The slave girl’s song

Joan Barfoot : Gaining Ground

.Every now and then I like to set myself another reading project. I’ve had Great Works, Old Women, and now I’m embarking on a little journey into books written by women about women living alone in remote areas.  There are any number of books written about people taking to the simple life, leaving the everyday world, and living self-sufficiently.

Frauds/freuds 9: The Irish Professor

obsequious

I was walking through the streets of Maldon, a small country town, at a folk festival. A group of Morris Dancers with jingling bells, another group of guitarists lustiiy singing Click go the Shears, but who was this man seated on a stool with a very old style typewriter on a small table in front of him?

Of course I asked, and found he was the Psychic Poet. For a small sum and a word of one’s own choosing he would craft a poem in ten minutes. How could I resist?

obsequious was my word (a young friend had said to me earlier in the week that he thought it was a rather good word) I then had to give a definition. I said,’ Excessively polite, fawning even.’

This is what he came up with. I thought it was rather good.

obsequious

too many words

salted with politeness

rushing in with tongues wagging

& hands full of words too

expressions

in action

tailoring in full colour

with the breeze of over acting

in total control

of their friendliness

enough of them

cruising into our vein

of the night

we just want quiet time

together

gordon donaldson maldon 5th november 2023

insta:psychic poet

Megan Nolan: Ordinary Human Failings

Anne Enright : The Wren, The Wren

In a June edition of The London Review of Books I came upon six poems by an Irish poet I didn’t know. Philip McDaragh certainly sounded Irish, and two of the poems were translated from Irish of the 12th and 9th Century respectively. I had always loved the Irish air, Lagan Love, and one little poem was called The Bird of Lagan Lough.

the wee bird,

yellow-beaked,

blurting sweet

melody over

grey water

is a blackbird

hidden in gorse

(yellow, of course)

Gert in Japan

Barbara Ehrenreich : Living with a Wild God

Barbara Ehrenreich, writer, scientist, and political activist, died last September aged 81. Somehow we missed it at the time, so this is both a tribute to her and a quick look at the book where she tries to examine what she believes.

Rouse the stupid and damp the pert