{"id":7098,"date":"2021-11-07T11:15:36","date_gmt":"2021-11-07T11:15:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/?p=7098"},"modified":"2021-11-16T21:57:01","modified_gmt":"2021-11-16T21:57:01","slug":"graham-hartill-cosmology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/7098\/graham-hartill-cosmology\/","title":{"rendered":"Graham Hartill: Cosmology"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cosmology 1<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

It is deepening Autumn now in the valley of Grwynefechan. I am walking the top road, looking down, remembering the prisoners I worked with and all their insatiable cravings: \u201cThe thing is Gray, you do it once, then you spend the rest of your life trying to get that high again. And you never make it.\u201d High again. And it\u2019s not only drugs, of course; you do it once, then after that you\u2019re sunk: \u201c13 seconds, that\u2019s all it took, then ever since then I was waiting for that knock to come on the door. It was like a relief when it came. Of course, now I\u2019ll always be one of them<\/i>. I\u2019m branded forever.\u201d And their victims won\u2019t be the same again either, affected forever.<\/span><\/p>\n

The path is full of briars that have spread all summer long, stretched limp across the tarmac. The road itself is falling away because, I fume to myself, because of the heavy trucks from the building work at the farm at the top, that shouldn\u2019t be trying this road in the first place. The other night I heard an anguished owl, disturbed, across the wood, and I was reminded that this is all the body, its stink, the sharpness of its claws, the softness of its organs. Whew.<\/span><\/p>\n

The little human body can not perceive it all without the aid of secret things: the mushroom\u2019s chemicals accelerate the eyes! You cannot comprehend it, you have to have taken the drug; even, some say, you have to have been addicted, you have to have felt it, you have to have been a captive. One guy said, \u201cI saw actual thoughts take shape, and move across the room from one head into another! Things aren\u2019t the same, Gray, after that, I tell you.\u201d Another, \u201cI did heroin, aged 8. My mother gave it to me.\u201d Yes, it\u2019s true, you have to have been there.<\/span><\/p>\n

I see sawn-off trunks that have fallen and crushed a fence, and old stiles allowed to collapse; it\u2019s an obvious analogy, but there they are in this late October. Like Dante, I\u2019m walking the top road, looking down and thanking God my addictions, I suppose, it\u2019s only coffee and poetry. Poetry<\/i>, I like to tell myself. Like Dante, I\u2019ve met them, stuck like corpses in trees. They\u2019d spit at this of course, or agree for the sake of what their agreeing might bring them, some smile in a Mars Bar, or even a clap on the shoulder: \u201cYou\u2019re alright, Gray!\u201d \u2013 gratifying. So then, I\u2019m alright. And then there are those who are so far gone that all of this can hardly be like hell for them at all. They\u2019re petrified, stuck in the rock of non-existent feeling. At least, that\u2019s how it can seem, patrolling my ledge, with some idea of poetry, some Virgil, walking beside me. What do I know?<\/span><\/p>\n

This universe I make tonight is the lane, the breaking trees, the soft wet grass, the owl\u2019s harsh singing and the stars\u2019 periphery. It is my wounded breathing, my old friend\u2019s cancer, the sight of a beautiful Beatrice. In this heaven, none are stuck in time or trees, or stuck in their body. Ah so easy to say this, I think to myself; you know you have your needs, your conditions and your fears, all too well, like anybody else.<\/span><\/p>\n

This hell, this heaven, in which the star burns up, the yellow apple falls to the ground and rots: Paul got\u00a0 Weill\u2019s disease from well-fed rats; the stream is rocking with turbulence and nobody\u2019s house is secure. Looking from the safety of my ledge, hand in hand, (I\u2019m smiling at my pretension) with the ancient poets: Virgil, Arnaut Daniel, Dante, Eliot \u2013 ah the great male lineage! knowing all and nothing. What do we know, I think, of each other\u2019s secrets and fixations, what do we know of our own? So little. Ignorance may be bliss, but is no defence in court.<\/span><\/p>\n

