 for the universe. One of those things more powerful than the universe, but oh my goodness, what a ride. Thank you very much. Thanks. So I was sitting in the corner with our late speaker and there were whispers around about who he had offended today. He had to pay for the guy who shows us the world. So Aaron is a poet both of the time and he does some other things in his books and he's going to come and share with us a little bit about how he's going to come and how he finds a little bit of beauty in that. Once he figures out what he's going to read to us, he wants it. Are we going to stand? I'll sit. I'll put it on the floor. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Julian. Thanks everybody for being here. This is for the recording. Oh sure. Okay. This is dreadfully formal. So that is? Yeah. Okay. So you will put your focus. Okay. Thanks and thank you Cara for that. Poets like to think that we don't lose our sense of wonder ever and that's hard to do on some days, especially in the middle of the week. But in the middle of the week I guess when we meet you, there's always a way of retaining that sense. And what I thought I'd do is start off by thinking about how some poets at least have looked at the world and the bits of the universe that you've tried to describe. And it struck me as you were showing us all those wonderful things that this piece by the wonderful Polish poet Wiszlawa Zimborska was actually quite appropriate. And Alex, I'll read it and then I think you have a better understanding why I think it's so appropriate. It's called falling from the sky. And this is how it goes. Magic is dying out, although the heights still pulse with its vast force. On August nights you can't be sure what's falling from the sky. A star or something else that still belongs on high is making wishes an old fashioned blunder if heaven only knows what we are under. Above are modern heads, the darks still dark, but can't some twinkle in it explain? I'm a spark, I swear, a flash that a comet shook loose from its tail. Just a bit of cosmic rubble. It's not me falling in tomorrow's news. That's some other spark nearby having engine trouble. And I think Zimborska captures that wonderfully. In some ways magic is dying out, but every now and then we find it. And the great thing about technology of course is that it's helping us to do that more and more each day. The other thing that poets do of course is they try and where they can immortalize at least a little bit of the vast universe. Just a tiny sliver because they know that words are always going to be dreadfully inadequate for everything that's out there in all of its glorious, gory complexity. And this is an effort that I had 20 years ago or so to try and capture another aspect of that vast pulsing force that Zimborska talks about. And this piece is called Landing Plains, written at Changi Beach in 1995. So almost exactly 20 years ago. In the night, sown so tight, sky and sea meet in silent mutual agreement. The tiny dot grows from sequin to searchlight, filling the black mass of shimmers in the sea. The light of fallen stars illuminates a road for those who would rendezvous with an unlit tomorrow. A motor's gradual chug whispers then screams past. The air, once tingling with excitement and boiling over with shining spirit, turns suddenly cold. And I have to say that's kind of how I felt after you finished. Like what do you even do to follow that? And I don't mean follow it in terms of speaking, right? But what's left after you've tried to explore so much vastness and so much size that even our sense of what size is starts to get challenged. And then I realized that actually lots of poets have answers to that. The answer to vastness is to go so small and explore the minuscule and find the universes in that. And I think that's quite powerful. Khalil Gibran, and Derek just reminded me about this section of his wonderful book, I think The Prophet. He's got a section in it actually called The Astronomer. And I think this is a wonderful link to what I just described, right? The fact that when we are completely overwhelmed by the vastness out there, sometimes we find lots of comfort in the vastness of the small. And here's what The Astronomer tells us, or rather what Gibran says about The Astronomer. In the shadow of the temple, my friend and I saw a blind man sitting alone. And my friend said, Behold the wisest man of our land. Then I left my friend and approached the blind man and greeted him. And we conversed. After a while I said, Forgive my question, but since when has Thou been blind? From my birth, he answered. Said I, and what path of wisdom follow us Thou? Said he, I am an astronomer. Then he placed his hand upon his breast, saying I watch all these suns and moons and stars. And I think what I want to do with the rest of the pieces I read tonight is really explore that, right? The suns and the moons and the stars that we find when we go really deep down rather than high up. And I think that given the fractal nature of the universe, there's going to be a lot of similarities actually between the very large and the very, very small. This is not a full piece that I'm about to read. It's an extract of a piece I call Remembering Jalan Kayu. Some of you will know that Jalan Kayu is somewhere up in the northeast. Very famous for Prata. If for no other reason than that is why it's famous. But it matters a lot to me not just for the Roti Prata but because I was born there on a little road called Edgware Road. So not Edgware Road London but Edgware Road Singapore in what used to be the British camp area where the officers of the British military used to live. And I don't remember a huge amount about growing up