My Dead Holiday.
\nPaul\u2019s Story.<\/p>\n
I dreamed my genesis in sweat of sleep, breaking *<\/p>\n Groups in prison are unpredictable in many ways \u2013 sometimes things interfere with men attending, due either to their own priorities, the demands of the regime, or when there’s some threat to security. When they built the spanking new wings, they somehow forgot to put in enough teaching rooms, so I need to block-book the room on Wing 2 every Wednesday afternoon. This week I have three guys lined up for a group session, chosen because they’re young and enthusiastic. I’m excited myself because it’s been a while since my jokingly named “Avant-garde Poetry Group” disbanded; but meeting him at the door of his wing, one of our members apologises for having a healthcare clash, and now there’s just the three of us. From limbs that had the measure of the worm, shuffled “When I read this poem,\u201d he said, “I understood it completely. I felt it was the story of my life”. *<\/p>\n I got to know Paul better over the course of the next few weeks. I would go to his cell and talk about his poetry. When he showed me his scarred legs and told me the story of his accident, I asked him to write it down. Some edited extracts follow.<\/p>\n *<\/p>\n I left work a few minutes early and was cycling back home. Usually I would be wearing safety gear but I had forgotten my helmet that morning on my way out for the breakfast shift. I didn\u2019t bother putting on my reflective ankle straps and sash as it was the middle of the day, and the sun was almost directly above. *<\/p>\n Andile\u2019s was a different tragedy. In Marikana, in 2012, black South African police had opened fire on unarmed miners; \u201cUnder orders,\u201d Andile insisted, \u201con the phone, from London!\u201d I\u2019d talked to him about what we loosely called \u2018open field\u2019 techniques, drawing on Chris Torrance and Allen Fisher and nodding to Olsen, as a way he could bring history and geography into his lyrics and stretch them wider, to write the bigger picture. This was to be a work in progress, perhaps a progress as long as his life. *<\/p>\n (The) embodied self continually hovers between such extremes of petrification and vulnerability in Thomas, in an interplay between organic and inorganic\u2026his \u2018habitual confusion of metal and flesh\u2019. For, however vulnerable it may be, the self has to don some kind of armour or carapace, in order to have agency and function in the world\u2026Thomas is fascinated with the apparatus of self-protection, even if he senses that a \u2018wounded self\u2019 is necessary to his writing. The sculptural autonomy of his poems, growing in its protective elaboration, is itself a kind of \u2018cybernetic fantasy\u2019 and in some of them, \u2018I, in my intricate image\u2019 or \u2018I dreamed my genesis\u2019 \u2026the speakers can seem nothing less than a cyborg\u2026 *<\/p>\n The sensation of tarmac grinding down your palms and elbows while scraping every other part of your body coming in contact with it is difficult to explain. Humans slide across tarmac more easily than I thought. The rubber on the heel of my shoe was vibrating madly, sending my feet back and forward like a metronome at top speed. My legs would buckle and fold below the knees moment to moment, but not constantly. I was using the back of my head and my neck muscles like an arm to help shuffle myself up the car when I felt my mid-section catch too much traction on the road and pull me underneath the car; I couldn\u2019t afford to use my hands because they were already working hard against the ground to stop me folding in half. Eventually, using my shoulders, I managed to twist my position to my side. This is the point of which I could see most of what was going on; I could now free one hand and was trying to grab upwards at the bonnet and at the front left corner. The idea was to get enough grip to pull myself away from the car and throw myself from the speeding vehicle; it was also a kind of an attempt to get the driver\u2019s attention. During all of this, having realised the situation fully, I was speaking aloud, not necessarily to anyone or myself but more just exclaiming my head voice. I recall saying \u201cOh no!\u201d quite a lot and \u201cWhat the fuck?\u201d followed by the odd \u201cHey!\u201d and \u201cAaaargh!