*<\/span><\/p>\n

Cosmology 2<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

O\u2019odham cosmology is based on an intersection between multiple vertical layers and a horizontal plane. The vertical layers are, from bottom to top, the fire below (mehi weco), the staying earth (jewed ka:cim) and up-above-laying (da:am ka:cim). The vertical axis of hell, the earth, and heaven was strongly influenced by Christianity. The horizontal axis is native and includes the very important beyond-the eastern-horizon (si\u2019alig weco), the afterlife location of, at least ideally, all deceased O\u2019odham. Moving westward is the horizontal plane\u2019s intersection with the vertical and the staying earth. The staying earth is where all humans, animals and the natural world exist. Farther west on this journey, which by the way replicates the path of the sun and moon, is the sunset place (hudunig). Here is the ocean (Gulf of California), an important site for prospective shamans as well as a salt-gathering location. Scattered over the horizontal plane are sacred mountains, caves, and shrines, where spirits and humans may interact.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

The spirit of a deceased person can return from the si\u2019alig weco to visit their descendants in the form of an owl (cukud). Such owl visitations are also a way for spirits to teach humans in the shamanic and curative arts. But deceased humans can also become spirits called devils (jejawul). An O\u2019odham devil was a cowboy in life. Upon death the devil establishes residence in one or another of the devil mountains that dot the desert. Here the afterlife location is also idyllic in that the devil continues to do what he did in life \u2013 the cowboy job of riding horses, rounding up cattle, and so on. A third, and tragic type of human spirit is the devil-owl (jiawul-cukud). This person was a cowboy in life but one who died in some violent manner. Perhaps most common of these spirits are those who died in automobile accidents.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0From: David Kozak & David Lopez: Devil Songs and Devil \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Sickness: Tohono O\u2019odham poetics<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

*<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Perhaps all culture is cosmology.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018Of the devil\u2019s party…\u2019<\/span><\/i> (as Blake said of Milton): no doubt the Inferno is the most \u2018gripping\u2019 and the most popular of the books, being to do with fantasy, revenge and cruelty. We love that. This is Dante\u2019s cause, his heroism, to walk and look down on those he has judged and punished in poetry. We all have our causa sui, <\/i>our <\/i>self-cause, <\/i>born of our need to assert ourselves in the world in contradiction to others, and such is a function, when all\u2019s said and done, of any of imagination\u2019s worlds.<\/span><\/p>\n

*<\/span><\/p>\n

Even in hell, or especially so, it\u2019s not actual death; in Christian and maybe all other cosmologies, death is imagined full of life! And idealised love is a corollary of this, of course: transcendent of the un-imagined actuality.<\/span><\/p>\n

A friend of mine says she found solace looking down into Inferno in the wake of her brother\u2019s suicide. There is recognition there, solace, and not just the solace of schadenfreude, but of finding ourselves down there and that we are far from alone.<\/span><\/p>\n

In Dante there are those who speak, and those who can\u2019t.<\/span><\/p>\n

*<\/span><\/p>\n

So it\u2019s late October in the valley and the stream is turbulent and leaves are all over the car; there are red wet leaves all over the lanes. I\u2019ve been reading Dante\u2019s fantasies: Virgil; Arnaut Daniel, il miglior fabbro, \u2018<\/i>the greater maker\u2019 (as Eliot, quoting, said of Ezra Pound); Dante; T.S.Eliot \u2013 <\/i>and we\u2019re back to The Waste Land again. It\u2019s been a hundred years since he wrote it and it\u2019s possible we may not get another really livable century on this earth. I read of Dante\u2019s complex and crazy cosmology: funnels, terraces, spheres. I say to Lyn: I thought Christ came to bring His mercy to all, not condemnation. Aren\u2019t they all saved, at some point? And Lyn says, Well, that\u2019s just the way it is. I\u2019m still trying to figure that out: I thought, according to that myth, that it was Christ, our own recognition of his suffering and ours, that brings about Mercy, as in the Bodhisattva Vow that says I will not save myself from suffering until all beings are saved; that it\u2019s not just the memory of some beautiful young woman that will lead us, no, lead him, the singular man, the great artist, maker, up, up, to transcendence? But there you are, that\u2019s cosmology for you.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s been said that people hate poetry because it seems not only too self-centred (let alone too much effort to read) but worse, that its subjectivity pretends to be common, let alone to be universal; it demands we think it speaks for us. Does Dante want us to marvel at his intellectual genius, masquerading as transcendence, blinding us from the thought at which circle of his fantasy, his great poetic edifice, he might have pitchforked us?<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

