Amsterdam in the Snow

Work takes me to Amsterdam for a couple of days, so I decide to make a weekend of it as I haven't been for over a decade. I first visited in the '80s when I was a photography nazi - I only shot in black and white which I developed and printed myself.

My how times and technology have changed. I can upload things to share in minutes, no sweating over a hot developer in the dark room for hours, luckily. Life moves on a pace and I have no time for that kind of malarkey any more.


Other things have changed too like the coffee shops. There were a hand full in those days - furtive places, where you were never quite sure if it really was OK or not (it was,but... paranoia). Now there's one or more on every street and frankly there's no need to go in, the whole of central Amsterdam wafts with weed. I'm pretty sure if you stood in the right door ways for long enough, you'd save yourself a bundle. Less fun, clearly, but cheaper. Unfortunately this means the city is full of British tourists. I do try to avoid my countrymen and women as much as possible these days. Curmudgeon is my middle name.

The Van Gogh Museum is closed for refurbishment just now, but the entire collection is on display at the Hermitage Museum, which my new local poet friend and guide for the weekend told me was until recently the world's oldest old people's home. Don't let that put you off, it's lovely and the Van Gogh's are a joy. Here you will find The Potato Eaters, his bedroom, one of the Sunflowers, some Irises, lots of blossom, and portraits and on and on. Brilliant in all their jewels colours.

Paris in the Snow

Is there anything more beautiful than early morning snow, the city quiet, just a few kids kicking up the soft flakes and trying to build a snow man, and a crow in search of food. This is the Place des Vosges an hour ago.

Merry Christmas one and all

Carol Ann Duffy has commissioned a selection of seasonal poems for the Guardian which you can read here
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/dec/18/carols-christmas-poetry?INTCMP=SRCH
I particularly liked Imtiaz Dharkar's Mubai Kissmiss.
Here is a poem of mine, which was selected by Carol Ann for The Mirror in January this year. Seasons Greetings to you all.

Snow light

I was born to the snow, brought

to snow light, the glow light of a late spring.

My first winter was all snow, ice floes

in the river, the Thames frozen bank to bank.

For three years I was beyond snow’s comfort,

beyond star-flake, hoar frost, rime,

touched it only once in a rusty patch,

as if roadside and rock-salted.

On Kosiuszko’s peak, it mended my snow-broken

heart with coverlet, sheet.

My uncle promised me a bucket of snow,

a bucket of hail, a bucket of sleet,

and in my six year old purity and Adelaide’s heat

I longed for the parcel, to grasp its cold deep,

crisp in my hands. I dreamed of snow;

snow beyond lamp-post and Narnia,

beyond Five’s winter adventures,

even beyond that cruel joke. Snow, a quilt

to lie down in, make igloos, eat.

Today it’s as if I’ve ordered snow; thick flakes

for you to mould and mountain, snow-shoe

and slide on. You won’t know what it is to be

blind without snow, beyond brilliance,

beyond its dazzling light.

Snow Poems

'But for now I am a willing prisoner in this house,
a sympathizer with the anarchic cause of snow.'


So says Billy Collins in 'Snow Day', where he has his dog 'porpoise' through the snow, an accurate image. I am in complete agreement with Billy here this week and have the same 'mind of winter' that Wallace Stephens explains in 'The Snow Man'.

Robert Frost's 'A Dust of Snow' is eight short lines of excellence for a day such as today. I commend it to you, along with Emily Dickinson's 'The snow that never drifts' and which is 'fragrant'. I wonder what snow smells of? Metamorphorically perhaps it smells of all things clean and new. But this is not so for everyone.

The emptiness of the world in the snow is described in Louise Gluck's stark poem 'Snow', on the loss of childhood innocence. Or perhaps one might find uses for Yeats' image of things being 'as mad as the mist and snow' (from the poem with this title). Or Larkin's 'wretched width of cold' ('First sight').

'The snow is melting
and the village is flooded
with children.' (Issa, trans. Hass)

Ah, if only, but I suspect we have many more days yet to play in the snow and let is give us poems (cf Ted Hughes' 'The thought-fox').

Welcome

to the all new Boomslang Poetry blog. I am planning to post items here of interest to poets, other writers and random culture vultures.

This week's news is that I have a poem, Snow light, in The Mirror, selected by Carol Ann Duffy for her Poetry Corner on the women's page. It will be in either Thursday or Friday's edition.