Margaret Griffiths [ grasshopper ]
 

Hello,

This sad news just came in from Neil Prentice late yesterday:
My condolences to her family and friends. The late Margaret (Eratospherean, grasshopper,) had been a member here since the end of August, 2002, and was a pretty active member. She will be missed.

...Alex

What a terrible loss. It's hard to find words to describe her talent, and she was generous and candid with critique. An awful loss. I'm sad for us and for everyone who was close to her.

Wow.

Maz gone, I can't wrap my head around it. Is there an obituary anywhere? I'd like to read it.

And her poems! Is someone taking care of them? She was terrible about submitting, so if you didn't know her from the poetry boards you might not realize how exceptionally talented she was.

Witty as hell, too. If she were here, she'd know just what to say. Damn.

Dear, dear Maz. I loved and respected her. How sad to know that her clear and beautiful and funny mind is no longer with us.

How lucky we were to know her!

I illustrated one of her poems and as I did so I came to properly understand the depth of her talent.
http://www.ramblingrose.com/folly/2006_10/poemlady.html
She was so spare with her words because she knew what they were worth.

A Meditation of the Meaning of Existence by Margaret Griffiths

I.
Y?

I think she lost many of her poems when a disk she had them on went unreadable. That's a tragedy. She was the best. I'll search my own archives for her work, but I do have this:


The Pismire Oration

Kreck, kreck, the Plumeys have been down pick pick
again. The valley-balls, the lupes, the liplap danglers
are all mussled and distrayed. Who was scooting
on the oakmost roam, and did not give the larum
to beware us? We could all have been mordered
in our buds, culled in curls and couchings.

O my simlings, gather round in heedance.
First we must brush and bellish, make bloomheads
clean and sparkish, then we can cusp and susp
and I will tale you tellings of long days ago,
stores of queens and trells and hellent warfor.

Ho, hard there, fattyfiller, with your seggy bodments,
do not munge upon these leaves. Peel off
and mandicate elsewhere. This pliant plot,
this green clingdom, this is our heapsake,
our hill-land, our gem set in a sylvan lea.

Rejuice, my simlings, simsters. We'll browse avids
on the fallage, surp meet mead nectar soon.
All life is ground and gladly — part from Plumeys.
May Magog smart the flockers from the highs.


Maz


http://www.the-chimaera.com/gryphon/...re-oration.mp3

I'll try to improve the sound quality and repost the mp3.

Very sad news. I always wanted to read more of her work and get to know her better. Here's one of her poems from a sonnet bake-off.


Opening a Jar of Dead Sea Mud

The smell of mud and brine. I'm six, awash
with grey and beached by winter scenery,
pinched by the Peckham girl who calls me posh,
and boys who pull live crabs apart to see
me cry. And I am lost in that grim place
again, coat buttoned up as tight as grief.
Sea scours my nostrils, strict winds sand my face,
the clouds pile steel on steel with no relief.

Sent there to convalesce--my turnkeys, Sisters
of Rome, stone-faced as Colosseum arches--
I served a month in Stalag Kent, nursed blisters
in beetle shoes on two-by-two mute marches.
I close the jar, but nose and throat retain
an after-tang, the salt of swallowed pain.

Here is another poem by Maz from the same issue of "Folly".

http://www.ramblingrose.com/folly/20...greeneyed.html

And from another issue of "Folly"
http://www.ramblingrose.com/folly/20...erblossom.html
And from another issue one about Philip Larkin
http://www.ramblingrose.com/folly/20...ip_larkin.html

Here are two from "Noted on the Gazebo":

Calling the Roll

Shedding a Little Light on Light

http://www.shitcreekreview.com/issue1/throwaway.html

http://www.shitcreekreview.com/issue1/holes.html

Remembering the Grapes

senryu

Visiting the Surgical Ward

The Bateleur

Aftermath

In Foreign Fields

Demon Lover

Last Orders: The Movie

The Night Emile's Mistress Turned Into a Cat

nighthouse

several poems in miller's pond, including "Afters"


It's frustrating that so many of her poems are (AFAIK) unpublished, which makes posting them questionable. Her "Studying Savonarola" poem was actually pretty famous, and there are several links to it online (though they all seem to be broken now), so I'll go ahead and post it, and if anyone objects I'll take it down.

.
.

Studying Savonarola, he considers his lover as kindling

With your amber eyes, yellow and red
of you, sun-sign heart like a blood orange
suspended in a porcelain cage, say you burn

in a courtyard and your ichor drips like honey
on the firewood, on the branches bound in fasces,
flesh fumed in the air, dark as molasses,

but what you are hovers as mist, as the spirit
of water is invisible until steam makes the sky
waver. Say you die, scorched into ashes, say

you pass from here to there, with your marigold
eyes, the garden darker for lack of one golden flower,
would bees mourn, would crickets keen, drawing long

blue chords on their thighs like cellists?
Say you disperse like petals on the wind,
the bright stem of you still a living stroke

in memory, still green, still spring, still the tint
and the tang of you in my throat, unconsumed.