*<\/span><\/p>\n

Louis Theroux, in one of his documentaries, visits a licensed brothel in Nevada. One of the girls doesn\u2019t really play ball with the set up and keeps threatening to, then actually does, take her top off on camera. \u201cOh come on,\u201d says Louis, \u201cwhy are you doing this?\u201d She says things like you need to sleep with me Louis, as if to say you\u2019re a hypocrite, voyeur, not man enough. What she\u2019s actually doing is turning around the set-up; she\u2019s not content with being the film-maker\u2019s hapless subject, however empathically handled. Louis asks the \u2018madame\u2019 who says all the girls are damaged in some way by what they do. In a nice reversal of the old clich\u00e9, by turning the weapon of her personality against Louis\u2019s camera, the young prostitute is claiming her soul again, taking control of her body. As Otto Rank puts it: \u2018a person no longer wants to be used as another\u2019s soul, even with its attendant compensations\u2026.\u2019 (Psychology of the Soul)<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It\u2019s strange the way Beatrice is sometimes depicted with this huge towering body and a little head! She\u2019s enraptured in such versions but she\u2019s not the thinker. It\u2019s more than just to make her monolithic, other worldly, surely? Dante’s literary architecture can’t be seen, quite, as mythic, because it is a singular construction; more a work of art of course, or artifice. Yet it stands as a ‘sustaining illusion’. We all need these in the face of life-and-death. So there she is, the guide, the muse, the endlessly yearned for: Beatrice. Looking at what we know of the actual woman, it looks to me that, as far as we know, she didn’t give a damn; or perhaps she didn’t know who it was, the great poet, she was turning a blind eye to.<\/span><\/p>\n

*<\/span><\/p>\n

And what is beauty anyway? Witness the extraordinary cleverness and skills of the bower bird, constructing that incredible nest, singing those songs that can imitate human children playing in the distance of the forest, laying perspective pathways of gathered blue berries and feathers and bits of glass and rifle shells to impress a discerning mate. Or that goddess on the TV dance show, larger than life with that beautiful, powerful face and hairdo, her dress, those eyebrows! It seems we\u2019ve inherited beauty from nature\u2019s excess. The Beautiful says: Take a look! I stand out! I\u2019m prominent and still survive. I\u2019m astonishing and colourful and gorgeously sculpted; I am superior, I am immune. Your genes are safe with me, and look, I\u2019ve gone to all this trouble \u2013 for you!<\/span><\/p>\n

The Comedy itself reminds me of this \u2013 as well as being an extraordinary work of art, it\u2019s a kind of cultural jewellery. \u201cLook,\u201d says Dante, \u201cI have been singled out. Beatrice, the Beautiful, look! I\u2019ve built all this for you!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

*<\/span><\/p>\n

The Sybil leaves her prophecies on leaves by the door of her cave \u2013 if they get blown away, that\u2019s just too bad, she will not repeat them. She offers her Prophetic Books to the King; He refuses. Too bad, she says and destroys three of them. Now do you want them? No, go away, stop bothering me. She destroys three more and at last he relents. Now what have we lost?<\/span><\/p>\n

Maria Sabina, the Mazatec curer, said she could no longer work once her gifts had been \u2018discovered\u2019, brought out into the open by the West; once the celebrities had been and gone. The power will not work outside the cave.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Sybil is its guardian; she lives in one and knows its hundred entrances into the Underworld. It\u2019s easy to go down, she says, but not so easy, no, far from it, to return.<\/span><\/p>\n

Virgil says she is a priestess, possessed by the God. But is that it? Is she not rather possessed by sexless, chthonic powers of voice? Compare Maria Sabina: when she becomes Christ and takes on all other male roles like those of judgment, bureaucracy, law, she is not in obeisance to them: she takes them on, she becomes them, she takes back her Self.<\/span><\/p>\n

