To Whom it May Concen:
It's come to this, getting the news, not from poetry, as the good Doctor-Poet wrote, but from blogs. Link led to a link (Poetry Scotland) which led to the death notice of Britain's shadow Poet Laureate, Adrian Mitchell.
This morning I dreamt that Sebastopol assemblage artist Raymond Barnhart was alive (he died in 1996) and he repeatedly kissed me on the lips. I shied away from the old man's kisses and I wondered who had died, because it was a kiss as if from beyond the grave...and I awoke, troubled. Not that it had anything to do with anything. His thin moustache prickled. I awoke with the feeling I was supposed to find something. I remember something, I didn't know what. Call it an assemblage of information. Why Raymond Barnhart, and why, after all these years? Assemblage indeed.
OK, so I'm feeling a bit mortal these days. Last Saturday I was racked with fevers of 102.2, a fallout of working with kids is that I get some pretty nasty viruses. I was definitely feeling sick. Some Valentine's Day. Maybe my brain's still a bit cooked. My bleedin' cough is killing me...breath is an issue. What is breath. To breathe, Latin: inspire, to breathe into as in inspiration. As in Godhead. He was trying to breathe inspiration into me? Raymond for God. I like that. Or God as an assemblage artist? I can see it now.
I'm still a bit gelly-kneed but my cough's improving. Catching up on my reading Sunny Dunny, a Scottish poetry blog I sometimes follow, I stumbled an oblique link that led to another link (I had no idea what I was following, what I was searching for, or why), and suddenly there it was. I was reading about the death of Adrian Mitchell on Dec. 20. And to be sure, both the Adrians were on my mind the past few months. it seems there's been a spate of deaths of friends and acquaintances. Getting the news indeed.
But then, I've been dredging up the past, posting old articles on the blog, letting them see the metaphorical light of day after languishing a decade or more of cyber-darkness. My friend Micaela read bits of my blog (she's probably the only soul actually reading this blog), she says I should write a book. But on what subject? Memoir without shape or form? As a name dropper? An oblique shadow It Girl of poetry? I write (infrequent as it seems) because I have to, not because I want to. Things come up, insist on a voice and direction generally not of my choosing.
Ah, the Adrians. Yes. I remember the Adrians. The only other Adrian I knew was a girl, Adrian Daly, Adair Lara, the writer’s twin. Adrian preferred cowgirl outfits replete with holster, gun and red cowboy boots. She was a bit of a bully in second grade and last I heard she became a cop. Adair was the poet. One Adrian in a lifetime was enough. Not a name I'd associate with poetry. But then, I met the Adrians.
I first met the two Adrians (Adrian Mitchell and Adrian Henri) together one summer (ca. 1996) at Poetry International and we spent an afternoon terrorizing the citizens of Holland with spontaneous outbursts of poetry and song. After a reading, and an installation of the Poet's Wall, we went to the Pilgrim’s Pub in Delftshaven, raised a few pints, and afterwards, about a dozen of us boarded trams and sang and recited poetry, we were wayward poets with no other destination that life itself. And I was the only girl. Oh and maybe that evening's reading in Rotterdam.
A group of us led by the two pied pipers, Adrians (Henri, and Mitchell). Liverpudlian poet-painter Adrian Henri was perhaps best known for inventing the British “pop poetry” scene with the Beatles. With us was Pink Floyd “The Wall” guitarist Andy Roberts, (I don't know how he got there), but we all hopped a tram singing “Poetry, poetry, poetry. . .” to a bemused, if captive, Surinamese audience. We skipped our fare but nobody cared because we were the poets come to town. Besides, try to collect fare from a poet?
Mitchell was the quieter Adrian, but nonetheless, lively. I remember him telling me he was Scottish, or his father was. I think he was a little sweet on me. We sang Beatles songs and people ogled the crazy gaggle of mostly British poets let loose on the streets of Rotterdam, high on space cake. I believe Roger McGough was there too. Since I was the lone "it" girl or, more like a fly on the wall for lack of a better word for it, I was taking it all in. Imagine singing "Yellow Submarine' with that lot. The tram was our very own Yellow Submarine for the afternoon.
Besides poetry itself, we had poet teaching in the schools in common. Crazy poets, we all went into the grammar schools and turned young kids onto poetry. I was the lone American from California, Sonoma County Area Coordinator for California Poets in the Schools. I gave the Adrians some collections of my students' work. I had had a series of California Arts Council grants so I had some nice collections of poetry and art books.
I was just so thrilled to find teaching compatriots in the UK, as teaching kids poetry was an odd, if lonely profession and few poets attempt to make a living at it. Most elect for the more prestigious college circuit and by that time it's too late for poetry. The brain's well on its way to ossification with the weight of all those dead white male poets cluttering the neuron pathways. Ah yes, the league of extraordinary scholar poets.
I like the story, that as a safeguard, Mitchell wrote a preface to his poetry collections: "None of the work in this book is to be used in connection with any examination whatsoever." His riveting protest poem "Tell me Lies," originally written against the Vietnam War, was revived and dusted off for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He was a ceaseless campaigner against the war, any war, or social injustice.
We wrote and sent poetry lesson ideas to each other for a while. Adrian Mitchell was a better correspondent than I, or the other Adrian, for that matter. But then, time itself dropped away. A horrible car accident in June of 1997, and punctured lung derailed me and my charmed poetry life. Took the breath right out of me. Literally. I later wrote a few times to Martin Mooij and he said that Adrian Mitchell was still alive but sadly, Adrian Henri had died. Now the last of the Adrians is gone from us. Long live the Adrians! Thanks for an afternoon I will never forget.
Guess I'll have to make a trek up to my cabin on Forestville and haul out the old notebooks and photos to see what's there nesting in the cobwebbed memory banks of time. So this little bloggy bit is but a placeholder, a Kilroy was here placetag, a reminder for writing to come. (Or not). Meanwhile, here’s a card from Adrian Mitchell:
As for this bloggy bognote, perhaps like Rayond Barnhart, I too want to please the work. I want the work to please itself. Writing, like assemblage: you have to be ready to reassemble the parts. Only I'm not ready, yet. It's always a mystery. And I never have all the parts I need at the same place and same time. Like Adrian Mitchell, I was run over by the truth one day, and poetry never looked back.
I an left with the odd thought of imagining God as an assemblage artist dressed like Louise Nevelson. After all, God is a woman, right? What I remember about Louise was her huge fake eyelashes encrusting her eyes like debris at the mouth of a flooded river, a red wound of a mouth, and her big floppy hats covering her like a cape designed by Dracula. She was one crazy old Ukranian bat who built entire walls out of packing crates and painted everything black.
I met her when she was putting up an installation at SFMOMA way back when—when I was an art student. But I liked this quote:
”When you put together things that other people have thrown out, you’re really bringing them to life—a spiritual life that surpasses the life for which they were originally created." —Louise Nevelson
