invictus

I quite like Clint Eastwood as a director, and he did a good job on this movie. It did gloss over Mandela's personal life (past infidelities and the like), only hinting at his problems. In one way this was a shame, because the contrast of his private weaknesses against his public successes would have made for an interesting study.

But the story it did tell was quite inspiring. Mandela had a choice when he took office. After 30 years in prison, some would have only been interested in revenge, but he recognised that this wasn't a useful approach. He showed compassion and fairness to the white minority who really didn't deserve it given their history. One of the symbols of that group was the Springbok rugby team and he engaged with the team, found ways to allow South African blacks to engage with them, too, in positive ways. And all of this leading up to the Rugby World Cup, which South Africa was hosting.

The title of the movie (which means 'unconquered') actually reflects an interesting choice, from the director and the writer. In the movie, just before the Cup, Mandela gives the Springbok captain Francois Pienaar a copy of a poem he says gave him hope while he was in prison. It's not bad either, as inspiring words go.

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

There's just one thing ~ that isn't what Mandela actually gave Pienaar. In real life, Mandela gave him an extract from Theodore Roosevelt's "The Man in the Arena" speech from 1910. The thing is, the extract is wonderful, and it's much more apt for a captain taking his team into the competition of their lives, with the country hanging on their success. The pressure must have been enormous, and they were copping constant flack in the media in the year leading up to the Cup. This is the extract:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

Damn straight, Teddy. Wise words. I really wish they'd used it in the movie. Given how precariously Mandela risked failure in order to bring his country together at a crucial moment, I think that extract was the better choice.

Not sure if there's anyone out there still reading this blog after such a long break, but if so, what piece of writing do you find inspiring/motivating?

woohoo...sort of

The good news:

Thank you for your submission to FIRST 2009 [university anthology]. We received almost 200 pieces [around 35 make it in], the overall standard of which was impressive. We are very pleased to advise that your work Friends is under consideration for possible inclusion in this year's publication...

The bad news:

pending approval after some reworking.

I got the 'suggested edits' later that week and they basically gutted it. I sent a rework that incorporates most of their suggestions, but argues against a couple that I thought were a bad idea. If they're only interested in it with all the changes made then I'll pass. In that state it isn't the poem I wrote and I wouldn't want my name on it. But I can live with the rework I sent them.

In truth it changes what the poem is about; what I was trying to express when I wrote it. For that reason it's a little bitter sweet that it will be published in that form. I can't post the poem here as it has to remain unpublished until the anthology is released, but maybe at that time I'll post all three versions and you can tell me if you think their revisions were on the mark or not.

The other interesting thing is that I submitted five pieces (two poems and three stories) and the only one that made it in is also the only one that was created from a real personal experience. Unfortunately this means I should probably tell the other person concerned before the anthology is published. I didn't think there was any point in doing so before, because I didn't know if it would be accepted anyway. Telling him then might have given the impression that the poem was supposed to deliver some kind of message to him, but in fact the poem was not written for, or in any practical sense directed at, him. It was just my way of expressing for my own sake how I felt at the time.

Of course now it's six months later and my feelings are completely different, so it will be a bit weird to bring it up. But I do still like the poem and I'm happy for it to be in the anthology, even if the committee's edits have made the whole 'finally getting published' thing a bit anti-climatic. But you know, yah and all. :)

decisions, decisions...

(apologies to Shakespeare)

Poetry or screenwriting? That is the question.
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind
to embrace an art I love
but that bittersweet delves
and draws from the human heart
its most pruned and precious blossoms
tiny cut by tiny cut

or to take arms against
the poignant turn of phrase
walled gardens of
clean, concise words
and end the need to contain
in fourteen rows
the immensity of the soul

no more, the pressing desire to train the perfect slam piece
that weaves its tendrils around the listeners' ears and throat
only to slap them witty on the cheek
their sudden laughter the proof
of wisely tended wordlings grown strong

to rest from tending
to sleep, perchance to dream
aye, there's the rub
what does a poet's heart become;
to what end its 3am wakefulness
when the poet sleeps on?

for in the strokes of urgent, unfettered pen
what wide, unmapped country lies ahead
of hilly dialogue and marshy directions

the traveller pauses, wondering

perhaps that five hours spent
grafting, lovingly watching
that one leaf unfurl perfectly

the counting of ways
the buds of May
the road not taken
the carrying of hearts
a dream within a dream within a dream

perhaps preferable, that searching
homeward
inward
for restraint and rhyme
than to ride into new and unknown lands
that puzzle the will
and make us rather bear those tasks we have
than fly to screenwriting assignments that we know not of?
thus two thousand words of uncertainty
make a coward of me
and turn my mind instead to
sixty lines of familiar torture

though there may be an enterprise
of great pith and moment
in me
still I may lose the name of action
to tap the undiscovered Jim Uhls in me
until 2010

***

Yes I do take poetry too seriously.And no, I'm sure screenwriting isn't actually like the unknown of death. :) And yes, I'll eventually decide which subject to enrol in this semester.

a poem for you (i took the photo, too!)

a little house for poems

Jason posted at Rag and Bone about a piece of public art he came across in a town called Stockbridge. There's a little hut in the town square made from hand-cut planks, steel beams and willow branches. Passersby can go inside and read the poems inside and write one of their own to add to the collection. Of the poems he posted, this was my favourite: