blue wail and flashing siren

This volume has been superseded by my chapbooks.

This is the first volume of my (dylan harris’s) poetry published by Potato Press. This volume is Licensed by the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike (2.5).

This zip file contains Word 2000 and Publisher 2000 format files used in the last print run.

For those unwilling to use propriety software to reproduce copylefted material, you can gather the entire booklet from this site. The photograph used on the cover is shown below, followed by a copy of copyright notice, contents, ands, (material not available elsewhere on this site).

contents

introduction ii
why copyleft my poetry ii
acknowledgements iii
endorsements iii
Manifesto 1
Darmstadt 1
Leicester Square 1
Chopin And The Chilli Wars 1
M6 1
November Rain 2
Leicester Station 2
Thirty Hours Near The Western Isles 2
Five Days 3
Sunlit Gloom 3
Box Number 3
These Words, They Were Not Said 3
Touching Each Desire with Happy Jokes 3
Angst Cycle 3
The Door 3
Father 4
I’ve Always Had Steep Mountains 4
Watford Gap 4
Why Is England So Full Of Fools 4
Letter 5
Moon–Shadowed Walk 5
Too Fast To Stop 5
Memories of Shadows, Words 5
Wake Up, Wake Up, Oh Slippery Snake 5
Is It Coffee In The Blood 5
Laughter Rose Above My Tired Desire 6
Nursery Verse For Nursery Heads 6
Those Bereft Of Vision And Passion Will Lack The Childhood Memories
To Appreciate This Short Poem Entitled ‘Bob Geldof’ 6
Plumstead Station By Electric Light 6
Scenes From A Blackpool Conference: 6
Dog Sea 6
After Eighteen Months 6
After Silent Years 6
Exhausted 6
“Smoke Filled Rooms” 6
Why Am I In Politics, You Ask? 7
It Must Be Christmas 8
But Its For The Children… 8
ici, pour les enfants 8
Of Caroline 9
Guinness 9
North Of Kylesku 9
Rock (Of The Early Eight) Is 10
Cheese And Onion Sandwiches 10
Limericks-ish 10
There Was A Young Lady Called Venus 10
’twas Ten Years Ago To This Day 10
Working For… 10
In Another Conversation 10
Cavity Wall Insulation 10
Hymnen 11
Technical Note 11
If 11
Teaser 11
Machine Solo a 11
Converse 12
Man Solo 13
Machine Solo b 13
General Arts Licence 14

introduction

Welcome to “blue wail and flashing siren”, one of four small potato press collections I’m preparing.

The purpose of these collections is to raise the funds for a drink in the pub after I’ve given a reading. If I’m really lucky, I’ll may have enough left over to subscribe to a poetry magazine.

This selection contains some of my earlier poetry. Most of these poems say what I wanted to say when I was young and spotty, and nothing like the wise advisor to world leaders today that I’m currently not.

Be warned: I’ve found the hard way I’m completely hopeless at selecting my own poetry. There are poems that I consider awful that have been published. I’ve gone back to dreadful poems after ten years and realised ‘hang on a sec’. There are poems I consider excellent that no–one else likes. So, apart from the outrageous drivel, I’ve kept nothing from these collections. That’s half the reason they’re so cheap.

My website is dylanharris.org. You’ll find versions of these poems there. But there is a fundamental advantage to buying a copy of the poems in this booklet rather than browsing online: I get a pint out of you. Thank you!

why copyleft my poetry

Copyleft is, if you like, guerilla marketing. If something is copylefted, it can be freely copied, modified and distributed, commercially or non–commercially. This freedom is governed by a licence, designed to ensure this freedom is not abused.

Copyleft does not exist to be guerilla marketing. It was created to defend principles of freedom, as the introduction to the Licence suggests, in particular freedom of thought and action against abusive restrictions by the owners of intellectual property rights and patents. What if a motor car manufacturer stated that you are not permitted to maintain your car, you have to use their highly expensive services? What if the car failed after five miles and you were barred from opening the bonnet to reconnect the battery? That’s how a lot of the software industry works, and that’s why the hacker’s hacker (a word given negative connotations by those scared of freedom), Richard Stallman, started the Free Software Foundation. For further information, visit the FSF website at www.fsf.org, or read Sam Williams’s copylefted biography of Richard Stallman, “Free As In Freedom”, O’Reilly, ISBN 0-596-00287-4.

Certain reasons for copyleft do not apply to a collection of poetry. Where, in a poem, is the oil that I can charge you for changing? No, my reasons to copyleft my poetry are very different. In my collection ‘Ranting Poesie’ is a poem entitled, would you believe, ‘Copyleft’ (which can also be found on my website).

If a poetry collection is copyleft; anyone can copy and distribute it as they wish, subject to the licence. If the poetry is copied, I neither pay nor receive a penny. If a critical mass is achieved, copyleft material can conquer the world. In the computer world, the copyleft operating system Linux is global and challenging even Microsoft Windows; which is incredible when you consider it began as a hobby project of Linux Torvelds, a Finnish student. Copyleft can be very powerful.

Poetry does not make much money; even the greatest poets often need additional income. William Wordsworth was a tax collector, Ted Hughes was a farmer, and many living poets, such as Benjamin Zephaniah, lecture in poetry at universities. One does not become a poet to become rich. Poetry is rarely a source of instant success. Only certain well established poets are generally known to poetry readers. Just a few poets are known to the general population. Such general awareness usually follows years of hard poetic graft and sculpted art. Poetry is—usually—a long game.

I do have ambition; I do like people knowing about and commenting on my poetry. It’s a reward for all that creative investment, if you like. I want people to hear, read and enjoy my work. That won’t happen if they don’t know about it.

So I need good distribution. I can’t afford it myself, so I have to depend on publishers. Most poetry publishing houses are merely national, if that; all disappointingly parochial. Worse, though eminently sensible from their perspective, is that I’m an unknown uncollected poet; I would be a seriously risky investment. I’m not confident about traditional distribution.

I’m interested in the long game. I’d like to get my name and poetry known. I hope easily available modern English poetry, which can be copied, distributed, and modified, will be of interest in education. If I’m right, advanced students of English may see my work, and hopefully a few of them will like it and want more.

There are charitable reasons why copylefting poetry might be a good thing. A volume costs less to produce and distribute; there are no royalties. It becomes extremely low cost if distributed electronically. All the legal information is included in the volume, so even the most fastidious need not waste time and effort checking permissions. This makes it cheaper to put such poetry into schools and colleges, where it can assist advanced students to explore modern English literature—there’s even a clause in the licence requesting copies from to be donated to schools. There are no doubt better examples of modern English poetry out there, but I believe something—even my something—is better than nothing.

I’d always intended to copyleft my work, so I had no a problem with publishing it online at my website (dylanharris.org). Even if I killed the site today, the Internet Archive Internet Archive (web.archive.org) will have copies of it, and would continue to make these copies available without successful and seriously expensive legal action. Anyone with net access can see my poetry anyway without paying me for it. Publishing a copyleft collection isn’t really a change.

acknowledgements

I would like to thank the editors of Black Rose, Breathe, Broadside, Iota, Krax, Moonstone, and Never Bury Poetry for accepting some of these poems. I acknowledge the owner of the Guinness trademark, even if I can’t spell them.

I would like to thank Karlheinz Stockhausen for permission to use the title of his electronic work “Hymnen” for one of my poems.

endorsements

Karlheinz Stockhausen has kindly described my poem “Hymnen”, inspired by and named after one of his electronic compositions, as “important and true”.