...and ready to go. 
In the train a man is writing in an A4 note book. He is sitting uncomfortably, slightly aslant the table, his head a little on one side. He writes quickly, his flow interrupted only by stopping to insert some words in caps, or to circle a sentence. His handwriting, is small, even and slightly sloping. As the train draws in to Tonbridge, he closes his pen, smacks the top of it with a satisfied click, and puts his work into his brief case.
There is an on-line literary magazine, http://www.qarrtsiluni.com/ which I have been visiting for some time. I was introduced to it by Lucy Kempton of http://www.boxelder.blogspot.com/ , who illustrated one of my poems, on it last year. That was before she took on my entire Handbook for Explorers sequence. She has since edited the latest theme - this time, water - on which qarrtsiluni invited contributions. It has high standards and it was a pleasure to find yesterday that it has published my poem Dry with which I had responded. One of the things I love about the magazine is its name. At first I have to admit, I had difficulties with it, until, that is, I got to know it better. It is an Inupiaq word (the language is spoken by Eskimos in northern Alaska and Canada) and means "Sitting together in the darkness and waiting for something to happen". Needless to say, there are now no more difficulties with the name for me, other than the recurring urge to roll it round my tongue and enjoy the mysterious image which it represents.
2 comments:
Thanks for the plug for qarrtsiluni, Joe, but don't you think people will want the direct link to your poem?
qarrtsiluni.com/2008/07/08/dry/
Thanks Joe, I'm a bit late on this.
But how does one actually say the word; is it like 'quart' or like 'cart', where do the stresses go? I still don't really know! (I suspect that is somewhat the point, as one only ever sees it written on line and never has to ask for it over the newsagent's counter...)
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