Terry McDonagh: Elbe Letters

Writing in Hamburg Writing in Hamburg is in a healthy state with several people involved and some good work emerging: – Pen& Ink Writers Hamburg meet every two weeks to exchange ideas and discuss work – A new publishing house is getting off the ground ( more later) – A number of people are publishing regularly – There are workshops and readings on an ongoing basis.

Hi All,

Terry McDonagh is offering creative writng courses in Ireland…check out this link:

http://www.tmdcreativewriting.com/

More information to come

Hi All,

a) I was very happy with the response to my poem, The Last Bard, published in The Prairie Schooner in December.  Thanks.

b) My book:

In the Light of Bridges

  -Hamburg Fragments

is going well…should be finished in about a month

c) Pen & Ink is a vibrant writing group in Kiltimagh, Co Mayo in Ireland, and now we have Pen & Ink Writers in Hamburg. I am delighted to be associated with both. We hope to bring them closer together in future.

Hamburg Pen & Ink celebrates its first ‘social’ in Kemp’s pub (Mittelweg 27, Hamburg) on February 3rd at 8pm.

All are welcome.

This group has really got off the ground in the past few months.  We meet every two weeks in Kulturladen St Georg.

Tschuess aus Hamburg.

Two Items:

a) I am making good progress with my latest book: In the Light of Bridges – Hamburg Fragments   I expect to be finished in about two months, to be published in spring.

b) my copies of Prairie Schooner, (nebraska University) an anthology of Irish writing, arrived a few days ago.

Two of my poems: THE LAST BARD and LIMBO are included in Prairie Schooner:

The Last Bard 

for Sally McKenna – creator of Raftery sculpture in Kiltimagh

 On Lios Árd among beech trees, I lie

like a novice on moss and grass and

you are in those battered clouds

looking down at colours you know by heart.

I was a fierce warrior here at eight.

At nine, I hacked my name into a tree.

A dog howls. In the distance the river

whispers, it’s time to sleep. I wrap

my book in fern and see stars slipping

like melting ice. A fox bickers.

A rabbit pleads. I smell red wind

and shut my eyes to catch you reeling in the sun.

*

You left Cill Aodáin in a hurry – to do with

the death of a horse – odds on, a tall tale!

With hands out wide, you trudged south to Tuam,

then on to Craughwell and Gort.

You knew darkness and could measure light:

come to me – come with me – show me your scars

and I will curse for you.

While Saint Bridget hung washing on a sunbeam

in spring, you dreamt of being a boy again

with rod and golden worms. Flowers and lists

of red berries carpeted the bog road in Cill Aodáin.

There was a first night in Claremorris and

strong drink in Balla. Kiltimagh was steeped in laughter.

All this was yours for a song.  A poet dreams.

A muse seeks its own geography.

*

You are back – a sculpture in Kiltimagh – a bard

trapped in open air for entertainment. I try to keep

an up-to-date diary of other routine events:

A woman in curlers charts a love story

in a shop window; another sings

of a long-lost lotto ticket.

Health-freaks check their feet before

walking round in circles; a footless man

peeps through the church railing.

Planes hardly clear the houses in Knock

and children are rushed off to piano lessons

and you say:

come, sit by me for a moment. I am blind.

I have walked to Galway and can hear the sun.

*

The child in your tomb will continue to outlive

days of holy awe and judgement –

in Cill Aodáin in springtime, with nature

writing colour into a new season, your silhouette,

baked in earth and sound, is stencilled in the sky.

I’m probably a thing of the past…at least I hope I am when it comes to publication of poetry. Weekends are the worst: I open my mailbox and the first thing that meets me is a whole list of poems which I’d love to read but, instead, I delete them…not because I want to but the sheer volume is the straw that breaks etc…I wonder if anybody reads poetry these days…are we all so busy writing that we ignore reading the masters? It has always been very difficult to get noticed as a poet but it must be almost impossible in the present climate. I live in Hamburg and imagine I am away from it all…not the case!!! we are global, which is fascinating…perhaps it is as it’s always been: clean water will find its way?

Snippets:

I have lived and worked in Hamburg for many years and am still finding out new things about the city…for example, I am often fascinated by the work that has to go into foundations where there is no solid stone base…and a lot of the city is built on and propped up by stilts…water, water everywhere!!

And now that I am writing a book about the city (working title: Hamburg in the Light of Bridges) I come across new things every day. The piece below is an excerpt from my manuscript prompted by a memorial mound in Eimsbuettel.

In 1821, Heine couldn’t have known what was going to happen under National Socialism, yet he feared the burning of books.

Heinrich Heine:

“Das war ein Vorspiel nur, dort wo man Bücher Verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menchen.”

“That was only a prelude, because where books are burnt, people will, ultimately, be burnt.”

These words are taken from Heine’s tragedy, Almansor (1821) when a Spanish Moslem made this pronouncement during the burning of the Koran – by Catholics – on a funeral pyre.

In his wildest dreams he could never have imagined that this was to become a reality in his home country of Germany.

The burning of books is recounted, in relief, on the base of the Heine Statue in Rathausmarkt, Hamburg.

Joachim Matschoss is a poet, novelist and a dramatist and, above all, he is an old friend. I was delighted when he asked me to comment on his latest poetry collection, Thinking in Fragments. www.joachimmatschoss.com

Thinking in Fragments is yet another milestone in the vibrant, artistic life of Joachim Matschoss. Born in Germany, living in Melbourne and capturing whole chunks of human experience in beautifully crafted, lyrical language is the enduring charm of this book. His language keeps pace with dazzling imagery as he moves from continent to continent, country to country, city to city, place to place, detail to detail.

