Tag: Poetry

Otters Eat As Often As Hobbits

Explore my relationship with food, NaPoWriMo? Surely you mean explore an otter’s relationship with food? But there are so many species (13), and they all eat slightly different things – should I write about Japanese otters keeping paddy fields free of crayfish? Or giant Amazonian otters being slowly poisoned by mercury from gold ore extraction accumulated in the livers of their favourite fish? Maybe later in the month. For now I am mostly distracted by a little Winnie-the-Pooh-esque ditty from the fabulous sea otter, those masters of the tummy buffet. They need to eat a quarter of their body weight every day to keep them warm in the seas off northern California. And they love abalone.

c4a0ccbf08cb65b72b968e9f67d7a0c2The Song Of The Feeding Sea Otter

Floating along on my own-e-o,

Smashing my abalone-e-o,

On my smashing stone-e-o,

I go whack! whack! whack!

 

Don’t ever cook it with po-tay-ter,

Celery, soy sauce, or to-may-ter,

Or gratinize it with a cheese gray-ter,

I just knock! it! back!

 

Rest assured that if I hear any more verses of this super-smashing happy feeding song, I will add them here.

 

My Significant Otter

I tried very hard (well a bit hard) to fit the official NaPoWriMo prompt about the strange names of heritage variety vegetables into my poem, but otters don’t care much for vegetables (which is why this zoo in Birmingham smuggles them into sushi, which they do like). What I really wanted to do was write a love poem for my husband, so that’s what I did.

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Assessing My Significant Otter

When she asked me to describe you, I could have said

the north sea to a fishtank

is his heart to this small, bland room.

 

When she asked what she had missed, I could have said

there is a tangle of black razorwire deep down inside,

can he unspool it safely in this benign, neutral room?

 

When she asked me how this is affecting us, I could have said

he calls me to the window to watch the goldfinches.

When we sleep we hold hands like otters,

so we never drift apart.

 

Aquarius Or Otter?

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Through the power of the internet, I just found out that my mother, stepmother, mother-in-law, sister-in-law and best friend are all Otters! Yes indeed, it is Native American totem animal horoscope time here on Otter Madness (TM), and also time to ask these gregarious and chatty animals the official question for today’s official NaPoWriMo prompt – is April actually the cruellest month, or was TS Eliot talking out of his proverbial?  Otters? What do you say?

What month is worst for otters?

“Oh, wow, that’s a hard one, isn’t it babe? I mean, speaking as an Otter, I suppose I’d have to say late Jan, early Feb, just because of the flooding we’ve been getting? Which is totally ironic, because that’s our birth month so it’s sort of like our power month? But then like Gary says, I really showed my creative spirit last year when I dug in the fourth exit above flood level, he says that’s pure Otter you know, because we’re like inventors? And I made sure it opens to the north, which you know is our spirit direction? So I guess maybe I’d say August, September time, partly ‘cause the pups are off by then and I get a bit of empty-holt syndrome, don’t I babe? But mainly I think it’s just that time of year is all about Bear, and that’s not great for me, ‘cause you know I used to work for a Bear and she was just so fussy and uptight and expected everyone to work the whole time and all she wore was brown, like literally all the time, and you know the whole thing about her being my natural predator made for a bit of stress in the workplace, so I had to leave in the end? I used to call her Un-Bear-Able, didn’t I babe? Didn’t I? Call her Un-Bear-Able? Oh yeah, me and Gary are both Otters, so are the pups. Except Jamie, she’s a Woodpecker? Not sure how that happened.”

Boris And The Otters

“As I write these words there are semi-naked women playing beach volleyball in the middle of the Horse Guards Parade immortalised by Canaletto. They are glistening like wet otters and the water is plashing off the brims of the spectators’ sou’westers.”

Boris Johnson, commenting on the 2012 Olympic Women’s Volleyball

tumblr_ljwl2fWEqw1qarjnpo1_1280In this quote, Boris demonstrates two things. Firstly, a certain deftness with sentence construction, a breadth of vocabulary and an almost proprietorial familiarity with fine art history that is entirely fitting in one who has received so staggeringly privileged and expensive an education. Secondly, a terrifying ignorance of the tendency of otters, according to Japanese folklore, to shapeshift into beautiful women with the express purpose of seducing, killing and eating unwary men.

