A blog, a blog, my kingdom for a blog!

Just kidding. I’m sure that was not voiced in any kingdom!

One glorious week in Stavanger where we kick started the Neighbourhood Challenge project which is being promoted by Shahrazad where Norwegian artists and non-Norwegian artists collaborate on a project.

Anita and I didn’t really have Shahrazad in mind when we planned to make foto-poem books on the ICORN cities in Norway. But when it got serious, in the sense that we started to tell people about it, Sharahzad came forward to say that they would sponsor us partially.

So last week was the beginning of what looks like a very exciting work. We stopped strangers on the streets and asked if we could take their photos, explaining that it was for a book on Stavanger. Ninety seven percent happily posed for us. When we bumped into some of them the next days, we were like old friends, greeting each other, exchanging addresses or parting with the words, “We’ll talk on Facebook!” What a rich experience this has been. If the other cities are going to be half as friendly, wow, we could do this for a lifetime.

Spring where?

When you live in the arctic circle, announcements of Spring and violets by friends round the world sound like the proclamation of the Second Coming of the Christ. Spring where? I raise my head and cry out. Violets? what are those?

Ah well, elsewhere are people called the Australians complaining about hot summers. At least Northern Norway has its blue hour..those hours after the arctic sun sets..from about 5.00 pm till about 8 or 9 pm when it is elf-blue and magic…and stars come out reluctantly…sit back, stay in the blueness and write more poetry…no point in stressing..Spring will come when it will…I guess there’s a lesson in there…be patient or be more patient?

Incredible India

Whether you spend a few days or a month and a half in India, you will come away mouthing that. Nowhere in the world have I seen such squalor co-exist with the most decadent luxury. But leaving that aside, India was lovely, yes I can say that, still lovely even after three years away from it. My Hindi returned haltingly at first, but with Bollywood coming to the rescue, I managed to carry out confident conversations with taxi drivers and shopkeepers. It was like my Norsk teacher had said, ‘They’re all there at the back of your head somewhere, all the languages you have learnt, and when you press the right button, it comes back.’

Bright blues, Reds and Oranges - colours even in the midst of the overwhelming grey fog that is so typical of Delhi winters, colourful pashmina shawls and silk bags and woollen, neo-persian carpets at the Delhi Haat market. We stopped our shopping and watched an impromptu dance by street performers, a young boy and an older man who donned a horse costume and swayed appropriately to the compelling beat of drums.

Nan, paneer, butter chicken and real yoghurt…nothing tastes like Indian food in India…

What I’ve been doing!

Stavanger for a lo-o-o-ng week but I wasn’t bored. The best part was they didn’t let me stay at the little 150 year-old, almost by-the-harbour, beautifully worked, but haunted house. So I could write a poem about it and do jazzpoesi with Johan Egdetveit, wonderfully versatile accordionist. Beautiful Wednesday evening at a vegan cafe called Resept. Lots of poetry. Lots.

Then we did the library and we did the barnamuseet, the children’s museum, where I donned a raincoat and hat to read a rain story of a wet crow to four year olds. They loved it! Saturday was exciting with more poetry reads broadcast to a live audience at St Andrews, Scotland. Hats off to ICORN and Sharahzad for all those memorable days!

End of Autumn

Ersfjordbotn is a little settlement on the island of Kvaløya. We were there last Saturday taking part in the big literature festival that Tromsø sponsors every fall.
Something about driving out of the city and into the country. To use a cliche, it was breathtakingly beautiful when we swung round the curve and the vista of fjord and farms opened out to us. Fading Autumn colours, and the first sunshine in days, made it even more beautiful than we remembered.
In the evening the moon obliged, and slowly glided up over a low mountain, like a child’s balloon, forgotten after a party..sounds like dejavu, but nature repeating itself, year after year, season after season is never cliched. Don’t listen to the cynics….

Dark skies again

I must have looked daft…looking upward, skyward on my way out to town. I was hoping to see stars in the dark skies. That is something I look forward to at the end of summer here. Dark Skies. Moon. Stars visible to the naked eye. Again. Would you miss the sun if it was taken away? even for a day? I think a friend asked that in a song…I counted three stars, one small, two biggish.

Indian Summer

I know an Indian summer refers to a short summer but I like to call Summer 2009 my Indian summer because its wonderfully warm with the kind of heat that makes you break out in a sweat…summers in India are wet, sticky, sweaty affairs…beautiful only when recollected in tranquility…then you can recall the fireflies at dusk and the jasmine at night…heady scents, nights that are thick with insect sounds and frog calls…and days that begin with watermelons…