there but I have these slivers of memories that come back every now and then and I wouldn't even call them memories because I'm not sure what they are of. And I describe in the poem here how sometimes moments rise above recollection and remembrance and I think when they do that they also avoid being forgotten. They're somehow not trapped but they're kept in this immortal space forever. It's a poem in five sections but I'm only going to read you section two because that is a section about size and dimension. As far back as I remember remembering our playgrounds were never very expansive under the dining table hiding in cupboards or making dried leaf roja in the drain outside. Those were the games of our 1980s childhood our created toys. We had our share of dolls and soldiers of kites and playing catching in the field mostly we found that interiors were not inferior. Before learning about size, shape or dimension we discovered worlds etched in splinters, stones and the sliver of light through nearly closed doors children's minds drawn to children's proportions and the possibilities in small spaces. Of course sometimes we remember the very small daily things not just through actions but through the people that we experience them with and the next piece that I wanted to share with you is called Housemate. It's something I wrote for the friend that I spent a year rooming with when I was in the UK on postgraduate studies quite recently. It's a time that was very replenishing after ten years or so of work and again it's a piece that goes very deep into the small rather than thinking about the large things that are out there. It's actually got some connection to the Zimborska piece because the epigraph of the poem is from one of her pieces. It starts with, I owe so much to those I do not love which is a line that she uses in a piece called Thank You Note where she talks about the importance of the people we do not love passionately and with all of our soul because sometimes it's those people that keep us sane. So this is a piece for Leo. I said to you once that society is poor in metaphors for friendship. Somehow our poetry fails when some would say we need it most moments of gratitude that we can do our washing together that we are comfortable staying in pajamas on days too slow for words. When in the kitchen we no longer ask who cooks or washes up when we discover that we both don't like salt in our food enjoy organic chocolate with sugar replaced by wild Zambian honey and yoga when one of us cries to the other about love ending before even a chance to begin when we talk about things not yet categorized, analyzed or fully articulated safe in that small space between us crafted for the vague formless intuitive I feel this most on nights we meditate together in the dark heartbeat warmth slowing breath all the reminder we need of life's comforts if only we find the space to listen afterwards I learned that turning on the lights too quickly can be sharp blinding what need is there for metaphors or any seeing when everything that matters can be heard when I feel on my shoulder your gentle hand that's what very very daily realities and I think what I find about my poetry at least in the last year or so is I've been going much deeper into what happens when we explore the small and the daily or the quotidian and how many universes we find between them I'm finding for instance that the religious poetry I used to write which was all about the big things like skies and mountains and landscapes have now been replaced by a lot more tiny detail and this is a piece I wrote called Friday Prayers so I'm Muslim even if I don't look it or even if my name doesn't suggest it and this is a piece I wrote on Friday the 3rd of January so the first day of school this year, 2015 and it was a day that I decided to take the day off from work just to let myself experience what the year was like before the stressors and madness of work rhythms began and I think it's about a space as small as small can get so here goes Friday Prayers I follow a clutch of school boys in their shoes left outside the mosque shine like the first day of school before the year stains scuffs and sullies we pray as we always do language hush to a whisper in hopes we might actually hear you seeking grace knowing vaguely that it comes as much from right ritual and routine as it does from gifts like new shoes white bright as all the steps we might take in the coming year once I wrote that I started to think a lot more about other details and again the simple daily things that we come across and there was a morning when I was walking to work and I saw what I thought was an interesting phenomenon because it was a rain tree like one sees anywhere in Singapore a rain tree with the branches bright gold with sunshine the leaves somehow were lit but the branches were I'm not sure I figured out the physics of that yet but it probably isn't as hard as some of the physics you were sharing with us but what was very profound about that I thought was perhaps this is the tree and its own language and how it speaks and communicates with the world so this is a piece called Walk to Work there is a time every morning when you send tendrils of light to the wayside trees leaves whisper in hushed shadows while filament ferns glow golden on the dark of bark on most days I pass these by but today I must have stumbled upon a perfect light angle branches outspread shining heavenward and I learn again that all things have their language of praise as you can tell the themes of spirituality not necessarily religion but spirituality feature very strongly in the pieces I write and one of the daily realities for Muslims is that we pray five times a day and what I found is that there is a wonderful physics about that process that's something I tried to capture in this next piece which is called Salat, the Arabic word for prayer in standing straight, bending down to touch my knees then ending each rakaat in homage on the ground I find that spot beyond all sight or sound around the bodies pivot the moments of each day reach equilibrium and balance stillness beyond dimension in a fretful twisting world five times daily some force that is and transcends mass, distance, matter isolates that point where all life's fulcrums meet gravity suspends perfect stability wrought in human hands and mind and feet what I've been finding also quite apart from the importance of the daily realities is the space that there can be in the silence around us and that's another aspect of the universe that I think we under explore and what I've often found is that words are so inadequate for any poet because we're trying to find ways of reflecting the colour and complexity of reality that we never truly do anything but approximate and words become really important in that respect but it's even more important what lies beyond the words and this next piece which I wrote in Petra Jordan tries to explore some of that what happens outside of language it's called standing still here I learn that even stone has its language standing here where rarefied mountain air slices bone and evaporates the need for words except the toughest most spare I discover how quiet eloquence can be hearing stone tees and immortalized civilizations first girlish blush hewn pink red brown compel humility as I pass treasury and tomb and know my own silence watchfully preserved is born of something more than fatigue or breathless strain standing here I brush shards of knowing that space is sometimes just a lack of sound and why these spaces, this stony syntax is what God chose for chronicle canon and commandment why to places like this we bring our most quiet prayers and wordless pleas but if in otherworldly silence there is some whisper of what we seek when freed of the world's static God's word grows loud and the silence is his mind for those of you who've been to Petra probably you might recognize the term treasury and it's how many of you have seen that wonderful fourth third Indiana Jones movie the last crusade you know he goes to look for the holy grail this is one great scene where he rides on horseback with his father and a few of the rest and they come to this beautiful pink piece of sculpture big building carved into the mountain side so it's actually real that is Petra Jordan that's a building called the treasury a wonderful place it doesn't go back as far as they pretend it does in the movies of course but the edifice is there built by the Nabataeans back in the I can't remember the exact century that it was built in but mountain merchants building a space where they could operate an entire civilization built out of stone and the place now is a place of great quiet wonderful meditative calm that I thought was worth trying to at least capture if not fully preserve I'll end with the most recent poem that I've written and also one of the longest that I've done for quite a while this was a piece written in a monastery a Benedictine monastery in the Big Sur mountains south of San Francisco south of Carmel south of Monterey and it's a group of about 20 Benedictine monks who live there they're about 1,300 feet up in the mountains and so above the monastery is Redwood Forest across from the monastery is the Pacific Ocean and it's a space of deep deep and profound silence it's also a space where on the first few visits I went there I found that I was drawn to the big things the landscapes, the ocean, the roar of the sounds but this last time I went in July that was the third time I found that I wasn't really interested in those things anymore I was interested in the little dandelion that I saw on one of the walks I happened to do I was interested in what the palm fronds looked like I was interested in the grasses and how they swayed or didn't sway I was interested in how the light came in through the chapel of the building all the little micro universes that were nonetheless extremely large and just full of detail to explore so this is a piece written in eight parts each capturing a slightly different aspect of the place and I dedicated it to Cyprian and James were two of the monks there that are extremely good friends the epigraph of this poem, kind of the introductory quote is a piece from the 44th Psalm that the Camaldolese monks in this community use for their morning and evening prayers so lords and invespers and the line of that is my heart overflows with noble words to the king I must speak the song I have made and the title of this piece is a song I have made part one, Vigil, which is the morning prayer that they do at 5.15 and it's actually quite easy to wake up at 5.15 when you live in a monastery because you go to sleep at 10 because there is nothing to do after you've meditated three times so anyway, Vigil from you and from this place I learn what gentleness means the hermitage bell wakes me without clang or clamour sidling into early morning dreams on eyelid flutter like a favourite memory of an insufficiently remembered friend part two, silence I learn that silence is everything not nothing we arrived late in the evening fumbled into our cells with all the finesse of urban life leaf crackle piercing the night the next morning I heard how silent sounds bird song blue jay core and call ocean swash and backwash like genderless rhymes above the echo of distant cars between Vigil and lords I think I heard the receding tinnitus of crickets