As the official NaPoWriMo prompt for today is to write a fan letter, I have chosen to write from some imaginary Japanese shape-shifting man-eating volleyball-playing otter-women to the Mayor of London. (My cavalier use of ungrammatical pronouns is intended to give an eerie, ‘demonically-possessed baby doll’ feeling to the piece, not an uncomfortably racist ‘JaJa Binks’ vibe, just FYI)).

Boris And The Otters

Sexy otter girls, we

Sleek! you watch, Borisu-san,

But do not see we.

 

Silly! we see you

Feast eyes on we lissom limbs,

Silken like tofu.

 

Suave you phrases plash!

Rain from you lyrical tongue!

Favourite muscle!

 

Storehouse of treasure,

You brain sleep in marrow sea,

Soft, sashimi-grade.

 

Speak we of art now?

Great man, stories of great men!

You hair kawaiiiiiiiiiii, ne?

 

Shall we little claws

Scratch you noble back, broad

Like Kobe beef-cow?

 

Secret, we sharp teeth

Wait for you, ichiban man,

Steamy bean dumpling!

 

Shhhhhhhhhh!! you no mind knives

We whet them in you honour,

Delicious Borisu-san….

 

 

Otters V Capitalism

2012-09-20-350HuffPostChe501onRecTrail-thumbMany people say to me, Kirsten, we know that otters love jazz, but what of otter politics? I reply that I am convinced most British otters would vote Corbyn, where the Californian Sea Otter community has come out strongly for Bernie Sanders. (Many have donated a few clams to his campaign fund).

Some say this is grotesque anthropomorphism of the kind disdained by serious conservationists, others accuse me of projection. To them I can only say:

 

Otters Of the World, Unite!

Answer me this – what if otters were potters?

Does living by water make their clay wetter?

Do they throw sloppy pots that all teeter and totter?

Does holding down splatter make pots a lot squatter?

Surely it follows their kilns should burn hotter?

They must buy their wood from a local wood-cutter

(Wood-burning kilns being certainly better

to use than electric, when potting near water).

 

But what if the cutter bamboozles the otters,

never once offering wood on a platter,

but ripping them off with some shitty sales patter?

Lining his pockets, the cutter gets fatter,

while locked into poverty, knocked on their uppers,

the lot of the otters just never gets better!!

Will the otters not notice that something’s the matter?

Will discontent not sound its note in their natter?!

Revolt and rise up, oh you down-trodden otters!

Even fat cutters need pots made by potters!

Tear down the kiln-wood-monopoly rotters!

 

Don’t look at me like I’m some kind of nutter.

 

Todays’ poem is brought to you in lieu of the official NaPoWriMo prompt, which is dull as the bottom of my shoe.

 

NaPoWriMo 2016 – The Year Of The Otter

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This will be my fourth attempt at NaPoWriMo, the international insanity among poets where we try to write one a day for the whole of April. My personal best is 15, and I’m definitely not going to beat that this year, because I’m going to try writing every poem about otters. Or featuring otters in some way. Because I like otters.

Please watch this video clip first.

Day one – Otters Playing Free Jazz On A Casio

How do you approach playing

with otters in

the absence of chord changes?

 
How do you even begin?

asks JazzAcademy.com’s homepage,

neglecting to ask these otters:

 

GET HOT!!!!! Kitten neeeeeeds keys,

ain’t no baloney,

we AB  SO  LUTE  LY

 

hip to the short-clawed jive!

gotsa screaming meemies!!

we collective, daddy-o, we radicaliiiiiiized!!!

 

I’m also trying to meet the official prompt, which yesterday was to write a lune (5-3-5 word formation). Haven’t seen today’s prompt yet, so I’ll check in tomorrow with whatever nonsense I’ve managed.

Heroism and Heartbreak – the residency continues!

