Crazy English

Reasons why the English language is so hard to learn.



The farm was used to produce produce.



The bandage was wound around the wound.



As there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.



I did not object to the object.



The insurance was invalid for the invalid.



The wind was too strong to wind the sail.



There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.



They were too close to the door to close it.



I had to subject the subject to the tests.



Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.

Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it? Is it an odd, or an end? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?

In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital?

Ship by truck and send cargo by ship?

Have noses that run and feet that smell?

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same? You have to marvel at a language in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which an alarm goes off by going on.

English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race. That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible...

Concrete Poetry.

Visited the ICA recently to see the exhibition on concrete poetry, called Poor.Old.Tired.Horse.

Particularly like Liliane Lijn's printed spinning cones, which were, literally, that! The rotation allows the observer to see the beginning of the line to come into view as the end of the line disappears, creating a unique effect of 'nonlinear reading', is the only way I can describe it. The lines -
Protons are positive. Are you? Are you?
Electrons are negative. Are you? Are you?
Neutrons are neutral. Are you? Are you?

go round and round, but the effect is unlike the words on the printed page.
Also, as I have realised by reading Lijn's comments, the conical shape means the words are accelerated as they feature lower down. She says-
"When we see the written word we forget that letters are symbols of vibrations. I make poem machines to transform words into energy patterns."

Ferdinand Klimet had metal signs with circular 'compendium words' as in BLACKOUTLAW, LIPUBERTYPE. The design of the signs to me had the style of giving information, whereas the word patterns embossed on them were more cryptic, but the presentation gave them more intrigue.

More traditionally, Alasdair Gray had on show poems that formed part of his black and white illustrations, illustrations that reflected a theme of the poem. I liked, from "In A Cold Room",

Loneliness

From the soul's proper loneliness love and affection seem
part substance and part dream
held in the mouth in the same way the snake carries its eggs
if gripped too hard they break
leaving a few grains of dust
and a heart crippled by its weight of lust



hope you are all still writing & will continue to blog!

I read an article about mobile phone novelists in Japan. Apparently the mobile phone novel is a publishing boom which is set to hit Britain soon. Of last year's 10 best-selling novels in Japan, 5 were Keitai Shousetsou (mobile phone novel.)

Ryu, a Japanese barman, blogged his novel, Tokyo Real, every night to his friends. It was subsequently downloaded by more than 3 million people, made into a film, and inspired an anti drugs march through the streets of Tokyo.

Similarly Tadashi Izumi, who has a PhD in Victorian Literaturefrom Cambridge University, is the author of Cross Road, which more than 2 million people downloaded within a week.

He said that the keitai novel is democratising publishing because novelists can now acquire a fan base before publishers even know who they are, similar to high profile bloggers such as Belle du Jour and Petite Anglais. The language needs to be conscise and simple with far fewer adjectives. So instead of describing a sunset, he simply writes that the sun is setting.

Also, publishers Indigo launched a digital book service in 120 countries. Most customers used their phones for e-reading.

I guess that it may materialise into an alternative for, rather than a replacement to, a conventional book.

Hi fellow bloggers. Read some things in the free Metro that you might find interesting.



1. The power of words. There has been a culture recently that saying 'sorry' allows you to get away with a lot. MPs and footballers for example. I remember a teacher of ours being angry with us when we said sorry for something, with a grin on our faces. He would say 'you are not sorry. Sorry means you are full of sorrow, which you are not.' & of course he was right. So I was surprised to see two examples of this on the same page.



"Hitman Says 'Sorry' Over 27 Murders." - apparently his sentence will not change, but he will receive £30 a month to buy goods from the jail canteen. (He is banned from writing a book about his crimes. The law must be different in Canada.)



"Give Sorry Khmer Boss His Own Cell." - Comrade Duch, of the Khmer Rouge, should be given his own cell because he said sorry for his crimes, his lawyer argued. Seems there is often an incentive for the apology.



2. "Gadsby: Champion of Youth, by Ernest Vincent Wright written in 1939 is noticable for not using the letter 'e' once in its 50,000 plus words. This inspired other writers to do the same thing, notably George Perec in La Disparition. " Which is an obvious link to the book 'Eunoia' by Chritian Bok, which only uses one vowel in each of its 5 chapters.



3. A new book by Alain de Botton, 'The Pleasure And Sorrows Of Work.' (I know about the latter.) He says ' Most modern fiction suggests all people do is fall in love and murder each other. It doesn't give you an idea of how central work is to people's experience.' He has written a 'poetically minded collection of extended essays that observe the rituals and internal culture of nine very different jobs.' Seems like a fairly unique book.



Finally, here is another calligramme. The words actually spell out what they are depicting. Needs to be seen in full screen.



.

After discussing ways of using text, I was looking at calligrammes by poets such as Apollinaire, where the text forms a picture relevant to
the text. Unfortunately these seem to be mostly in French! but here

is one -

& after going to the Harvey gallery and talking about putting poetry together with images, I suddenly remembered two books which I have had for years and all but forgotten about, by Heathcote Williams. They are "Whale Nation" and "Autogeddon" and they are basically books of photographs with interspersed verse, which work together really powerfully and I can't express how good I think they are. Anyway I have copies that anyone can borrow/look at. They would be of interest to anyone into poetry or photography or green issues.

I was reading with interest that Seamus Heaney is a big fan of Eminem.
He said "Eminem has created a sense of what is possible. He has sent a voltage around a generation. He has done this not just through his subversive attitude but his verbal energy."

