Author: Robin Houghton

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The Reading List, week 11 – Clare Best’s ‘Cell’

It seems my blog posts of ‘micro reviews’ have set some sort of trend – who’d have thought?  Anyway, I haven’t posted one for a couple of weeks as other aspects of LIFE have rather taken priority. The original idea to read a book a day was ambitious,  but the blogging of the reviews has proven to be the hardest bit, and something I haven’t always managed to find time for. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t been reading.

Rather than waiting until I have the time to write three or more reviews at once, I think I’ll sometimes just get them out singly. So coming up soon – thoughts on Mark Doty’s  T S Eliot Prize-nominated Deep Lane (Cape) and Wendy Pratt’s pamphlet Lapstrake (Flarestack). But today I’ll focus on one pamphlet.

 

Cell –  Clare Best & Michaela Ridgway (Frogmore Press 2015)

An unusual pamphlet, both in physical form and concept. Clare Best’s award-winning sequence ‘Cell’ is in the voice of Christine Carpenter, a 14 year old girl who, in 1329, took a vow of  ‘solitary devotion’ and became an anchoress. Accompanying the sequence are a number of powerful pen and charcoal sketches of the human (female) form by Michaela Ridgway (herself an accomplished poet).

In the unfolding and re-folding of the single sheet, you create a box-like space which represents the cell in which the girl spent over 1,000 days. From there, following the sequence isn’t easy – each is numbered in Roman numerals, which took me a few moments to work out (come on then – CCCMLXXI? Quick!) Having been at the launch event, I know from Clare’s reading that the numerals represent the number of days since the girl’s incarceration. Otherwise that too would need some work on the part of the reader.

And that’s surely the point – reading ‘Cell’ was like following a set of clues, deciphering a horrible secret – in figuring out the folding and the ordering, observing the contortions of the figures, the smudged-out body parts that seem to overstuff their pages, even before reading we have to do a little work, but not very much in face of what we’re about to witness in the poems. We are primed to ‘solve’ the mystery. And a mystery it is, certainly to present-day readers, why a young girl would go willingly into such a contract.

Just one day, Mother, since you
kissed my brow, my cheeks and chin.
I must not love the window,
must protect my sinful heart. (II)

In reading Christine’s words and thoughts it’s hard not to be moved – not just by the pathos of the situation, but also the girl’s ongoing reflection in terms of her belief (having perhaps no other framework to cling to) even as she passes from excitement and determination to fear, pain and finally resignation.

Dreams like thoughts –
both sense and
nonsense. How shall I
bear the silence
of this place? (CCLXI)

The reader isn’t spared any details of the girl’s physical and mental deterioration ‘scalp alive with lice’, ‘shrunken gums’, and the nightmares (‘Lucifer, again. … he spreads me, enters like a fist’) but for me the story is told with intimate tenderness and without judgement. ‘Cell’ is a challenging read, moving and highly compelling. Both the artwork and Katy Mawhood’s ingenious pamphlet design corroborate the story and heighten the reader’s involvement – which is what genuine ‘multimedia’ should be about. Excellent job.

Cell, by Clare Best & Michaela Ridgway, Frogmore Press 2015

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Should poems be read from memory?

Robin Houghton reading at Mayfield Poetry Festival

I’ve only really started reading poems from memory this year, but rarely an entire set. I admire those poets who not only memorise long, often VERY long poems, but communicate them with panache and seeming ease.

But is reading from memory a requirement of a memorable reading? Does reading from memory always enhance the listener’s experience? Just how much extra work are you setting yourself – and is it worth it? What if the poet’s nervous enough already – isn’t it better for them (and the audience) to stick with reading it off the page?

I asked two poet friends (and experienced poem-memorisers) to get their views on it, and also asked myself the same questions.

Tony Gill, aka Gilli Bloodaxe, has performed in clubs, a crypt, a barge and at festivals little and big. His first collection Fin was published this year by Matador. Peter Kenny is a poet, playwright and serial collaborator, having worked with musicians and writers in all kinds of genres. His pamphlet ‘The Nightwork’ was published in 2014 by Telltale Press.

Peter Kenny
Peter Kenny

What makes you want to memorise poems – particular reasons?

Peter Kenny: I’m starting to memorise my poems and try to perform them from memory when I can. I write to communicate with people, and I think shuffling and hiding behind papers is obviously a barrier. It’s nice to give the audience eye contact and focus on bringing the poems to life rather than simply reading from a page. I don’t like readings where the poet seems to be talking to themselves.

