I’m just taking a moment to post what will probably be my last of 2018, and I have to be careful not to descend into a sort of ’round robin’ where I refer to myself in the third person, blurt out a list of frightening achievements and try to put a positive spin on any chronic ailments with a sad emoji, etc etc. Actually I have nothing new to declare on the chronic ailments front, so HURRAH for that. Frightening achievements? Hmmm… let me see. I think that’s also a no. BUT this was the year…
… a ‘Black Friday’ deal had me. Then after receiving my first book, Raymond Antrobus’s The Perseverance I was on a train to a friends’ reunion and realised I’d forgotten the ‘wrapped pre-loved paperback’ for the Secret Santa. So I wrapped Ray’s half-read book in a page from the Guardian and sacrificed it. The recipient seemed delighted with the book though – my consolation, and a reminder to give poetry more often to people who don’t buy poetry books.
I went to the Forward Prize readings
…having heard they were ‘different’ to the T S Eliots, plus a poet friend pulled together a few of us to be fangirls and boys for amazingly talented and unbelievably modest Abigail Parry. She didn’t win, but I loved the readings, especially Danez Smith who read this poem as a spellbinding encore.
I didn’t book to go to the T S Eliot Prize Readings in January 2019
This is the first one I’ve missed in (I think) five or six years. But having been to the Forwards, and bearing in mind the difficulties of getting to the South Bank on a Sunday in January, I thought I’d give it a miss. In previous years the experience has been enhanced for me by attending Katy Evans Bush‘s workshop the day before the readings, in which the shortlisted books are discussed. I’m not sure if she’s running it this year, but if she I highly recommend it.
Telltale Press launched its first and last anthology
A huge relief to get this ‘out the door’, and almost as exciting as actual publication was being shortlisted for the Poetry Business Pamphlet Competition (oh that was last year, so excuse me for STILL milking it, he he.)
… OK, she was definitely in the recording. My little voice might not make the cut at all – but hey! I was there 🙂
Also …I went on a lovely Garsdale Retreat week with Ian Duhig, and blogged (blagged?) my way through the charming Swindon Poetry Festival, managed (just about) a ‘dry’ November, perfected my front crawl in the tiny local swimming pool, discovered the joy of yoga, sang in Westminster Abbey and Canterbury Cathedral and experienced my first live ballet at the Royal Opera House no less. All this and a fantastic summer in the garden. Life is good.
Although I’ve been writing poetry, I haven’t been sending poems out as much as previous years, which means I’ve only had a handful of poems published. But the first collection is starting to have a shape, and I have a good feeling about it (you have to, don’t you?) AND a good poet friend has got me into freelance features writing again, so there are things coming up on that front in 2019.
Thank you so much for reading, commenting on and supporting this blog. I hope the season of goodwill is good for you, wherever and however you spend it. Here’s to whatever you look forward to.
Something different. I answered the Poetry Society’s call for audience members at a recording of BBC Radio 4’s ‘Book Club’. The guest poet being interviewed by James Naughtie was Alice Oswald. I’ve heard the stories about Alice rarely giving interviews or readings, and since the session was to discuss her 2016 collection Falling Awake (which I loved), I thought it would be fun to do.
I’d never been to the iconic Broadcasting House before, so that in itself was exciting. I wanted to take a photo of the huge Latin inscription in the foyer but I was a bit intimidated by all the security and number of people standing around wearing headsets and keeping an eye on the poets as we all loitered waiting to be ‘called in’. I just assumed the audience members would be poets, and I wasn’t far wrong. There was a large group of people from Poet in the City for starters. And I was happy to spot a familiar face in Cheryl Moskowitz.
The discussion/recording took place in the Council Chamber, a semi-circular wood-panelled room which dates from when the building was first opened in 1931. Huge portraits of past Director-Generals look down on you, and the Art Deco is everywhere, including the lovely clock face above the fireplace. For me, it was worth going just to see all that!
There were about thirty in the audience, and quite a few of us got the chance to ask a question. Alice’s answers were fascinating, and although I wish I could have recorded it, I guess that’s a bit daft as it’s going to be broadcast in February anyway. Whether or not ‘my’ question makes the final edit remains to be seen!
I was recently asked to select some readings to go in between the movements of a choral piece. The piece is Bob Chilcott’s On Christmas Night. In it, Chilcott sets a number of carols in a sequence, telling the Christmas story from the fall of Adam and Eve (yes, it hadn’t occurred to me that it starts there – Nativity Plays usually skip straight to the shepherds in the fields) – to the birth of Jesus.
