A Poem A Day

[Mercian]

This one is by a Jamaican who emigrated to England in the 1950s; Andrew Salkey.

 

The poem is called ‘A song for England’.
It is written to sound like the variety of English that is spoken by Jamaicans.

Many immigrants to England (and many natives too!) will agree with the poet’s assessment of my country’s weather.

 

 

 

I wrote it out on a piece of 80gsm Rhodia ‘High Grade Vellum’, taken from a No. 13 bloc pad.

 

The pen is my Pelikan 400 from 1954, with its ‘F’ nib.

The nib is 14k gold, and it is ‘bouncy’ or ‘springy’. Its ‘F’ nib is rather narrow, and it has the cursive-italic grind that was Pelikan’s standard nib-grind shape in that era. It produces very crisp lines. I really like it 🥰

If one wished to buy a pen to use for signing contracts and/or other documents, I think that one of these pens with an ‘M’ or ‘B’ nib on it might perhaps be the perfect pen for that purpose.

The ink that I used is Pelikan 4001 Blue-Black.
The pen’s feed is an ebonite one, and it is so ‘wet’-writing that, as you can see here, it really puts the ‘black’ into ‘blue-black’ 😁

Indeed, it is so ‘wet’ that it completely overwhelms the tendency of Pelikan Edelstein Sapphire to ‘shade’; this pen lays down that ink as a crisp, solid line of bright, gemstone blue 🙂

 

Edit to add:

thinking about it, I’m now rather keen to see what this pen does with Edelstein Garnet 🤔

[penwarrior32]

Using my lamy safari white broad nib to write the translated Chinese poem by Li Bai:

In short, it reflected the feeling of loneliness and home sickness by the poet when looking at the moon from his room not located in his hometown. 

 

 

[inkstainedruth]

@Mercian -- On one of their trips to England, my parents told the tour guide that they brought good weather with them.  He didn't believe them.  He later had to admit that he hadn't believed them -- and that he was WRONG.  The only times my mother said that it rained on them in I think 3 weeks of touring Northern England (including going to see Hadrian's Wall) was on highways between one place and another.... 

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[Mercian]

On 6/10/2024 at 9:46 PM, inkstainedruth said:

@Mercian -- On one of their trips to England, my parents told the tour guide that they brought good weather with them.  He didn't believe them.  He later had to admit that he hadn't believed them -- and that he was WRONG.  The only times my mother said that it rained on them in I think 3 weeks of touring Northern England (including going to see Hadrian's Wall) was on highways between one place and another.... 

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

I think that the only time that the weather you describe could have occurred in northern England was during the notorious drought of 1976! 

[Mercian]

Today, I am sharing a short poem that may be helpful for anyone who occasionally finds themself in need of something to cheer them up:

 

 

My handwriting with this pen is, after having used my round-grip-sectioned Pelikan 400 for a few days, either:

a) an embarrassing reminder of exactly how hasty is the slapdash scrawling of my Wraith-runes, or;
b) a testament to the power of the vintage Pelikan’s springy, cursive-italic nib to flatter one’s handwriting.
 

I leave it up to you, dear reader, to decide which explanation you favour 

[inkstainedruth]

20 hours ago, Mercian said:

I think that the only time that the weather you describe could have occurred in northern England was during the notorious drought of 1976! 

Nope.  Because I think that trip up to the north was while I was in college or maybe afterwards, so *after* 1976 (so, late 1970s or early-mid 1980s).  And because the tour guide hadn't believed them at first....  

The trip I was on with them (which included the 4 day bus trip around southern England) was spring of IIRC 1973.  Most of the trips abroad with them was while I was in middle school or high school, except for the trip to Egypt, when I was in college (and mostly because it was during spring break and there would have been no way for me to have gotten home and didn't relish being stuck in the dorm all week), and then the last "family" trip abroad was to Copenhagen (with a day-trip to Lund and Malmö in Sweden, and an inadvertent overnight layover in Reykjavik in Iceland on the trip home) after I graduated from college in 1982.  

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth 

[LandyVlad]

Well,

 

I definitely need to improve my handwriting...

 

It reads:

Wandering, wandering

Aimless and lost

While others seek to guide our way

Playing falsely on our hopes and dreams

With empty promises of a better day

They seek to be the guide dogs of our minds.

 - by Michael Reed.

 

 

 

As if to illustrate how bad my writing is, this is my wife's (even if she did make on spelling mistake) 

 

TWSBI Diamond 580 ALR - 'M' nib with Diamine Oxblood.

[Mercian]

Yay!
You have resurrected this thread 😊

 

Your wife's handwriting is lovely

Yours just needs a bit more practice - it is roughly where mine was when I started using FPs exclusively (unless I'm forced to use BPs).

 

A great way for you to practice, and to improve, would be to write out more poems, and upload the pics to this thread

[GlenV]

I’m happy to see this thread up again! So agree that writing is a great way to practice and fun.

[A Smug Dill]

A friend invited my wife and I to his poetry night street party. It's not my thing on any count; I haven't written any poem since primary school, and I don't do any creative writing. Also, it's been a rough week, and today my hand is all twitchy and wobbly when I try to hold a pen; socialising with a bunch of strangers is definitely not something I look forward to doing. Nevertheless, my wife had promised we'll attend this evening, so rather than being caught short and make the experience even less enjoyable, I thought I'd write something and go prepared.

 

[inkstainedruth]

For someone who claims to have not composed a poem since you were a kid?  This is not bad at ALL.  

Congratulations for pushing your boundaries of what you think you can and cannot do.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[A Smug Dill]

2 hours ago, inkstainedruth said:

This is not bad at ALL.  

 

Thank you!

 

I think it was met with mostly silent “Huh?” disguised by polite applause, which could have been just for my dramatic “deliverance”, as described by the organiser of the poetry night who wrote to thank us for our participation.

 

(Poem revised. Old scanned image above replaced.)

[AmandaW]

38 minutes ago, A Smug Dill said:

dramatic “deliverance”

Warranted by the subject matter! Pleased to hear you did so.

[txomsy]

[darazs]

17 hours ago, txomsy said:

 

I liked it, but somehow that page of Oxford optic paper did not like the Iroshizuku Kon Peki ink amount.

 

 

[txomsy]

Very nice renditions, I specially like the italic one.

 

 

 

Thankful for his life, the author bows eastward before turning westward, to the Paradise.

 

[A Smug Dill]

 

My therapist makes highly appreciative comments on my handwriting every time when I show her my ‘homework’. After showing her (an earlier version of) this poem — which I wrote partly in answer to a question she asked me the previous session, and partly as preparation ahead of the next poetry night street party — I asked her whether she would like a fountain pen (of which she knows I have several hundred and “cannot” stop buying), specifically the one with which I penned that copy in front of her, now that I have tested (and cleaned) it and know/shown it writes competently. She readily accepted, so I fished the pen (which was another HongDian M2, in a different colour but also fitted with a black-coated steel F nib, as with the above) out of my bag, along with an unopened surplus bottle of the (Rohrer & Klingner Sepia) ink I used, and gave them to her.

 

 

 

Edited Monday at 03:50 PM by A Smug Dill
added details of pen and ink given away

[inkstainedruth]

Nice!  I like the poem a lot.  

I'm not good at doing rhyme schemes, and tend more toward free verse -- I remember when I was a freshman in college, one of the guys, who was an upperclassman, wrote a sestina and the rest of us were going, "Oh wow!  That's so cool, Patrick!" (sestinas are really hard because of the complex format -- especially when you're trying to make it actually poetic as well).

So what was the pen(s) and ink(s) you used?

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[A Smug Dill]

Thanks @inkstainedruth.

 

5 hours ago, inkstainedruth said:

So what was the pen(s) and ink(s) you used?

 

I used another HongDian M2 (but in dark olive green, as I've just received a ‘spare’ or surplus unit of that) with a black-coated steel F nib, and wrote in Rohrer & Klingner Sepia ink, for the copy of the poem I showed her. I have the most unopened backup bottles of R&K Sepia, Herbin Cacao du Brésil, Robert Oster Sydney Lavender, and Hero 232 blue-black here. The last of those is iron-gall ink, and has the potential to erode the nib (more because it is coated with some unidentified material), especially when I haven't personally tested the cap seal effectiveness of the HongDian M2. Among the rest, R&K Sepia is the most legible, writes least ‘dry’, and has the best water resistance, so I picked that just in case I was ‘penabling’ her without knowing her level of experience with fountain pens and inks, and didn't want the lack of water resistance (subsequently discovered the hard way) to surprise her.

 

In the copy shown above, (as stated on the perforated page stub) I switched to Pilot Iroshizuku Tsuki-yo (“Moonlight”, or more literally, “moonlit night”). The title and last line in red were written in 云停 (WeTone, a Chinese ink brand) 漸染^†, using a Pilot Prera with a CM nib. It's a very sheeny ink, as you can see from the title on the page which was at more of an oblique angle to the camera.

 

 

^† The manufacturer for some reason transliterated 漸染 on the bottle label into Japanese as ぜんそめ “zen·some”, but in Chinese would mean gradated dyeing/staining literally, and (possibly) altered by osmosis figuratively.

[A Smug Dill]