Iain Strachan

 Introduction In this exercise with my ongoing experimentation with the AI program chatGPT, I took one of my short poems "Hoovering up the violets on the lawn", and got it to do an analysis of the poem.  I then asked it to rewrite the poem from the point of view of various characters in the poem.  I then attempted my own rewrites.  Since when you write anything poetic you are influenced by other writing you have seen, it is arguable that my rewrites were influenced by chatGPT's attempts, and that therefore it could be a tool to spark creativity.  First, here is the original poem, my own work, motivated by a real event, followed by chatGPT's analysis of it.  The title "Hoovering up the violets on the lawn" came to me while mowing the lawn and noticing how the rotary mower seems to resemble a hoover, sucking stuff up. Hoovering up the violets on the lawn There they were, unobtrusive yet elegant  Mingled with the straggly grass and tatty daisies. A sham...

Inspired by Carol Ann Duffy's new poem  Silver Lining  (hear the Poet Laureate read her poem  here ), I took some photographs, and wrote my own poem, which bears no small debt to "Silver Lining".  The weekend where the skies were so empty of planes felt like a pause at home; a pause that caused havoc for those stranded however, serving to remind us how dependent we are on a precious resource that is bound to run out eventually. Our Labour Paused Not in fifty springs May I see the cherry-blossom thus: Dancing against a plain and planeless blue, Endless shades of white undulating the petals, Stamens accosted by hoverings of wasps and bees; Nature reclaiming the skies and continuing to work. But this morning, deemed safe To receive our own outpourings Of earth's innards, The blue infinities, Criss-crossed with kids' crayons, Streaked with white fragments In straight lines, billowing to a dull blur, Witness: Lovers, reunited, Supermarkets, re...

Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, had a vision of a galaxy teeming with intriguing alien life forms that it was the Enterprise's five-year mission to seek out. In successive Star Trek franchises the spiritual beliefs of these alien species were often investigated. It seems Roddenberry was preceded in this idea by Alice Meynell (1847-1922), an English Catholic mystical poet, who wrote the following marvellous poem in 1917. Christ in the Universe With this ambiguous earth  His dealings have been told us. These abide:  The signal to a maid, the human birth,  The lesson, and the young Man crucified. But not a star of all  The innumerable host of stars has heard  How He administered this terrestrial ball.  Our race have kept their Lord’s entrusted Word. Of His earth-visiting feet  None knows the secret, cherished, perilous,  The terrible, shamefast, frightened, whispered, sweet,  Heart-shattering secret of His way with us. No planet knows that this  Our wayside planet, carryin...

The wounded surgeon plies the steel That questions the distempered part Beneath the bleeding hands we feel The sharp compassion of the healer's art Resolving the enigma of the fever chart. Our only health is the disease If we obey the dying nurse Whose constant care is not to please But to remind of our, and Adam's curse, And that, to be restored, our sickness must grow worse. The whole earth is our hospital Endowed by the ruined millionaire, Wherein, if we do well, we shall Die of the absolute paternal care That will not leave us, but prevents us everywhere. The chill ascends from feet to knees The fever sings in mental wires. If to be warmed, then I must freeze And quake in frigid purgatorial fires Of which the flame is roses, and the smoke is briars. The dripping blood our only drink, The bloody flesh our only food: In spite of which we like to think That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood - Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good. I have just typed by hand ...

Back in July, I posted a YouTube link to a beautiful song, Fix You , by Coldplay. It is easy in the emotion of the music to give assent to what is expressed in the chorus of the song: Lights will guide you home And ignite your bones And I will try To fix you But of course it's never as easy as that - there are no quick fixes for those in the kind of emotional distress that is portrayed in the song. So here is my creative response to those words ... Not trying to fix you I have no lights to guide you home, Instantly incandescent and full of hope. The little flame that burns in my heart Will perhaps suffice To see you, stumbling and hesitant, Around the next corner; Accompany you on the next twist In your path to light or darkness. For half an hour or maybe more I'll be alongside you An arbour of safety In which, if you are able, You'll begin to unpick The fettering threads of despair And release to me The gift of your story. And I, not guiding, But quietly receivi...

This was a poem I wrote about a year after my father died, in his memory. The image of the half-mown lawn was one I had long intended to write into a poem, but the recollection prompted by the incident at the end was the spark that got the poem written & thus a sad memory got sandwiched between two happy ones. "Please, Daddy, can you mend my coach?" Me. Aged five. At the airport. Clutching broken toy. You, ever the patient father, Tired from your business trip, complied. Thirty years passed, and then you died, Mowing the lawn. For three days I stared out of the window At the mower's slanting swathe across the uncut grass, Marking your last path. Then started it up again, continuing your work. Felt your last moments in the vibrations of the handle. Knew your last conscious act; To halt the mower and save your precious lawn. Then yesterday, you came to me again, Through my five-year-old's broken toy, And for a few moments that spanned the gap of all those years...

Over at Willful Grace there is a posting about the Myers-Briggs personality profile. As Grace, who is an INFP points out, there are some good things about INFP's (like being very caring etc), and some things that really suck, like having a "subtle tragic motif" running through their lives. Well, on reading about it, I went and took a Myers-Briggs test, and answered a lot of impertinent Yes/No type questions, and lo and behold, I also came out as an INFP! (Introverted, iNtuitive, Feeling, Perceiving). I guess my "tragic motif" is my penchant for sad music as exemplified in these posts: No easy fixes, but we can try Funeral songs ( choosing a song for my own funeral?! How tragic is that ???) Hunger for Seriousness But I also seem to remember that I took an M-B test around 20 years ago, during a management course, and came out as INTP (T = "thinking"), reflecting my analytical, scientific, rational nature as opposed to the touchy-feely-liking-depr...

Here's a poem I wrote some time back. In the post God's Flute I wrote about Elgar hearing his music in nature. This is about the music I hear in nature. On writing the previous post, I realised that it resonated very much with this poem & much the same thoughts must have given rise to it. Order out of chaos again? Ambient Music As if God Had assembled A random orchestra And placed me in the empty hall, I hear music .. In the woodwind of birdsong The distant dissonance of a sheep bleat The cadence of rain coming down, The drone of a van going up hill Briefly broken By the leisurely fermata of a gear change. And deep rest comes Not in sleep But in deeply awake ... When the boring voices inside Churning the same questions About life and stuff Have laid off, The answers are all here

Why do I love miserable music? I'm not a miserable person at all, and yet it seems my favourite music always seems to be of the kind that most people tend to find depressing. One of my favourite composers is Shostakovich. Now Classic FM play quite a bit of Shostakovich, but give rather a biassed view by only playing lollipops like the "Romance" from the film score "The Gadfly", or his brilliantly witty arrangement of Tea For Two (In the Soviet Union this was called Tahiti Trot ). But none of the Shostakovich pieces that are regularly played by Classic FM capture the true bleakness and tragedy of this man's music. By contrast, I attended a performance by the Lindsay Quartet of Shostakovich's deathly 13th String Quartet at Manchester University a few years back. The quartet ends with an extended passage for solo viola accompanied by deathly taps as the second violin is directed to tap the body of the instrument with the bow. It ends in a high s...

Kicking through piled leaves Frosty on the sunlit path Shrinks his age to five.