Thus, do not chase after fame, poet, the legend says; such ambitions will just blow away like leaves in the wind! Like the wind in a horse\u2019s ears. If you don\u2019t want the books, it will be your <\/i>loss and danger, it won\u2019t be hers.<\/span><\/p>\n

*<\/span><\/p>\n

Priestess = poet.<\/span><\/p>\n

She knows the way to the underworld, ie. the unconscious; she knows the secrets of death. She gives Virgil the Golden Bough that permits him entrance. And she knows how to get back out. This is what men fear most as we know, and what the great City is built on, of course, what Culture is built on. Culture is Empire; all its great glories are built on a hollow cave.<\/span><\/p>\n

Who will find the Sybil\u2019s leaves? What stray passers-by may find and pick them up? I\u2019m reminded of hunting after old cassettes on the streets of Hull (a disappointing experience in the end because of course no one left personal messages on them as I would have liked) and the way that metamorphosed for me into picking up people\u2019s stories. And of casting a poem in a bottle from a Scottish rock: who knows where the tide will take your secret words! The most unpredictable finder will perhaps be your most intimate audience! And, unless you include your address in the message, you\u2019ll never know it.<\/span><\/p>\n

And our consolation is always: well you never know who might read it somewhere, sometime, and be affected by it; like you never know what you might have said, or taught, that might affect somebody\u2019s life. You never know.<\/span><\/p>\n

And similarly, how a poem might occur, and keep popping up, like The Waste Land<\/i> now, again, with new significance and importance, deepened understanding. There is no fixed state to the poem in terms of how it is heard, by horses or not, or found, blown down a drab city street, or a country road.<\/span><\/p>\n

*<\/span><\/p>\n

In Dante there are those who speak, and those who can\u2019t, who are frozen or burning in silence. Judgment and justice is all about what is said, or not, by the criminal, the victim (if they are alive to speak, or free to speak, or are heard) and by the judges and by the reporters. And the judged can speak or not, or speak half-truths and lies and fictions, which is most common.<\/span><\/p>\n

*<\/span><\/p>\n

The Journey to the Underworld! The Hero\u2019s Journey \u2013 today (23rd<\/sup> October and subsequent days) I enter the zone of creative connections, I enter the labyrinth! Of course, the Sybil of Cumae; The Golden Bough (which was Sybil\u2019s); T.S Eliot\u2019s personal Waste Land; his crises, especially in his marriage, certainly sexual, maybe to do with his actual sexuality, maybe to do with medical ignorance of Viv\u2019s menstrual cycle and its psychological effects on her. Ah men, who put her away, like Sybil was put away by Apollo, in a jar because she wouldn\u2019t have sex with him (let\u2019s call a spade a spade) and he, like men do, turns the table: \u201cThis is what you wanted isn\u2019t it \u2013 a life as long as a handful of sandgrains? Have it then! Wither away in a prison, the prison of your untouched body.\u201d Is it any wonder that Eliot quotes Petronius in his epigram to the entirety<\/i> of The Waste Land? Sybil, taunted by boys: \u201cWhat do you want?\u201d \u201cI want to die.\u201d Did Viv say this to Eliot? It isn\u2019t hard to imagine.<\/span><\/p>\n

*<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course you have to climb over Satan to get out of hell \u2013 you have to climb over war, rape, horror \u2013 and, according to the Christian myth, over death itself, which mankind created by coming to consciousness.<\/span><\/p>\n

*<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m amazed at this: that Mary Shelley claims, in the preface to her novel, The Last Man, that she found her story in the leaves of the Sybil. And that they told of the end of the world by \u2013 the end of the 20thC.<\/span><\/p>\n

*<\/span><\/p>\n

Dante\u2019s wood \u2013 the European Forest \u2013 the turning of life towards thoughts of mortality: looking life-and-death in the face, its shadows and tunnels.<\/span><\/p>\n

