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A Bournville Cocoa in Glasgow
Sleeting snow whitens the trade ships
disembarking Glasgow, makes a phantom
of Greenock ships returning to Liverpool.
Fish and chips wrapped in the Edinburgh
Times, my bitter Bournville Cocoa
hot as a steam train for Inverness.
I listen to BBC weather reports covering
the shipping channels and Scotland’s
River Clyde, spells of rain for Strathclyde,
Argyll and the maritime lanes.
I am confined waterside where few birds
flyover and only your embedded voice
can reach me on the day-long storms.
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Oct/1/2012, 4:05 pm
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Re: A Bournville Cocoa in Glasgow
Hi Bernie,
Welcome to DM! Glad to see you are settling in and making yourself at home.
Will be back tomorrow to read and comment.
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Oct/1/2012, 6:19 pm
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Re: A Bournville Cocoa in Glasgow
Bernie, good to be reading you again! I am exhausted tonight (and it is only Monday :P), but will be back for a more careful read.
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Oct/2/2012, 1:12 am
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Re: A Bournville Cocoa in Glasgow
Hi Bernie,
Brrr. The winter seascape you paint reinforces the chilly inner weather. There is a lot of geography happening in the poem, which contributes to the sense of the N being dislocated, but is there too much? I don't know. (I was reminded of Mrs. Bale always listening to the Shipping Forecast in "As Time Goes By." ) The last stanza is very strong and my favorite. Hope it survives any rewrites you might do.
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Oct/10/2012, 11:05 am
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Re: A Bournville Cocoa in Glasgow
Sleet whitens a hod carrier
disembarking Glasgow,
makes a phantom of Greenock boats
hauling slag on return to Liverpool.
I listen to BBC weather forecast covering
the shipping channels, spells of rain
for Strathclyde, Argyll and the maritime lanes.
Fish and chips wrapped in the Edinburgh
Times, my bitter Bournville Cocoa
hot as a steam train.
I am confined waterside where few birds
flyover and only your embedded voice
can reach me on the day-long storms.
Kaitlin
yes, too much real estate.
Mrs Bale was a favorite of my daughter who kept me posted about the series. who doesn't love dame judi?
my own model is a short poem that won many awards for Kay Ryan the conclusion of which is the call, always in the same order over BBC, of several English weather stations.
written as a prayer.
thanks for your guidance on my poem, sample revision posted in this thread.
bernie
Last edited by mojaveo1, Oct/11/2012, 2:08 pm
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Oct/11/2012, 4:42 am
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Re: A Bournville Cocoa in Glasgow
Hi Bernie,
I like the minor trim you did to the poem. I forgot to mention earlier that the place names you have used add a wonderful sound quality to the poem.
There was always something mysterious about why Mrs. Bale listened so faithfully to the shipping reports, and there is something mysterious in your poem, too, about why the N is confined and alone.
I don't know that poem by Ryan. Do you have the title, so I can google it?
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Oct/11/2012, 7:57 am
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Re: A Bournville Cocoa in Glasgow
K---
i made a big mistake, not Kay Ryan.
Prayer
Carol Ann Duffy
Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
utters itself. So, a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.
Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth
enters our hearts, that small familiar pain;
then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth
in the distant Latin chanting of a train.
Pray for us now. Grade 1 piano scales
console the lodger looking out across
a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
a child's name as though they named their loss.
Darkness outside. Inside, the radio's prayer -
Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.
-- Carol Ann Duffy
It's that last stanza...
Rockall, Malin, Dogger, Finisterre are all sea areas in the shipping forecast issued by
the Meteorological Service, and broadcast by BBC Radio Four.
The shipping forecast always follows a set pattern, a formalised routine.
On May 1st 2009, Carol Ann Duffy became the UK's twentieth Poet Laureate.
an observer---reviewer---celebrates her popularity and her technical adroitness: "Duffy's poems are at once accessible and brilliantly idiosyncratic and subtle". She writes of life in all its sadness - life, as what Eliot calls, that "infinitely gentle, infinitely suffering thing".