Tony Gill: I think that when a poet (or anyone actually) stands and reads, there is a physical barrier (the book, a piece of paper) between them and their audience. The poet is saying “I’m reading this poem in this book”. Without the book, it’s a more natural communication, it frees you up to move around and wave your arms, you’re telling a story like a Viking at the fireside…

Robin Houghton: Reciting from memory really feels like you’re making a connection with the audience, but you do have to make eye contact. That business of ‘focus on a point above people’s heads’ is the worst advice ever given, I think. People have told me they hear more of the poem and take in the words more intensely when they’re being spoken to rather than read to.

Do you think it’s something all poets should try to do, or does some poetry not really ‘need’ to be delivered from memory?

TG: Yes!

PK: Interestingly, the reading I found most electrifying was actually not from memory at all: I saw RS Thomas when I was a student and he read from the page without giving the titles of his poems or introductions, but was utterly brilliant.

RH: Some poems work much better from memory. But I think a poet can still deliver effectively off the book, as long as s/he adds value somehow to the audience experience. This could be (for example) looking up and making frequent eye contact with listeners, or it could be animating the poem in a way the audience wouldn’t get just from reading it on the page.

How do you go about memorising poems – do you have a routine/schedule? How much time do you think it takes to learn a new poem?

PK: It takes me several days to learn a poem. I just stand in my kitchen and say the thing over and over for ten minutes for three or four days and I usually have it. Also when you are memorising something, if it is persistently unsayable, then something’s usually wrong with it.

TG: Some are easier than others – if there’s a structure, or if they rhyme. Once I’ve learnt it, I see if I can recite it over music, which is quite distracting. The amount of time depends on the length of the poem. But generally not that long.

RH: So far I’ve only memorised reasonably short poems. If the poem’s in stanzas then that helps: I do it one stanza at a time. (If it’s not then I might temporarily reorganise it so that it is!) Lots of repetition out loud (it helps if there’s no-one around). Remembering the links between each stanza is important – the last word/phrase of one and the first word/phrase of the next. Because once you start the stanza you’re off and running.
I try to ‘see’ the overall shape – the start, the build-up, the aside, the climax etc. It can take me a while, and several actual readings, until I’m secure.

Any top tips for a poet who’s never managed to read a poem from memory – how might they go about it?

TG: Just do it!

PK: My stepdaughter is an actress and she reminded me to have a few physical movements or body positions for different bits of the poem. Using your body as well as your brain to prompt the next bit seems to work quite well for me.

RH: The only other thing I would say is to practise, and in front of an audience. Practise at the low key/low risk readings where you have enough adrenaline to make it real, but no big deal if you stumble because you’re among friends. It will build your confidence for the bigger readings. I always remember the saying “an amateur practises until they get it right, a professional practises until they can’t get it wrong”. I still have a long way to go on that score!

Have you ever dried, and what’s your advice if that happens?

PK: I have dried completely at least twice but I’m fairly philosophical about it. You’re not in the middle of a play and putting everyone else off. When you make a mistake you feel like there’s a yawning chasm of time when you are giving the reading, but the audience might not even notice as much as you think.

RH: I had a near-miss once, but held it together, and quite recently I dried completely and had to reach for the book. I was annoyed at myself but you just have to laugh and not make a thing of it. The audience doesn’t want to see you distressed.

TG: Only when I’ve had a drink, which I never ever do before a reading.

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A Bonanza, a Finale and a look ahead to 2016

The Stanza Bonanza poets, November 2015

It’s been a busy week, still catching up, but I wanted to post a recap of things before we’re into the pre-Christmas week when events seem to accelerate.

Last Monday I was I privileged to be a member of the Brighton team (especially considering I now live in Eastbourne) at a Stanza Bonanza with Kent & Sussex Stanza at the Poetry Cafe. Bonanzas are the regular readings organised by Paul McGrane of the Poetry Society. They give Stanza members a chance to read at the iconic venue and meet/socialise with other Stanza poets. Always great fun, and this one was a corker. Poet friends Jill Munro and Jess Mookherjee were on the opposing team and it was lovely to hear them read, and Brighton definitely brought out the big guns – Peter Kenny, Tony Gill, Andie Davidson, Susan Evans and Marek Urbanowicz.

Thursday saw the launch reading of Clare Best’s poem ‘Cell’ which has been produced beautifully by the The Frogmore Press in a fold-out pamphlet alongside striking artwork by Michaela Ridgway. Michaela organises and generally hosts the Pighog poetry nights at the Redroaster in Brighton, but on this occasion she handed over the MC responsibility to Daisy Behagg, who did a fine job. The audience was very well behaved – not sure if that was a concession to Daisy, or just that the season finale drew a particularly high quality audience! Also on the bill were Tom Chivers of Penned in the Margins, and Stephen Payne who I seem to run into regularly at readings around the south and who was in the audience for my reading at Words & Ears last month, which was a lovely surprise. Michaela is super multi-talented, by the way – poet, artist and someone who makes things happen, on top of a big day job. Props. It was an excellent evening and I felt really energised and inspired by the poetry I heard. Here are some pics from the night:

Daisy Behagg at Pighog poetry night in Brighton
Daisy Behagg
Tom Chivers at Pighog poetry night in Brighton
Tom Chivers
Michaela Ridgway & Clare Best at Pighog poetry night in Brighton
Michaela Ridgway & Clare Best

Then on Friday we finally had our Telltale Press & Friends January reading all confirmed – to be held at the Poetry Cafe on Thursday 7th January, with special guest poet Jack Underwood. I’ve been a big fan of Jack’s work for a while and enjoyed his ‘putting together a pamphlet’ course at the Poetry School a couple of years ago. I loved his collection Happiness too, so I’m of course very happy that he’s reading with us alongside Telltales Siegfried Baber & Peter Kenny, and Kitty Coles. I often see Kitty’s work in magazines and heard her read at the launch of South magazine last month, so I was very pleased she agreed to join us for this event. If you’re within striking distance of London do come along – it’s free! A warm Telltale welcome awaits.

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A poetry anthology comes to life via Facebook

My Dear Watson anthology

Look what arrived today – my copies of the lovely new anthology from Beautiful Dragons (mastermind: Rebecca Bilkau), My Dear Watson. It’s a celebration of the 118 elements on the periodic table. Each poem takes one of it the elements as its inspiration, and 118 poets have contributed. Poets were sourced and Rebecca organised the whole project via Facebook.

Social media platforms elicit strong feelings. Not so long ago it was the internet itself. In 2001 you could say “I hate the internet/I don’t DO the internet” and you’d find plenty of folks agreeing with you. Now it’s kind of unusual since the internet is difficult to avoid. These days it’s social media. “I hate Twitter/I don’t do Facebook.” All fine, and I’m not suggesting in ten years everybody will be ‘doing’ Facebook and/or Twitter. But in 50 years everyone will be using similar (and hopefully much improved) tools because communication methods are constantly changing. Remember: the first people to have telephones in their homes also ran the gauntlet of ‘Are you Mad? What on earth is the POINT of it?’ And that was only 100 years ago.

I personally feel privileged and very lucky to be one of the first generation to experience both the pre-internet and the early internet era. It’s real history and we’re living through it. The tools we currently have are not perfect by any means. Remember: Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter etc etc all started in some guy’s bedroom. Nobody knows the rules because we’re figuring them out as we go along. But the tools are what we (humans) make them, and when things go wrong, or the tools are abused or used for bad ends, it’s not down to evil computers or that dreadful ‘social media’, it’s down to evil people.

Anyway, what got me going on that strand of thought was actually that I wanted to celebrate, for once, the wonderful things we humans can do with the tools available. The contributors to ‘My Dear Watson’ are a community only in that we all heard about it on Facebook and responded. (OK, some of the poets had already contributed to previous anthologies). Poems were submitted, and virtually all correspondence was carried out on Facebook. Even Rebecca notes that ‘not one of them (the contributors) knows all of the others’. I’m not saying this is a unique achievement  but it’s a fine example of how a crowd-sourced project (the herding of 118 poets is no mean thing) can generate its own community, and it was facilitated via a social platform. Nothing special about Facebook, although as free, web-based platforms go it’s pretty suitable for this kind of collaboration.

So brava, Rebecca, and thank you.

And let’s try not to fall back on easy statements like “I hate ovens!” just because we haven’t yet produced the perfect souffle.

 

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The Reading List week 10: Glück, Paterson, Crowther

Crowther- Paterson-Gluck - The Reading LIst

These pocket-sized reviews have been getting a bit long lately and that’s not good, because I start thinking “do I have time to write a 1,500 word post today?” and tend to put it off. So here goes, this is me trying to cut back on the waffle. A couple of paragraphs, a taster… then over to you.

Faithful and Virtuous Night – Louise Glück (Carcanet 2014)

I picked this up at the Poetry Book Fair as part of my drive to read more US poetry, and Glück’s name has since come up twice. Firstly at John McCullough’s course at New Writing South, and secondly at Aldeburgh last week where Tony Hoagland suggested her career has paralleled that of Sharon Olds, but with Glück enjoying the imprimatur of the US poetry establishment while Olds has been the more ‘accessible’ and popular.