\u201d I was finding it very surreal and upsetting that it was taking so long that I had time to speak, but not just blabbing, rather actual coherent chatter. I felt it should have been quicker. *<\/p>\n Between the 10th August and 20th September 2012, there were 44 deaths, including 41 striking miners shot dead by police near the Marikana platinum mine near Rustenburg in South Africa, after 3000 miners had joined in a protest against pay and conditions. The Bench Marks Foundation argued: “The benefits of mining are not reaching the workers or the surrounding communities. Lack of employment opportunities for local youth, squalid living conditions, unemployment and growing inequalities contribute to this mess.” It claimed the workers were exploited and this was a motivation for the violence. It also criticised the high profits when compared with the low wages of the workers. The International Labour Organisation criticised the condition of the miners saying they are exposed to “a variety of safety hazards: falling rocks, exposure to dust, intensive noise, fumes and high temperatures, among others.” The Trade and Industry Minister described the conditions in the mines as “appalling” and said the owners who “make millions” had questions to answer about how they treat their workers. *<\/p>\n The main point is that Thomas is attracted to the cybernetic trope and the figure of the cyborg, because these are ambivalent \u2018boundary figures\u2019 between states, \u2018neither one thing nor the other\u2019. Far from setting up the organic \/ inorganic split\u2026he seeks to deconstruct the dichotomy. \u2026The constant slippage in his writing between external and internal physicalities, between a sense of the embodied and the disembodied, reflects a fundamental uncertainty about the limits of the self. Thomas presents the attractions of the autonomous \u2018cyborg\u2019 body, together with its threats and, as I shall show, the alternative of dissolution.<\/p>\n *<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I read this poem,\u201d he said, “I understood it completely. I felt it was the story of my life”.<\/p>\n *<\/p>\n At this point I became unconscious. It was as if all of my senses were one; instead of being separate I was seeing sounds, tasting colours, hearing visions and feeling time. It was like I was a cell that was self-aware as part of a much bigger collective consciousness; all the other cells made up this \u2018body\u2019 and the cells were people, animals and objects, and the \u2018body\u2019 was the universe or rather, \u2018all that was\u2019. The cell that was me but also a small part of this body would occasionally go through valves and gates and encounter other cells; it was like I was aware of what needed to be done at these intervals and would have done it but something exterior overpowered me gently and put me on autopilot through these cascading valves of colour and lipid matter. These encounters would drain me of life-source though, and as it went on \u2013 for 300 years \u2013 I felt myself becoming wiser and wiser with each encounter. Like a blood cell delivering oxygen to muscle tissue, the haemoglobin would store the oxygen (life-source) and deposit it where necessary, and the more this happened the more I became self-aware and further understood my position and purpose in the body. All the while of course I was essentially getting closer and closer to my end, which made the whole process extremely poignant, meaningful and full of awe. *<\/p>\n Andile\u2019s\u2019s Marikana sequence is still in process. Paul has left the prison, having handed over his poems and other writings to produce this article and to put out there in whatever way seems useful. I am grateful to both men for their work and generosity in allowing me to use their words. I hope to dwell a little more on Andile\u2019s work in the next \u201cMen Inside\u201d.<\/p>\n At the end of the workshop I heard their connection \u2013 metal meets flesh \u2013 when Andile said, \u201cIt can be healing this poetry, can\u2019t it?\u201d<\/p>\n At the time of writing (5.12 pm, 29.11.16), platinum is trading at \u00a3734 per ounce.