I fell in love with Alice no, not Alice in Wonderland nor through the looking glass though this Alice famously admired her reflection in shop windows as she walked down the town.
She was not the girl next door eponymous heroine of the bereft Smokie who could not face a life without her nor the Alice in the driving White Rabbit pounded out by Jefferson Airplane – rather it was the plaintive harmonies of the McGarrigle sisters reviving a parlour song about a young girl wearing her favourite blue gown for the first time.
Little did I know that this Alice was no homely teenager but an American Princess daughter of a President denied her name for the tragic loss of her mother due to childbirth her father, Teddy, unable to bear his newborn daughter’s namesake she was condemned to be called Baby Lee until years later her father soothed by a new wife and five more children.
A feisty girl and woman Alice Roosevelt smoked and shot at Telegraph poles from moving trains but I prefer to think of the gentler image of the girl in the song in her Alice Blue Gown “Till wilted I wore it I’ll always adore it My sweet little Alice blue gown…”
The boy in the darkened room is trapped in the lifeboat of his bed he daren’t put his feet to the floor fearing the deeper darkness beneath the bed teeth or claws or something squelchy might suck him under he sleeps fitfully till daylight
Written for Melissa Lemay in Uncategorized over at dVerse Poets Pub, but unfortunately, I missed the boat for Mr Linky and so I am posting it on OpenLinkNight hosted by Mish… Melissa’s challenge was to write a Cento poem made up from lines of other pub-goers in the month of April which I misread and chose lines from the May “Magic 9” – Es la Vida…
This Cento draws lines from fellow poets at dVerse Poets Pub – Punam, Sunra Rainz, Laura Bloomsbury, Kim M. Russel, Jane Dougherty, Gillena Cox, Mary Grace Guevara, Melissa Lemay, Helen, Robbie Eaton Cheadle, Judy Dykstra- Brown, Reena Saxena, Paul Vincent Canon
In April the Challenge is A-Z other writing takes a back seat writing my blog fills my head and for this year I double dipped two A-Z themes I interbred – I wrote about Commodities and with a poem drove home what I said but now the challenge is complete it’s normal service in my head…
II
Back to the novel and down to the pub – the dVerse Poets Pub that is to virtual friends, poets all like me it’s not, however, all about the likes but novels, blogging or poems we certainly desire to be well-read but truly I must write for me the itch induces constant scratches – if that is you too please comment and like me…
Written for Grace in Poetry Forms over at dVerse Poets Pub who today invites us to use the Magic 9 poetic form whose rhyme scheme is derived from the word abracadabra – I have taken the liberty of using the form as a stanza form as I wasn’t done after a mere nine lines…
You can find my A-Z on Commodities with 26 poetry forms via the button at the top of the page and more of my poems via the Poems button.
For a list of all my A-Z posts click the A-Z 2024 Menu Button at top or go back in time with 2020 – 2023…
I already began the process of reflection on my 2024 A-Z Challenge in my X is for eXigesis post – that being my way around the lack of an X commodity so I will cover slightly different ground here. To my mind, there would be no point in setting out on the journey which is A- Z, if I were to pick a theme about which I was so well versed that there was nothing to be learned by me too! If that were the case then I doubt whether the writing would be as compelling as I hope it has been for each of the years I have participated -five now… I like to learn new things and I feel that my excitement informs the writing. For example, I learned at school, about the theft of rubber plants that broke the Brasilian monopoly on Rubber and I had read a book called “Genocide” about the Belgian atrocities in the Congo, but somehow it all came together in a more insightful way in my “R” post – and those insights into the history of empires, geo-politics, and the drivers of economics were repeated time after time with the story of different commodities.
Talking of “well versed” – I made it a double challenge this year by writing a poem – also with an alphabetically matching form following a plunge into poetry after the 2023 A-Z which saw a lot of poets visiting my site and I have certainly had my poetic mind stretched by this exercise. I feel I can understand what it might be like to be a Poet Laureate and to have to deliver poems on demand on unlikely or difficult sources of inspiration – Royal Weddings, Openings and Deaths… Many poets online write to all sorts of prompts every day (and I know some who write to several each day) but if the muse don’t move you – you don’t have to do it – this poetic challenge on the other hand, was determined by the intersection of the commodity and the poetry form of the day and so included a Haiku about Heating Oil, an Ideogramme about Investment and a Pylon Poem poem about Palladium!