Don’t tell anyone, but I get very, very nervous about delivering workshops to school children. Who knows what they might do?! Unripe humans! But it was my sacred duty as poet-in-residence at the Hartlepool WW1 archive project to spend a morning on a boat, sorry ship, on a ship, with 25 Year Five children, on a ship, writing about the ship that we were on. This ship.

PS Wingfield Castle
PS Wingfield Castle

Luckily, mostly what these unripe humans did was to get very excited by the joys of writing poetry, especially when they find out they have the powers of Amazing Adjectives and Super Similes! (Favourite extended simile of the day – “as red as a devil, sitting on lava, eating a bloody heart, in an Arsenal strip”)

We collectively made a poem describing the ship by describing its many parts, textures, surfaces. It worked. I smoothed out the edges. It’s now online on the archive website here – give it a read? You can find some more of mine up there too.

StAnza – possibly the perfect poetry festival

I spent the weekend in St Andrews as a performer at StAnza, Scotland’s international poetry festival. Lucky, lucky, lucky me! Collected from the station, treated with unfailing courtesy and unflappability by every staff member and volunteer, fed at the poet’s buffet for free throughout the weekend, delivered back to my home-bound train in timely fashion – bliss!

This was my first time to StAnza, and even had I not received the perks of performer status I would have been bowled over by the finely-tuned balance of the programming, the range of poetic styles encompassed, and the inventiveness of the ‘extras’ such as table-side performances and hashtag poetry. (By the way, my set -collection launch went very well. There are reviews here and here, which I don’t expect anyone but my mum to actually read. Hi Mum!)

In one day you could attend: a serious breakfast talk about the concept of the body in poetry, led by a diverse panel of poets including multi-award winning Andrew McMillan and arch-innovator SJ Fowler; an intimate gathering in a graceful oval drawing room, hung with green watered silk wallpaper and garnished with immaculate white orchids, listening to Pascale Petit fill it with hummingbirds and jaguars; a lunchtime hour of sheer entertainment from a spoken word show like Jemima Foxtrot‘s Melody; an afternoon of splurge-buying beautiful small press poetry collections and chapbooks;  a double-bill main stage presentation of classic readings by Jo Shapcott right next to multi-lingual near-operatic sound poetry from Nora Gomringer (complete with jazz drummer); and then round it all off with a poetry slam hosted by current BBC Champion Scott Tyrrell.

Frankly, what this kind of programming says to me is that the team who put this festival together know their poetry, widely and deeply, and are passionate about it in all its various glories – at times to the point of fangirldom! If you have any love at for poetry, you should go. And it doesn’t hurt that a. St Andrews is charming and b. it has both gelaterias and second hand book shops. Perfect.

 

Collection launch!!

 

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Today I polish my boots, practice my poems and pack my bags, for tomorrow I’m off to StAnza, to launch my first full collection!

I could go on about it, but really I just wanted to let you know two things:

Firstly, if you happen to be going to StAnza, then please consider yourself invited to my set at their Poetry Cafe, 1pm, Byre Theatre, Friday 4th March – tickets here.

Secondly, if you fancy a copy of The Trouble With Compassion, but you’re not able to get one from me at a performance, you can buy it online from Burning Eye Books.

Thanks, that’s all really!

 

A Day In Beadnell (virtually)

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There are days when I forget I enjoy writing poetry. To be honest, there are weeks, sometimes months, when I become my own administrator and my poetry gets completely
lost. That’s why it was such a joy to spend all of yesterday in the company of other poets, being led through a veritable barrage of multi-sensory prompts by Lisa Matthews and Melanie Ashby, the intrepid creative team behind the ongoing project A Year In Beadnell.

 

Strandling Feather

Whisht.

I’m not dead.

Shed.

I’m beak-nipped,

a preen-leaving,

winter-to-summer down-shrug,

for the fat pickings

in the glad months make

sleekitty plumage.

 

One feather

conjures the bird,

plumped on the nest-scrape

eggs sucked pebbles.

 

I’m plucked,

but still arched

from the puffling shook-out

of incubation.

Divested from the belly,

given to flight, I am

wind-bowled,

sand-skittering,

tumble-fluff,

fast flick of a soft brush,

my own

wing.