Christmas the Colour of Mousebird (from Between the Realms)

Another Dinosaur Dust creation by Riccardo Smid-Magnanini, featuring a poem, from Greater Matter, entitled Christmas the Colour of Mousebird, which, like all my poems, tells a true story. (It's in Section 4 of Greater Matter - Between the Realms.)

I am fascinated by the way in which Riccardo's eye sets the poem in a way far beyond what I could have imagined. 

All this is work in process - the best kind of work there is. ENJOY!

https://youtu.be/_X8uUQDUsSc

Depth and integrity of feeling: Spontaneous interview with Dinosaur Dust Co-Creator Riccardo Smid-Magnanini

Friday afternoon was fun, yet again working with Riccardo in the valley below Tor Doone, at a tiny waterfall I'd not visited before. In this clip he says a few things about what is important to him in the moving images he creates.

It's so interesting to me, who recalls the cynicism 30 years back towards 'happy stories and movies'; a cynicism that was due to the shallowness, indeed, hypocrisy, that seemed unfortunately often to be present, tainting natural happiness - a situation satirised by ... mmm ...

... I believe it might have been Rainer Werner Fassbinder in a science fiction movie - was it World on a Wire? No amount of searching has yielded information regarding in which movie exactly the weather forecaster smiles statically day after day: "Nur Sonne, immer nur Sonne" (Only sun, only ever sun).

At any rate, the big things are surely depth and integrity of feeling, accurately reflecting the complexity of lived moments of experience. This clip by Riccardo, and others, which I've seen, some of which I've had the pleasure of participating in, reflect a shared, ongoing quest for the shimmers of truth as they flicker, moment by moment.

Laura Marling's track, Devil's Spoke, is exquisitely chosen, too.

BIG MOMENT: the quiet, happy birth of my Heffalump

I have sent Section 8 of Greater Matter to my readers. Here is the title poem for it - Blood in Ink (previously published in the latest Ecca book, Throw in your Song).

Now to incorporating my readers' feedback to create a sleeker or at any rate fully mobile fourth draft, while also stepping away from my book to face it with my head in editing mode. A kind of freedom. The heffalump is born. Now to learn to ride her. 

From Throw in your Song, Ecca Poets, Hogsback, 2018, p.40

The third draft of the second-last section of Greater Matter is with my readers.

Step by step I climb my Heffalump. Minnesinging is the penultimate section, confronting the socially disturbing presence of the single woman. And the question that burns differently for every widowed creature: where to with love when your loved one dies?

To be

Covenantal selves (another hitherto unpublished poem by Norman Morrissey)

Not long ago I found a poem by Norman, which I remember him drafting back in 2012, over a weekend during which he spoke about almost nothing else (the way I remember it, anyway) - namely, ...

... but I actually don't wish to take the words out of his mouth.

Nowhere else have I seen the concept of 'Ubuntu' - we are what we are, because of others - explicated more exactly or more beautifully than in this poem, which he entitled Covenantal selves.

Click on http://eccapoets.blogspot.com/ and scroll down just a little to read this extraordinary, hitherto unpublished poem.

Please do be generous with your feedback, either on the Ecca blog, or here.