*<\/span><\/p>\n

Joseph Campbell writes of us living in a \u2018terminal moraine\u2019 of myths and mythic symbols.<\/span><\/p>\n

Our bodies are drawn together by the gravitational pull of stories, and those stories are comprehensible and unfathomable (!) = poetic, in equal measure because of this mythos which is buried, largely unrecognised and unnoticed<\/i>, in the language, the tropes or dramas, the metaphors, and the conventions of the stories.<\/span><\/p>\n

This the secret magic of the cave: all discourse in the public arena carries great hidden freights; and, at its depths, lies mortality denial, birthing and conditioning all culture.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0*<\/span><\/p>\n

Cosmology 3<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What she knows as the wind<\/span><\/p>\n

she will leave at the gate of earth,<\/span><\/p>\n

earth\u2019s breath<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

what words, invisible, as brief<\/span><\/p>\n

as breath, she has left at the opening of earth<\/span><\/p>\n

until we come<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

we will be too late<\/span><\/p>\n

and come again<\/span><\/p>\n

and again<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

in sleep sometimes<\/span><\/p>\n

not knowing where or why,<\/span><\/p>\n

to find them picked up somewhere else by anyone<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

who doesn\u2019t know what is it they pick up \u2013<\/span><\/p>\n

if you come in a storm it will hardly be seconds<\/span><\/p>\n

or on a bright summer\u2019s day to blow against rock<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

they will be rained upon, these images<\/span><\/p>\n

little as breath,<\/span><\/p>\n

they may be rained on, become illegible, sodden<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

be blown and gone<\/span><\/p>\n

in their millions,<\/span><\/p>\n

at this time of year, of life<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

be blown, to end up in another field, or country,<\/span><\/p>\n

another future,<\/span><\/p>\n

catching a corner of somebody\u2019s eye, flicked carelessly out from a shoulder<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

stowing away his dogs or picking up her bag as a bus comes<\/span><\/p>\n

or enters a building or<\/span><\/p>\n

turns on a lathe<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

she said she will bring you, King that you are,<\/span><\/p>\n

she told me to pass this on, she said<\/span><\/p>\n

you are Queen or are King of yourself and therefore what is what<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

she brings nine books you will take them now?<\/span><\/p>\n

because in a minute there will be three<\/span><\/p>\n

and then, like leaves, they will be everywhere gone<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

like bones, with pictures of life upon them,<\/span><\/p>\n

she said she will bring you whatever you are<\/span><\/p>\n

but you have to be quick, as quick, in fact, as a breeze<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

as a thought come to leaf or paper<\/span><\/p>\n

I think she is the mouthpiece of the tree<\/span><\/p>\n

whose cleavage is the harbour of the boat of life and death<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

what else, else, can I say<\/span><\/p>\n

she scatters roots in the abyss<\/span><\/p>\n

and branches in heaven<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

she blows the words that come to you, are given,<\/span><\/p>\n

catch them only to find them beautiful, translucent<\/span><\/p>\n

only to find them<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

once there were forests, forests, all over Europe,<\/span><\/p>\n

and people who never got to the end of the forest,<\/span><\/p>\n

the mind was all forest, there<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

were trees all over this island,<\/span><\/p>\n

cut down for empire, empire\u2019s wars,<\/span><\/p>\n

a resource of the mind, not endless<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

the Self is the centre that holds against fire and flooding<\/span><\/p>\n

the billions of it, walking the lanes in high October,<\/span><\/p>\n

seas of it, seas of orange, yellow-brown tides of it<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

now she says, there\u2019s three books left, three only,<\/span><\/p>\n

a woman sits by Boots the Chemist, come from Syria,<\/span><\/p>\n

there is a man from Poland<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

the edge of my mind\u2019s weak forest, wrapped are his shoulders in cloth,<\/span><\/p>\n

there are 3 books left, 3 only,<\/span><\/p>\n

do you want them, leaders of men?<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

is it just fear<\/span><\/p>\n

and should she just bequeath these last surviving books to the world\u2019s great library or data-base<\/span><\/p>\n

