Books – Page 10 – Robin Houghton

Blog/ 07/09/2015

The Reading List, week 6: Duhig, Kenny, Murray, Lehane

This post is the latest update to my ‘Reading List’ project begun in July 2015.

The Lammas Hireling, Ian Duhig (Picador, 2003)

From the opening poem ‘Blood’, an extended description of a self-styled skinhead-type hardman who turns out to be a fifteen-year-old who faints at the sight of a vaccination needle ‘in front of a whole queue of third years’, you get the feeling this collection is going to be a treat. Ian Duhig has such a range I just can’t find the right box to put him in.

A rage against a corporation that diverts ‘twenty million tons of river’ is presented as a protest song (‘Water, Light’) – ‘Some people couldn’t run a bath / And these were running mining’. The poet seems to have a scholarly familiarity with the classics, with ancient myth & folk tales, with modern history … yet he’s also a politically-engaged ‘man of the people’ who seems able to combine extraordinary wit and subtlety of language with (how shall I put it?) a certain earthy bluntness. There are punchlines aplenty (eg ‘The Vision of the Virgin’, ‘Chinese Sonnets’) and a hilarious ekphrastic poem – ‘The dancing couple. He’s as smug as buttered parsnips / Despite entertaining scarlatina and an eerie crotch.’ (‘Rustics Dancing Outside an Inn’). A found poem ‘Coble Rig Veda’ celebrates a rich nautical vocabulary probably indecipherable to your average present-day reader. The wonderful title poem won the National Poetry Competition in 2001. It has a weirdly compelling quality – a poem I want to keep going back to, and every time there’s more to be squeezed from it. Here’s a link to Ian reading the poem, and some background to it.

Favourite poem: ‘Ken’s Videos, Seahouses’. (I admit I wrote a little homage poem ‘after’ this, which appeared in The Interpreter’s House. Nowhere near as clever as the original, sadly. I can try though.)

The Boy Who Fell Upwards, Peter Kenny (anthologyofguernsey.com, 2010)

This collection of poems is part of a ‘A Guernsey Double’, together with ‘The Man Who Landed’ by Richard Fleming. It was published with funding from Guernsey Arts Commission, as an ‘explore Guernsey’ project – there’s even a map in the centre pages pointing out the various places referred to in the poems.

I confess I’ve only read Peter’s half of the book this week, saving Richard’s for another time. (You have to turn the book over and start from the other side to do that, so it does feel like a separate piece.)

My ‘Reading List’ strategy is to read straight through the poems in a collection, not to re-read or overthink individual poems. This isn’t always easy, especially if there are distractions and you get to the end of a piece and have the sensation you weren’t attending properly. But it leaves an impression, a kind of prevailing feeling. After reading ‘The Boy Who Fell Upwards’ the feeling I had was melancholy. That’s not to say sadness exactly, but there are mysteries here – unresolved (hi)stories, both personal and of the place, and it’s sometimes the sense of not knowing that fuels the tension. From the start we learn ‘I’m torn up by currents …/ hollow-boned orphan, I shriek like a gull in the gale.’ (‘The Boy Who Fell Upwards’).

The narrator (as small child, as teenager, as adult) is surrounded by characters unnamed but defined by their family roles – Gran’mere (the first we meet, and the most present through the poems), Father, Grandfather, a dead brother, a ‘thought daughter’. They are all woven into a landscape both hostile and beautiful – ‘Cliff and foam murmur the murmur / of a dreaming widow, reaching / across a cold sheet / to a memory.’ (‘Dusk at Icart Point’) and later,’Raucous in the little lanes / a drunken sea-wind / blew me here / to listen and belong again…’ (‘A return’). But this is no memoir. And it’s certainly not a tourist information brochure. Sure, we get ‘I glimpsed a summer Guernsey / cuddled by the setting sun’ (‘A Glasshouse’) but a Nazi bunker has the narrator imagining a wartime victim ‘…your belly flop / into the concrete slop / of these foundations.’

There’s a deep sense of love for the place, and the sadness of things fragmenting, uprooting, breaking and toppling – ‘all these muddled memories / word by word from broken things.’ (‘The Little Chapel’) which I found complex and moving. Favourite poem: ‘Thought Daughter.’

Of earth, water, air and fire – animal poems – Nicholas Murray Melos 2013).

This is a fairly jaunty celebration of animals and birds, alive and (about to be) dead, real and mythical. Sometimes the beast itself takes centre stage, but just as often the poet focuses on a particular feature or association, as with ‘Aardvark’ – ‘… unaware of its symbolic life / as tradesman’s Number One’.

