Dooms

"Very, very dangerous" giant underwater volcano found off Indonesia, 4,600m high and 50 km at its base.

Resistance to malaria drug growing, experts warn.

Road accidents have overtaken malaria as the leading cause of preventable deaths in developing countries. In five years time, if nothing is done, traffic accidents will be the biggest single cause of premature deaths for children aged 5 to 14.

Climate change "kills 300,000 every year"

Update
But there is hope yet:

Gay penguins rear adopted chick. Perhaps I should be depressed that this is even regarded as news, depressed that the zoo and the BBC put inverted commas round "gay" but in view of the torrent of hatred and oppression that usually flows unchecked, this is mildly cheering - cheering that the zoo for all their scare quotes (which might just be bet-hedging for less tolerant customers) seem fairly enlightened, and cheering that it seems to be reported in like vein. Roll on the day when this sort of thing isn't news because it's unremarkable, and when humans no longer have to refer to animals to seek legitimacy for human behaviour because humans are finally accepted for themselves.

Chair

Martin Ejector seat

Useful.

But look, it's a museum piece. It's bolted to the floor.

Chestnuts

Let's go back to happier, more innocent times - oh, about a fortnight ago:

Each year I think it's going to be the last time they flower. Right now, they are magnificent along the approaches to Cambridge, in the allées on Jesus Green, and in parks and avenues up and down the country. The leaves have shaken themselves out to their full extent. While some buds are still opening, other flowers are on the point of fading, and fruits begin to set.


By June, the leaves will be covered in mottles, by July they will be shrivelled and it will look like autumn. When autumn comes, there may be a few small conkers. Not that children bother much these days to be first out after a big wind, scuffling for a gleam of treasure in the grass.

In October last year among the blasted trees in Richmond Park, one or two branches were sporting spring candles, a desperate measure against the ravages of the leaf miner moth. However devastating it looks, apparently it's not fatal. But another rapidly spreading blight of chestnuts can be.

I had thought of ending this post with some links. But let them just be chestnuts for now.

Save our Salts

Chris Hamilton-Emery says "Anyone looking after kids at home will be familiar with the WWF Adopt a Polar Bear ad being piped in with every commercial break on children's daytime television. Enjoy this spoof."

Salt

Salt is one of the leading poetry publishers in the country. They also publish fiction, criticism and drama, and their authors come from all over the world - over 200 titles this past year. But the recession is hitting them too. Chris Hamilton-Emery has just posted this plea:

Here's how you can help us to save Salt.

JUST ONE BOOK

1. Please buy just one book, right now. We don't mind from where, you can buy it from us or from Amazon, your local shop or megastore, online or offline. If you buy just one book now, you'll help to save Salt. Timing is absolutely everything here. We need cash now to stay afloat. If you love literature, help keep it alive. All it takes is just one book sale. Go to our online store and help us keep going.

UK and International

USA

2. Share this note on your Facebook and MySpace profile. Tell your friends. If we can spread the word about our cash crisis, we can hopefully find more sales and save our literary publishing. Remember it's just one book, that's all it takes to save us. Please do it now.

Go on. Buy one. You know you want to. Just look at their website - you can listen before you buy, watch videos, download a pdf of the first few pages to sample a book.

Salt books I have purchased in the last twelve months:

Josephine Balmer - The Word for Sorrow
Simon Barraclough - Los Alamos Mon Amour
Isobel Dixon - A Fold in the Map
Katy Evans-Bush - Me and the Dead
Jane Holland - Camper Van Blues
Charles Lambert - The Scent of Cinnamon
Tony Lopez - Meaning Performance
Rob MacKenzie - The Opposite of Cabbage
André Mangeot - A Little Javanese
Andrew Philip - The Ambulance Box
Andrea Porter - A Season of Small Insanities
Fiona Sampson - On Listening
John Siddique - Recital
John Wilkinson - Down to Earth
John Wilkinson - The Lyric Touch

and my own The Men from Praga

Some I have just ordered:
Julia Bird - Hannah and the Monk
Diana Pooley - Like This

Walcott Lectures

Walcott's Nobel lecture. Text and audio.

Michigan State University Audio.

Whitman College Lecture Audio.

University of Alberta (Scroll down to the bottom of the page.) Audio.

OxPo redux

Admittedly I was angry when I wrote that last somewhat incoherent post. I've calmed down a bit now.

There are several issues here, which need untangling.

