tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16482307502087635652024-03-05T10:23:17.473+00:00DisplacementFiona Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10052038869211775919noreply@blogger.comBlogger161125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1648230750208763565.post-69475475189230366802017-11-27T17:59:00.000+00:002017-11-27T17:59:10.114+00:00Poetry in Aldeburgh 2017<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">There’s
an irresistibly obvious metaphor for what’s happened in Aldeburgh.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A phoenix chick emerged last year from the
crash-and-burn ashes of the international festival.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now the chick has fledged, showing off some
fiery feathers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">It’s
3 weeks since the festival, too late for blogging really.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I knew many of the participants which
makes it awkward.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Anyway here’s what’s
stayed in my mind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">***Mimi
Khalvati standing in a brick niche outside the Jubilee Hall for a pre-reading
smoke, her silver hair pouring down over a gold silk top: our furtive
saint.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As Poetry School co-founder she led
a 20<sup>th</sup> birthday event with three star pupils, Edward Doegar, Hannah
Lowe and Karen McCarthy Woolf.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All four
did each other proud; it was lovely to sense such strong personal relationships
on stage. When Ed read <a href="https://www.poetryarchive.org/poem/overblown-roses" target="_blank">Mimi’s sonnet ‘Overblown Roses’</a> I thought she / all of
us would cry. It starts with a child and her mother and moves with the metaphor
of the roses:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span>I
suddenly saw afresh</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">the rose now, the rose ahead: where
a petal</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">clings to a last breath…</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">At
the end, someone asked those in the hall who’d been taught by Mimi to stand up
and many of us did.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When people write
PhDs etc on poetic influences of the last 20 years in Britain she will get her
own chapter. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">***Ishion
Hutchinson’s workshop on imitation in poetry, in a Sunday morning sun-filled
gallery: from Ben Jonson to current plagiarism controversies to a translation
of the mid-20<sup>th</sup> century Greek poet George Seferis.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was very good to hear Hutchinson support
imitation and the “rich harmony of implications” it can offer – when it’s not
plagiarism or mockery or otherwise in bad faith.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And to
discover another Seferis fan who probably made conversions that morning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The poem he looked at was ‘Upon a Line of
Foreign Verse’ translated <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=48293" target="_blank">(here, in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Poetry</i>)</a>
by A E Stallings. I’m used to the Keeley & Sherrard parallel text edition
of Seferis.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Strangely, he isn’t a
difficult poet to translate, and anyway K&S make it look easy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it was a delight to read another
translator, and such a good one. It starts:</span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Happy
is he who has made the journey of Odysseus</span></i><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">. Happy if, as </span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></i><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">the
journey loomed,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">He felt the sturdy rigging of a
love, stretched taut inside his body </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>like the veins where the blood booms,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Of a love with unbroken rhythm,
invincible as music and undying,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">because it was born when we were
born, and whether it dies when </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>we do, we do not know, and it is no use trying.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">God help me to say, in a moment of
great joy, what is this love?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">I sit sometimes surrounded by an
alien land, and I hear its distant </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>roar, like the boom of the sea mingled with an inexplicable </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>whirlwind from above.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">It
was also a pleasure to discover Ishion Hutchinson’s poetry. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If there’s a Seferis / Derek Walcott link –
the sea, myth, wandering and exile, and something about the style – there’s a
Hutchinson connection to both of them: his new book, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">House of Lords and Commons</i>, shares these preoccupations in richly
worded poems and he shares Walcott’s Caribbean roots.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>‘The Orator’ begins:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Amid a ratcheted, alloyed ghost,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">I returned stares in the blackout </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">that clogged the podium where a bore</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">was harping in dead metaphor</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">the horror of colonial heritage.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">I sank in the dark, haemorrhaged.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">There I remembered the peninsula</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">of my sea, the breeze opening the
water</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">to no book but dusk; no electricity,
</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">just stars pulsing over shanties,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">and, later, an inextinguishable
moon,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">invisible in this dark NYC room,</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJJxkvcYeDPUPuWWheKKsoO6Bc9y0x1GalqIXAFIEBdgW-S4dCJ3gp827n1waqmm02EXeSO_w5pphzjGeeQwWJvfIme6l6DlYYMNEElLV7BXaBsD5wZc2J7gaMvMdm1bNHnR60ljpIOMKf/s1600/aldeburgh+books+2017.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJJxkvcYeDPUPuWWheKKsoO6Bc9y0x1GalqIXAFIEBdgW-S4dCJ3gp827n1waqmm02EXeSO_w5pphzjGeeQwWJvfIme6l6DlYYMNEElLV7BXaBsD5wZc2J7gaMvMdm1bNHnR60ljpIOMKf/s320/aldeburgh+books+2017.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">***Along
with Mimi’s reading, this one was memorable: Raymond Antrobus / Keith Jarrett /
Rachel Long who filled the Jubilee Hall with energy and rhetoric.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/92375/echo-589363f95ef54" target="_blank">See here</a> for a resonant poem of Antrobus’
about Gaudí’s cathedral, sound, deafness and much else.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jarrett can rhyme as fast and beguilingly in
French as English and switch from North London to broad Caribbean and back in
an instant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lF-TM3DZtuo" target="_blank">This link’s to a video </a>because
listening to him is so enjoyable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I went
off with books by both of them; Long doesn’t have one yet but surely will do
soon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She writes tough and precise poems.
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here are some lines from one called ‘Translating
Hemispheres #2’</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">I’m thinking of Baudelaire, of hair
skating on thin air between swimmer’s shoulders</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">and barber floor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am thinking of writing him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am thinking, will he recognize me now</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">I am almost boy. Will he recognize
me more?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Once I tried to hold his voice,
but it slipped</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">through ‘pianist’ fingers. If only I
had learnt to play.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">I took measurements of his sleeping
face, his waking, his soft and angry face,</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">all his faces.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Except the one I never saw because he was all
back and no back – ever.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">***The
Resurgence Prize winners’ reading, which far exceeded my low expectations. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Eco-poetry is hard to write well – as one of the
judges Mina Gorji and Lavinia Greenlaw said, we don’t seem to have found the
vocabulary for what is happening perhaps because we can’t grasp it – but the
three finalists’ poems (<a href="http://www.resurgenceprize.org/2017-awards/" target="_blank">online here</a> together with some excellent runners-up) are all
very striking.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">***HappenStance
launch: two pamphlets, Lois Williams’ <i><a href="https://www.happenstancepress.com/index.php/shop/product/47776-some-couples-%E2%88%92-jennifer-copley" target="_blank">Like other animals </a></i>(with some lovely exact turns of phrase) and Ramona Herdman’s
<a href="https://www.happenstancepress.com/index.php/shop/product/47777-bottle-%E2%88%92-ramona-herdman/category_pathway-66" target="_blank"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bottle</i></a> (whose theme of family alcoholism
clearly intrigued the audience – a near-taboo subject?); and <a href="https://www.happenstancepress.com/index.php/shop/product/47775-and-poems-1970-%E2%80%93-2017-%E2%80%93-michael-mackmin/category_pathway-64" target="_blank"><i>And</i>, Michael Mackmin’s</a> first
full collection for nearly 50 years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All
three rewarding, very differently.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Michael’s
poems, full of love and sex and place but less birdlife than one might
expect, are pungent, gamey, hung for a long time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Do read the one on the <a href="https://www.happenstancepress.com/index.php/shop/product/47775-and-poems-1970-%E2%80%93-2017-%E2%80%93-michael-mackmin/category_pathway-64" target="_blank">HappenStance page</a>, ‘Pax’.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is from ‘Inishturk’:</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Where else would a tall man down
from the hill</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">bid everyone good morning, so safely</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">at four in the afternoon?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Such a place has frame and courtesy.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">We who are not islanders, well – </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">we are lapped by unreasonable tears</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">in this outside: washing out from
our hair</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">the sand of that clear shore.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">***Michael
Laskey, founder of the original Aldeburgh festival, reading with Kate Miller
and John Clegg.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>None of them had met but
it worked – Clegg riffing on ideas to make us laugh, Miller’s painterly poems
filled with light, sea etc and Laskey’s wisdom, vegetable and otherwise.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s a Smith Doorstop <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Selected Selected</i> (not a typo) of his just out, and one of Mimi
Khalvati too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nice idea, nice way to
sell books.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Michael read ‘The Last
Swim’, twelve beautiful lines ending:</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">And that’s best, to have gone on
swimming</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">easily to the end: your crawl</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">full of itself, and the future</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">no further than your folded towel.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWLv5bFVEd7LtYzETjZJExMlOHMxNg-AKPYIzosXdLDoTYwrsGi-rRtGZCWpZ7-H5S-FU8PcSyZYRPf2xPVXfpX3V-xAr7tJOdnSMSMv5QQg9OcWqcTNctxGFktIBQWZxeMSCHxa0zXmDr/s1600/aldeburgh+swimmers2017.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="900" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWLv5bFVEd7LtYzETjZJExMlOHMxNg-AKPYIzosXdLDoTYwrsGi-rRtGZCWpZ7-H5S-FU8PcSyZYRPf2xPVXfpX3V-xAr7tJOdnSMSMv5QQg9OcWqcTNctxGFktIBQWZxeMSCHxa0zXmDr/s200/aldeburgh+swimmers2017.jpg" width="112" /></a><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Swimming!!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Eight of us went in on Sunday morning, the
water cold but clear and beautiful.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>There was no poetry, we just swam, watching the pattern the sun made on
the waves, turning to admire the shoreline disappearing both ways.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was calm enough to talk and laugh without choking
on seawater.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">We
had a house with windows full of sea and some of us stayed on afterwards.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Swimming score: 6/7 days – I had to miss a
day when the waves were too big.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That
day was hard.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Swimming becomes an
obsession after a while, not-swimming feels like a failure to make the day
complete.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There were lots of geese and
waders in the lakes and marshes north and south of Aldeburgh; this year’s
highlight was several godwits towards Orford Ness. I loved their long black
legs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I wasn’t sure, at a distance, if
they were bar-tailed or black-tailed until I listened to the audio on my bird
app – its black-tailed voice/call clashed with the marsh-sounds but bar-tailed
blended in perfectly.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">The
brilliant Aldeburgh volunteers worked extreme overtime again, led by Daphne
Astor and Robin Boyd (Daphman and Robin to their colleagues).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The rest of us turned up and enjoyed, in large
enough numbers to keep the festival afloat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It’s not subsidised by the Arts Council, the organisers having decided
they’d prefer independence and minimal admin. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">At
the end the phoenix flew off again, following its own gold path towards the
sun.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Collapse of metaphor: that was
Sunday afternoon and since Aldeburgh faces east the sun rises over the sea and sets
over the Alde marshes or wherever else you are looking inland.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Never mind; the phoenix flew off and will be
back next year.</span></div>
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Fiona Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10052038869211775919noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1648230750208763565.post-57065751501809527052017-05-31T16:09:00.000+01:002017-05-31T16:09:53.967+01:00OULIPO N+7: stuck and stale leakage, and the dictionary’s subconscious<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">First
some OULIPO background, as a reminder to me and anyone else who needs it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Princeton
Encyclopedia of Poetry & Poetics</i>:</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">OULIPO is the acronym for ‘Ouvroir
de Littérature Potentielle’, which was founded in 1960 by a group of ten
writers and mathematicians led by Raymond Queneau and François Le Lionnais.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Later additions included Georges Perec and
Jacques Roubaud, as well as... Marcel Duchamp and Harry Mathews (USA) and Italo
Calvino (Italy).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Although Duchamp and Queneau
constitute links between dada, surrealism and the OULIPO, the latter movement
has emphasised its autonomy. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
procedures based on chance which Tristan Tzara devised for generating dada
poems aimed essentially at demolishing traditional notions of aesthetic value. Surrealism
proceeded on the belief that chance is controlled by surreal forces which, as
in the case of automatic writing, work through the unconscious.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The OUPLIPO, on the other hand, rejects both
chance and the unconscious as valid tools for literary creation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is primarily interested in the conscious
elaboration and the systematic application of text-generating methods.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJW2JGaHf_L0sJQ-U6Y0E60Lhb81-oOgiQNf4IbYdAMEExb06rYcSAt0Igt_D8sB9kl5Airg8L3N3vRKbh9_gnYtSmPbsW2k66mLqgpPyUeTZhhkzIyBvWjT_pdHN-agA4fou_RSUY-ry2/s1600/OULIPO.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="613" data-original-width="501" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJW2JGaHf_L0sJQ-U6Y0E60Lhb81-oOgiQNf4IbYdAMEExb06rYcSAt0Igt_D8sB9kl5Airg8L3N3vRKbh9_gnYtSmPbsW2k66mLqgpPyUeTZhhkzIyBvWjT_pdHN-agA4fou_RSUY-ry2/s320/OULIPO.jpg" width="261" /></a><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">One
of the OULIPO techniques is N+7*.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Princeton</i> again: “a new poem is
generated by replacing each noun N in an existing poem by the noun which ranks
seventh after it in a given dictionary”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>There’s an <a href="http://www.spoonbill.org/n+7/" target="_blank">online generator for this, here</a>; so there should be.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But doing it yourself is more fun – <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the process itself is interesting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You soon realise that you need to add rules
as you go along: faithfully count every noun, or just the ones the average
Scrabble player would know.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Plough
through every dictionary entry that isn’t a noun in case it contains a noun
half-way through, or run a finger down each column at high speed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And what sort/size of dictionary to use in
the first place?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Different
sort of question: why limit the application of N+7 to poems?**<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Politicians’ speeches seem like a good place
to go in this post-truth age of brexitmania, twittersphere politics,
alternative facts, and companies / foreign governments attempting to practise
mind control via social media.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">What
follows is N +7 & A + 7.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve
substituted adjectives as well as nouns.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Anyone living in the UK will probably guess the speaker, and at least
one over-used phrase...</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">So every voyeur for the Consolables,
every voyeur for me, every voyeur for a lone Consolable canker, is a voyeur for
stuck and stale leakage in the nauseous interjection. And that is what this
electrocardiogram is all about, about leakage, about stag, about doing the
riotous thirty for Broadcloth. And it is only by voting Consolable that you get
that stuck and stale leakage. Because that is what this Consolable grader has
been providing. And if you just think backstreet to when I took over as
Printable Minority after the reflux, there were prefects of immediate fired
creaks, of edible dart, but because of our stuck leakage, what we have seen is
that contempt conformation has remained hirsute, we’ve seen reedy nunneries of
jodhpurs and we’ve seen edible g-spot which has been above all experts. When I
took over as Printable Minority, pepperonis said the couple was divided, that
it would never come backstreet toothsome again. What I see around the couple is
a reborn unrest of purveyance, of pepperonis urging us to get on with the
jodhpur of Brickwork and make a suckling of it.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">And when I took over as Printable
Minority, what was needed was a clipped vitamin and that stuck leakage to take
us foxed into those Brickwork nemeses and that’s what we’ve provided. And
that’s the sedition that you get from a stuck and stale grader and stuck and
stale leakage. Indeed, it’s actually what leakage looks like. And the chopper
at this electrocardiogram is very clipped. It’s a chopper between that stuck
and stale leakage under the Consolables or a weatherbeaten and unstuck co-author
of chaplet led by Jimmy Corcorann. And make no misuse about it, that is what is
on officialese.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">I
used Chambers dictionary for that, bypassed words which failed the Scrabble
rule and didn’t look for nouns buried in entries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I ran my finger fast down the page so as not
to be tempted by other options – and because there were a lot of words in this
extract. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Anyway the temptation
precaution wasn’t necessary; perhaps the dictionary does have a subconscious. </span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Challenge
for computer hackers: instead of hurling ransomware at hospitals, why not corrupt
our corrupt political discourse with an OULIPObot?</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">* The original is S+7, from the French <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">substantif</i> for noun.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">** Of course this blog is not the first to
have that idea.</span></div>
Fiona Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10052038869211775919noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1648230750208763565.post-78152811239631746262017-02-28T10:10:00.000+00:002017-02-28T10:10:13.271+00:00A dual carriageway through Seamus Heaney’s landscape; or whatever you say, say nothing<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Our
greatest poet’s dead, so let’s run a dual carriageway through his childhood
landscape. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span>Apart from a motivated group of local people hardly anyone’s making a
fuss.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Either in Ulster or over
here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">A
flyover is planned within 100m of Seamus Heaney’s childhood home at Mossbawn.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">One
of the UK’s most precious poetry landscapes is about to be destroyed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It also happens to contain pristine wetland which
is a whooper swan site.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The 4-lane A6 road,
carrying 22,000 cars a day, will pass through the Lough Beg area within yards
of an Area of Special Scientific Interest protected by the Wetlands Convention
and the EU Habitats Directive.</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">A
local environmentalist called Chris Murphy is taking the Northern Ireland Department of</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"> Infrastructure to court, seeking a judicial review.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> <span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Garamond; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">There’s<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-38094217" target="_blank">a </a></span><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-38094217" target="_blank">BBC piece here</a> on the background. </span></span>The hearing happened last week; it had to be
moved to a larger courtroom to accommodate supporters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The case has to be solely about whether the project
is being taken forward according to Article 6 (3) of the Habitats Directive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Heaney’s legacy isn’t part of it.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnhtEyh1T4BKGpL3J8e9pfww-wnDD4v4Ei9NOb_VYwQ7SogUi4LKPW-ki4ky9Ce9qiNORZovg8EBVaXnXSFke4KtdxDg7JhqRYS341aAQ7AxpJAsST4fXP5N9J_UFJ9Yu4necWUZObj-mn/s1600/save+heaney+country.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnhtEyh1T4BKGpL3J8e9pfww-wnDD4v4Ei9NOb_VYwQ7SogUi4LKPW-ki4ky9Ce9qiNORZovg8EBVaXnXSFke4KtdxDg7JhqRYS341aAQ7AxpJAsST4fXP5N9J_UFJ9Yu4necWUZObj-mn/s400/save+heaney+country.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Murphy
says they have a strong case because the Infrastructure Dept has made errors and
there are good alternative routes for the road.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><a href="http://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/save-heaney-country-protect-lough-beg" target="_blank">Here’s the link to a crowdfunder</a> for the court action.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some
way down the page is a scan of a letter Heaney sent to Peter Hain (then secretary
of state for NI) in 2005, asking him to get involved: </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">I have known and loved this area
since childhood and have written about it – or rather out of it – often. It is
one of the few undisturbed bits of wetland in mid-Ulster, a direct link to the
environment our mesolithic ancestors knew in the Bann Valley and a precious
“lung” in the countryside.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Any motorway
desecrates, but some desecrate more than others. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">This
is a crowdfunder that could have gone viral – but it’s only reached £840, with
29 backers, though Murphy says pledges have been made offline too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">The
only NGO to oppose the plans is Friends of the Earth whose Northern Ireland
director, James Orr, has been <a href="http://www.irishnews.com/news/2017/02/13/news/work-on-controversial-a6-gets-underway-929404/" target="_blank">in the NI press highlighting</a> that trees on the
route are already being cut down and hedgerows taken out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Highly irregular”, he says; the Dept for
Infrastructure should be waiting for the outcome of the court case. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Others
have kept their heads down.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve been
told that the local atmosphere is somewhat toxic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The RSPB, for example, <a href="http://www.rspb.org.uk/our-work/our-positions-and-campaigns/campaigning-for-nature/casework/details.aspx?id=tcm:9-229175" target="_blank">has a cryptic statement on its website</a> as if the author was biting his/her lip not to say
more.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-39040770" target="_blank">According to the BBC</a> the land
across which this road would run has already been bought and compensation
agreed. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">I
emailed Home Place, the new Heaney centre in mid Ulster, who could only find
this to say:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Mid Ulster District Council supports the development of the
strategic road network in the Mid Ulster area. The Council also recognises that
with any major road infrastructure project it is important that the
environmental impacts are fully considered. Addressing adverse impacts,
and putting measures in place to mitigate against them, will be particularly
important for the A6 road scheme.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">It
seems that Home Place is happy to foster an artificial, virtual Heaneyscape while
the real one is destroyed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it turns
out that <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/02/seamus-heaney-homeplace-review-bellaghy-co-down" target="_blank">Home Place was funded</a>, very generously, by Mid Ulster District Council,
who will also cover the considerable running costs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">There don’t seem to be celebrity supporters either.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When you think of Heaney’s national and
international connections, Irish, American, Nobel Prize and many others, that
seems remarkable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One exception is naturalist
and writer Mark Cocker who visited the area last autumn and heard about it
all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He is supporting the campaign and
<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/nov/01/nature-conservation-development-protest-logh-beg-lodge-hill-country-diary" target="_blank">wrote briefly about it in the Guardian</a>. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">A few weeks ago I emailed various people who I thought would have an
interest in this because of Heaney associations or general poetry interests,
asking them if they’d donate to the crowdfunder and/or share the news and lobby.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I got a few responses including from the
Poetry Society.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Similarly hardly anyone responded when I posted about this on social
media.. not that I’m a social media queen but if I’d posted something quirky,
or a poetry story closer to home, the response would have been much better. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZV07wpZkGmbEtq-A4VrRSCDbQUt_dhz4c_a_RPi76IbfQFGWIIdAacAZbq9wlzNcGT_NpJ2C-CsISKOW-ocPUsvob6Oh8ToUhi1koOUJafO4C5Co9RajCuEZe5ViqZleNOpghBG1Sg778/s1600/save+heaney+country1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZV07wpZkGmbEtq-A4VrRSCDbQUt_dhz4c_a_RPi76IbfQFGWIIdAacAZbq9wlzNcGT_NpJ2C-CsISKOW-ocPUsvob6Oh8ToUhi1koOUJafO4C5Co9RajCuEZe5ViqZleNOpghBG1Sg778/s400/save+heaney+country1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Is it that </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Northern Ireland might as well be on another planet for most
people in the rest of the UK and elsewhere?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Or perhaps they think the situation is lost already and it’s
better to turn their backs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We’re all
exhausted with all the other causes we must support in 2017.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or they’d like some heavyweight endorsement
of the cause, to be sure it’s worthwhile; fair enough.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mark Cocker’s support after his visit should suffice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Perhaps fatigue and resignation are setting in when it comes to
destruction of the countryside.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It just
happens and happens and happens and happens and happens.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">I
find the whole thing perplexing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">There’s
a hashtag #stopHeaneyroad but only one tweet so far.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">By the way, I don’t know what the timetable is beyond last week’s
court hearing, e.g. how long the judge will take to decide or whether an appeal
is possible if the decision is No.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span>If a
judicial review is allowed, I hope attitudes will change. I hope I'm not </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">the only person to have a Heaneyscape in my head, or wherever
it is that poetry takes root. </span></div>
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Fiona Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10052038869211775919noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1648230750208763565.post-29500631486148031782017-01-29T15:17:00.000+00:002017-01-29T15:17:49.255+00:00Sifting the Rialto pamphlet competition <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">I've been reading hundreds of pamphlet submissions to the Rialto’s competition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Absorbing, fascinating… and intensive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Three of us sifted the entries to give our
judge, Hannah Lowe, a longlist of fifty to read.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><a href="https://www.therialto.co.uk/pages/2017/01/27/the-rialto-open-pamphlet-competition-2016-results/" target="_blank">The results are on our website</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here are some thoughts about the experience
of sifting and trends among the entries.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihfnxOhNn8tTBrauD7RAmRYOsyLw3mGeNRNmBK8amaHdQxyQU__XAGGBFl9WsGqjkl3VsWwuQ7rNayYaIUjdnbQPZtA-2bVrwn7SLAbyB4dOTP257hWmMsgByx8JstqlTE-cC7Be-1VAPA/s1600/US+embassy+demo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihfnxOhNn8tTBrauD7RAmRYOsyLw3mGeNRNmBK8amaHdQxyQU__XAGGBFl9WsGqjkl3VsWwuQ7rNayYaIUjdnbQPZtA-2bVrwn7SLAbyB4dOTP257hWmMsgByx8JstqlTE-cC7Be-1VAPA/s200/US+embassy+demo.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">*
Life writing was popular, some of it addressing, admirably, difficult issues
such as childhood abuse or mental illness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Racial and cultural identity, often with an autobiographical and/or
ancestral angle, was a big theme that produced some of the best poetry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Herons, cats, marshland, floods, trees, the
sea… all were here, sometimes (not the cats) in elegiac mode for what’s passing
or passed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Unelegiac urban life was here
in all its richness and confusion, and with foxes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Brexit appeared sporadically.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The US elections came just before the
deadline.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">*
For the sifter, entries with an overarching theme or story are easy to take in
and remember.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sets of poems that are
quiet or work together without a story need to be given the attention they
deserve.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I found it a pleasure to read formally
versatile entries, and those with poems all in the same form skilfully handled.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The same applied to whole pamphlets of short
poems; we didn’t get many of those.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Short poems are hard to do well. Formally and/or linguistically
experimental sets stood out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We didn’t
get many of those either; I’d have welcomed more.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">*
The first poem is important: eg as setter of tone and theme, and inviter-in of
the reader who is longing to be excited, charmed, wrong-footed, made to laugh, lured,
thunderstruck, transported... This is especially true for electronic submissions
(around 4/5 of ours were online) which encourage linear reading.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet a surprising number of pamphlets didn’t
lead with one of their best.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This
phenomenon struck all three sifters independently.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Maybe entrants had a certain idea about
ordering, or were unsure which were their best poems.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some entries only got going after the first
few poems.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It felt like that familiar
workshop question, Do you need the first line / the first two verses or are these
just writing into the poem?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps
ordering into a pamphlet is something to watch out for. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">*
Risks are good to take even if they don’t come off.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Conceits, for example, have to be really well
done to work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But that’s OK; the reader
respects the attempt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">*
Trusting the reader to understand, make connections etc is important.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">*
Line breaks that energise their poem are a delight.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If they aren’t doing this it might as well be
prose.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2Ha7OjONfiQ9osXkCOyUqcJA_nogCpuinFMkOCnJZfIm3C7woVrPdc4G3Pdk1oHihl9q8xtbRH94T4u4lB3eP98TSDkYzez9Kd8ijASGzoqrFxfAA1FUkcBQaWESTqdMSqIBRMNbRXSXC/s1600/devil%2527s+ditch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2Ha7OjONfiQ9osXkCOyUqcJA_nogCpuinFMkOCnJZfIm3C7woVrPdc4G3Pdk1oHihl9q8xtbRH94T4u4lB3eP98TSDkYzez9Kd8ijASGzoqrFxfAA1FUkcBQaWESTqdMSqIBRMNbRXSXC/s200/devil%2527s+ditch.jpg" width="150" /></a><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">*
Adjectives…<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes, they still need to be
talked about!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Many are superfluous or part
of a predictable adjective/noun combination.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Each adjective should be scrutinised to see if it deserves to be there, and
if so, whether it’s the right one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(It’s
totally fine to write a poem bristling with adjectives … provided you know what
you’re doing and the poem is hungry for them.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>There are other poetry habits too, especially what long-standing HappenStance
pamphlet publisher <a href="http://www.happenstancepress.com/index.php/blog/entry/verbs-leaning-through-the-window-and-other-coincidences" target="_blank">Helena Nelson calls leaning verbs</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She even has a blog-tag for those and her
analyses of current habits are very shrewd.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">*
Titles: they don’t matter much at this stage but it’s nice to find one that
works.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">*
As a sifter all I wanted was pamphlets that channelled old Ezra, more than 100
years on: <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">MAKE IT NEW</b>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The best ones created a world of their own
and invited me in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Line breaks electrified
the poems, the language felt alive with unexpected turns of phrase or syntax,
form and content worked together, the poems had their own particular music
(harmonious, harsh or whatever), beginnings and ends earned their place…
etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The subject matter might not be striking
but the angle on it was.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What’s the
point of poetry (among so much other discourse) if it doesn’t convey the shocks
and wonder of living?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">*
When these things happened I’d get a sense of confidence mixed with excitement,
and read on knowing that the next poem would work, and the next, and with luck,
most of them…<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’d also have a sense that
the writer was reading and listening to poetry, whether from the back of beyond
or an urban attic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So along with Ezra
this too goes in capital letters: <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">READ
READ READ</b>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The two exhortations are
complementary, not contradictory.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Read
to write and write to read.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Read to make
it new.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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Fiona Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10052038869211775919noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1648230750208763565.post-54428675645810417712016-11-30T20:19:00.000+00:002016-11-30T20:27:53.981+00:00Poetry in the Sea<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">This
post is for anyone anywhere who wonders if poetry in the sea is viable – as a
reading, an event, performance art or just for fun. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span> The
answer’s yes to most of those even in testing conditions, though as a reading
you’d need sea calmer than we had.</span>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGZ626KLpzn8m0YYLIG1xtJ1X1v7nTqWbUX91GUrdX6lXvyS754YcTxtu7m_93MBauAkJJqzlgmjDm_ZOE1Re8yNxRodimvxCziJ_gR9o1VQg9DEZnNpovOchtkRa0MtC6tjSPgHWnbTRf/s1600/aldeburgh+swim1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="187" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGZ626KLpzn8m0YYLIG1xtJ1X1v7nTqWbUX91GUrdX6lXvyS754YcTxtu7m_93MBauAkJJqzlgmjDm_ZOE1Re8yNxRodimvxCziJ_gR9o1VQg9DEZnNpovOchtkRa0MtC6tjSPgHWnbTRf/s200/aldeburgh+swim1.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">Our
experiment took place early on a blue-and-gold November morning, the Sunday of
Poetry in Aldeburgh.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The sea had that
molten-metal look, very very bright in the low sun; wrinkled by the wind and
running big breakers into shore.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Caroline
Wiseman of the <a href="http://www.aldeburghbeachlookout.com/" target="_blank">Lookout tower</a>, who swims every day that it’s possible, led the
way down the beach to find the best place to plunge in without being
overturned.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Briony Bax, Joanna Clark, Lisa
Kelly and I followed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Caroline swam off
southwards, looking as though she’d make it to Orford Ness and beyond, and the
rest of us flipped around in the waves, trod water and spoke our poems in turn.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Each poem had something to do with the
sea.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes, it was cold – but we all stayed
in for all four poems.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And we had an
audience, small but distinguished.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><a href="http://www.happenstancepress.org/index.php/blog/entry/how-to-launch-a-poetry-book" target="_blank">See Nell Nelson’s blog</a> for their perspective. She and Selina Rodrigues took the swimming photos. </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsgqVcGvOcLUpwISsDMjwNLb0L3msH9QAV1p0QJr8A7YzFkc4322DamT2_kci-HiaZPs0skKI19HGVXz3CDM1DO7_8H7ql8k9zqe5QCv7FT7qBPX898r6P-6l5kbCMsUhanPj9_BNOcyEJ/s1600/aldeburgh+swim3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsgqVcGvOcLUpwISsDMjwNLb0L3msH9QAV1p0QJr8A7YzFkc4322DamT2_kci-HiaZPs0skKI19HGVXz3CDM1DO7_8H7ql8k9zqe5QCv7FT7qBPX898r6P-6l5kbCMsUhanPj9_BNOcyEJ/s200/aldeburgh+swim3.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">Spectators
rather than audience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The four of us in
the water could all hear each other.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Those
on land could snatches of words at first, and then...<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was prepared for the waves to drown our
voices (each time I’d checked the weather forecast in the days before, the wind
speed had strengthened; on the day it was probably around 15mph).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I hadn’t reckoned with the longshore
drift.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was powerful and moved us
southwards along the shore quite fast; by the time we noticed this the
spectators had receded.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><a href="https://soundcloud.com/user-4910953/poetry-in-aldeburgh-2016-sunday-wavemp3" target="_blank">You can hear what they heard:</a> Aldeburgh blogger Ben Rogers was there and recorded… well, mostly
the sea but you can find voices among the roar.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZsPLwJPjmtuexpm1hDSqleUdcJlnJFSm3dyYXGJA4YryW8okPmPv3yjWbkHEv8eG6IPu0nGdHs8-xB0t5ZDJUUC41_5hnM4ANEsOpr5xlIAnd_kyrhC0Hton2zD00SEFok0c1qVWxsZwV/s1600/aldeburgh+swim5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZsPLwJPjmtuexpm1hDSqleUdcJlnJFSm3dyYXGJA4YryW8okPmPv3yjWbkHEv8eG6IPu0nGdHs8-xB0t5ZDJUUC41_5hnM4ANEsOpr5xlIAnd_kyrhC0Hton2zD00SEFok0c1qVWxsZwV/s200/aldeburgh+swim5.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">Anyway,
we all loved doing it. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The event got a
lot of attention and support.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Next year
I want to do it again: ideally with more performers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The snag with that is it’s best done early in
the day, before programmed events start and so that people can go back home afterwards
for a hot shower and breakfast.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And who
wants to get up early on the Sunday morning of a festival? Though a cold swim
is the best hangover cure I know. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Also
the time couldn’t be confirmed until the weekend itself, given the changeable
weather.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Though I’ve discovered <a href="https://www.windfinder.com/forecast/aldeburgh" target="_blank">a website that forecasts</a> local wave height (plus wind strength etc), by the
hour.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So: maybe more precise forecasting
and lots of publicity in advance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And
consultation among potential swimmers to see what they think about timing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Cold water swimmers who go to the festival,
you’ll be hearing from me!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2tSy2ULFu7EVxdvMnZY-DupbYk-ed5tUZU6SPbDHCC7IO2SvEcNXhVtQErld-Pywg1eMXBaRDrahF1orQ4FpD97kXFyxST46cGgVKmyyqP2RaVCGIeP8B61Da_Jpu9x0MR0KfuZXciH0r/s1600/aldeburgh+scallop+with+moon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2tSy2ULFu7EVxdvMnZY-DupbYk-ed5tUZU6SPbDHCC7IO2SvEcNXhVtQErld-Pywg1eMXBaRDrahF1orQ4FpD97kXFyxST46cGgVKmyyqP2RaVCGIeP8B61Da_Jpu9x0MR0KfuZXciH0r/s200/aldeburgh+scallop+with+moon.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">There
will be a festival next year, or possibly two.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The volunteers of Poetry in Aldeburgh did a brilliant job.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They delivered a lot of events, from small to
large and from interesting to very memorable. And they broke even, on a budget
at the low end of five figures.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Strengthened
by their success they have undertaken to do it again next year, the same
weekend, 3-5 November.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the Poetry
Trust have got a transition grant from the Arts Council to plan for a 2017 festival
too. Snape festival with Aldeburgh fringe?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Who knows; from the audience perspective what matters is that there will
be poetry (this time last year there was the prospect of none).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">The photo just above is of Maggi
Hambling’s scallop on the beach, some way north of where we swam.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> The l<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">ate af<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">ternoon </span></span>moon is in <span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">the gap. </span></span>The words are from Benjamin Britten’s opera <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Peter Grimes</i>: "I hear those voices
that will not be drowned". <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
Fiona Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10052038869211775919noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1648230750208763565.post-7713939901464521692016-10-31T18:45:00.000+00:002016-10-31T18:45:27.598+00:00Poetry in Aldeburgh, poetry in the sea<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">“Here
is the gift of a poetry festival for each of you”. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s how the <a href="http://www.poetryinaldeburgh.org/" target="_blank"><span id="goog_152299368"></span>Poetry in Aldeburgh website</a><span id="goog_152299369"></span><span id="goog_152299373"></span><span id="goog_152299374"></span> introduces
itself. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A heroic group of volunteers is
delivering a festival this first November weekend, just by getting on and doing
it. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A festival in Aldeburgh not Snape, at
the old familiar venues.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Readers at the
Jubilee Hall include Moniza Alvi, Mona Arshi, Kayo Chingonyi, Maura Dooley, Ian
Duhig, Matthew Hollis, Ruth Padel and Tom Paulin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgim6m_0X-0oqi0YlXNumtFdyZdmhL0W4wLGHH2-OPwSx1CqFDtT_A1qHNYPrRelX0bVkpI89Pudgry1yoCfYruc41cLDcMupLXuf4acy4fAUQGxx5dV22VkH2gecxYwGtbT4H2Mh5vEPPF/s1600/Aldeburgh+Nov2012+002.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgim6m_0X-0oqi0YlXNumtFdyZdmhL0W4wLGHH2-OPwSx1CqFDtT_A1qHNYPrRelX0bVkpI89Pudgry1yoCfYruc41cLDcMupLXuf4acy4fAUQGxx5dV22VkH2gecxYwGtbT4H2Mh5vEPPF/s320/Aldeburgh+Nov2012+002.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">There’s
a distinctive local feel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Two magazines
based in East Anglia are launching new issues in the Peter Pears Gallery.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Rialto</i>, 4-5pm on Saturday 5 November; I’ll be introducing Hannah Lowe and
others.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The other is newcomer <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Fenland Reed</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Various groups, workshops etc, local and
otherwise, are having events, exhibitions etc. </span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">The Rialto</span></i><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">’s launch has sold out. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Other events are selling well / out, <a href="https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/poetry-in-aldeburgh-2016-tickets-26807259234" target="_blank">see here for tickets</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>People are looking forward to this. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s still time for a last-minute decision
to go…</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Poetry
in the sea…<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Every year at the Aldeburgh
Festival, except when there were gales, poets have been in the sea; enough of
them to form a minority tradition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So
this year I’m hoping we can have poetry in the sea as well as poets – swimming
poets, you are invited to come and take part in a pop-up poetry reading in the sea:</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmDZkNUoLGL_3kSuau_k-xD8NvVGMtJSBt4iGE-s3eSUfrT_pECI7hCErjIh-QBmUwCDm5pKgBtgcbN5hDooN1vf864y_Hn24-XHNyUHP8ISl2GZTXU0gWJVDncBmNh-XgEwoEaDub_4v3/s1600/Aldeburgh+Nov2012+006.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmDZkNUoLGL_3kSuau_k-xD8NvVGMtJSBt4iGE-s3eSUfrT_pECI7hCErjIh-QBmUwCDm5pKgBtgcbN5hDooN1vf864y_Hn24-XHNyUHP8ISl2GZTXU0gWJVDncBmNh-XgEwoEaDub_4v3/s320/Aldeburgh+Nov2012+006.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">The
idea is that each reader should swim/float while reading; the rest of us can
stand on shore and listen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Speaking by
heart would be a more accurate description than reading.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The poem may be one of yours or anyone’s, and
it had probably best be short.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">This
will be an experiment: I don’t even know if it’ll be possible to hear people speak
their poems above the sound of the waves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The water will be cold, but not freezing winter cold – it’s currently
around 14.5 degrees. Wind and waves are currently looking OK for the Saturday,
a bit wild on the Sunday.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But that
forecast may change.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If the conditions
aren’t suitable we’ll have to postpone until next year.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">When
I get to Aldeburgh on Friday afternoon I’ll have a look and a trial swim and
check the forecast.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then I’ll advertise a
time on Facebook and Twitter and ask others to spread the news too. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">So,
swimming poets: come along, bring a poem in your head and a towel, and wear
your swimming costume under warm clothes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Interested
non-swimmers, do please come along and support us!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Some
news about the Poetry Trust (who ran the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival for decades and
had to go into hibernation after last year’s): they have now got an Arts
Council transtion grant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here’s the
chair, Robert Seatter, quoted in <a href="https://www.writeoutloud.net/public/blogentry.php?blogentryid=61301" target="_blank">writeoutloud</a>: </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">What we decided to do in 2016 was
to take a year out to review how the Poetry Trust operates, in order to come
back more robust and financially viable for the future. At the moment, we’re
working with Arts Council England, who have just awarded us a transition grant,
to work out a detailed plan, enabling us to come back in 2017 with a new
festival.</span></div>
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Fiona Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10052038869211775919noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1648230750208763565.post-12118686806097917692016-09-30T20:07:00.000+01:002016-09-30T20:07:11.735+01:00Poetry & politics at the Poetry Book Fair<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"><a href="http://www.poetrymagazines.org.uk/magazine/record.asp?id=5922" target="_blank">What is the language using us for?</a> <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What were
we all doing at the book fair, selling and buying books, networking, reading,
listening?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKttlFLmercQ6K8AT6RW3pWS-BzY-ZXtvbBE0OHfH67PUOohL_p_Y-BgaGCzw_Ogud6gqkmJTfS_tJbsEbYr0WelzgqSDfrdvh-9VAydmkTGCbFaFyAHVwplI50E7fBYs13vjyPX2mU__O/s1600/IMG_20160930_173127.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKttlFLmercQ6K8AT6RW3pWS-BzY-ZXtvbBE0OHfH67PUOohL_p_Y-BgaGCzw_Ogud6gqkmJTfS_tJbsEbYr0WelzgqSDfrdvh-9VAydmkTGCbFaFyAHVwplI50E7fBYs13vjyPX2mU__O/s200/IMG_20160930_173127.jpg" width="150" /></a><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">WS
Graham’s question got quoted at the fair’s panel discussion on Poetry &
Politics with Choman Hardi, WN Herbert, Sophie Mayer and RA Villanueva.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They talked passionately and collaboratively
for almost an hour and the crowded room listened hard.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>People kept coming up to me afterwards (I
chaired the panel) to say they wished it had gone on for longer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or that they’d tried to get into the room but
were turned away because it was full.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
discussion was filmed and <a href="http://www.poetrybookfair.com/p/media.html" target="_blank">it’s just gone up on the Book Fair’s website</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bill Herbert has also put the link on <a href="https://newbootsandpantisocracies.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">New Boots & Pantisocracies</a> and invited comments.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Before
the panel I had fun collecting quotes, to have in my back pocket in case
discussion needed stimulating (it didn’t).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Here is a mixed bag, a lucky dip starting with one that, as Book Fair
director Chrissy Williams reminded me, is usually quoted misleadingly, first five word only.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text2;">For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text2;">In the valley of its making where executives</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text2;">Would never want to tamper, flows on south</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text2;">From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text2;">Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text2;">A way of happening, a mouth.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text2;">W H Auden ‘In Memory of W B Yeats’</span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text2;">Poetry is not about making things happen. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s what language does.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Poetry is about making language happen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text2;">Donald Revell, American Poetry Review</span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text2;">All norms of other kinds of discourse are changed when
absorbed by a poem.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text2;">Veronica Forrest-Thomson (intro to Poetic
Artifice)</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text2;">In the internet age, where we are at liberty to download
such a plethora of texts – to reproduce them, recycle them, change their
appearance by altering font, typeface, spacing, size – context and framing
become the key elements.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The poet’s role
has become, in the literal sense, that of a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">word
processor</i>, finding how best to absorb, recharge and redistribute the
language that is already <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">there</i>…</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text2;">What, in this new poetry, has happened to the authentic
voice?...<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The fabled ‘sensitivity’ of
the Creative Writer gives way to a sensitivity to language that is almost like
a fever – a sensitivity that has been the distinguishing mark of the poet from
the Troubadours to George Herbert… Emily Dickinson… Susan Howe..</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text2;">Marjorie Perloff in PN Review, on poetry as
the language art </span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text2;">[The] search for images and symbols adequate to our
predicament.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text2;">Seamus Heaney, ‘Feeling into Words’, Finders
Keepers</span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text2;">I am interested in what activism can learn from poetry…. I
believe failure in activism is often a deficiency of lyricism—an inability to
collapse time and distance, a refusal to surprise or “make it new,” a
willingness to calcify into rigid and limiting expectations, a closure to
self-transformation, an unconsidered <em><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">we</span></em>
or <em><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">you</span></em>, to
name just a few. I believe social quests for freedom have much to learn from
freedom enacted on the page. And that this conversation should happen on the
level of reading and not, as it often is, solely on the level of intention…<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text2;">It’s a conversation that should happen especially with
erasure, the most blatantly political form of late. Erasure may well be the
closest poetry in English has gotten to role of the state. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 72.0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text2;"><a href="http://www.thevolta.org/ewc28-ssharif-p1.html" target="_blank">Solmaz Sharif from the erasure issue of Evening will Come.</a>
Thanks to Sophie Mayer who told me about this piece which also contains much
interesting material about erasure as a poetic device, highly recommended.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And then Ron Villanueva mentioned it on the
panel – it’s a reference point.</span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text2;">No one who reads much contemporary poetry in English can
fail to notice that there too the moral positions of the authors are sometimes
taken as evidence of an artistic seriousness and accomplishment that the work
may not in fact bear out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At times we
seem to be reading virtue rather than poetry. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text2;">Sean O’Brien in the Guardian (review of
Centres of </span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text2;">Cataclysm)</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-themecolor: text2;">Why
does diversity in poetry matter?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>…
Poetry has the potential to hold up a mirror to society; at its best, it has
the ability to show what a society may become.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-themecolor: text2;">Nathalie Teitler, intro to Ten: the New Wave</span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-themecolor: text2;">One
of the things the tyrant most cunningly engineers is the gross oversimplification
of language, because propaganda requires that the minds of the collective
respond primitively to slogans of incitement.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-themecolor: text2;">Geoffrey Hill in the Paris Review</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text2;">The history of Europe in this [last] century is full of
those terrible events supposed to have traduced or contaminated language, along
with those sorrowful bystanders, perched upon some peak of purity, who can
bewail the loss of a model of rational, passionate and poetic discourse that
would somehow resist the ruptures of historical process. But, how silly…</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text2;">Human language is the tribal continuity of expressive
human behaviour, and is marked in its very core by whatever depravity or
nobility an exercise of linguistic analysis may discover within the human
record.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If writers and poets think that
language can somehow resist this involvement with the worst, while claiming natural
affinity with the best, then they are guilty of a naïve idealism that ought
least of all to attract those who know how language works and what it can do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text2;">J H Prynne (quoted in a recent LRB piece by
Robert Potts)</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text2;">Every beginning<br />
is only a sequel, after all,<br />
and the book of events<br />
is always open halfway through. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text2;"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6669.Wis_awa_Szymborska"><span style="color: #1f497d; mso-themecolor: text2; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Wisława Szymborska</span></a>, View With a Grain of Sand</span></i><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text2;"></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text2;">Degas to Mallarmé: I’ve got good ideas for poems but
can’t find the words.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>M to D: “It is not
with ideas, my dear Degas, that one makes poems. It is with words.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text2;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>From the Perloff PNR article.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text2;">[Climate change] is like death, no-one wants to talk
about it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text2;">Amitav Ghosh quoted in the Guardian
recently; not a poetry </span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text2;">reference, I couldn’t find one...</span></i><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text2;"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text2;">Contemporary poets do not aspire to ‘greatness’; the role
they are meant to fulfil is the role of the earthworm.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The soil of the earthworm is language.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text2;">Wojciech Bonowicz; from Modern Poetry in Translation</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">The
hugely successful Book Fair has become an indispensable institution over the
five (or six?) years it’s been going.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This year the team produced a Poetry Almanac containing listings for and
descriptions of 190 poetry publishers and other poetry organisations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s also a poem each from many of the
publishers and a set of essays on poetry publishing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Almanac may become an institution too –
it’s a very useful reference work of a sort that hasn’t existed up until now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><a href="http://www.poetrybookfair.com/p/poetry-almanac.html" target="_blank">You can get it here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPswHIOgbpNWoK6okHnYtMbbtpR3aDpCHB6Xl1g2ptS_8QAYBJiwCgnpQ4BWdTjB4W41QgHXD0icBcqr3lt7zykJ2l-lt1RHCKpxdp7LpGFauCUdCe61ed6G2WiltJA86P00dxvu4-gqjT/s1600/IMG_20160930_173404.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPswHIOgbpNWoK6okHnYtMbbtpR3aDpCHB6Xl1g2ptS_8QAYBJiwCgnpQ4BWdTjB4W41QgHXD0icBcqr3lt7zykJ2l-lt1RHCKpxdp7LpGFauCUdCe61ed6G2WiltJA86P00dxvu4-gqjT/s320/IMG_20160930_173404.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
Fiona Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10052038869211775919noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1648230750208763565.post-19104714193838411752016-08-31T17:06:00.002+01:002016-08-31T17:07:43.496+01:00Rereading Seamus Heaney’s ‘Personal Helicon’<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">This
poem’s music has been bumping along at the back of my brain, coming in and out
of focus along with the words.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m
obsessed with the poem and have to write about it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(A completely different experience from the
often exasperating one of having a song on the brain.) <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5XtQc8j2meCmcfrYxpSVUUgIeAUMXC65lrDsHyNIG66I3ITqsGQg-x9WcQoixS9nqpNLpoXMkJ0MxWJUWAzX2Nut2FhM7cv2tZ1tyWL0ZMQSqCWtFrKCQB3bhC1ibdtvAl8YCgwrz3gBg/s1600/Heaney_Death-of-a-Naturalist.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5XtQc8j2meCmcfrYxpSVUUgIeAUMXC65lrDsHyNIG66I3ITqsGQg-x9WcQoixS9nqpNLpoXMkJ0MxWJUWAzX2Nut2FhM7cv2tZ1tyWL0ZMQSqCWtFrKCQB3bhC1ibdtvAl8YCgwrz3gBg/s200/Heaney_Death-of-a-Naturalist.jpg" width="123" /></a><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">Like
many readers and students of poetry, Irish and British at least, I’ve known
‘Personal Helicon’ for years, especially its much-quoted ending.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Recently I picked up <a href="https://www.faber.co.uk/9780571328802-death-of-a-naturalist.html"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Death of a Naturalist</i></a> again, started on the last page and was
transfixed as if I’d never read it before.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Last poem of Heaney’s first book (and nicely balanced with ‘Digging’,
the opening poem).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><a href="https://www.ibiblio.org/ipa/poems/heaney/personal_helicon.php">It’s here</a>, with a
recording of him reading it. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">The
odd title (personal what? first-time readers must ask) sets us up for something
elevated and classical. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mount Helicon
was a haunt of the Muses and its springs were said to inspire poetry – hard for
northern Europeans used to rain and damp earth to grasp the magic of fresh
water in the arid mountainscape of central Greece.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But from the first line we’re down in wells:
deep in the unknown earth whose crust we live on unthinkingly, amid dankness,
rats, echoes, weed and mud; deep in the unknown self, in origins and childhood
fascinations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And down in wells we stay
(or rather half looking down, half down there) though in the last verse <a href="http://www.onassis.org/online-magazine/issue-37/article-4.php">Narcissus brings us back to Helicon</a>, where Echo fell in love with him and he with his own
reflection.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">The
rhythms of the poem are based on iambic pentameters but move far from
them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Stressed syllables tend to be
strongly stressed, almost Hopkins-like; two often occur next to each other, as
in the first two lines of the second verse:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">One, in a brickyard, with a rotted
board top.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">I savoured the rich crash when a
bucket</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">Plummeted down at the end of a rope.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">So deep you saw no reflection in it.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">The
consonants in the second line mimic the crash.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The third line unwinds the bucket from the windlass in rapid dactyls.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s humour in all this but it’s
scary too – there’s danger in the rotted top, the crash, the reflectionless
depths that get their own short sentence for emphasis.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Later in the poem the lines smooth out to
become more conventionally iambic – until disturbed by “a rat slapped…”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">There’s
such relish in the language – as always with Heaney – unLatinate, onomatopoeic,
often monosyllabic, enriched with words like windlasses, scaresome, mulch.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My shorter OED hasn’t taken scaresome on
board.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then, as if for fun, Heaney gives
us a Latinate line with an unusual word, “Fructified like any aquarium”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">Heaney’s
laying claim to his own language here, his own territory, as well as his right
to be up that Greek mountain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s a
political poem, subtly so.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">Apart
from the aquarium line there’s little metaphor in the poem whose effects come
from graphic, pungent detail: rat, roots and slime, smells and sounds.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Despite these the brilliance of language and
rhythm, the relish and the humour give a sense of refreshment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The word “reflection” appears twice to
bring in both light and thought.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">And
of course the whole poem’s a metaphor, leading up to the denoument of the fifth
verse:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">Now, to pry into roots, to finger
slime,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">To stare, big-eyed Narcissus, into
some spring</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">Is beneath all adult dignity. I
rhyme</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">To see myself, to set the darkness
echoing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">The
perfection of that last sentence sets up echoes of its own in the reader.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The final line is a lone hexameter –
declarative. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It acts out the echoing in -self,
set, -ness, ech-, following lots of short and long i's in the rest of the verse.
