Guest Blog Post: Jennifer Lemming

Jennifer Lemming has poem and fiction published in, or forthcoming in Foothills Press, Tipton Poetry review, Hobo Camp Review. Daughters, Rufous Press (Sweden), Outrider Press, The Camel Saloon, and News Verse News. 

She considers lyrics to be just a breath away from poetry, and in winter of 2009 won 3rd place in the Jazz Beyond Jazz blog Blues lyrical poem contest for her poem “I got the I Can’t Sleep Baby Blues”. 

In 2004 “Sundown” Peter Kobal put music  to her lyrics and recorded “Thunder Song” l, on his CD “The Only Star”, available from Driftwood Music., also since early 2017 included in KDAK 102.FM playlist. 

In Feb 2011 she was a finalist the Lincoln Poem event in Zionsville, Indiana which was sponsored by Brick Street Poetry for her Poem, 

"Lincoln's Zionsville Whistle Stop".

She considers lyrics to be just a breath away from poetry, and in winter of 2009 won 3rd place in the Jazz Beyond Jazz blog Blues lyrical poem contest for her poem,I got the I Can’t Sleep Baby Blues.  

Her chapbook, The Clever Level was published by Celestial Panther Publishing, summer 2012. 

Her chapbook, Diamonds in Asphalt is forthcoming from Dark Heart Press. 

I am beginning to reflect on what emotional and cultural atmosphere which envelopes me as I write, what inspires me, yes, but also my actual physical surroundings.

I wrote my first really good poem while finishing college. I wrote it just sitting in the computer lab located in the basement of a building on campus,. After only about a ten per cent editing, and a couple years of submissions, it went on to win a first prize in a poetry festival!

While I’ve written poems and short stories at various locations using a pen or pencil and paper I’ve slowly graduated to computer composing, which is easier and still produces results, but the process is not quite the same...

I’ve sat on a park bench editing a printed copy of a poem I had been working for a long time but it didn’t quite gel. But on that park bench that overlooked a glorious view of the Missouri River in North Dakota, I knew the beat of the poem was wrong. While I was bent over with concentration and reworked the rhythm but mostly I missed a spectacular sunset that passed while I was writing. That day I was pushed hard by my muse, the rhythm laid out in my head like a map as I scribbled it down feverishly; that poem remains one of the best, beat for syllabic beat, of all my writing.

Producing a personal favorite and one of my best short stories in a 2-3 hour span while with ear buds plugged in, I listened to sad, gothic, sometimes French music in a YouTube loop. As I pounded out a story with a good beginning, middle and end, all three story acts flowing from my tapping fingers with ease (several rounds of grammar editing came later) I listened, sometimes to the voice of Edith Piaf, and sometimes to others, all softly wailing their humanity while I wrote a story about bees and vampires.

I composed lyrics to a song a lifelong country western singer recorded as I sanded, then varnished a dresser on the porch of our New Mexico house.  We had moved the very southernmost edge of New Mexico a few months prior.  I was processing variety of experiences overloading my system. They included an endless skyline which showered us with a glorious star shows at night, stories of I was hearing from people who had completely different experiences from anything I have ever witnessed.

I stood on that porch and wrote a lyrical poem, line by line between the sanding and polishing process. Eventually that poem landed in the hands of the singer and producer known as “Sundown” Peter Kobal who put music to my words, recorded the song on his CD The Only Star.

Now I am in Bismarck North Dakota since 2014 and this song, Thunder Song is on the playlist of the community radio station. What a trip, what more is ahead of me.

Below is a poem I wrote shortly after arriving in Bismarck. I arrived from a 1,000 mile trip from Indiana with dog and possessions in tow, to met my husband at our new dwelling.

What a life! What more to experience.

