Mythogeography: A Guide to Walking Sideways
The Mythograpedes
Strolling in the cracks of the pavement
Honouring the city’s weeds
Or walking on unlit shores
The mythograpedes
moving unseen,
eyes like split fruit
every year at the height of summer
The Crab Man walks on blistered feet
GPS, a rightly-worshipped Orrery
a Guide, sort of, in the sightless search
of Neanderthals chanting
the Order’s boundary beat.
Derbyshire wallabies are nigh extinct
Victims of Tourism’s blobby ways
While Surrey overflows with Parakeets,
No pool safe from the crocodiles.
Not angels but angles
Not plans as such
but uplanned plans and planned unplans
Not Utopias but ‘Anywheres’ to cherish
The heart leaps to A. Salmon
And the halting arrest of myth’s progress
Absurdly faint? Faintly absurd
Hardly seen or heard
Central committees
Shun the traps of fame
But request me to state
in a near-real-world way
and in their words
“You are free to share …any part of this work provided that:
1/ you always attribute the work as follows [but avoiding suggesting any influence from the copyright owners]: from Mythogeography, Triarchy Press 20102/You make no derivative works – you may not alter, transform, or build upon this work [without following certain conditions].”
The first condition seems ethically and legally acceptable. The second has, rather like the book itself, a curiously other-worldly feel to it.
Noli me tangere. Now I must go
to catch the mythogeographic Gruffalo
December 29, 2009 at 1:04 pm
I cannot speak for all mythograpedes, but this one is thrilled to be reluctanttwittered on Christmas Day. Thank you.
Funny, the copyright malarkey. “You are free to copy, distribute and transmit…” seems to me like a major step forward from the conventional “you can’t copy, store, record, transmit…ever” prohibition that you find on 98% of all books still. And yet the requirement to get permission before altering the work seems, if I understand, to rankle a little with you. When I read it again, I’m inclined to agree. Yet, it doesn’t seem fair to the author if anyone can just rehash, or rewrite bits of it at random. A fine line – one of many – for publishers to tread these days.
December 29, 2009 at 3:58 pm
As a card-carrying mythograpede yourself, you will realize that the Reluctant Twitterer exists in a space in the cracks in the pavements of reality. However, speaking from a nearby crack, I suspect he wonders how to pay homage to such sources if he is unable to build them into his own creations.
Agree about the advance over the 98%, and on the thin line of permissions. Maybe hairline-thin but still with scope for splitting …
December 29, 2009 at 5:24 pm
Hmmm. I see the predicament. Triarchy Press hereby waives the ‘no derivative works’ clause in Mythogeography: A Guide to Walking Sideways for The Reluctant Twitterer and his bio-manipulator and gives full and uncompromising permission for them to build extracts from the work and/or the website (www.mythogeography.com) into whatsoever of their glorious creations they feel inclined.