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">Has
anyone expressed the Why of writing poetry, the introspection and excitement, as
well as this?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not just in that sentence
and the lovely, serious piss-take preceding it (poets, self-obsession/-indulgence,
vanity) but also the run-up, the set-up, the whole poem?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
Fiona Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10052038869211775919noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1648230750208763565.post-51607958514322781922016-07-31T18:51:00.000+01:002016-07-31T18:57:56.127+01:00Finding Denise Riley<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">S</span>ometimes
there is a poet who should be read far, far more.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Denise Riley used to be one such.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I doubt there was any lack of depth of
engagement from those who knew and liked her work – it was more about lack of breadth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I used to enjoy introducing people to her:
generally this would cause interest and excitement.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">Introductions
should no longer be necessary, now that her new book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Say Something Back</i> is out from Picador and shortlisted for the
Forward Prize.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve just reviewed it for
<a href="http://www.thecompassmagazine.co.uk/">the next issue of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Compass</i></a> which
will be appearing online shortly, so I won’t write about that book here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">I
expect people will read backwards from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Say
Something Back</i> and discover <a href="http://www.realitystreet.co.uk/denise-riley.php">Riley’s Selected Poems</a> (Reality Street, 2000).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTCAfwmpcKXqIM4pucQoLMrUr2iBif8kvEpMBVlQ0tiApWC17jUwTmfcMMxVSWYQGnKoZ9HFiuzFC_lf9oTP6HGZ9u_boxsKUf_qn0cJBi06MI6K2fFe-FOrCKH9DTMdI4aOfXJ9F7BMTO/s1600/Denise+Riley+books.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTCAfwmpcKXqIM4pucQoLMrUr2iBif8kvEpMBVlQ0tiApWC17jUwTmfcMMxVSWYQGnKoZ9HFiuzFC_lf9oTP6HGZ9u_boxsKUf_qn0cJBi06MI6K2fFe-FOrCKH9DTMdI4aOfXJ9F7BMTO/s200/Denise+Riley+books.jpg" width="150" /></a><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">My
first encounter with her work was online, in a year or two of intensive reading
after giving up my job.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That time was
full of discoveries but finding Riley was one of those where you remember the
feeling years later.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’d never read
anything like her and printed out all the poems I could find**, off an obscure
website which perhaps shouldn’t have reproduced them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span>‘Dark Looks’ was the first one I read and I
can still visualise the typewriter typeface it was in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The poem now appears in more accessible
places – <a href="http://www.poetryinternationalweb.net/pi/site/poem/item/5704">see here</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It starts:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">Who anyone is or I am is nothing to
the work. The writer</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">properly should be the last person
that the reader or the listener </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>need think about</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">yet the poet with her signature
stands up trembling, grateful, </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>mortally
embarrassed</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">and especially embarrassing to
herself, patting her hair and </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>twittering If, if only</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">I need not have a physical
appearance! To be sheer air, and </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>mousseline!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">A
funny, ironic, cool, hard-hittingly true, pun-filled and vivid monologue with intellect
and emotion working together.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Its one
page contains so much – a cogent argument, embarrassment that makes the reader
cringe (that If only! and To be!), Victorian Anglo-Catholicism, film, modern
materials, spiritualism, feminism (with special focus on periods) and more, and
I’m sure some things I’ve missed… back to the horrors of poetry readings:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">What forces the lyric person to put
itself on trial though it must stay </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>rigorously uninteresting?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">Quite.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>‘Dark Looks’ ends with a plea to the listener/reader
not to run off.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As if we would. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Riley is generally brilliant at awkwardness
and self-consciousness – she does them like no-one else.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">She
describes feelings and situations in ways you’d never expect.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An early poem, ‘Affections must not’ (<a href="http://www.poetryinternationalweb.net/pi/site/poem/item/5703/auto/0/AFFECTIONS-MUST-NOT">full poem is here</a>), ends:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">the houses are murmuring with many
small pockets of emotion</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">on which spongy ground adults’ lives
are being erected and paid for </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>daily</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">while their feet and their children’s’
feet are tangled around like </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>those of fen larks</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">in the fine steely wires which run
to and fro between love and </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>economics</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">affections must not support the rent</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">I. neglect. the. house</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">That
hard, practical yet weird metaphor is typical.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Line breaks are used instead of punctuation for the subordinate clauses and
the words run fast.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The full stops in the last line are the only
ones in the poem; they convey (I think) resolution and they stop us dead.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>‘Fen
larks’: anyone else would have written just ‘larks’, not that they’d have
written any of this at all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">And
in ‘Rayon’:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">The day is nervous buff – the
shakiness, is it inside the day or me?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">‘Buff’:
polishing movements, a blow, involuntary splutters of laughter, a certain heavy
animal, a dull pale colour, naked skin…<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">Riley’s
ekphrastic poems draw emotions out of their subjects: in ‘Lure’ she mixes in
scraps of song lyrics.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Flood, drag to papery
long brushes</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">of deep violet, that’s where it is,
indigo, oh no, it’s in</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">his kiss. Lime brilliance. Obsessive
song. Ink tongues.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">Density
is a common feature – reading Riley out loud, your mouth works hard at the consonants
but finds resonance and relief in the frequent assonance – see above.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Syntax can be complex but is always clear and
carries the reader along.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some poems are
simpler in form and foreshadow the work in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Say
Something Back</i>. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From ‘Lyric’:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">I take on its rage at the cost</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">of sleep. If I love it I sink </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">attracting its hatred. If I</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">don’t love it I steal its music.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">See
also ‘An awkward lyric’ in her new book.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">Riley
is an academic – literature and philosophy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I assume that much in the poems has been
deeply considered elsewhere too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>According
to its online blurb, her book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Words
of Selves</i> examines the question: What does it matter what you say about
yourself?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She says in the introduction: “There
may sometimes be an inherent emotionality to grammar”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She walks the walk of that statement in every
poem.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">Today
I’ve been reading Denise Riley alongside Geoffrey Hill.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Two great lyrical modernists (if that
description makes sense); both allusive, political, complex on and/or below the
surface; both with large intellectual hinterlands.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">You
can get hold of Denise Riley’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Selected
Poems</i> <a href="http://www.realitystreet.co.uk/denise-riley.php">here</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It might sell out…</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">**This
was in the pre-Poetry Archive era; you can <a href="http://www.poetryarchive.org/poet/denise-riley">read and hear several of her earlier poems there</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s offline this afternoon
but I think the poems include ‘Dark Looks’ and another favourite, ‘Shantung’.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Also, <a href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/v34/n03/denise-riley/a-part-song">see here for a podcast </a>of her reading ‘A
Part Song’, the much-admired long poem from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Say
Something Back</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Riley was in volume
10 of the Penguin Modern Poets.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She had
books before her <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Selected</i>, some published
by Virago (see <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dry Air</i> in the photo –
I was delighted to find this at the Blackheath Amnesty International book sale).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Several years ago I searched for them in the
Poetry Library but they had mostly gone missing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
Fiona Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10052038869211775919noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1648230750208763565.post-53131003302370117632016-06-29T13:21:00.000+01:002016-06-29T13:21:45.411+01:00Finding a path from Europe to Europe<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">How
to break through the film of dread and write something, anything? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">One
option’s to quote from the terrifying vision of <a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/43290">W B Yeats’ ‘Second Coming’ </a>(1919)
and hide.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No: two sentences of prose
instead.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">To be defeated and not give up, that
is victory. To be victorious and rest on your laurels, that is defeat. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">He
should know.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That was said by Józef
Piłsudski, Polish hero of the fight for independence and leader for many of the
interwar years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Quoted by <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/commentisfree/2016/jun/24/lifelong-english-european-the-biggest-defeat-of-my-political-life-timothy-garton-ash-brexit">Timothy Garton-Ash in the Guardian</a> – a piece like many this week but with added
historical depth.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s looking as
though we’ve rested on our laurels of peace and security within (most of)
Europe for far too long.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Now
the 48% need to not give up. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So often we
only really care about something when we risk losing it. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">The
bitter irony of the referendum is that it’s the people who voted Leave because
their lives are fraught with difficulty who will suffer most.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Their expectations have been failed in the
last 8 years and will be failed again – and then what?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
</div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOLPRE5MYQu7MJXLQt03Dxba_U-mcWtW5kO2p38AAEhIteKZrooTo8bWwulvDGQpplwJB_uo76IeL9BObWL0vUYfGrgJM9D2vxFClc3VssgIvuY6Ca7-KpsC0EP-vMsezkgkWhnaSVmjb9/s1600/Kintyre+peninsula+May+2016+045.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOLPRE5MYQu7MJXLQt03Dxba_U-mcWtW5kO2p38AAEhIteKZrooTo8bWwulvDGQpplwJB_uo76IeL9BObWL0vUYfGrgJM9D2vxFClc3VssgIvuY6Ca7-KpsC0EP-vMsezkgkWhnaSVmjb9/s200/Kintyre+peninsula+May+2016+045.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Scotland, Europe...</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">It
would be madness not to try to find a path through this that ends back where it
started: in Europe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The country’s future
is at stake!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Leave campaigners’ lies/promises
are already being reneged on. Scotland’s heading for the door (my biggest dread
throughout the campaign: nightmare of a truncated UK with all that it implies)
and <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Northern Ireland is smouldering. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Racism’s rearing its head as if given the
stamp of approval.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Money is falling out
all over the place and Putin & co are having a laugh.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Reasons
to be positive: the passion of the 48% and of the young, the parliamentary
majority for Remain, the referendum’s advisory nature, the political and
economic turmoil, Leavers’ regrets, a new urgency about addressing Leavers’
concerns, Angela Merkel being calm. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Reasons
to be negative: the political and economic turmoil, the tabloids, the Eurocrats
who want to teach us a lesson so others don’t follow, the main UK parties’ failure
to address the problems and perceptions (most of all those around immigration) that
motivated the 52% leave vote.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">It
must be possible to call another referendum on the terms of departure, once
these have been negotiated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And/or delay
until circumstances and opinions have changed. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And in the meantime do some hard thinking about
how to address things that aren’t working well in the world (<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/29/key-lesson-of-brexit-globalisation-must-work-for-all-of-britain">here’s Gordon Brown on globalisation</a>). <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A general
election might help, if one gets called; or not help. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The scary thing is that various complex
elements would have to fall out right for there to be a good outcome.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">So:
back to Piłsudski and not giving up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For
Europe, for peace and stability, for a UK that remains united, for equality of
opportunity, for progress on the environment, science etc, and for
tolerance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For the 52% as well as the 48%.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Shelley, too, 100 years before Piłsudski and
Yeats, 200 years before us, ended this sonnet with hope:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">England in 1819</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">An old, mad, blind, despised, and
dying King;</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Princes, the dregs of their dull
race, who flow</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Through public scorn,—mud from a
muddy spring;</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Rulers who neither see nor feel nor
know,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">But leechlike to their fainting
country cling</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Till they drop, blind in blood,
without a blow.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">A people starved and stabbed in th'
untilled field;</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">An army, whom liberticide and prey</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Makes as a two-edged sword to all
who wield;</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Golden and sanguine laws which tempt
and slay;</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Religion Christless, Godless—a book
sealed;</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">A senate, Time’s worst statute,
unrepealed—</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Are graves from which a glorious
Phantom may</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Burst, to illumine our tempestuous
day.</span></div>
Fiona Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10052038869211775919noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1648230750208763565.post-79168217811760037922016-05-31T21:10:00.001+01:002016-05-31T21:51:53.683+01:00From poetry to strategy: How (not) to get your poetry published<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDjqpivmVIL3u5CPfnNY-Rsos6vLwxXoFPth7iKgAP-n8DlSFNi8QAujZplUdvMYJHB3juwgONGJ9xT6bXpoW3vxX_XDQPtU9k3XyPCuAcQtKBHq1nS45-mTpg30zYtYEAqqzBY0tdsKAs/s1600/how+not+to.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDjqpivmVIL3u5CPfnNY-Rsos6vLwxXoFPth7iKgAP-n8DlSFNi8QAujZplUdvMYJHB3juwgONGJ9xT6bXpoW3vxX_XDQPtU9k3XyPCuAcQtKBHq1nS45-mTpg30zYtYEAqqzBY0tdsKAs/s200/how+not+to.jpg" width="133" /></a><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">Recently
someone without knowledge of the poetry world asked me to read a poetry
collection and advise on publication.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>What I really wanted to send instead of my longish and painstaking email
reply was a concentrated version of <a href="http://www.happenstancepress.org/index.php/how-not-to">Helena Nelson’s book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">How (not) to get your poetry published</i></a> –
something that would encapsulate all its wisdom, common sense, humour and raw
experience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">Here
I’d better declare an interest: Helena Nelson (Nell) of HappenStance Press has
published both my pamphlets.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But that
means I know she walks the walk.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Many
other poetry readers and writers know it too: she’s a prize-winning small
publisher and poet. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">Why
did I need <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">How (not) to</i> and what’s so
good about it?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here’s a list of thoughts
about the book, which is itself full of useful lists.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Extracts are in blue. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="margin-left: 18.0pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">If the world of poetry publishing were
a tangible object, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">How (not) to </i>would
be a DIY video on YouTube.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A voice and pair
of hands would be taking the world apart, explaining how it works and what to
do when it doesn’t.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>People who’d googled
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">how poetry publishing works</i> or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">problems with poetry world</i> would settle
down to watch it with relief.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 18.0pt; mso-add-space: auto; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 18.0pt; mso-add-space: auto; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">People
don’t do this enough to the worlds we construct, which tend to operate on the
basis of shared, unspoken assumptions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>These are usually odd and/or unfathomable to anyone new.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Someone who knows a little may think s/he
knows a lot and therefore still make what are, in that particular world,
mistakes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 18.0pt; mso-add-space: auto; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 18.0pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">2.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">How
(not) to</span></i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";"> takes a
strategic and systematic approach, working through the stages an
aspiring-to-be-published writer of poetry must go through.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From the first page: </span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="margin-left: 18.0pt; mso-add-space: auto; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 18.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #002060; font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">This book deals with
strategy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You may not think poetry and
strategic planning have much in common, but why do you think some poets are
successful in their publishing deals while others, who seem to you to write
just as well, are not?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Getting poetry
published is a competitive game in which you create your own luck.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: 18.0pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">3.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">The book’s both hard-headed and
warm-hearted, both structured and imaginative.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>For example it contains several worksheets at the back including a
checklist of how ready you are for publication and a table with criteria for
assessing which publisher might suit your work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It also contains 22 writing prompts – the subliminal message seems to
be: don’t get too wrapped up in this, keep on writing the best poems you
can.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: 18.0pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">4.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">Basic questions get clear
answers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nell lists 10 reasons why
writers need to publish in magazines before trying for a pamphlet or book.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some of these are fairly obvious, such as
this being a way of getting your name known.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Others, such as the extra edge that both sending out and rejection bring
to redrafting poems, become apparent with experience. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="margin-left: 18.0pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">5.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">I challenge anyone to read the book
without laughing, internally or out loud.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">How (not) to</i> is full of fictionalised
case studies from Nell’s own inbox, mostly showing how not to.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We’d never not address a publisher by name in
an email enquiry and fail to research her submissions policy on her website
first, would we?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or send an already
self-published pamphlet and ask her to publish it?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course not… but we’re fallible and the
examples are salutary.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 18.0pt; mso-add-space: auto; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">There are many small parodies of today’s poetry world and human nature interacting.
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here are just two items from a list of
options for ‘thinking outside the book’:</span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 18.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 18.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #002060; font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">- Attract attention to
yourself by some highly original fundraiser: maybe performing poems by heart at
every railway station in the UK and uploading videos to YouTube.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 18.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #002060; font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">-<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Start a ‘school’ or ‘movement’ with a group
of poet friends. Create a name for yourselves (The Middenists? The
Quiddites?)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Publish a group anthology.
Get noticed. </span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 18.0pt; mso-add-space: auto; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 18.0pt; mso-add-space: auto; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">Those
names are fit to march alongside the Levellers or Diggers.</span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 18.0pt; mso-add-space: auto; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 18.0pt; mso-add-space: auto; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">Nell’s
approach is more effective and humane than the usual somewhat dry and irritable
harangue by an editor fed up with the attentions of zany poetasters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 18.0pt; mso-add-space: auto; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 18.0pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">6.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> <i></i></span></span></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">How
(not) to</span></i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";"> gets the
reader to think like a publisher. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One
chapter explains what publishers want.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It itemises all the things a publisher will have to do to publish you
(from drawing up a contract to distribution) and all the other things she’ll be
doing at the same time (from considering further collections for her poets to applying
for funding).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nell points out that
publisher time runs differently: five years seems an age to an impatient poet
(and which of us aren’t?) but is short to her.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 18.0pt; mso-add-space: auto; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 18.0pt; mso-add-space: auto; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">Another
chapter’s about how to research publishers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>So many people, when applying for anything, talk a lot about why they’d
be good at whatever it is but not at all, or hardly, about what about the
organisation they find interesting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 18.0pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">7.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">Nell’s wisdom just has to be
motivational.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On sending to magazines
(bold text is mine):</span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 18.0pt; mso-add-space: auto; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #002060; font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">It’s hard graft, this regular sending out of poems, but it
strengthens you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Certainly rejection of
your favourites can be demoralising.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
there are at least three key aspects to the poetry business.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The first is the best – the making of poems,
the joy, excitement and fun of that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Second is getting those poems as good as they can be, which means
exposing them to strangers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The third
thing is determination.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Stickability.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Doing the necessary
business of sending them out, filing the returns.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Earning respect because you don’t give up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Standing up and being counted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">You
wanna be a poet?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is your job.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 18.0pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">8.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">There’s advice on what to do if
publication attempts aren’t working.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
chapter on ‘thinking outside the book’ contains a long, long list of
options.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s a chapter on
self-publication too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 18.0pt; mso-add-space: auto; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="margin-left: 18.0pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">9.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">And there’s much more besides.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>About networking online, networking in
person, giving readings, blogging…</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="margin-left: 18.0pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">10.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">How (not) to</span></i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";"> isn’t just invaluable for the
starting-out writer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We all forget or
ignore things.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(For example I hadn’t
thought about publisher/poet differences in perception of time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s really helpful to me right now.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The checklists and decision aids would be very
useful for any poet on his/her nth collection needing a fresh approach.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 18.0pt; mso-add-space: auto; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="margin-left: 18.0pt; mso-add-space: auto; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">And it’s
not only for UK writers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although it’s
written from within the context of the UK its truths and common-sense have
universal application.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That comment’s
addressed to the readers of this blog from America, India, Australasia, Europe
and everywhere.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The world that’s interested
in the poetry publishing world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">I
did send the link to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">How (not) to</i> to
the person who’d sent me the poetry collection; I hope that might lead to a
purchase and one more individual both enlightened and entertained.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">How (not) to get your
poetry published </span></i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">by
Helena Nelson is published by HappenStance Press and costs £10 + postage (which is around £5 for Europe and a bit over £7 for further away).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><a href="http://www.happenstancepress.org/index.php/how-not-to">Its web page, here, </a>has some downloadable material
including the publisher analysis worksheet and one called Plan A and Plan
B.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<![endif]-->Fiona Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10052038869211775919noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1648230750208763565.post-90804311407474264662016-04-30T19:13:00.001+01:002016-05-01T21:29:35.371+01:00Reliquaria by R. A. Villanueva<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<![endif]--><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">American
poets in London have long made it a more interesting place to be.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are many; some stay more or less
forever, others come and go.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some are
also commentators and Ron Villanueva’s one of these.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I met him at the Troubadour a few months ago when
we were both on a panel discussing the “I” in poetry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By then I’d read enough of his poems to be
sure I wanted the book.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6xH-5yXu99qf-gwwEqqdq9EMrW7hUs9jj2rQ8syZx8pfD91MXQScWMfKcLLfo7T-zGt8_yOCJ3cMoKlfFvqIJl_TVMTbQp1lwbSzU5K6A9x3Ipc2ZZS_cL56OurCq7PybwlEnX-1ZGru4/s1600/reliquaria.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6xH-5yXu99qf-gwwEqqdq9EMrW7hUs9jj2rQ8syZx8pfD91MXQScWMfKcLLfo7T-zGt8_yOCJ3cMoKlfFvqIJl_TVMTbQp1lwbSzU5K6A9x3Ipc2ZZS_cL56OurCq7PybwlEnX-1ZGru4/s200/reliquaria.jpg" width="200" /></a><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">Reliquaria</span></i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">: it’s clear roughly what that means,
something to do with relics and reliquaries… but exactly?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The word’s not in the Shorter OED or Lewis
& Short (classical Latin); nor is it clearly defined online.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I got some clerical (not Catholic) help.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Independently we worked out that reliquarium is
ecclesiastical Latin for a reliquary and may also stand for a place where
relics (perhaps boxed in reliquaries) are kept – just as the house of a poem
contains stanzas and lines and words, and a collection contains poems.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Reliquaria (plural) also makes you think of
the things themselves that are left behind, whether bones or memories – things that
appear in the poems.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">So
it’s a good title: you think you know where you are with it but then..?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Google it and the first page results are
mostly the book! <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">Going
down a layer, poems have titles like ‘Vanitas’, ‘What the bones tell us’, ‘Fishheads’.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The book invites layered thinking as with the
cemetery in ‘All Souls’ Day’, which starts:</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">Here see the city of makeshift
things:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">ramshackle balustrades, stopgap
pipes,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">clotheslines of staples and twine.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">What surer proof of the risen Christ</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">than this tomb-stacked city,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">its lungs of bamboo. Gravestone town
of scaffolds</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">and cellophane. Smoke-heft of burnt
plastic,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">of tin, match-lit ranges of ash.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">The
poem’s as packed as the cemetery with details of the strange after-life of
