Tramp in Flames
Windmills in Flames
Great Fires
The Burning Perch
Dad, the Donkey's on Fire
A Furnace
Hot Like Fire
Pale Fire
Fire to Fire
Showing posts with label poets. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poets. Show all posts
09 August 2010
30 July 2010
Seamus Heaney Centre
The shortlist has been announced for the inaugural Seamus Heaney Centre Prize for the best first collection published in UK and Ireland during 2009:
I am honoured and delighted to be on the list.
Siân Hughes reads from The Missing
Lorraine Mariner reads from Furniture
Tom Mathews reads from The Owl and the Pussycat:
Andrew Philip reads from The Ambulance Box (and explains the title)
I interviewed Andy last year, and his book was one of my choices for the year on Peony Moon.
Hmm, seems I'm the only one without a Youtube presence (except for this one as part of Joy of Six). Maybe I should do something about that.
(In alphabetical order)
Anne Berkeley, The Men from Praga (Salt)
Siân Hughes, The Missing (Salt)
Lorraine Mariner, Furniture (Picador)
Tom Mathews, The Owl and the Pussycat (Dedalus)
Andrew Philip, The Ambulance Box (Salt)
I am honoured and delighted to be on the list.
Siân Hughes reads from The Missing
Lorraine Mariner reads from Furniture
Tom Mathews reads from The Owl and the Pussycat:
Andrew Philip reads from The Ambulance Box (and explains the title)
I interviewed Andy last year, and his book was one of my choices for the year on Peony Moon.
Hmm, seems I'm the only one without a Youtube presence (except for this one as part of Joy of Six). Maybe I should do something about that.
18 July 2010
Oriole
Down in the woods he sings: oriole, oriole. It's haunting, alluring, maddening. I've seen pictures of the bird but never the actual thing. I wonder if he is Edward Thomas's Unknown Bird. Thomas was a keen naturalist, and if the poem was prompted by a real bird (and why not? All the proof is-- I told men/ What I had heard) it's inconceivable it could have been any regular visitor to the UK, at least in his part of it, at his time. I write this from deepest France, where the oriole is regular but not exactly common. The oriole has been a rare East Anglian visitor for best part of a hundred years. It's not a bird of Thomas country.
A lot depends on how you hear "La-la-la". Whenever I have heard anyone read this poem they place equal weight on all three syllables. But give it a bit of song, la-la-la, and it starts to become possible.
The Unknown Bird
Three lovely notes he whistled, too soft to be heard
If others sang; but others never sang
In the great beech-wood all that May and June.
No one saw him: I alone could hear him
Though many listened. Was it but four years
Ago? or five? He never came again.
Oftenest when I heard him I was alone,
Nor could I ever make another hear.
La-la-la! he called, seeming far-off--
As if a cock crowed past the edge of the world,
As if the bird or I were in a dream.
Yet that he travelled through the trees and sometimes
Neared me, was plain, though somehow distant still
He sounded. All the proof is--I told men
What I had heard.
I never knew a voice,
Man, beast, or bird, better than this. I told
The naturalists; but neither had they heard
Anything like the notes that did so haunt me,
I had them clear by heart and have them still.
Four years, or five, have made no difference. Then
As now that La-la-la! was bodiless sweet:
Sad more than joyful it was, if I must say
That it was one or other, but if sad
'Twas sad only with joy too, too far off
For me to taste it. But I cannot tell
If truly never anything but fair
The days were when he sang, as now they seem.
This surely I know, that I who listened then,
Happy sometimes, sometimes suffering
A heavy body and a heavy heart,
Now straightway, if I think of it, become
Light as that bird wandering beyond my shore.
A lot depends on how you hear "La-la-la". Whenever I have heard anyone read this poem they place equal weight on all three syllables. But give it a bit of song, la-la-la, and it starts to become possible.
The Unknown Bird
Three lovely notes he whistled, too soft to be heard
If others sang; but others never sang
In the great beech-wood all that May and June.
No one saw him: I alone could hear him
Though many listened. Was it but four years
Ago? or five? He never came again.
Oftenest when I heard him I was alone,
Nor could I ever make another hear.
La-la-la! he called, seeming far-off--
As if a cock crowed past the edge of the world,
As if the bird or I were in a dream.
Yet that he travelled through the trees and sometimes
Neared me, was plain, though somehow distant still
He sounded. All the proof is--I told men
What I had heard.
I never knew a voice,
Man, beast, or bird, better than this. I told
The naturalists; but neither had they heard
Anything like the notes that did so haunt me,
I had them clear by heart and have them still.