1. The archaic post of Professor of Poetry. The job needs reform.

The duties of the Professor are to give one public lecture each term; to give the Creweian Oration at Encaenia every other year (since 1972 in English); each year to be one of the judges for the Newdigate Prize, the Lord Alfred Douglas Prize and the Chancellor's English Essay Prize; every third year to help judge the prize for the English poem on a sacred subject, and generally to encourage the art of poetry in the University.

For this s/he will receive a stipend of £6,901 pa (pay award pending) and a princely £40 per Creweian Oration. A mercy they don't still have to give it in Latin.

2. The method of election. This needs reform too. While the overwhelming number of beneficiaries of the lectures are undergraduates, they have no vote. The candidate is chosen by secret ballot of senior members of the University. Not just the dons, but any old geezer, who may have no interest in poetry whatsoever, who sports an MA (Oxon). (Not suggesting that votes can be bought, of course.) There are no postal votes or electronic votes. Voting is in person, and the wearing of gowns optional. Well, of course you can't let young people choose their own professor; they are too young to know anything, let alone what's good for them. It has always been this way, and therefore it must continue. It is a tradition, and that's the sort of thing England, and above all Oxford, does exceedingly well.

3. The candidates. One would think that a poetry professor whose job consists light duties consist mainly of giving lectures on poetry should be chosen on the basis of their skills in lecturing on poetry. They don't have to be poets; indeed, the present Professor, Christopher Ricks, is not known for his poetry but was elected because he is an inspiring critic.

4. The campaign. One would think that candidates would campaign on their ability to deliver the lectures, and if they have any, their skill as poets. As far as I can tell, they have. No-one but an idiot would engage in negative campaigning, let alone by anonymous proxy. I'm frankly amazed that anyone could have such a low opinion of any of the candidates that they should think differently.

5. Sexual harassment. Look, I loathe sexual harassment. It has no place in the university. It's not flattering. It's not a joke. It is corrupting and demeaning, and sometimes frightening. A tutor who offers or withholds good grades on the basis of the giving or withholding of sexual favours is no better than one who would do the same for money. In fact, probably worse.

There were two anti-Walcott campaigns. One was started by a woman using her own name (there's a bit of a muddle even there) asking a group of her contacts whether someone with a reputation for harassment should be appointed to the post. This email was forwarded on, as can be the way of emails, and became a campaign. It would be a legitimate question where the appointee is to come into personal contact with students. But this job doesn't. Perhaps they were afraid that it might involve such contact under the rubric "and generally to encourage the art of poetry in the University." In that case, perhaps it can be excused as legitimate debate. Or it could be, if there were evidence that any of this were true, apart from the allegations by the alleged victims themselves. At any rate, were the appointee to be in a position to sexually harass students here, then the allegations should have been put to him properly, and he should have been required to answer them before his candidacy could proceed. He shouldn't be tried in the court of public opinion. (We are pig sick of that forum.)

There was a second, and utterly disgraceful, campaign conducted anonymously in which pages from a book accusing Walcott of harassment were mailed to prominent female academics. That is smear. There is no excuse for the anonymity and it's not possible to debate with or counter anonymous allegations.

5. The suggestion that appointing someone with sexual harassment allegations hanging over him would bring the Professorship, and Oxford itself, into disrepute. Has it brought the Nobel laureateship into disrepute? Well, has it?

6. If you are against X you must be in favour of Y. Wrong. Walcott's supporters ask themselves cui bono? and conclude that Padel's supporters must be behind the smears. While one of her supporters hasn't been above repeating them publicly, it doesn't follow that this is the reason for either of the campaigns. It is quite possible that feminist anti-harasser animus is sufficient motive. My god, haven't these people ever met an angry feminist?


The election is on Saturday. It had promised to be exciting: poetry giant vs poetry populist vs poetry heavyweight largely unknown in Oxford. There were real issues involved. As it is, the whole business feels sullied. I feel sullied. I don't want to go and vote. I want to protest at the world for being different from how I'd like it to be.

OxPo Foes

Sickening. Vandals.

I am disappointed that such low tactics have been used in this election and I do not want to get into a race for a post where it causes embarrassment to those who have chosen to support me for the role, or to myself.

I already have a great many work commitments and, while I was happy to be put forward for the post, if it has degenerated into a low and degrading attempt at character assassination, I do not want to be part of it.

Derek Walcott has withdrawn from the race for Oxford Professor of Poetry - not for any poetic reasons, but because certain idiots have sent over 100 anonymous letters to voters repeating personal allegations at least 20 years old. (It's only from the Oxford Mail that I learn the recipients were all female.) Who could have sent them, and why? And why anonymous? Are they seeking to smear Walcott, or is it some Machiavellian swipe against Padel? There was nothing particularly secret about these allegations: as someone who is hardly at the centre of poetry gossip I first heard of them years ago. They were published and ignored. Even if they were true, they have nothing to do with his ability to deliver the lectures. They didn't stop him getting tenure at Boston.