She was born in Glasgow in 1955 to a Scottish father.
Duffy graduated from Liverpool University in 1977 with a BA in Philosophy. She won the National Poetry Competition in 1983,
listen live to her reding her own poem, Love:
http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=11510
bernie
Last edited by mojaveo1, Oct/11/2012, 2:53 pm
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Oct/11/2012, 11:44 am
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Re: A Bournville Cocoa in Glasgow
hi Bernie,
I like the edited version and can't see anything else to fix. I'm in awe of your ability to integrate crits into rapid edits. So how do you manage that?
The Duffy poem is wonderful, thanks for it.
I've been watching "As Time Goes By" for years, it's nice to know I'm in the company of like-minded fans,
Chris
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Oct/12/2012, 8:08 am
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Re: A Bournville Cocoa in Glasgow
Chris---
thanks so much for your generous comment.
i mess up poems about as often as improve them, speed is one characteristic that my friends would find oddly placed to describe me, yet with poems i am a merciless speed demon.
Ktheleen says, that when we are driving, I roll backward at speed bumps, i'm sure she exxagerates---a bit.
LOL.
glad you liked that poem by Duffy.
again, thanks.
bernie
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Oct/12/2012, 10:10 am
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Re: A Bournville Cocoa in Glasgow
Well, maybe it has to do with letting go of your 'darlings.' It has to be done quickly, like ripping off a band aid,
Chris
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Oct/12/2012, 1:34 pm
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Re: A Bournville Cocoa in Glasgow
Chris---
probably a good way to put it.
bernie
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Oct/12/2012, 7:15 pm
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Re: A Bournville Cocoa in Glasgow
Hey Bernie,
I didn't know the Duffy poem either and thank you for it. It was good to read, especially today.
Last edited by Katlin, Oct/23/2012, 12:23 pm
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Oct/13/2012, 12:16 pm
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Re: A Bournville Cocoa in Glasgow
mojave,
Beautiful imagery. There's probably only one other person on this board who rivals you in how you use place names, but he writes about China and Australia. The poem is good, the language compact and without many bumps at all. I would have preferred some other word to "embedded." Embedded somehow makes it too technical for me. I would have preferred something more biological or something more explicitely speaking of memory. The longing for that other person comes on rather abruptly in the final stanza. I would have preferred a gradual buildup to that revelation. But a high quality poem, as usual. Zak
quote: mojave1959 wrote:
Sleeting snow whitens the trade ships
disembarking Glasgow, makes a phantom
of Greenock ships returning to Liverpool.[Wonderful image.[
Fish and chips wrapped in the Edinburgh
Times, my bitter Bournville Cocoa
hot as a steam train for Inverness.
I listen to BBC weather reports covering
the shipping channels and Scotland’s
River Clyde, spells of rain for Strathclyde,
Argyll and the maritime lanes. [Somehow what I imagine the narrator is hearing in the weather reports generates an image of the weather.]
I am confined waterside where few birds
flyover and only your embedded voice
can reach me on the day-long storms. [I had to look up "embedded" to make sure how it was being used. I commented on the word above.]
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Oct/14/2012, 1:25 pm
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Re: A Bournville Cocoa in Glasgow
Having just read a few of your poems recently, I know to read the entire thread looking for any revisions you might have done in the meantime, and, again, not disappointed. The "trimmed" version is exquisite. I love the place names too -- it's like the use of the occasional word froma different language in a poem. So much evoked,deftly, with sound and implication both. Nice.
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Oct/23/2012, 9:40 am
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Re: A Bournville Cocoa in Glasgow
VKP---
thanks for caring enough to follow my tracks to the trimmed poem. your comments about place names i took special not of.
many thanks.
ZAK---
loved your comments about names i sometime use in my poems; your guidance and patience a model for myself.
deeply appreciative.
Katlin
glad you liked the duffy poem. a small prayer for the faithless like myself.
thanks to you all.
bernie
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Oct/25/2012, 3:42 pm
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