He was named second most powerful celebrity on the planet, by Forbes. He also won an Oscar for Lose Yourself. This was 2003, so I am completely behind the times. But here is Lose Yourself. I like the images with the lines. (Warning. There is swearing.) Love it or hate it...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRRn9NoZs8s

Hi everyone, I hope you all had a pleasant Christmas. Hope to see you all next week. Been trying, but not hard enough, to write more, but spent too much time eating drinking and being merry instead. But why not, apparently the world will end in 2012, just to cheer you up. The ancient Mayan calendar started 5000 years ago but unlike ours counts downwards, and ends in 2012. Which is also when the Earth's magnetic field reverses. Apparently. Which is not much fun for all you orienteerers out there. Physicists say that this is nothing to worry about, but perhaps they are just being kind.





I went last weekend to the Lightbox in Woking, which is a new gallery and museum. It has caused a lot of controversy among the townsfolk, I have been told, many of whom believe that the money needed to build it could have been used more practically. The lighbox is decieving; the broadside, as one approaches, makes the building appear larger than it is. The entrance is gained from the left side which is quite narrow. So imagine a long thin rectangle of light. I went out of interest in "Drawn Blank" which is an exhibition of 60 paintings by Bob Dylan. What you actually find is a single room on the top floor which contains the works, which are drawings from the 80s and 90s that have been digitally enlarged and then painted by Bob. Some, it has to be said, are reminiscent of other artists, such as the 4 identical drawings in different colours that is very Warhol. Others remind you very much of Van Gogh, and I was hoping to see something more original. But he says that such similarities were not made intentionally. Most are views from rooms or portraits, and all share the same casual, colourful style. Incidentally, these works go for approx. "£4,000 unframed, £5,000 framed." A thousand? Your reviewer has quit his job and is going into the frame making business.

Hi all, here is another belated blog. I have found an interesting website for any aspiring writers, which is http://www.short-stories.co.uk - some of the stories are great, some not so much, and vary from one or two pages long upwards. I find even the not so good ones interesting as the reader can maybe see how the prose 'went wrong.' But hey, I am no critic - I have discovered from my writing course that it is very,very difficult to pen a good story without devoting enough time and thought to it. My 1st is nearly finished, and I will try to 'blog it up' by the end of the day. Or it might take me that long to think of a decent title!
There is also a link at the top where the genres list is, called HYPERFICTION that could be of interest to the more avant garde or technically minded among you - its a bit beyond me, but I shall take another look as it seems like interesting ideas. Anyway, still grappling with this damn story - watch this space!

Saatchi gallery chelsea

This recently opened gallery is free to the public and is easily found, from Sloan Sq. tube head down King's Rd for one minute and the Duke of York's residence is on the left. This has now been transformed into an impressive, modern, gallery. My motivation for going was to see a laurie lipton exhibition.I now realise that she was only featured online, as the gallery features its own online artists. She is, however, an amazing, stunning artist as you may agree if you follow this link.. http://www.laurielipton.com/


What my friend D and I did find here, however, was a collection of art by Chinese artists. It is probably not the 'done thing' to burst out laughing in a gallery, but when confronted by a huge statue of a donkey pushing over a skyscraper (or something worse) this is exactly what she did. This was by Zhan Huan and has something to do with the toppling over of government oppression, apparently. There is also some good work by Feng Zhenjie of blank-faced women, neither Western or Oriental in appearance, that represents the blandness of commercial advertising. There are some disturbing figures suspended from the ceiling by Zhang Dali, and conversely Cang Zin has very lifelike figures which seem to have fallen to the floor, the angel, in particular, appearing very real. One can get as close as one likes to these objects and also take pictures. Being a very silly man, I saw someone had dropped a hairband on the floor and pretended to take pictures of it. An art critic I will never be. However, this is a fascinating place to go to, not least because it is the newest London gallery and inside is what modern art is meant to be - striking and shocking.
http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/

Welcome

Welcome to the first page of this diary!



On Monday of this week I attended Stepping Stones - a talk with Seamus Heaney, Dennis O'Driscoll and Mark Lawson, to mark the publishing of the book of interviews of Heaney by O'Driscoll. This was at the Wyndam's Theatre at Leicester Square.

Heaney began by reading six poems of his and ended with the reading of a further two.

Outside the theatre, there were no posters or advertising of the event to be held inside, but the rows soon became full, which is an indicator of his popularity. In fact his fans have a name of their own - 'heaneyboppers.'

The tone of the evening was quite anecdotal and light. At one point Heaney remarked that when creating a poem, he goes from the stage of the poem as being linked with the word 'I', ie it is still in the process of being linked with himself and his thoughts, to being linked with the word 'It', when it becomes a thing in its own right. He said "I am not sure how you go from the process of 'I' to 'It'... except perhaps by adding a 'T!'

Lawson at one point talked about predictive texting, and informed Heaney that if you type in the word 'poet' you come up with the word 'soft', to which Heaney replied 'very good Mark!'

Dennis O'Driscoll, while seeming to be not as used to speaking publicly as the other two, spoke very deliberately and earnestly about his relationship with the poet. The book took six years to write, including interviews both face to face and online, and O'Driscoll commented of the differences in style between the two, ie how e-mail interviewing gives the interviewer more time to reflect, and how this self-editing can be both good and bad.

Heaney also talked about his reasons for turning down the poet laureate position, saying it was basically a fact that it was a full-time job that he did not want the responsibility of, and not for any political reason.

The surprise was that no copies of Stepping Stones were available on the night, but after hearing this three-way conversation I would say that for anyone interested in biography or poetry, this should be a fascinating read.