Poem in Memory of Poet Andrew Burke

 Belated Elegy

You and I were never close, and likely

thought we knew each other better 

than we could. But we were

familiar with each other, and earlier

spent time in company.

You attended our wedding dinner.

We visited you. In the later

days of my addiction, you were

‘on call’ on two or three or four

occasions. You stayed with AA forever. 

Once an addict... remember.

We published your local poetry

collection, Pushing at Silence. And after

we escaped to Cambridge, there

was an exchange of emails about poetry

and form, about where prosody

might make meaning. 

                                             We can barely

have drifted apart when we were

never really alongside each other.

I felt you weren’t there when I was publicly

under pressure — a bet either

way, rather than ‘all in’, but really

I was searching for something

you were in no position to deliver.

Mea culpa. The lateral drift continuing.

But there was much in common.

And there were moments of wry

humour. I valued your poems celebrating

the everyday, jazz, poetry, the earth... and simply

being. I’ve said little since your passing, 

and now this demi-hymn...

to a friendship of sorts, but of a very

particular sort, wouldn’t you say?

Or would you respond in some jazzy meter: 

read slower... read slower... read slower.

John Kinsella

and see Tracy's elegy for Andrew here.

Pride/Christopher Street Day March in Tübingen

We're just back from attending the Pride/Christopher Street Day March around the streets of the Old Town in Tübingen. It was a powerful, peaceful and joyful occasion, 'awash' with rainbows in their different iterations. Thousands marched. Interestingly, Tracy and I were among a very small number of 'older people' who marched, but given this is a university town, that's probably not surprising. But it would have been nice to see a few more of our generation showing their support. Plenty watched on from the sidelines.

As the violence of the war in Ukraine shatters lives and communities on a vast scale, and threatens so many others, this was a demonstration of what peace, love, tolerance and respect might bring. It was worth noting a committed political 'intersectionalism' present across the procession, with anti-capitalist and anti-fascist flags, songs and mantras echoing out between the buildings. We always accept these in their peaceful iterations. For us, anarchism and peace are inseparable, and we support only pacifist approaches to even complex problems. And joy, camaraderie, community, and the peaceful benefits and inclusiveness of 'queer revolution' sang to us.

Though different groups represented different political and communal aspects of the queer community, there seemed an overwhelming sense that the exploitation, greed, profit and oppression that arise from capitalism, which is so readily yoked to various versions of fascism (in overt and hidden guises), need to be resisted. Capitalism and climate change. Capitalism and arms production. Capitalism and inequality. To link identity, gender and sexual liberty with a move away from the selfishness of capital and power/hierarchies seems essential to us. I am not speaking for all marchers, of course, but that's just one strong impression we took with us as we walked with the community.

What was equally refreshing about the march is that such unity spreads a sense of safety through the communities which we hope will endure. Only a couple of weekends ago, the inaugural Christopher Street Day March in the neighbouring city of Reutlingen was violated by anti-gay counter-protesters who extended their rightwing bigotry to violence and attacked marchers after the parade. It was so important for community to come together today to show such violence will be resisted by increasing presence, by affirming rights, and by denying it any say in how people are or will be. We send our support to those who were assaulted in Reutlingen, and stand by the LGBQTI+ community in every way. Further, we send our respects to the organisers of the march and other events celebrating queerness in all its manifestations, and further out from Tübingen to the world, where minorities suffer egregiously. In solidarity. 

Here are some images from today (taken by Tracy):

And by way of saying farewell, I add a 'sonnet' I wrote the other day after being yelled at in the street. It says something, I think:

Shout

I am walking from the bus stop to the flat

when a couple of 'young blokes' passing

in a car slow down and shout abuse at

me. I turn and study them — curving

around a corner they slow further

and shout again. I shake my head and disappear

down a lane-way, wondering if I will

find them waiting at the other end.

This happens to me around the world

for no obvious reason. I don't get their angle.

This weekend Tracy and I will march

in the Pride Parade to show our support —

there have been harassments and counter-marches

by conservatives here. We will sing but won't shout.