death.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The fullest lines bristle with
consonants but also have assonance to give them music (eg. ramshackle,
balustrades, stopgap; pipes, clotheslines, twine, Christ).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Between the couplets is much-needed space for
the reader to walk, as between gravestones.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The looser second sentence offers space between the lists, a vowel-filled
change of tone. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Words, syntax and
line-ends all work together. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">The
detail could also stand for an accumulation of heritage; Villanueva is Filipino
American and this poem is (I think) set in the Philippines.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Tagalog words and phrases enter some poems
along with fragments of family history.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In ‘Fish Heads’ the speaker’s mother</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">.. warns, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Don’t waste what should be eaten.</i> Reminds me </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">of every delicate gift we have
thrown away: tilapia stomach</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">best soured with vinegar, milkfish
liver to melt</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">against the dome of the mouth.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">Such
gifts, scorned by a younger generation not brought up to know the frugal past,
could be metaphorical too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">I
like it when Americans do form because they do it (as everything)
differently.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Villanueva has a rather
lovely poem in a form that’s hard to do without making the average editor groan
and think Oh no, another X.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Form can
make a writer go to surprising places; here, it’s the work to disguise the form
that does that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Enough about the poem –
no spoilers for a pleasurable discovery.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">He
also has a sonnet crown, ‘Aftermath’, whose main theme is white racist violence
and the associated dilemmas, memories, fear and other states of mind it brings:
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">I need you to know I’ve tried. To
name ghosts, </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">to face them, dark as they are,
slurred in with</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">the city’s glossed clots and fresh
buttresses,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">The
thought and description is complex, concentrated and regretful, almost elegiac in
tone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The crown isn’t closed off as if
to say: this story continues.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">Within
the broad themes of life and death that run through <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Reliquaria</i>, subject<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCpEfdhEMWnlRJc9amohPxLSTznz8mI9Yk5toqbxf2fOMmtogM-wPr4ot7BdwOECmUoNquZilzX-JaxV5wqssGMSlaMZMOfyaR04LE_6g7y5J39DT9fW94tWRM6yYn7PJf3RVu_H9btau8/s1600/van+Hagens.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="166" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCpEfdhEMWnlRJc9amohPxLSTznz8mI9Yk5toqbxf2fOMmtogM-wPr4ot7BdwOECmUoNquZilzX-JaxV5wqssGMSlaMZMOfyaR04LE_6g7y5J39DT9fW94tWRM6yYn7PJf3RVu_H9btau8/s200/van+Hagens.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Gunther van Hagens 'The Skin Man'</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
matter ranges from ancient Greek myth to Magellan,
the Kill Sparrow War (China, late 1950’s) and life in modern New Jersey.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s much strangeness, often related to often
deathly transformations: a rodent-poison that causes the body to kill itself by
producing deadly levels of calcium; cancer; a plastinated cadaver; a journey to
the ocean’s hadal zone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Language often has
gothic flourishes to match, sometimes with deliberate archaisms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These occasionally, for me, tip over into
bathos in the relatively few persona poems such as ‘On the sixth day, Ugolino
thinks of his children’: “I… cannot father / more grief here among what remains
alive, /knots itself round my waist..”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But the risk usually pays off as ‘Drifting towards the bottom, Jacques
Picard recalls the sky’:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">All
around us seems an empire at the</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">height
of its forces, a tuber of night</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">and
ooze, bone fog and soot we come to love</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">because
we can.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">There’s
a lot to be teased out of many of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Reliquaria</i>’s
poems in repeated reading; for example ‘Swarm’ in which schoolboys in a biology
dissection have “jury-rigged” a phallus on a crucifix.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Transgressors,
all of you</i>, </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>he said and closed the door
behind him, </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">refusing to look at us or the thing</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>that seemed to shimmer and twitch </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">with each frog’s reflex kick against
our forceps.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">Schoolboys,
sex and death; religion; mockery and suffering; group solidarity; the visceral
mystery, wonder and absurdity of the body; institutional behaviour…</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">The
short lines and simple language of the final poem, ‘Mine will be a beautiful
service’, show Villanueva’s versatility:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">Pressed, chemical</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">I will look content,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">but confused,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">as when you watched me turn</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">in my sleep, dreaming</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>of a Golgotha</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">in beeswax, a coffin</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">for swallows..</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">This <span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">is a</span> favourite poem partly for its gentle humour and especially in part 2,
where it becomes a love poem for the “you” it’s addressed to (the longer line
length contributes to a change in tone):</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you each day clutch </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">our pillows, press them to your
face, pray</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">to take in some atom of me all</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">into the hollows of your chest, yes</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">I promise my ghost will find you</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">should you want someone else to
love.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/product/Reliquaria,676012.aspx"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">Reliquaria</span></i></a><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";"><a href="https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/product/Reliquaria,676012.aspx"> is published by University of Nebraska Press</a>. I've kept it around for several months<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";"> now, enjoying rereads of various poems for their richness of language, form and metaphysical thought.<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span>There’s
an interview <a href="http://wordsofcolour.co.uk/interview-with-r-a-villanueva/">with Ron Villanueva here</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
Fiona Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10052038869211775919noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1648230750208763565.post-86955701098808174632016-03-31T12:35:00.001+01:002016-03-31T12:35:55.972+01:00Poetry and Sexism in the Guardian Review 2014-16<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">There
was originally a question mark at the end of this post’s title.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My expectation was that there would be both
less poetry and less sexism than in previous years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Also, I wondered if an audit of poetry
reviews in the Guardian Review could still be relevant; now, having done the
count, I’m quite glad I did.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Results
and conclusion first:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">*
There's no improvement over time in the gender balance, none in the range of
publishers represented and not much in the presence of black, Asian and minority
ethnic poets / reviewers.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">*
Under a third (31%) of the 45 collections reviewed are by women.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This figure is probably lower than the
percentage of books by women published by the big poetry publishers (which was
39% from 2010-13).</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">*
Under a third (31% again) of reviews were written by women.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">*
Both these figures are worse than last time – and both represent the average across
all six years of this audit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">*
Collections by (I think) three BAME* poets are reviewed: 7%.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Slightly better than last time.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">*
Two reviews (I think) are by BAME reviewers: 4%.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Last time there didn’t appear to be any, so
that’s progress.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">*
Publishers are unlikely to get their books reviewed unless they are one of the
big six poetry publishers or another large publisher… or, this time,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Shearsman (hooray for that at least!).</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">*
The number of poetry reviews continues to go down.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">*
Figures for the Saturday poem are much better than for the reviews.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">*
Conclusion: over the last six years, while the world of poetry changes around
it, the Guardian Review has kept its poetry reviewing coverage much the
same.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It seems to be stuck in a pattern
of reviewing books by the big publishers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This must be the biggest determinant of the results, but isn’t the only
one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It doesn’t appear to explain why
the figure for women’s books reviewed is so low.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And of course it doesn’t explain at all the small
number of female and BAME reviewers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Background
to the audit:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVTJfhS0Sw0qV0KpL5dfTHho5fpDjxk6zpavYFMFhTs7XyFFqMLpOuMRKMticeYAvBsOQeInlG_Kbvr-iqgRZDXqJDiJPbDV6b4PVi_-XQXuMmLQop_LuNv3h4AnfQcKNU8PL8uZq8bNpb/s1600/capildeo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVTJfhS0Sw0qV0KpL5dfTHho5fpDjxk6zpavYFMFhTs7XyFFqMLpOuMRKMticeYAvBsOQeInlG_Kbvr-iqgRZDXqJDiJPbDV6b4PVi_-XQXuMmLQop_LuNv3h4AnfQcKNU8PL8uZq8bNpb/s1600/capildeo.jpg" /></a><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">This
is the fifth audit I’ve done of reviews of poetry books in the Guardian Review,
as a micro supplement to the US-based VIDA review which takes an annual look at
representation of women (as both reviewers and reviewed, across all subjects)
in literary publications.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I started out
just looking at male/female representation but then extended the audit to
include BAME poets / reviewers and which publishers’ books get reviewed. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span>This count was never quite in sync with VIDA
so last year I decided to wait until now, to synchronise – <a href="http://www.vidaweb.org/the-2015-vida-count/">VIDA’s count cameout yesterday</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">I’ll
repeat the reasons for doing this, from an earlier audit:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Shouldn’t the Guardian’s Saturday Review
be challenging literary hierarchies, not strengthening them?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the case of poetry it is doing the
latter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why do I care?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because I read it every Saturday, enjoy most
of it, but get regularly annoyed by the poetry reviews.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And because the Guardian is mainstream,
reaching a far wider audience than any poetry magazine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>People whose acquaintance with contemporary
poetry goes no further than skimming the Review’s reviews will have no idea of
its diversity.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">This
may all be less relevant than it was when I did the first audit in 2011.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Guardian’s coverage of poetry online has
grown and is diverse.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s Carol
Rumens’ poem of the week.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Last year
there was the poem-a-day on climate change for Keep it in the Ground.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A list of items for March includes a podcast
with Holly McNish and Luke Wright discussing political poetry, and a poem by
the Palestinian poet Ashraf Fayadh who is in prison in Saudi Arabia, until
recently under sentence of death.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">It’s
the coverage on paper, in the Review, that stays traditional.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I still read it and enjoy much of it, so I still care.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGbSLL5duHugcUrI_0KR7_NtjjYbPXQ7DzpNWwZXuyskSLyjdi41yTBmzJlVy_Ub2simkinz-PVhVLI6KQYj0v3RdO18kS2MWDcW5GiH870JFRe1KVKuCHut8jjM5DJEXmOl-p0vuM_3mo/s1600/heaney+virgil.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGbSLL5duHugcUrI_0KR7_NtjjYbPXQ7DzpNWwZXuyskSLyjdi41yTBmzJlVy_Ub2simkinz-PVhVLI6KQYj0v3RdO18kS2MWDcW5GiH870JFRe1KVKuCHut8jjM5DJEXmOl-p0vuM_3mo/s200/heaney+virgil.jpg" width="126" /></a><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">This
audit sticks to the same four categories as the last one and covers the 21
months since June 2014. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was harder to
do this time – on the Guardian website it’s no longer possible to search for poetry
reviews.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One can search for
poetry-related items, and reviews within this tend to be colour-coded
grey.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I may have both missed things
and included one or two reviews that didn’t appear in print.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve included a couple of pieces by writers
about their own books: by Seamus Heaney on his Aeneid VI translation, and Karen
Van Dyck on her anthology of new Greek poetry.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">See
<a href="http://displacement-poetry.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/poetry-and-sexism-in-guardian-review.html">the 2014 audit, here,</a> to compare. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That
audit also lists the results from previous years.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">The 2014-16 audit:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<u><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">A.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Books reviewed in the Guardian’s Saturday
Review</span></u><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #c0504d; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: accent2;">31 books by men, 14 books by women.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s 69% and 31%.</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Disappointing
because the last audit showed some improvement, with women having written 37%
of the books reviewed.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #c0504d; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: accent2;">3 books by BAME poets, 2 women, 1 man.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s 7%.</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Slightly
better than last time’s figure of 5%, which represented two books.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It would be interesting to be able to compare
this with the percentage of books by BAME poets published by the big six.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<u><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">B.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Reviewers</span></u><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #c0504d; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: accent2;">34 reviews written by men, 15 by women.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s 69% and 31% again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Disappointing
again; this reverses what appeared to be a slight but steady improvement over
time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the last audit 34% of reviewers
were female.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #c0504d; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: accent2;">2 BAME reviewers, both women.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s 4%.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">At
least better than last time, when there appeared to be no BAME reviewers.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">(Discrepancies
in numbers between A and B are because I’ve counted reviewers of anthologies
but not the anthologies themselves.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<u><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">C.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Publishers</span></u><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDNnIoF53sCQpI37Ye3_H7Mh0bOTZ6COl1rQ1ZU4AsB2J5tW7plzH3xeG_1_8Tua4kxWpTV7VucdwLO-dEDfyXBRE-0C52DeMxjyBJczLnmAH-lpz_LVKEBB23MIyMBOPhXsiyImcSerHT/s1600/simms+hen+harrier.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDNnIoF53sCQpI37Ye3_H7Mh0bOTZ6COl1rQ1ZU4AsB2J5tW7plzH3xeG_1_8Tua4kxWpTV7VucdwLO-dEDfyXBRE-0C52DeMxjyBJczLnmAH-lpz_LVKEBB23MIyMBOPhXsiyImcSerHT/s200/simms+hen+harrier.jpg" width="133" /></a><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Only
five books reviewed were not published by the big six poetry publishers or
another large one such as Penguin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s
10%.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of the smaller publishers Shearsman
(see right) had 3 books reviewed, and Gallery and Nine Arches one each.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These figures fail to reflect what’s
happening in poetry publishing today… there’s a whole world out there which it
would be nice to see given some attention in the Review.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<u><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">D.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Saturday Poem</span></u><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">57
poems in total.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #c0504d; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: accent2;">32 poems by men and 25 by women.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s 56% and 44%.</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #c0504d; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: accent2;">6 by BAME poets, 5 of them women.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s 10.5%.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLsXNlfxE6VuWkDAiBOnmzX147RYplxgITOYRU7ia3G9tbUFZadxcxvKL5zIWluJ3eEdqk21ylymOzJbBvHs8AN9Ih2EUutWIRhw5hVKBkxkplEEmyJaZhBeqoL_Ve8v2xhCuTYjluU8EW/s1600/loop+of+jade.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLsXNlfxE6VuWkDAiBOnmzX147RYplxgITOYRU7ia3G9tbUFZadxcxvKL5zIWluJ3eEdqk21ylymOzJbBvHs8AN9Ih2EUutWIRhw5hVKBkxkplEEmyJaZhBeqoL_Ve8v2xhCuTYjluU8EW/s200/loop+of+jade.jpg" width="125" /></a><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">This
one was easy to search.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The gender
breakdown seems more or less within normal variation (last time it was 50/50).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
last audit showed no BAME poets at all so this audit’s figure is a very
positive change<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(and interesting that
the gender balance is reversed here).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just
over a quarter of the poems were out of books from small publishers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">That’s
it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<br />
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Fiona Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10052038869211775919noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1648230750208763565.post-218455333543339352016-02-29T13:04:00.001+00:002016-02-29T13:04:30.770+00:00The lyric “I” – some thoughts in quotes<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8yFYdCK2QzEPdHz6KyPWCrlswi5X4IYTk8sbTKuXH5AzfJ2o_dlHIjoLDwgqdq0lf5yS-agYIUhUPpQqCXzH1gewQnXqO-8D5PNEh7tmj08kSiZ8j9eiu7pWoOw59OX0diOpu2c-jh2GQ/s1600/M%2526I+March+2014+009.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8yFYdCK2QzEPdHz6KyPWCrlswi5X4IYTk8sbTKuXH5AzfJ2o_dlHIjoLDwgqdq0lf5yS-agYIUhUPpQqCXzH1gewQnXqO-8D5PNEh7tmj08kSiZ8j9eiu7pWoOw59OX0diOpu2c-jh2GQ/s200/M%2526I+March+2014+009.JPG" width="150" /></a><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">A
few weeks ago there was a panel debate at the Troubadour about the “I” in
poems, with Fiona Sampson, Ron Villanueva, Tim Liardet and me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We
discussed, of course, everything from self-exposure to self-invention to
self-indulgence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Beforehand I collected
some quotes that helped me think about the subject – they don’t all address it
directly. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It seems a shame to waste them,
so here they are. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think I actually
read the first one out during the discussion; the rest stayed in my head.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #002060; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">What is the source of our first suffering?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It lies in the fact that we hesitated to
speak.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It began in the moment when we
accumulated silent things within us. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #002060; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Gaston Bachelard, quoted in a lecture by Seamus Heaney.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #002060; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel
with ourselves, poetry. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #002060; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">W B Yeats, Essays</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #002060; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Facts are very unimportant things, there to make you believe in the
emotional content in a poem. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #002060; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Anne Sexton (in a radio interview)</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #002060; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">I must begin with first the illusion of an intention.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The poem begins to form from the first
intention.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the intention is already
breaking into another.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The first
intention begins me but of course continually shatters itself and is replaced
by the child of the new collision…<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
poem is more than the poet's intention. The poet does not write what he knows
but what he does not know.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #002060; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">W S Graham, Notes on a Poetry of Release</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #002060; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">To write a poem is to work with change, to deal with a shape-shifter.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #002060; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Kathleen Jamie, from Strong Words (Bloodaxe)</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #002060; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">The friends that have it I do wrong</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #002060; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">When ever I remake a song, </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #002060; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Should know what issue is at stake;</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #002060; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">It is myself that I remake.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #002060; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>W B Yeats</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #002060; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from
emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from
personality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #002060; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">TS Eliot, from The Sacred Wood (essays)</span></i><span style="color: #002060; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI_yt6xS72Jd2K-E_pK5IHcSlMAJQ677SS8vA5PVqsqam1tizS4t8wJxwmRyjHKB5fLWXoe1esTmtjdhEuccuAOsTrne4heFCjrCiQVao6LvjrJpUdwpvKeKC-uwJiMBSxPPrPQE-hamHY/s1600/M%2526I+March+2014+006.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI_yt6xS72Jd2K-E_pK5IHcSlMAJQ677SS8vA5PVqsqam1tizS4t8wJxwmRyjHKB5fLWXoe1esTmtjdhEuccuAOsTrne4heFCjrCiQVao6LvjrJpUdwpvKeKC-uwJiMBSxPPrPQE-hamHY/s200/M%2526I+March+2014+006.JPG" width="150" /></a><span style="color: #002060; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"> </span></div>
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<span style="color: #002060; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">For the [American] Gurlesque poet, the use of the lyric “I” does
not confess a self, but rather a raucously messy nest of conflicting desires
and proclivities that can be costumed this way or that. Disjunctions in
identity are not to be worked through or resolved but savored and tapped for
their cultural power.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #002060; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Lara Glenum in Jacket</span></i><span style="color: #002060; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #002060; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Off and on I have written out a poem called “Grandmother’s Glass
Eye” which should be about the problem of writing poetry. The situation of my
grandmother strikes me as rather like the situation of the poet: the difficulty
of combining the real with the decidedly un-real; the natural with the
unnatural; the curious effect a poem produces of being as normal as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sight</i> and yet as synthetic, as
artificial, as a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">glass eye</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #002060; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Elizabeth Bishop (in an unpublished talk. Thanks to Jacqui </span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #002060; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Saphra for unearthing this quote.)</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #002060; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">A short poem in which the poet, the poet’s persona, or another
speaker expresses personal feelings. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #002060; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Poetry Foundation definition of lyric poetry</span></i><span style="color: #002060; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #002060; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">A highly concentrated and passionate form of communication
between strangers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #002060; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Edward Hirsch on lyric poetry, Poetry Foundation website</span></i><span style="color: #002060; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #002060; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">The speaker is a device for making the invisible visible.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #002060; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Princeton Encyclopaedia gloss on a definition of deconstruction</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">***<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>***<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>***<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">To
end, here’s a favourite haiku that seems relevant in 2016 when some blossom is past
its best by the end of February.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Issa
was talking about old-Japanese new year, of course, in early spring, and meant something
completely different...<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think this translation
should be read (or heard in the head) in an ironically grumpy elderly American
male voice, to get the absolute most out of it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span style="color: #002060; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">New Year’s Day – </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #002060; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">everything is in blossom!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span style="color: #002060; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">I feel about average.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #002060; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Issa (1763-1828), translated by Robert Hass<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<br /></div>
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Fiona Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10052038869211775919noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1648230750208763565.post-26852107254867383292016-01-20T19:41:00.000+00:002016-01-20T19:41:35.389+00:00Open Letter to the Poetry Trust<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Dear
Poetry Trust – </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">I
cancelled my Friends standing order, at your request, with a heavy heart. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At least I think I did: there’s no record of
the cancellation in my account or of the order itself except that it was last
paid, appropriately, in November.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If the
money arrives again next November, that’s too bad…<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Electronic bank transactions aren’t much good
for metaphors so I can’t help thinking that a cheque will fall on the doormat
at your Halesworth attic, the letterbox clatter echoing in the emptied office.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXRU_w02ZsfPIBzo3P29QyyIVZgqocK1VdjJrFdK_ZFPkWkA18o4Ydy3IUW1F2veK071VnKZPqYEXsWct6komyQU5_b9B8Oi4qtN-Laxa9MB_frTi4c37BJQILkx-vBHvBmKlYj0Mc3_YN/s1600/aldeburgh+bookstall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXRU_w02ZsfPIBzo3P29QyyIVZgqocK1VdjJrFdK_ZFPkWkA18o4Ydy3IUW1F2veK071VnKZPqYEXsWct6komyQU5_b9B8Oi4qtN-Laxa9MB_frTi4c37BJQILkx-vBHvBmKlYj0Mc3_YN/s200/aldeburgh+bookstall.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Thank
you for going ahead with the <a href="http://displacement-poetry.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/aldeburgh-birds-poetry-swimming.html">2015 Festival</a> despite accumulating financial and
other worries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Everyone who was there, packing
out Snape and Aldeburgh rooms of all sizes, will have been grateful
for that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course there were rumours.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One of the things being
said was that you’d been encouraged by your sponsors to risk the ambitious move
to Snape, and perhaps they were now letting you down.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">When
you made <a href="http://www.thepoetrytrust.org/news/the-poetry-trust-future-news-update/">your announcement in December </a>there was a predictable outpouring of dismay,
lamentation, support etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From signed-up
Friends and supporters but also from people who don’t go to Aldeburgh, or only
occasionally, but still value the festival as a vital part of UK poetry
life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Since
then it’s gone quiet but that doesn’t mean people aren’t still thinking and
talking about it: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">what’s going to happen?</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">I
haven’t tried to contact anyone for inside knowledge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I know that you the trustees (and maybe some
of the former staff?) are being careful about what you say – fair enough, any
comments would spread quickly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is
a rumour going round that there either won’t be a festival at all in 2016 or it
will be very informal, symbolic, enough to prevent a total break in the
27-year-long chain.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMM1gYMCg7LI2cbBScxXPOz8JH_U1pMoh4a_vYBrOGaeaXgoryUn1Rng-q4zplDW7wnbF2GpIE0ymKQllFzR_DCglew8oiNg5Um9ExuGYAF_3HcJxQwYBDn6risWAqN7JGaxbnvI2QrCEG/s1600/kei+miller+aldeburgh.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMM1gYMCg7LI2cbBScxXPOz8JH_U1pMoh4a_vYBrOGaeaXgoryUn1Rng-q4zplDW7wnbF2GpIE0ymKQllFzR_DCglew8oiNg5Um9ExuGYAF_3HcJxQwYBDn6risWAqN7JGaxbnvI2QrCEG/s200/kei+miller+aldeburgh.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Before
looking forward I want to go back – to your annual report & accounts</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"> for
2014/15 (up to March 2015), <a href="http://apps.charitycommission.gov.uk/Showcharity/RegisterOfCharities/DocumentList.aspx?RegisteredCharityNumber=1102893&SubsidiaryNumber=0&DocType=AccountList">see here</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On
the face of it, despite the loss of one major donor (the Garfield Weston
Foundation) and box office income not rising as hoped, your financial position
looks OK, with £270k income and £265k spend over the year… except that any
organisation (especially with low reserves) relying on Arts Council Grants for
the Arts funding and/or charitable donations is constantly on the edge of a
North Sea cliff.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">While
showing appropriate caution about future funding, the plans suggest a certain
optimism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Your report (p8) set out an
ambitious fundraising programme, including a public appeal and a search for
major donors to complement Grants for the Arts money.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is matched by the ambition of the
artistic programme built around the Festival, which includes: </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">A year-round programme of events and
projects …a re-introduction of the Schools programme, an increased youth offer,
a move towards partnerships, and a widening of access to the benefits of contemporary
poetry, delivering a year-round live and digital programme, creative education opportunities,
courses, prizes and publications.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Clearly
this didn’t work out for various reasons, perhaps chiefly a combination of
staff changes and over-ambition?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t
know enough about this and it’s easy to be wise after the event.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A