Lambs are ‘teenaged gangs’, a Pheasant is a ‘gaudy racer’. Most of the creatures are addressed directly as ‘you’, permitting the poet to express his own feelings or observations. I enjoyed the originality of ‘Pelican’ – ‘the guy who swaggers, / who Mick Jaggers.’ Less convincing was the ‘Swan’ – ‘Conscious of magnificence, that stately glide / asserts possession of the tree-screened pool.’

Unfortunately I’m unable to read any poem about a Kingfisher without recalling the wonderful Chris McCabe poem of that title which appeared in The Rialto and in the ‘Best of British Poetry 2011’ anthology. (Hear Chris read the poem here.) And ‘Crow’ will always be a tricky one.

The collection was good fun and the quirky juxtapositions of creatures and unexpected touches made me smile. Favourite poem: ‘Pelican.’

Hunters – Dorothy Lehane (Annexe Press 2013)

This is such a slim volume I thought I’d slip it in this week … just seven poems, and on a first read through I did pick up on some references to stars/constellations/space but wasn’t entirely sure if I’d missed something crucial.
‘Keyhole (NGC1999)’ ‘isn’t exactly grown yet / barely sagacious’ made more sense when I had looked it up (apparently it’s a ‘mysterious hole in space’). I don’t really like doing ‘research’ in order to get something from a poem, but in the case of this pamphlet it did help.

In ‘Crab Nebula’ there are references to the Bible, a line from Macbeth and possibly a reference to some incident in Chinese history and/or fable. There are puzzling and/or opaque moments throughout, but nevertheless the poems zing with original ideas and exhilarating language. ‘Deep freeze mother, / primordial grime, / don’t speak now hypoglycaemics.’ (Goldilocks Zone’) ‘sweep this realm, / hypnotised by jewels, regal cat’s eye / puffing out smoke rings like knotted gas,’ (‘Hunters’).
Favourite poem: ‘AE Aurigae’.

Blog/ 30/08/2015

The Reading List, week 5: McVety, Konig, James

Right now my reading material consists mainly of kitchen brochures, legal house-moving gumph and internet research on macerator toilets and whether you need planning permission to change a window on the rear of a building.

So the antidote is of course a splash of poetry. ‘Splash’ being the right word, I think, consider the amount of water present in this week’s reading list. Nothing to do with all the rain we’ve been having. Or the toilet stuff.

Lighthouses -Allison McVety (Smith Doorstop, 2014)

I heard Allison read at the Swindon Poetry Festival last year which was when I bought this book. I enjoyed re-encountering some of the poems from that reading, including ‘Lido’, in which the narrator is swimming lengths as the rain comes down and she’s caught in ‘the liquid rhythm of cup and crawl’. We meet the lighthouse/sea/water theme in various guises, via beacons of light, starlight, LED light, watery deaths and ‘To the Lighthouse’, the three stanza homage to Virginia Woolf that won the National Poetry Competition in 2011. There’s a beautiful set of poems on separation from a loved one – ‘we sway though ups /and downs, soft footing it, you towing my heel, / me towing your lead’ (‘Tightropes’) yet McVety is just as at home with a conversational voice (eg ‘Levenshulme Semi’). This is the sort of collection I would love to have written. Moving, entertaining, varied and very skilled indeed. Favourite poem: ‘Treasure’.

Advice for an Only Child – Anja Konig (Flipped Eye, 2014)

There are some quite brief poems in this pamphlet. For some poets this may be a problem in that there’s nowhere to hide. But here, for ‘brief’ read ‘intense’: not a syllable is wasted – Konig writes in a pared-down style which somehow embraces both tragedy and humour, and it comes thick and fast. We witness two friends meeting for coffee, one disclosing that ‘…it had spread – / brain, liver, bones,/ a butcher’s plate. / You looked afraid. We talked / of other things, /that we should get out more …’ (Triple Negative). In ‘Six Nineteen’, both the aftermath of a breakup and the whole crux of the relationship itself is expressed in just six lines. I was fortunate enough to meet Anja at the Duffy/Clarke masterclass I went to at Ty Newydd a couple of years ago and she made a big impression on me. Great to see her producing such an excellent pamphlet. Favourite poem: ‘Dump’.

Be[yond] – Sarah James (Knives Forks & Spoons, 2013)

Crazily inventive! Of the book’s three sections my favourite is probably the first, ‘Against Air and Water’, eleven mostly prose poems through which I felt I was tumbling with very few handholds. A relationship is under scrutiny as is the narrator’s sense of self. ‘Some days are all elbows and thumbs. Then air makes me nervous. But also water. All the things that refuse to mix – or rest in stillness.’ (‘Hydrophobic’) The middle section of the book sees the most wordplay and typographical experimentation: part-words picked out from other words in bold or enlarged type, shaped poems, intricate spatial games – I got the impression James was having a bit of fun at the expense of more ‘serious’ wordplay forms such as acrostics or Fibonacci. And yet amidst all the fireworks there are many gentle moments where the language sings quietly, ‘As blue bruises, / he shoulders the horizon, / wears her skin in his branches.’ (‘Childbirth’). Favourite poem: ‘Visiting the Zoo’.

