Hello, here is poem number five in my sonnet series.
This one deviates somewhat from my self-imposed brief, as it does not directly refer to any particular activity which took place during the Performing Worlds festival.
Instead, it was written in response to a jumble sale which I hosted in my former flat a couple of weeks ago. The sale was an attempt to raise some funds and rid myself of unnecessary ‘stuff’, in preparation for moving from one Dundee flat to another. Any unsold items were donated to charity shops, aside from several boxes of ‘essentials’, or highly sentimental/practical items, which I have kept. During and after the sale I parted with a considerable variety of possessions, including most of my personal book collection.
I discovered that ridding oneself of material goods is no easy task, and in my case led to some serious questioning of how we define ourselves through objects; how much we rely on ‘owning’ these objects for emotional support; and what happens when our domestic environments are altered beyond recognition.
The ensuing sonnet (featured below) can be related to my experience of Performing Worlds in the sense that I was obliged to confront my own subjective ‘world’, as defined by my hoarded possessions, with the impermanence and flux of external reality. When expanded to the scale of a city, these issues are equally relevant – should we cling to the past, or embrace the future? The choice seems ambivalent.
Goodbye Library
God’s giftie, Rab would have it, is to see
One’s entity as more than some forked bag
Of blurry features. Bitter Phil agrees:
‘They may not mean to’. Vendredi, Samstag,
Dimanche – days alternate, unnoticed
In translation. Sell the dictionary!
Cast its pages to a plague of locusts!
Opinions held on this subject vary,
But we were taught to relinquish objects.
Labour just enough, and set aside time
To focus on a number of projects.
So goodbye, dearest library of mine.
Text is tissue, layer upon layer.
I’ve no real use for a record player.
FOOTNOTE
The above sonnet references several existing texts by established authors. I have included copies of relevant text extracts below.
Death of the Author
Text is a tissue of quotations, drawn from innumerable centres of culture.
Roland Barthes
Das Kapital
A commodity appears at first sight an extremely obvious, trivial thing. But its analysis brings out that it is a very strange thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties.
Karl Marx
To a Louse
O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An’ foolish notion:
What airs in dress an’ gait wad lea’e us,
An’ ev’n devotion!
Robert Burns
King Lear (Act Three, Scene Four)
Poor naked wretches, whereso’er you are,
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,
How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,
Your loop’d and window’d raggedness, defend you
From seasons such as these? O, I have ta’en
Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp;
Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,
That thou mayst shake the superflux to them,
And show the heavens more just.
Why, thou wert better in thy grave than to answer
with thy uncovered body this extremity of the skies.
Is man no more than this? Consider him well. Thou
owest the worm no silk, the beast no hide, the sheep
no wool, the cat no perfume. Ha! here’s three on
‘s are sophisticated! Thou art the thing itself:
unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor bare,
forked animal as thou art.
William Shakespeare
The Plague of Locusts (Exodus 10, King James Bible)
Tomorrow will I bring the locusts into thy coast: and they shall cover the face of the earth, that one cannot be able to see the earth: and they shall eat the residue of that which is escaped, which remaineth unto you from the hail, and shall eat every tree which groweth for you out of the field: and they shall fill thy houses, and the houses of all thy servants, and the houses of all the Egyptians; which neither thy fathers, nor thy fathers’ fathers have seen, since the day that they were upon the earth unto this day.
Poetry of Departures
Sometimes you hear, fifth-hand,
As epitaph:
He chucked up everything
And just cleared off,
And always the voice will sound
Certain you approve
This audacious, purifying,
Elemental move.
And they are right, I think.
We all hate home
And having to be there:
I detest my room,
Its specially-chosen junk,
The good books, the good bed,
And my life, in perfect order:
So to hear it said
He walked out on the whole crowd
Leaves me flushed and stirred,
Like Then she undid her dress
Or Take that you bastard;
Surely I can, if he did?
And that helps me to stay
Sober and industrious.
But I’d go today,
Yes, swagger the nut-strewn roads,
Crouch in the fo’c’sle
Stubbly with goodness, if
It weren’t so artificial,
Such a deliberate step backwards
To create an object:
Books; china; a life
Reprehensibly perfect.
Philip Larkin
Goodnight Moon
In the great green room
There was a telephone
And a red balloon
And a picture of
The cow jumping over the moon.
And there were three little bears sitting on chairs
And two little kittens and a pair of mittens
And a little toy house and a young mouse
And a comb and a brush and a bowl full of mush
And a quiet old lady who was whispering “hush”.
Goodnight room
Goodnight moon
Good night cow jumping over the moon
Goodnight light
And the red balloon
Goodnight bears
Goodnight chairs
Goodnight kittens
And goodnight mittens
Goodnight clocks
And goodnight socks
Goodnight little house
And goodnight mouse
Goodnight comb
And goodnight brush
Goodnight nobody
Goodnight mush
And goodnight to the old lady
Whispering “hush”.
Goodnight stars
Goodnight air
Goodnight noises everywhere.
Margaret Wise Brown
Performing Worlds 