business guru would say: stick to your core competence, which in this case is –</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">DELIVERING
REALLY GOOD POETRY FESTIVALS YEAR AFTER YEAR.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYbl15x2_Re-vwq9w-lwY3iy7ooetQc0HiZbhAN6wKXxMSpqSnBUaZ0EWmG0FYOqqUs1t7nmtkzyNTTRuS2qJ8IpUEJ1LrqAp3sEqEdmm2v7SfAGQeSrCqbHO3lFsyNTDLVLmPsA79AwuZ/s1600/aldeburgh+new+voices.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYbl15x2_Re-vwq9w-lwY3iy7ooetQc0HiZbhAN6wKXxMSpqSnBUaZ0EWmG0FYOqqUs1t7nmtkzyNTTRuS2qJ8IpUEJ1LrqAp3sEqEdmm2v7SfAGQeSrCqbHO3lFsyNTDLVLmPsA79AwuZ/s200/aldeburgh+new+voices.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Other
near-integral elements, part of the Aldeburgh brand, are the Aldeburgh Eight (though
as a former participant I’m biased) and the First Collection Prize.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The rest sounds positive but isn’t
core though I’ve heard that the work you did with English teachers, helping
them teach poetry in schools, was really good.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Someone should be doing that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">By
now you may be asking, why am I writing to you?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Hardly to say, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">stick to the
Festival</i>, since I’m sure you’ll already have worked that out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think I’m writing into what has felt, since
Aldeburgh in November, like a vacuum. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
realise you must have decided that you need quiet time for your strategic
review, without intrusion from the poetry crowd: fair enough.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">But
nature abhors a vacuum. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I can’t fill
this one so I’m sending a letter into it. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s a plea for communication.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Do
you know how much goodwill there is out there, and might it be a good idea to
have it working for you /with you?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If
you could consult and involve us in your decisions – or at the very least,
update us on how your thoughts are evolving – you’d be repaid by Friends,
audiences and supporters feeling some ownership of the future Festival and
whatever shape it takes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">This
blog should be illustrated by a photo I failed to take in November, of a notice
on the sea side end of the Jubilee Hall in Aldeburgh saying that renovation
plans were being developed (which at the time made me wonder if a return there might
be an option).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Anyway the <a href="http://www.aldeburghjubileehall.co.uk/sample-page/hall-development/">Jubilee Hall website is now announcing</a> public meetings in February, with presentations and
discussion on the future of the Hall.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One
building can’t be compared to a whole, complex Poetry Trust, but still it seems
like a good idea.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">While
writing this I’ve kept thinking about what I read in November on one of </span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5ueaPWplqHgcLuRxHQMCQ4sHonvfhFMnnfp-auGyTCtNA779RKuKyMFksXpFmbhoHFuSe6DK6udQvwaAssfLsgBN_awsxuFq2ZhxcoYT3TcBiVHQisyPA_VcSXglOqfs9s7CYBWHWH3lZ/s1600/alde+walk1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5ueaPWplqHgcLuRxHQMCQ4sHonvfhFMnnfp-auGyTCtNA779RKuKyMFksXpFmbhoHFuSe6DK6udQvwaAssfLsgBN_awsxuFq2ZhxcoYT3TcBiVHQisyPA_VcSXglOqfs9s7CYBWHWH3lZ/s200/alde+walk1.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">the local
history signs by the sea path south of Aldeburgh towards the Martello tower.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Fishing
families used to have houses there which would get flooded during sea
surges.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They knew about this so their
houses were constructed accordingly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They
left the doors open on both sides so the sea washed through and back again. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m not sure what this is a metaphor for
(there’s got to be one!)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps it’s
about human / festival adaptability.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or
about letting us all in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span></span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"> </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">My
Aldeburgh friends (ie the ones I always go with) and I are thinking of booking
a stay in Aldeburgh around festival time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>If you’re not there we’ll hold our own festival under the stars, by/in
the sea, on the marshes and in the pub.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps
others will come and do the same.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But we
hope very much you will be there too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">All
the best</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Fiona</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">All Festival photos by
Peter Everard Smith</span></i></div>
<br />
Fiona Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10052038869211775919noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1648230750208763565.post-83553277261230408822015-12-18T17:57:00.000+00:002015-12-18T17:57:10.831+00:00A revolt against transparency<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
New Concrete</i> has been lying around for a while, propped up against bookshelves, looking
good: a near-square block in textured concrete white, the title in raised type
and crossword style.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A fat white door
that says Open Me, a door to all kinds of strangeness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">R</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">OSEMARIE</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"> W</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">ALDROP</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">:
Concrete poetry is first of all a revolt against the transparency of the word.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXToSjs2SnZuUOik_hQNxjvSvM8XloYeqW6f9R-IMYWdtFXE-A1_3AgzSjVr61n1qc1YOHH5Ga_-9YFHklxXthUbuENOZCAIiwQQeNoObsDkWRfvfHCiu7YnVRtnmLOF0OFqjBdJy6g7Fh/s1600/the+new+concrete.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXToSjs2SnZuUOik_hQNxjvSvM8XloYeqW6f9R-IMYWdtFXE-A1_3AgzSjVr61n1qc1YOHH5Ga_-9YFHklxXthUbuENOZCAIiwQQeNoObsDkWRfvfHCiu7YnVRtnmLOF0OFqjBdJy6g7Fh/s1600/the+new+concrete.jpg" /></a><a href="http://shop.southbankcentre.co.uk/the-new-concrete-visual-poetry-in-the-21st-century.html"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">The New Concrete: Visual Poetry in the 21st Century</span></i></a><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">
is edited by Victoria Bean and Chris McCabe with an essay by Kenneth Goldsmith.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s published by Hayward Publishing at the Southbank
Centre, who describe the book as an “overview of contemporary artists and poets
working at the intersection of visual art and literature”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I should declare here that I know Chris
McCabe and that Hayward sent me a review copy (to my delight).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Also that I lack any background
in the visual arts, linguistics or semiotics; what follows is a poetry reader’s
review / reaction. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">The
white door works as a signal, meditation white to put the brain in a receptive state.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I get much pleasure from opening it anywhere
and leafing through… looking? reading? being surprised and excited again and
again by the inventiveness of the contents.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Most of all, being made to think about the strangeness of letters and words.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They change, disappear leaving an aftermath,
are disrupted, superimposed, dissolved, de/reconstructed; they prance, flare or
lurk in many different typescripts, pay grungy homage to early typewriter
concrete, make/don’t make language and some sort of sense to the regular reading
brain. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">M</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">AX</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">
B</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">ENSE</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">: Concrete poetry does not
entertain. It holds the possibility of fascination, and fascination is a form
of concentration, that is concentration which includes perception of the
material as well as perception of its meaning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Concrete
poetry raises some reviewing questions. How to describe the
poems/pictures?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The contents list calls
them ‘artists’ plates’.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are around
180 of them, in alphabetical order (good decision – looking for ordering
reasons would be a distraction).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Each is
given its own page, framed in plenty more white.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve just opened the book at random and hit ‘concrete
poetry’ by nick-e melville.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Spoiler alert.</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Various black geometrical shapes spread across
a double page, like off-cuts from a suprematist’s collage session.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ah, that one’s the inside of an R.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And there’s an O.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Another O with its head cut off like an egg;
the top appears next to it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The inner spaces
of stencil letters!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What’s the oblong
with a diagonal slash?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The right-hand
side of Y.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ah, it spells </span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">CONCRETE POETRY</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"> but some of the letters are missing
or decapitated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mind and eye enjoy the
confusion of floating lost among the black and white, then seeing/not-seeing
the letters, then the puzzle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Once the
solution’s found it’s not possible to see the page the same way as before.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The strangeness of looking and thinking.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">D</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">EREK</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">
B</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">EAULIEU</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">: Concrete poetry momentarily
rejects the idea of the readerly reward for close reading, the idea of the ‘hidden
or buried object’, interferes with signification and momentarily interrupts the
capitalist structure of language.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFOCXIlLpourYOqPXdfoxVKXLVPSgmzh0-fOoLCKvvrXbYCrT-lhB8OpOnSkREaMZBn-gyfKcLpSf1i7xKa10AGEHjULxueGsyod43yPH2SbaZDYDA8ovIEyc5hxnlLpfVCZWIZj9D9-1_/s1600/concrete+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="148" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFOCXIlLpourYOqPXdfoxVKXLVPSgmzh0-fOoLCKvvrXbYCrT-lhB8OpOnSkREaMZBn-gyfKcLpSf1i7xKa10AGEHjULxueGsyod43yPH2SbaZDYDA8ovIEyc5hxnlLpfVCZWIZj9D9-1_/s200/concrete+1.jpg" width="200" /></a>Another
reviewing question is: how to quote?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ll
play safe and only show the pages that are on the Southbank Centre’s
website.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> I can't download them properly so please <a href="http://shop.southbankcentre.co.uk/the-new-concrete-visual-poetry-in-the-21st-century.html">visit the page to see</a>. Here</span> is ‘Flesh’ (left) by Décio
Pignatari, one of the Brazilian founders of concrete poetry in the 1950s, still
working in 2002; and ‘fallen’ (right) by Jörg Piringer, a foamy torrent of letters
within which words seem to appear, or perhaps a cross-section of the chaos of a
brain? </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">One
of my favourites, for its watery beauty, is Francesca Capone’s ‘Oblique Archive
VI: Isidore Isou’.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An underwater book
(apparently), its typewritten lines wavily distorted and luminescent as if seen
on a poor quality screen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s possible
to make out some words: et même si, Rimbaud, lettristes, Tristan, voulons, Marx,
tracts pro-soviet, (sym?)boliste. With time more becomes apparent, but which
phrases go with which?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They merge and
separate with the ripples on the water.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Moving
my head around ought to work but no, this is a page.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Isidore Isou was the founder in the 1940s of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lettrism">the French avant-garde movement Lettrism</a>: “many of their early works centred on
letters and other visual or spoken symbols” says Wikipedia.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">D</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">ONATO</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">
M</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">ANCINI</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">: The typewriter creates the
page-as-grid which creates the page of much concrete poetry…</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-kNYL_Gs_qwzbReZ-Nf99mdBMx-PjqAOv3QiJhFYOREGWkk1awnQ2_YITGCVfmQxo_k9FXGXN0oUEsPinY0fmXWUiWncwU3wtKrRh8f6MHSTKilXM2BoyauARoMYepvdLR_6ypivbNjaV/s1600/new+concrete+3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="148" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-kNYL_Gs_qwzbReZ-Nf99mdBMx-PjqAOv3QiJhFYOREGWkk1awnQ2_YITGCVfmQxo_k9FXGXN0oUEsPinY0fmXWUiWncwU3wtKrRh8f6MHSTKilXM2BoyauARoMYepvdLR_6ypivbNjaV/s200/new+concrete+3.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">This
is ‘Grand Eagle (capitals and columns)’ by Henningham Family Press.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s one of the few plates that carries an
explanation: “..If only propaganda were this difficult to read”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The title sends us straight to American power
both military and financial yet this could also be a digital-age and
multi-coloured (rather than red-and-white) representation of the banners that
used to appear in Eastern Europe in the days of the Warsaw Pact, strung across
road bridges or on the front of factories.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Structurally it looks like a plan not just of Wall Street, say, but of a
Roman military camp, lines and rows split into four quarter-squares.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In much of this book there’s no indication of
scale – the original of ‘Grand Eagle’, despite its postage-stamp size on this blog, ought to take up a whole gallery wall or
a stadium of North Korean dancers spelling out a message.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It probably fits inside another book.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">I’ve
opened again at random and come across Christian Bök’s ‘Of Yellow’ which
contains no letters at all but a sort of representation of a computerisation /
encoding of <a href="http://poesie.webnet.fr/lesgrandsclassiques/poemes/arthur_rimbaud/voyelles.html">Rimbaud’s sonnet ‘Voyelles’</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Each vowel has been replaced by an oblong according to Rimbaud’s own
colour associations as described in the sonnet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Consonants are grey.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is fun (like
most of the book: forget what Max Bense said) and it’s interesting to see Rimbaud’s
sound-patterns. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">K</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">ARL</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">
K</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">EMPTON</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">: [While computers and the internet
have allowed people to create and publish] compositions that take hours instead
of days or weeks or months, it has also generated a lack of respect for
discipline and seriousness leading to widespread creation of insignificant
works.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">The
pages that work best for me tend to be the ones where letters/words collide in
strangeness and do the old Ezra Pound thing of </span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">MAKE IT NEW</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">; where enough sense is made for
that sense to be questioned, distorted, undermined, negated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The space between meaningful language (whatever
that means) and alphabet soup.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some
pages I respond to more as works of art, with the letters/words as props or
still-life components. Occasionally I feel the sense just goes on making sense...<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">This
is a multinational collection of concrete poetry from the last fifteen years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most of the names are unknown to me;
occasionally a known, usually British one leaps out (A code-hand-written page by Edwin Morgan... could be anything, perhaps the Loch Ness Monster singing in
Linear A?) <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is some political work
but not, I think, covering the Arab Spring and its aftermath or climate change, though the latter may underlie some works such as Richard Skelton’s ‘Limnology’.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk0JzAaBVM9RLCBdZFS2BG-hFnCNgJ4N_R9lej6LlWsTnojbBxFNFLyTK_gTlB29_ioDbvQLMa4IQu0RjBlyPtaHuWZQwtI-c_1T7Og7VsD4UZWHPOueT191lbRtqt1D2FH2s9F5MWUvoW/s1600/new+concrete+4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="148" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk0JzAaBVM9RLCBdZFS2BG-hFnCNgJ4N_R9lej6LlWsTnojbBxFNFLyTK_gTlB29_ioDbvQLMa4IQu0RjBlyPtaHuWZQwtI-c_1T7Og7VsD4UZWHPOueT191lbRtqt1D2FH2s9F5MWUvoW/s200/new+concrete+4.jpg" width="200" /></a><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">The New Concrete</span></i><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"> has an excellent introduction by
Kenneth Goldsmith on the history of concrete poetry and its current
reincarnation as, he suggests, “post-digital concretism”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s a sense that some contemporary
practitioners feel they are riding on the shoulders of the giants of the 1950s
and 60s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Goldsmith suggests that the
influence of social media means that “much of the new concrete poetry takes the
form of snappy one-liners”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t find
this when reading/looking through; perhaps the editors have avoided this phenomenon. Each
has contributed an essay, subject matter ranging from a chance bookshop
encounter to the shape poetry of 300</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">BC</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the book is book-ended by a wall of extremely
quotable quotes, a few of which appear in this review.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> More on the book <a href="https://thenewconcrete.wordpress.com/">here</a>.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">I</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">AN</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">
H</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">AMILTON</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"> F</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">INLAY</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">: Concrete poetry is not a visual but a silent
poetry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
Fiona Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10052038869211775919noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1648230750208763565.post-3155266513776094802015-11-25T14:21:00.000+00:002015-11-25T14:24:31.392+00:00Pattern beyond chance? The story of a poetry collection: guest post by Stephen Payne<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">Stephen
Payne has just had his first collection, <a href="http://www.happenstancepress.org/index.php/shop/product/47744-pattern-beyond-chance-stephen-payne">Pattern Beyond Chance, published by HappenStance</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I’ve written on Displacement about my own journey to pamphlet publication
(also with HappenStance), so this seems like a good place to publish his
account of his journey to a full collection.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">But first: hear ye,
hear ye all. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On 5 December sixty poets
are taking part in a Poem-a-Thon for Refugees – a day-long reading in London.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We are raising money to support the work of Médecins
Sans Frontières with refugees in the Mediterranean.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They have two search-and-rescue ships.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They run hospitals and clinics, both mobile
and static, in many of the places refugees are coming from, passing through
and/or getting stuck.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Vaccination, clean
drinking water, safe childbirth, medical and psychological care - they provide
all these. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjunm53d6A_zd2qZexypbh-xjv_VKKVkcaEdOYbe9CzzSDcYp9NhSwPhcJj8XeWM4W4ROyHpaIYDObNaHjVgnzvPkVP9tdOuF9u3zOP_6VlcjcvqKHsSzH5LScuPUCPzGHsRxu69Sf2NBsz/s1600/seferis+poems.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjunm53d6A_zd2qZexypbh-xjv_VKKVkcaEdOYbe9CzzSDcYp9NhSwPhcJj8XeWM4W4ROyHpaIYDObNaHjVgnzvPkVP9tdOuF9u3zOP_6VlcjcvqKHsSzH5LScuPUCPzGHsRxu69Sf2NBsz/s200/seferis+poems.jpg" width="134" /></a><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">Each of us is reading
for 8 minutes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ll be reading poems
from mid-20th century Greek poet George Seferis' Mythistorema, which came out
of his own experience of displacement and exile in the Mediterranean nearly 100
years ago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Plus one poem of my own.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">So far we’ve raised
over £8,000 and there are still ten days to go… <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If anyone would like to contribute, <a href="https://www.justgiving.com/Fiona-Moore-poetry/">my fundraising page is here!</a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And if you’d
like to come and hear us / cheer us on on the day, the Poem-a-Thon will take
place from 12pm-10pm at <a href="http://vout-o-reenees.com/map-location/">Vout-o-Renees, The Crypt, 30 Prescot Street London E1 8BB</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Saturday 5 December.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">If not now, when?</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">Now
over to Stephen.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #002060; font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">If there’s a pattern in the story of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pattern Beyond Chance</i>, it’s a wonky one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The sequence of events is nothing like a
straight line from submit to accept to publish. It seems self-indulgent to tell
the story, but I’m keen to acknowledge some kindnesses as well as the role of
chance: the sheer contingency of the process and my own good fortune
throughout.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #002060; font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">I first emailed my publisher, Helena Nelson, in 2006, through a
website called Word Doctors. This was not long after I’d moved from Cardiff
University to the University of Manchester in an odd career move that had a
more positive effect on my poetry, allowing me to join Poetry School classes at
Linda Chase’s Village Hall — especially with Linda and Grevel Lindop.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #002060; font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">I asked Nell if I could engage her professional critiquing
service. After a short email conversation, she suggested instead that if I sent
her some poems she’d be happy to give her thoughts for free. It’s better not to
dwell on what this might imply for the commercial prospects of HappenStance Press;
I’d say it attests to more important qualities for a poetry publisher.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #002060; font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">Anyway, I sent a few poems, and received more critique than I’d
perhaps bargained for, including overall impressions and advice, and line by
line suggestions on the poems. If this was the moment of my ‘discovery’ as a
potentially publishable poet, it didn’t feel like it. Contrasting my poems with
the prose style of my emails, Nell was drawn to the adjective ‘constipated’.
She also commented that I seemed to be avoiding poems where I was ‘at risk as a
person’.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #002060; font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">It may seem strange to say that I was pleased to receive such
feedback, but it’s the truth. Something to work on. And in among the criticism,
there was warmth and wit and encouragement, as well as an invitation to keep in
touch as a friend.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #002060; font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">Which is what we did, through occasional emails. I became a
HappenStance subscriber and a reviewer for Sphinx. I read Nell’s own poetry, in
particular <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Starlight on Water</i> (winner
of the 2003 Aldeburgh Prize), with its marvellous Philpott poems, and a couple
of stunning poems in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Dark Horse</i>,
which had been recommended to me by Grevel Lindop as the best magazine in the
UK. (And whose editor, Gerry Cambridge was to become a HappenStance poet
himself. )</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #002060; font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">In July 2008, Nell visited Manchester to read for Poets &
Players and to stay at Linda Chase’s house, where I was by then a lodger.
Several times thereafter, Linda suggested that I submit to HappenStance, and I
eventually did in July 2009. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #002060; font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">Good news! But soon after I received it, Nell emailed to ask if
I’d heard from Michael Laskey. I had no idea what she meant, but the very next
day Michael’s (paper) letter arrived, offering me the Smiths Knoll mentorship
for 2010: a year of tuition culminating in pamphlet publication, offered on the
basis of my submissions to the magazine over the previous few years (most of
which had been rejected, of course: evidence in itself about the contingent
nature of poetry publishing). </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjrLdbuh7iO8Jq-lcbNnzdNWiVMY5GeaOU7m6Phwu1v0eCyY75c3aUmDYkDR_RmjjhVED8yCvEO9RFkpkzNXkaDykugZlVjtOq0jLmQiVp_npd-5t58F84slaFLrIk8fpXrxSnQe1-d5A6/s1600/prob+of+bal.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjrLdbuh7iO8Jq-lcbNnzdNWiVMY5GeaOU7m6Phwu1v0eCyY75c3aUmDYkDR_RmjjhVED8yCvEO9RFkpkzNXkaDykugZlVjtOq0jLmQiVp_npd-5t58F84slaFLrIk8fpXrxSnQe1-d5A6/s1600/prob+of+bal.jpg" /></a><span style="color: #002060; font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">I immediately asked Nell what I should do, and she
unhesitatingly said that I should accept the mentorship, despite all the
editorial work she had already done on my behalf. The Probabilities of Balance
was published by Smiths Knoll in December 2010.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #002060; font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">Being mentored by Michael and Joanna Cutts was fantastic, and
having a published pamphlet was affirming, even if it didn’t change my life. I
received few reading invitations and zero begging letters from major
publishers. Three things to mention, though. One is that Nell reviewed the
pamphlet herself, for Sphinx, and gave it a lovely review. Another is that
Fiona Moore reviewed it beautifully on Displacement, and wrote to tell me. We
discovered we were both going to that year’s Aldeburgh Poetry Festival, and
agreed to meet up. Now we’re good friends, and see below.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #002060; font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">Third, I did send my pamphlet to a well-established publisher,
and received a very encouraging response, so that for a long time I was rather
confident that they were going to publish a collection. But, after more than a
year of interaction, something seemed to shift, and I sensed, before any formal
announcement, that the decision would be No after all. I told Nell, who
replied, ‘Well, if they won’t publish you I will.’</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #002060; font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">And so it has transpired. I delivered my first more-than-full
manuscript by hand, at the 2014 Poetry Book Fair. Nell and I had our first
editorial meeting during the 2014 Aldeburgh Poetry Festival, when Nell told me
her idea for the structure of the book. One of the more distinctive aspects,
she’d noted, was that the language and ideas of my academic interests inform
many of my poems.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So she set me a
challenge, to organize the poems according to this undercurrent, and to find
some scientific quotations to introduce each theme. The next version of my
manuscript, was organized into four sections —Design, Word, Mind, Time — each
headed with a quotation from a scientist I revere.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #002060; font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">From here on, much of our work was done by email, but the most
intense and detailed editorial discussions took place by telephone. Nell has a
deal where the first hour of a landline conversation is free. Several times, we
would ring off just shy of the hour, and begin again. Perhaps some authors
wouldn’t enjoy such an attentive approach to editing, but I love it. I loved it
with Joanna and Michael, and I loved it again with Nell. I’m sad it’s over; I
hope it might happen again. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #002060; font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">What were our phone conversations about? The works: choice of
poems (did they belong? —something it seemed possible to judge even without
knowing what it meant); order of poems (were they kind to their neighbours?); punctuation
of lines; poem layout. Most of the discussion was about accuracy: a tiny
adjustment of cross-hairs aiming at clarity, tone or balance. A few changes
were bigger. We changed a prose poem to free verse,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>partly because Nell worried that it might seem
a fashionable token. I’m convinced this improved that poem, because of one line
break. We centre-aligned one poem; such a taboo in some parts of poetry-world,
but which seemed to us right, and a bit rebellious. We had fun: poetry is too
important not to have a good laugh about it.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #002060; font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">When we both thought the collection was almost done, it was sent
to Charlotte Gann, whose helpful and encouraging comments we were both thrilled
to receive.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #002060; font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">‘Pattern beyond chance’ is a phrase from a poem. It was almost
the first title I thought of, and a couple of friends approved, or didn’t
disapprove. Which makes it sound as though I didn’t obsess over it. Let me
correct that impression, by observing some of its properties. It chimes with my
pamphlet title: probabilities in one, chance in the other, the first a phrase
from a poem about my son, the second from a poem about my daughter. It rhymes
with my publisher, Happen beyond Stance. It is an anagram of The Payne Concert
Band. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFJmua4ppfxmYWGSz_CtlhJtyDHfyJ5zmdsyyrmyFXdS2SRd9eNyOU-OWs_38igsdvBj2LJZdkrC8A4AHj-37UkgaG0waYDcocMtewk1kQK4w3tmA2uWEnFFIRZAUyO6tpGsgnaGMG6aTV/s1600/pattern+beyond+chance.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFJmua4ppfxmYWGSz_CtlhJtyDHfyJ5zmdsyyrmyFXdS2SRd9eNyOU-OWs_38igsdvBj2LJZdkrC8A4AHj-37UkgaG0waYDcocMtewk1kQK4w3tmA2uWEnFFIRZAUyO6tpGsgnaGMG6aTV/s200/pattern+beyond+chance.jpg" width="134" /></a><span style="color: #002060; font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">Also, as it turned out, it prompted Nell to design a patterned
cover which I’m very pleased with, and which could be no other main colour,
once it was mentioned, than Payne’s Grey. HappenStance Press styles itself as
‘anti-blurb’, and the cover has only a single, short quote, from ... Fiona
Moore! It’s a quote from her review of The Probabilities of Balance, before we
knew each other at all, but I enjoy the way it seems to cock a little snook at
convention.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #002060; font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">The flap on the hardcover also has a short puff by Nell. The
publication plan was for hardback only, but one more accident changed things:
the printer messed up with the bindings of many copies, and then went bust
before they could repair the damage. Now I have the rare privilege of being
published simultaneously in soft and hard cover. I recommend buying one of
each.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #002060; font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">A last detail to mention is the font. I’m interested in fonts,
the very idea of them. My first academic article (Green, T.RG. & Payne,
S.J. (1983), The Woolly Jumper: Typographical problems of concurrency in
information display) was published in a journal called Visible Language,
adjacent to a paper by Douglas Hofstadter criticising the suggestion that font
design could be fully understood (and represented on a computer) in terms of
quantitative variation of stroke thickness, length and curvature, etc. Font is
pattern, but more complex and mysterious a pattern than that. Hofstadter used
to say that the challenge of AI (Artificial Intelligence) is to know what an A
is. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #002060; font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";">Pattern
Beyond Chance</span></i><span style="color: #002060; font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif";"> is set in Trinité. When Gerry Cambridge was preparing his
HappenStance pamphlet on typesetting, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Printed Snow</i>, Nell asked him to nominate a favourite font. Gerry mentioned
Trinité as highly regarded by afficionados, but expensive. In another example
of love trumping economics, Nell chose to mark HappenStance’s tenth birthday
with the ‘crazy’ purchase of Roman Condensed and Roman Condensed Italic,
Trinité No 2 .To my eyes, it’s beautiful, and a little strange. I read about
it: it has no perfectly straight lines.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br />Fiona Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10052038869211775919noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1648230750208763565.post-40951521293885217112015-11-12T11:13:00.000+00:002015-11-12T11:13:08.659+00:00Aldeburgh: birds, poetry, swimming<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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Alde marshes; bird book </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Shoes that will cope with mud and
salt water</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Hat, gloves, scarf (too warm for the
gloves this year)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Book bag </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Nytol to improve the chances of