Wild words: a typical double page spread from Sarah James's [Be]yond — Wild words: a typical double page spread from Sarah James’s [Be]yond

Angst/ 23/08/2015

The Road Not Taken & FOMO

Just the other day Don Share posted on Twitter a link to a recording of Robert Frost reading ‘The Road Not Taken’. How wonderful to hear it in the poet’s voice. Here it is on YouTube:

Matthew Hollis, in his 2011 biography of Edward Thomas, Now All Roads Lead to France, tells of Thomas’s distress at this poem, taking it so personally, in fact, that it was the final push that sent him off to war (and his death). This, despite Frost trying to reassure him the poem wasn’t meant as an admonishment for Thomas’s (self-perceived) cowardice or indecision, but rather a very mixed message indeed, full of ironies and what the poet called ‘the fun of the thing’.

Then this morning I open up the latest email from Maria Popova’s excellent Brain Pickings, to read another beautiful essay, this week on the topic of all our roads not taken – In Praise of Missing Out: Psychoanalyst Adam Phillips on the Paradoxical Value of Our Unlived Lives.

In this early internet age of ‘fear of missing out’ – one of the truly troubling aspects of social media – the idea of being haunted by the road not taken, or the lives we might have lived or perhaps we feel we ought to be living, seems extraordinarily relevant.

As Philips puts it, “We have an abiding sense, however obscure and obscured, that the lives we do lead are informed by the lives that escape us,” going on to argue that our ‘wished for’ or fantasy lives, the ones we could have/might have lived, are as much a part of us as our real lives, and as Popova says, “the most ideal of these missed-out-on experiences reveal a great deal about the realest aspects of our lives.”

This is a fascinating read which got me thinking about so many aspects of online behaviour, not just FOMO or how the medium seems to fan the flames of envy, but also the holding power of online communities, fantasy worlds and games. I wrote an academic paper on the subject fifteen years ago entitled ‘You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave’ – props to the first person to tell us in the comments what song that line comes from!

Blog/ 19/08/2015

The Reading List, week 4: Heaney, O’Brien, Williams

As promised, The Reading List continues …

District & Circle, Seamus Heaney (Faber, 2006)

Everything you’d expect from a Heaney collection: poignant but unsentimental recollections of the past, images you can’t get out of your head days later, a familiar strangeness, the ghosts of various characters from Edward Thomas and Dorothy Wordsworth to Harry Boyle the barber in his ‘one room, one chimney house’ (‘A Clip’). Wondrous use of language, so many poems I want to read again and again. Favourite: ‘Höfn’:

Höfn

The three-tongued glacier has begun to melt.
What will we do, they ask, when boulder-milt
Comes wallowing across the delta flats

And the miles-deep shag-ice makes its move?
I saw it, ridged and rock-set, from above,
Undead grey-gristed earth-pelt, aeon scruff,

And feared its coldness that still seemed enough
To iceblock the plane window dimmed with breath,
deepfreeze the seep of adamantine tilth

And every warm, mouthwatering word of mouth.

Downriver, Sean O’Brien (Picador, 2001)

Interesting choice of opening poem in this collection, in which a poet at a reading is requested to ‘..bore the arse off your nearest and dearest instead / Supposing they haven’t divorced you already / Or selfishly put themselves under a train’ (‘Welcome, Major Poet!’) I’m not sure what I was expecting after that, but it wasn’t a series of gritty landscapes, laments, commentary and songs. We’re tossed between classical myth, popular culture and what feel like a series of in-jokes. There’s a rollicking sequence called ‘The Sports Pages’ in which the Olympics, armchair footie experts and the commercialisation of sport is all rounded on – and packaged up in a comedic rhyme scheme that reminds us it is, after all, a game. Then there are train journeys, river journeys, mythical journeys. I wouldn’t say that O’Brien does wistfulness, but in Downriver the sense of place and belonging, and beauty in even the most unlikely places, is tangible – ‘All our excursions run / Not to our love but where we lived and died.’ (‘Ravilious’). Favourite poem: ‘Postcards to the Rain God.’