ever softer with warming day part three, it's called contemplation you tell me that contemplation means more than just rumination in extended time I suspect this truth will take a while to tame but I am starting nonetheless towards a frail tentative understanding when I notice a spider trapeze my line of sight while I shower feel its web on my cheek after just hours away from my cell watch the chalk swirl in the water I boil for tea listen to tea splash and the poetry I always knew vaguely now finally there is time to wait watch and witness part four is called meditation it mentions the word vesper so the monks pray four times a day they do vigil morning at 5.15 lords which as I mentioned is the morning prayer at 7 they do a full mass or Eucharist at 11 then they work for the rest of the day and they come back together for vesper at 6 which is the evening or closing prayer for them some monasteries will do a night prayer as well but these guys do that privately so when we meditate together after vesper my palms finally unfurl like lotus petals on my knees during previous visits for whatever reason the mind makes up it seemed wrong to open my hands to even a fraction of this place's love and largeness I cannot name what now has changed perhaps the benefit of knowing that some gifts we simply hold a while stewards not owners of preciousness undiminished even magnified and multiplied for being shared part five music all of their prayers are sung in Gregorian chant I noticed the simple ache of your singing single notes uncluttered rhythms few multiple harmonies or music in the round these may well have their own beauty on other days I've wondered if anything but polypart voices can sing the unsayable yet somehow your melodies seem built for pacific sturdiness and redwood sentinels and then there is the place you keep for broken voices notes and moments when our choir falters and somehow someone pulls us back by staying true perhaps this was how Elijah felt learning that God comes not through storm, structure or perfect symphony but still small insistent songs part six is on photography and all my completely futile efforts to capture some of the detail of the place because you can only capture that tiny fractal fraction of the place but anyway we try right with whatever we have so this is that section on earlier visits I found myself drawn the sky, sea and mountains the familiar canvases God chooses for his ever renewing story this time I'm shown the miracles in the minuscule bees on daisies bluebell droop pines perpendicular to unlikely slopes solitary dandelions whispering stories to the sun benches overlooking the edge of the world lone stalks of grass and grain holding firm against the wind and weathering of the world in them I discover the scale of the small blessed insignificant inheritors of both the earth and the divinity there can be in details part seven is called icons and this I was quite fascinated by because my friend Cyprian told me that icons, those beautiful pictures of religious art are not painted, they are written so when you see a Madonna and child particularly the ones in Byzantine kind of fashion with that interesting gold filigree and geometric spaces those are all written, not painted or drawn it's just the verb that they use to make them they write the icon so someone will never tell you I've drawn an icon or I've produced it they will say I've written an icon so I was delighted by the idea that icons are written not drawn for a poet this means the blue of Madonna robes profound as the ocean and the expressiveness of her eyes are not images but noble words yet thinking again maybe the labels don't matter word images or image words are all treasures of grace anyway the names will fade leaving only our experience their example and those long gazes into eternity finally part 8, post script something I wrote after I left the monastery this time there were many songs to speak after my first visit yet overflowing hearts sometimes compel a slowing of words moving us to savor more, dig deeper ponder just that much longer to see what's revealed between the words spacers pulsing with meaning we start to hear the music in the rest three visits, two years, one poem later I find faith in new melodies hope for new time love for the future but for today, gratefully still I must speak this song, not so much that I have made but made through me I'll leave you with that thought those were the pieces I wanted to share pieces that explore the terror and the wonder in the tiny which I thought might be an interesting compliment Carter to the vast spaces that we explored before so there we go thank you very much everyone questions or comments? I thought it was ironic I'm not sure you saw it go by but when you were reading about it it was passing right through well there was clearly a moment of synchronicity there and it's passing by you now and also when you mentioned Big Sur that was passing right through and we didn't even have to plan it I have a question about Petra who gives the finality of it but is the treasury is that just a notional name or was it really a treasury? I think it really was a treasury and they have other surviving buildings that were used for different things as well not many as beautifully and perfectly preserved as the treasury and it's in this gorgeous pink that just reflects the sun I haven't even been fortunate to see it up close but I couldn't even see the picture so it was actually a treasury where they actually came and exchanged goods for money or goods for goods so it's a place of financial exchange do you plan when writing your poetry or is it on a whim? I won't say it's on a whim but the last line that I read that the