Plains Song

Avoiding gopher dugs and digs,

I rub sandalwood oil

mixed with buffalo grease

on my bare arms. Opening

my mouth to bite at the cold,

I finally see the moon

after the membrane of clouds pass

and I try to hold on

until your love reaches shore break

inside my heart,

and shatters all geography.

published Hobo Camp Review - Winter issue 2016

Yourself, Teach Welsh

"Now then indeed to goodness look you" as the the Times of London might say, we have seen a  furore from the defenders of the Iaith and quite rightly so, the 'Tarian Twitterati'. I posted a couple of quixotic tweets myself but we have learnt from the cognoscenti that the best thing to do is ignore those who insult our 'Mam Iaith'. When they insult Cymraeg what they are actually saying is a version of 'Yer Mum' oft used by schoolchildren to attack or wind up their peers. We rise to the bait en masse in righteous indignation because we feel threatened. We personalise the attack because we speak Welsh. Cymraeg, even though it is our strength and shield is also our achilees heel. It is one of the things that we feel most passionate about, that the slightest twitch of criticism can send us into paroxysms of defensiveness. The psychology of Welsh Speaking is worth a study in itself because most of us are brought up in a soup of Saesneg and we regain the language in our own different ways. We have strata of standards of Welsh where inferiority complexes show themselves up to the light. "Mae fy Nghymraeg ddim yn digon da" "My Welsh isn't good enough" How often have we heard that or have we said it ourselves? You wouldn't dream of saying "My English isn't good enough" so why have you taken yourself into the Second Division of the Linguistic League with this lazy refrain. I don't actually care about the standard of my Welsh but I do care passionately about the language and its survival. Personally I don't think that competing against each other once a year at the Eisteddfod Genedlaethol is the most productive way of ensuring its survival as competition and indeed education is a turn off to a lot of people. Unfortunately the elders are expecting the yoof to embrace Welsh in their hundreds of thousands. The Welsh Assembly Government have set their target of 1 million Welsh speakers by 2050 after having a sibrwd in their ear by Cymdeithas yr Iaith and a very good thing too. There is nothing like a target and a deadline to get the blood flowing. Unfortunately many of us writing and speaking Wenglish will be dead by then so are we going to sit back in our rocking chairs and let the banks and supermarkets take the strain or are we as Carwyn Jones has urged going 'take possession and responsibility' for the language? Every single one of the 546,000 or whatever number the Census has manipulated us into thus far, need to become Teachers of Welsh. We need to pounce upon unsuspecting tourists having their ice creams in Llandudno or white water rafting in Llangollen and engage them in Cymraeg. We see its value and importance but persuading the other victims of austerity of its priority in our lives might be a different matter, but we don't know until we've tried. For my part I am tutoring a little Midlands Person who attends classes and comes to me for Conversation practice. I continue to write my beloved 'bratiaith' on this blog but I am aware that if we are all serious about 1 million Welsh Speakers by 2050 then we ourselves are going to have to become 'The Teachers of Welsh'

Digon o Ddyn

Digon o Ddyn

Dych chi ddim yn ddigon o ddyn i gyfadde’ eich bod yn gaeth i gystadlu?

Yn ddigon o ddyn i fynd i ryfel dros y Gymraeg ar drydar?

Ydach chi yn ddigon o ddyn i gyfaddef eich bod yn 'bore'?

ar unig beth i chi yn mwynhau di 'Final Score'.

Ydach chi'n ddigon o ddyn i ddeud fod cael cachiad yn well na chael rhyw?

Ydach chi'n ddigon o ddyn i sylwi fod pob brawddeg yn spew?

  

Dwi ddim yn ddigon o ddyn i alw fy hun yn ddyn oherwydd dwi di wneud gormod o bosau yn deud fy mod gen i ymennydd menywaidd 

Dwi'n ddigon o ddyn i guddio tu ôl i Weplyfr ac i ddweud y pethau maent yn disgwyl i mi ddeud.

Ond bywyd afiach ydy un o gymhariaeth.

Dych chi'n ddigon o ddyn i brynu siocled a siampen

i wrando yn astud yn lle cynnig ateb

i sylweddoli dy fod ti yn perthyn i dy wraig a dy blentyn 

Ti'n ddigon o ddyn i sylweddoli na fod yn ti dy hun yn hunanol?

a chydymffurfio ydy'r unig ffordd i fihafio.