I’ll come clean now – it was my husband who asked me, on behalf of the East Sussex Community Choir which he conducts. The project interested me, so even though I knew there wouldn’t be any payment on this occasion (!) I was happy to take it on.
The score suggests which readings would be suitable, but that others may be substituted. Now, I’ve been to plenty of concerts (especially at Christmas) where there are readings in between the music. Almost without exception they are either the standard Bible readings of ‘lessons and carols’ (such as the one that’s broadcast each year from King’s College Cambridge), or they are ‘light’ – passages from Dickens or ‘The night before Christmas’ by Clement Clark Moore, amusing Christmas-themed stories or anecdotes. Or else it’s Eliot’s Journey of the Magi.
I wasn’t interested in doing the ‘same old’, so I set out to find poems or texts that were by living/contemporary writers. I wanted secular, not sacred – words that would complement the religious story being told by the choir, and invite contemplation of the wider spiritual context – themes of wonder, joy, love, birth, death and the cycle of nature.
I topped and tailed with two extracts from A C Grayling‘s extraordinary The Good Book, a kind of secular Bible and a fascinating compilation of thousands of texts by philosophers, teachers, prophets, leaders, literary figures and writers. So, alongside the carol about Adam eating the apple and falling from grace, we are reminded how a tree bears both flowers and fruit, and its fruit is knowledge, which teaches the good gardener how to understand the world. The closing extract is a short passage about the nature of wisdom, which parallels the Biblical story of the ‘wise men’.
For the rest of the readings I chose poems:
Janet Sutherland‘s ‘line’ from her collection Hangman’s Acre takes us into a wintry but beautiful landscape where geese ‘carve a soundless line’, where ‘simple shapes’ and ‘muffled earth’ set a scene of waiting and anticipation, before ‘the line sets out alone’. There is both apprehension and wonder in this – to navigate a path (through life?) with ‘no compass no margin’ and yet not to hesitate, but to simply wait for the moment. For me, this approximates to the journey facing Mary, and indeed Christ after her – they face up to the unknown because they have no choice – they have faith and they accept.
‘Prayer’ by Carol Ann Duffy is a favourite of mine, and I knew that it would be familiar to at least some of the audience. For me it examines self-doubt, sadness, possibly even grief, in a way that uplifts by showing us the hope and love present when we open our ears to the quotidian sounds around us. Life goes on, children practise their piano scales, we cope with bad days – all this and more expressed in a sonnet which concludes with an extract from the Shipping Forecast, an enduring and recognisable ritual not unlike daily prayers and ‘Latin chants’. And as with ‘line’, there are musical references in ‘Prayer’ which felt appropriate for this context.
When it came to the nativity, I wanted a poem to express all the wonder, hope, and love felt by a parent at the birth of a child. ‘William’ by Jack Underwood (from his collection Happiness) is a creative, exuberant and highly original love poem to a new baby, from his father. Starting from the point of what he is familiar with, the speaker then finds himself at a loss when faced with ‘your fine melon head, your innocent daring-to-be’ – completely ‘uncooked’ at the newness and intensity of his feelings – ‘I can feel my socks being on’ – pure joy and a lot of fun.
The final poem I chose was the wonderful song-like ‘A short story of falling’ by Alice Oswald from her collection Falling Awake. It takes the audience back to the theme of birth, lifecycles, regeneration and the wonder of nature. The title also plays on the idea of the Biblical ‘fall’ with which we began. There is so much beauty in this poem – the summer shower that ‘steals the light and hides it in a flower’ and the narrator wanting to know how to ‘balance/ the weight of hope against the light of patience’. Like a song, we reach the end and feel we are ready to being again – ‘the story of the falling rain / that rises to the light and falls again’.
I can’t say yet whether all this will work or not, as the concert is this evening in Lewes! The reader will be a member of the choir who’s also an actor – in rehearsal he delivered the poems with sensitivity and clarity. I haven’t asked for the poems to be printed in the programme as I didn’t want to risk breaching any copyright, so it’s all in the reading. All the poems are credited though, and I hope it may encourage some people to seek out the books in which they appear. Not everyone will be that interested, but at least it gets contemporary writing in front of a general audience.
So no ‘jolly old Saint Nick’ or Tiny Tim or the ghost of Christmas past for the audience tonight, but more challenging fare! Let’s do it!
