Samuel Taylor Coleridge is a global great, and my thanks to IT and Rupert for posting this celebration of his life and work here.

The video on IT is my sound and image reflection on STC as we near the 250th anniversary of his birth: more details when you visit the site.

~

I am currently winding down my involvement with the Coleridge Memorial Trust as we near the unveiling of our Samuel Taylor Coleridge statue on the 21st October, 2022 – the 250th anniversary of his birth in the town of Ottery St Mary. The statue is to be placed permanently at St Mary’s Church, Ottery.

So this is a personal, celebratory mood, with a very personal celebration of STC from a little while ago: my word re-arrangements from a Coleridge line set to a musical piece from me

I have recently mentioned on this blog my two Coleridge poetry collections: Ottery’s Aeolian Harp which is an eclectic collection of poems about STC and Ottery St Mary (the town of his birth), and a poet animate in anima poetæ which is a collection of found poems taken from his notebooks, collected as Anima Poetæ. I am now announcing my plans for making these available.

I will place these for sale on the 21st October, 2022, the 250th anniversary of Coleridge’s birth. All proceeds from the sale will be donated to the MS Society UK.

Each pamphlet will cost £5, to include UK p+p, or they can both be purchsed at £8 to include UK p+p. I will post more details on this nearer the time.

The following are examples of poems from the booklets, the first pair from OAH, and the second pair from a poet… :

There is a room to rent in the
awesome opportunity of its offering,
available in the immediacy of an

effortless life where such fantasy
is en-suite. Having moved in and on,
it is now yours – no interactive

fiction game, no escaping, no
self-contained alternatives, no looking
for a share. Good is in a room

when you believe.
There are tips for painting your room you:
remove the dreams of those from before;

tape all trims with blue; prime your
work ethic with hopefulness; now brush or roll
anew according to what you have.

However, one night you sleep on the
blind side, envisage having been alone until
turning over to see – oh dear me:

we are in this story
deep now, in this amazing room
that is south facing to

imagination, the space almost
to yourself, still asking the question and wondering
how blue loneliness looks.

Amuse yourself reading
Handy Guides: A Room to Yourself
found in the attic amongst the

broken toys and trunks
left open and not as empty
as you had assumed.

When your thoughts turn negative
ask yourself if you have enough salt and
white sage to scatter and burn

to prevent the need for black tourmaline.
While out driving and in passing you spot the
Spoil Yourself Someday Room Offer sign,

pause and reflect on what Gertrude Stein might
counter about the accommodation you already have
and how tenderness should overcome pondering.

At 10, I walked into town
with a sustained sound of
the church’s peel of bells,
a loop of rise and fall in an
indiscernible song – to me
anyway – then returning
home, its remote melody
drifted in and out with my
changing surrounds or
perhaps the shifts of a light
breeze, and hooking into
those touchstones known,
all I could think about was
a curved air of mourning.

My thanks to IT and Rupert for posting my poem here today.

We talk the same now
but it wasn’t always like this:

as with turning on the
tap / faucet in opposing ways,

how to ask directions for the
toilet / bathroom, or revving

engines of Peace and Love
under a bonnet / hood.

Judgement was in the ‘right’
way to say English words –

my counting of thirdy, fordy; then
turdle as well. Always oarange,

my languid Nebraskan vocal
dulled consonants and stretched

vowels a mouth could not
get around with ease.

But talking the same now is the
‘Right’ way, a politics of

speaking that replaces nuances
of sound for vitriol. The Fascists –

there is only one way to speak this
designation – coalesce in shouts of

the self over care for others. Accent
is no longer a divide, but rich / poor

and truth / lie reside respectively as
a chasm or are indistinguishable:

the two ‘great democracies’
I have straddled for a lifetime

sound the same, but are
no longer what they were.

~

(On the day one idiot narcissist leaves its power base to be replaced by another, the following cut-up continues to be apt):

Power is power,

but we are different
when we do not want it
for that.

It takes all our courage
to question this.

We are
unwillingly
the answer to our question

asking of it,
what motive?

Why the method
of one’s own motives
for power?

We are not in this power
relinquishing for our own sake
for others;

interested in the good of others.

There are other means
to an end where
this is this:

the good of others
is
the good of others;

being equal
is
being equal.

(cut-up: 1984 – George Orwell)