October 27th

A foundling token

pressed into her grubby palm

mother’s shame, renamed

I went to the Foundling Museum in Bloomsbury. It’s somewhere I’ve never been before and covers the history of the building, which was London’s first home for abandoned children and the first public art gallery. It was also inspirational for Dickens in some of his works.

One of the most moving parts of the collection was the foundling tokens. Mothers would pin a little token to their child’s clothing, thus if they were able at some stage in the future to reclaim their child, they would use this token to identify the child that was brought in. As the child was given a new name upon entry into the hospital, this was the administrative method they used for identification. The children were not allowed to see or keep their tokens, in case it gave them some clue in later life to their identity. A photo of some of the tokens.

With the child would come a letter of petition, frequently illiterate, the mothers would ask a friend to write them a letter, requesting the hospital take on their child. Poverty, rape, abandonment, the death of a husband and the lack of work led to this desperate act by many mothers. Transcripts of some of their tragic letters are also on display.

There was also a letter from a mother who had married a farmer and found her feet, coming out of poverty, she wanted her child back. The tragedy was her child had died years before. The register shows that many children died, despite the care of the hospital, diseases were still rife. Many though did leave the hospital to employment to become maids or apprentices, or joining the armed forces. Some even became rich and contributed as a benefactor to the hospital in later life, never forgetting the experience that built them.

The art is also impressive, there are prints and painting by Hogarth. Hogarth was a social satirist and pulled no punches in his depictions of poverty stricken London.

The Enraged Musician (shared via Wikipedia) is below, showing the gentleman unable to practice his music due to the din from the people in the street below. The woman on the left is bare breasted, pregnant, holding her child, a little boy is peeing and various street vendors sell their wares.

More famously, a print of Gin Lane is also on display, it actually depicts the Bloomsbury area of London. Note the old man and the dog sharing a bone, the Gin shattered mother dropping her baby, the poor selling whatever they own to the pawnbrokers, the burial in the distance and the man dying in the gutter, his faithful hound by his side. Hogarth works are so detailed and rewarding when given time. This page on the British Museum website gives more info.

The accompanying Hogarth poem for this work is as follows:

Gin, cursed Fiend, with Fury fraught,

Makes human Race a Prey.

It enters by a deadly Draught

And steals our Life away.

Virtue and Truth, driv'n to Despair

Its Rage compells to fly,

But cherishes with hellish Care

Theft, Murder, Perjury.

Damned Cup! that on the Vitals preys

That liquid Fire contains,

Which Madness to the heart conveys,

And rolls it thro' the Veins.

I could write so much more, but I’ll just leave this post to say it’s well worth visiting.

September 21st

A penitent stag

the huntress fixed him, cursed him

run mute to your dogs

Yesterday I briefly visited the National Gallery, I wrote a one tweet poem for their competition relating to the Ovid / Metamorphoses exhibition they have there at the moment. The original poem I wrote is below. The above is the abridged Haiku version!

Of the Titian artworks on display, I chose the scene relating to Diana and Actaeon, the hunter meeting his match when he spies on the Goddess of the hunt Diana, who by way of punishment, turns him into a stag. He then gets stalked, run down and devoured by his own dogs.

(pic from wikipedia)

My original “one tweet” poem below, less than 140 characters of course.

#titianpoem He gasped, she turned, her fierce wisdom fixed him, froze him, a penitent stag, the huntress cursed him, run mute to your dogs

Co-incidentally I’d bought a second hand copy of Ted Hughes’ adaptation of Ovid’s work a couple of months ago. Before I visited I’d read a few passages. It’s steeped in Hughes’ descriptions of nature, of the wild. So vivid and powerful. My favourite passage from Diana and Actaeon was actually on the wall.

I copy an extract here (from the national gallery website), the late Ted Hughes is a wonderful poet.

……Actaeon
Stared at the goddess, who stared at him.
She twisted her breasts away, showing him her back.

Glaring at him over her shoulder
She blushed like a dawn cloud
In that twilit grotto of winking reflections,

And raged for a weapon – for her arrows
To drive through his body.
No weapon was to hand – only water.

So she scooped up a handful and dashed it
Into his astonished eyes, as she shouted:
'Now, if you can, tell how you saw me naked.'

That was all she said, but as she said it
Out of his forehead burst a rack of antlers.
His neck lengthened, narrowed, and his ears

Folded to whiskery points, his hands were hooves,
His arms long slender legs. His hunter's tunic
Slid from his dappled hide. With all this

The goddess
Poured a shocking stream of panic terror
Through his heart like blood. Actaeon

Bounded out across the cave's pool
In plunging leaps, amazed at his own lightness.
And there

Clear in the bulging mirror of his bow-wave
He glimpsed his antlered head,
And cried: 'What has happened to me?'

No words came. No sound came but a groan.
His only voice was a groan.
Human tears shone on his stag's face

……..