Katy Evans-Bush‘s TS Eliot shortlist workshop is fast becoming an institution. Now in its sixth year, it’s a fine precursor to the Prize readings which take place the following day, and the prize giving itself the day after that.
The format is straightforward – Katy reads the ten shortlisted books, chooses from them a number of poems to discuss, and invites poets along to the Poetry School in Lambeth for a day to mull them over. I’ve been to one of these workshops once before and had a wonderful time. This time I had to confess I hadn’t read any of the collections, but in a way that’s part of the excitement – to be introduced to them by someone like Katy. Not only does she offer her thoughts and insights into the works, and invite us all into the discussion, but she also brings to the table her formidable background as a writer, reader and and literary critic. Plus the odd bit of insider gossip, of course.
The TS Eliot Prize is probably the highest profile UK poetry prize and that’s not just because the winner gets £20,000. The annual prize readings are a popular draw. I was fortunate to be there at the South Bank last night. The result will be announced tonight – I won’t be at the award ceremony this year (no invitation!? Boo! – although that didn’t stop me going last year!)
Anyway, here’s a quick round-up of the books, a note or two from the workshop and what I thought of the readings. It’s in the order that they read last night. I can’t presume to review any of the collections, but I’ve included links to interesting reviews of each of them, should you want to find out more. Oh, and a few pics at the end.
Bernard O’Donoghue, The Seasons of Cullen Church (Faber)
In an interesting mix of shortlisted poets, O’Donoghue represents the old guard, if you like – experienced, a Whitbread Prize winner, Emeritus Fellow of Wadham College, writing the sort of assured, Heaney-esque lyric poetry one expects to see on the TSE shortlist. In the time-pressured vipers’ nest of the workshop room the few poems we looked at got short shrift, but to be fair it was near the end of the day and we needed cake.
Ruby Robinson, Every Little Sound (Liverpool University Press)
Born in 1985, Ruby Robinson is clearly this year’s newcomer wild card (but not to be dismissed -look what happened last year). It’s a slim collection of little more than 30 poems, in a very small format (pamphlet sized) and even smaller typeface. This book was also shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, so clearly is a standout. In our workshop, various aspects of the sample poems came under attack (errors in grammar, inexplicable line endings).. could envy have been getting the better of us? Surely not!
At the readings, Ruby stood her ground very successfully and if she was nervous she made a good job of keeping it under control.
A collection of mostly short poems, with a section devoted to the Bach Flower Remedies, in which Towers personifies each flower with the qualities it purports to cure. These were clever and entertaining, but workshoppers identified a tendency to sail dangerously close to whimsy.
Katharine came across as a little nervous in the reading. Much as I admire brevity when it comes to introductions, as a member of the audience I found myself feeling supremely uninvolved. It’s a tricky balance.
In the workshop, none of us knew anything much about J O Morgan, but Katy filled us in on his previous publications and helped us into Interference Pattern, which doesn’t follow any traditional path. There are no titles, and although there are section markers it’s not clear if the sections are meant to be read as individual pieces. There are some recurring threads but it’s not all narrative. ‘Voices jostling… like radio interference’ was how Katy described it. I was intrigued by the idea of it not being ‘one poem’ but then again clearly meant to be taken as a whole.
I travelled up to London with poet friend Charlotte Gann and by the time we arrived I’d been won over by her enthusiasm for J O Morgan. The reading he gave was mesmerising – all without a script, and with an intensity of presence that gripped me utterly. Slightly scary too – which probably helps if you want to keep people’s attention!
At the start of the second half of readings, host Ian McMillan announced that a few people had complained that they couldn’t hear people clearly enough – thank god it wasn’t just me then! And the second half sound was noticeably better.
Vahni Capildeo, Measures of Expatriation (Picador)
One of the big guns – this book has already won the Forward Prize for Best Poetry Collection, and it’s clearly a big read. It’s in seven sections and is packed with not just poetry but dense passages of prose. It deals with displacement, leaving, distance, language, identity and many of such topics that are absolutely of the moment. ‘Complex and multifaceted but readable’. One of the workshoppers said she was halfway through and although she thought she’d find it heavy going it absolutely wasn’t.
Last night Vahni was first to read after the break, as a few audience members finished their ice creams and beers. It could have been a challenge but she was confident reader, friendly and fun. My brain struggled however to connect to what she was reading, I felt I’d come to it too ‘cold’ to really get a handle on it. I often find that though, and I also felt it when we read sections of the book in the workshop – I’d rather have the space and clarity of reading it on my own off the page, with time to look up references I don’t understand, that kind of thing.