Flying into the Bear, Chrissy Williams (Happenstance, 2013)

I seem to remember from Media Studies that ‘postmodern’ had the qualities of pastiche, parody and cultural scepticism – which is possibly where this pamphlet sits – many of the poems in ‘Flying into the Bear’ are puzzling and I wondered occasionally if I was trying to read more into them than the poet intended. That said, there’s a thrilling energy and ‘so much to like’ (if that’s not too abused a phrase) in the experimental feel. Ezra Pound appears as a puppet ‘bearded, elderly lunatic’ in a poem that’s written as stage directions (‘The Puppet’). Tommy Cooper’s death on live TV features in ‘Bears of the Light Brigade’. There are many notes at the back, which I probably should have read but didn’t. The special textual effects were fun but I wasn’t convinced I needed them. The poems that worked best for me were probably the less surreal numbers, written with a sort of deadpan lyricism, a moving simplicity. – ‘This is London. It is on fire. / I go to bed while it is burning. I wake up / and parts of it are still burning.’ (‘The Burning of the Houses’). Favourite poem: ‘The Invisible Bear’.

This post is the latest update to my ‘Reading List’ project begun in July 2015.

Blog/ 27/07/2015

The Reading List, week 3

Things have gone a tad pear-shaped these last 2 weeks and I’ve managed to read only 3 books –but I have various excuses, ranging from (ahem!) work, getting ready for our holiday (imminent), selling our house (exchange of contracts WE HOPE imminent), flat-hunting for new flat to replace the one we had to pull out of, a weekend of singing at Westminster Abbey (magical) and arrival of first grandchild (born this morning).

The Bees – Carol Ann Duffy (Picador 2012)

I heard Carol Ann read from this collection when it was shortlisted for the T S Eliot prize. For me she’s a perfect Poet Laureate in that she manages to write poetry that has wide appeal – yet it’s not ‘popular’ in the sense of relentlessly lightweight, and not ‘accessible’ in the sense of there being no work for the reader to do. If there was one overall impression I had after reading this book it was the pleasure Carol Ann takes in the sounds of language – she’s bold with her use of assonance, alliteration and internal rhyme, the most obvious example probably being ‘Cockermouth and Workington’ – ‘No folk fled the flood, / no flags furled or spirits failed –/one brave soul felled.’ Seeded through the book are a number of poems about the poet’s mother, all very moving. Favourite poem: ‘Cold’.

Philip Larkin – High Windows (Faber, 1974)

This is where I show my ignorance (or innocence?) because I admit to being a Larkin virgin (unless you count having read the odd notorious excerpt). I spotted this slim volume, romped through the book and thoroughly enjoyed it, even the curmudgeonly stuff, and laughed in what were probably the wrong places. Here is a style that seems to sit somewhere between John Betjeman in his less twee moments and contemporary poets like Sam Riviere: idiomatic, conversational, multi-layered wit. Reading this collection feels a little like overhearing an unguarded conversation in the pub. ‘And however you bank your screw, the money you save / Won’t in the end by you more than a shave.’ (‘Money’). Favourite poem: ‘Vers de société’.

Sarah Howe – Loop of Jade (Chatto, 2015)

I bought this book on the basis of one short poem in the Guardian and I’m pleased I did. You know that feeling when you’re reading stuff by someone you’ve not encountered before, and you just know this is the Real Thing. I see Loop of Jade is on the Forward Prize shortlist and I’ve absolutely no doubt Sarah Howe will be all over the big poetry prizes in the future, on GCSE syllabi and more. It’s a big, lush book which had me intrigued from the off. I wasn’t convinced by the back cover blurb and the promise of ‘an exploration of self and place, of migration and inheritance’, which sounded a bit familiar. But to be fair it’s hard to describe the density of the language and the pull of so many intricate images, of contemporary China, memories of the poet, her mother and grandmother (‘half-finished bowls / of rice, the ivory Mah Jong tablets / clacking, like joints, swift and mechanical’ – ‘Crossing from Guangdong’), ancient stories and fantastic characters. There are prose poems, snippets of chinese, a meditation on a life model, a hot night in Arizona, a beautiful ekphrastic poem which should be used as reference in all workshops on the subject.

At the start of the book is a quote from Borges referring to ‘a certain Chinese encyclopedia entitled The Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge‘ which classifies animals into groups such as ‘sirens’, ‘frenzied’ and ‘drawn with a very fine camelhair brush’. These then form the basis for many of the poems in the collection. Super, super stuff. Favourite poem at the moment (but hard to choose): ‘Woman in the garden’.

This post is the latest update to my ‘Reading List’ project begun in July 2015.

Blog/ 12/07/2015

The Reading List, week 2

The weather has been so good lately it’s tempting to go out for a walk (or a pub lunch!) rather than read. But I’m enjoying the discipline – I find last thing at night and first thing in the morning are good times to read. This week I read through five more collections.

