jonnybaker

empire remixed

thanks to bob carlton for the link to #4, a poem from empire remixed blog that begins like this.

Join us,
comrades in the struggle for
the anti-Kingdom
the non-State
the Party w/out a vanguard

the anarchic community of communities...

to reach satisfaction...

To reach satisfaction in all
desire satisfaction in nothing

To come to possess all
desire the possession of nothing

To arrive at being all
desire to be nothing

To come to the knowledge of all
desire the knowledge of nothing

these are words from john of the cross in a poem that we will be exploring at grace this saturday - see you there?!

tune in to radio 3 tonight 10pm

a very unusual activity is hapening in our house tonight - we'll be tuning in to radio 3! harry is featuring in the show verb christmas performing two poems. tune in...

mtv voices winner!

congrats harry on winning the mtv voices competition - listen here - it would take me a long time to spend £500 on itunes!!!

we are all unequal

jeremy woodham, a friend and colleague at cms, is also a bit of a wordsmith and poet. he is a member of the lounge, a small christian community in ealing, and was a member of vaux back in the day. he let slip yesterday that he has been quietly starting a blog - take back the poetry. there are already some wonderful pieces on there. it really is good! i love this piece we are all unequal and am adding it to the worship tricks series - no 30 series 4, but do go and have a scout round and add it to your reader. i'll definitely be revisiting. try supper stories and lord's prayer for example...

We come together

because things are not right
because we don’t know what to make of the world
because we are bewildered
because we need shelter

We come together

because peace has not come
because your kingdom is a long time coming
because your will is hardly clear
and yet brutally clear
because we are threatened on all sides
because we have lost our way

We come together

because we notice the gap
between who we know we are
and who we want to be
and we feel giddy on its edge

We come together

because Jesus said, Come to me and I will give you rest
I will give you living water for your soul
I am the bread of life
because Jesus turned on the crowds
and had compassion on them
that wanted to be fed

We come together

to set the stage
to act as if it might be true
that we are loved
to love each other
to treat each other fairly
to see each other for who we really are
to allow others to see who we really are
with no shame and no fear

for we are all unequal
we are all disabled
we are all addicted
we are all dying

We come to pretend

that what we dream for tomorrow is true for today
that we live in a strange kingdom
where nobody is standard
nobody is predictable
nobody is average
nobody is unacceptable
nobody is judged
and nobody is judging themselves

where advertising does not standardise our dreams*
where our view is only filtered through God’s eyes

where instead of punishing each other for our own failings
we act with justice
love with mercy
and walk humbly with each other
and with our God

where the streams come from

where the streams come from is a series of 3 poem soundscapes from chris goan out this month on proost. i love chris' poetry. check out listing and ten thousand places if you have not come across them. proost interview chris here and he has this to say about poets

For me, poetry is a spiritual act. It involves dwelling on something in a deep and even prayerful way. The process of constructing words that carry as much honesty, emotion and truth as I am able to bring to bear is at times painful, but mostly is a precious thing. The poems I like most carve a new path into something. They are full of sinew and not afraid to express the dark things - the doubt as well as the faith, the pain as well as the joy, the lament as well as the celebration. Poems like this make me cry (in a good way.) The people who write this kind of poetry often carry damage in some way. We are members of the awkward squad, outsiders who look from a different perspective. Poetry becomes one of the ways that those of us who have been sensitised can apply our sensitivity- a kind of gift. 

mad as a bear with toothache - worship trick

michael mitton led a pligrimage over august to ireland and wales which provoked a rush of poetry which is up on his web site here. they are poems inspired by celtic saints ciaran, brendan, brigid, kevin, brynach, non, illtyd. they are absolutley delightful and very moving. i know mark berry is going to love this poem/prayer on brendan!! i am making the collection a worship trick. makes me want to go on this pilgrimage...

