world.

Powder used to blast and shoot our way towards the creation of an Empire.

Here is a quote from McConnell’s article-

The conversion of the raw materials from Kames into gunpowder at Millhouse required ten separate processing stages, each accommodated in a specially constructed building known as a “house”. A detailed description of these processes is outwith the scope of this article, but the names used to identify the various houses were Mixing, Charging, Breaking-down, Pressing, Corning, Dusting, Glazing, Stoving, Heading-up and Packing, These processing houses were widely dispersed throughout the grounds to minimise the risk of an explosion spreading from one building to another. Trees were planted in the intervening spaces for the same reason. Horse drawn bogeys were used to convey the goods around the works, and these ran on a small gauge railway system. The production machinery was driven by water power.

It was a dangerous business. He lists a whole series of accidents and explosions in which as many as nine people died. I think we can assume a similar history in Glen Lean.

The location of these mills was no doubt chosen at least in part because of their remoteness, as well as the availability of water power and raw materials. Whole communities developed that were dependent on the mills for work, and were decimated when we found more efficient ways of blowing each other to kingdom come, and so closed the mills one after the other.

I suppose you could say that this area has continued the tradition of providing the means of causing very large explosions. The Faslane naval base, location of the nuclear submarines, is just across the water from here.

Walking round the old buildings today was a walk through our military-industrial history. They are being swallowed by the encroaching trees, like an Aztec temple in the rain forest.

There has been no attempt locally to make this part of our history known. No footpaths into the site- you will need some serious footwear to get anywhere near it- and certainly no interpretive history boards.

Soon it will all fall into the river below.

The whole thing seems to be to be a poignant visual analogy of Empire. Our former means of producing arms and ammunition have mouldered away. Obscured and forgotten in a forest of new trees.

And much of what we were, I am glad to leave behind.

And yet there is something still that pulls at me with pangs of regret. Memories of a something precious that we might also have lost. A simpler, more idealistic time, where all things seemed possible.

Or perhaps these are constructed memories, projected onto these old walls.

Old ruins like this tend to foster this kind of thinking.

Praxis…

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Praxis is the process by which a theory, lesson, or skill is enacted or practiced, embodied and/or realized.

You could say that it is all about getting your hands dirty.

I am on leave from my day job, so spent today day in my shed, making things.

And it was great- sawdust in my hair and things taking shape on a workbench.

I have come to love creating things out of bits of rubbish- driftwood, fallen branches, old rope. A lot of what I do is cerebral- it happens in an office and has little physical end product.

There is a point to this activity though- we have an embryonic craft co-operative, and my contribution is to be photographs and some sculptures made from ‘found’ objects.

So far I have enjoyed the making, but I have not got round to actually selling anything!