Hangman’s Acre – Janet Sutherland (Shearsman 2009)

I love the way this collection is shaped, framed by poems of love, separation and reunion. In between there are tender explorations of ageing, loss and grief. But there’s much more than that: Janet’s poetry of the South Downs, spirituality as seen through nature, the death of animals and a powerful rage against female genital mutilation. And more – such as the short ‘Bone Monkey’ sequence, a precursor to the more recent collection of that name. Janet’s poems are spare and precise, a joy to read over. Favourite poem: ‘A Walk with Five Dewponds’.

Crow – Ted Hughes (Faber 1972)

At school, we read half a dozen Ted Hughes poems and I memorised ‘Hawk Roosting’ for my A level English. Reading Hughes got me interested in writing poetry and I’ve always regarded him with awe. And yet reading Crow made it so obvious that I’ve only scratched a very small bit of the surface when it comes to his work. This was actually a two-day job, even without re-reading as I went along (one of my ‘reading list’ rules). What to say about Crow? A masterclass in extended metaphor. I would say ‘a roller coaster ride’ if that weren’t such a stupid cliche – gruesome, comedic, horrifying, tender and raging, you could say it was all those things. Above all it challenged me, pushed me into things I didn’t like, made me want to put the book down, but just as strong was the urge to read on. I had a few nightmares. But it was worth it. Favourite poem: ‘Lovesong’.

Earthworks – Jacqueline Gabbitas (Stonewood Press, 2012)

More lovely poetry of nature, from close (and slightly spooky) encounters with creatures both dead and alive in forests, on hills and in the garden (‘Bird Buried’) to pagan celebrations, and everywhere the feel and smell of clay, soil, peat, coal and all that lies buried in the earth. There’s a touching memorial which appears to be to the poet’s mother (‘In principio’) and a couple of poems in some kind of dialect – which I struggled a bit with as I couldn’t ‘hear’ the voice, but no doubt would come to life in a reading. Many rich seams of meaning and experience to be uncovered in this short (and neatly packaged) collection. Favourite poem: ‘Bird Buried’.

Hugo Williams – Dear Room (Faber, 2006)

I think Hermione Lee in the cover blurb nicely sums up what I think of Hugo Williams – “.. a poet of such intimate charm, such grace and cunning, and such ordinary comical sadness”. I’ve dipped into this collection many times and it was easy to read it all through in one go. I know Williams’ work is regarded in some quarters as less than heavyweight. But personally I love the ‘accessible’ poems with their deadpan delivery and crushing irony, the small poems telling of big joy (eg ‘Pieces of Sky’) and even bigger melancholy (eg ‘The Cry’). So much to love in this collection – OK it’s not Crow, but who says you can’t enjoy both chocolate and curly kale? Favourite poem: ‘All the Way Down.’

Kim Lasky – Petrol, Cyan, Electric (Smith/Doorstop 2013)

This pamphlet is a real gem which was shortlisted for the Michael Marks award in 2013 and I don’t know why it hasn’t had the sort of widespread publicity and acclaim that it deserves. The poems link seemingly diverse topics as the science of colour (‘Newton Sees the Seventh Colour’), early experiments in electricity, a mother’s gradual loss of speech and slow descent – ‘We are past the fact of muscle, flesh and nails.’ (‘As if the very air’) and the poet’s imagined meeting with her father in 1944. It really does get better with every reading because there is always something more to discover and enjoy. Favourite poem: ‘There are not enough words in the language.’

This post is the latest update to my ‘Reading List’ project begun in July 2015.

Blog/ 05/07/2015

The Reading List, week 1

In the first week of my ‘read a poetry book a day’ quest I actually managed five books rather than seven, but I think that’s a pretty good start. As promised here’s a very brief roundup of my impressions, and a few notes on how the process is going generally.

The books

How to Pour Madness into a Teacup – Abegail Morley (Cinnamon, 2009)

A tense, claustrophobic world with two just principal protagonists (‘she’ and ‘he) and a series of nightmarish scenarios where little is said or sayable – ‘He reads her by her scars. / Does he remember writing them?’ (‘One Last Time’). The many references to limbs, hands, skin, nails and lips – dragging, wiping, scraping swallowing and sewing – of words, or body parts, or tears – is intensely physical and I felt completely pulled in. The poems are uncomfortable, but compelling – like staring at something you’d really rather turn away from. Read as a sequence at one sitting. Favourite poem: ‘Her Turn’.