sleeping at all when there is so little time to do it </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Elastic bands to put round porridge
bags etc in containerless cottages</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">One poetry book to be read and
thought over (Peter Riley’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Due North</i>)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Swimming things</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Fleece long enough to go over
swimsuit to be halfway warm and decent on the way to/from the beach; mac long
enough for same (and to wrap the towel) in rain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">There’s
not time during the festival to do much of these things except book buying and early
morning swims, so I’ve stayed on with Jeri Onitskansky to write, walk etc for a
whole week.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Aldeburgh
mystery: when you’re out walking along the shore in the dark, what is the
will-o’-the-wisp that sometimes appears out to sea?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Unlike fishing-boat lights, which move slowly
in relation to where you are, it whizzes by in the opposite direction like a
silent speedboat. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Wednesday<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">This
afternoon I walked out towards the Martello tower and then along the dyke round
the first wide loop of the river Alde.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I met Anna Selby, Richard Scott and Richard’s
partner Dan on the way, heading for Orford Ness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They’ve stayed on too, with Ed and Renée
Doegar and Chrissy Williams; various combinations of the six appear around
town, in the pub or on the sea wall.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>They have a tough jigsaw puzzle going and a crazily unliterary
poetry-book card game involving vital statistics such as Amazon ratings and
Google hits.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Only to be played when
drunk… but still just sober enough to wonder why my card for Shakespeare’s
Sonnets said <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">number of poems: 174. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilgXxw5aAcqx1vbln2v2PM0Bs_DuC8mKi6a299Kgo-FtkmT3Cg-M6b3ynC7VZXYW48W8sbVP_ECO3FxpSZORkPouHot9RQ6FU56ZoTlh0WRyMBySyoZiQB_ND1OAZmfrbWujx1BZ1JmLjf/s1600/Alde+walk2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilgXxw5aAcqx1vbln2v2PM0Bs_DuC8mKi6a299Kgo-FtkmT3Cg-M6b3ynC7VZXYW48W8sbVP_ECO3FxpSZORkPouHot9RQ6FU56ZoTlh0WRyMBySyoZiQB_ND1OAZmfrbWujx1BZ1JmLjf/s200/Alde+walk2.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Birds!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Several small flocks of Brent geese today (I
had to look them up) cropping marsh-grass as if there were no tomorrow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Little egrets, one close enough for me watch
how it lifted each marsh-green foot high and splayed it down in what to human eyes
is exaggerated care: half-delight, half-disgust.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Curlews carrying out precision surgery on the
mud with their bills and one on the bank close by, surveying the river so that
I could admire its chocolate brown back patterned with beige sand-ripples.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Their bubbling cry went up and down the
river.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Oyster-catchers and a couple of redshank(s)**;
more haunting cries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A couple of herons
stalking the mudflats.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Small
pale-patterned waders scuttling around in a flock, too far off to see:
turnstone?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A serious birder would know
at once from the choreography.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Shelducks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some ducks too far away to identify and it
was getting dark by then; teal?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Once a
squeezy lapwing sound came from the flooded fields on my right.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Suddenlyzoom!highintheskyoverheadthirtyfortysmallbirdszoomingupriver.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then sameagainmorezoom!!lowskimmingriverfollowingitscourse.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Zigzag mix of dark and light: dunlin?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Two
hours passed in no time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The tide was
coming in: less mud for the birds, now mere shapes whose dark or light was hard
to see.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The trees towards Iken on the
other side of the Alde glowed as the day darkened, their yellow leaves thinned to
gold coins.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A marsh harrier was gliding
and tumbling over the marsh in front.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Iken’s church and the big tower stood out romantically against dappled
cloud behind which was one of those late skies you expect to turn red but glows
neon white.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Later there was a small red
glow where the Alde was headed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I stumbled
back inland by reeds along a stream, avoiding the wettest mud by its glimmer of
the sky, finding my way by the pale feathery reed-heads and the rustling of
their dry horizontal leaves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">I
was benighted and said so to (American) Jeri when I got back; had to explain it
and Ah, knighted by the night!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>she said.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Walking
along the Alde it occurred to me that the birdscape/riverland/birdsoundtrack was
reeling out against the festival background: human voices in the head.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Thursday</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">There
were birds in some festival voices too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>John Burnside started his talk on birds in poetry by saying one of the
best things of the festival.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When you go
alone into the natural world, something happens to you; each time, each
experience is different.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Yes – the Alde
walk!)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then he read us <a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/248196">Edward Thomas’ ‘The Unknown Bird’</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He talked about how
birds can change in the imagination, and stand for something.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There was a blackbird night-singing in
Berlin’s Tiergarten, and local English residents were going there to hear the
‘nightingale’.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That happened in the present day; John Clare
had a similar anecdote from London’s outskirts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">It
is always good to hear about people’s favourite poets.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Burnside’s is, after Chaucer, Marianne Moore
and he read<a href="http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ma05/dulis/poetry/Moore/moore2.html"> ‘The Frigate Pelican’</a>:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He glides</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>a hundred feet or quivers about</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>as charred paper behaves——full</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>of feints;</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">It’s
also good to hear about their new discoveries but I didn’t catch the name of
Burnside’s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Youngish, American; Nick
Lance or Rance?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Your search - "of the parrot and other birds that can speak"
- did not match any documents.</i> <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It
could be <a href="http://www.pbs.org/newshour/poetry/weekly-poem-nick-lantz/">Nick Lantz, see here</a>: worth following up.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Birds,
he said, can help us express otherwise inexpressible aspects of personality or explore
thoughts about the world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He read
<a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/177176">‘Evening Hawk’ by Robert Penn Warren.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></a></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His wing</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Scythes down another day, his motion</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Is that of the honed steel-edge, we
hear</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">The crashless fall of stalks of
Time.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">The head of each stalk is heavy with
the gold of our error.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Look!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Look!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>he is climbing the last light</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Who knows neither Time nor error ,
and under</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Whose eye, unforgiving, the world,
unforgiven, swings</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Into shadow.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">That’s
an extract from the middle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I avoided
choosing the end because the last line-and-a-bit is even more extraordinary,
not to be quoted out of context.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Burnside’s
talk was at the Baptist Chapel in Aldeburgh – packed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I loved the fact that there was a run of
events there all afternoon but had to get back to Snape for Christine Webb and
the buses didn’t work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I stood at the
chapel gates and asked for a lift.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some
kind people got me there in time to hear Christine’s excellent short
reading.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She chose a varied set of stand-out
poems and threaded them all together perfectly. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEGovHXVmTq09x7ClzGu5r019rOj5fHZFfjW1fw6qQfoH6weQM17tOTMcyTOPjlXCShTylpKqAcU2UQSUug6sxcg6RpAI2gdr4PRZ3_HgexaPy8pbb33keZzmrxv1MpNyf66kzc5VrHfjW/s1600/shaler%2527s+fish.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEGovHXVmTq09x7ClzGu5r019rOj5fHZFfjW1fw6qQfoH6weQM17tOTMcyTOPjlXCShTylpKqAcU2UQSUug6sxcg6RpAI2gdr4PRZ3_HgexaPy8pbb33keZzmrxv1MpNyf66kzc5VrHfjW/s200/shaler%2527s+fish.jpg" width="186" /></a><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">More
birds: Helen Macdonald was at the festival, standing in for Richard Mabey who
was under doctor’s orders to stay away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>She and John Burnside held a Rialto-sponsored conversation about
language and nature.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was lovely to
hear her read a passage from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">H is for
Hawk</i>, though I was sorry that she was presented solely as author of that
book and not also for her first, little-known and so far only collection of
poems, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Shaler’s Fish</i>, which I <a href="http://displacement-poetry.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/shalers-fish-by-helen-macdonald.html">wrote about here</a> a while ago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Maybe that was
her choice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Anyway she told me
afterwards that an American publisher is going to republish the poems.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They are difficult, dense and strikingly
original.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They involve birds a lot (I
wonder if John Burnside has read them?)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I hope she writes more one day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Macdonald
told a story she’d read in Walter Benjamin: after the Fall, Adam forgot all the
names of the animals and renamed them all a little wrong.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She and Burnside talked about taxonomy, the
fungal life-networks under the forest floor, appropriating nature… and the
literary selfie, ‘here I am in the natural world’. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Burnside’s recollection that the Sami have
names for birds they eat; other birds are Bird.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Macdonald’s imagining of the hawk perspective – everything nameless,
exquisitely detailed, in the eternal present.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>She made a plea for difference: we tend, she said, to use nature as a
mirror for our own concerns, reflecting back what we want it to.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the non-human is different and it’s
important for nature writing to address that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">They
asked themselves how to communicate looming disaster, from the absence of large
lapwing flocks to the deadness of our romantic/pastoral landscapes to the
science of global warming.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They didn’t
have an answer, but in a way their conversation and Burnside’s bird talk were
the answer: go on writing and communicating in whatever way you can, make
whatever connections you have to make.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Other
Aldeburgh highlights.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Impassioned
conversations about the poetry of Tony Hoagland (questions of attitude to race
and women) and Choman Hardi (how can/should one present utterly horrifying
material, what makes it work/not work as poetry).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Kim Addonizio: smart, sassy, and other such
American words.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her craft talk on turns
in poems was smart too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“No turn, no
poem.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Turns that engineer surprise and/or reflect
the writer discovering something unexpected to say; turns that enact the poem’s
meaning; epiphanic turns; rhetorical structures such as past/present or
present/past or a 3-way switch.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She
recommended a book, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Engaging Poetic Turns</i>
by Michael Theune.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_fjYZm4oU_jR0h3BNnOENZke5b9ta3w6ogQVfRiBqRZxbPaNew3DHqqklyAb5nhJNmfnnO-o01x7Zahzsl1Xl_aAZ9Mo7kDK0YASyJBXbfdfoG-WrEee5xG95wCOYNrYM1UgVQ8GMXQDX/s1600/kunial.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_fjYZm4oU_jR0h3BNnOENZke5b9ta3w6ogQVfRiBqRZxbPaNew3DHqqklyAb5nhJNmfnnO-o01x7Zahzsl1Xl_aAZ9Mo7kDK0YASyJBXbfdfoG-WrEee5xG95wCOYNrYM1UgVQ8GMXQDX/s200/kunial.jpg" width="127" /></a><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Zaffar
Kunial’s reading as part of New Voices – passionately low-key, down-to-earth
and soaring; time and origins, love and loss – I think that will have been
among many people’s highlights.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I bought
his pamphlet after his Friday evening craft talk but unwisely left it on the
dining-room table and have been looking for its forceful mid-green ever
since.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It seems to have been taken
hostage in an early-morning rushed departure in semi-darkness, and will be posted
back by a very apologetic house-mate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You
can hear ‘Poppy’, one of the poems he read, <a href="https://soundcloud.com/new-writing-north/zaffar-kunial-poppy">here on Soundcloud</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He also gave a craft talk on line endings
with examples from Seamus Heaney and ‘Q’, one of his own poems whose line
lengths he changed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Other people’s
redrafting processes are fascinating.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The two beginnings are:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">[early draft]</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Somewhere (thank you, father)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">over the hills, </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">through some trap door in my mind,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">despite having no calling</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">to speak it, and hearing of it so
long ago,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">I know the Urdu <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ishq</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">is love… </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">[redraft]</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Somewhere (thank you, father) over
the hills, </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">through some trap-door in my mind,
despite my having </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">no call to speak it, and hearing of
it so long ago,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">I know the Urdu <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ishq </i>is love. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">The
first version feels dreamier, more detached; the second more intense,
closer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">More
things: the other three New Voices.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Kei
Miller’s craft talk on the image that doesn’t quite close (thus leaving a door
open for the reader).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Helen Mort’s short
take on Norman MacCaig (“the long haul to lucidity”, he called his poetic
progress).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Both their readings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mexican poet Pedro Serrano’s reading
voice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All the close readings I went to
– they are free, and always so interesting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Festival founder Michael Laskey’s return, in the otherwise sad absence for
urgent family reasons of new Festival Director Ellen McAteer. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Michael introduced some events just like in old
times and when I told him how lovely that was he gave me a hug.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheW_iqgXXXAI0UJPPDYEDuqp78s8be8Yh38FOpLLFLzFacbQ0523uUJdqnHLteQFh8PzVnljoAVSQ9h_vJR37uNf86OKLzKrenSyFBzi80gkKOYcSZJPGfaH5shu70KU0QzJ8HyHDDxD0J/s1600/MM+Rialto+at+Aldeburgh.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheW_iqgXXXAI0UJPPDYEDuqp78s8be8Yh38FOpLLFLzFacbQ0523uUJdqnHLteQFh8PzVnljoAVSQ9h_vJR37uNf86OKLzKrenSyFBzi80gkKOYcSZJPGfaH5shu70KU0QzJ8HyHDDxD0J/s200/MM+Rialto+at+Aldeburgh.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">The Rialto had a stall! Strategically placed between the cafe entrance and the Recital Room. Michael Mackmin heroically manned it for two days, with occasional help from Matt Howard and me. (Michael and Matt are both serious birders so I'm hoping they will read this blog and answer some of my bird questions.) We sold poetry! Lots of Dean Parkin's festival-launched first collection <i>The Swan Machine</i>, and magazines and pamphlets too. We made money! And Michael was touched by how many people passed by and said good things about the magazine, or reminded him that he'd published their first ever published poem. (He published my first ever too, so I know how they feel.) </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKY7_d50ofiATNqIajg9FuRYhegtFmqXCJd4nmzUciNb0Fop6MArzyAvIzTC7AOCn7h296ZWakShl2U-tI1AI2mS1rsVY-43fySy7vnKjszdMwOOZSrz8fSuSXkgJFH21OnPpyEstbFbjf/s1600/Fswim2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKY7_d50ofiATNqIajg9FuRYhegtFmqXCJd4nmzUciNb0Fop6MArzyAvIzTC7AOCn7h296ZWakShl2U-tI1AI2mS1rsVY-43fySy7vnKjszdMwOOZSrz8fSuSXkgJFH21OnPpyEstbFbjf/s200/Fswim2.JPG" width="150" /></a><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">More
things: the stars, so clear, was it Saturday night?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Orion’s belt and sworded hip swinging out
over the sea.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Staying up late round our
table to talk.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Pub sessions in the Cross
Keys.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sitting in a bay window
overlooking the sea listening to someone playing Bach on the piano.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not sleeping.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And swimming: every day so far.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
first swim was a record with four of us – Joanna Clark, Hannah Lowe, Jeri
Onitskansky and me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One of us was in her
underwear.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The sea was rough that day (yesterday too) but
has mostly been beautiful, less cold than usual in this weirdly warm November but
still cold enough to shock and then cradle and then numb…<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That shock is the best cure I know for
sleeplessness and hangover. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Panoramas of
sky and sea, shingle and coastline.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Their detail: breaking-wave- and cloud-scapes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">The
Aldeburgh will-o-the wisp – I noticed one of them last night, and then… there
was a dark triangle on the shingle, denoting a fisherman.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The light was at the far end of his long
fishing-rod: not far out to sea at all, but tethered.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Just
as I was finishing this there was a knock on the door and there were Anna,
Chrissy, Dan and Richard looking windblown and happy/sad, come to say goodbye.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Chrissy's blog about the festival <a href="http://chrissywilliams.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/its-on-list.html">is here</a>.) Jeri and I have four more days that they don’t, stretching out...<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Off
for a swim now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Blue sky. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">**When
are multiple waders singular, and when plural?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDc1SzC9G8HgeUDSoDAMgbd93i7ldRFgR7XNxwSBjqq7gT8TdQ8IKgXwvrA47578GwVYQZUT1SU9FBFMMQuhrI0LmfGoyOv-mgkZMe6sW_Z3o0wvn17jUZSaWDnGhyphenhyphentHVvLmdkndakipwp/s1600/Aldeburgh+beach.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDc1SzC9G8HgeUDSoDAMgbd93i7ldRFgR7XNxwSBjqq7gT8TdQ8IKgXwvrA47578GwVYQZUT1SU9FBFMMQuhrI0LmfGoyOv-mgkZMe6sW_Z3o0wvn17jUZSaWDnGhyphenhyphentHVvLmdkndakipwp/s400/Aldeburgh+beach.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<br /></div>
Fiona Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10052038869211775919noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1648230750208763565.post-84890591815165288732015-10-26T18:54:00.001+00:002015-10-26T18:54:48.508+00:00Small publishers and poetry prizes<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<![endif]--><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Do small publishers get fair access
to the big poetry prizes, and if not, what are the barriers and what can be
done?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I asked four small poetry publishers
for their views.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s hard for them to
come out with these themselves; that could be self-defeating.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjA-YZj4eVA-HR_ItyHSXSj55_llrG8FH3P3iW8qetv3cH4ZuvN4qRJAo0-FSLqF-2v7wKdv9vfK-ZmRw5Du8VjXz6zcz6o_QgWhoTUqPousZLFapKS1oq3ZPOCB0vlngkqosDH3ldWWPtO/s1600/claudia+rankine.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjA-YZj4eVA-HR_ItyHSXSj55_llrG8FH3P3iW8qetv3cH4ZuvN4qRJAo0-FSLqF-2v7wKdv9vfK-ZmRw5Du8VjXz6zcz6o_QgWhoTUqPousZLFapKS1oq3ZPOCB0vlngkqosDH3ldWWPtO/s1600/claudia+rankine.jpg" /></a><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">The background was this year’s
Forward Best Collection Prize (<a href="http://displacement-poetry.blogspot.co.uk/2015_10_01_archive.html">see previous post</a>). The Forward shortlist, and winner
<a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/poetry/2015/09/forward-prize-winning-poet-claudia-rankine-what-it-means-be-black-america">Claudia Rankine</a> (left), shook up the familiar poetry prize carousel – shortlists and
judging panels alike dominated by the major publishers, an apparent
unwillingness to look outside the mainstream, and this reflected in a
predominance of white and (to some extent) male winners.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><a href="http://displacement-poetry.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/poetry-prizes-elephant-on-stage.html">See the audit I did</a> of the Forward and TS
Eliot Prizes nearly two years ago. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Also
see that audit for some caveats; it’s not possible to write about poetry prizes
without these.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">The TS Eliot Prize shortlist has
just been announced and major publishers retain their grip on that; the list of
poets is more diverse, perhaps reflecting a trend in poetry publishing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5srX_FckR1e-FqscSTMKjtqDADUnKx52Jzum8pgZYUwakhTlXEzvAkV7dZbUuy7X-QruuQ2UJKGg7oBaRU0lKS51KS9Avp0FPkRzKz5G481O09LlLJ_qGeOlwSEdxjNgu9iasfPjVPmdM/s1600/tse+shortlist.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="198" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5srX_FckR1e-FqscSTMKjtqDADUnKx52Jzum8pgZYUwakhTlXEzvAkV7dZbUuy7X-QruuQ2UJKGg7oBaRU0lKS51KS9Avp0FPkRzKz5G481O09LlLJ_qGeOlwSEdxjNgu9iasfPjVPmdM/s320/tse+shortlist.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">The four small publishers I
questioned are experienced, hard-working and well-respected.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They come from different parts of the UK and
publish a wide range of work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One has
had some success with poetry prizes, the others haven’t.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I asked about the TSE and Forward, to keep it
simple, but some answers ranged more widely. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve mostly presented the issues in the publishers’
own words.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course not all of them
said everything, but responses were similar.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I’ve highlighted the one case where they disagreed.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">All appreciated the helpfulness of poetry
prize administrators but felt that the processes and results didn’t reflect it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They identified three barriers to fairness: the
judging system (for the TSE Prize), the timing of entries and the cost of
entering prizes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">1. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Prize administration</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">The Forward Prize administration was
praised for being welcoming and helpful to small publishers, for example
accepting books in manuscript form, having an online submissions system; and for
responding constructively to criticism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #632523; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #632523; mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms: lumm=50000; mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: accent2; mso-themecolor: accent2; mso-themeshade: 128;">Especially wonderful is the way [Susannah Herbert] talks to people
and listens and takes criticism on board and responds, all in a completely
informal and open way.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">The staff at the Poetry Book Society
(which runs the TSE Prize) were also praised for being helpful.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #632523; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #632523; mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms: lumm=50000; mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: accent2; mso-themecolor: accent2; mso-themeshade: 128;">They communicate well with us and some individuals in the
organisation work very hard to be accommodating, thoughtful and helpful – this
is much appreciated.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">However:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #632523; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #632523; mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms: lumm=50000; mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: accent2; mso-themecolor: accent2; mso-themeshade: 128;">the [PBS] website is awful to navigate – feels like a closed club to even
us as publishers</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">and this contributes to a perception
of lack of transparency.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">2.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The judging system</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">There was general frustration that the
prizes are dominated by the big six.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Joey
Connolly <a href="http://poetrysociety.org.uk.gridhosted.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/1042-content-for-web-Connolly.pdf">in <i>The Poetry Review</i> last year</a>: </span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">“Only one of the forty PBS
Choices in the last ten years has come from a non-major publisher”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #632523; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #632523; mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms: lumm=50000; mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: accent2; mso-themecolor: accent2; mso-themeshade: 128;">It does all feel rather London-centric and larger-publisher
orientated at times. I’d like to see many more regional indies on these lists,
and poets whose work may be more at the fringes.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Specific criticisms focused on the
judging system for the TS Eliot Prize. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #632523; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #632523; mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms: lumm=50000; mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: accent2; mso-themecolor: accent2; mso-themeshade: 128;">The PBS and the TSE need a big jolt…</span><span style="color: #632523; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #632523; mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms: lumm=50000; mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: accent2; mso-themecolor: accent2; mso-themeshade: 128;"> </span><span style="color: #632523; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #632523; mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms: lumm=50000; mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: accent2; mso-themecolor: accent2; mso-themeshade: 128;">the whole set-up is odd: the judges have 40% of their shortlist
chosen for them by the other judges of the seasonal Choices... Last year [when
two of the three judges had close links with the winner] was a fiasco.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #632523; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #632523; mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms: lumm=50000; mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: accent2; mso-themecolor: accent2; mso-themeshade: 128;">Can we have some non-poets and real-life poetry readers on this
panel?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>..</span><span style="color: #632523; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #632523; mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms: lumm=50000; mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: accent2; mso-themecolor: accent2; mso-themeshade: 128;"> </span><span style="color: #632523; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #632523; mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms: lumm=50000; mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: accent2; mso-themecolor: accent2; mso-themeshade: 128;">I’d like to know WHO the [PBS selectors] are and see that there are
also a diverse mix of selectors young/older, women/men, and BAME poets.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">3.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Timing of entries</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Poetry prizes tend to take in books
for reading in advance of publication, so that when shortlists and winners are
announced they aren’t out of date. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #632523; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #632523; mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms: lumm=50000; mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: accent2; mso-themecolor: accent2; mso-themeshade: 128;">If I want to submit for the PBS summer choice/recommendations
(books published April/May/June), for example, I have to send them proofs at
start of previous December.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Having to send books/proofs in early
was a problem for three. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #632523; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #632523; mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms: lumm=50000; mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: accent2; mso-themecolor: accent2; mso-themeshade: 128;">The smaller the publisher the shorter the lead times.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">But one said:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #632523; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #632523; mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms: lumm=50000; mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: accent2; mso-themecolor: accent2; mso-themeshade: 128;">I don't see why working to a long schedule should be more difficult
than working to a tight one.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">It’s probably hard for the
organisers to get the balance right between timeliness and ease of entry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Larger publishers may have a presentational
/psychological advantage too if the judges are reading their entries as books
or well-presented proofs rather than in manuscript form.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">4.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Cost</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #632523; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #632523; mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms: lumm=50000; mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: accent2; mso-themecolor: accent2; mso-themeshade: 128;">The cost for small publishers is often the numbers of free copies
that are hurled into the abyss of prizes, review copies and comps. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is sensible to print cheaply: perfect bound
cheap editions so the unit cost is small… <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My books have a high unit cost because of
their production values.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #632523; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #632523; mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms: lumm=50000; mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: accent2; mso-themecolor: accent2; mso-themeshade: 128;">It’s usually somewhere between £60-£200 worth of books to enter,
plus printing off of manuscript copies, postage of around £20 – it all adds up.
We write off this cost as part of what we do, but it’s a sizeable cost and it
can feel like a disheartening process.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">The TSE and Forward are not worse
than average though there is a cost problem with the PBS Quarterly Choice:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #632523; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #632523; mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms: lumm=50000; mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: accent2; mso-themecolor: accent2; mso-themeshade: 128;">If a book were to be selected for PBS Choice, the terms are grim.
They agree to buy lots of copies, a couple of thousand, but these must be RRP
under a tenner and they will buy for a very low price… It means you need to set
a high cover price and a low print cost in order to make anything on it at all.
