found in the fervour for

My poem here today at International Times, with thanks to Rupert and IT.

There’s going to be more in this than American Cookery. I looked for lighter, but…

Further to my previous post on this erasure attempt, it was, as I suspected, not oven-ready for transformation, the ingredients lacking the potential hoped for. I could persevere for ‘light entertainment’ – and there’s no harm in that – but I don’t think it can ultimately rise to this. I rest my case:

I’m actually making a real pie for lunch, and that is much more interesting!

My next writing project, another self-indulgence, is an erasure of the 1796 American Cookery book – the ‘first’ American cookbook, certainly as a national idea and production.

My initial thought is it would be a rich source, but I am not sure, and will only know definitely as I progress through. I think when I get to the actual recipes I may find the repetitiveness rather limiting. Here is one from yesterday,

I’ve hit a section currently where the threads tend to the peurile [not the ‘muddy bottoms’ of above…] and this may be an impass.

My previous erasures, for interest, and to read/download for free, are:

Muellerasure – an erasure of The Mueller Report – here

The Yell – and earsure of The Yellow Book – here

The Aran Islands Parts I and II here

I am very pleased to be in such a ‘timely’ anthology, this post’s title qualifying that term. My individual poem is perhaps singular, expressing contempt for the pathetic ‘little englander’ narrative – the one voiced throughout Brexit, and the silliness of the tags experienced in a lifetime when having chosen to live in a country other than the place of your birth and nationality. I also mean my voice does not have to deal with the nastiness, misrepresentations, neglect, abuse and all the significant rest some others in this collection share from their experiences – though not forgetting the celebrations. I do like the line ‘welcoming arms of poetry’.

To read more and purchase, go here.

#24 – the final poem from this collection

(Images by artists and photographer Nick Dormand)

#23

Not an
elephant’s eye

or crack
in the cloud

on this full
bright day

but sunlight
dappled by the

nearer move
of bamboo in
a soft wind

Traffic on
the radio
a DJ intro’d

as ‘psychedelic’
its light and dark

dancing across
closed eyes

as reclining
on the couch

travelling and
starting to fall