Otherwhere – Catherine Smith (Smith/Doorstop, 2012)

Like Abegail, Catherine is both a friend and a poet for whom I have enormous respect. It was she who inspired me start the ‘Reading List’ project, as I explained in my last blog post. So who better to pick up and read in my first week. Reading Otherwhere in one go is rather than gorging on one of those huge chocolate Easter Eggs (in the days when they were filled with yet more chocolate.) One more piece? Oh go on then. In an effort to categorise the themes and styles I started trying to group individual poems under headings…Surreal, Satire, Poignant, Erotic charge, Childhood memory, Ironic observation and Powerful but hard to classify, which I admit is a bit of a cop out. A rich and rollicking great read. Favourite poem: ‘Story’.

A Recipe for Water – Gillian Clarke (Carcanet, 2009)

By the time I picked up A Recipe for Water I was starting to realise how much I have actually read of the poetry books I possess. I feel as if I haven’t had time to read them properly, but even having dipped in and out, I’m still finding many poems familiar. This collection is full of the beautiful nature poetry I associate with Gillian Clarke, her affinity with the Welsh language and her Welsh heritage – ”The sea turns its pages, speaking in tongues. / The stories are yours, and you are the story.’ – ‘First Words’. Favourite poem: ‘Kites’.

Brumaire and Later – Alasdair Paterson (Flarestack, 2010)

Ooh! I struggled a little here. A pamphlet, so short in length, but very dense. It’s in two halves and built around the premise of the French revolutionary calendar, ‘ in which not only every month but every day was re-named after familiar flora, fauna and work tools’. In the second half, the poems take on the same theme but extend it into post-revolutionary Russia. Not having any great handle on these undoubtedly historic events, I couldn’t quite crack the code. (I blame my French Revolution phobia on being force-fed A Tale of Two Cities when I was eleven.) But I liked the conceit of it, and it makes for some wonderful titles, from ‘Apple’ and ‘Goose’ to ‘Ear’ and ‘Holes’. Probably very entertaining to hear at a reading, with some background preamble.

Overwintering -Pippa Little (Carcanet, 2012)

I came across a poem by Pippa Little relatively recently and wanted to read more of her work. Pippa has a wide range of styles and registers, and many of the poems here are rooted in the Northumbrian landscape, its history and its characters. You could glance at the copious notes at the back and worry about what you’re getting into, but no need. The poems are perfectly enjoyable even if you don’t know what the odd word means or refers to (always a sign of good writing, in my book). It was easy to read through this collection in one go, and plenty that was memorable, such as ‘Beijing Flight, Thursday Morning’, ‘After Flooding’ and ‘Spending One Day with Patrick Kavanagh’. Favourite poem: ‘Axis’.

On the process:

To begin with it felt wrong to be reading poetry books as I would a novel – no re-reading or going back (or very little), just ploughing on. But there were unexpected benefits. First of all, when I got the end of a book, especially if I had read it through in one sitting, I found I had very good sense of the work, a big picture if you like, more wood than trees.

Secondly, there are sometimes extended or concurrent themes that may not be obvious when cherry picking or dipping in and out. A repeated word here and there, references between poems (intertextuality, I think that’s called?) and other nuances seem to ping out when you consume a whole book at once. You see many subtle and clever things that you might not otherwise.

It wasn’t easy at first, especially fighting my instinct to re-read when something wasn’t clear. I didn’t re-read until I’d got the end of the collection, and it paid off. On returning to individual poems they seemed so much clearer and familiar the second time around, more so than if I had spent half an hour doing a close reading of a single poem.

Angst/ 26/06/2015

The wonder of positive conversation

Yesterday I had an inspirational afternoon with the lovely Catherine Smith on the sunny terrace of Pelham House in Lewes. OK, so I’ve been a bit low this week what with the pending house move & lack of sleep for worrying about it. But I hardly have a bad life! I was reminded how crucial it is to spend time with friends and their different perspectives, different backgrounds, different cycles to their moods, just different lives. To get out and have conversations, to listen to the timbre of another voice, to be told something new, or see something differently.

I loved hearing Catherine talk about how she came to writing. And there in the conversation was something that set off a spark in my head. It was how she closed the gap between where she felt she was with poetry at the start of her Creative Writing MA, and where she realised she wanted to be. Her answer was simple: she read everything she could get her hands on.

The university allowed her to borrow 15 books a week, so she ‘devoured’ 15 poetry books a week. When she got through them, she went to other libraries. All this at the same time as condensing the MA into one year and bringing up two small children. This is what genuine drive looks like. A calling. I listened to this and thought about how I buy poetry books and then dip and pick at them, or sometimes have them there to read and never get around to it. How I don’t have any children or even elderly parents to worry about and the generous nature of my husband who allows me a free poetry rein. How I know in my heart I’ll never be a big-name poet but if I allow myself to think I’ve gone as far as I’m capable, then that indeed is as good as it will ever get.