June 8th

flatland fringes end

reassured by cold stone weight

the ninth wave crashes

The Ninth Wave is lifted from Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s Idylls of the King*. I used to love Tennyson when I was younger. Sod knows why a north London working class lad was so much into the Arthurian romances, but I read about them voraciously. I also read Le Morte D’Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory. The modern English translation was, from memory, still very challenging for someone of my competence (and no doubt it would also be today). I then got into the art of the Pre-Raphaelites, the tragic realism of their depictions of myth, history and romance. And the gorgeous laydeez they painted of course. (I think that was the appropriate ‘street’ spelling of ‘ladies’ there).

Below is the Lady of Shallot by John William Waterhouse (1888), another Arthurian subject of Tennyson, although like most things Arthurian, the poem’s story was cobbled together from a number of sources/legends/historical facts, who knows who the true Arthur was, let alone what he and his peers got up to.

(pic from wikipedia)

Despite my above average academic abilities, I got cut from taking English Literature at school. This was from a time when you just stoically accepted that teachers knew best. What it meant was I was shut out from some wonderful books, which although I might not necessarily have appreciated at the time, would have given me a different outlook and set me up in some small way for the future. It’s a small moan, I admit, but it’s not borne of a deep seated rage, more of an observation. People must still take responsibilities for themselves so I have no gripe or simmering regret to this incident. I think I’ve turned out alright! But who knows, I might have been given an honorary doctorate for some reason or other (much like Mike Tyson) had I taken English Literature at school.

But.. Back to Arthurian Romances. Why? I think they played into the moral values I loved. People who wanted to do good, but were in some way flawed (Lancelot). People who wanted to do good, often did, but were flawed and let down by those they loved (Arthur). People who could achieve great things from humble origins (Percival).

They are archetypes. Whether they appear in comic books, Arthurian romance or mythology, they pull levers deep set in our psyche somewhere. Or at least in mine! Especially comic books!

So here I was, standing on Aldeburgh beach at dusk, holding a beautiful two tone pebble. Listening to the sea, thinking how wonderful the moment was. How it couldn’t last. How in a few years, the very spot I was standing on might well be under those waves as East Anglia is always at risk of the sea reclaiming it. But we live for moments like that, most of life is a flatline, with small peaks of wonder and light. This was one of those moments.

Extract from Idylls of the King, The Coming of Arthur

It seemed in heaven, a ship, the shape thereof
A dragon winged, and all from stern to stern
Bright with a shining people on the decks,
And gone as soon as seen. And then the two
Dropt to the cove, and watched the great sea fall,
Wave after wave, each mightier than the last,
Till last, a ninth one, gathering half the deep
And full of voices, slowly rose and plunged
Roaring, and all the wave was in a flame:
And down the wave and in the flame was borne
A naked babe, and rode to Merlin's feet,
Who stoopt and caught the babe, and cried "The King!

My pebble and the ninth wave -

* – Kate Bush, someone who is significantly more famous and talented than me, also used The Ninth Wave as a concept for her Hounds of Love album. And what an album it is too. Side one is the commercial side, magnificent, a pinnacle of her talents, but side two is just immense, so out there, beguiling, mysterious, almost frightening. Just thought I’d mention that.

March 5th

Delightful furrows,

Buried treasures churned, unearthed,

Worms for leaping gulls.

 

Went for another run today, I’m so unfit it was exciting to get under 10m per mile pace! Still, I did run 3.5miles, but plenty of room for improvement. One of the fields adjoining the moor had recently been ploughed. Birds were congregated, getting a good feed of all the turned over detritus. Mostly it was crows and gulls, probably the most bullish of the avians, keeping the smaller birds at bay.

The photo below isn’t actually of that particular field, but it is one in the locale, Pegsdon Hills, I took it a couple of weeks ago, I like the way the plough marks the soil, especially on corners.

I’m working on a longer poem on this theme, which will appear on my other blog at some point in the near future.

February 5th

Underworld thoughts pulse,

Synapse rivulets, ice splits,

Hephaestus forges.

 

We went for a walk in the snow earlier, back through the moors, to the pond too. There were some amazing designs in the surface of the pond, where the ice had started melting. It looked like something below the earth had shuddered, creating these synapse like splits in the ice. Way below in the underworld, Hephaestus was working I think. Making presents for Aphrodite. Poor Hephaestus. As an extra treat, here’s an additional poem that just jumped out of my original narrative to support the Haiku.

It was weird that on the first snowy day of the year I thought of the blacksmith of the gods and his furnace. Check the pic below too.

 

Hephaestus

There’s something under the water,

Under the earth,

He’s making, forging,

His hammer burning,

His arm, soot stained, pained,

Giant hands mould metal,

Precious stones,

Armlets, crowns, rings,

Beautiful gifts for his love,

Spurned,

Aphrodite laughs,

He drags his lame leg,

Furnace burned,

Heavy brows, focused,

Thick neck sweating,

Tries again.

©Mel Melis 5-Feb-2012