Four years, or five, have made no difference. Then
As now that La-la-la! was bodiless sweet:
Sad more than joyful it was, if I must say
That it was one or other, but if sad
'Twas sad only with joy too, too far off
For me to taste it. But I cannot tell
If truly never anything but fair
The days were when he sang, as now they seem.
This surely I know, that I who listened then,
Happy sometimes, sometimes suffering
A heavy body and a heavy heart,
Now straightway, if I think of it, become
Light as that bird wandering beyond my shore.
14 July 2010
Just One (more) Book
Does contemporary poetry make a difference to you? Do you relish fiction that makes you think? Do you value truly independent publishers? Then you can help. Despite heroic efforts last year, my publisher, Salt, has been having a hard time in the recession and desperately needs to sell more books to stay afloat until the new grant kicks in. Word is that they have less than one week's cash left in the kitty. Chris Hamilton-Emery writes:
I hoped I'd never have to write this note. The recession has continued to have a very negative impact on sales at Salt and we're finally having to go public to ask you to help support us.
Our sales are now 60% down on last year and have wiped out our grant and our cash reserves as we continue to market and publish what we can from what we believe is a great list. We've plans in place to help secure the business from November 2010 — though the books we'll be publishing won't deliver any real revenue until 2011. We're sorry to ask, embarrassed to ask, but we need your help to survive until then and if you were considering purchasing a Salt book, we'd dearly love you to do it right now. We've less than one week's cash left.
If you can help us, please do two things:
1. Buy one book from us — we don't mind from where, it can be from your local bookstore (they need your support, too), it can be from Amazon or the BookDepository. It can even be directly from us. But please buy that book now.
2. Please tell everyone you know to do the same. Buy just one book and pass it on.
If money is tight for you, too, you can simply write a review of any Salt book you love on Amazon. Or recommend a book to a friend.
You can visit our Web site right now, simply go to
http://www.saltpublishing.com/
and buy JustOneBook.
Remember too, that every book you buy directly from us gets a raffle ticket in our Big Summer Raffle — and you could win one copy each of the next 20 books we publish from 1 September.
Thanks for continuing to support us.
Chris
I bought two more Salt books just now: Wena Poon's novel Alex y Robert and Tom Chivers's Crashaw Prize-winning debut How to Build a City. Oh, and my book's still available if you're interested - just click on the image on the sidebar.
12 July 2010
Ledbury
Just back from Ledbury Poetry Festival. I was there for the second weekend, reading on Saturday with Mick Wood, managing to grab a few other events en route. The first was Meirion Jordan, reading with Ruth Bidgood - quite a contrast of voices. He's good, this is a very accomplished first collection. Sarah Crown called it "a startling, lubricious debut". He reads well, too.
That night, I heard Aoife Mannix at last, accompanied by Janie Armour with great wit and intelligence. Very accomplished, thoughtful and all with such a light, sassy touch. Deserved a much bigger audience.
As for my reading with Mick Wood on the Saturday morning, it was a blast. A lovely, responsive audience. And Mick was wonderful, a real star. A seasoned thesp, he had the audience in his hand. His poems have a keen dramatic intelligence, and the audience respond to that. His delivery values the reading as a dramatic encounter, not just voiced words on a page. Couldn't be much further from the grey armchair school of poetry reading - one I've never subscribed to anyway. When poets profess to eschew a dramatic reading and "let the words speak for themselves" they are too often copping out. A performance that prefers one interpretation over another doesn't preclude those other interpretations for all time; it's questionable whether it erases the possibility of other readings even during the performance itself. The performer's first duty is to the audience, and the Ledbury audience hugely appreciated that.
An honour to be reading with him.
I took the rest of the afternoon off, going with friends up the Malverns, to sit in sunshine and the western wind surveying Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Gloucestershire and Wales, while eating strawberries and consuming lashings of ginger beer, while far below we could hear strains of tuning up for the Jools Holland concert. (Thanks, Gary!)
Rather than Jools Holland, I chose to hear Martin Figura debut Whistle, the show he is taking to Edinburgh. Based on the collection published earlier this year by Arrowhead, the poems, delivered with Mart's inimitable confidence, nous and warmth, layered and textured with slide show and recordings, earned a standing ovation. You don't get that so often at poetry readings. The story the poems tell is heartbreaking, but Mart tackles it with courage and humour. It was an intimate, generous experience. As a fellow Sixer, I've known Mart for quite a while, and enormously value his emotional intelligence vis à vis audience.
As I said, the performer's first duty is to the audience. He's a fabulous reader. I wish him every success in Edinburgh, and if Ledbury is anything to go by they will be crowding it out before he's through.