John Kinsella

A farewell memory for poet Andrew Burke

 By Tracy Ryan

Andrew Burke (left) in 2008, with Tracy & John

Nineteen-ninety

in memory of Andrew Burke

 

 

Frank: you were always that.

 

I’ll even admit things treasured but

never shared: the way my late ex-

husband nicknamed you Balzac

and it stuck till I almost said it

to your face, not because

you were prolific, though you were,

but for the half-walrus moustache

you had back then, & the nineteenth-

century boho longhair look,

though it was poetry, not prose, for you.

 

Now: the day I think we first really met:

Three teetotal poets out on a fortnight’s

well-paid country tour of schools, dodging

teacher happy-hours, though you’d

always sit over lemonade in a pub,

letting the dark side down,

trashing the writerly reputation.

 

Collecting me at Midland station, you

laughingly noted your then-wife had

asked around about us beforehand

(me & E.)

& been reassured I was pregnant

& E. was over sixty —

let’s not even gloss it.

 

But it was never like that.

 

On the wild drive through the Mid-West you played

track after track from your full set of The Poet Speaks,

E. upset & sullen in the back seat saying turn it down,

Plath is just not poetry; me, not long turned twenty-six,

wanting those poems blaring on repeat. Yee-ha.

 

You telling me off for over-and-over loud

Sinéad O’Connor on the hotel jukebox,

rooms damp and the tea-kettle full of ants,

asking nonetheless to read the MS

of my first book, and I let you, frail self

you slashed through with that rhythmic biro

till I heard jazz not mine, & arrogant, took on none of it.

 

But what I did learn from you: it mattered —

the way you wrote all detail, each day of the journey,

into your poetry, reprocessed every minute,

poems a mode of living,

regenerating.

The Greed of Chalice Mining — now they want to do an open cut Nickel-Copper-Platinum Group Element (Ni-Cu-PGE) mine and destroy Julimar Forest

 Forest (a flash fiction of 200 words)

 

            John Kinsella

 

 

Stepping through the forest door, Kris and Los forgot to close it behind them. Admittedly, it was a permeable door that allowed forest creatures to pass back and forth relatively unhindered, and even for seeds and shoots and rhizomes to find a way through or under or around. But the door was to prevent people stealing the forest. This did not mean that people couldn’t live with and interact with the forest — to the contrary, and there were peoples living with the trees who respected the forest for what it was, and the forest in turn respected them.

 

But forgetting to close the forest door allowed the 'green miners' to find a way in without any restraints. Kris and Los were deep inside when they remembered their error but, rushing back along a shady path, encountered many bereft creatures saying the end had come. Kris and Los asked how so? Because these miners want what's under the forest so they can profit more from humanity surviving longer.

 

Kris and Los reached the broken, gaping door, and yelled at the miners, We will not use those batteries anymore! With no profits to be made, the miners vacated, leaving wreckage behind them.

****

AND please sign this petition. Get active please people, and don't let this happen. The destruction of a forest is NOT good for the biosphere. This is an appalling case of greenwashing and these greedy people are trying to convince you it's for your good when it's purely for their own good!

In Memory of Poet John Tranter (1943-2023)

 

Graphology Paraph 27: in memory of John Tranter

 

            Sydney... not the bush!

 

 

Away from the country town

towards the city, away from the Jindyworobaks

towards the New York School of Poetry.

 

Sheen in a skyscraper’s window

till we look closely and see the reflection

of another window, then another —

 

a cascading advertisement for real estate

we might occupy in the lexicons

of a pop-cult industry always

 

threatening to consume,

a drip-fed Babel ingraining

images extracted from movie tones,

 

images stencilled into news

of icebreakers or satellites

within satellites within satellites.

 

 

            John Kinsella

 

Nuclear Power Plants As Societal Control Mechanisms

John Kinsella

They can’t just be turned off, so government and companies have the ultimate control — it takes a highly specialised skillset to shut them down, and then to manage the shutdown across many decades, and through this, power structures assuredly maintain cohesion with the support of a fearful (consciously or unconsciously) populace who having been dragged into a reliance on the energy ‘provided’ by these plants sustain their existence and the persistence of the invested power structures. This is the ultimate life-death control scenario, and is, in its way, very similar to the use of nuclear weapons as threat.

