Sick Child (Flying)

in the distance
our knowledge starts to fade
is this the tops of some turbulent nimbus
or the flat eroded crater of a diseased volcano
hurling upwards

over the sea
peaks of waves dip and echo
the crests and troughs of the wrinkled land
(it would be a hard healing
hitting one of those)

sleeping in derilium
creases across the sheet
lying over the bedrock of a sick child
body lava hot knees quaking
heave geography


© Martin Porter 2011

This poem has a compound title, and no other explanation. I often insert a commentary into a poem in the form of an epigraph or postscript, but there is no suitable candidate for this. The poem is a very recent piece, and I am not entirely sure it is in final form at this stage, but it has gone through my editing process and I'm not unhappy with the current form.

Language used in poetry does not always follow the established rules of written (prose) language. It may be moulded into unusual forms rather like a sheet of metal in a press, and, like a sheet of metal forced into an unnatural shape, exhibits stress patterns and weaknesses as well as structure and strengths. This poem uses a reduced form, rather like that discussed in an earlier entry "in the cinema stalls watching..." Punctuation may allow the reader to construct a different interpretation, although this is still constrained by structure - the stanza, line structure and parentheses. So although the language has reduced coherence, it has not crossed the boundary of meaning to become nonsensical.

In some ways this poem may be seen as difficult in the sense that the meaning is not immediately obvious. As discussed in the entry "Disregarding 12 0 2", there may not be a need for a poem to be immediately obvious. It may be argued that poems which reveal their all in one single glance are just too obvious, but such judgements become subjective. A case, perhaps, of one man's meat... Unlike "Disregarding 12 0 2", this poem is difficult not because of the reduced content of the subject matter (which concentrates on what is actually happening, not where or why) but because of the language and its use. The obscurity is not going to be lifted by a simple internet search, because knowledge is not the issue here, this is a poem that is more about the seen and the interpreted.

This poem starts as a relatively simple description of a scene viewed from above as indicated in the last part of the title, although the first two lines are designed to challenge a simple interpretation. The use of brackets at the end of second stanza is intended to add an external commentary, but external to the narrator rather than external to the poem. Here the poem starts to move towards the edge of simplicity, and the language starts to obtain meaning not from the words used but from the structures in which they are placed. The structure becomes more chaotic in the third stanza, a structure that is prefigured by the word "diseased", which matches the word "derilium" used at the start of this final stanza. Note that the structure becomes chaotic, not disorganised. There is something structural operating there, rather like a defined feedback process that produces unpredictable results rather than just randomness or ill-discipline.

The first stanza contextualises the poem in both space and time. The time is the geological present, the place is what I call "home". The language has to work hard to push this past this boundary to an understanding of the origins of this location. The understanding is not a scientific understanding, however, but a poetic understanding. It attempts to take the reader past the point of tectonic activity and theory and pushes towards the concept that this young land has parallels to a sick child, hence the title. Perhaps this is what gives the poem the opacity that can be seen as a problem. But this is a good place to ask whether a poem should be just description, or just knowledge based, or perhaps something more visceral.

By using structure and move understanding past knowledge by using analogy, this poem tries to push language past the simple use of words. It takes the observation of a landscape on the clashing edge of tectonic plates, pushes language beyond its normal boundaries and takes the reader past  the visible into something that lies beyond the seen. In some ways the language is also searching for this substratum, a language beneath language.

The poem is not just about the known, it is about the experience the feelings and the interpretative process that rationalises and stores the experience into the fabric of the observers conception of nature. If nature poetry is to advance, perhaps it should position both language and place on the edge. The skill is to ensure it soes not fall over the edge, either into the dull or into the incoherent.

Cool (Sharks)

(Baros, Maldives, 10th April 1998)

Black tips break the surface.

Two torpedo twins
Glide, side by side,
Looking cool.

They cruise, irrespective,
Ignoring the black-eye mackerel,
All of a crowd,
Ignoring the sting-ray,
Too big, too intentioned,
Looking cool.

If they were in America
1965
They would be cruising
In unison, among some other racers,
In Cadilacs
Looking cool.

Here, on the reef
Looking tough,
Vicious even,
Ignoring all,
They just glide, side by side,
Two torpedo twins,
Looking cool.

Disregarding 12 O 2

30 seconds.

Twelve o two is crying for attention.
Overloaded, the god in the machine
Is in a state of panic
And demands that you stop.

But down below, the surface
Where you are going
Looks so interesting, so dangerous,
Grey, pored with sharp edged holes,

Tempting in the blandness,
But each block a risk of irreversible
Landing. Dust fans out
In long white streaks

And the shadow of the spider legs
Meet the spider legs.
The guys about to turn blue
Breathe again, the guys up there

Simply breathe.

© Martin Porter 2010

Disregarding 12 O 2 is a poem not without controversy. It has been described as being a difficult poem, which is a description I do not accept. The subject matter is perhaps not as explicit as it might be, but this does not necessarily make a poem difficult. I would argue that the poem is clear in its use of language. The syntax may be more creative than might be used in informal speech but not particularly unconventional, Personally, I think the syntax is plain. The use of words is not complicated, each word being used for its common meaning and the phrases are not uncommonly used either. There are no complicated metaphors, no deliberate double meanings. The poem may not immediately give up its context, in fact the reader may need some research to discover the context, but the event described in the poem is one of the better known of the last century and certainly cannot be said to be specialist knowledge. I would be surprised if I met many groups of people who did not know that the event had occured. They might not accept it, but they would have heard or read of it. Many of my contemporaries may have watched it on television as it happened. So I would not classify the poem as being "difficult".


Is the poem obscure? In one sense it is, in that it does need some research to identify the event. But close examination of the poem opens up clues to some of the solution. The pored grey surface as a destination and the mention of spider legs may trigger some memories in some of the older readers. The phrase "guys about to turn blue" and "breathe again" may offer some clues as well. Try using an internet search to identify them and the event is quite quickly revealed. It does require effort as I have crafted the phrases to not reveal the context immediately but to allow the searcher to discover the meaning. But it should not be hard for the intended audience to achieve this, especially as the poem is published on the internet on the "52/250 A Year of Flash" blog under the theme "Long Distance" - another clue to the meaning - and not as hard copy.

Is the obscurity deliberate? Most certainly. If it was not, the poem would be out of control. While out-of-controlness might not always be a bad thing, it does not reflect well on the craft of the writer. I would not say a poem should always be so restricted as to defy any flexibility in reading or interpretation, but I do believe the writer should engineer the space. Unintended opacity is, in my opinion, a defect in a poem and should be tackled. It reflects that the audience is either the wrong audience for the poem, the poem is the wrong poem for a given audience or the writer does not offer sufficient respect to the poem or the intended audience. Its no less wrong than a single slug in a restaurant salad.

Is this "obscurity" justifiable? Perhaps not, but sometimes a poem should not immediately reveal itself. Sometimes a rather prosaic event becomes interesting simply because it does not reveal its context immediately. I hope the language hooks the reader with phrases such as "Looks so interesting, so dangerous" and "a risk of irreversible/Landing" and encourages the path of discovery. I hope making the poem less explicit than it might be allows the imagination to work more effectively and for the subject to be enhanced by the links to possible interpretations that enhance the readers understanding. In other words, the writing should encourage the reader to imaginatively focus down to the event, rather than restricting the imagination to just the event. Does this prevent the poem from having meaning (whatever that may be)? I think it can give a poem an expanded meaning. It simply places some of the creative process onto the audience as well as the poet, and I believe this can be beneficial. Of course the writer can reveal all the secrets at once, but that can be destructive.


In "52/250 A Year of Flash", further information is added to the poem in the epigraph. I now regret this. I believe it has compromised the readers path of discovery. If the poem is not worth thinking about it is better left alone, The poem could have been made considerably more obvious in its context by replacing the word "holes". I chose not to do this as a conscious decision simply because it would make the context very obvious, perhaps the equivalent of putting any interpretation into a straitjacket. If the poem has value, it is worth researching. I hope the reader of this poem not only finds value in the written words and structure, but also in discovering that a well-known event in history which has become taken for granted has an interest beyond the bare facts - the "science" - and has a beauty and a thrill that is art. I also hope the path to discovery is a rewarding adventure.