Ah, but.

I don't really understand why he didn't face them down as he's always done in the past. He might have been elected; he might not. Either way, he would have come out of it looking as if he didn't give a stuff about the person who made the allegations. Whoever is elected now won't have the satisfaction of knowing they won in a fair fight.

Hermione Lee has called on Padel to dissociate herself from it, which she has done. She has just been on PM saying it's absolutely terrible. She deplores that it's been all over the press this way. She feels tainted. She has no idea who sent the letters or why. She's wondered whether to withdraw, but supporters have persuaded her she shouldn't be deflected.

Other dons are claiming that there would certainly have been other candidates if Walcott hadn't been standing. That's true, and the animosity against Padel is palpable and suggests that even if elected she would have to endure continual sniping from some quarters. Perhaps she should withdraw after all, leaving Mehrotra as a shoo-in.

The best solution would be to postpone the election, but that's been ruled out. Why in the name of all that's rational can't someone rush through an amending statute? This election should be about poetry. If art were judged only on the moral virtue of artists, there wouldn't be a lot left. And it's hardly as if the Professor of Poetry does one-to-one tutes, or exercises any power over grades.

Oxford has been deprived of a fair choice of candidates. It's a moot point whether the smear campaign did this, or whether it was Walcott himself in choosing to stand down. It is a huge shame he's removed himself from the race.

I bet John Walsh is feeling pretty sick too. (I wish I'd never mentioned his wretched article.) A snarky leader in today's Independent (the paper Walsh writes for) is almost actionable in its innuendo.

I don't really know Padel, I've never even had a drink with her - but I cannot for one moment credit that she would have had anything to do with this crapfest. I'd guess she was pretty embarrassed even by the Indy's totally un-anonymous Walshing. With friends like that, who needs enemies?

We are all tainted. We are humans, appetitive and fallible. Without those qualities, no-one could write poetry. And we are all the poorer for this sort of non-poetic battle about poetry jobs.

The row on Harriet continues here.

Let the Right One In

Image: Momentum Pictures

The producers call it

a story about emancipation. Of how love and trust build the foundation for personal growth and liberation.

The film is based on a novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist, who wrote the screenplay. On the film's website he says:

Above all it's a love story. Of how Eli's love releases Oskar, how she makes him look upon himself in a different light. Not as the scared one, not as the victim. How she gives him courage to stand up for himself. But Eli is a vampire. A real one...

I still don’t really know what to make of it. It is an unforgettable film, poetic and complex, and for the most part never looks like a horror movie at all. For me, the worst horror is not what appears onscreen. It's been praised for its restraint but in fact I could have done with even less gore, and less sniggering at the back.

Horror is a genre I have never understood. Why do people laugh at horror films? How did horror become camp? And why do they laugh even when the horror isn’t camp? Why do they laugh at the most gruesome things? They can laugh because it’s unconvincing, or excessive. Perhaps they laugh when it’s too frightening, or out of relief, or simply to show their companions that they're not scared. Sometimes of course there is deliberate wit, a compact between director and knowing audience, and there was an element of that here.

As a student I went with a friend to see The Exorcist, which at the time was getting rave reviews in the grown up press. Despite the sniggering at the back, I was impressed by the night-dressed child’s passive-aggressive urination on the carpet at the cocktail party, rather shocked by the creative abuse of a crucifix, repulsed by the 360 degree head rotation (this was a generation before CGI) - but I’m afraid that by the time we got to the projectile vomiting I laughed too. It was just over the top. It didn’t make us popular with the Very Old townspeople in the audience. I had a feeling that I'd spoiled something, that they wanted to continue to be convinced by something that had now lost its spell over me. And in turn I had the feeling of having been spoilsported at times while watching this film. I wonder what the effect would have been if I'd seen it at home on DVD.

I still don’t really get horror. Violence revolts me, and I have so far resisted all blandishments to see Tarantino as I lack the sense of humour that finds severed limbs funny. (No, sorry, not even in that German fork-lift truck safety film.)

But I was persuaded to see this by the five-star reviews, one of those rare occasions when Anthony Quinn (The Independent) agrees with Nigel Andrews (the FT). They insisted this was more than a vampire movie.