<\/p>\n For now, I\u2019ll quote a poem from Paul:<\/p>\n There I sat and spoke to god Say all I must, but long to stay. <\/p>\n Graham Hartill, with Paul & Andile (pseudonyms). \u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Graham Hartill was born in the industrial West Midlands in 1952. As a teenager he was fascinated by avant-garde music and theatre and staged a few chaotic performances. He moved to Wales, worked as a performer and installation artist and went on to study in the USA. On his return he began to assimilate the influences of American open-field poetry and became a mainstay of the burgeoning poetry scene in Cardiff. He is currently writer-in-residence at HMP Parc, Bridgend, South Wales and teaches on the Creative Writing for Therapeutic Purposes MSc for the Metanoia Institute. In 2013 he became the first Writer-in-Residence at Swansea College of Medicine.<\/span><\/p>\n Graham has published widely, both poetry, papers on facilitation and co-translations from classical Chinese.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Selected Poems of the Three Caos<\/em> (with Wu Fu-Sheng), The Commercial Press, Beijing, 2016<\/span><\/p>\n Selected Poems of Cao Zhi, <\/em>(with Wu- Fu-Sheng), The Commercial Press, Beijing, 2014<\/span><\/p>\n Chroma,<\/em> Hafan, Swansea, 2012.<\/span><\/p>\n A Winged Head,<\/em> Parthian, Carmarthen, 2007.<\/span><\/p>\n The Poems of Ruan Ji, <\/em>(with Wu Fu-Sheng) Zhonghua Book Company, Beijing, 2006<\/span><\/p>\n Cennau\u2019s Bell (Selected Poems), <\/em>The Collective Press, Abergavenny, 2005<\/span><\/p>\n Tilt <\/em>(with Ric Hool and John Jones), The Collective Press, Abergavenny, 1996<\/span><\/p>\n Ruan Ji\u2019s Island \/ (Tu Fu) In The Cities, <\/em>Wellsweep Press, London, 1988<\/span><\/p>\n The Lives of the Saints, <\/em>Read, Write, Create, Sutton, 1997<\/span><\/p>\n Turas<\/em>, Red Sharks Press, Cardiff, 1988<\/span><\/p>\n Songs from the Purple Mountain<\/em>, Spectacular Diseases, Peterborough, 1984<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My Dead Holiday. Paul\u2019s Story. I dreamed my genesis in sweat of sleep, breaking Through the rotating shell, strong As motor muscle on the drill, driving Through vision and the girdered nerve. Dylan Thomas \u2013 I Dreamed My Genesis * Groups in prison are unpredictable in many ways \u2013 sometimes things interfere with men attending, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4493,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false},"categories":[44,12],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/blue-eyes_yellow_little-2.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42xiC-18t","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4369"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4369"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4369\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4529,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4369\/revisions\/4529"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nThrough the rotating shell, strong
\nAs motor muscle on the drill, driving
\nThrough vision and the girdered nerve.
\nDylan Thomas \u2013 I Dreamed My Genesis<\/span><\/p>\n
\nPaul is in his early twenties, plays guitar and has written some lyrics, but never studied poetry. Andile is South African, and has been flying for a few weeks now on what we call his open field project, taking off from his disgust at the Marikana mine disaster of 2012 and what\u2019s gone wrong with the Rainbow Nation. Two men who have never met before, both with limited experience of writing but going at it with a will from very different angles.
\nA week or so ago I’d met with Paul and got a few books from the library for him. But the book he brought along today was Dylan Thomas, bookmarked at “I Dreamed My Genesis”, commonly regarded as a quintessential, and quintessentially \u2018difficult\u2019, work.<\/p>\n
\nOff from the creasing flesh, filed
\nThrough all the irons in the grass, metal
\nOf suns in the man-melting night.<\/p>\n
\nMy eyes widened. This was some start to the session.<\/p>\n
\nI was wearing my favourite black jeans which were made of proper denim, unlike most of the stuff you find these days; my favourite navy blue t-shirt with coloured flecks on it and my favourite box-fresh hooded jumper, which had a black and white dot mandala-esque pattern on it. I still have the hood.
\nI had already cycled the first mile and a half of my journey and was now approaching the only real junction along my route. Curiously, it was here that I always had an unsettled feeling when I cycled home. On this day, the 19th July 2014 at 14:08 in the afternoon, I had this unsettled feeling again. After I had safely cleared the junction and was cutting through a closed car sales garage forecourt, I was hit by a 7-seat family car.
