writinghomes

23 year-old lit student. this is where i muse. all things diasporic (or simply literary) fascinate me - paintings, poems, novels, photographs... i also write a daily poem and the odd book review! i live and love to read and write. daily poems book reviews the diasporic/ ideas of "home"

[likeafieldmouse-deactivated2015]

Chad Wright - Master Plan (2013)

"For the first part of this series, Wright created a mould in the form of an L-shaped suburban dwelling, and set out a series of sand castles on his local beach. This scale-model suburbia was washed away by the tide, which perhaps urges us to consider the relative transience of so solid a symbol of the American dream, particularly since the 2007 subprime mortgage collapse. "

Artist’s statement: 

"In Master Plan, I am conflating a child’s sandcastle with architecture typifying postwar American suburbia. This three-part series culls artifacts from my childhood, investigating suburbia in its vision and legacy.Phase One focuses on the mass-produced tract house, re-examining it as symbol for the model American Dream.”

[strandbooks]

Found poem

[writinghomes]

Congratulations Natasha Trethewey, new American Poet Laureate!!

Honestly, I had never heard of her work before. However, I am so glad; it means I've found an exciting new poet to read! If you want to know more about her, The New York Times and The BBC wrote interesting informative pieces on her appointment. She sounds like a remarkable woman. Anyhow, here is the end of a poem which is an instant favourite:

Letter Home

... I thought not to do the work I once did, back bending and domestic; my schooling a gift--even those half days at picking time, listening to Miss J--. How I'd come to know words, the recitations I practiced to sound like her, lilting, my sentences curling up or trailing off at the ends. I read my books until I nearly broke their spines, and in the cotton field, I repeated whole sections I'd learned by heart, spelling each word in my head to make a picture I could see, as well as a weight I could feel in my mouth. So now, even as I write this and think of you at home, Goodbye

is the waving map of your palm, is a stone on my tongue.

[razorshapes]

Nowhere

[writinghomes]

... but imagination?

[writinghomes]

wolf

your eccentricity is not what i call charming or english or artful

in fact, i find your way and your manner complex and arrogant

fearing what i don't understand you are the she-wolf who howls against the moon

my mind is not yours we wake at different hours i am lamb if you are wolf

your silhouette and sound so beautiful and yet cliched an image from a sweater

you are a talented howler you cry in tune you place your face well

i would like to read your manual study that face and sound see if i can humble it

_

Daily Poem 03/06/12

[thedreamdigger]

[writinghomes]

Daily Poem 02/06/12

I think you are hiding somewhere where the butterflies live to be a thousand years old and each sparrow has its own song. Do you sing along? Are you coming home? 

[writinghomes]

Daily Poem 01/06/12

I AM (HAIKU)

[writinghomes]

Daily Poem 31/05/12 I prefer

Sometimes I prefer a poem to a conversation, a word written to a word spoken. I prefer a book to a beer, a coffeeshop to a party. Perhaps this is why I am lonely but happy. 

[writinghomes]

I've been in Scotland for a few days. I will be back with more lines once I've rested my feet!

[writinghomes]

"There is nothing to hold on to - but reality. To realize the present whatever it may be - because that's how it is and it's much better." Marilyn Monroe’s diary. From Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters by Marilyn Monroe.

I enjoy the flow-chart nature of her existential thoughts; quite like the way I map my thoughts. If only my poetry diary-come-notebook approached how wonderful this or some of the others are in this collection, too.

[writinghomes]

Daily Poem for 29/05/12 You are born home

[writinghomes]

It is part of morality not to be at home in one's own home.

Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia. Section 18: "Refuge for the homeless."

[writinghomes]

Dail Poem for 28/05/12 Refuge for the homeless

18

dwelling is now impossible each trait of comfort is paid for with a betrayal of knowledge each vestage of shelter with the musty pact of family interests

modern man wishes to sleep close the ground like an animal abolishing with the bed the threshold between waking and dreaming

the house is past "it is even part of good fortune not to be a house owner" Neitzsche already wrote

today we should have to add: it is part of morality not to be at home in one's own home

private property no longer belongs to no one

the thesis of this paradox leads to destruction a loveless disregard for things its antithesis is an ideology for those wishing with bad conscience to keep what they have

wrong life cannot be lived rightly

Another translation of Theodor Adorno's Minima Moralia into poetry.

[brightlightsloudnoises]

it’s easy for me to live in this city on Sunday morning on an empty highway or on the nights between summer and fall or spring and summer

it’s easy when I have someone to take around downtown, someone to remind me to validate my parking ticket, someone to laugh hysterically with over a misstep or an obscene word at a strange time

yes, it’s easy when you have the extraordinary in your phone book or hanging in the air but most of the time it doesn’t work that way,

most of the time the city kicks your ass and it’s a struggle with the days and the traffic and the tv to keep a little bit of originality, a little bit of what you were born with

sometimes fucking, swearing, drinking can take you on short, acceptable vacations into insanity

but even those get old too mostly the only thing you can do is wait

[writinghomes]

atlantic blues

I

when i go to sleep, you've still five hours left to live. time difference becomes a mind game where i continually lose; each hour i spend here is an hour without all of you.

Daily Poem for 27/05/12 to be part of a series

[writinghomes]

goodnight

it becomes monotone, what was once exciting softens, dulls, becomes grey. colours disintegrate, sounds blur, taste drowns in my tongue. i wonder why i read, why i labour over existential questions and computer desks for pennies. each face becomes a time-worn, minted face from another coin. all songs and voices are hums lost among the pulsing wires, between our neighbours' television and the crumpling of papers. but then i go to sleep and the blurred edges of the day sharpen, rearrange, are polished. when i wake up the world sounds as if it were rattling inside a crystal and it shines like it, too. faces pop and glow like wild flowers and their colours burst in my chest; oils on a fresh morning canvas.  

Daily Poem for 26/05/12