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Then there’s the Costa Prize, or how
“the UK’s largest hospitality company” extracts money from poetry publishers:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #632523; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #632523; mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms: lumm=50000; mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: accent2; mso-themecolor: accent2; mso-themeshade: 128;">For the Costa, in addition to the handful of books [to enter], 20
free books if shortlisted; if you win the poetry category, publisher has to pay
Costa £4,000 for ‘general promotion of the books’; if you win outright, another
£5,000 on top of that.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #632523; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #632523; mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms: lumm=50000; mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: accent2; mso-themecolor: accent2; mso-themeshade: 128;">Costa prizes.. are pretty much un-enterable for us at present… how
wonderful to be shortlisted, but how awful then to try and find £4k to pay for
the privilege to a private company as large as Whitbread PLC – no opt out or
support for smaller publishers!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #632523; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #632523; mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms: lumm=50000; mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: accent2; mso-themecolor: accent2; mso-themeshade: 128;">What, one wonders, are sponsors actually paying for, if the
publishers have to pay for promotion?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">And some other prizes:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #632523; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #632523; mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms: lumm=50000; mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: accent2; mso-themecolor: accent2; mso-themeshade: 128;">Guardian First Book Award: in addition to the handful of books, an
entry fee of £150 + VAT; if the book is shortlisted, they require 70 free books
for their reading groups (..the books get to people who otherwise wouldn’t have
read them..).</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #632523; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #632523; mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms: lumm=50000; mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: accent2; mso-themecolor: accent2; mso-themeshade: 128;">Dylan Thomas Prize, 20 free copies if you get to the longlist,
another 20 free copies if you get on the shortlist.. [and then you] pay £500
for ‘promotional purposes’..</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">And the Next Generation promotion:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #632523; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #632523; mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms: lumm=50000; mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: accent2; mso-themecolor: accent2; mso-themeshade: 128;">… Not a prize but there was a fee levied per poet, and charged if
you were selected, that was the same whether you were a major or a small
publisher – plus a number of books had to be sent, and no sliding scale or
additional help to enter for small press publishers, despite it being ACE
funded.</span> <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="color: #632523; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #632523; mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms: lumm=50000; mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: accent2; mso-themecolor: accent2; mso-themeshade: 128;">As a result we entered fewer poets…</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhA8C_rOARqqjgx6W6OzvYnF-AtpUpEk3TWZu4JxIlCTjGbuNSBD8vHDB1x-ARrEoLX6nnYPrsxO7u6lBNBAASLFCqqLf66ejIYofbvwIKSkJSWeLXoGcLHI6xkC-vFTbbGgRqyfL96QrMl/s1600/forward+composite.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhA8C_rOARqqjgx6W6OzvYnF-AtpUpEk3TWZu4JxIlCTjGbuNSBD8vHDB1x-ARrEoLX6nnYPrsxO7u6lBNBAASLFCqqLf66ejIYofbvwIKSkJSWeLXoGcLHI6xkC-vFTbbGgRqyfL96QrMl/s1600/forward+composite.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">5.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Solutions</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Despite all this, and even through
gritted teeth, these small publishers continue to enter their poets’ books for
prizes. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #632523; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #632523; mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms: lumm=50000; mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: accent2; mso-themecolor: accent2; mso-themeshade: 128;">Not submitting is self-defeating.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #632523; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #632523; mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms: lumm=50000; mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: accent2; mso-themecolor: accent2; mso-themeshade: 128;">The chances that they will be placed or win are remote but one
can't let the author down (actually one can [some small publishers don’t enter
everyone they’d like to]).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">What could be done to make it easier
for them and to lessen the perception – shared widely in the UK poetry world –
that prizes aren’t fair? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Which is not
good for any poets or publishers, large or small.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
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<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="margin-left: 18.0pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">A.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Some
changes at the Poetry Book Society/TSE Prize, which is now perceived as lagging
behind the others:</span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 54.0pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level2 lfo1; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">o<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Widen the range of judges and
selectors to include reviewers, editors, poetry readers etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 54.0pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level2 lfo1; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">o<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Implement a code of practice, as
called for in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Poetry Review</i> last
year.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To the PBS’ credit it has agreed
to do this (see current <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Poetry Review</i>)
– which might help achieve a more varied judging panel anyway.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(The Costa and Forward Prizes said No to this
idea, but then their judges are more diverse.)</span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 54.0pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level2 lfo1; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">o<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Reform the link between the PBS
Choice and the TS Eliot Prize, or remove it altogether.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One option would be to allow the TSE judges
to shortlist four books from any of the PBS Bulletin’s recommended books, which
would greatly widen the scope (Peter Daniels suggested this in a comment on my
audit).</span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 54.0pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level2 lfo1; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">o<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Reform the PBS Choice pricing
structure so that it is less punitive to small publishers. </span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 54.0pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level2 lfo1; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">o<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Revamp the website to make information
about the prizes, PBS Choices, etc clear and easily accessible.</span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 54.0pt; mso-add-space: auto; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 18.0pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">B.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Publishers
could submit collections initially as pdfs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Judges would then call for proofs / books at a new, longlisting
stage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(This idea came from one of the
four publishers, and a couple of the others liked it.) <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Might be unwelcome to judges but would level the
playing-field on timing and presentation.</span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 18.0pt; mso-add-space: auto; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="margin-left: 18.0pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">C.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Take the cost out of Costa and the
other expensive prizes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Could mega-plc Whitbread
afford a few extra thousand pounds to make their prize more accessible?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the very least introduce a sliding scale
of fees, maybe based on turnover. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="margin-left: 18.0pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">D.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Funders of poetry prizes should
consider using their power to reinforce calls for change.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For example: </span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 54.0pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level2 lfo1; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">o<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">The PBS got £22k from Arts Council
England (ACE) last year as part of a 2-year grant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>ACE could make any future funding conditional
on changes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>PBS also report £49k from
foundations etc in their 2013-14 accounts. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Foundations could be more proactive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 54.0pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level2 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">o<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">The Forward
Foundation gets £144k for 2015-18 from ACE with which it has National Portfolio
status.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s easy to imagine that a
dialogue on diversity has taken place.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="margin-left: 54.0pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level2 lfo1; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">o<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Next
Generation Poets 2014 received £40k from ACE.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In future, ACE could insist on a sliding scale of charges to help small
publishers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">I’d like to thank all four
publishers who spent time and thought on answering my questions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And finally, as one of them said:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #632523; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #632523; mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms: lumm=50000; mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: accent2; mso-themecolor: accent2; mso-themeshade: 128;">What are the real prizes? And do prizes actually put poets off
writing well?</span></div>
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<![endif]-->Fiona Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10052038869211775919noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1648230750208763565.post-77102102976374878102015-10-02T17:12:00.000+01:002015-10-03T08:42:02.249+01:00The Forward Prize; the Poetry Book Fair <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">I first saw this year’s <a href="http://www.forwardartsfoundation.org/forward-prizes-for-poetry/about/">Forward Prize shortlists</a> while experiencing a moment of internet access a very long way
from London.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I noticed with pleasure
that Peter Riley was on the main prize list; and wondered who Claudia Rankine
was.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><a href="http://www.forwardartsfoundation.org/forward-prizes-for-poetry/forward-judges-2015/">The judges</a> looked interesting,
chaired by AL Kennedy. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And not one, two
but three graduates of the <a href="http://thecompleteworks.net/">Complete Works programme</a> were on the first
collection shortlist... <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span>Maybe the
Forward Prizes were stepping off the poetry prize carousel?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuEmSi3aP1-527me77Jqes0XcMVXYzYrZn5K7DSLiyNXERQzQOvvRygi-hCGPCsirfhqOzcfcFrtDKqK_-l1oOkyah85LGjhZioo4zYypGuqxIP6gdJnn8BFW6nHmrR29gxC2J2UuFI-mk/s1600/citizen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuEmSi3aP1-527me77Jqes0XcMVXYzYrZn5K7DSLiyNXERQzQOvvRygi-hCGPCsirfhqOzcfcFrtDKqK_-l1oOkyah85LGjhZioo4zYypGuqxIP6gdJnn8BFW6nHmrR29gxC2J2UuFI-mk/s200/citizen.jpg" width="130" /></a><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">By Monday night I’d read about a
quarter of Rankine’s <a href="http://www.penguin.co.uk/books/citizen/9780141981772/"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Citizen: an American<span id="goog_1036944263"></span><span id="goog_1036944264"></span> Lyric</i></a><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> (Penguin)</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">, </i>more than enough to be thrilled
when we came in late, having queued the whole interval at the bar, to see her
on stage in the row of five.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Shortlisted
poets from America don’t always turn up – fair enough.)</span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Citizen</span></i><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"> presents everyday racism as Chinese
water torture.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s emotionally
electrifying and not like anything I’ve read in form or content.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It pushes the boundaries of poetry, veering
from prose poem to lyrical essay to concrete poetry. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s ground-breaking enough to sweep
definitions aside.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s mostly written
in the second person, so that you – ‘you’ – become the subject of the many anecdotes
and are also challenged by them to think about your own attitudes and behaviour.
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Interviewed on stage, Claudia Rankine
said that poetry is the realm of feeling and the book is about intimacy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She had asked people to tell her about
moments in everyday life when they felt bad.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The intention is that readers should feel what these individuals felt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>‘You’ is unstable, she said: it can be
accusatory, a call, intimate, general; can become a space rather than a
pronoun.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She reminded us of the slights
President Obama had suffered, such as the calls for his birth certificate.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">There’s a short extract from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Citizen</i>, which is published by Penguin, <a href="http://www.forwardartsfoundation.org/poetry/in-line-at-the-drugstore/">here</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>See <a href="https://davepoems.wordpress.com/2015/08/20/claudia-rankine-citizen-an-american-lyric/">Dave Poems </a>for a review.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSWgvBlAARnwiby1QLE4f8rx6Q99bncy2NhcdinqNsDckMjpAROYSccVVbJQsjEthiTlPeUfq6cD1nhyphenhyphenVE6xg0F-MUL-mKpCer4sUo7naftkjvwpIUGHDQRjr4BLJDBGA_cTEGORdXXGuG/s1600/due+north.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSWgvBlAARnwiby1QLE4f8rx6Q99bncy2NhcdinqNsDckMjpAROYSccVVbJQsjEthiTlPeUfq6cD1nhyphenhyphenVE6xg0F-MUL-mKpCer4sUo7naftkjvwpIUGHDQRjr4BLJDBGA_cTEGORdXXGuG/s200/due+north.jpg" width="133" /></a><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">It was also good to hear Peter
Riley, an English modernist whose poems contain landscapes and journeys both
physical and political, read from <a href="http://www.shearsman.com/ws-shop/product/5140-peter-riley---due-north">Due North</a>. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And three poets from
Ireland (or rather two since Paul Muldoon was stuck in the US lecturing): Eiléan
Ní Chuilleanáin and Ciaran Carson.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To focus
our attention on less widely read authors such as Riley and Ní Chuilleanáin is one
thing prizes should do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Another first was
that three of these poets’ books are out from middle-sized publishing houses,
Ireland’s Gallery Press and Shearsman.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">There was a storm of applause when <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Citizen</i> won.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It felt like a breakthrough moment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>First ever black female winner of the Forward
main prize.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We were applauding the
woman, the work and the symbolism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like
the reception last year for Kei Miller, first ever black poet to win. </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLDIIw2aWYIDi9hcXp5fxYyO3Dv18tmJtDVCzdg0TOKglg_h80LxtQ11yh5mkJNVIiLZJscYhbC0LgUQ5RbHI8cnY5cogkv4kIv6XOLSRpB9kO14JXGEKtFDlQPkjeUAbdN30YtI4-SWSP/s1600/woolf+aviary.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLDIIw2aWYIDi9hcXp5fxYyO3Dv18tmJtDVCzdg0TOKglg_h80LxtQ11yh5mkJNVIiLZJscYhbC0LgUQ5RbHI8cnY5cogkv4kIv6XOLSRpB9kO14JXGEKtFDlQPkjeUAbdN30YtI4-SWSP/s1600/woolf+aviary.jpg" /></a><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">This year’s First Collection Prize will
be memorable too, as the year the Complete Works generation came of age.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Five vivid and memorable books, five
excellent readers; and three sets of vertiginously high heels as if in a game
of dare. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was exciting to hear the three
Complete Works authors read, in such circumstances, poems I’d read several
times on the page. Sarah Howe’s reading of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">‘(c)
Tame’</i> gave me the shivers, Karen McCarthy Woolf conveyed the precise madness
of bereavement in ‘The Registrar’s Office’, and I was delighted that winner Mona
Arshi chose to read ‘The Daughters’ which was published last year in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Rialto</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I enjoyed in a different way hearing Andrew
MacMillan and Matthew Siegel read, as an introduction to their work. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">If the Forward Arts Foundation didn’t
exist we might not believe anyone who proposed to invent it: a private
foundation whose purpose is to support poetry and talented poets and to inspire
a love of poetry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A philanthropic poetry
godparent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Really?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the UK?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I’m not sure we appreciate it enough...<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Anyway the Festival Hall stalls were
full last Monday night, the sense of occasion heightened by a glamorously
orange-lit stage – same shade as the trousers worn by singer/poetry lover and stand-in
for absent poets Cerys Matthews, unless that was the lighting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She, founder-benefactor William Sieghart and judges’
chair AL Kennedy all played their roles becomingly modestly and our grumbling (no
actors to aim at this year) focussed on the over-explanatory MCing of radio and TV
personality Kirsty Lang.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">My main motivation for writing about
Monday’s ceremony is that nearly two years ago <a href="http://displacement-poetry.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/poetry-prizes-elephant-on-stage.html">I did an audit</a> of shortlists,
winners and judges of the TS Eliot Prize and Forward (main prize only) and
concluded that poetry prizes were a carousel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>So this is to mark progress since then.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Forward Director Susannah Herbert deserves much credit for listening openly
and constructively to criticism of prize culture (and of previous years’
staging of the Forward).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The way the Forward
Prizes are developing ought to put some pressure on the TS Eliot Prize.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Reality Street stall</span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">The week’s other treat was the <a href="http://www.poetrybookfair.com/">Free Verse Poetry Book Fair</a> with over 80 publishers cramming into Conway Hall, the
lack of elbow room a symptom of the expanding scene and the fair’s success.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Who would think that poets and their friends,
customers etc (often also poets in another, very different carousel) could make
so much din?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As before, major publishers
such as Bloodaxe and Faber were next to the middle-sized, the small and the
smallest, from Arc or Blart to Veer or ZimZalla, and Hercules to Isobar or
Katabasis.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There was a translation focus
this year and I was sorry that the Poetry Translation Centre’s reading by Sudanese
poet Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi was known about and listened to by so few.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He can fill a stadium with four thousand
people at home…</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Rishi Dastidar on the Rialto stall</span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">The stalls were a delight to browse
for look as well as contents.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> My favourite thing of all was <a href="http://www.sidekickbooks.com/">Sidekick Books'</a> moth-poem visiting cards. I've nicked a photo off their Twitter feed, right at the end of this. The Rialto had a stall too so I played stallholder for a bit (it felt like playing shops). </span>I didn’t
buy so much this year but went away as usual with my mental map of poetry
publishing enriched.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And with the lovely
catalogue, like last year’s no throwaway object but a publishers’ index and
anthology combined.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All hail to Chrissy
Williams, Joey Connolly and their team of volunteers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxDplAuyujIBb_b1f6Sq6UHY5cKogfSsIbBcJG3HV-2ugzwW-5KEbeFouM7a53gdXtWLxFrPrNoOk4VXUCe3THZyj5p22M32OBqk5WZlLAGVc2t8SlwtelQAcN-T0JqDEW2xZe_i3lmc6h/s1600/book+fair+2015.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Smaller publishers still struggle to
enter books for poetry prizes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve asked
a handful of them about what barriers they face and what might make it easier
for them. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To follow shortly. </span></div>
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Fiona Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10052038869211775919noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1648230750208763565.post-49892332431706927722015-09-21T17:23:00.000+01:002015-10-09T09:57:29.673+01:00Beauty in the mind: Agnes Martin<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<![endif]--><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">“Beauty is the mystery of life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is not just in the eye.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is in the mind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is our positive response to life.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Agnes Martin, 1989.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">How good to be released from all the
words of reading and writing: by walking or swimming or looking at art.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sometimes a particular episode of release
works especially well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This seems to
involve (for me) enlarging the space the mind inhabits and changing its shape.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Agnes Martin exhibition at Tate Modern
has just done that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Martin painted and drew using grids:
square, oblong, huge or small, marked or scored by lines of graphite or occasionally
by dots; often filled, in the big paintings, with pale horizontal bands of
paint.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMCmNfxJARPH5nS0TnoQ-PH9Iw7JVAZPcJwMzmKyF6Gr7hRSEeENDf5OmRBKu4sBCeh08EvAKWeamr-MS4PqLByWfJyJs244hAMwqB8hSxip_40Ws1jM_GWU_gSx7FcViROY8ABtSje2f9/s1600/agnes+martin3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMCmNfxJARPH5nS0TnoQ-PH9Iw7JVAZPcJwMzmKyF6Gr7hRSEeENDf5OmRBKu4sBCeh08EvAKWeamr-MS4PqLByWfJyJs244hAMwqB8hSxip_40Ws1jM_GWU_gSx7FcViROY8ABtSje2f9/s200/agnes+martin3.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">There’s a whole room, the first, of large,
squareish paintings, each banded<span id="goog_740226431"></span><span id="goog_740226432"></span> slightly differently in white or lemon, pale peach
and shadow-blue.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It took me a few
moments to get used to them. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then I
became drawn in to my own interpretation – shadows on sand and baked earth –
while also exploring the detail of surface variations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Below (or above) all this I felt I was being
calmed, floated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">(I’m wary of reproducing images, so am
illustrating this with book covers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If
you google images of Agnes Martin paintings there are plenty on gallery
websites.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">From these late paintings the
exhibition takes one back to her early work, her journey towards formal
abstraction via Miró here or Rothko there (always fascinating, an artist’s
journey to mature style), and through a roughly chronological survey… <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuqUlr4c9rFfX4HprkcH4zw3hkcxhRIJXlVqmdVibl3hvRvTJUFhENx03tdHplJp0zJLaIHXdfRWpiSp6JAkks3pRQ-KGaDdo1ReHgt8YSNgUMfiX7ak2n3IAsxe3pFcz1mm9QkZEx6RCV/s1600/agnes+martin1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuqUlr4c9rFfX4HprkcH4zw3hkcxhRIJXlVqmdVibl3hvRvTJUFhENx03tdHplJp0zJLaIHXdfRWpiSp6JAkks3pRQ-KGaDdo1ReHgt8YSNgUMfiX7ak2n3IAsxe3pFcz1mm9QkZEx6RCV/s200/agnes+martin1.jpg" width="170" /></a><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">… In grids, mostly. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They are not cold or impersonal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They seem to give the mind a structure within
which it can imagine and explore.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or a
ladder for the imagination.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Light-waves;
landscapes as mood – light and shade, sea and sky – mood as mindscape/landscape.
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span>Then there are two rooms of small works which resemble
so many different things.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Palimpsests, Linear
B, the drawn threadwork we had to make at school, American street plans.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Exercise books, music staves, graph paper (made
me think of Rachel Whiteread), timetables, an oven shelf, a grill(e), a street
grating with five round-ended oblongs in pale grey.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Unwritten lines.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">The mind soon gets accustomed to
minor variations, and geekily delights in them; so when confronted by a pair of
black pyramids with lime green tips or a huge gold-leaf square on which a grid
of horizontal oblongs is scored (‘Friendship’, <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/agnes-martin">see here</a>), it’s a shock.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">John Ashbery once described Agnes
Martin’s work as “almost distressingly powerful.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">On one grey horizontal banded
painting the paint forms liquid patterns as if blown across the canvas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These look like clouds though clouds, however
liquid, never look like that. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">An inner room holds a series of
twelve large paintings, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Islands</i>,
all variously banded in shades of white.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I was in there on my own…</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">It was impossible not to search for
the human eye, hand, mind in each picture, in a pencilled line’s wobble on the
bumpy canvas or a change in the <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>density of
paint.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">There were several paintings which
contained wide greyish horizontal bands with a narrow pale strip between each.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Soon I was seeing these as sea with narrow
land on the horizon, then sky… then land above the sky, more sea above that,
then land, then sky.. like a stuck film reel that flickers between frames.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8SMJCR1ZaFhR527XWpch1P8-Sw67JK4Cz9wftWu5J_JUizodLUSHx4e3ctgoxmtoKNrsOeLskZ8FyY2VH345X7z2DG6sx5_z1qQLvVHQ03-fLEMmwEDmn27GBlqWcgzKVVU8onRK2-AoF/s1600/agnes+martin2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8SMJCR1ZaFhR527XWpch1P8-Sw67JK4Cz9wftWu5J_JUizodLUSHx4e3ctgoxmtoKNrsOeLskZ8FyY2VH345X7z2DG6sx5_z1qQLvVHQ03-fLEMmwEDmn27GBlqWcgzKVVU8onRK2-AoF/s200/agnes+martin2.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Agnes Martin (1912-2004) was brought
up on the Saskatchewan plains; she lived for periods in New York and in New
Mexico, mostly the town of Taos, 7,000 feet up with mountains one side, desert
the other. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She described herself as an
abstract expressionist though was described by others as a minimalist.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She
was interested in East Asian philosophy and spirituality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She suffered from schizophrenia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her preference was to be solitary but she was
part of the New York art scene in the late 50’s and 60’s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then she took off on a road trip and settled
in a remote part of the New Mexico desert for some years. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/may/22/agnes-martin-the-artist-mystic-who-disappeared-into-the-desert">More about her here</a>. She was still working in her 90s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">I came out looking hard at the floor
of wooden planks, at how paving stones intersect, at drains in the gutter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the gridmarks of the pedestrian bridge and
the Renaissance-city view of St Paul’s it opened up. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At bands of river and land and sky. </span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">At the world. “I paint with my back
to the world”, Martin said. </span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Agnes Martin is at Tate Modern until
11 October.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
Fiona Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10052038869211775919noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1648230750208763565.post-56910008885877305412015-08-04T15:17:00.001+01:002015-08-04T15:17:52.805+01:00Guest Post: Poetry In Conflict by Selina Rodrigues<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">As promised in the previous post,
here is Selina Rodrigues on the talks she heard at Poetry
International in the South Bank Centre, Saturday 25 July: Pashtun poetry and
landays, and Syrian and Iraqi poets on modern war poetry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her account of the talk on landays started me
on a fascinating search to learn more.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">“It was about lips and hair and
meeting your beloved,” said poet Saleem Khan, describing Pashtun poetry, before
Pakistan undertook a military intervention against the Taliban in North
Waziristan.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course this is a
simplification, but with the displacement of over 700,000 people, poets are now
recounting their experiences of conflict, death, and the challenges of
witnessing and transcribing such events. “Our children are exposed to sun and
even the sun is not easy here”, mused Saleem Khan, on the difficulties of
living in camps without schools, frequent running water or electricity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
<span style="color: #20124d;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisS98ba4zqT5LUFxhQ1AUZMqzw8S-pHTlBACIzUb9jiP909UldiY2_cnXjucHwnrTXocOsXBgb72M13qsjYiZT40hX8nLU6hkNXYuwESDSj3wRAo_Ja1SjCITlZUhTZ9_nT1oxqG3yuMNu/s1600/poetry+international.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisS98ba4zqT5LUFxhQ1AUZMqzw8S-pHTlBACIzUb9jiP909UldiY2_cnXjucHwnrTXocOsXBgb72M13qsjYiZT40hX8nLU6hkNXYuwESDSj3wRAo_Ja1SjCITlZUhTZ9_nT1oxqG3yuMNu/s200/poetry+international.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">“You handed me the gun and took away
the pen”, quoted Dilawar Khan, also of North Waziristan, and later, “you kept me
hungry, so I turned into a man-eater”, these lines showing the agony and
complexity of human responses to violence. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Poetry and self-expression are still shared
through Mushaira, traditional gatherings of poets and people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Many have started to write poetry as a
response to the conflict.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With limited
access to technology, poetry is a spark and signal for subjects ranging from
resistance to individual grief, to the solace of religion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
<span style="color: #20124d;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="color: #20124d;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">These two Pakistani poets were also
joined by fellow poet Zahid Ullah Khan and journalist Aamir Iqbal in the talk,
Free of the Taliban.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
<span style="color: #20124d;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="color: #20124d;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Poetry is acclaimed as a remover of
obstacles, a bridge between discordant ideas. These events showed its
mutability and flame-like attraction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Text messaging and social media enable the sharing of landays between
rural and urban women in Afghanistan.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Existing for 3,500 years, of 2 lines and 22 syllables, landays cut to
the essential, enabling confession, rebellions and companionship between women.