\nUpon impact I thought someone I knew had come up behind me on foot and pushed me to mess around, but I quickly realised this was not the case because I heard the car engine accelerating and it all got a bit too much too fast. I turned my head to have a look but I was pummelled into the parked car. I felt my right leg bones smashed like a bag of twigs, and that\u2019s all it was, an instant. As I felt the sensation of my legs getting destroyed, I was hurtled to the left through the air as the parked car span, clockwise. I was hit again momentarily after landing on the road and pushed 18 metres forward in a seated position with my legs flat on the ground and my back to the bumper with my palms down, grinding against the floor, trying to keep my body from folding and going under the front wheel, which was right behind my left shoulder, spinning furiously. I could hear the rubber buzzing in revolution\u2026.<\/p>\n
\nPaul and Andile\u2019s disparate shocks involve blood \u2013 plenty of blood \u2013 and metal.
\nHow to survive, in a body, physical or social, so brutally trashed?<\/p>\n
\n\u2013 John Goodby<\/p>\n
\nEventually, along with the push from the car and my efforts, I was flung from the car. I think the car was turned away because it was headed for the pavement beyond which was a hedge and a house. I barrel-rolled and tumbled in a roly-poly fashion diagonally away from the front left of the car. I believe at this point my legs actually went under the wheels. After the car rolled over me I tumbled to a halt, facing the pavement. I was leaning back holding my legs up with my hands on my hamstrings.
\nI knew straight away that I was hurt but didn\u2019t know the extent of the damage. Even though I had felt my legs break, the pain hadn\u2019t set in properly, or perhaps I was so bewildered I just didn\u2019t want to believe it and therefore had to check. My knees kept going down; my shins were folding over themselves. I remember seeing them starting to bend but not really believing it. It hurt quite a lot.
\nI leaned back straight away, unable to straighten my legs because of there being nothing responding below my knees. I picked up my feet and shins, one at a time and straightened them out as much as I could before lying down. At this point the pain was so great I laughed and then went very quiet. I turned to my right and saw a woman get out of the car that hit me; she was taking children out of the car. I was so upset and worried about that I repeatedly shouted down the road, \u201cAre you okay? Is everything alright?\u201d and sensing that they couldn\u2019t hear me I started to drag myself towards the wreck. Upon reflection I don\u2019t know what use I would have been but I am glad that it was my first instinct. After I dragged myself about 3 or 4 pulls, an old lady was running to my aid from behind me; she was shouting \u201cDon\u2019t move! Stop moving!\u201d So I did, realising my attempts were futile.
\nShe kneeled down and put my head on her knees.<\/p>\n
\nWhen the strike began, Lonmin halted production and said that it was unlikely to fulfil its full-year guidance of 750,000 ounces (approx.. 21.25 metric tonnes) of platinum. Lonmin said it will have to monitor its bank debt levels due to the disruption. Lonmin’s capacity to refinance its debt was also questioned.<\/p>\n
\nI opened my eyes and saw only the sky. Then my eyes focussed; I saw my girlfriend\u2019s mum\u2019s face and said:
\n\u201cFinally. A human face.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nand the world was false.
\nMy body folds; hang and align.
\nHeld, braced in age, I wait.
\nMothers calm in audience rush.
\nRide the pain carved cabriole; I bleed.
\nThe two I knew brought red reunion.<\/p>\n
\nThe angels sting, my dead holiday; anaesthetise
\nTricentennial godstream drift, howling soft coloured whispers
\nthrough me.
\nBound to roar, my body barrels,
\nand is raised into the sky.
\nIron wing; false, fade, return.
\nHe does not answer, sleep now or stay.
\nNo matter for I said remember.<\/p>\n
\n(1) John Goodby (2013), The Poetry of Dylan Thomas: Under the Spelling Wall. Liverpool University Press.
\n(2) https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Marikana_miners%27_strike<\/p>\n