Brightsparks

The BrightSparks voicebox has been woefully far behind in keeping you to date with things that are exciting in all kinds of exciting ways.

Exciting thing number one: last weeks Sparkplugs. The sterling turnout of heavens knows how many trotted their way through a follow up Things I have brought exercise.  Those who’d done it as ‘homework’ read round to start. Those who hadn’t, did that as their sessional exercise and some others still did clever things with mixing lines up between the things they had brought exercise and things they had not …. Here are a couple of pieces, done in the session to illustrate the point.

My Darling

My seal of zeal
As the distant clouds
Is my beloved darling

Still she lays bare in the glass vessel

For time I look at the seasonal rain
And bare barren trees
To inform me of its meaning

Whilst the birds withdraw
As to escape its shadowy clutch

My musik now belongs to the tarmac
As the tyres crush,
Sounding like waves
Lapping against the seashore

I wrap myself in my warm, weathered waist coat
To shield me from its force

Finally I am reassured.

Sean Benjamin 2007

full of things I can’t remember
mixed up with things I can’t forget

I hold the stone which will become earth part of the planet from the star stuff and my body burns iiself to holdand the stone holds my hand back which is like the darkness reaching out to you which is like nothing holding you firmly this is an interlacing of my fingers and your fingers of darkness and nothing and there are rings on your fingers my darling and all the husbands and all the wives are solid stuff intershot with emptiness and we hold each other tight we put out the fires inside for rings are forever my darling but we are only now we are fists and fingers we are statues we are holding and so we are from the planet from the stars we are stones

Jo Twist

Last week new poet, Naomi Paula Naisbitt, attended Sparkplugs for the first time. A prolific writer she came up with a number of pieces, here’s one of them….

Loneliness

Loneliness is a cruel word,
it hurts me deep inside.
Nobody understands how much
or why.

The torture delves deep,
through the dark nights
and hurts me most
during the witching hours

12am to 2am
are the worst,
waiting till the clock strikes
tick, tick, tock -

monotonously,
endlessly
time travels on
till morning arrives.

With the birds chirping
and the sun rising
another day
and the torture continues

Will I ever find happiness?

Do you have some art you’d like to share? Artist and Myspace blogger, Steffi Pointon does….

Well, after a short break, The BrightSparks Poets are back on track, rejigged, renamed and ready to blow. ‘Sparkplugs’ relaunched this Wednesday, at the super swanky RAC (Richard Attenborough Centre). Subsidised by the RAC (through the vastly kind donation of space) and facilitated by me, the first session went really well.

We LOVE the centre. The room is spacious, light and airy, packed with books and condusive for writing. The cafe downstairs does great snacks and is lovely to break in. The art throughout the centre is fabulous. We are very happy and we would like to stay please, so…Lydia must get writing that funding application so when our 10 week pilot runs out, we can do.

In our first session we read Not a CV (or I am not who you think I am), a fantastic piece by Penelope Shuttle and one which had inspired me to write Not a Mathemetician a few weeks earlier. After discussing Penelope’s piece we kicked off with a writing and feedback exercise-which ended up taking the rest of our time. The group wrote following the same ‘negative’ theme, but using the prompt: ‘Things I have not brought with me’. This exercise is a kind of linguistic version of the drawing exercise, where you draw the spaces between objects rather than the objects themselves. In many ways it follows on nicely from Mark Goodwins earlier exercise in lying…sometimes, more can be revealed by reading between the lines…. Anyway, here are some of the poets solutions…

Things I haven’t brought with me today

I have not brought my seal of zeal this afternoon

As a distant cloud has dulled my mood

Also not with me is my beloved darling

Who has in-fact not been with me for quite sometime

My watch stands still in the glass vessel on the coffee table

This was too big to put into my folder

However, I did bring my pen but not the lid

As this hampers writing for me

I haven’t brought my CD collection which is growing out of all proportion

As these can now be stored onto my MP 3 player

This happens to be plugged into my friend’s ear and not mine

Alas neither my friend nor his ear is here so lend an ear

And spare him a thought.

Sean Benjamin 2007

More ‘not’ poems to follow….