Alan Garner writes
“I shall try to explain; and begin by using moments that formed me beyond the moment, which became linked in the unconscious, just as the newspaper, the graffito, Mow Cop and Barthomley were warp and weft on a loom: the loom of story. They are fragments to show how creativity makes connections between entities in ways which have not be seen to connect before – what my great-great-great- grandfather, Joseph Garner, weaver, would have called ‘powsels and thrums’.”
Mike wrote
You warp, I’ll weft
I still remember the shop-lady in Sunderland
Who called me “pet”.
What did I buy? Sweets? A drink? Illicit fags?
Who knows?
But I do know that a southern boy
Found a sudden unaccustomed warmth.
Of such material our lives are made,
The unexpected kingfisher connection.
Threads cross and, seldom, re-cross.
Stand back, and we could see the pattern.
A design? Perhaps, but made of countless choices freely made.
If such encounters form a seamless whole,
Then how much more closely joined are we
To those with whom we choose to yarn awhile.
Absent friends? Maybe.
But they are those we know, have always known,
And, like church bells heard afar, will know forever more.
MCB
26th August 2006
Alan writes
“At the Giant Redwood Park of Muir Woods, near San Francisco, I met the shallow dimension…
..And I had to get home. ‘Home’, here, does not mean a house. In Russian the word is rodina. Rodina is the land, our life force.”
..And I had to get home. ‘Home’, here, does not mean a house. In Russian the word is rodina. Rodina is the land, our life force.”
Friend Bart, who is a poet, has just bought a house, and he emailed to ask
”I’d like to name my house. What’s a good Scots Gaelic rendering of Poet’s House or something like that?
I replied….
“I’m of Irish descent, not Scots! In Irish Gaelic “the poet’s house” is teach an fhile.
Scots & Irish words are often similar, and in this case, the Scots Gaelic waxes a bit more lyrical, where “poet’s house” translates depending on whether you mean the physical house ……Taigh a’ bhàird or emotional ’home’…. Dachaigh a’ bhàird. You might like the Scots, because it’s got the word ’Bard’ in it!”
We all have our stories, the powsels and thrums that make up our lives.
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