Dear God
Brendan was as mad as a bear with toothache
But it was a madness you loved
And you took hold of that old bear
And threw him out to sea
'Til he returned to land with such a wild tale
That even the priests laughed themselves silly.
The people danced in the surf of Bantry Bay
And a thousand coracles set sail
Into the bright breeze of your Spirit.
 
O Lord madden me by that same Spirit
Bring on the God-blessed flights of fancy
Inebriate me with Holy Ghost visions
And set me free to behold with the eyes of my heart
Great wonders on the high seas of God.

"one of the greatest things i've ever seen!" radio one's verdict on harry's edinburgh show

"one of the greatest things i've ever seen" - that's how harry's show proper pop-up purple paper people was described on radio one ths afternoon and given a 5 star rating! who knows how but chris who picks out a show to review each day for scott mills landed at harry's venue and loved it (if you want to listen on iplayer it's about 1:23 in to the show). joel rang me as he was in the car and had radio one on at the time and was somewhat surprised to find harry being reviewed... the show is in a small basement at the royal oak so expect tomorrow to be packed!!!

world champion slam poet - harry baker!

harry won the world cup poetry slam final in paris last night and is now WORLD CHAMPION! amazing. here he is performing in round 1.

[update: two of harry's final poems are in this movie - round about 8mins and 25mins. and in this one he gets the trophy...]

good luck harry for tonight!

so here's last night's footage (part 1 and part 2 here) of the deuxieme semi final of the world cup poetry slam which has three of harry's poems in. having come last in the votes after the first poem he then nails it with 99 problemes and brings it home with paper people! so that's through the first round, through the semis and tonight is the final with the last 5 - england, usa, canada, quebec, sweden. good luck harry!!!!

Coupe du Monde Slam 2012 - deuxième demi finale... by slam

slam coupe du monde!

this week in paris harry baker gets to represent the uk in the world poetry slam finals. jen and i are heading over for a couple of nights to cheer him on - it would be rude not to! should be fun...

quite how you judge between different languages in such a nuanced word dependent art form i have no idea?!

proper pop-up paper purple people

yes it's a mouth full! but it's from one of harry baker's new poems - here he is reciting it in hebron! go listen...

everything speaks in its own way

kate tempest has a book of poetry bundled with a cd and dvd - everything speaks in its own way. i've ordered my copy - looking forward to it. big big fan of her spoken word as you'll know if you follow the blog!

international women's day

today is international women's day. there seem to be lots of creative pieces out there but the one that i ended up diving into was @applesandsnakes poetry collective twitter feed which simply posts links and gives voice to women poets. 

it was at the big chill festival a few years ago i stumbled into the spoken word tent to an event hosted by apples and snakes and two of the women i heard that day are linked to - follow the tweets but try jean binta breeze and zena edwards

word of mouth - banbury

friends in banbury involved in mosaic arts are hosting a spoken word event on march 9 with harry baker and el gruer which looks like it will be good. details here and then there's a workshop on the following day...

old ideas - melancholy gospel?

leonard cohen's latest album old ideas is quite brilliant. he's widely recognised as a wonderful poet but what immediately grabbed me about the opening song going home following my last blog posts is the connection he makes bewteen poetry and prophecy. i may be reading too much into it, i don't know - but it's a description of his calling, his vocation to speak out. it reminds me of the call of jeremiah or ezekiel!

I love to speak with Leonard
He’s a sportsman and a shepherd
He’s a lazy bastard
Living in a suit

But he does say what I tell him
Even though it isn’t welcome
He just doesn't have the freedom
To refuse

the whole album is shot through with spiritual reflection and religious imagery with great poetry and depth. it's melancholy gospel if such a thing exists! simple but powerful songs stripped back allowing cohen's voice in all its aged maturity to weave its words of brokenness and hope. the struggle and darkness are there as ever but a world is spoken where the victims are singing and the laws of remorse are restored, the filth of the butcher is washed in the blood of the lamb. cohen asks to be shown the place where the word became a man, where the suffering began. and in a penitential hymn of invocation, come healing, he calls for the healing of the body mind and limb and spirit 

