Poets' Letter, Poet in Residence: Final thoughts & Reading list

I have just finished my March residency at Poets' Letter. It was really lovely & Munayem has been a great inspiration. Over the course of the residency, I wrote 6 new poems after the reading assigned to me, 5 of which are posted to my Poets' Letter page, here: http://www.poetsletter.com/AikoHarman.htm
As promised, I'll post my reading list below.


'The Paper-knife' was written in Week 1 after the following reading assignment:

Week 1: Emmanuel Kant: Critique of Pure Reason and Jean Paul Sartre: On Existentialism and Humanism.

Go for a walk for at least an hour. Walk on a long road pavement, preferrably on an afternoon when there are not many people about. I would like you to walk without any destination in mind and simply pass through the space not giving much attention to it and be inside your head and think about the way Kant's mind works, how the ideas flow and how beautifully his language runs with him like a dog and sings the beauty, the art of wonderful, intricate, subtle and sublime thoughts in a rational succession of waves. And when you are coming back I would now like you to look and notice the space through which you would be walking back home.

Write a poem: not about Kant, not about Satre or their philosophies but about your walks and how they have deliberately drowned themselves in your lake and become sky-like-blue splashes of colours and everything that you saw and looked at and touched and reacted to felt so differently.

In Week 2, I wrote 'Authenticity' and 'Authenticity is a Bird' after the following reading assignment:

Week 2: Søren Aabye Kierkegaard and Regine Schlegel née Olsen

Write a poem about Søren Aabye Kierkegaard and Regine Schlegel née Olsen. But I would like you first to get into Kierkegaard’s mind and then do the same with Olsen. This is not a historic poem you are writing but an areal poem the way you recraft their life and how they came alive in your viewscape and how you got into their lives.

Try reading and reading about: Federico Garcia Lorca, Rabindranath Tagore, Lord Byron, Alexander Pope, Derek Walcott and Fernando Pessoa, (And Ernest Hemmingway’s For whom the Bell Tolls).

Poets’ Letter Archive: Kona Macphee, Briony Dennis and Malgorzata Kitowski

In Week 3, I wrote 'Ravine' after the following reading assignment:

Week 3: Rabindranath Tagore and Victoria Ocampo

Write a poem about these two and again, I would not want you to write history. I would like you to bring them alive the way they came alive in your sensedia and understanding.

Try reading and reading about: Rane Maria Rilke, Robert Frost, Vladimir Mayakovosky, Elizabeth Browning, Seamus Heaney, Chinua Achebe, Sharon Olds, Mimi Khalvati, (That Does not Die: Maitreyi Devi and The Bengal Night: Mircea Eleade).

Poets’ Letter Archive: Cheryl Follon, Claire Askew and Philip Ruthen

In my final week, I wrote 'Ono' after the following reading assignment:

Week 4: John Lennon and Yoko Ono Lennon

This one, particular attention must be paid to avoid the massive cliché that exists in the public domain. I would like you to ignore all that paraphernalia and dive into where they came from. And I would not want you to write history but areality as to how you found them to be talking to you.

Try Reading and reading about: Pablo Neruda, Thomas Dylan, Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Nelson Mandela’s Autobiography: A Long Walk to Freedom, Coleridge and Boris Pasternak (A Game of Hide and Seek: Elizabeth Taylor and Dr Zhivago: Boris Pasternak)

Poets’ Letter Archive: Leanne O’Sullivan, Alan Buckley and Sharon Harriott

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It's been a great month! It was really nice to be constantly reading and reading about all these great poets and writers and thinkers and people. Inspirational. I'm looking forward to attending the London Poetry Festival in August where I might just meet a few of them!

Weathering & Buried Bones

Weathering and Buried Bones are published in Issue 3 of Bottom of the World magazine.

You can buy a copy from: Lulu, a print-on-demand publisher.
VERY LOVELY COPIES! I am so impressed.... glossy perfect-bind, nice pages *swoon*. (Excellent content as well. My colleague Dave Coates is also featured!)

For Your Love of Robots & Lilith

For Your Love of Robots and Lilith are published in Gloom Cupboard Print Edition!

You can buy a copy from erbacce press!


note: Lilith has been severely revised, (even renamed!) such that this is probably the only place you will be able to find the original. A collector's item! =)


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For Your Love of Robots also published at Poets' Letter on my Poet in Residence page.

Mimicry

Mimicry

It’s called a mimic in nature when a species wears
the colors of its kin. There’s something in it: the hair
the skin, the sound, even the way a thing breathes
can be deceiving. The language of the body
can so easily be copied – a close call,
if you will, a rose by any other name.

Like a sheep in wolf’s clothing, going by the wolf’s name,
a weaker creature conceals itself in what the stronger wears.
Some dazzle for distraction: the octopus’ calling
card is a cloud of black ink. An ermine turns white its hair.
Call it camouflage or crypsis – to hide one’s body
in a similar scape, to trick a killer, to keep breathing.

Lappet Moths lie dead like leaves, barely taking breaths.
Danaid Eggflies copy Monarch butterflies whose name
strikes flight and fear into the feathered bodies
of foes who know to avoid the poison orange they wear.
Photuris fireflies are nicknamed ‘femme fatales’; their hairy
hoax to catch a prey is to fake its mating call.

The cuckoo bird fools other birds into calling
its egg their own. They’ll feed it, raise it, breathe
life into it, never questioning its different air
or size, or why it does not come to its own name.
Milksnakes know coral snakes are poisonous, so wear
their stripes, black-red-yellow, like caution tape on the body.

Uroplatus geckos are masters of disguise; their bodies
are practically invisible to passersby. At a hunter’s call,
the chameleon chromatically changes what it wears.
Evolution. A cunning adaptation. To freely breathe
under the dubious spoof of a species by another name.
The clever care to modify their face or shape or hair.

In summertime the once-white snowshoe hare
turns its fur a rusty brown. An anglerfish’s funny body
baits prey with a hook-like lure, analogous to its name.
There’s something in it: the way one knows how to call
to another, knows the language of movement, breath,
and scent. Knows it is home by what its mate wears.

In our bedroom, I wear my hair the way she has
in photos. I breathe your body in as she would
and I do not shudder when you call her name.


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Mimicry is a sestina, and was the winning poem for the 2009 Grierson Verse Prize.
Mimicry, first in Tontine, STUDENT Newspaper's creative writing supplement, 03/17/09

Caledonian

My poem 'Caledonian' in Snakeskin 153. They've done another 'short verse' month:

Caledonian

We began like trees: our wooded heights, our glory
in number and pride. A proper home for lynx or wolf,
for lichen, moss, and moose alike.
Where once our bellies swelled with bloom and root,
the geriatric few of us that still stand tall
are but a "wet desert", pushed north, cornered west
to make way for sheep feed, for timber shipped to England.
Our leaves mute to make way for new life: an empty silhouette.



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Caledonian, first in Snakeskin, 153, 04/02/09

Heat

My 'small stone' at a handful of stones!!:

Heat

You say a voice is just air and vibrations.
I pull my ear close to the radiator
and hear heat.


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Heat, first in a handful of stones, 04/01/09.