Faithful and Virtuous Night is unlike anything I’ve read before, except perhaps D M Thomas’s The White Hotel, a strange and disturbing book where the reader is pulled into an unreliable and dreamlike narrative and left without a handhold. The first poem, ‘Parable’, hints that we may about to be going on a journey, or maybe not. The narrator and his/her companions appear to go through various trials – extreme weather, endless discussions. ‘…we had changed although / we never moved..’ The poems that follow are intriguing – I wanted to keep reading, not just because I wanted to decode the secrets but also because of the storytelling – it brought to mind A Thousand and One Nights…. night, what happens at night, what happens in the shadows of the mind – just when we think we’ve got somewhere we find ourselves still and square one. The narrator has questions and the reader has them too.

A number of poems read as a someone recalling childhood memories but always half in the dark – either literally or metaphorically. The older brother comes in and out of the narrative, as does an aunt, and the dead parents. The narrator retells the fine details of dreams, episodes that may have actually happened, and stories much in the style of Aesop’s Fables. Glück often writes in a flat, unemotional tone but the sense of wonder and mystery is never far off:

I soon found myself
at my narrow table; to my right
the remains of a small meal.

Language was filling my head, wild exhilaration
alternated with profound despair –

But if the essence of time is change,
how can anything become nothing?

(‘The Story of a Day’)

Favourite poem: ‘The Sword in the Stone’.

40 Sonnets – Don Paterson (Faber, 2015)

There are reviews aplenty of this one, shortlisted for the T S Eliot prize this year, but I’ve resisted them even though they may have helped me with some of the poems in this collection.

I wasn’t really expecting 40 Shakespearean sonnets from DP. But the majority of these poems are fourteen lines long, many of them do employ traditional end-rhyme and conventional layouts and quite of few of them are celebratory, if not out-and-out love poems. Sorry if I’m sounding a bit bogged down with technicalities but any book with such a title invites it. But … To The Poems:

I confess I took a while to get into the book. A cluster of existential openers held me back a little on first reading, as did some of the poems for or about people I’m not familiar with left me. That feeling of being at a glamorous or intellectual get-together and not quite being in the know. TV character ‘House’ and Tony Blair get the ironic treatment (the latter somewhat less sympathetically – ‘They are your dead, who still rose to the birds / the day we filled the booths and made the cross, / before you’d forced them howling to their knees / to suffer your attentions. Spare us. Please.’ (‘The Big Listener’). Frustration with bureaucracy (‘To Dundee City Council’, ‘An Incarnation’) rubs along with humour, allegory and experimental pieces such as ‘Seance’ and ‘The Version’. With two poems referencing Francesca Woodman, I gave in to curiosity and looked her up.

The final sonnet (they’re not numbered, although once again the book title made me want to know where I was in the sequence) is for me one of the most beautiful, the discovery and uncovering of an old roundabout by a father and his sons, who after much effort get it moving again

‘ … Our hands still burning
we lay and looked up at a sky so clear
there was nothing in the world to prove our turning
but our light heads, and the wind’s lung.’

Favourite poem: ‘The Roundabout’

Of course in my mind the sainted DP can do no wrong. So I hope you appreciate the effort I’ve made to not gush. I’ll save that for after I see him reading next month – ha!

Incense – Claire Crowther, (Flarestack 2010)

There is so much about this pamphlet that’s clever. I have poem-title envy in spades – ‘This Poem Must Take Clothes Off’, ‘Over is Almost All of Lover’, are just two examples. The sequence consists of 23 poems all of which are fatras – ‘a medieval form consisting of eleven lines and an introductory couplet composed of the first and last lines of the poem.’ We’re also learn on the back cover that the form is associated with ‘nonsense poems’. This, together with the information that Crowther worked for many years as a journalist in the weight management industry, is the key to enjoying the collection. The sense and nonsense of fat, the stories told about it, its vilification, the full physical, emotional and psychological weight of it, is all explored. ‘Even academics / believe fat-calories / are laid down / as fat without / the brain / knowing.’ (‘Fataboo’). ‘Size is my name. / It’s stated on the tiny labels in my clothes. / I want to change it.’ (‘Check, Check, Check the Even Number.’)