At the end of a week in which I’ve gone into a mini meltdown of overwhelm, it’s probably really stupid of me to be setting myself yet more goals. But I feel inspired to follow Catherine’s lead and create a schedule for myself. I could start with the books on my shelf – if I read every poem I have in the house that would be a massive result! Part of me wants to make it into a ‘project’ and not only do the reading but create an online reading group and invite others to join me. But that would take me away from reading time! And I have enough damn projects on the go as it is, not all of which I’m managing to keep up…

When I took myself on a writing retreat it was easy to read a whole collection in a day (well, maybe not Michael Symmons Roberts’ Drysalter or the complete works of William Blake). So here’s the target: seven books a week, and no cheating by choosing just the slim volumes. Catherine suggested picking every fourth book on the shelf, or working through (roughly) in alphabetical order.

Of course, if anyone wants to join me and compare notes, that would be lovely! But I won’t turn it into a PROJECT, at least not unless it becomes A Thing. I can’t promise an in-depth review of every book, but I will report on what I’ve read in any one week. If life (or work, or a house move, or a holiday, or a good conversation) gets in the way, I will try not to beat myself up about it. This is not a competition, and as long as I’m reading, I’m not worrying so much about the writing …

Blog/ 21/05/2015

And so to bed (and Bath)

Actually I wish I was still in my bed right now as I’m feeling a tad slug-like after another late night ‘up in town’ as my mum used to say. (It was always ‘up’ to London – even at the station announcers would always say “attention please on the up platform…” – I wonder if one goes ‘up’ to London from points north? Hmmm.)

But the ‘bed’ reference is more to do with what’s on my bedside table in the process of being read. The latest additions are a copy of Brittle Star issue 36 and a sleek little pamphlet called ‘Earthworks’ by Jacqueline Gabbitas. I was fortunate to meet Jacqueline and her Brittle Star co-editor Martin Parker last night at the launch event, at the Barbican Library. She was a warm and effervescent host, a hugs-rather-than-handshakes person who made everyone feel like long-lost friends. It was a lovely relaxed atmosphere. Oddly enough I was asked to read first, which is becoming a habit – I think I’ve been on first in the last four readings I’ve done. I also noticed I made a teensy error in the poem that appears in the magazine (‘practice’ instead of ‘practise’) but thankfully I wasn’t had up by the grammar police. My apologies nonetheless.

I was dead impressed with the whole operation – the magazine and other publications from Stonewood Press, their imprint, are beautifully produced, the event was well organised and well attended and they even provided free wine, Pimm’s & strawberries. Nice! Not only that, but it was a impressive range of readers (poetry and short stories). I particularly enjoyed a two-hander from Joolz Sparkes and Hilaire, who read a selection of poems from their project ‘London Undercurrents’ featuring tales of feisty London women from different periods of the city’s history. Also very nice to hear (and speak to) writers Jonny Wiles, Ruth Brandt and Stewart Foster.

Also on my current reading list is the May issue of Poetry (the cover alone has been giving me strange dreams). I suppose one of the pleasures of editing a monthly poetry journal (as opposed to the more usual half-yearly) is the ability to include longer pieces if you so wish, or to focus on a single theme or style. April’s edition was dedicated to ‘breakbeat poetry’, or a celebration of ‘new American poetry in the age of hip-hop’ as Don Share says in his introduction. This month the magazine opens with a 35-page long poem by Frank Bidart. Equally daunting is a 22-page essay by Donald Revell entitled ‘Scholium.’ I’m never sure of the best way to tackle longer pieces – I find the amount of concentration needed makes them impossible to digest in one sitting. So it’s usual case of start, skim, and go back. Or not, depending on how gripped I am.

And finally, Sonofabook – a new twice-yearly journal from CBEditions, a mix of poetry, short stories and non-fiction pieces which looks very promising. There’s an offer on at the moment as an incentive to subscribe. Sonofabook features a guest editor for each issue, and is the brain child of publisher Charles Boyle, who incidentally writes a very honest blog by the same name – check out this excoriating piece about Faber, for example!

Siegfried Baber pamphlet launch, photo by www.dotandlucyphotography.co.uk — Photo of Siegfried Baber by http://www.dotandlucyphotography.co.uk

Just a quick mention about last week’s event in Bath, which was such a pleasure for me – to unfurl the Telltale rollerbanner in Toppings bookshop and to introduce our latest Telltale poet Siegfried Baber and his pamphlet When Love Came To The Cartoon Kid. When I began the whole Telltale thing I didn’t realise how much enjoyment and satisfaction I would get from helping other poets on their way. The more you give to these things the more they seem to pay back. That’s not to say I’m not still ambitious for myself – but the two things (helping yourself and helping others) aren’t incompatible. Personally I think I they balance each other up.