Is there anyone who doesn’t love Ian Duhig? He’s such a great combination – a man of the people who’s absolutely grounded in the real world, local communities and politically engaged, generous and humble, but also fiercely intelligent with a masterful grasp of history, the classics and poetry in all forms. AND FUNNY TOO. Yikes! That’s my impression anyway.
It took me a while to adjust to Duhig’s accent in his reading and I wanted him to take the poems more slowly, so we could savour and enjoy. By this point my neighbour was already suggesting that us Southerners were woefully unrepresented – come on, Sarf London! Don’t leave it to Kate Tempest!
The premise of Void Studies is Rimbaud’s idea of writing series of poems as ‘pure music’ with no discernible message being communicated. He never did it, so here’s Rachael Boast’s version. You have to let the poems ‘wash over you … like listening to Debussy’ was Katy’s explanation. Basically French symbolist poetry, but in English. The poems we looked at struck me as having lovely ethereal language & imagery. Mostly in couplets, short. My kind of poetry, one might think.
Boast has a strong voice, a real pleasure to listen too, although perhaps it was the nature of the poems that they did indeed start to wash over me, without leaving any strong impression.
Here’s John Field’s review of Void Studies, only one of the ten reviews he wrote on the shortlisted books which inexplicably never made it onto the TSE Foundation website, which is a great shame. John is a fine reviewer as evidenced on by his blog Poor Rude Lines, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who would like to have linked to his reviews and help publicise them. Ah well.
Denise Riley, Say Something Back (Picador)
The ‘beating heart of the book’, said Katy, is the central sequence ‘A Part Song’ on the theme of a mother’s grieving for her dead son. We read the whole sequence round the room as part of the workshop and it was certainly moving. ‘A stupendous book’ was Katy’s pronouncement, and Riley was ‘a poet’s poet with a fine reputation.’ Katy pointed out that she’d come a long way, from being last published by Reality Street (‘Reality Street! Not even Shearsman!’) to Picador – a big leap, well deserved though. Indeed at the end of the day most people in the room felt this could be the winner.
The best word I can use to describe Denise Riley’s reading is ‘defiant’ – there was a strength of feeling in her delivery which was compelling, although I struggled with her chosen emphasis at times, and the long pauses between words. We didn’t get to hear ‘A part song’ which I was kind of hoping for.
Surely gets a prize for the most eye-catching cover, and in fact I absolutely LOVED all the Picador covers, and the size/shape of them. Full marks, Picador packaging peeps.
So here’s Jackself – a collection of poems about various Jacks of legend, phrase & fable, of childhood – Jack Sprat, Jack Frost, Jack O’Bedlam… Englishness and a sense of place (Polley’s place – the English/Scottish border country), themes of being trapped, a confrontational, unstable world. Katy says ‘You’re either with him or you’re not’.
In the workshop I was with him, I enjoyed the poems and the handling of the themes. Made me think a bit of Janet Sutherland’s Bone Monkey, or Ted Hughes’s Crow, although less dark than either of those (as far as I could tell from what I read).
Polley’s reading was the penultimate and having to go before Alice Oswald is also a pressure. I remember really enjoying his reading from The Havocs a few years ago. More self-assured now, but a little more mannered in his delivery. I still enjoyed the poems though.
I struggled to find a review of Jackself, but you might be luckier than me!
Alice Oswald, Falling Awake (Cape)
What can I say here? I loved the poems we read in the workshop, including ‘Swan’ which she then read last night. Falling Awake won the Costa prize already and Oswald is a previous winner of the TSE Prize. Her reading was magnificent, all recited from memory which I love but it wasn’t just that. She had such a presence. ‘Commanding presence’ is a cliche but it really was that.
And so to the result – only a few hours to go. My metaphorical money is still on Alice Oswald, although my fellow workshoppers came down in the Denise Riley camp. With Vahni Capildeo the other in the triumvirate of ‘likely to wins’. Or how about J O Morgan as a dark horse?
The books…in no specific orderMe & KEB at the end of the poetry book marathon
And on the way home, what should I pass than Pimlico Plumbers and their amazing Christmas decs – in the middle of January!
Hello!? It’s January 15th, people!
But London was as beautiful as ever at 5pm in January…
