Our love, equality’s blood now spills and foams Stabbed by fantasists and dictators with loud fuss We mourn the loss of freedom taken from us
Supporters held in thrall, dismayed as truth hits home Democracy is murdered as those fools stand by – witless Our love, equality’s blood now spills and foams Stabbed by fantasists and dictators with loud fuss
We poets must respond and fight with sharp-edged poems Not just to mourn our lost love, blazon our distress But as a call to arms for all to rise and seek redress Our love, equality’s blood now spills and foams Stabbed by fantasists and dictators with loud fuss We mourn the loss of freedom taken from us…
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Grace in Poetry Forms invites us to try the English Madrigal – a complex form which was often a song and often too, referring to love. This is a somewhat different love song for the dark times we live in – not just in America but across many countries around the world that will nevertheless be made worse by what is happening there.
Key Features of the English Madrigal
Content: Often includes a theme of love
Structure of an English madrigal
*Usually written in iambic pentameter. *Comprised of three stanzas: a tercet, quatrain, and sestet. *All three of the lines in the opening tercet are refrains.
Form: A thirteen-line form in three stanzas: Stanza 1] Tercet -Three lines Stanza 2] Quatrain – Four lines Stanza 3] Sestet – Six lines
What price the truth, is truth now dead that leaders spout – thoughtlessly said unfiltered guff from mouths uncouth distract the people – the poorly led from what’s the real that will be rued is truth now dead, what price the truth…
A stanza of 6 lines – any number of stanzas permitted 8 syllables per line end rhyme scheme BbabaA (often written in iambic tetrameter.) L1 and L6 of each stanza is written in 2 hemistichs i.e the line split in two, with commas The 2 halves of L1 are inverted but repeated exactly as a refrain in L6. For example: L1 In winter’s cold, as moonlight beams L6 as moonlight beams, in winter’s cold.
N.B. The 2 halves of L1 contain and set the a and b rhymes thus: RRRA, RRRB xxxxxxxb xxxxxxxa xxxxxxxb xxxxxxxa RRRB, RRRA
“It needn’t be tinder, this juncture of the year” Conor O’Callaghan – January Drought
I – Hand-wringing…
Tinseltown they called it The Hollywood sign above it On mountain and canyons covered With scrub like gasoline tinder Rich palaces of dreams rendered To which many young locusts aspired But Santa Ana winds have burned Those houses to naught but ash Chimneys only gravestones to the cash Will Angelinos now have learned Money, for Nature is no match Challenge it and there’s a catch Will L.A. be a lesson to us all That Damocles’ sword’s about to fall…
II – Thunderbolt slinging…
“Come friendly bombs and rain on Slough” Quipped English Poet Laureate Enough with all this rational debate No one heeds “We the People” now Let Mar-a-Lago flooded be With Trump inside preferably Let insurance baulk at rebuilding The Palace-ades of rich and famous And let’s see what Trump really does When Global Warming’s truly a thing So unlike wise old King Canute The science is no longer moot And yes, for sure we all will suffer Till Nature trumps the monstrous duffer…
Andrew Wilson, 2025
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Laura Bloomsbury in Meeting the Bar: Critique and Craft invites us to write a Palinode in which two verses take contrary views and around a quotation relating to the New Year. I chose the Conor O’Callaghan one which seems almost prescient to the L.A. fires that are occurring so early in the New Year…
The last time that the president-elect was indisputably seen in public, was at his inaugural rally at which a third presumed unsuccessful attempt on his life resulted in his being whisked away and out of sight. After a night of panic by his supporters, a reassuring video was released of the now President, sitting up in his hospital bed and raising a fist in a defiant gesture. Thereafter, the POTUS made no live appearances, his team stating that three attempts on his life were quite enough. The irony was that the techniques which had served the president during his candidacy for re-election, to smear opponents, were now used to supplant the presence of the ageing and unstable would-be dictator. Deep fakes, AI-generated speeches flowed forth, for God knows, there were enough speeches to train the AIs in the rambling, vitriolic, and emotion-soaked appeal that was the President’s trademark. The crew that had pushed the president forward over the last four years, not to mention his long-suffering wife, breathed a sigh of relief and prompted the AIs to generate a more coherent presidency which went exactly to plan…
Winter has come forth freezing forever the fruit of misbegotten dreams…
The dual theme of my A to Z Challenge this year is the world of Commodities and Poetry Forms so the juxtaposition of these two themes may throw up some strange poems – could be a Heroic Ode to Heating Oil or will it merit a Haiku or a Haibun – whichever, I will be endeavouring to bring you interesting facts about commodities that may change the way you think about the stuff we variously depend on…
By commodity I mean certain items that are of both sufficient value/volume to be traded in special markets and are generally volatile enough to attract traders in “Futures” which are a way of hedging bets in the trading world of stocks, shares and commodities.The A to Z Challenge runs throughout April and will consist of 26 posts – there are only a couple of letters for which I couldn’t find commodities but plenty of poetry forms to carry the day! The A to Z Challenge runs throughout April and will consist of 26 posts – there are only a couple of letters for which I couldn’t find commodities but plenty of poetry forms to carry the day!