It reminds me of a singing teacher who once told me that the way not to ‘run out of breath’ is to support it and keep fuelling it, rather than giving up too soon. If you believe all you have is a small amount of breath, that’s all you’ll ever have. But if you trust your lungs to do what they’re good at you’ll find there’s a lot more inside you than you think.

Blog/ 23/04/2015

Reading from memory – the sequel

Lauderdale House - Poetry in the House

Well I did it. Yesterday evening at Lauderdale House in Highgate I recited two of my poems from memory. It was actually the perfect set-up – no microphone (which I usually like having, but in this case I was concerned it would prevent me from moving freely), the chairs set out in a semi circle, so I felt like a real story-teller. More about it in a mo.

First of all, I have to say how grateful I am to Shanta Acharya for giving me the opportunity to read at Poetry in the House, which she has been organising for nearly 20 years, without any outside funding. The evening began with an invitation to join Shanta and the other readers for a bite to eat at a nearby restaurant. A very sociable start to the night and one I particularly appreciated, because I knew I wouldn’t have even a moment to socialise at the end, being at the mercy of the 22.47 from Victoria.

The size of the audience was impressive (a lot more chairs had to be added after I took the above photo), and Shanta’s hosting style is wonderfully relaxed – all the readers’s biogs were on the flyers that people had in their hands, so she dispensed with verbal introductions, other than saying our names, and I liked that. It really seemed to put the poems to the fore, rather than the personalities. And what poems – all the sets were very strong.

Richard Skinner was launching his Smokestack pamphlet ‘Terrace’ (more on that shortly – we have pledged to swap pamphlets but will be doing so this evening at the Vanguard Readings) and treated us to ‘a Nebuchadnezzar joke’ and a beautiful poem written for a friend’s wedding which has yet to take place, amongst others. When Richard and I were talking earlier I was interested to learn that he never attended poetry courses or workshops, despite his impressive track record as a poet and the fact that he is Director of the Fiction Programme at Faber Academy. For my part, I replied that although I do go to workshops, I had to concede that the individual poems I’ve had the most success with hadn’t ever been workshopped. Hmm!

I was intrigued by the poetry of Mona Arshi – sometimes surreal, always surprising – who was ‘pre-launching’ her first collection, Small Hands, which she told me at supper beforehand was one of the first poetry books from Liverpool University Press. Another poet I want to read more of is Philip Hancock. I really enjoyed the mix of unselfconscious invention and gently ironic observation which I got from his poems. I’m not very articulate at explaining why particular poet voices resonate me with, but his did. Geraldine Paine‘s thoughtful and touching poems had both humour and beauty and Alan Murray‘s cheery pessimism and clever word-play certainly got the biggest laughs of the evening, but don’t be fooled by that, there was some heavyweight work in there.

I had the opening spot, which I was pleased about, because it meant I could then sit back and enjoy everyone else’s poems. I’d set myself the task last week of memorising a poem. In the end I did two from memory – the opener being a short and relatively easy to remember ‘list’ piece. I took Peter Kenny’s advice about tying in certain movements or gestures – I think that definitely helped to put the phrases in my mind. Being in the centre of a little ‘arena’ was also a bonus. I actually really enjoyed it, especially the silent pauses – the feeling of power, when you can hear a pin drop and you sense that people are waiting for your next words, or perhaps on edge wondering if you’ve lost it – is indescribably heady!

Halfway through the set I read one more from memory, a poem from my pamphlet, called ‘Closure’, which I’ve read often and which was written over a period of many years, so I really felt I ought to be able to remember it. As it happened, I did fluff a couple of words, but I didn’t let it show on my face and I don’t think anyone noticed. I was just a bit disappointed that I said ‘scar’ instead of ‘zipper’, since it’s one of the key moments in the poem!

So, onwards. I think I’ll do pretty much the same set next week at Pighog in Brighton, another great venue to read in, although I will be behind a mic there so I’ll need to prepared for that. If you’re somewhere within reach of Brighton do come! It’s just me and a performance poet / mulitmedia artist called Andreea Stan who I’m not familiar with, but from her Vimeo channel it looks like it could be an intriguing experience. Take a look at this – The Ocean is Almost Seven Miles Deep.

I can thoroughly recommend trying to memorise a poem or two. I opted not to have the book in my hand, because I think that would have made me less confident. Maybe that sounds odd, but not having anything to ‘fall back on’ does mean you commit to it fully, and I think that’s the key – you have to be entirely committed to delivering it from memory, and so practice as much as you need to do that. That would be my advice, anyway. I also think the audience responds to you better if you have nothing in your hands – I’ve certainly felt that as an audience member – there’s an immediacy, an intimacy that’s compelling.

Category: Books

The books

On the process: