all one to me: 2011

Sunday 4 December 2011

Wage Of Words

The stainless wage of words –

Squatters’ rights, steadfast bliss –

Has ten men trodden,

Watered down, in

Less time than

One could accrue.

Brandishing a holy lot,

Spartans did their infants send

Rose-bathed, honeyed,

Gift-wrapped to the

Furthest brink

That men could go.

I watch you march in prouder strides,

Yet have no conflict fraying –

Where birds might hum and nest

Before their journey’s won –

Would you make folly of those ten

Through bombast of conception? –

Warriors too, there, mighty, fell

And day was wound undone.

For neither is embitterment

Nor is the smiling scorn

A fair depiction of your rank –

High-headedness will none.

As silent as a fettered horse

Does reach unto the grass

I fear that you will soon, my dear,

Fall upon your arse.

© kate marlais 2011

Gone

Trudging through this stannic fog –

The drill of morning towns

Cuts as snowflakes

Through mould -

And far off as fame –

The abstract search for

Spine and cold.

Fossilised forever-glances

Over sodden bars,

Waking winds nudge lapsed memories

And the pavement warmly holds.

Wednesday evening,

Ten past nine –

And likely for the

Final time -

Going,

Gone.

© kate marlais 2011

Henri Cartier - Bresson

Sunday 13 November 2011

Mother

This is brilliant.

This is what my mum wrote in response to Two Maple Grove.

The place she grew up in Wales.

I love what she remembers about it all.

One in a billion-gazillion. LOVE YOU MUMMY!

(take a deep breath)

maple grove is very good - but 6 pence downstairs, 9 pence upstairs I think it was - that gave you scope for a bag of shrimps and blackjacks and some sherbet. Maple Grove was also opposite the allotments and where Miss Mansell kept her large cart horses and she gave riding lessons to Liz and I. and David Mercer's dad - now swanky with Wimbledon - had the only TV in the street. and Mr Koffman lived next door, and there was a swing in the garden and a very steep back lane which all the kids sped down on tea trays with string as handles and always fell off or hit the wall at the bottom. There was a coalshed in the back garden and a lavatory and a very strange lodger called Miss Hastie who haunted the upstairs - she rented a room and was about 90 and a Christian Scientist. When the coalmen came I hid under the bed. Every Christmas we got a pillowcase with oranges, games and jigsaws and something knitted by Ding. An annual pair of knitted bedsocks came from an ancient aunt and were relegated to the chest of drawers (now in back room but then was on the landing). In the garden were lots of gooseberry bushes and lots of roses in the front. Judith Benjamin was my friend and the Benjamins lived in the big house on the corner and she was given pocket money for sweets each week. Her dad was a solicitor with an office on Sketty Road, Swansea and another office in Llanelli so he often took us both for a ride when he went to Llanelli stopping at Kidwelly Castle and other such places.... and they always made sandwiches with radishes - and I've never liked radishes really. Geoffrey Benjamin went to Cambridge and I looked after his terrapins when nobody was around. Susan Benjamin was the elder sister. Every Friday Judith and I joined the family for the Jewish blessing with matzo bread. This is all when I was small. At Christmas we wore party frocks - and mine was always a hand me down from Elizabeth which I didn't mind as I didn't like party frocks anyway. 2 Maple Grove looked a bit pokey when we drove there but it probably looked bigger when I was smaller. Love mam

(she decides, after all, to continue)

I can also let you have my views on Lon Illtyd and Glanmor, the Gypsy Boy and the Macabre cafe near the Odeon cinema, buses and caravans in Oxwich. Watty the dog from Tonypandy who lived with Auntie Esther and Uncle Jack - she taught piano to the Houston brothers and Auntie Ginnie had a second hand bookshop in Tonypandy which was full of old books and comics everywhere - very dark and with a musty small but you could climb on a table and read the comic books. She had a leg in a calipher, was very smiley, but never married. Liz and I were sent there in the summer. Esther and Jack left Tonypandy and went on to run a b&b in Great Yarmouth around the corner from the Singing Postman - I was sent there to help with the b&b in the summer.

(she ends there. perfection.)

Saturday 12 November 2011

Two Maple Grove

Sheltered in suburban wombs

Thirties red and pebble-dashed

One-television smirk.

Industry, politic hum

Distancing the docile docks

That once sailed for Dunkirk.

Walk to school, walk back for lunch

Milk Bar weekends, cinema

9 pence upstairs, 12 pence down.

Photographs of speckled friends

Bobbed hair, dark and gypsy brown

Blackberry lips home-grown.

She sat in windows, glorious, bold.

Blushing wagers won or lost

Prisoners and hearts.

Coffin-tabled café meetings,

Tillers caps - escutcheons

On good boys drinking fast.

Edward Steichen, Loretta Young (Vanity Fair, c.1932)

Tuesday 8 November 2011

The Hanging Air

The hanging air that smokes the house –

Out of the flowered, compacted –

Broadcast flare inflates

And gasses

Through the hush.

Cool a-foot, and piercing heat

Inhales a heavy blow –

Letters sent and milky –

Swallowed –

Are sickly, vain.

Sleep now tucks away its shivers,

Folds to liquid dawn,

Nursed by bare arms browning –

Eased –

Loving and alive.

Ding-dong bells that name the birds

Drunk as sun upon this hill;

Washing goes around

Again –

The sea purrs.

Wisdom bent by fairy rings,

The buzzing town is cleft;

A cow and moon, the bridge –

Remember –

Blissful, there.

Man Ray, Lee Miller Solarised (c.1930)

Monday 7 November 2011

Lines

The world is shapes, angles -

Existing in satisfied order

Where I would suit

And, still, procure.

Waiting room.

Platform.

Lines.

Carriage.

Living waves that roll off

Bleeding, passing land -

Vibrations from this

Shovelled bass

Are now, moving, all.

Middle ground defines the city wall.

© kate marlais 2011

23-10-11

"It's your last chance"

The final squeeze -

Giving birth to what

You do not want

But need.

© kate marlais 2011

Martin Munkacsi, Nude with Parasol (Harper’s Bazaar, July 1935)

Let's prioritise...

Slacker. Sloth. Passive. Laggard. Negligent. Absconder.

Yes, these are all words that you can use to describe me. I have left you, bloggites, for too long, too too tooooo long. How could I? I feel wretched about it. Can we talk?

Let's try now to move on, shall we? I've recently been to a series of group sessions in which I re-evaluate my life priorities (I haven't) and after much opening up and letting go (none) I have landed on the happy conclusion that I need more blog in my life once more. Therefore, for the next ten minutes, you blog, are TOP, tippity-top, of my list! YES!

Quite frankly, we need to work on our relationship. It's not you, it's me. I know I am flaky and have a tendency to let my eyes wander and my mind wonder. I realise now that I've been giving too much attention to stupid, stupid Twitter and her friends and have left you forlorn, alone. I don't even know what I saw in her. After all, who can truly express their thoughts, let alone establish a frankly hilarious witticism fully in 140 meagre characters?! C'est ridicule.

And that is why I've come back to you, my dove. I've missed you. Why, I blabber on, and you just let me! You listen. You really do. You are... God, you're good. You're just so...you.

I'll explain my absence to you in bullet points. It's been a busy few months. When did we speak last? It was May, wasn't it? And I told you all about Kenny and his fish. That was fun.

Ergo, here goes; from whence we last spake (in present tense, as if a diary entry so to establish a more intimate relationship with you, the reader):

Move to Hoxton. Feel so cool it's frightening. Take up urban-zen activities like yoga, goji berry juice & quoits.

Travel a bit... Wales. Nice. Liverpool.

Do some plays. Playing Fairy Godmother in Cinderella at Liverpool Playhouse. Get to fly. Get extra pay. Casually named 'accidental death money'.

In Between all of the above I have also been doing any one of the following:

a) Selling my soul to the Underground Society of Closet Corporate Temporary Staff (low IQ & Look Magazine obligatory)

b) Spending and earning money in the ratio of 2:1

c) Writing - plays & poetry; and on those days where one has been bound by 'Writer's Block' (hereby known, in my personal definition, as 'online shopping') I have religiously stuck my hands in ink and smeared it all over my face, donned my finest shredded linen shirt and marched intensely to the local coffee shop where I will sit and look all Writer-y in the hope of a publishing deal infiltrating my soul via osmosis, and perhaps a few shrewd glances from fellow Hoxton sages/ latte-love admirers. Rarely doth anything occur, but By Jove, I love a good latte!

*Cue Coldplay/Zero 7/Sigur Ros background music for sudden but effective mood-sobriety. Soft focus close-up on bunch of grapes/ field of horses/ other such natural wonder*

Hey, let's get serious. I've been writing a collection of poems. Keep your eyes, ears and egos a-breast of my blog, I'll post the darn things at random. I'm trying to bring poetry back, make it hip, give it some 'spect. A hard, thankless task. Proceed with caution, but if anyone can make pretentiousness en vogue again, it's me.

At least, that's what I keep telling my furrowed brow. ENJOY!

Thursday 26 May 2011

Raw fish

I am craving sushi 24/7 these days. I can't get enough of that raw fish. Cook the fish & pah I'm over it. But gimme it raw, and i'm an emotional, slathering mess. Yeah yeah, EVERYONE likes sushi these days because it's cool & healthy ra da ra da. Well, I like sushi because my Japanese friend, Mari, is, well, Japanese. Am I claiming to be the first non-Japanese-ian to start the sushi trend? Yeah, go on then, I am. Just like I claimed to start the re-trend in converse & parka jackets. No one has yet to prove me otherwise.

So why all these cravings at the moment? With bebe? No. Negatory.

It might have something to do with this guy: Ken Kawasumi.

Pretty dishy. And Ken too, he's not bad.

He is the principal of Tokyo Sushi Academy. OMG STOP NOW! HOLY COW! HOLY MOTHER OF PEARL! HOLLA! ETC.! Yes, there is a sushi academy. Hang on, that deserves some caps lockage - A SUSHI ACADEMY.

Kenny K is the dude. He not only makes amazing sushi (tick), he is the champion of it & won awards n such (tick tick) BUT he also creates little chaps like these:

A man who combines fun and food? Ken I'm coming over. I need some sushi tutorials, one on one. We'll hit it off Kenny boy. Let's roll in that rice paddy. Ahem.

Aah gotta love pandas!

My point, if I choose to make it, is thus - if you're going to Tokyo, check this place out. Tokyo Sushi Academy. They do courses, and they "speak English" too, according to the website. Impeccable.

Or if you aren't planning your far flung trip just yet, lest not forget all the fun you could be having with raw fish. (Typed with total innocence. You dirty lot.)

Yum.

Friday 20 May 2011

Helen

Please throw some love over to my favourite, Helen & her blog britgirlbondi

She's way too cool. Even though she is from (*chokes on a peanut*) Essex, follow her - she's a very clever girl.

I'm a sad camper that she no longer resides in London town.

Nevertheless, the Legend of Helen continues...

Sunday 8 May 2011

Next chapter

Hello I'm back. Where oh where have I been? Hmm now let's see.

Athens. Has cool bars. They love crepes. Who knew?

Madeira. Apparently, I still qualify for parent-child holiday. I crashed my folks' holiday. If you are over 60 & like flowers, this is the place.

And now, back in Blighty, I have been wallowing in self-poverty & dredging up the remains of my bohemia. In other words, I have been forced into CREATIVITY, confined to my tower by lack of dollar on Oyster card.

Writing, writing music, making sweet music, making sweet...no no none of that.

Maaaan, I feel like Dylan on Lucozade, Cohen with vertigo, Hendrix in Madeira...

NO SERIOUSLY. In a vain attempt to stifle my strong urge to jack it all in & go straight down to the Next sale & purchase a polyester, slightly-too-short-at-the-ankle trouser suit, I have resorted to my roots. Gotten into my time machine & landed back where it all began, all this creative nonsense. Read on, read on...