.
.

Here's one that was published in The Eleventh Muse in 2005.


Sky in the Pie

Two sure cuts open the crust
and release a rush of dark thrushes
with golden beaks, heralding an arc of stars
borne on a rainbow. The spectrum flexes
like muscle, then settles in a single depth
of colour, blue as the powdered lapis
on a manuscript page in a rich book
of hours, blue as a dunnock's egg, blue
as distance. Take your spoon before
it elopes with the knife, and taste.

The clouds melt on your tongue
and sweeten your throat. You can chant
this day across the meadows, and call the lost flocks
home. The sheep and the chestnut cows. The dappled deer
and wild black horses. The wolves and small quick foxes.
All the lost beasts of your kingdom.
Call them home.

.
.

Wow. What a shock. Not Maz?

A couple of interviews (with good selections of poems after each):

http://www.poets.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=16688, which contains:

I feel I am here under false pretenses, as I don't regard myself as a poet, merely as someone who tries to write poems, so my status is definitely: Still Learning Hard.

http://www.poetrykit.org/pkl/featurpoet/grasshop.htm, which contains:

Why do you write poetry?

I don't know. All I know is that I can't stop writing it. I think I'm a junkie.

Is there anything else you would like to add?

I hope that with all my poems, whatever else I am trying to communicate, I will communicate some of my delight in language and the magic of words. If pressed,I will admit that I wish I could write a poem that would make everyone really respect the world and all our fellow travellers, whatever their species.

David R.

I am shocked and saddened. Maz was one of the finest who posted here. She had her own particular voice, it was unique, and it was marvelous.

I am very saddened to hear this news, she was such a talented poet and thoughtful editor. Her zine was my first publishing credit. I will miss her and her and her always encouraging presence on the boards.

This is a shock. Online, when someone isn't heard of for a while, you tend to assume he or she is just busy elsewhere, unless you hear otherwise. I admired her work very much, and she was an asset to Eratosphere whenever she appeared here. It is terrible to think that many of her poems may be lost on an unreadable disk.

Susan

How do we find out who inherits copyright? Maz's poems must not be allowed to disappear. They must be collected and published.

Maryann's looking into it.

I have some of her unpublished ones, but I'm sure there were hundreds more.

Such a talent! And such helpful critiques of others' work, too. I always treasured what she had to say, on my own and other threads, because her advice was always both intelligent and good-hearted. That good-heartedness was always obvious under the sass and vinegar and strong opinions that made her so much fun to argue with.

Here's "The Duke A-Hunting", from one of our Sonnet Bake-Offs:

http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showthread.php?t=5619

I'm still a-hunting for my favorite of hers, the chilling sonnet with the conquering lord disposing of the conquered one's daughters along with his hawks and other property.

[Edited to say: OH MY GOODNESS, I forgot about this one, "Visiting the Surgical Ward", which is ACTUALLY my favorite sonnet of hers!

http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showthread.php?t=5608

But I'll keep looking for the other one I mentioned.]

[Edited to say: HA! Found it! It's "Aftermath":

http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showthread.php?t=5642

I still like "Visiting the Surgical Ward" better, but only by the tiniest bit...sigh, again, what a talent...I'm proud to have known her, even if only via Erato.]

[Edited again to say--okay, now I see that Rose already posted links to most of these above, but I enjoyed the hunt anyway.]

Maz was one of several editors of The Worm.

I never sent her poems because The Worm seemed so like an email but is that a good place to start? Who else was a contact?

I've PMd Alex, since he must have contact info for Neil Prentice, asking him to ask whether there's a literary executor. That was the only thing that occurred to me to do. If others have steps they can suggest, I'm eager to hear them. We've obviously made a start right here at collecting what there is to collect, and it seems appropriate to continue, at least with what is public.

I've put a note up at Sonnet Central as well, where there must be a number of Maz's poems in the archives, but a search for "grasshopper" turns up no hits--I fear that the conversion of the board to yuku turned her into an "unregistered."
That would mean we'd only find "maz" poems by a careful human search.

Editing back: more googling reveals she also posted at some time on PFFA.

I found an old one in SC by Googling, but it's an unpublished draft so rather than post the link I'll just say the username is ukgrasshopper.

Thread relating to 'The Pismire Oration' recording here:

http://www.robgodfrey.com/burgundy/m...tml?1066420010

'Colonel Blimp Addresses the Troops':

http://www.robgodfrey.com/burgundy/m...tml?1153376674

'Afters':

http://www.robgodfrey.com/burgundy/m...tml?1153359373

She published a lot of stuff in The Worm. Some under grasshopper, and some under "m a griffiths" I believe. When it is figured out who is culling everything together, someone should mine the archive: http://www.poetryworm.com/

David R.

Sad news. One of the most memorable poets on the Sphere, the Gazebo, and elsewhere. This is the horror of the internet, that we "know" one another but don't know one another. We know almost nothing about Maz but her work. Meeting in person has great value, and friendship far more value than that.