Thinking in Fragments. I felt the warmth and breath of a nun’s smile as she rides along on her bicycle in Slovakia. There’s cat’s under a table in Greece. He says Farewell in Hamburg; is “lost for words in Melbourne” in his “home away from home” and “ what better is there but springtime?” by the river Wye.

This book bubbles. We dart from a bar in Portugal to goat’s cheese in Greece to a family in Germany to Gypsies in Rome or morning in Venice. The poet’s pen is a camera scared to leave a crumb unsnapped.

And despite all the movement, we are constantly reminded that human existence is precious and fragile. In the opening poem, A Woman, a Cemetery in Singapore, there are “no future plans/just a bunch of fresh flowers/for now.” We read of “grey” days in Hamburg and a brother: “once he laughed/who has failed?”

The book ends in “Lost for Words” – a sombre note. “They speak English here”/ Tschuess!” To whom or what is he saying goodbye? English?

Terry McDonagh is an Irish poet living in Hamburg and Ireland: www.terry-mcdonagh.com

As I said in my last piece, I’m working on a book/collection of tales, stories, anecdotes, poems, scraps of life in my adopted city of Hamburg. My working title is Hamburg in the Light of Bridges. There are 2,300 bridges in Hamburg so I thought it would be a good title to begin with. I wrote this poem the other day. I’m not sure of the title but this is it….

As Real As Life Gets      

In the city, there are coats on people and jackets on pegs

in shop windows. There is paint on walls in suburbs,

names above buildings and women on something

in Good Ville. The city seems safe, but as sure as

there was a time before cars, some judges go to lunch

in brothels, policemen walks up and down dreaming

of a cosy bar with a lady who has got a weapon

to trade. There’s a tormented professor of philosophy

in coffee shop and a breezy troublemaker next to her.

Hints of a real world fall into focus like the blue of a pool

from up high. An elderly lady leans across into her

neighbour’s garden to pinch a sprig with a straight face.

The visiting crowd leave facts and figures

on a beach in July. Wind blows up the river and waves

roll in with the tides. Symbols have meaning for some.

Colour blindness sees what it sees and not every singer

is happy. A boy and girl receding into the woods, or a

child on cloud nine with ice-cream is as real as life gets.

I still don’t like the word BLOG, blogedy blog, but I like scribbling a few words now and then. In some ways it’s not much different to so-called cavemen scribbling their messages on walls. Trouble is our ‘stuff’ is painted out there somewhere in cyberland, alien-hinter-space or other such invisible territories.

I remember being asked to do workshops in a school in the old days (about seven years ago) and the teacher asking me to bring in some drafts of published work if I had them. I did have some drafts on handwritten scraps and tatty A4 sheets which I brought with me. We had a wonderful few days discussing the writing process from day one to finished product. I no longer keep drafts because I work mostly on the computer!! That’s progress, or is it?

I don’t know how I got on to that theme but, anyway, what I wanted to say was that I have been asked to write a book, Hamburg in the light of Bridges, (working title). I feel like a caveman and that’s brilliant! let me explain: The book is to include observations, poems, stories, and some half-forgotten things that ‘busy’ life tends to push to one side or ignore. I jump on my bike and cycle about with a keener set of eyes and I’m having fun talking to people about experiences from football through possible Danish invasions and on to the rarified world of books, poets and composers. Most of my ‘gathering work’ is conducted in German, but I am writing in English…it is exciting! The caveman in me is rampant!

Ahoy from Hamburg.

I met Homer Rieth in 2001 in Melbourne and we got on really well from our first meeting. I was writer in residence in the city; he was teaching classical studies at the university and had just published his first full poetry collection, The Dining Car Scene. We have remained friends.

In 2009, Homer published Wimmera. He sent me a copy and the moment I opened the ‘parcel’ I knew I was in the presence of something special. If a book of poetry ever changed a poet’s life, this must be the one to change Homer Rieth’s. I had read excerpts of the book-in-progress, but nothing could have prepared me for the final work.

Aside: he forgot to sign the book but, later, remembered his ‘mishap’ and promised to make good when he comes to Europe next year.

Justin Clemens says: it encompasses and re-presents fascinating regional details; in it’s spiritual vision, it is reminiscent of the cosmic speculations of Wordsworth and Whitman. Paul Kane says: Homer Rieth in Wimmera re-invents the epic. There is nothing like it anywhere.

It is an epic set in Australia’s Wimmera Region, 400 kilometres NW of Melbourne,  where Homer lives in the small town of Minyup with a pop. of c.600. This is significent because Homer made a conscious decision to move to Wimmera seven or eight years ago. The end result of that move is an epic consisting of 12 books and 358 pages, published by Black Pepper in Melbourne. In comparison, all of our slim volumes seem very slim indeed.

This poetry has to be read in blocks. It tells us the physical, metapfysical and spiritual story of a region. The book titles give us a hint:

1) Jackson Siding,   2)The road to wal,  3) Wide Blue Yonder,   4)  Ashens,  5) Sheep Hills,   6) Navarre ,   7) Pearl barley,   Florida Villas,   9) Marnoo,  10) Mutton Swamp,   11) Tap Roots,   12) Aldebaran and Beyond.

The first line of book 1, part 1:

And the length and breath of those summers

the back of them

fading into a blank-stare distance

towards nothing remotely on the horizon

This is not meant to be a review and it isn’t. It is an appreciation of a wonderful book of poetry written by a friend. Read it!!