poem is not a song I have sung but that is made through me I am getting increasingly into a believer becoming more and more of a believer that all art is a gift through which the artist is a medium and it sounds like a terrible cop-out on some levels because I have no control over what I say and of course that's not entirely true there's a sense of crafting there's a sense of the more you make an effort and put some rods out there you will actually get struck by lightning or struck by inspiration but I won't say that I plan I I let inspiration hit me at least a few different times I collect fragments I'm a bit of a magpie in that sense I'll just collect lots of things write them down somewhere and then when I have the time when my mind has had sufficient space to still then usually the piece will come together does that mean they don't need to redraft them or just close and then you don't have to correct them that's a good question when I talk about songs made through us I'm talking really about that first initial draft that act of birthing or of creation after that there's a huge amount of refinement and growth and editing that takes place and I often say to the people I work with on their own creative writing you almost need two different brains for the writing bit and the editing bit and successful writers need to know how to toggle the good thing is whenever you have writer's block the easiest thing is to just go back and work on a piece that's already there but the key thing is to always write regularly every day if possible but if not then at least once a week just to get the rhythms and the muscles flowing because writing is a muscle and if we leave it it will atrophy like any discipline or craft it's a muscle that has to be developed I draw so much similarities with poetry and my programming I can go and retain my open source projects of create new ones and when I have block to create new ones I just retain and close bugs and issues the other thing that I find really useful is if I'm having a block and I don't have many pieces to edit it's to help other people with theirs so teach someone mentor someone or just go and work with someone so that you at least keep the language of it moving in your mind write them out somewhere online that we can go and check some of the pieces are online quite a number of them I had a book out about 10 years ago 2005 so those pieces are in a hodgepodge of different anthologies I'm slowly putting the stuff together into a blog because I've been much too lazy about getting a second book out I have it there it's all in my head the thing is a publisher is willing to take it I need to go and get approval from bosses and stuff and I just haven't got round to that yet this is the problem when the writing is very much a hobby and something I love rather than something and I wouldn't change that for the world yeah so I watched a dead video about where is Pico and he mentions the Monterey Bay the last time I met Pico was in that monastery it's exactly the same one and Pico and I emailed every now and then because we both love the place very much he's actually read this poem before he was one of the first people I showed it to I suppose he goes there and I think he spends at least a month there each year writing so it's kind of his retreat house I think that's very much it the stillness and that confluence of deep nature but deep interior space as well and you start to realize that there is the divine out there in everything the community is an interesting one because they are actually a community of hermit monks so unlike most monasteries where it's one building and they all live in different rooms they actually each have a cell to themselves with a little bit of a garden around it so their whole rhythm oscillates between community and self community and solitude throughout the day they pray together but then they go off and be alone they come back and during the prayers there's a lot of community singing but then moments of silence as well so the entire experience is of this constant in interior quiet space and active community space they do, they do so they're a benedictine community and all benedictine communities part of the rule that they live by is to welcome guests as they would Christ himself because the guest can be a form through which the divine comes to the monastery so they are always open to guests so they, this group actually has quite a large number of rooms that are up for you know they're not quite a hotel but they're a great place to stay and it's all online so you can check whether they're available no so that's the thing only males can live in the monastic cloister so if you want to book a monk cell you actually have to be male but everywhere else in their retreat house it's for men and for women some monasteries are men only but not this one what's the name? new Kamaldali Hermitage new so as in not old and Kamaldali C-A-M-A-L-D-O-L-I so if you look up www.contemplation.com that's their website the contemplation.com I know totally right I've been teaching them a lot about that it's like why are you a dot com but they are religious procedure well our friend doing his masters in the TV is not here so the Muslim are praying five times a day and then the Christians are only doing so in monasteries as it happens and so what happens when you visit a monastery? yeah it's a really good question I was describing my experience to a friend the other day who's also called Aaron and who's Jewish so what kind of Muslim are you? www.contemplation.com www.contemplation.com www.contemplation.com yeah it's a really good question so I mean I like to think that this is where I should clarify share with you the slightly odd quirky family that I come from and at least one of you knows some of that because my friend of my brothers is actually here so my dad is half Tamil half Eurasian so ethnically very mixed but they have some Portuguese descent from the Portuguese that went to Goa in India and then Malacca and then came to Singapore so dad was raised Catholic as a child he converted to Islam when he married my mum who is half Malay and almost half Pakistani and has a smattering of Chinese in her from a Chinese baby adopted by a Pakistani family and raised as a Muslim this was my great great grandmother so I actually have a blood deficiency carried by women and had by men so I tell you all that just to say that it's a very very eclectic upbringing that we've had I am perfectly comfortable in churches because I've had to be there for weddings and funerals and baptisms and I do quite a bit of interfaith work which is how I know Julian and so when I go to the monastery what I found is there is a tremendous commonality of vocabulary in fact many monks would say that they are more in common with Islam because of the observance of that they punctuated by prayer then they might do with lay Christians who don't observe what is called the liturgy of the hours so there is a huge amount of commonality there I will say and recite whatever I can of it as long as there is no contradiction and mostly there isn't to be quite honest so I do all of my own prayers so the five daily prayers and I will join in addition and I do the four as well that is a big part of the question it really is I know which is partly why I feel so recharged when I get back and then of course that energy just gets leached very quickly but I feel like I've stored up capital after the July visit I just wanted to ask you something before I ask that I just want to know that actually females are not to stay in the calm light monasteries and this is a similar version to the Benedictines and nuns they poison themselves and those that poison themselves have very good interior life so the question I want to ask you is throughout your poems you are talking about fastness and then you go back into solitude and submission the question I want to ask you I don't know whether it's too personal for you to answer where are you right now in terms of your emptiness that's a really good question actually and what I would say is this when I go to the monastery or when I've been to places that afford that kind of interior space and certainly being in grad school was great for that because there was a lot of room for long walks and you know just sitting in a chapel or an empty room or just reading by yourself and even that can be a deeply interior activity where am I in my emptiness what I've realized is the emptiness for me at least isn't there as an indulgent thing it's a place to go to to gather energy it's a place to go to to find a bit more of myself the things that I wouldn't hear if I was outside and had a constant clamour pushing at me but it's to be in that space so that I can be better in community after that and what I've found is when I'm in community that there is a different kind of fulfillment that comes from that the community of work or the community of family or the community of friends who also share similar interests but the interior space is important for that and so what I try and do now is to make sure that I have what I call both micro and macro silences in my life the micro silences are periods in the day when I make sure that I have a little bit of time to myself and of course this is a deep introvert speaking I'm highly de-energized by large crowds that I don't know well although crowds like this somehow I feel like I know very well we just explored the universe together it's all fine but the micro silences are important so the five daily prayers are an important part form of those micro silences morning yoga a bit of meditation either in the morning or in the evening is also important so those are all deeply interior times I get up, I roll onto my yoga mat and I will not open the door to my room until I've had some of that space so that I feel gives me a little bit of energy for the day I try and take a little bit of time at lunch just to slow down even if it's just five minutes of reading one poem from a collection that I might have in my office that gives me a bit of micro silence and then before I sleep prayer has to happen and some kind of interior space as well so I find that if I have those things the days are survivable in a week I try and have Sundays to myself so the rule I've set with my family is I will not leave the house on Sunday unless someone is born dead or dying or getting married so there has to be some major life anniversary of death anniversary I suppose to be had for me to come out on a Sunday and I find that it's important because recharging of that kind gives me a bit more strength to go through the rest of the week so that's on the weekly cycle slightly larger than micro silence and then in the course of a year I find that as long as I periodically travel and have a long flight to myself and spend a bit of time in places like the monastery or other spots in the world which are what I like to call my wellsprings the places that give me deep energy then that's my macro silence for the year and I try and make sure that there is some punctuation of that throughout the 12 months as long as I have those things I feel I have enough emptiness to then go and exhaust myself in the rest of the extraverting life Have you reslated? Can we hold it until after this episode? No Okay, you have Yes Sorry, we can chat after this I hope we surprise We have always surprised me So we had a little surprise