Body image and identity are subjects close to my heart and I wanted to love this pamphlet. Although technically and intellectually I found it very satisfying, the poems didn’t move me beyond a sense of sadness and recognition. I think I wanted more anger, or less coolness, less detachment. I wanted to be incensed. The control and precision of the writing, although no doubt deliberate and referencing the fight for control over the enemy ‘fat’, left me a little flat. Nevertheless, Crowther is a fine poet whose work I enjoy, and reading ‘Incense’ has made me want to seek out more recent stuff.

Favourite poem: ‘Say No and Skip It’

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Aldeburgh Poetry Festival de-brief

Scallop by Maggi Hambling

And so the inevitable Aldeburgh Poetry Festival blog post. You’ve probably read a post or two on the subject already, or at least seen the Facebook/Twitter storm of “wasn’t it amazing?” sound bites, in-jokes about poets posing as penises  – (I know! Too much alliteration) – and jolly pictures of poets sipping pints. (SORRY, am doing it again.) This is quite long, but there are subheads for the skimmers!

Three lessons for newbies

It was the first time I’d been, and clearly had a lot to learn. Still, when speaking to other ‘virgins’ I found some common themes: firstly, it’s easy to book too many sessions. I’d underestimated how exhausting it would be to go from one session to another and not schedule time for eating, chatting, walking or just sitting quietly. As it was, I certainly missed a few things I had booked for, but I don’t regret it – I had a better time for it. Secondly, be prepared for no phone signal the entire weekend. I saw a few people managing to make calls and had phone network-envy. Some were able to text. But me? Nothing. I hadn’t realised how stressy it would make me when I couldn’t talk to my husband on Friday. But thankfully there was internet, so we spoke via Skype. Thirdly, it’s important to pace yourself – not just in the number and timing of sessions, but also in the ‘meet and greet’ aspect of what is an intensely social event.

On ‘networking’

OK, so not everyone was at Aldeburgh. Hilaire wrote a lovely post about what she was planning to do while the tweet-heads were trying to get #APF15 trending. But in the crucible of Snape Maltings it was heady stuff.  And for the ambitious and ballsy, there were plenty of people worth cosying-up to.

Poets and networking don’t always sit happily together. It was fascinating to see how a few people went about it. I think you need to be single-minded and thick-skinned to do it properly. But do I do it myself? I acknowledge there’s a bit of the ‘networker’ in me but although I tinker at it I’m not really confident enough to consistently pull it off.  There’s the added stress of course that, unlike in business, networking has a reputation for being loathsome. To get away with it, I think it really has to be done subtly, accompanied by lashings of charm and good humour. The only trouble is, you might start believing you’re not networking, just being charming and good humoured. And that’s when it becomes loathsome.

On the first day I was pleased I hadn’t come alone as it seemed a little overwhelming. But being there with poet friends Charlotte Gann and Clare Best was brilliant, as was seeing so many familiar faces: the Brighton and Lewes contingent was impressive. I couldn’t help looking out for people I knew, or thought I might know via social media, and wondering whether to introduce myself or not. There were poets I knew (of) but not to speak to, and plenty I didn’t know at all. One of the great things was that the poet-presenters mingled and came to other people’s sessions, so there wasn’t a huge gulf between us and them. By day three I got the impression that everyone was more relaxed, me included. It seemed much easier to say a quick ‘thanks – enjoyed your session’ or ‘hello, are you so-and-so… just wanted to say hello’.

The ‘Aldeburgh’ bit

Aldeburgh is a wild place, especially in November. It didn’t stop a few poets (almost) skinny-dipping on Saturday morning while I was just about hauling myself out of bed. The weather wasn’t nice and the land around Snape Maltings (where most of the activity took place) was boggy, but staying on Aldeburgh seafront was quite magical. And the rain did clear up. This was the view from our house this morning before we left.

View from our house at 8am

The town is centred on one long High Street parallel to the coastline, its houses are colourful and quirky but this is a strange, end-of-the-world sort of place which seems to teeter on the edge of the North Sea. It’s well-heeled: ‘Chelsea by the Sea’ was how a poet friend described it to me. The town is famously where Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears lived, worked, held court, founded a music festival and created a huge heartland of music for much of the mid-twentieth century.

The poetry festival used to take place here – but the story goes that some of the venues lost their health & safety credentials and the festival needed to expand in order to get the funding it needed. So everyone decamped to Snape Maltings 5 miles inland. There’s no doubt the various auditoria and the facilities there are fabulous. Some poetry festival events still happen in Aldeburgh but travelling to and fro during the day isn’t ideal, and if you don’t have a car you’re dependent on bus times.

