Barry Graham's Blog, page 12

children playing in ruins of mill
me 40 summers ago
walking by today

An emerging poet bringing a new popularity to the form This article in the Guardian is an entertaining example of how every ten years or so the media declares a movement of young poets who are popularising the form, or taking it off the dusty bookshelves. It was said of the beats (who were really the most conservative poets of the 20th Century) in the 1950s, of various hippy writers in the 1960s, of the punk poets in the 1970s and 80s, of slam poets in the 1990s...

In the early 1990s, a S...

The River Kelvin runs near the Glasgow tower block where I live in a small flat on the 10th floor. I walked to the river in search of a rock I could get to represent the Buddha on the altar I’m assembling on my veranda. I found one lying at the side of the path, so I put it in a plastic bag and staggered home, holding its weight in both arms.

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young woman pushing pram
bruise under her eye
morning rain

The spring issue of Northwords Now has a story by me. It's one of my favourite literary magazines, and first published me more than 20 years ago. I'm grateful we're both still around.

At Tesco, a young man mumbles a question to the middle-aged man at the checkout: Does it cost 50p to pay by debit card? "Naw, no here, pal. It's free," the older man says. So much everyday compassion in how he speaks.

Lessard accuses me of murdering this grass Novelist and Zen practitioner (and, now, damn him, poet) Bart Lessard has taken revenge on me for flaking when I was supposed to clear fallen leaves at the Zen retreat we're creating at Garelochhead. My failure to do so resulted in what you see in the photo. As it's a flyte, I hope to come up with a response, but I fear it won't be as brilliant as this:

Willows weep, aspens quake
In dreamclouds of the Weegie flake
Blackthumb Barry Graham
October lai...

Two days ago you breathed out
and didn’t breathe in again. You
were in your bed at home in Cascadia.
I’m on my couch at home in Glasgow,
reading a book of your poems, one of
the books you put in a package, took
to a post office and mailed to me.
I find you in the words, and I look for you
in the spaces between.

I'm sad to hear of the death of Sam Hamill, the great Zen poet, translator, founder of Copper Canyon Press, and founder of Poets Against War. We never met in person, but corresponded for years and sent each other books. I planned to visit him when I was living in Portland, Oregon and he in Washington State, but, as is the way of things, I never made it.

He was brilliant, grumpy and kind. He did what I consider the best English translation of Basho's Oku no hosomichi (Narrow Road to the I...