It could hardly be more different from the image conjured up by the tag "teenage vampire movie". There's no sex, no glamour, very little melodrama. It’s set in a bland suburb of Stockholm in the early 1980s, tensions with Russia on the radio in the background. It is winter, bitter outside and fetid indoors. The camera is patient, allowing appreciation of composition, the almost abstract qualities of the blocks of flats. The pace is restrained, and there is a rich palette of sound. The focus is on Oskar, a twelve year old boy who is being bullied at school and fantasises about revenge.

There is a murder scene very early on, where a young man is waylaid at night in the park. There is some verismo business with scuffed plastic containers and the sound of blood knocking into them. It's all very matter of fact. But the butchery is interrupted by a dog. There is undeniably something uncomfortably funny about the way the dog is so riveted by the scene – as anyone might be – and continues to ignore its owner’s calls. Instead it sits down to watch. It’s funny not least because it’s one of those fancy manicured poodles, sitting politely, not a wild-looking mutt who'd have been getting stuck in. The streetlights are on in the background, and passing traffic. The murderer gets more and more frantic, and it’s funny too because such an effete looking creature can thwart someone so murderous. And because it’s a movie, part of you wants the man to get away with it so we can have more of the story. The scene epitomises the delicate area the film explores: the park, liminal between civilisation and the elemental, banality and evil. The horror is that it can happen within earshot of everything ordinary.

For the first twenty minutes or so, I was in the world of the movie: the housing estate, the cold, the mundanities of the kid’s life, the bullying he suffers, his halting attempts at friendship with the mysterious girl. This is what the film does best: ordinariness, alienation, suggestion. It's never exactly clear how much is going on in real life and how much in Oskar's head. The leads – Kåre Hedebrant as Oskar and Lina Leandersson as Eli – are terrific. Natural, sensitive, believable. The film is psychologically very astute. It lingers but never bores. The tension is fantastic.

The film makes beautiful pictures, whether of the suburbs, the snow, or the outback, where the boy’s father drinks vodka with a man who appears out of nowhere and may be his lover. Or maybe just a drinking buddy, and the lover is really the vodka, but at any rate the boy knows his idyll with his father is ruined.

Then a man's face is half destroyed by acid, and the students giggle. They are so grown up, students these days, and so knowledgeable.

Some of the special effects seemed unnecessary. But perhaps their ability to disrupt underlines the moral ambiguity. Eli herself is not above a bit of passive-aggressive manipulation in her bid to be accepted across the threshold.

And there are puzzles, some of which might be resolved by the book, which I haven't read. This is a film: it doesn't need a book to explain it. There are hints of a massive back story for Eli. Why, if she is so “old”, is her Pa so incompetent at bloodletting? He wears a homely plastic overcoat, has an idea of disposing of a body, but really is extraordinarily hamfisted, not reading the culture: he chooses a park with streetlights; he doesn’t realise that kids will wait for their pals to go home together after basketball practice. He is new to the city, but acts as if he is new to the century – which is the last one, not ours.

And why has Eli got that scar we glimpse for a moment? What does it mean? (Oskar is wounded twice: once by violence, and once by his own bravado.) And the jigsaw egg, which she claims is worth enough to buy a nuclear power plant, an odd measure of value?

There is a shockingly ambiguous scene in which the father goes back home to the vampire daughter and asks her to do one thing for him, not to see “that boy”. Although the narrative is skewed to suggest that he is always her gofer, here is a glimpse of an alternative abusive relationship. He is clearly jealous. She touches his cheek as if to confer a blessing; he closes his eyes as if receiving it. In his submission, we glimpse a sense of his desire.

It seems commonly agreed that in this movie vampirism is a metaphor for other sorts of difference. Both Oskar and Eli are outsiders. Neither has a normal family life. Oskar lives with a mother who seems to pay him no attention, let alone notice that he's being bullied, and a father who indulges him with a sentimental fondness until the bottle appears. Eli’s parent/guardian makes it his business to go about getting her haemoglobin rations, and doesn’t appear to have any job.

None of the adults in the film is particularly sympathetic.* The parents don’t seem to engage properly with the boy; the others are boozers, except for the teacher who can’t wait to get home when the bell rings - even though Oskar is staying behind, copying something out of an encyclopaedia. You’d think she’d want to see what he’s up to, but she leaves him to it, and he rather touchingly switches off the classroom light when he leaves. In one scene where his mother berates him, the sound wonderfully enacts how Oskar switches off.

Eli’s true nature eventually dawns on Oskar: she appears only after dark, doesn’t seem to feel the cold, and when Oskar cuts his hand in a gesture of kinship, falls to the floor to lap it up with those curious animal gutturals that come with her affliction. He accepts this, yet when later she offers him money he is scandalised. You stole it! You stole it from those people you killed!