The ‘poetry’ bit

Aldeburgh Poetry Festival handouts

The weekend consisted of readings, craft talks, lectures, discussions, close readings and critique sessions/masterclasses. There was plenty of variety and a few free sessions (although I never made it to those, they were mostly 15 mins of a poet talking on a topic or on a poem he/she liked.) For me, the craft talks were where I learnt the most: Zaffar Kunial on line endings, Kei Miller on ‘the image that doesn’t quite close’, Kim Addonizio on turns.

The main readings were on the long side – three poets each reading for half an hour with an interval between the second and third. On Friday evening I loved Helen Mort and Kei Miller. But after the break I was already tired (up at 7, five hours driving, three hours of poetry sessions). Like much of the audience, I was perplexed by the third poet who read, seemingly from a 1970s timewarp and determinedly ignoring the audience for his entire set. I struggled to stay awake. Still, it proved a talking point until 1am and for the rest of the weekend. Maybe the programming was designed to challenge us!

I went to a lovely short reading on Saturday by Michael McCarthy and Christine Webb, two poets with fine pedigrees who I’d never encountered before. Fifteen minutes each was the perfect format, and in an intimate venue. Similarly, a ‘New Voices’ reading gave us the opportunity of hearing four relatively new poets over the course of an hour.

There was something for everyone. At Tony Hoagland’s talk on Sharon Olds, one poet turned to me, indicated the empty seats and said ‘I thought EVERYONE would be here for this!’ To be fair, it did fill up more. Then afterwards as I made my way to the cafe I encountered another lovely poet who informed me of her great joy in NOT attending a talk on Sharon Olds. Tee hee.

Over the whole weekend I discovered all kinds of poets, poems and collections I didn’t know and hadn’t read, international in scope, and that was one of the standout features for me.

The boxes issue

I struggle a bit with the Poetry Trust stage sets – piles of cardboard boxes with ‘Words’ printed on them. First of all, in the Britten Studio, the courses of bricks weren’t aligned properly. Everyone knows “the universal rule allowing for brickwork to be stable under even modest loads is that perpends should not vertically align in any two successive courses.” (Wikipedia) This wall was about to topple. Secondly, the boxes were clearly empty. So the overall message was ’empty words, ungrounded and easy to knock down.’ Is that a good image for poetry? Remember now – I had hours and hours to stare at those boxes.

But seriously

I’m a complete newbie to the festival but it was clear talking to people who have attended many times or been involved in one way or another that it is under threat, in terms of lack of funding, and it’s by no means certain the festival will be able continue. This, plus the fact that Creative Director of sixteen years Dean Parkin is stepping down, is very sad. 2015 was the first year of Ellen McAteer‘s Directorship and it was also very sad that she was unable to be there, for personal reasons. The Poetry Trust does a fine job on a shoestring. There were one or two aspects of the festival that got me a bit grumpy but I came away as impressed and as satisfied as all the fans on Twitter. So I hope finance can be found. I would go again – probably not next year though. Unless I win some money. It gets expensive.

Winners, honourable mentions etc 

Zaffar Kunial – I can’t wait to get his pamphlet. A fabulous craft talk and a star reading. This guy’s the real deal.

Kei Miller – everyone fell in love with him. The question is, does his twinkly smile remind me more of John Travolta or David Essex?

Kim Addonizio –  never mind the 1980s Madonna thing, I want her as my mentor. Besides, I love Madge.

The seating in the Britten Studio – proof that good ergonomic design simply works.

Tony Hoagland – another breath-of-fresh-air American whose reading was sharp, funny, poignant and moving.

A spontaneous Saturday pub lunch – I hope we weren’t too loud …  Five Women Poets Get Lairy as Locals Flee

Poet friends Clare and Charlotte, my sorority house pals and the perfect travel companions. Here’s to wine, peanut butter sandwiches, chocolate and ibuprofen!

Charlotte, Clare, Robin at Aldeburgh

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What I’ve been up to, and look ahead to Aldeburgh

aldeburgh beach

Just a quick update and a look ahead to the weekend …

I was excited to see the T S Eliot Prize shortlist, especially as it included the excellent debut collection from Sarah Howe – Loop of Jade – which I mini-reviewed on this blog a short while ago.  I’ve already signed up for Katy Evans-Bush‘s excellent preview day when we look at all the shortlisted collections as curated by Katy. I went this a couple of years ago and it really enhanced my enjoyment of the readings night. Recommended! I’ve also bought a couple of the books on the list – Mark Doty’s Deep Lane and Don Paterson’s 40 Sonnets. I’m trying not to read any reviews of the books before I talk about them on the The Reading List, in case they influence me, and I’m trying so hard to learn how to review/critique.