I hope you are sitting comfortably. Uncomfortably is also ok.

Once upon a time, there was a naughty, tomboyish, puzzling sort of girl who spent all her free time running wild in the heart of suburbia. She liked to think of herself as the rebirth of Joan Baez, the remake of Joni Mitchell, the rekindled Carole King. Secretly, she knew she was none of these, but didn't care to mention it in case anyone noticed.

With her much-loved guitar sidekick & her quick ear for a double-edged lyric she would make up tunes, as many as time would allow. Tunes about boys, tunes about her, tunes about nothing much.

Her hair was long, a bit matted, her nails always bitten, her mind always off somewhere, anywhere. She had a sharp wit, a mean one often. But for all her outer bravado, mouth & opinion, inside she was shy & thought the whole thing was a bit foolish.

Her guitar playing too clumsy, the idea of it all hugely narcissistic, she certainly didn't want to make a fool of herself. So she kept all these tunes, songs, lyrics to herself & never told a soul.

Eventually they were forgotten. That's what happens when you don't pass things on.

It was only when she had grown up a bit, experienced a bit more & a bit more after that, did she realise that her little head was too full. Too full of tunes, songs, lyrics, boys, herself, nothing much. She should release it all back into the ether where it belongs.

It had been a while. But she began the long task of writing it all down, using different, better words, playing her hackneyed clumsy guitar so this time it could not be forgotten.

Monday 28 March 2011

The Red Shoes

A quick one...

Just been to BAC (Battersea Arts Centre for those not down wit da lingo - not to be confused with RAC, an extremely valuable car break-down service) to watch Kneehigh Theatre's "The Red Shoes".

They've done it again. It's very physical & superbly visual. It's Brother's Grimm meets Cabaret. For very brave children. Including me.

Dutch-ness is all over the costumes & choreography. Not sure how the very Danish main man, Hans Christian Andersen, would feel about that. He wrote it, innit. I guess if you squint hard enough whilst looking at a map, Denmark blurs into Holland.

Anyhoo, Dutch-ish it is. Dutch clog dancing mixes with contemporary, free-spirited sequences & I even spotted some Lindyhop. Oh yes, I've a keen eye for it.

All accompanied by live, folky music from the players & two observant, patient musicians - one rather handsome musical chap if I may be so bold.

Every detail is mapped out &, well, detailed.

As ever, Kneehigh play all their cards. Shaved-heads, physical theatre, dance, music... a tranny with a mic. If in doubt, go all out. Et pourquoi non?

It's clearly a hit with the A-Levelers. If only I could read the detailed accounts they hand in tomorrow morning. Perhaps then I'd arrive at a deeper understanding of the sub-text...? They clearly had a lot to say about it.

Bullet points & Bic Biros.

However, I think back to the days when I could have written an essay about a fart. Oh, the bullshit I dredged up from the deepest pit of my pretension. And? I got an A.

Quite frankly, I enjoyed it just as it was. A jolly good story, jolly well told. Sub-text: negatory.

http://www.bac.org.uk/whats-on/red-shoes/

Monday 21 March 2011

LONDON FASHION WEEK 2011 Day 6

OOOOOH last day! It's piping hot. And full of men ('s fashion). Excellent.

J.W.Anderson tapped in to my current fashion hummunahs - tweed, paisley & pastels.

Hum-mun-mun-mun-aaah.

J.W.Anderson A/W '11

And...skirts? For men.

Yes, skirts for men.

Not quite sure how I feel about this look.

Can't help but think Da Vinci code priest.

J.W.Anderson A/W '11

Doing it for the Dudes:

Cassette Playa had the London 80s graffiti scene all over it.

Literally, probably.

That is URBAN.

If I could beat-box, I'd definitely wear this stuff.

Cassette Playa A/W '11

James Long, the huggable, knitted man's friend.

With a dash of PVC junkie thrown in.

James Long A/W '11

Katie Eary tumbled awkward models on to the catwalk wearing Harajuku/Decora styles that hark me back to Cosplay & the bizarre street fashions in Japan.

That, or Cyberdog on herbal tea.