Month: July 2021

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Currently reading & other summery (?) things

currently reading

The weather has been a bit rubbish here so I’ve been catching up on some reading and writing. Magazines tend to drop through the letterbox all at the same time, so I’m still working my way through current issues of PN Review, The Dark Horse, Poetry, The Poetry Review and Lighthouse. So far I’ve particularly enjoyed poems by Donna Aza Weir-Soley in Poetry, Isabel Galleymore in The Poetry Review (‘Then, one spring in which every dawn came/ pigletty and the blossom trees were really putting in / the work’), Diane Thiel in The Dark Horse and Josh Ekroy in Lighthouse.

Poet friend Claire Booker kindly gave me a copy of The Language of Salt, an anthology of poems ‘on love and loss’ which so far looks to be an excellent range of poems from poets both known and new to me.

Meanwhile I have a number of full collections by my bed – Sometimes I Never Suffered by Shane McCrae (Corsair) has gripped me, particularly I think because I’m deep in Dante at the moment. I found McCrae’s ‘Hastily Assembled Angel’ sequence strange and moving. Then there’s Mortal Trash by Kim Addonizio (Norton). I always reach for Addonizio when I’m feeling jaded or all out of fresh words and it’s like a shot of adrenaline. YEEESS!

Peter Kenny and I are on a summer break from Planet Poetry which has given us a chance to do a bit of admin (such as setting up a somewhat basic website – coming soon), create artwork for all the Season One episodes, put together a bit of a promo plan and get some more poet interviews in the bag for broadcast in the Autumn. We’re getting more confident about approaching ‘big name’ poets and also poets from other countries, so we’re excited about how Season Two is shaping up.

I’ve just ordered collections by Di Slaney and Martina Evans, which I’ll talk about in a future post….plus I’m trying to get some quality writing time in… honest!

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Lighthouse launch: reading a new poem and its prequel

Tomorrow evening is the online launch of Lighthouse Journal #22 in which I have a poem called ‘Let’s pretend to go shopping together’. This poem revisits an older one entitled ‘Closure’ which first appeared in (the late lamented) Envoi in 2014 and then again in my Cinnamon pamphlet All the Relevant Gods (only £2.09 at Abe Books!)

So I was delighted when Lighthouse editor Julia Webb got in touch to say there would be a launch event, and that contributors were invited to read two poems. I hadn’t actually placed ‘Closure’ and ‘Let’s Pretend…’ side by side until just now, and it has been interesting to compare them. The earlier poem refers to the end of a brief affair between two work colleagues, one of whom had had a quadruple heart bypass. At the time of writing I didn’t consider ‘Closure’ to be nostalgic, but placed next to this new poem the wistfulness is unmistakeable. Plus, something weird happens. Actually several things.

First of all I can see much more clearly now that both poems are concerned with the superficiality of not just this relationship but possibly many of the relationships that at some point in time feel real and substantial. I’m thinking of work friendships as much as romantic ones. Another thing is how the memory massages events of the past to the point that misremembered details get re-invented. For example in this case, the name of the hotel changes from one poem to the next. ‘Closure’ ends with reference to a ‘false heart’, ‘Let’s Pretend…’ is a wholly imagined scenario in which even the existence of the first poem is questioned. What exactly was ever true or false? Does the second poem change the first one? Which version of the narrator is the more reliable?

Tune in tomorrow for all the answers (or not!) and of course, plenty of fine poems from this issue’s contributors.

 

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Launches, recent and forthcoming

There have been some interesting launches and other events in the last few weeks. I suppose all those books that were out last year are playing launch catchup. Kudos to all the poetry book and magazine publishers that have kept things going, despite the fact that most books are sold at readings, so sales must have taken a severe hit.

These are some of the events I’ve managed to get to:

Mara Bergman launching her new collection The Night We Were Dylan Thomas, published by Arc, alongside Ranjit Hoskote launching his book The Atlas of Lost Beliefs – the event was recorded so you can watch it on YouTube if you wish. Mara is one of those wonderfully supportive poets and I wasn’t surprised to see a large audience on this very warm occasion.

The next night was the launch of Robert Hamberger‘s long-awaited book A Length of Road – a prose/memoir/poetry hybrid which has been many years in the making, based on Robert’s punishing four-day 80-mile walk in the footsteps of John Clare and a meditation on both their experiences. Rob is another of those lovely, supportive and humble poets as well as being a beautiful writer. Another love-in of a launch!

Last week was the launch of three new pamphlet anthologies from Candlestick Press, one of which, Ten Poems about Getting Older, edited by John McCullough, included a poem by Hastings Stanza member and poet friend Judith Shaw. So I was there primarily to support Judith, who read brilliantly alongside some big-name poets on the bill.

This evening, another Hastings Stanza member Brian Docherty is launching his new collection from Dempsey & Windle, The View from the Villa Delirium, which sounds very on-trend for these days, and I’m looking also forward to next Friday 23rd when I’ll be one of the readers at the launch of the new issue of Lighthouse Journal, in which I have a poem.

Meanwhile over at Planet Poetry, Peter and I are getting Episode 17 tidied up for its launch this Thursday, in which Peter talks to Rishi Dastidar, and we drop a bombshell – I can’t tell you what it is though, as it’s embargoed until then!! Listen in or subscribe in your podcast service to find out…

Enough for now… I hope like us you’re promised some warm, dry days in the next week or so. Don’t we just need it.