Speaking of DP – I’ve booked to go hear him and Liz Berry read at The Print Room on 15th December…actually off the back of hearing Liz read on the podcast Transatlantic Poetry – definitely worth a browse, there’s a wonderful archive of poetry reading there.

Meanwhile I’m three sessions in to New Writing South’s ‘Advanced Poetry’ course with John McCullough and it’s really warming up. With a large number of students I suppose it always takes a while to settle down. But John’s enthusiasm and support is great. He’s giving us a crash course in poets many of us are unfamiliar with and it’s very exciting. I’m keeping notes on all the writing prompts and tips he gives us in the hope they will be useful to dip into. He’s also suggested we create an ‘anthology’ of poems that we like  – in magazines, on the web, etc – type them each out and save them in a ring binder under categories that will help us refer to them later, for inspiration. It sounds a bit analogue but I thought this was a fine idea – I so often read a poem in a mag, think ‘ooh this is good’ then have trouble recalling who wrote it or where I saw it – duh! Mind you, these days one needs to be careful not to fall into the ‘I must have subconsciously been influenced by XYZ  and yes my own poem came out pretty much word-for-word the same but it was all an innocent mistake!’

Last week we had a whistle-stop tour of rellie-visiting and on the way we stopped at Bradford upon Avon for Dawn Gorman‘s excellent Words & Ears event. What a privilege to be invited to read there – so many good poets in the room, and a lovely atmosphere. Thank you to everyone who came and also to those who bought pamphlets – I think this was my best reading in terms of sales!

Now I’m looking forward to the official launch of Sarah Barnsley’s debut pamphlet The Fire Station next Thursday 12th November at Goldsmiths in London. The Telltale Press massive is, well, massively excited about it, so do come along if you’re able.

And now to Aldeburgh! It’s my first visit to the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival and I think it’s going to be a wonderful weekend. I’m sharing a ‘sorority house’ with poet friends Clare Best and Charlotte Gann on the bracing Aldeburgh seafront. If you’re coming too, please say hello if our paths cross!

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The Reading List week 9: Malone, Maitreyabandhu, Man

Cur, The Bond, Lift

This week, three books by men, all with names starting with M, all with (pretty much) monochrome cover art and three of the shortest titles ever. Spooky! This is the latest post in my Reading List project begun in July 2015.

Cur, Martin Malone (Shoestring 2015)

To read Cur in one sitting is a rollicking ride. The big themes of love, death, growing up, relationships and the like are all here, filtered through a range of references from pop culture to ancient Greece. This is a book that namechecks (among others) Jackie Pallo, Tuthmosis, Versace and The Smiths.

The first (and title) poem threw me into a Hughes-esque world of animal intensity and raw emotion. It’s the first of a sequence of twelve or so which explore a relationship, sometimes in narrative terms, sometimes reflective. In ‘Life Drawing’ the poet considers his sleeping lover and how he might paint her, the backdrop ‘Some capture of hinterland, an inkling shade of unknown.’ We meet the ‘Inkling’ again at the end of the book, the unborn baby as seen on an ultrasound image.

The changes of register are surprising, and music is everywhere – ‘Then you’re beside me, in a wind-tumbled / fluster of rooks and their cracked peppercorn / of song.’ (Alice) ‘The backbeat is all / – triplet, sinew, farts and porn – / born to it, solid.’ (‘Meet the Band’). Something I quite liked (but I can imagine not everyone would) is a certain knowingness that pervades some of the poems – almost as if to make up for the wonder and openness of others. It feels like a breaking of the fourth wall, as in: ‘Impossible to withhold comment, then, on the ironies of choice made / when a crippled Tawny took to roosting / in the garage of the Gadd’s semi.’ (Gadd’s Owl), or ’What he really handed me was some final flourish / of golden-summer cliche’ (‘Egging’), or ‘Yes, let’s play this game and go there, / leaf through your back pages, trace the stages/ and versions that led you to now and this man.’ (‘Life Drawing’).

I didn’t feel I had the key to all the poems, but that’s inevitable – I still got a jolt of pleasure to see a reference to ‘Alias Smith & Jones’ to which I was addicted – ADDICTED – when I was about 12, the opening script of which I still know by heart. And you can’t help but be joshed along by the satire of ‘Ver: A Modest Proposal’, enjoy the humour of ‘Lords of the Ring’. That’s not to say Malone doesn’t have a subtlety of touch, far from it – evidence, for example, ‘Eclogue’ and the heartbreaking ‘Like I was your girlfriend.’ There’s an underlying seriousness throughout which brings to mind the ‘craughing’ (simultaneously laughing and crying) described in ‘Doing Words’. A rich, full-fat collection. Favourite poem: ‘On an afternoon like this she takes a new lover.’