Dwi'n gwybod dy fod ti ddim yn ddigon o ddyn a dyna pam dwi'n gofyn

i weindio di fyny am fy mhleser. 

Paid â becso (Sowth) hogyn (North) does 'na ddim dyn ar y ddaear yn barod i gyfadde

fod o ddim yn ddigon o ddyn.

Tasers for Teachers

http://www.preposity.com/2012/01/ronald-searle/

"Police use of tasers on children increases by 30% in one year" screams the headlines on Page 15 of the Western Fail this morning which got me to thinking in a broad Yorkshire accent "Owd on, if the Police can use tasers against children, then why can't teachers?"
As a former teacher myself whose knees used to tremble and heart started to race when he heard and saw 30, mixed ability year 9s marching like an invading army into the classroom, a 'shmoking taser' would have come in very handy. I attended a school in the late 1970s/early 1980s where you were shit scared of the teachers. You learnt nothing but you didn't misbehave and this provides the answer to the immortal Maths question "What came first the chicken or the egg?" Weeeeeelllllll if we insist in 2017 of educating to pass exams, in the head factories that are quaintly called schools, then without doubt impeccable behaviour must come first. How can you hope to learn anything when you are threatening to throw a fire extinguisher out of the window as a Year 10 once did on my watch? We hear daily on radio phone ins that teachers are leaving the profession in their droves. The irony is, that even though you are surrounded by people all day, it can be the loneliest job in the world. You are surrounded by little people who think they know better than you and they often do about the whys and wherefores of the world but not about the useless subject that you are trying and failing miserably to teach them. For some unknown reason, Staff Rooms are even more unfriendly than the Classrooms especially for supply teachers who are generally treated like pariahs by contract staff. Staff rooms are 'neurosis central'. Everybody is so close to having a nervous breakdown.  The main complaint we hear on the airwaves is about bureaucracy, administration, no home life, marking homework and preparation but in my experience it is about pupil behaviour. Unless the school is run like a draconian, Victorian workhouse then learning by wrote to pass exams does not stand a chance. In my now hazy memory, in all my 13 years of Forced Education as a pupil was it ever explained to me what I was learning and why? They just taught us, these fucking useless human beings also known as teachers, all they did was teach us. In my case, they taught me to fail exams. A failure as a child leads to failure as an adult, not always but it did in my case. My inability at school to understand what the hell we were all meant to be doing and why has led to this very irascible blogger that you read in front of you today.  In some of my lessons, when I became a teacher in the vain hope of trying to understand life from the other side of the barricades, a taser would have come in very handy. An hour Drama or English lesson was very often ruined by a modern day Molesworth sans the charm who would just launch into a one man/woman circus freak show. Now if I could have just tasered the little fucker and got the caretaker to remove the body, then we could have got on with the lesson but no, everybody's education is ruined by the little love who is not getting enough love at home. We are hot housing human souls from sometimes very disfunctional backgrounds! Imagine how many young people we could stop joining gangs or becoming radicalised, if teachers, like the police were able to taser the wretches and return them, retching to their incredulous parents or care givers at the end of the day. Care Giver? What kind of term is that? The Care Givers who dreaded Parents Evening as much as you did. I used to lie to the Parents and tell them that their spring offs were little angels with the hardened criminal squirming in the seat next to them in the vain hope that when they came to my lesson again that they would behave. A quick taser shot to parent and child under the table, blow the whistle to get the caretaker in to take the bodies out and I could have been a Government Academy Headteacher in no time.     

Faecal Matter

Getty Images

"Ice from three of the UK's biggest coffee chains has been found to contain bacteria from faeces, according to a BBC investigation."

Even more worrying was the fact that it was faeces from the same bloke.

Frank is an Anti-Capitalist and he goes in where Santa fears to tread

cos he knows that the artisan coffee houses are making too much bread.

The Cow and the Farmer, the Coffee Plantation and even the Barista

are making buttons compared to the Corporations who remunerate themselves

from our desire to drug and anaesthetise ourselves.

Coffee and a Chat

Coffee and a Crap

now that Frank has had the big idea.

He was thrown out of dragons den

for inventing the shit smelling pen

for executives.

He turns up to rallies and marches as the poo emoticon

but he is emotionless cos he knows Capitalism is a con.

We've tried it since the dawn of time,

thousands and millions have died.

How Frank got into the three high street chains on the same night

is still causing a stir down at the Met.

Still it makes a change from tragedy and terror

but it is still a metaphor

a sign of our times

that everything is shit

and Politicians

think it can be fixed by throwing money at it.

Big Arse Frank has now a job to do.

He is a Faecal Entrepreneur

He has pulled himself up by the bootsraps.

He's got on his bike

He's even wearing trainers sponsored by Nike

So down to the High Street Frank does run

Think twice when the nice lady offers you a

fresh currant bun.

The Militarisation of British Wales

BBC Owned Picture

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-east-wales-40474037

Here we bloody go again! The British Establishment and in particular the British Military Establishment are bringing a symbol of its presence to Cardiff (swper dwpper capical swity of girgle girgle diddums cymru) Bay and they hope people aren't going to notice! What they fail to realise is that some of us are unemployed and it is our job to spot the on going colonisation of our Celtic Country. 

2 million pounds have been allocated by the UK government. Well that's all right then! Thank god it's not the smug arses in the Assembly/Senedd that have sanctioned this. 

You see, it will get public sympathy because it has the word 'Medicine' in it and when we see that word we think of the Angels of the NHS and Florence Nightingale and the brave surgeons cutting limbs off in field hospitals, their shirts and pince nez splattered in blood and surgical alcohol. We do not think of the might of the British Imperial War Machine! If you want to see that, you have to go to the Imperial War Museum in London or Manchester and a sobering visit that is, but quirky liccle Cardiff gets the Military Medicine Museum to bring in the tourists to look at the paraphenalia used to save the men and women who were fighting the 'fuzzy wuzzies' on our behalf. This part is sinister.

"Design proposals for a new Museum of Military Medicine in Cardiff will be unveiled at a public exhibition.The exhibition, at Cardiff and Vale College's city centre campus, will outline plans for the museum's relocation from Keogh Barracks near Aldershot to Cardiff Bay."

So some crafty sod has decided to rope in the Cardiff and Vale College knowing that if you get the demography 16-19, you've got them for life. So the Caterers and the Hairdressing Apprentices will be able to see first hand what the new building will look like. Who knows, they might get a job in there!

The British Army recruits in the poorest areas with the worst schools and lowest educational standards. They are then square bashed and sent off to a life of adventure and heavy drinking very rarely able to return to civilian life without difficulty. Institutionalised brutality is traumatic! It can provide comrades and a surrogate family but when you first reach for the prosthetic limb you are on your own...until now! Will this new £2 million pounds museum have prosthetic limbs hanging down from the ceiling like Basque ham or tea pots in tea rooms?  

BBC Photograph

You can tell I feel passionate about this. Bear with me lovely boy. Whether it is the Windsor Davies Sergeant Major in 'It ain't half hot mum' or Welsh Soldiers singing Men of Harlech at Rorke's Drift, the Welsh have supplied as much cannon fodder to the class based Sandhurst operated army as have other poverty stricken areas of the Dis-United Kingdom. They do not appear to have a very good track record in looking after the health and safety of their soldiers in peace time let alone war. From the beasting of territorial army personnel on the Brecon Beacons we learn that on average 9 British Soldiers die in training every year. Collateral Damage? Maybe,but somebody's father, somebodies son! 

I don't think that the Military Medicine Museum in Cardiff will be particularly popular, perhaps as popular as its present base in Aldershot which is known as a Garrison Town. Did anybody even know of its existence....until now. Do not turn Cardiff, the Capital City of Wales into a Garrison Town. 

"Squad, turn to the left in threes, left turn

Squad, stand down, stand easy"

Further Reading

http://sharkfishinginwales.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/british-welsh-powerhouse_3.html

http://sharkfishinginwales.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/a-short-psycho-geographical-tour-of.html

http://sharkfishinginwales.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/circuitous-route.html