What is going on here? He nods at murder but baulks at theft? Is vampirism so bizarre that both Oskar and we the audience can gloss over it as beyond morality, a theatrical device, a mere stroke of fate that has to be endured despite its victims (for the most part not the toothsome youngsters of tradition, but boozers and losers – the implication perhaps that none of them will be missed)? Perhaps I’m being too literalist, but it’s one thing to accept someone from an alien culture, or with an alienating label or even an antisocial addiction, but quite another to be OK around a vampire.

Critics have focused on how it is a beautiful metaphor, probably because the darker side is bleedin' obvious. And there is a deeply disturbing cultural aspect to it. Eli’s way of life is shown as different but sufficiently similar that she can live in the flat next door. She may sleep in the bath under a light-proof cover, but when the cover is lifted, she is an ordinary girl asleep. In one sense, Eli provides the kinship that Oskar, if he weren't a loner, would find in a gang. At that level, the violence isn't so remarkable. Although friendship and acceptance can redeem us, if we befriend the wrong person, one possible outcome of unconditional acceptance is corruption.


*Correction: one of the unglamorous middle aged boozers is a heroine. She makes the supreme sacrifice in one of those scenes with baffling comedic overtones, but she has been dogged (or should that be catted) by comedy all along.

A Grand Day Out

Now that the Poet Laureate's been named, attention might turn to the next Oxford Professor of Poetry. Will another male bastion fall? The election is on 16 May.

It's an archaic institution, requiring the holder to give three lectures a year, and little else. Andrew Motion rejected the idea of applying, declaring that the whole thing has been overtaken by creative writing courses, and needs radical overhaul.

For some time, poetry evangelist Ruth Padel and Nobel laureate Derek Walcott were the only candidates. Roughly speaking, their declared supporters can be characterised as poetry readers and poetry writers respectively. Arvind Krishna Mehrotra is a latecomer to the fray, and brings endorsement from Tariq Ali, Amit Chaudhuri, Toby Litt, Tom Paulin. He sounds impressive too.

I'm almost sorry that Michael George Gibson didn't garner enough support. He would have ensured some frantic media coverage. He's the man who allegedly asked for his money back at Ledbury because he didn't like the poems, and attempted to report The Poetry Society to Trading Standards because they weren't dealing in what he calls poetry. But they are arguments we've heard before.

Fascinating to see who's nominated whom. Walcott is getting the poets and critics: Al Alvarez, Alan Brownjohn, Carmen Bugan, David Constantine, the sadly late UA Fanthorpe, Alan Hollinghurst, PJ Kavanagh, Grevel Lindop, Patrick McGuinness, Lucy Newlyn, Bernard & Heather O'Donoghue, Michael Schmidt, Jon Stallworthy, Oliver Taplin, DM Thomas, Anthony Thwaite, Geza Vermes, Marina Warner...

Padel appeals to everyone else, astronomers, broadcasters, classicists, journalists, musicians, philosophers: Melvyn Bragg, Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, Valentine Cunningham, Victoria Glendinning, AC Grayling, Jeremy Isaacs, Emma Kirkby, Libby Purves, George Steiner, John Walsh, Geoffrey Wheatcroft - and at least one real poet: Alice Oswald. (Probably others I should have recognised.)

I incline slightly to Padel: sparky, generous, less conservative, and I like her. I understand some people don't, but not their reasons. I applaud what she does with her proselytising. It's not aimed at poets but at non-poet readers who are wary of the stuff. I don't see what's such a sell-out, or so patronising, about that. She did a fantastic job sorting out the Poetry Society a few years back - not a reason for her to have this post, but it speaks of character. It was impressive how she was prepared to listen, learn, and get up to speed overnight. She never seemed to begrudge the time spent.

Her old pal John Walsh did a hatchet job the other day on Walcott's reputation. Though it touched on professorship, it had nothing to do with poetry. I haven't read any of Walcott's criticism. Maybe it's not surfaced on my radar simply because I've been asleep.

Last time I voted for Carson. She didn't get it, but it was a grand day out.


Updated to account for more names.

Update and correction
Mr Michael George Gibson's agent has contacted me:

...we were very amused to read your comment about him in Squared. Where did you get your information from? Michael never asked for his money back at Ledbury and he has never attempted to report The Poetry Society to Trading Standards. We suggest you have a look at www.michaelgeorgegibson.org to find out what he is really saying.

My apologies to Mr Gibson.
25 August 2009