Julie - the poem you're looking for, and it is chilling, is Aftermath, which Rose has included above in her post #11. (Whoops - just realized you subsequently found it - well, that one was so good that it deserves another mention.)

Terese,
I feel that Maz and I were friends. About a year ago she emailed me out of the blue asking for some bird photographs. We hadn't been in touch for a good while. I felt then that something was wrong. I sent her the photographs and she responded. I felt that she needed contact with nature for some reason. I emailed her about one month ago and was sad to receive no reply. Sometimes in poetry we achieve a greater closeness than we do in the three dimensional world.

I'm terribly, terribly sorry to hear about Maz.

But, for the time being, might it make more sense to have someone centrally responsible for the various and sundry poems that people might have lying around until we know what the whole state of inheritance, etc. is? (I wound up playing that role when Ray Pospisil died.)

I've written Neil Prentice who broke the news to me for answers to the questions being raised about collecting Maz's work. I've even pointed him to this thread and encouraged him to register so that he can respond directly here. Hopefully, we'll get at least some answers about the collecting the work and stewardship.

Cheers,
...Alex

Janet,

Sometimes.

Sad news. I thought well of her and her work.

Here are a few more links...

My Life with a Latin Professor: http://docs.google.com/gview?a=v&q=c...%22+poet&hl=en

Afters: http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~simmers/00afters.htm

Pumpkin Pie: http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~simmers/00pump.htm

Salt: http://thesonnetboard.yuku.com/topic...t.html?page=-1

Jerome and a Theory of Nails: http://74.125.113.132/search?q=cache...=clnk&ie=UTF-8

The Poet’s Dam: http://74.125.113.132/search?q=cache...=UTF-8&strip=1

Maz encouraged me at a difficult time with a difficult poem, and it meant so much to me. I know she did that for others, as well. I am saddened to hear this news. She will be missed.

I'm saddened most by the fact that she stopped posting here in the same month that I joined...so I missed out on her presence.

Nice to see so many people here revisiting her work. It's a poet's only real hope of immortality, after all.

'Megaera in the Cocktail Hour'

http://www.poetryworm.com/Worm%2017.htm

Megaera in the Cocktail Hour

She is standing with the dark-eyed man
in the corner. He is twitchy with his glass
casting glances at the wall where the clock
escaped. It is because, his teeth remarked,
he has to be elsewhere, locking the gate
against defenders. She has been through
several sieges, has eaten ripe, unnamed flesh
and sucked on roast rat-tails.
She reaches down with tended talons,
tweaks the rule of stockings
which she wears on her shinbones
as a statement of entente.

Icebergs clink in crystal,
liners cruise proud and unprepared
across the carpet. Passengers wave
from the shore, their journey in the air.
She is growing feathers as he squirms.
She preens, pecks, crows 'Darling.'
He is nestward bound, destined
to feed her green and gold fledglings. The rush
of wings bears him out into the carpark
and pins him to leather. He has no chance
to semaphore. He misses Mayday.




~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

M.A. Griffiths was born and grew up in London, but now lives in Dorset (Hardy's Wessex).
She enjoys writing both free and formal verse, and participating in online poetry boards.
Her work has appeared in Snakeskin, Crescent Moon Journal, The Eleventh Muse,
Mind Mutations, and Mindfire Renewed, amongst others.

I am saddened to hear this news....I'll just pass on the post I made on the GAZ where I knew Maz best...

I wept when I read the news about Maz on Erato.

I knew Maz from several boards, but mostly this one, from way back years ago. She was an exceptional poet, had tremendous wit and she encouraged so many new/young/old poets like me to keep working at this game, to keep trying, to keep writing. Her critiques were always spot on and even when the poems we posted were god awful and she was quick to say so, she always had helpful suggestions and a word of encouragement at the end. : )

She encouraged me and many others to consider reading, trying to write formal poetry, to go to Eratosphere, read the poems posted there. I did go there as she suggested and still begin my day there every day. Not to post, but to read.

After the first few issues of SCR and The Chimaera came out with my art in them, was the last time I heard from Maz. She wrote "See, I knew those formalists would get to you one way or another". : )

Her voice has been, will continue to be missed by many. All who knew her, her poems and critiques are richer for the experience.

The thread about her death on Erato has many of her poem posted now:

http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showth...?t=8669&page=3

Pat

I am truly sorry to hear this. I don't have as long a familiarity with her work as many of you, but truly fell in love with her writing in last year's sonnet bake-off.

http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showth...D ead+Sea+Mud

This is sad news. Worm 39 was the first place to accept my work, and I was thrilled to bits when it happened.
I admired Margaret's work and her general approach to poetry.

This is such sad news. I knew Maz from the Gazebo. The subject matter of her poems was original and different, her writing very creative and engaging. Her poems were like stories to me. I remember many of them and the “characters” in them. Much of her poetry is in the Gazebo archives.

I am very sad to hear this.
Maz was one of the finest poets to emerge from the internet.

She was an obvious talent, but you also couldn't help feeling she had a decency beneath it all that would have made her a lovely neighbor who would keep finding ways to make the community better.