And the press gloats that as Germany closes its last nuclear reactors, and sends them into the decommissioning process, Finland has just linked its Olkiluoto 3 nuclear reactor full-time to the power grid. Acclaimed as the largest nuclear reactor in Europe, and both predictably and ironically manufactured by Areva-Siemens, it is linked to a manipulation of the climate crisis to claim green credentials that is very much aligns with the French nuclear industry’s red-herring profiteering and consolidation of national-political power in Europe, and indeed globally. 

Governments work in different ways to control people, and this is one very deceptive and horrific way. It is not ‘green’, was never ‘green’, and will be the ultimate death of the planet if not pulled back as Germany has done (despite much conservative opposition sold as ‘environmentalism’ as it suits them). The materials that go into making these plants, and sustaining them, never mind anything else, are their own legacy of ecological abuse. Furthermore, we are expected to cede control over the environment for many future generations.

By way of a reality-check, try this brilliant video by long-term visual-word collaborators, Marc Atkins and Rod Mengham, ‘Where Suns Lie’, and its breakdown of, among many things, the deceptive and devious architecture of nuclear power plants.

One of the most egregious ‘sells’ of nuclear power in Europe at present revolves around the threat of gas supply from Russia due to the war with Ukraine. As we all experience the threat of catastrophe from the military actions and manipulations around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, one would expect more caution and risk-awareness to affect policy. But no, power plants are money, they are control (see above), and they are long-term no matter what. They are projections of power. They are not ‘green’, and they will not save the world. To the contrary...

Germany Closes Down Its Last Operating Nuclear Power Plants!

This is a great moment! The last three operating nuclear reactors in Germany shut down at midnight last night. Germany is still surrounded by reactors in other countries, but it's a start. It is deeply frustrating and offensive to hear the pro-nuclear lobby try to claim that they are environmentalists, saying that without nuclear more fossil fuel will be used. Fact is, it doesn't have to be a case of no nuclear meaning more coal or gas. Renewables are a large percentage of German power production, and increasing. But more to the point, we all need seriously to reduce our power consumption and find less-impacting ways of living. For the world to be manipulated by an industry that could mean mass devastation, and whose contaminations are legion, is obscene. So, we celebrate the closing of the plants. A serious step towards a safer planet.

Final Nuclear Power Plant Shutdowns in Germany: a heuristic for celebration

Energy consumption as fait accompli is the big stick 

those who would control us wield... Use less!

Neckarwestheim II nuclear reactor

shut down at midnight last night — froh!

Isar II nuclear reactor

shut down at midnight last night — froh!

Emsland nuclear reactor

shut down at midnight last night — froh!

It is raining today, but we probably won’t need to take iodine.

Under forests, roots say, No nuclear doesn’t foment coal mines.’

Neckarwestheim II nuclear reactor

shut down at midnight last night — glücklich!

Isar II nuclear reactor

shut down at midnight last night — glücklich!

Emsland nuclear reactor

shut down at midnight last night — glücklich!

From a beech tree, a blue jay makes a universal declaration.

‘One small step’ needs to be reclaimed. Recalibrate the slogans.

Neckarwestheim II nuclear reactor

shut down at midnight last night — hooray!

Isar II nuclear reactor

shut down at midnight last night — hooray!

Emsland nuclear reactor

shut down at midnight last night — hooray!

From the UK nuclear lobby we hear the specious tra-la-la of consumption:   

‘...environmentally damaging, economically  illiterate and deeply  irresponsible’. Say again?

Neckarwestheim II nuclear reactor

shut down at midnight last night — hooray!

Isar II nuclear reactor

shut down at midnight last night — enfin!

Emsland nuclear reactor

shut down at midnight last night — endlich!

While French media trace the sadness of a nuclear town

in losing its raison d’être, we say, dance to Nena’s ’99 Luftballons’.

John Kinsella

Note: "Tom Greatrex, chief executive of the UK’s Nuclear Industry Association, said the phaseout would worsen carbon emissions and ‘for a country supposedly renowned for its logical and evidence-driven approach is environmentally damaging, economically illiterate and deeply irresponsible’". See The Guardian.