Each year since my 2020 pantsing it debut in A-Z (I only discovered it on April 1st) I have vowed to have all my posts pre-prepared and this year I was halfway there at the start of the month and had the last post finished two days ahead of time with only finishing touches like links to other posts to be done the night before – but one thing I simply forgot to do this year, was to use the daily letters at the top of the page which is a shame because Ronel did an excellent job of creating them and indeed all the graphics this year – I will do better next year and I see that the graphic for the 2025 Theme Reveal is already designed! So yes I will be back – all being well, and I already have a theme planned for 2025…
I enjoyed the visits of the team who were supportive as always and of course it was a joy to visit and be visited by others on the Challenge and I will be reviewing them and others I intend to visit now that the madness of April is over – in Roadtrip posts. One thing that surprises me (each year) is how few people Comment and take the chance of posting the link to their daily post, on the official April Blogging from A to Z Challenge #AtoZChallenge daily post – after all – is this not the perfect gathering place at which to check in and start your daily promotion. I start each morning by promoting my post both at the official site and on my Facebook page (which then shows up on Instagram). I’m not sure that they bring in many visits but then the best and most enjoyable method of self-promotion is via visiting and commenting on the blogs of fellow travellers…
Favourite comment: “I think you’ve got the weirdest theme out there for this A to Z. Congrats. This is brilliant. And I’m rolling my eyes at the poem.” by Liz A of lawsofgravity.blogspot.com on Soybeans and a Solage.
Lastly, I like to illustrate my posts copiously, either with photos gleaned from the web or generated by my prompts in Midjourney – so here is a small selection of my favourite Midjourney pictures from this year.
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!
In 2022, Wool was the world’s 663rd most traded product, with a total trade of $3.28B.
Once again, I couldn’t find a Commodity beginning with “Y” so I am going with another “W” one – one I previously had a difficulty in choosing Wheat over – but I did find a Poem form beginning with “Y” so poetry saves the day again…
I live just North of the Leeds Bradford conurbation and those two towns owe a lot to wool – in fact at one time, Bradford had more millionaires than any other city in England! Not to say that every mill was weaving wool – some wove cotton and some mills swapped between the two textiles. Although the industry declined from the 19th Century onwards due to competition from overseas mills using cheap labour – there are still some factories in Bradford which are part of the wool industry. Wool was an important industry in Britain since at least the 13th Century and there are still 31.8 million sheep in the UK today although many of them are raised for meat with wool being a byproduct. So with signs of the wool industry all around me I am glad to have the opportunity to write about it.
In Roman times – European clothing was made from wool, leather and linen with cotton from far-off India a mere curiosity and Silk from China a rare and expensive luxury. By the 15th Century, the value of wool trading to England was reflected in the fact that the presiding officer of the House of Lords sat on a Woolsack and since 1275 , a tax on wool called the “Great Custom” had been financing king and country. As the demand for wool rose, acts of enclosure, official and unofficial, stole common land from the common people – a right to which they had been entitled to since Edward the Confessor. Although compensation, financial or in the form of lesser quality land was sometimes forthcoming, it represented nothing like the increase in value of the land to the landowners. In Scotland, whole swathes of the Highlands were cleared of people in favour of sheep who were, after all, low-maintenance agricultural creatures who converted poor grazing into wool and meat…
A herdwick sheep at Rannerdale Knott in the Lake District. ‘The best solution would be to fence off large areas of the fellsides to grow woodland without being damaged by sheep,’ writes Michael Green in The Guardian. Photograph: Owen Humphreys/PA
The bare hills of the highlands are the result of sheep grazing to this day, and preventing the establishment of native trees with which the hills were once clad. The dispossession of people resulted in emigration to the New World and left Britain short of labour and with a reduced military capability all of which caused inflation in the economy. At one time, the government attempted to restrict enclosure for just these reasons. Other effects of the wool trade was the eradication of wolves and the improvement of transport infrastructure – first roads and later, in the 19th century – canals and railways. The Leeds-Liverpool Canal runs from Leeds, skirts Bradford and passes through my village on its way to the port of Liverpool thus enabling coal in and goods out from this industrial heartland – or as Blake described it “dark Satanic mills…” Arguably, wool is the single most important element responsible for shaping many aspects of the English landscape.