</span></span></div>
<span style="color: #20124d;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="color: #20124d;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">How much simpler can love be. </span></span></div>
<span style="color: #20124d;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Let’s get engaged. Text Me.</span></span></div>
<span style="color: #20124d;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="color: #20124d;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Sahera Sharif, founder of the Mirman
Baheer literary society in Kabul, said women may be writing under pseudonyms,
using fantasy or even male personas to convey “the feelings of women… which are
different”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>American journalist Eliza
Griswold collected and published these landays but as Sahera Sharif gently
reminded us, the meanings can be intricate and sometimes the deeper layers
remain visible only to Afghani people. </span></span></div>
<span style="color: #20124d;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="color: #20124d;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">When sisters sit together, they always
praise their brothers. </span></span></div>
<span style="color: #20124d;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">When brothers sit together they sell
their sisters to others.</span></span></div>
<span style="color: #20124d;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="color: #20124d;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjdfJNH9V6mDQQMnUEc6bqMCPuRxQLUEYBvVCelSmNMFxvS5XdueP7rOr3zdBW-ooPLdiCzOU3K_BV8t0xXcjk4ArM0Nf1kEvCSXz-lk26rhd53pXTk5E9ccZw9zROOfLVtMTlMGwr5wCs/s1600/beggar+of+the+world.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjdfJNH9V6mDQQMnUEc6bqMCPuRxQLUEYBvVCelSmNMFxvS5XdueP7rOr3zdBW-ooPLdiCzOU3K_BV8t0xXcjk4ArM0Nf1kEvCSXz-lk26rhd53pXTk5E9ccZw9zROOfLVtMTlMGwr5wCs/s200/beggar+of+the+world.jpg" width="148" /></a><span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Griswold’s i-Phone was placed under
a pile of pillows during one gathering in Afghanistan and she suggested that
this was due to the potency of the subject matter, created by women. Yes, women
and girls experience violence and brutality and poetry and self-expression can
be seen as shameful, but perhaps it’s more complex than that. Even in our
selfie-saturated environs, the brain clicks from thought, to photograph, to
publication. What we say is charged differently when taken by a foreigner to
another continent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Landays are oral
forms and there’s an adjustment in transferring to page/screen, as we can see
when wonderful UK-based performance poets snake between the landscapes of stage
and page. </span></span></div>
<span style="color: #20124d;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="color: #20124d;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Sahera Sharif and journalist Eliza
Griswold participated in the talk, Why Afghan Women Risk Their Lives to Write
Poetry. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s a long piece on landays
by Eliza Griswold <a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/media/landays.html">at the Poetry Foundation, here</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her collection of landays, <a href="http://us.macmillan.com/iamthebeggaroftheworld/elizagriswold"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I Am the Beggar of the World</i></a>, is
published by Macmillan US. </span></span></div>
<span style="color: #20124d;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="color: #20124d;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">One of Golan Haji’s poems, ‘Shooting
Sportsmen’ (published <a href="http://www.wolfmagazine.co.uk/27poem2.php">in The Wolf, here</a>) considers how the borders of conflict
expand so that no-one, no thing is left unaffected.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
<span style="color: #20124d;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="color: #20124d;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">They murdered the madman of the
quarter, the milk vendor and the</span></span></div>
<span style="color: #20124d;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>parsley seller</span></span></div>
<span style="color: #20124d;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">They killed the window and the
sister who looked from it </span></span></div>
<span style="color: #20124d;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Neither the neighbours’ cow survived
</span></span></div>
<span style="color: #20124d;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Nor the streetlamp.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
<span style="color: #20124d;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="color: #20124d;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Both Adnan al-Sayegh, a poet from
Iraq, and Syrian Kurdish poet Golan Haji spoke of the need for translation,
visits, contact between cultures.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Golan
Haji reflected on the complexities of language and power and his concern that
non-Western literature is viewed as “from the ruptured country, [we are]
pictured as victims in the mundane version of the world”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But he celebrated his “love [of] poets of the
world as if they are of my own country”. </span></span></div>
<span style="color: #20124d;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="color: #20124d;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">These poets participated in the talk
Modern War Poetry.</span></span></div>
<span style="color: #20124d;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="color: #20124d;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">No fault of the organisers, through
all the events we ran out of time, only enough to hear one or two poems and
sensing the poets had more they wanted to share.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How strange it was to leave the dark Purcell
Room, go out to July wind and sun, back to the internet and hope to see and
hear more, again. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Selina
Rodrigues lives in London and works for a charity. She is of mixed-race Indian
parentage and writes poetry focusing on identity, urban living and the
pull-push of desire and behaviour.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her
poetry has been published most recently in The Rialto and Magma and as a
competition winner for the Poetry School and South Bank Poetry Magazine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She has read at the Poetry Café, for Poetry
Shuffle and by invitation at various London bookshops. </span></i></div>
Fiona Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10052038869211775919noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1648230750208763565.post-5921439787851550942015-07-28T19:29:00.000+01:002015-07-28T19:29:34.553+01:00Iranian poetry, concrete poetry…<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<![endif]--><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">The London streets of 2015 are paved
with poetry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s quite something to
have to choose between several seriously interesting events, which is what
happened throughout Saturday.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I started
reading and listening to a lot of poetry 11 years ago there was far less going
on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s tempting to use (or misuse)
words such as exponential and explosion.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgorl36dp9cF9iqZe3mmkHjgQZW83XosK2huUEIrIuGKnBf2vyNqnqA_50yyJUeIskS6kRMKx4bat5MIi_opxbixqGWBjac1PuKpsl8E6zWwOQaiL6CtEvjwpnxl08TB7zuv0kZ2BvfPnR_/s1600/mpt+scorched+glass.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgorl36dp9cF9iqZe3mmkHjgQZW83XosK2huUEIrIuGKnBf2vyNqnqA_50yyJUeIskS6kRMKx4bat5MIi_opxbixqGWBjac1PuKpsl8E6zWwOQaiL6CtEvjwpnxl08TB7zuv0kZ2BvfPnR_/s1600/mpt+scorched+glass.png" /></a><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Poetry International on the South
Bank was featuring poetry and poets from Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, some
of this in conjunction with the magazine Modern Poetry in Translation (MPT) <a href="http://www.mptmagazine.com/page/magazine/?pid=158">whose spring issue</a> featured Iranian poets of the 20<sup>th</sup> and 21<sup>st</sup>
century.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Stephen Watts heroically covered the
last 1,000 years of Persian poetry in a talk. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Infinite possibilities opened up – a whole
civilisation in poetry – as he moved from Ferdowsi’s 11<sup>th</sup> century epic
the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Shahnameh</i> via Rumi to 20<sup>th</sup>
century greats Nima Yushij and Forugh Farrokhzad and 21<sup>st</sup> century diaspora
poet Ziba Karbassi.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Stephen, himself a poet and
translator, tried – tentatively – to identify the distinguishing features of
Iranian / Persian poetry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Classical and
modern poetry share, he felt, “a pared-down richness of language”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Poets are at ease with abstractions and poems
may be both rooted and take off – soar – as Rumi’s work does.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Modernists from the 1930’s onwards reacted
against the ossification of Persian poetry and their social and political
circumstances; they took on the natural language of their surroundings. The
best of their poetry combines inwardness and openness. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">This may make little sense without
examples; the new MPT contains translations of work by twelve poets.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I find it quite difficult to extract quotes –
is Iranian poetry also hard to break up; might this be to do with
abstraction?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here is part of leading
modernist and pioneering woman poet Forugh Farrokhzad’s poem ‘In Darkness’,
translated by Sholeh Wolpé:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">I called your name</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Your name I called holding </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">my own being like a bottle</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">of milk between my hands.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">The moon’s blue gaze</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">rapped against the glass.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">From the cicada city</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">a blue song was ascending,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">slithering like smoke</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">against window panes.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidOmtlAjcXgHg85QPkIv2I6WXj8KbIdNuxYStuCXaEpLr0DvNjI3H9dGj8A3LTqhq4V422bD-xrR_s4RL79trHxZJBzO_ggNvxPk-XXQ0X1Lp1ZOpwDlMYBAPcuxK7FFmOAoNhXFwUNl0m/s1600/Farrokhzad.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidOmtlAjcXgHg85QPkIv2I6WXj8KbIdNuxYStuCXaEpLr0DvNjI3H9dGj8A3LTqhq4V422bD-xrR_s4RL79trHxZJBzO_ggNvxPk-XXQ0X1Lp1ZOpwDlMYBAPcuxK7FFmOAoNhXFwUNl0m/s200/Farrokhzad.jpg" width="127" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Farrokhzad</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">I was a little disappointed that
only two of MPT’s featured poets were female – Stephen said he thought some of
the best poetry being written now is by younger women.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But he added that some of the best may be on
the margins, unpublished, whether for political and/or other reasons such as
geography and language.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Many languages
beside Farsi (or Persian) are spoken in Iran, including Azeri and Kurdish.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">The energies of the 1960s and 70s in
opposition to the Shah’s rule, both secular (mostly from the left) and religious,
were suppressed after the Iranian revolution.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Writing carried on, often in secret; there were workshops.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some poets have dared to use their own name,
some use pseudonyms and some write anonymously.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Poets in Iran have risked much, even
life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nasrin Parvaz and Hubert Moore
talked about their joint translation of contemporary poets – bringing them “out
of the shadows” by various routes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Parvaz herself was imprisoned for many years in Tehran and condemned to
death.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">The first poem they read was by an
unknown woman in the notorious Evin prison.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The speaker, along with fellow prisoners, watches a woman leave the
cells, her walk perfuming the air.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
ambiguity about where she’s going, to her native mountains or to death, makes
the poem all the more powerful – you long for it to be the first while knowing
it has to be the second – but then perhaps death is a returning home…<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And this poem itself has a story.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The poet, before her own execution, passed the
piece of paper to someone else who memorised the poem before confiscation by the
guards, and carried it in her head and out of prison on her release.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Parvaz read a couple of poems in
Farsi – I’d have loved to hear more.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As
someone in the audience said, didn’t they rhyme?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Someone else said that Farsi rhymes anyway,
all the time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The audiences for both
talks were very engaged – a woman stood up and talked about Rumi, there was an
exchange about whether it mattered if one says Iranian or Persian, and Farsi or
Persian (“no they’re the same”, or “yes it’s still highly political”).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A debate nearly happened about whether exiled
writers' work is as valid as that of those who’ve stayed in Iran – a
theme surely familiar to all diasporas. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Some of Parvaz and Moore’s
translations are in MPT, including three short poems by poet and construction
worker Sabeer Haka.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>‘Mulberries’ starts
like this and <a href="http://www.mptmagazine.com/poem/mulberries-714/">the rest is here</a>.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Have you ever seen</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">mulberries, </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">how their red juice</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">stains the earth where they fell?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">For more background, MPT have put on
their website <a href="http://www.mptmagazine.com/feature/the-phoenix-rising-an-email-interview-71/">an interview with literary critic and translator Atefeh Tahaee </a>who is based in Tehran.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here’s the first
paragraph:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Iranians love poetry. The best
evidence for this is the constant incorporation of poetry into daily life, a
habit which began in the distant past and still continues. Poems, both ancient
and modern, run through people’s lives: in proverbs; in the celebration of
Nowruz, the Persian New Year, and Yalda in the deep midwinter; from the mouths
of TV and radio presenters; in the voices of singers and the tunes of
musicians; in newspapers, postcards and even in the street where you can buy
Hafiz’s auspicious verses for divination for just a coin.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Stephen Watts recommended <a href="http://www.arcpublications.co.uk/books/ali-alizadeh-and-john-kinsella-six-vowels-and-twenty-three-consonants-an-anthology-of-persian-poetry-from-rudaki-to-langroodi-426"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Six Vowels and Twenty-three Consonants</i></a>,
an anthology from Arc of Persian poetry from the early Middle Ages until
now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiR01_vIHfAKgwPb4IO_TlJYpJsuO0OJlp7YWZKIe9YP_ZfQJu5xfs-mLShSLSW-zP5XSk_MDTxYgST0kuzn-XxN75ZggVc3zFCWPLsjiEPa94A41wHeSGmhDnFAqt7eQLycwRZtuXP0Wo/s1600/votes+demo+poster+July+2015.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiR01_vIHfAKgwPb4IO_TlJYpJsuO0OJlp7YWZKIe9YP_ZfQJu5xfs-mLShSLSW-zP5XSk_MDTxYgST0kuzn-XxN75ZggVc3zFCWPLsjiEPa94A41wHeSGmhDnFAqt7eQLycwRZtuXP0Wo/s200/votes+demo+poster+July+2015.jpg" width="133" /></a><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">It was impossible to go to
everything; the events on Saturday overlapped (why weren’t some of them
scheduled for Sunday when mostly workshops were programmed?).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There was a session on why Afghan women risk
their lives to write poetry, another on war poetry and one on poetry in
north-west Pakistan under threat from the Taliban.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think everything was recorded, and hope the
recordings will be made accessible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In
the meantime Selina Rodrigues went to all three sessions and is writing a guest
post about them, to go up on Displacement next week. </span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"></span><br /></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Then there was the proportional
representation demo outside Parliament: I spent about 10 minutes there after getting
crushed in a scary 20-minute human traffic jam on the embankment between the
London Eye and Westminster Bridge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
demo was disappointingly not a crush but apparently the speeches were good.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaYSfrtvzTrtVg6jhcI2o1uxB3vM-9GLVYVvS_Hsj3dlymD2n2YqHlxZcLOQAp8v_W6GxxOIGiYNu5XNlwiVWU_RUuXZ2Tju6fECBjPn9j3yXzIWILJdRkB6_5lmD2ZNJHZZewM3KBOPJP/s1600/the+new+concrete.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaYSfrtvzTrtVg6jhcI2o1uxB3vM-9GLVYVvS_Hsj3dlymD2n2YqHlxZcLOQAp8v_W6GxxOIGiYNu5XNlwiVWU_RUuXZ2Tju6fECBjPn9j3yXzIWILJdRkB6_5lmD2ZNJHZZewM3KBOPJP/s1600/the+new+concrete.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">A major anthology was launched on
Saturday too, at the Whitechapel Gallery – <a href="https://thenewconcrete.wordpress.com/"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The New Concrete</i></a> (Hayward), edited by Victoria Bean and Chris McCabe and described as “a
long-overdue survey of the rise of concrete poetry in the digital age”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I can’t wait to have a look at this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Good concrete poetry sets different
parts of the brain working together in unaccustomed ways; and there’s something
wonderfully geeky as well as aesthetically pleasing about words and letters
being unusually patterned, decorated, represented, combined, etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIzbd50CGDTdN9dQ6mLnx7xti_OEjEBz5xLNM5Iq9PFg1zHoz4CrqICDVMNc7nzjXPmMsPjbYCrBowHTdtNZOP9mc01Wa0w8N8ValIyYRf9DEVG6qDST01wDpPXJYJDQVoEekfGhkcbyM_/s1600/long+time+no+see.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIzbd50CGDTdN9dQ6mLnx7xti_OEjEBz5xLNM5Iq9PFg1zHoz4CrqICDVMNc7nzjXPmMsPjbYCrBowHTdtNZOP9mc01Wa0w8N8ValIyYRf9DEVG6qDST01wDpPXJYJDQVoEekfGhkcbyM_/s200/long+time+no+see.jpg" width="134" /></a><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">In the evening there was a big
reading with the poets (those who’d got their visas in time) and translators at
Poetry International. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There was the
monthly Shuffle at the Poetry Café, a couple of whose readers are on the
Forward first collection prize shortlist. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I missed both of these because it was also the
launch of poet Hannah Lowe’s book <a href="http://www.periscopebooks.co.uk/long-time-no-see/"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Long Time No See</i></a> (Periscope) which promises to be a fascinating mix of imaginative
reconstruction and memoir.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b063n3sw">Radio 4’s Book of the Week</a> this week, read by Hannah herself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
Fiona Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10052038869211775919noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1648230750208763565.post-1203550426648805952015-05-31T23:52:00.000+01:002015-05-31T23:55:22.184+01:00The Printed Snow; noticing things<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">In March last year I was driving
through tree-lined Norfolk country lanes with Michael Mackmin, on the day of
the nature tour prize for the Rialto/RSPB poetry competition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I said I’d recently started to feel
frustrated that I couldn’t recognise different trees in winter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So Michael enumerated them as we drove past:
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Spring was about to burst out, but when
winter came I started trying to learn the shapes of trees.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think I am now quite good at oaks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The same thing happened with birdsong a few
years ago – beyond already known songs by woodpigeon or blackbird such learning
is a slow and painstaking process for someone with a poor ear.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The wren, singer of the same set of
flourishes again and again, was my first success.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNvekf6kqnNWcoP6mco_xl5aLogkzty_Yr0P7cRn93bY2Idxh0gsricj3S0qEIQxCpig8HRGy_ZhyphenhypheneoaGgNv0bltyWydqnItd3pzqhaAMNxuMWNOW0zwFTfaySVQ6PbU1IzyodnKXoQo49/s1600/printed+snow.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNvekf6kqnNWcoP6mco_xl5aLogkzty_Yr0P7cRn93bY2Idxh0gsricj3S0qEIQxCpig8HRGy_ZhyphenhypheneoaGgNv0bltyWydqnItd3pzqhaAMNxuMWNOW0zwFTfaySVQ6PbU1IzyodnKXoQo49/s1600/printed+snow.jpg" /></a><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">When HappenStance publisher Helena
Nelson announced that she was producing a pamphlet on typesetting poetry by
poet and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dark Horse</i> editor Gerry
Cambridge, I was intrigued.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Rialto</i> is expertly designed by Nick
Stone, so when we get the pdf proofs back it’s mostly to check for missing
lines, verse breaks gone wrong, etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our
occasional discussions about the presentation of a particular poem on the page
are my only experience of the design side of typesetting... <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Apart from choosing Verdana for this blog
because it’s plain and supposed to be easy to read online.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And having a discussion with Helena Nelson about
whether a long-lined poem in my pamphlet should be printed vertically rather
than horizontally – she said No, it would draw attention to the poem’s vertical
appearance rather than the contents.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">I’d already benefited from
Cambridge’s typographical skills because he’s advised HappenStance on
design.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I ordered <a href="http://www.happenstancepress.org/index.php/shop/product/47737-the-printed-snow-on-typesetting-poetry/category_pathway-52"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Printed Snow</i> (here)</a> and it was austerely elegant, as one would
expect.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With lovely blackberry-coloured
end papers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One feature of it is this:
in several places the first word in a line has an inverted comma before it, to
open a quote.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The inverted comma lies
slightly outside the left-hand margin – it sticks out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Presumably that’s a characteristic of this
particular typeface, Trinité 2 Roman.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Would I have noticed, had I not been reading about typography?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">The
Printed Snow</span></i><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"> soon
had me reaching for the pile of poetry books on my table (two piles actually)
to look at, and for, things I hadn’t noticed before. Or things I’d only noticed
in poorly typeset books: as Cambridge says, </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Setting inner text is a scrupulous
business in which, like the art of forging banknotes, a creator’s invisibility
is a sign of success.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">One of the pleasures of reading this
pamphlet-monograph is its physical form.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It’s nice, and rare, to hold in the hands a short, pocketable piece of
non-fiction prose that’s not part of a newspaper, magazine or website.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">The pamphlet isn’t a comprehensive
treatment of the subject but an “idiosyncratic essay” (with a bibliography for
those who want more).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here are some of
the things that struck me, a mix of unknown unknowns, unknown knowns and known
unknowns.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Design perfection on the computer
screen may be something else entirely on the page.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A pamphlet page can be read almost to the
central gutter but the binding of a paperback reduces page width by up to 20mm.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Some typefaces are more economical
than others with space across a page.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Typesetters enjoy finding or making
links between the typeface chosen and the writer and/or subject; Cambridge used
a typeface called Tacitus (after the Roman historian famous for his irony,
unusual vocabulary and the extreme compression of his writing) in a pamphlet on
the Gaelic poet and scholar Derick Thomson.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">There is a typeface called
Turnip.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Unlike prose blocks in a book, the
varying shapes of poems can lead to ‘show-through’ of type from one page to the
next.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I suppose I had noticed this, but
not enough to… notice.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Poetry dilemma: do you set the same
left-hand margin on each page, or use an imaginary centre line to place the
poems?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The latter may be necessary for a
mix of long- and short-lined poems.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Sharon Olds’ <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Stag’s Leap</i>
happened to be on the table: I opened it and read with new eyes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her poems may be mostly blocks but the line
length varies from middling to quite long.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Cape, her publisher, chose the centred approach.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This does – now – look slightly odd when one
leaves through, but the other options would have been to squeeze the
shorter-lined poems right over to the left, leaving lots of space on the right;
or turn the longer lines over, ie run them on into the next line.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Love” must have been maddening to arrange on
its first, full page: the left-hand side of it almost disappears into the
central gutter so as to accommodate all the lines … except line 1, which has to
be turned over.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But then this is how the
first few lines read:</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">I had thought it was something we
were in. I had thought we</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>were</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">in it that day, in the capital</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">of his early province – how could we</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">not have been in it, in our hotel
bed, in the</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">cries through the green grass-blade.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">The initial awkwardness gets read
into the argument of the poem.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this
case that works rather well with the emphasis on the forced line break “we /
were”, two key words for the poem and indeed the whole book.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I’m now almost wondering if the
turning-over here was deliberate.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Cambridge compares writing poetry
and typography because both “require almost neurotic levels of attention to
detail”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m no designer but am now engaged
in noticing typesetting, along with birdsong and the silhouettes of winter trees.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">PPS: I’ve just seen that Dave Coates
(at Dave Poems, see the blog list on the right) has won this year’s Saboteur
Best Reviewer Award.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hooray!! and
congratulations to him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">
</span></div>
<br />Fiona Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10052038869211775919noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1648230750208763565.post-63606484703219630112015-04-29T20:35:00.002+01:002015-04-29T20:35:50.058+01:00Life on Mars by Tracy K Smith<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5exauYUrKrXkUqF9uR1jkGNgI8wIe1jk7LZHlBm2Le5zaMFwRbPFhkNCyYM6AcrOwmqsF6cUFon5KAFVGnW1qa5M6wY6zBjZrQhB4G5JW6F7jhWQty2ol8GlP0b-snF-nP_wBBUoEC3Op/s1600/life+on+mars.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5exauYUrKrXkUqF9uR1jkGNgI8wIe1jk7LZHlBm2Le5zaMFwRbPFhkNCyYM6AcrOwmqsF6cUFon5KAFVGnW1qa5M6wY6zBjZrQhB4G5JW6F7jhWQty2ol8GlP0b-snF-nP_wBBUoEC3Op/s1600/life+on+mars.jpg" height="200" width="133" /></a><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">This book makes familiar things strange
from the perspective of space, and reimagines the cosmos, sometimes in earthly
terms, as strangely as inadequate human understanding can.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Several months after first reading <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Life on Mars</i> it still resonates; the
stardust has stuck.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I hadn’t heard of it
until an American friend chose it for a poetry reading group, and most people
I’ve mentioned the book to hadn’t either – it won a Pulitzer Prize in 2012 but
doesn’t seem to have entered the general consciousness here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">‘The Universe: Original Motion
Picture Soundtrack’ invents that soundtrack and shows how Smith plays with
scale.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She is expert at delivering the
cosmic dizzyness that comes from looking into space.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s hard to extract lines from the six couplets;
the whole poem is <a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/243876">here at the Poetry Foundation</a> along with several others.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So much for us. So much for
the flags we bored</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Into planets dry as chalk, for the
tin cans we filled with fire</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">And rode like cowboys into all we
tried to tame. Listen:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">The dark we've only ever imagined
now audible, thrumming,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Marbled with static like gristly
meat.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">The description of space travel
makes it seem tiny, banal and gimcrack as a stage set.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As for the last half-line – what an
extraordinary simile – a reach of association large enough for the subject. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Smith’s father was an engineer whose
job may have taken her imagination into space at an early age:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">When my father worked on the Hubble
Telescope, he said</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">They operated like surgeons:
scrubbed and sheathed</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">In papery green, the room a clean
cold, a bright white.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">That is from ‘My God, It’s Full of
Stars’ (the title a quote from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">2001: A
Space Odyssey</i>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This long poem is
one of several that is in parts, each part with a different form.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It takes in zombie plots, Charlton Heston and
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">2001</i>, all supporting passages of metaphysical
speculation:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Perhaps the great error is believing
we’re alone,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">That the others have come and gone—a
momentary blip—</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">When all along, space might be
choc-full of traffic,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Bursting at the seams with energy we
neither feel</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Nor see, flush against us, living,
dying, deciding,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">The whole poem is overshadowed by
the death of Smith’s father. So far I’ve quoted only from the book’s first section
of four which is the most cosmic in scale, because for me this is what really makes
the collection stand out. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Life on Mars</i> reaches as deeply in to
human experience as out to the stars. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span>There
are elegies/meditations on the poet’s father; there are poems on love and childbirth
and poems that contain gang rape, modern piracy and the torture of Abu Ghraib. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All have the same fluency and energy of form
and language, and similar cosmic and metaphysical preoccupations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Smith probes the nature of reality and
strangeness of experience, posing questions such as: where do tangible things
go, and things that are not tangible?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This is the end of a ghazal, part of ‘The Speed of Belief’, a poem in memory
of her father.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"> Perhaps one day it will be enough to
live a few seasons and return to ash.</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">No children to carry our names. No
grief. Life will be a brief, hollow walk.</span>
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"> My father won’t lie still,though
his legs are buried in trousers and socks.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"> </span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">But where does all he knew – and all
he must now know – walk? </span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"></span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXI5M_YdasMdEj9_MTtE0Cxq18qPoYq2t66VOZoWv_cY3spgtIfzabF9Fg02R64KCmlh3I_GMorlfHeiPJvI3Gm4OuW3VPFrHwqOU-Dtnnauz3Pta6heDrfBjkODFpz75FEafMIaPpRHas/s1600/hubble+space.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXI5M_YdasMdEj9_MTtE0Cxq18qPoYq2t66VOZoWv_cY3spgtIfzabF9Fg02R64KCmlh3I_GMorlfHeiPJvI3Gm4OuW3VPFrHwqOU-Dtnnauz3Pta6heDrfBjkODFpz75FEafMIaPpRHas/s1600/hubble+space.jpg" height="200" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">From Hubble</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">She can do strict form – there’s a villanelle
whose irony is all the harsher for its precision.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The tone is hugely assured, poised, as any
space mission must be.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The poems have a
musicality that made me wonder about influences from this side of the Atlantic;
then I read that she’d been taught by Seamus Heaney for two college years, and
revered him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her lines are both weighty
and light-footed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Wallace Stevens is
certainly lurking and sometimes the strangeness holds an echo of Marianne Moore,
as at the end of the riddling ‘It & Co.’:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Still, It resists the matter of
false vs. real.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Unconvinced by our zeal, It is un-</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Appeasable. It is like some novels:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Vast and unreadable.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">‘They May Love All That He Has
Chosen and Hate All That He Has Rejected’ (title taken from a Dead Sea scroll) considers
five American hate killings, mostly racially motivated, that took place within
just over a month in 2009.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In between passages
meditating on hatred, fear and ordinariness, each of the victims writes a
(prose) postcard to his or her murderer from a celebrated American
landmark.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These have the banalities of
any postcard, from what-I’ve-been-doing to thoughts and hopes… but
altered.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Tonight I’m at the bottom of
the Grand Canyon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t know where I
end.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is deeply unsettling.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The poem’s final passage begins: “Line them
up. Let us look them in the face.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(“Them”
being the killers.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is the last thing
we want to do, after reading the postcards.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Life
on Mars</span></i><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">, Tracy K Smith's third collection, is
<a href="https://www.graywolfpress.org/books/life-mars">published by Graywolf Press</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s
readily available to UK readers on the internet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Here is the ending of ‘My God, It’s
Full of Stars’. The poem is <a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/243880">at the Poetry Foundation</a>.</span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">On the ground, we tied postcards to
balloons</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">For peace. Prince Charles married
Lady Di. Rock Hudson died.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">We learned new words for things. The
decade changed.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">The first few pictures came back
blurred, and I felt ashamed</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">For all the cheerful engineers, my
father and his tribe. The second time,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span>The optics jibed. We saw to the edge
of all there is—</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; tab-stops: 370.65pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">So brutal and alive it seemed to
comprehend us back.</span></div>
<br />
Fiona Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10052038869211775919noreply@blogger.com5