The Bond, Maitreyabandhu  (Smith | Doorstop 2011)

Just before reading this pamphlet I’d been tackling the first of Eliot’s Four Quartets. (I’m reading the heavy duty stuff in stages. Betcha can’t wait for my thimble-full of thoughts on The Waste Land…) As a consequence I started seeing little parallel themes and images which I’m sure are co-incidences, but I wonder if that’s what happens when reading collections back-to-back. Or even reading individual poems back-to-back, as when judging a competition or considering submissions for a magazine. Anyway, I digress.

Maitreyabandhu is a poet I noticed a lot when I was starting to submit to magazines. His name was everywhere, and accompanied by what seemed to me the most perfect and succinct of biogs which I wanted to emulate. Since The Bond he has gone on to have two collections with Bloodaxe, The Crumb Road and Yarn, and he hosts the Poetry East series which I’ve never managed to get to, but all the readings/interviews are on YouTube.

The Bond takes us on a journey through a young boy’s formative years and the tentative beginnings of a first relationship. Some of the poems are in the first person and written with the straightforwardness and voice of a child, ‘I’d follow my mother round the house and watch her/ … She’d tuck the sheets / and blankets in so tight, you had to wriggle / when you got in to make a proper space!’ (‘The Chest of Drawers’). Others are written as the adult looking back, sometimes with a certain wary retrospection, or in the distancing third person ‘He had a landscape in his head… the place the dog jumped in and barked and bit the water; / the lawn of someone’s house.’ (‘A few fields’). Interspersed with these are a number of enigmatic, allegorical poems open to interpretation, such as an apparent moment of enlightenment (‘The Small Boy and the Mouse’).

Throughout the collection is a sense of place, location, and the recurrence of certain details – a set of keys, the dogs, the father’s tools, dust – highlights their significance. From the initial ‘stand-alone place, big enough for one’ (‘The Coat Cupboard’) to the ‘den’ or ‘hidey hole’ we return to in several of the poems, where the boy meets secretly with his friend, to the amount of effort expended in the raising of a signpost that ‘points at something too far away to see’, (‘Signpost’), it feels like the narrator (and we) are on a mission to decode the events of the past and the details that linger in childhood memory. There’s a central sestina upon which the collection seems to turn, expressing the crux of it all ‘The den we found was presence and a gap. / You said nothing. I said nothing back. I had my way / of thinking, touching your ill-remembered face.’ (‘Sestina’). Favourite poem: ‘The Cutting.’

Lift, Harry Man (Tall-Lighthouse, 2012)

A pamphlet that set challenges for the typesetter! Rather like Sarah James, whose book Be[yond] I reviewed a few weeks ago, here’s a poet who likes to play with layout, word order and the convention of line. This collection bristles with electricity and experimentation. Its broad themes are space travel, time travel, human flight, technology and a good deal of ‘what if’. I’d read ‘Lift’ when it first came out and Harry kindly allowed me to reproduce one of my favourite poems from the book, ‘telesue’, which you can read here. 

As if mirroring the other-worldliness of their subject matter, the poems delight in technical and sometimes strange vocabulary (‘circumzenithal’, ‘plitter’, ‘flensed’, ‘zoopraxiascopic’), but Man also has a fresh way with phraseology – sheep ‘chewing with the expression of someone who thinks / they can hear the telephone’ (‘Sheep Get Inquisitive after a Meteor Strike, Stanbury Moor’), ‘A Saturn V sheds her heavy feathers / in the smoke, a rising asterisk of light’ (‘The Discovery’). Several of the poems have titles that read like newspaper headlines, and there are plenty of jokes – ‘I have a question for you guys, / how rare are villages?’ (‘Lines Derived from Minecraft Player Queries’). It’s all quite geeky and sometimes a bit confusing, but then I guess that’s the idea – like the ‘Re-entry of the First American in Space’, you don’t always have a clue what’s going on, but hey!

Interesting to note a connection with ‘Cur’ – both collections have poems about ultrasound scans. From Malone we get ‘fishbone, heartbeat, / the opening sequence from Doctor Who’, the unborn child with ‘an extraterrestrial hand’ (‘Inkling’). From Man: ‘The white artery of your spine / hovers beneath a butterfly’s ghost; / wings budding into flight / twice a second, heartbeat by heartbeat.’ (‘Ultrasound’).  Favourite poem: ‘Troubleshooting’.