In the 19th century, towns were transformed as much as the countryside had been with the advent of the Industrial Revolution and here in my village of Silsden alone, there were two substantial mills. These mills were powered by the new steam engines and one consequence of these steam engines that people today have forgotten about, was the ash… When we first arrived here in Silsden, a stretch of buried culvert was being uncovered as it was in danger of collapsing. One very upset man told me how he had bought his old (farm) house without knowing that he was responsible for the maintenance of this buried culvert. The small valley had been blocked in a triangular section 60 feet across and 20 feet deep, by the town rubbish dump, but in the main – this rubbish consisted of the ash from the mills – that is a lot of ash! It cost the man £60,000 to dig up his garden to a depth of 20 feet in order to have his section of culvert repaired!!! So when I look at all the mills around Yorkshire – I wonder where each of their ash heaps were… The coal to feed the steam engines might have come from Leeds originally but when that area was exhausted, then it came in to villages like mine, from Liverpool by canal.
Between here and Leeds is Salts Mill and the surrounding World Hertiage site of Saltaire Village built by one of the most successful of those 19th Century Bradford millionaires. It is one of the largest mills of its kind and when built, contained the largest room in the world! When it closed in the 1970’s, it was seen s an enormous white elephant until a man with vision bought it comparatively cheaply and repurposed it as what we now understand to be an industrial estate. Jonathan Silver, was also a friend of David Hockney whose work now has a permanent home in the 1843 Gallery which takes its name from the date when the mill was constructed.
Looking briefly at the three main wool companied still working in Bradford – British Wool is the intermediary between farmers and the wool trade – I pass their modern warehouse on my way to work and if the doors are open, all you can see are hundreds of identical bales of wool…
Haworth Scouring is just down the hill from where I work and they do the job of cleaning and combing wool – a job which was done as a cottage industry before the industrial revolution and though you nevere see much from the outside other than the odd lorry coming and going, in 2017, they made a A multi-million GBP investment in state of the art Schlumberger Era combing machinery which has the capacity to produce up to 150,000kgs wool tops per week and to comb wools from 22µm – 40µm. All that happens after the cleaning (scouring) part where the wool is washed of wool grease (lanolin), dirt and other vegetable material.
Lastly – just a few miles downt the valley from where I live, is Atkinson Dyeing who complete the final stage of bulk wool production – the dyeing. I love that all these elements of wool production are still up and running and all around me…
And so to the aspect of Wool as a Commodity – as the box below shows – Australia is the largest producer of wool and so the world market in wool is pegged to the $Australian which is quite unusual I think.
🇦🇺🇨🇳🇳🇿 Australian, Chinese & New Zealand Production. Australia is the biggest producer of wool, accounting for roughly 23.4%. China and New Zealand produces 15.5% and 9.1% respectively. These three countries produce almost half of the world’s wool, so any supply disruptions in these countries could have an impact on prices. Global Demand (Especially China & The US). Although wool is considered to be a high-value, niche product, it’s a globally traded commodity. The US is the largest importer of woollen textiles and apparel, and China is a major consumer of woollen products.
If you have been following this series on Commodities, you will probably know by now that anything involving trade between the US and China is liable to be subject to a tarrif war and you are not wrong “the US increased import tariffs on Chinese woollen apparel by 15%. This pretty much decreased demand on the US side.” (Medium)
We have not looked at what wool is used for these days – clothing is still the big one but furnishing fabrics, carpets and the surprise newcomer – Ecofriendly Building Insulation. Furthermore, there is the Lanolin byproduct obtained from scouring the wool which is used in “personal care, cosmetic, and baby products, and is also used in pharmaceutical and industrial industries. According to various market research firms, the global lanolin market size itself was about USD 290 million in 2019.” (Medium).
The Ya-Du is a Burmese form of poetry which consists of up to three stanzas of five lines. The first four lines of a stanza have four syllables each, but the fifth line can have 5, 7, 9 , or 11 syllables.
