a mermaid has lost my voice-the greedy girl

As said wrote lots of poems over weekend and just tidying a lot up    as usual minimalist and mystically  obscure

this is one of my most peer  praised on the poetry sites i post to  

based on mermaid stories which are based on sodden  mermaid paintings such as above 

 find I do not write conceits or odes  only confusions of existing myths 

 Zennor is a sea port village in Cornwall  famed for its mermaid romance  and commemorative carving of   mermaid in the local church 

as you can see the poem is not romantic 

Zennor morning

I find you a mermaid

Rip her fish

We had not dreamt of mythology 

And of the thoughtless   standing chained in  the quicken deep

A ship burns  on the water

Daybreak  still in incident 

what am i talking about in these poems

read deep space martyr a novel linked to the deep space  game franchise as expected a back story to the game  no plot or characters to speak of , bodies literally spill out,  monsters are reanimated corpses   and they keep on coming on and on in dark corridors and behind locked doors   loose mention of an unexplained alien artifact  which is  an  sentinel  obelisk called  here the marker  as any on ther better name for an alien artifact already taken
Richard Dadd the artist and the asylum  a illustrated biography of the parricide artist from his early colour plate  orientalist work to his  belief  of being possesed by ancient Osiris  from murder and madness  and then a slow genesis into a painter of delusions and fey  horrors   that made his name

the black book    of modern myths    the usual paranormal guide ticking all the occult from EVP to  spirit posses ion of a computer  but including examples from  the far east , phillipines and the pacific rim   many old stories retold

the 20th century in poetry    i admit i read very very few books on poetry  and thsi book only really got interesting in the 1960s   the pre war poets the greats were in the main dead and wrote like the dead, some  good content from the  first and second world war poets who fell in the field    but  often dire in inspiration and  content  from odes to the titanic to odes to  going shopping   all the laureate is here but little of the laurel

thinking if remaking my star clock  note the time  for december and may  reading off ursa major 

wrote  14 poems this week mix of supernatural mystic and  more mystic   for example written last night at 1945 GMT
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/helen-is-finally-faceless/
 http://www.writeoutloud.net/blogs/marklittler

hurrah I sing the jubilee

wrote another jubilee poem
alas too late for the deadline to be judged by pam ayres as usual my  ironic obscure stuff   and  referring to Queen libet as "age ridden monument "
noted I use a limited vocabulary of words and themes  my stock phrases are dark , day , outside, ending,  emptiness decay, christ, loss  and that I can interchange lines from poem to poem
only a poetry hobbyist   would write and ask simon armitage about what it is like being "a poet superstar destined to be celebrated for lines immortal"  but of course would just get ignored again  stiil waiting for a reply from my 19th April enquiry  and i think his yorkshire morkshire  stuff is *** anyway

lot of pending poems as seen above  and now run out of paper in the notebook i started in 1987   will have to go back and rub out all my early work -who needs it

over blown Dune novel eaten by worms

read the prequel  prequel Dune universe novel  the sisterhood of dune by brian herbert and kevin J anderson  a long novel of remarkable little story telling the ancestry of house corrino house harkonnen and house Everyone Else   written by the son of Dune creator Frank herbert   it reads like a bad Peter F Hamilton space opera with less plot   and no originality  one for the  mass market  and for the money

kingdom of light by guilio leoni   a novel about dante the detective set in 14th century florence and dealing with the  search lost treasure of emperor frederick II from 50 years before    full of secret conspiracy and  secter brotherhoods   starts well with a ship  arriving  full of a dead crew  but too much plot not used well  either it was about islamic science brought to a disbelieving or  court conspiracies from long ago   (one or the other please)  finishes on  a second rate "Name of the Rose" conclusion about a  long lost scientific device that threatens the world  and really does very little  characters appear just to be killed off   and the  murderer is signposted early

In search of a masterpiece  a art lovers tour of britian and ireland  a tour of galleries  and their best art  large section on london  but minute on edinburgh, wales and Eire  do they really have few museums   space for laing art gallery preston museum and  Tate St Ives    showed the best art  in their collection so do not need to go there now

Masters of Crime: Fiction's Finest Villains and Their Real-life Inspirations   riproaring tales about jonathan wils, jack shepherd and moll cutpurse  and their origins in rather unsavoury real life crimes, section on the inspiration for professor Moriarty and how every black art satanist magician in print is really only based on Aleister Crowley and his publicity 

regina queen

read mistresses by  elizabeth abbot  strangely trite history of the mistress from the often told royal mistress  to  the kept woman, jewish mistress of nazi , gangsters moll    and  the literacy mistress  in fact and fiction    rather uninspiring brief biographies of what were in the main selfish  woman  stuck with selfish men  hope there will be companion piece on fancy men and male lovers
the travellers day book   a tour of the world in 366 days  by fergus fleming    a long year of a read and  of mixed content    a year a page using sources from the medieval to the  TV programme  but in the main   boring  content from travel writers  and novelist  journeymen   barely hiding their disdain  of foreigners  none of the extracts long enough to tell a story  but short enough for judgements  and solitude
rather a long laborious read  and had forgottten most of the days by the end

the victors crown Greek and Roman Sport from Homer to Byzantium  by  david potter
interesting  history of early sports  and with good  new theories on minoan bull leaping    and with  2012  already here  a better than usual  section on the olympics   including not only the victors but their trainers  fans and promoters  leading to the mixing of greek and roman culture and early history of the games  avoiding the arena cliches  and giving new though to the myth  that the christian church ended the roman games
modern architecture a guide  since 1900   well illustrated history of architecture divided into   schools and  movements from classical and post classical modernist and post modern  including  the architecture of metropolis and the dictator  and showing how the patron works with the architect  many new designs fro cathedrals,  museums  skyscrapers and new multicities


mixed inspiration  and many loose lines     i had noted that there is a daily mail competition for   diamond jubilee poems  judged by sir andrew motion, pam ayres and  sir roy strong
love to send my England I love this republic  to sir and to judge  cannot expect  to win   if pam ayres is judge    for those who do not know  pam ayres started as unconscious  entertainer  of very simple  harmless verses  same is however true of sir And
my new currently fragementary  royal poem uses  the words " long diagonal, rectangle,elizabethan virgin, victorian virgin , silent architecture  severe vertical "  to describe  HM  who has been  so long on the throne almost an institution  and just a definition for stability  the Regina Queen
with new presidents in France  and Russia starting new terms
the idea of england having an elected president seemed odd after all our parliamentary politicians  are not worth rising to president and that leaves only a figurehead from the performing arts to fulfil the role of four year term head of state

hawaiian star compass

always wanted to create an polynesian star compass   based on the northern hemisphere   skies  and make it out of rocks  which i would put in a  circle in my backyard  see design below   easy to spot and follow the movement of the  constellations from solstice to solstice  and indicate the  passage as stones   ie winter cassiopeia north west
summer cassiopeia north east (however the hard bit is actually seeing the stars in an urban security light  illuminated suburb know the constellations are there- just cannot see them )

Mau Piailug's Star Compass pattern of stones  from wikipedia 

my poetry  now scattered around on various  forums and poetry sites  

my Arthurian poem " Arthur the king" scoring some hits    as this is popular  theme 

still no reply from simon armitage re kalevala but do not expect one as such things now dealt with   by the publishers PR team

Mara Jade hold my hand

the art book   a thames and hudson illustrated guide  to  thousands of years of art from cave art to indian  installation art of 2010  as it says on the back  cover easily navigatable and user friendly  all types of art there in this print website  format from  ancient sumerian to the mannerists and onto  every post war artist since 1945  totally without comment or pretension

lore of the playground by steven roud  a 100 years of childrens games from tag to skipping    british bulldog to marbles and tops i spent my childhood indoors reading books and memorizing king lists and dates in history  so the idea of clapping games  conkers and  skipping rhymes new and unknown to me

warlords the struggle for power in post roman britain  stuart layock   some thing  familiar to any reader of a Arthurian novel     good on detail and heavy on sources form gildas  not only imcluding the favourites Arthur, vortigern and Hengest but also Gerontius  and Penda

star wars omnibus a series of three graphic novels   stars wars shadows of empire, mara jade  by the emperors hand  and shadows of empire evolution      i pickled this up and realised that i had read these in the 1990s but still  remembered the story    set betwen yavin and endor    it told  of peripheral events usually amongst  galactic scum and  cantina lowlife  for example the adventures of  boba fett transporting  a big block of han  solo to jabba ,the conspiracies of prince xixor and his black sun criminal gang   mara jade   (later of course mrs skywalker) and her early life as high kicking high kill count imperial  agent  and the last story shadows of the empire evolution    telling the story of Guri the barbie blonde replica human assasin droid from the black sun gang sought by criminal gangs, cantina low lifes and galactic scum all of which  she of course crushes underfoot   wonderfully  cliched  and  drawn colourfully if not totally to scale