to wait its burning?<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

but our gathering up, your picking them up, I will believe in,<\/span><\/p>\n

your bringing it home,<\/span><\/p>\n

this fame, these rumours of making sense, that nothing she says will be unchangeable, un-reusable,<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Ginsberg said, to be a prophet you have to be clear,<\/span><\/p>\n

hold nothing, secrets, back,<\/span><\/p>\n

be as little fake-self as you can manage, day after day, at the openings<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

the mouth, mouth, mouths of the cave,<\/span><\/p>\n

there are thousands of them, a worldful,<\/span><\/p>\n

it\u2019s easy she says, to go down, it\u2019s coming back up<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

to come back up from the busiest place of rhythmic voices,<\/span><\/p>\n

voices of all who\u2019ve been, its laughable,<\/span><\/p>\n

wind is beautiful, white or grey or blue<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

it’s delicious, the river<\/span><\/p>\n

and language it\u2019s friend,<\/span><\/p>\n

she says this is the voice of the god, I think she means this is the voice of all that is beyond us<\/span><\/p>\n

all that we are within, you call it God if you like<\/span><\/p>\n

but we\u2019ve all had enough of that,<\/span><\/p>\n

it is the voice, it is very many<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

it\u2019s storm-riddled autumn today,<\/span><\/p>\n

in lemon light the sun comes in my window<\/span><\/p>\n

old yellow leaves on the pear tree<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

she is outside, come in,<\/span><\/p>\n

I hear the river,\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

fingers trip the keyboard, what is this?<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

haha your blowing leaves, leaves stitched together, given a spine, is a book,<\/span><\/p>\n

or a body, look do you want this,<\/span><\/p>\n

it will be tossed on the fire or else, this rhapsody, this stitch-work<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

do not ask a favour of a mighty god, he won\u2019t forget it,<\/span><\/p>\n

he\u2019ll strike a deal, the debt will be your body, she<\/span><\/p>\n

imprisoned in a jar because he wanted that<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

she wanted to die in regret of a life like a handful of sand,<\/span><\/p>\n

do not ask immortality of any God<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

the trees grow,<\/span><\/p>\n

only the wind determines it,<\/span><\/p>\n

do not give up your mind to any god<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

the leaves get blown away, and are replenished, this is what breath is<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

October 2021<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Graham Hartill was born in the English Midlands in 1952. After a studying in the US he moved back to Wales and became a mainstay of the burgeoning poetry scene in Cardiff and with Open World Poetics in Glasgow. He moved to the Black Mountains in 1992. Of his latest collection, Rhapsodies<\/em>, Chris Torrance wrote: \u201craw excitement, koans, quotes…marshalling a wide-ranging questioning. A terrific book.\u201d Graham teaches post-graduate students Creative Writing for Therapeutic Purposes for the Metanoia Institute in London and recently finished a 15 years stint as writer-in-residence at HMP Parc, Bridgend. He has published widely, both poetry, papers on facilitation and co-translations with Wu Fusheng (of the University of Utah) from classical Chinese.<\/span><\/p>\n

Recent publications include:<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Rhapsodies: (poems)\u00a0<\/em>Aquifer Books, Llangattock, 2021;\u00a0The Selected Poems of Meng Haoran <\/em>(with Wu Fusheng) The Commercial Press, Beijing, 2021;\u00a0Selected Poems of the Seven Masters of the Jian\u2019an Era <\/em>(with Wu Fusheng) The Commercial Press, Beijing, 2018;\u00a0Slipping the Leash <\/em>(with Chris Torrance & Phil Maillard) Aquifer Books, Llangattock 2015.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Click here to go back to:\u00a0Contributors and Links to Pages 1 – 4<\/a><\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cosmology 1 It is deepening Autumn now in the valley of Grwynefechan. I am walking the top road, looking down, remembering the prisoners I worked with and all their insatiable cravings: \u201cThe thing is Gray, you do it once, then you spend the rest of your life trying to get that high again. And you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7166,"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":[64,12],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/images-2.jpeg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42xiC-1Qu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7098"}],"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=7098"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7098\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7534,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7098\/revisions\/7534"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}