O gather up the brokenness
And bring it to me now
The fragrance of those promises
You never dared to vow

The splinters that you carry
The cross you left behind
Come healing of the body
Come healing of the mind

And let the heavens hear it
The penitential hymn
Come healing of the spirit
Come healing of the limb

the cracks are letting a lot of light in on this one. it's the most compelling set of songs i have heard in quite some time...

on poets and prophets

i have blogged several times about poets and prophets. they seem to have a kind of speech that comes from the same place, have a similar way of seeing and remaking the world. 

if there is one writer who has opened up this idea more than any other it has to be walter brueggemann - the three books i am thinking of in particular are prohetic imagination, hopeful imagination and finally comes the poet. whilst i read two of those 20 years ago or so i have only recently read hopeful imagination which is an equally brilliant book. anyway that's all by way of introducing a few quotes from it on the poetic speech of prophets...

The overriding reality of the prophets is that they are characteristically poets. Poets have no advice to give people. They only want people to see differently to re-vision life.

Everything depends on the poem and the poet for our worlds come from our words. Our life is fed and shaped by our metaphors.

The enemies of the poem are the managers of the status quo.

The poets want us to re-experience the present world under a different set of metaphors and they want us to entertain and alternative world not yet visible.

Poets speak porously. They use the kind of language that is not exhausted at first hearing. They leave many things open, ambiguous, still to be discerned after more reflection.

Very often people who hear poets want an explanation, which means to slot the words into categories already predetermined and controlled. Such an act however is the death of the poem... Good porous language does not permit itself to be so easily dismissed. It intends to violate and shatter the categories in which the listener operates.

These poets not only discerned the new actions of God that others did not discern but they wrought the new actions of God by the power of their imagination, their tongues, their words. New poetic imagination evoke new realities in the community.

We lose vitality in our ministry when our language of God is domesticated and our relation with God is made narrow and predictable... Predictable language is a measure of a deadened relationship in which address is reduced to slogan and cliché.

It is always a practice of prophetic poetry to break the conventions in which we habituate God.

Every centre of power fears poets because poets never fight fair... only a poem

and a couple from prophetic imagination...

The characteristic way of the prophet is that of poetry and lyric.

The poet is not changing external politics but is reclaiming imagination... We ought not underestimate the power of the poet.

parables

kate tempest on random acts performing parables...

random acts - spoken word on channel 4

random acts is a series of very short films on channel 4 - 3 minutes. tonight spoken word is in the mix with polarbear at 11:05pm. set your series to record. it looks like the people behind this in some way are the wonderful bang said the gun crew who know how to make a night of poetry in south london hit the two poles of raucous and poignant. i have no idea but am guessing this may be the first of several spoken word acts as channel four recorded a night with an impressive line up at bang said the gun before christmas...

explorations - stream of consciousness

this months release on proost is explorations by ned lunn. it's a poem/prayer in the pocket size book format. ned is part of the rough edge collective in durham who did the beat eucharist if you came across that on proost or at greenbelt. so this is very much in the same genre of the beat poets. as ever it's available as a pdf or physical book. if you are outsude the uk you can order it from lulu. In the contemplative tradition there are two schools of though about prayer or two paths of spirituality. one - the via negativa - is that in the presence of god what can be said - words cannot begin to express so best say nothing or very little. the via positiva is equally in awe in god's presence but responds with an abundance, an overflow of speech. so the stream of consciousness is very much in that latter tradition. ned says why it suits him

In any sentence I want to reference or expand on individual aspects of one concept or idea and everything soon becomes interconnected. The stream of consciousness style of writing helps me to journey along the many trains of thought, to detour and find my way around the network of my inner life. It makes the act of writing a process of discovery and, in reading it, you’re invited to journey with me and, as much as we can in the static product, we discover together.

and...

The overuse of vocabulary captures, I hope, the beautiful tension between reverent silence and the drive to speak constantly about the wonder and amazement aware at all times of the limitation of our own language.

it's devotional, and quite unique.