The form uses a climbing rhyme. The rhyme is required on the fourth, third, and second syllables of both the first three lines and the last three lines.
e.g.:—A–A–A-B–B–B—
What I found difficult with this form, was not the climbing rhyme but simply writing with a mere four syllables per line…
Wool
Knitted in time for her fine son the kind mother is rather proud of her knit and son…
Teen with Mum clashes knits old fashioned no cash for new so knit you love love through and through
When old Mum dies then son flies home scent lies in vest to nose pressed now and rest of life…
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!
Exegesis – “critical explanation or interpretation of a text”
Usually, I review my A-Z Challenge at the end of the month as well as hopping on the Roadtrip to review some of the other blogs I have visited, but over the last week I have started to have a perspective on what I have learned on my journey through commodities. Since with the best will in the world, I could not find either a commodity or a poetry form beginning with “X” – I am going to allow myself time to draw some threads together before going on to “Y” and “Z” next week – oh, and to choose a poetry form that I did not write to already this month!
I thought there would be quirky facts about various substances, I thought that portraying stuff as Commodities might yield a different viewpoint, but I didn’t anticipate the Geopolitical tropes that would occur time and again or the Environmental recurring themes either. Of course, I have realised that that is partly because of me – who I am and what therefore stood out for me. For example, the imperial atrocities associated with the early extraction of Rubber, both in the Amazon and the Congo. The fact that atrocities are still being perpetrated against indigenous peoples in both those river basins not to mention virtual slave and child labour. How industries rose and fell like the Whale Oil industry between 1780-1860 and only the advent of Kerosene saved many more whales from extinction – and yet the age of oil exploitation threatens a wider extinction through global warming…
Time and again we have seen how commodities like Gold, Silver and Oil – “Black Gold” – have been the driver behind imperial conquest, how enmity between trading blocks has led to fluctuations in the market – Putin’s war on Ukraine has – through sanctions applied to Russia – affected grain prices, energy prices and even more exotic commodities like Palladium – and these are not just effects on the traders who gamble in commodity futures, but ordinary people who have experienced rampant inflation due to rocketing energy prices or in Africa – people who have suffered the euphamistic “Food Insecurity” due to the lack of Ukrainian grain as we saw in yesterday’s Wheat. It’s not just the politics and the lingering effects of Imperialism, but the environmental issues that have come to light – we first encountered this with Barley – a crop which likes cool conditions but without too much rain and as we have come to know in the last few years (Donald Trump arch-denier notwithstanding) global warming can mean too hot, too cold, too dry too wet – too variable – so sip your malt whisky while you may…
Today the news is headlined by student protests against the genocide in Gaza calling not only for a ceasefire, and the implementation of the two-state solution, but the divestment of investment by their universities, in any company involved in supporting Israel – such as arms manufacturers like Lockheed. In making these protests, the students are not only demonstrating the ongoing ability of youth to see through years of invested bullshit and like the tale of the Emperor’s New Clothes, see what is really going on and call it out, but they reveal that they understand that the way to tackle it is through economics – hitting companies and errant countries in the wallet – the issues are complex and the histories entwined but much comes down to money… The issues of the environmental, socio-political and geo-political that my skimming through tales of commodities have raised, are much the same – if we want a better, fairer , safer world then it is going to cost us – choices will have to be made, things taken seriously…
Ever since last year, when the poet Misky introduced me to Midjourney – still the best generative AI picture app, I have been using it to produce illustrations – including a number of posts here on the A-Z Challenge. I am a painter and photographer but I would not rate my Illustration skills and so I am delighted by the ability of Midjourney to parse the instructions I “prompt” it with and watching the images form before your eyes is – well magic! But it can take a few iterations to get the AI to give you what you want (and sometimes you have to give up…) so here are some of the “nearly rans” from the past month!
You may recognise the unfortunate Sue (bottom left) from the post on Lacquer. When you ask Midjourney to create an image, it offers you not one, but four images to choose from and you can if you wish, either enlarge one or more of them or ask for variations on it – in this case I was happy with the first iteration.
I wanted an illustration of the many products that can be made from soya beans and although Midjourney made a credible and appetising looking effort, it was not quite comprehensive enough and in the end, I didn’t use it.
These happy families are quaffing orange juice and this illustrates how you can ask Midjourney to work “in the style of” – in this case the style of a Ladybird book cover which produced just the kind of post-war fifties feel I wanted to convey… Again, I went with the bottom left image but asked for it to be redone in a wider aspect ratio.
The problem with AIs is that they don’t fully understand what is going on in the images they learn from and this is particularly the case when asked to come up with something in the style of an old master. Here is the exact prompt I used here “The Goddess Athena impaling Pallas who is distracted by Zeus watching in the background in the style of Michaelangelo –ar 4:3 –v 6.0“. There is confusion about which and who Pallas is and even gender and though some spears are in evidence, they are not always held by the right person, and as for Zeus… You may say that my prompt is insufficient and you may be right but I think dealing with an AI is like trying to talk to an alien! The image I actually used in Palladium, had the following prompt – “The Goddess Athena fighting with Pallas as Zeus watches in the background in the style of Titian –ar 4:3 –v 6.0“
Lastly a series of images seeking to convey the Goddess Freya aka Vanadís for the post on Vanadium. I asked Midjourney to depict Freya Norse Goddes of love, beauty, fertility, sex, war, gold and magic but Midjourney declined until I removed the word sex from the prompt – Midjourney is a very modest AI… After that Midjourney interpreted the prompt with extraordinary beauty and imagination – I would tell you which two artists (separately) the following images were in the style of but I can’t let you into all my secrets but by all means hazard a guess in the comments and I will confirm if you are right… You might want to look at the one I finally chose (none of these) here.
And so to today’s poem. I used several lists of poetry forms to choose and guide me as to the poems I wrote for the A-Z Challenge but principally Language is a Virus, and The Academy of American Poets – Glossary of Poetic Terms. Looking through to find a form I had not chosen previously, I came across the Contrapuntal poem which combines two poems that can be read three- ways – each separately or together, reading across the lines, to form a third poem.
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Grace in OpenLinkNight has been asking for a poem of our own choosing. A week or so ago, one of my grandsons – an F2 Junior Doctor, fainted whilst working on his hospital ward. He has fainted once before for much the same reasons as this poem explores… Junior Doctors as they are called, have been on a cycle of strikes for months now, here in England!
Fainting is not a feminine attribute Nor yet a signal effect of fear When the wave comes upon you like Canute You cannot command the tide “Disappear!” Long hours, small meals, emotional turmoil These will do the trick of draining blood Effects of low blood pressure you cannot foil And you will fall right where you stood Causing alarm to staff and patients But quickly picked up, handled with patience Nurses have seen these faints before and told The management of overworked young doctors Who, stress-loaded, sleep and food-deprived, folded Nurses cannot be the Doctor’s Proctors Can’t change the way the system’s moulded So Junior Doctors do the very best you can Demand more pay, less hours Take every chance to stick it to “the Man” For by your bedside we can’t bring now banned flowers…
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 Worldwide Trade in Wheat 2022 was $73.3Billion and it was the 49th most traded product…
Wheat Adobe Stock)
“Give us our daily bread…” says the Lord’s Prayer although the making of bread from wheat is by no means limited to the Christian West and I am sure there are similar lines in prayers of other religions (do please say if you know any…) but it indicates the huge importance of wheat and the bread, pasta, and cake that it is used to make, among other things. “Wheats are a part of Cereals. They include Wheat except durum wheat, and meslin and Durum wheat.” says the OEC website on Commodities. I confess I had not heard of Meslin (which turns out to be a planting of Wheat and Rye together) though I can disambiguate the other main types of Wheat which largely fall into two categories hard and soft wheat – this is not to do with physical hardness – in fact Durum wheat is physically harder, takes more milling, which damages some of the starches, has less gluten and is therefore has higher extensibility. This means they are more easily stretched into long pieces without breaking, making them ideal to use in pasta. Common Wheat on the other hand has a higher elasticity, which helps them bounce back when kneaded. This makes common wheat a better choice when making bread (the elasticity is what allows the bread to trap bubbles of carbon dioxide allowing the bread to rise). So Red Winter Wheat as grown in Canada for example, is a “hard” high-gluten bread-making flour whilst the Spring Wheats grown in say, France, are “soft” (less gluten) wheats and more suitable for cake making. Durum wheat (“soft” in gluten terms but physically hard) is used for pasta making. Below is a chart showing the gluten content of Common Wheat, Durum Wheat and two of the ancient grains from which our modern wheats are descended Emmer and Spelt… Oh and Meslin – is grown mainly for animal feeds these days but was big in breadmaking from Medieval times and its use in baking died out after the Second World War.
With Wheat as a commodity, we once encounter the geopolitical importance of markets and once again the unwarranted war by Putin on the Ukraine comes to the fore. Once described as the breadbasket of the Soviet Union, Ukraine has not been well treated by Russia – under Stalin, whose collectivist farming policies were so efficient, that even in a land so blessed in soil and climate as Ukraine – they caused collective failure. Stalin punished Ukraine by taking all the grain including the next year’s seed grain which of course only exacerbated the problem the following year and led to a famine in the Ukraine so severe that people resorted to eating the dead to survive. This little-known atrocity was depicted in the film Mr Jones in which a determined Welsh journalist goes to Ukraine and sees for himself the devastation. This is one of the reasons why Putin, hubristically primed by his revisionist book to regard Russia as the “mother” of Ukraine (and not the other way round as is the real truth) was surprised to find that the people of Ukraine did not welcome him in to take Ukraine back into his dream of a re-unified Soviet state but instead continue to fight tooth and nail to stay free. Ukraine has become the bread bowl to a wider market supplying vital grain to many African countries who in turn, were pushed nearer to famine by Putin’s war. Fortunately, some grain is now getting out…
To understand who Exports and who Imports wheat and the value of those transactions – go to https://oec.world/en/profile/hs/wheat where they have some amazing interactive infographics but unless you are a commodity trader (and I suspect most of you are not!) then I am going to close the factual part of this post with a word about roller milling and stoneground wheat. The wheat kernel consists of a husk – the bran – inside which are two halves of flour joined together with a little proto-plant – the wheatgerm. In the old days of windmills turning great round grindstones, the grain was fed in between the stones and crushed into pieces but this included the wheatgerm which is a living plant and so if the stoneground flour was not used fairly quickly, the crushed wheatgerm would turn the flour rancid. The modern roller mills consist of heavy metal rollers that can be adjusted so precisely, that they first, delicately crack off the bran which is separated and perhaps further chopped up. Then the rollers gently break the two haves of the kernel apart so that the wheatgerm falls out and is taken away to be roasted – this kills the plant and makes a tasty product in its own right. Lastly, the rollers can grind the flour kernels down with such precision that different grades of flour are obtainable from the outside to the middle. Now if the mill wants to offer 100% Wholemeal Flour, then it can mix the bran, the toasted wheatgerm and all the flour back together and this flour will keep much longer than Stoneground – so what is the difference? Well stoneground flour contains a mish-mash of different-sized particles from pure flour to fragments of the kernel still in its bran and this means that when baked, the flour releases its carbohydrate slowly. Roller-milled flour is essentially white flour with the bran and wheatgerm added back in and that makes it a fast-release carbohydrate – in other words, you might as well be eating white flour in terms of carbohydrate release…
And so to today’s poem a WaltMarie. The Writers Digest University offers this definition:- This week, a Poetic Asides member shared a poetic form she created. While I don’t usually share nonce forms, I’ve tried this one myself, and I think it’s a lot of fun. So without further ado, I’m introducing Candace Kubinec’s form, the Waltmarie (which is itself a nod to PA members and Poetic Bloomings hosts, Marie Elena Good and Walter J. Wojtanik). Here are the guidelines for writing the Waltmarie:
10 lines
Even lines are two syllables in length, odd lines are longer (but no specific syllable count)
Even lines make their own mini-poem if read separately
No other rules for subject or rhymes.
Wheat
Give us our daily bread or just the flour and we will scavenge fire-wood to bake the staff of life flat bread or leavened if we can manage for life keeping body and soul together…
(Dedicated to the refugees in their own land Palestine but also to refugees or those afflicted by famine whether caused by war or climate change anywhere in the world… You can donate here Oxfam)