In 2022, worldwide trade in Zinc Ore was worth $14.1 billion and it was the 297th most traded product.
If you have ever looked at say, steel railings and noticed a blotchiness to the surface, you are looking at crystals of zinc applied by hot dipping the steel (Galvanising) to protect it from rust.
Zinc is an important metal that has been used since ancient times – long before the element was properly isolated and named. It is also vital to life as a trace element but can be toxic in excess. It has many uses – one third goes to galvanising steel and iron and so as a commodity, watching the demand for steel – especially in China, is a key indicator of demand. Other uses include alloying – most notably with copper to form brass, Diecasting metal parts for such things as Automobile parts, zinc oxide is used in many industries, including paint, rubber, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, plastics, inks, soaps, batteries, textiles, and electrical equipment, and Zinc sulfide is an important component in many products, including luminous paints, fluorescent lights, and x-ray screens.
You may have noticed that the trading figures at top refer to Zinc Ore rather than Zinc itself which suggests that the places that mine the ore do not necessarily wish to refine the ore into metal and in any case, as we can see from the use of zinc compounds above, metal is not always the desired form of zinc. It also suggests that the zinc content of the ore is sufficiently concentrated as to make shipping the ore financially viable. The diagrams below show the major exporters and importers of Zinc ore.
You will notice that the largest producer is Australia and the largest company mining Zinc there is Rio Tinto – in fact at one time it was known as RTZ – Rio Tinto Zinc. In recent years, Rio Tinto (you can read their history here) were embroiled in a massive scandal after they blew up an aboriginal shelter in the Juukan Gorge which had evidence of continuous use for 46,000 years – in other words – throughout the last Ice Age! Although this demolition was in order to expand an iron ore mine, it brings into sharp relief the colonial occupation of lands all over the world and the issue of who has ownership of the land and mineral rights – the native populations or the colonial occupiers. As a result of the worldwide condemnation of this act of cultural vandalism, the Western Australian government was able, just this March, to ram through bipartisan legislation further protecting aboriginal lands although as the deadline for the implementation of the act approaches, there is huge debate about the perceived draconian nature of its clauses and what impact that will have on Australia’s economy – choice, choices…
The carpet-bagging, swashbuckling, vicious age of Imperialism and Colonisation may be in the rearview mirror of the past but aboriginal/native peoples around the world are finding a voice in the present and questioning their right to own what was taken from them and where such actions are taking place in what were remote sites out of sight of the world, are now open to live scrutiny and monitoring in the modern age of satellite technology and the whole world is connected by an internet that can mobilise at an instant – so no longer are dark deeds out of sight – out of mind… If laws like those in Australia make it more difficult to exploit the environment without concern for the planet and the local environment of the extraction, then it gives us pause for thought. Of course, some native peoples may be delighted to benefit from resource extraction, but more commonly, those people’s attitude to the environment is one of stewardship and we could learn from their wisdom. We also have to be careful that if a battle for the benefit of the environment is won in one place where vocal stewards succeed in making their voice heard, the environment of some other, less visible part of the world does not suffer instead – we live in a global village and there is no place to shit with impunity – as the effects of global warming are increasingly demonstrating. Unfortunately, it is still the case – as it ever was – that the resources we “need” often come from the Third World and so it is doubly unfair that they are the ones suffering the most from Climate Change. If Zinc could only be found beneath New York, how different do you imagine the extraction process would be?
