The Wake, by John Caselberg

I'm (very slowly) restoring stuff that used to be on my geocities site to the new jimdo one. Yesterday I uploaded John Caselberg's poem, The Wake, which doesn't appear to be on the Net anywhere else, as far as I can see. The only other reference to it is in relation to Colin McCahon's canvas panels on which he painted the entire poem (not always very readably).

I first came across these panels at the Hocken library (here in Dunedin) when it was still within the University compound and not at its current ex-cheese factory site. They're typical of McCahon's 'written' art works - the words scrawled over the canvas without any obvious style, and the background painted in various gloomy colours. They're interesting, rather than masterworks, in my (humble) opinion, but because they've got the name 'McCahon' on them, they are highly rated.

The other good thing about yesterday, besides the visit of my wife's brother (and his wife) - the first time my wife and her brother had seen each other in forty years - was that I found that some of the old material that used to be on geocities is still hidden away on my computer, under 'oldharddrive', a place where it was put by an IT guy who increased the memory on the system and did some other work a couple of years ago. So this means I can begin using it elsewhere on the Net again.

Finding Myself

I'm sure I'm not the only person who does this: sits in an idle moment, types in their name into Google, and sees what comes up.

I'd been typing data entry stuff a good deal of the day and gave myself a few minutes respite, this afternoon. Amongst some of the more unusual results were these:
I'd mentioned Catherine Zeta-Jones in a post somewhere and got picked up by a site called Boxxet, which apparently is a site where you can share content. Someone, I presume, has shared my post and there I am on Boxxet, all unawares. I might investigate Boxxet further, if I have the time.

All my mentions of HitTail in posts struck gold. I now have an entry on the Everyone Loves HitTail site (quite honestly I was beginning to think I was the only person who knew what HitTail was). This site is: Dedicated to collecting quotes and testimonials about using HitTail, a decidedly inspiring Web 2.0 long tail writing suggestion tool.

The comment that goes with the mention of my post is this: This belongs in Funny Suggestions. Oh, the things you learn about your site, your readers, and the world when you use HitTail!

Yes, well. I think that's a compliment.

Thirdly, and rather to my amazement, I got quoted by a local freebie paper called Deadline.
They archive their previous editions online, and there in a discussion of John Caselberg's poem, The Wake, they quote a section as follows from my old site.

John Caselberg is best known perhaps for his poem ‘The Wake’, described as an “astonishing poem” which became the subject of a series of paintings by the Caselberg’s contemporary Colin McCahon. Mike Crowl notes “Wake is an extremely well-crafted poem, making full use of the language with its aural resonances, its varied rhythms, its inner rhyming, its broad vocabulary
and complex sentence structures. More than that, it takes the death of a beloved animal, a family pet, and extends this into a ringing wake for the tragedy of the deaths of all beloved ones, including humans”.

So, there you go. Oh, there was one other. In a site rather strangely called, isthisyour.name, there's a reference to Fiona Henry, a local singer. I have my suspicions that Fiona's name has just appeared on there out of the blue, but anyway, my post about her has appeared there as well. The more you do on the Net the more visible you become....slowly. It's like a gold chain that keeps on growing - though the gold is a bit slow coming.