Because Zinc was not fully recognised or understood in ancient times , even if it was contributing to metallurgy in instances such as Brass – and the many uses of Zinc in the modern world only followed on from 18th century developments in smelting – zinc or its compounds were discarded in earlier mining of other metals such as lead (zinc often occurs with lead and other metals) and the dumps of the past mining operations can leach zinc and cadmium into the environment polluting rivers. A little zinc may be necessary for life but too much is toxic.
Zinc is used as the anode in Zinc-Carbon batteries and its property of attracting oxidisation to itself above othe r metals, means it is used as a sacrificial anode – attach a strip of zinc to an iron rudder and the zinc will gradually erode but not the iron. There is so much to say about Zinc but we are nearing the end of the A-Z Challenge 2024 and both I, and I imagine you, dear reader, are getting saturated with reading and so if you want to know more facts about all aspects of Zinc, then Wikipedia, as ever has an excellent article…
And so to the poem of the day – the form is Zuhitsu and unlike other poetic forms originating in Japan, this is no tightly specified set of rules about syllable count, line length or even appropriate subject matter – meaning “Follow the brush…” – Zuhitu is the very opposite! Although seen as early as 1002 AD, you could be forgiven for mistaking it as very modern because it is eclectic, “composed largely of interwoven writings in prose and poetry on ideas or subjects that typically respond to the author’s surroundings” (American Academy of Poetry). It is not unlike the modern Lyric Essay an example of which is Cluadia Rankine’s ground-breaking American Lyric trilogy, Don’t Let Me Be Lonely (2004), Citizen (2014) and Just Us (2020) – you can read an extraact here. Another modern eponymous example is “Zuhitsu” by Jenny Xie. It seems appropriate that as I draw to a close my theme of Commodities, and as I reflect on the themes of imperialism, exploitation and environmental damage, this is the final poetry form I encounter…
Zinc – a Zuhitsu
I like to trace the outline of zinc crystals in the galvanised surface of metal railings – a secret of chemistry hiding in plain sight for those who know. How dull the world without that knowledge and how multi-layered my view is – like wearing Google glasses and looking upwards to see “Blue sky – an effect of atmospheric diffusion of sunlight” superimposed across the sky. Does it spoil the sky to be so emblazoned? No I turn off my knowledge at will and simply enjoy the change from blue to black and all the sunset colours in between.
We are all the children of chemistry, and physics melded together in biology and we need to know the elements that make us tick even though we hand that research off to specialists – trust them to find the answers and point us down the paths of health – learn what you can, from ancient practices like naturopathy to modern science explained in clearest terms in New Scientist – inhabit yourself through knowledge applied with wisdom.
I am growing old – sixty-nine journeys round the sun and each time my cells regenerate (I am not the man I used to be) they accumulate tiny errors like a multi-generational photocopy which in my case manifest as wrinkles, age spots – blotches of brown on the backs of my hands. A secretary’s cheeky photocopy of a breast unwisely persuaded at an office party, once copied then copied again and again would too, lose its perky perfection…
I drink an effervescent, orange flavoured glass of Vitamin C with Zinc each morning in case a deficiency of zinc might hasten my end by means of multi -faceted effects on my body and I know I should read the science and see whether it is necessary or whether I have just been seduced by the marketing but I haven’t yet – after all, I’m only human…
The dual theme of my A to Z Challenge this year is the world of Commodities and Poetry Forms so the juxtaposition of these two themes may throw up some strange poems – could be a Heroic Ode to Heating Oil or will it merit a Haiku or a Haibun – whichever, I will be endeavouring to bring you interesting facts about commodities that may change the way you think about the stuff we variously depend on…
By commodity I mean certain items that are of both sufficient value/volume to be traded in special markets and are generally volatile enough to attract traders in “Futures” which are a way of hedging bets in the trading world of stocks, shares and commodities.
The A to Z Challenge runs throughout April and will consist of 26 posts – there are only a couple of letters for which I couldn’t find commodities but plenty of poetry forms to carry the day
It’s some times hard to find the exact date figures for each commodity and for Kerosene I commend this site for its excellent infographic on producers and importers of kerosene (even if it is 1998 and not 2022 as I have tried to stick to…)
The Lady with the Lamp…
One of the iconic images of the early Nineteenth Century, is that of Florence Nightingale depicted as “The Lady with the Lamp” and I imagined that she might have used some sort of oil lamp and that might be a good place to start with talking about kerosene, but the truth of this image is rather more complicated.
I already mentioned Kerosene under the letter H for Heating Oil as a commodity and Kerosene is a specific form of Paraffin derived from Crude Oil distillation. Kerosene can be used contemporarily as heating oil but also as aviation fuel, rocket fuel and it was one used as a replacement for whale oil in lamps, much to the relief of whales who were being hunted to the brink of extinction by the 1860’s. The growing scarcity of whales raised the price of whale oil as a commodity and drove the search for alternatives such as petroleum-derived Kerosene. So today I want to examine the historical importance of Kerosene as a major commodity for lighting.
Going back to “The Lady with the Lamp” for a moment – The Florence Nightingale Museum exhibits a Turkish Fanoos lantern which it claims is the correct type of lamp that the eponymous inventor of The Nightingale Ward would have used. This is a concertina-style paper lantern – a collapsible travelling lantern which would have had a candle inside. Candles, incidentally, can be made from Paraffin Wax – another product closely related to Kerosene. But the more romantic image of Florence Nightingale carrying a Greek or “genie” lamp burning some form of oil, caught the public imagination more after several depictions of such – so much so, that “A further layer of meaning was added to the lamp with the foundation of the Nightingale Training School in 1860. The oil lamp was already a symbol of learning because it had enabled reading in the hours of darkness since classical times. Now the lamp came to represent nurse education.”
Oil lamps had been used for thousands of years often vegetable oils so in the Mediterranean countries this would have been Olive Oil. There were many seeps of crude oil around the world and one of the oldest attempts to extract oil for lighting oil, is the Persian scholar Rāzi, who created a form of kerosene by filtering petroleum through an alembic with materials like clay. It was not until 1854 that “a Polish pharmacist, Ignacy Łukasiewicz, invented the kerosene lamp – a device that quickly went on to light up Europe. He also went on to open the first oil mine and kerosene refinery in the world, becoming a pioneer of the oil business.” In America, “Until the late 19th century, an oil find often was met with disinterest or dismay. Pioneers who settled the American West dug wells to find water or brine, a source of salt; they were disappointed when they struck oil”. But with the perfection of the method of extracting kerosene from crude oil, the new commodity was set to take over from Whale oil and literally save their blubber.
Later, the major commodity to be extracted from Crude Oil, would become Gasoline which we encountered under “G” – which just goes to show how commodities can change over time. Whole industries such as whaling (1780-1860) can rise and fall in less than a hundred years. Likewise, the shift from crude oil’s importance as a source of kerosene lamp oil was eclipsed by the advent of electric light although it gained a new lease of with the advent of jet engines and as a heating oil and the gasoline fuelled the growth of the motor car and the asphalt created the roads for cars to run on until every fraction of crude oil was utilised for something – spanning many separate commodity markets.
The other narrative running through this evolution of commodities, is the way that we humans have exploited the natural world for whatever riches our burgeoning “civilisation” has required. Vegetable oil lamps were sustainable, whale oil lamps nearly extinguished whales and fossil fuels are largely responsible for the unfolding disaster of climate change! Hmmm…
And so to today’s poem which at “K”, brings us to a French poetry form called the Kyrielle. “written in quatrains (a stanza consisting of 4 lines), and each quatrain contains a repeating line or phrase as a refrain (usually appearing as the last line of each stanza). Each line within the poem consists of only eight syllables. There is no limit to the amount of stanzas a Kyrielle may have, but three is considered the accepted minimum. Some popular rhyming schemes for a Kyrielle are: aabB, ccbB, ddbB, with B being the repeated line, or abaB, cbcB, dbdB. Mixing up the rhyme scheme it’s possible for an unusual pattern of: axaZ, bxbZ, cxcZ, dxdZ, etc. with Z being the repeated line.”
Kerosene – A Kyrielle
Homes once lit by Whale Oil lamps were the reason why whales were hunted – long before the “Save the Whales” camp ‘twas Kerosene saved the whales.
Kerosene a component of crude oil scars our skies with jet vapour trails but when whalers ceased their toil then Kerosene saved the whales!
Electric lamps made safer homes then aviation took up the slack made tourists of us – ones who roam but kerosene saved the whales!
Whale watching is the latest fad no matter how much Kerosene burnt do you not realise it’s mad when Kerosene saved the whales
only to have them share our fate and all die from global warming we denying it till it’s too late – did kerosene save the whales…?
The dual theme of my A to Z Challenge this year is the world of Commodities and Poetry Forms so the juxtaposition of these two themes may throw up some strange poems – could be a Heroic Ode to Heating Oil or will it merit a Haiku or a Haibun – whichever, I will be endeavouring to bring you interesting facts about commodities that may change the way you think about the stuff we variously depend on…
By commodity I mean certain items that are of both sufficient value/volume to be traded in special markets and are generally volatile enough to attract traders in “Futures” which are a way of hedging bets in the trading world of stocks, shares and commodities.
The A to Z Challenge runs throughout April and will consist of 26 posts – there are only a couple of letters for which I couldn’t find commodities but plenty of poetry forms to carry the day!
Worldwide Trade in Gasoline 2022 $16.86 Billion Worldwide Trade in Gold 2022 $14.568 Trillion
When I first researched a list of “Commodities”, Gold and Gasoline were the only two which came up for “G” on the best list I could find, but what a pair! Gold has been sought for centuries – valued for its incorruptible nature though it has arguably been one of the greatest sources of corruption of the human heart. Similarly, crude oil – the source of Gasoline, has shaped the political map ever since its component “gifts” were discovered and exploited with disastrous consequences for many peoples and for the world and its environment as a whole. So I decided to deal with both these commodities together – one constant and immutable, the other volatile, expendable and dangerous…
Gasoline is used for transportation and energy production worldwide and is severely implicated in global warming as a result of CO² emissions. The spread of the motorcar through the 20th century reshaped our lives and living arrangements and wars have been fought to secure, steal or destroy other’s oil sources. Arguably. The US, as the largest consumer has fought an undeclared war against the Arab nations since the Second World War to assure the flow of oil although it began with an alliance with Saudi Arabia that promised guaranteed oil supplies in return for non-interference with the Wahabist-based sect of Islam which was espoused there. The consequences of that are another story, but Iraq and Libya (a country that shared its oil wealth amongst its people in an unprecedented way) are but some of the victims of US-led wars designed to keep the best oil flowing in the “right” direction. The oil lobby is the greatest source of “climate deniers” although the car lobby and many car drivers are equally denying that Climate Change is happening and man-made.
A salutary tale of the corruption that surrounds commodities such as oil (and gold), is the recent movie Killers of the Flower Moon, in which members of the Osage tribe of Native American Indians are at first surfeited in wealth (see above) derived from the rights to oil found on their land but how an unscrupulous local politician then seeks to murder them and acquire their lands into his family.
Gold has also been a source of conflict and a regulator of success in wars as this article outlines. Paper money used to be backed by reserves of the actual gold which it symbolised and this was known as the “Gold Standard” and although this system has been replaced everywhere by the Fiat system the prevalence of inflation as a result of the severing of the link, has risen worldwide. Having gold bullion reserves finances wars – for example, it is estimated that Californian gold was responsible for 10% of the cost of the American Civil War. The UK had access to gold produced by mines in its colonies such as South Africa which the mines were obliged to sell to the treasury whilst over the course of the two World wars, Germany had no such access and so the UK was able to pay for some of the food and armaments that came from the US (and borrowed the rest which it only paid off in 2006).
Gold Fields South Deep Mine The Twin Shaft Complex comprises a Main and Ventilation Shaft. The Main Shaft extends in a single drop to 2,998m below surface, while the ventilation shaft extends to a depth of 2,947m below the surface. That’s almost 3 kilometres…
Oil and thence Gasoline prices are also levers of power in war e.g. the embargo on Russian oil in response to the war in Ukraine although to pull those levers means adversely affecting the price of oil commodities and the US has to try to persuade its Arab producer allies to release more product to stabilise the market. The price of gold and oil or gasoline (their markets show some different behaviours) are some of the most important commodity trading standards in the market and the first thing that many in the know will look at each morning.
Of course, gold has decorative and cultural uses as well as bullion – jewellery, crowns, ceremonial cups and it is because it doesn’t tarnish or corrode that it has had this value since ancient times and so is one of the earliest commodities to be traded.
And so to the poem and having recently written a Ghazal, I decided to try a Glosa…
Glosa, or glose, is a form originally from Spain, featuring a quatrain epigraph, and four ten-line stanzas with the last line of each stanza being the corresponding line of the epigraph. The key to the form is that it incorporates the words of another. The glosser, or glosador, advertises a connection to a prior text.
Gold and Gasoline
Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold! Bright and yellow, hard and cold […] Hoarded, bartered, bought and sold, […] Price of many a crime untold …
Gold has commanded lust of kings and beggars both who wish for things or for gold’s sake alone a useless dragon’s hoard coins, bullion bars and rings miners gave their lives for it soldiers died protecting it across the globe merchants trade the metal that will never fade Price of many a crime untold …
Shallow mines are damp and cold deep in the Earth’s heat lies the gold where miners in the new South Africa still sweat to feed the dragon’s hoard a ring with which to have and hold a brooch to sparkle and attract the eye a sovereign, symbol of King and country pays for the soldiers’ dice with death to die or win and maybe loot a little wealth Price of many a crime untold …
And gasoline’s story is much the same black gold fought over in the Great Game of nations tampering with other nations to keep their cars moving, lights burning the destruction of Libya a tale of infamy the treasures of Iraq to the winds scattered because compared to oil, culture didn’t matter and wars are won and lost by oil’s logistics and the market’s fluctuating statistics Price of many a crime untold …
Whilst gold has spawned so many crimes it doesn’t threaten climate-changing times it will not end our human hubris and rarely even give us bliss as when we ring the wedding chimes both have brought us good and bad and if we perish, though very sad we only have ourselves to blame for seeking gold and gas – the same Price of many a crime untold …
The dual theme of my A to Z Challenge this year is the world of Commodities and Poetry Forms so the juxtaposition of these two themes may throw up some strange poems – could be a Heroic Ode to Heating Oil or will it merit a Haiku or a Haibun – whichever, I will be endeavouring to bring you interesting facts about commodities that may change the way you think about the stuff we variously depend on…
By commodity I mean certain items that are of both sufficient value/volume to be traded in special markets and are generally volatile enough to attract traders in “Futures” which are a way of hedging bets in the trading world of stocks, shares and commodities.
The A to Z Challenge runs throughout April and will consist of 26 posts – there are only a couple of letters for which I couldn’t find commodities but plenty of poetry forms to carry the day!
Frost Futures – yes you read it right – you can buy futures in Frost and other weather phenomena! This is at the heart of trading futures as a hedge against the unexpected and though you might argue that frost itself is not a commodity, yet its impact on many grown commodities is potentially devastating and trading in weather futures is a way of insuring against loss… What I have not been able to find are any meaningful figures for the trade in Frost Futures since this is still a rather exotic trade!
Here are some quotes from the CME Group who specialise in Weather Futures:-
“The common cliché is that every conversation begins and ends with the weather. That’s probably because weather is the most common and pervasive risk factor for individuals or businesses. […] a decisive majority of senior finance and risk managers confirm that their businesses are significantly impacted by the weather and a stunning eight out of 10 warn of a new risk: that the emergence of global climate change and accompanying volatile weather patterns will require changes to their business models in the decades ahead. […] Weather cannot be controlled. But with the introduction of the products we offer, its blame for company losses is no longer justifiable. Weather, like any commodity, can be traded and its risks mitigated. Our Weather products offer the ability to manage volumetric risk or the risk due to variability in sales revenues, caused by weather-related fluctuation in levels of consumption.”
Forgive the corporate language but in essence – trading in futures is gambling and weather futures are a way of hedging your bets… That’s it – short and sweet, other commodities beginning with F include Feeder Cattle and Fish and if you are wondering what Feeder Cattle are – they are young cattle which are sold on (often a byproduct of dairy herds who need repeat pregnancies to maintain milk production) for fattening up before selling.
And so to the poem which today is Free Verse – a form which often seems to be the most ubiquitous among modern poets. Free Verse does not use meter or rhyme, but is still are recognisable as ‘poetry’ by virtue of complex patterns of one sort or another that readers can perceive to be part of a coherent whole. (Language is a Virus…)
A beautiful assassin calls at night you can never be sure when you may stand guard in your garden gazing at the glittering array in the heavens revealed by a clear sky and feel in your bones she is lurking but she will wait till cold has driven you to your warm bed and in the early hours she will grip plants squeezing them to death by freezing the life blood in their very veins
You will awaken to a white wonderland of sparkling crystals coating the world and await the sun’s sufficient elevation to melt the assassin’s work and reveal the extent of the damage the body-count the wilting and the dying the seedlings cut down in their infancy and even as you curse the late and unpredictable frost’s devastation counting the cost planning the re-planting you cannot help but admire the beauty…
The dual theme of my A to Z Challenge this year is the world of Commodities and Poetry Forms so the juxtaposition of these two themes may throw up some strange poems – could there be a Heroic Ode to Heating Oil or will it merit a Haiku or a Haibun – whichever, I will be endeavouring to bring you interesting facts about commodities that may change the way you think about the stuff we variously depend on…
By commodity I mean certain items that are of both sufficient value/volume to be traded in special markets and are generally volatile enough to attract traders in “Futures” which are a way of hedging bets in the trading world of stocks, shares and commodities.
The A to Z Challenge runs throughout April and will consist of 26 posts – there are only a couple of letters for which I couldn’t find commodities but plenty of poetry forms to carry the day!
Worldwide Trade in Barley 2022 $10.4 Billion
Barley is the oldest cultivated grain and still the forth most cultivated after maize, wheat, and rice. Bere was the Old English word for Barley and the word Barley comes from the Old English bærlic. The Old English bere-aern meaning “barley-store” gives us the modern word barn and showing the importance of this ancient grain. Grinding stones near the Sea of Galilee reveal traces of barley starch from 23,000years ago and by 9,000 years ago, domesticated barley (unable to reproduce without human assistance) is found throughout the Fertile Crescent including Mesopotamia, sometimes thought to be the original Garden of Eden.
Botanical illustration of leafy stem with roots, flowers, and 2- and 6-row ears
In 2022, 155 million tonnes of barley were grown worldwide with Russia in the lead at 15% followed by France Germany and Canada. You can read more details about all aspects of Barley here. However, the thing to be concerned about over barley as a commodity is that it is threatened by Climate Change. Modern barley ideally likes a cool climate without too much rain which is perhaps why it enjoys northern continental interiors but even these areas are threatened by the rising temperatures of global warming and the unpredictable extremes of weather events that bring heavy rain to unaccustomed areas…
Seventy percent of barley goes to animal feed which vegetarians would answer is a wasteful way for humans to raise protein, but the other thirty percent is eaten (or drunk) by humans but if climate change disrupts the crop, will animal feed be the first to succumb to unpredictability with humans feeding directly on whatever has managed to be grown?
With barley being eaten in such a wide range of countries, there are many varieties of soups, stews, gruels and porridges not to mention bread made from barley flour. But barley is also fermented to produce malt which is the sugar basis of both many beers and of whisky and these liquids are ascribed as the gifts to mankind of John Barleycorn who was the subject of many ballads variously personifying the harvest and transformation of barley into booze…
John Barleycorn (image by Midjourney)
Healthwise, a 100-gram portion of barley can provide 10% of the required Daily value of some essential nutrients – fibre, the B vitamin niacin, and dietary minerals, including iron and manganese. It does however contain gluten so it is not suitable for those who are gluten-intolerant. It can aid in the regulation of both blood sugar and blood pressure.
Barley is not the only crop which is and will increasingly suffer from climate change, but it illustrates clearly the coming doom scenario if we fail to act to halt the slide into global warming.
And so to today’s poem – a recently coined form – a Bop poem! The Bop was created by Afaa Michael Weaver during a summer retreat of the African American poetry organization, Cave Canem. The Poets.org defines the Bop as “The first stanza (six lines long) states the problem, and the second stanza (eight lines long) explores or expands upon the problem. If there is a resolution to the problem, the third stanza (six lines long) finds it. If a substantive resolution cannot be made, then this final stanza documents the attempt and failure to succeed.” So here goes…
Barley
Barley enjoys a cool climate but not too much rain but global warming also means increased precipitation, we may have to eschew John Barleycorn’s barley malt but losing liquor is the least of it if climate change can’t halt. this oldest of grains is still the fourth most cultivated crop so food for animals and people around the world might stop.
Animals eat seventy percent of the barley. Some know only soup with Pearl Barley but bred to lose its hull is Hull-less Barley which pre-cooked and dried is Quick Cooking Barley, longer to cook is only lightly polished Pot Barley, similar to steel-cut oats are Barley Grits, and like rolled oats, Barley Flakes are flattened bits of a grain that’s eaten in so many places its crop loss with hunger will over-face us.
The third stanza of a Bop poem seeks resolution but I see no solution to this sad situation, those traders in stocks and shares who seek to hedge their bets with grown wares will find Soft Commodities have and make bad Futures if we’ve tipped the climate past the point of rupture…
Other Commodities beginning with B include Beef and Bitumen. Beef, as is discussed with Barley above, is the least efficient way of producing protein of all animals since you have to put masses of other protein in to get there and as well, cattle are accused of contributing to greenhouse gasses and thus global warming with all their farting and burping methane. There are some minor measures which are beginning to alleviate those things but more significant is that the demand for beef continues to grow and that means bringing more land into agriculture including forestry. Just because people in developed countries want to eat more meat and don’t directly see the Amazon rainforest being cut down to make way for ranching, does not mean it is not affecting them through climate change. You can read a good article by the World Resources Institute weighing up the factors around beef and the environment here.
Bitumen is a byproduct of refining crude oil – the very last item to come out of fractional distillation and it is of course, the binder in tarmac or asphalt which makes the roads that the petrol-driven motor cars drive on. If bitumen was not used up in this way then it would be a horrendous waste product to be disposed of. So the growth of the motor car and the spreading of roads were pretty much synchronised and conversely, if – and it is a big if – we transition fully to electric vehicles, then the cessation of oil refining will mean a cessation of bitumen availability and considering that electric vehicles will still need roads… As a commodity, bitumen is pretty closely allied to the cost of crude oil and the price of that is a whole other can of worms!
Other poetry forms I might have chosen beginning with B include the Ballad, the Blazon (though it might be difficult to frame Barley as the beloved), Blank Verse, and the Ballat.
This post by Di on Pandamoniumcat’s Blog, is in response to the No vote in the recent Australian Referendum on the issue of Constitutional recognition of Australia’s indigenous people. Failure to recognise the existence of people who already lived in the land you took can never end well and hopefully, this is not the end of the road for this cause… It was posted in response to For Dverse Poets Meeting the Bar: A Collective Point of View