As for Ledbury, I was torn between going to lots of events and preserving my sanity. There is just too much to do.
The last event I managed to get to was Roz Goddard and Penny Shuttle (standing in for Dan Chiasson, who was indiposed). Roz's Soprano sonnets were witty and astute, and I know I missed a lot from being a TV-phobe. She's a good reader, with a lovely rapport with the audience. As for Penny Shuttle, I have heard her read loads of times, but don't tire, even of poems like "Filth", which I've heard so often I probably know by heart.
09 June 2010
A hard chair
And there was I thinking it was going to be nem con.
There are ten remaining candidates for the Oxford Poetry Professorship. Paula Claire withdrew on 7 June, in protest over "serious flaws" in the election process, and favouritism shown to Hill.
We are used to arguments about what does or does not constitute poetry, but Roger Lewis doesn't draw a distinction between the patterned words and the metaphor. Like Geoffrey Hill (for whom Professor Dame Averil Cameron, Warden of Keble, has posted an encomium), Lewis hasn't written a manifesto. His case is extravagantly pleaded by Rebecca Nicolson (St Hugh's 1985). Tantalisingly,
Michael Horovitz stands much more of a chance. It doesn't signify, but his facebook group has more supporters than Hill's. I just don't get his allegation that his religion is against him because it seems irrelevant to me - but maybe it's true that Christians are voting for Hill because he's a Christian... Have literature, and Oxford, come to this? I applaud Horovitz's manifesto:
Other candidates include poetryfundamentalist traditionalist Michael George Gibson
Seán Haldane if elected wants
Stephen Moss is the Monster Raving Looney whose candidacy has been well documented in the Guardian.
Full Candidate statements here
I haven't voted yet.
There are ten remaining candidates for the Oxford Poetry Professorship. Paula Claire withdrew on 7 June, in protest over "serious flaws" in the election process, and favouritism shown to Hill.
We are used to arguments about what does or does not constitute poetry, but Roger Lewis doesn't draw a distinction between the patterned words and the metaphor. Like Geoffrey Hill (for whom Professor Dame Averil Cameron, Warden of Keble, has posted an encomium), Lewis hasn't written a manifesto. His case is extravagantly pleaded by Rebecca Nicolson (St Hugh's 1985). Tantalisingly,
If elected to the Chair of Poetry, Lewis' subjects may well include - Ezra Pound: Poetry and / or Politics; The Ramification of Richard Ellmann's 1,500 Factual Errors in his Biography of Oscar Wilde; The Nineteenth Century View of Shakespeare and Jesus and Great Cryptograms; Sullivan Without Gilbert; Philip Larkin and Ted Hughes: Sex, Violence and Difficulties with Girls; Poets of the Appetites: M.F.K. Fisher and Elizabeth David; The End of England: Eric Ravilious, Barbara Jones and Edward Bawden; and Dick & Liz at Oxford: The Burtons and Doctor Faustus.But he won't be.
Michael Horovitz stands much more of a chance. It doesn't signify, but his facebook group has more supporters than Hill's. I just don't get his allegation that his religion is against him because it seems irrelevant to me - but maybe it's true that Christians are voting for Hill because he's a Christian... Have literature, and Oxford, come to this? I applaud Horovitz's manifesto:
Let the Oxford professorship's authority be revived as a platform for authentic poetry ticket-bookings, scheduling ever newer departures and in-depth arrivals way beyond mere careerist arrivism. Anyone voting for me is assured that I will continue striving to emulate Chaucer's Clerk of Oxenford: "Sownynge in moral vertu was his speche, / And gladly wolde he lerne and gladly teche."Ruth Padel supports both Hill (with a damning qualification about his stamina) and Horovitz. (Snarky article in Camden New Journal at the link.)
Other candidates include poetry
The literary and verbal things now presented and published as 'poems' are so varied that a fresh and fundamental examination of what was and is 'poetry' is well worth making.[Edit: amended following a complaint from Mr Gibson's agent - see comments]
Seán Haldane if elected wants
to talk about the neuropsychology of poetry, poetry and verse, poetry and 'more-than-coincidence', poetry in different languages, and what Hardy called its 'sustaining power'.Chris Mann, a former Newdigate prizewinner, offers samples of his work, including
DragonflyMaybe that wasn't such a good idea.
Rafting the Zambezi River,
I saw your filigree shimmer
on a boulder's bulky sphinx…
Stephen Moss is the Monster Raving Looney whose candidacy has been well documented in the Guardian.
So why I am standing? It's a good question. The idea came to me over a curry at the Hay Literary Festival last year.... What will I do if I win? Well, I will give the stipend away to needy poets and writers, and to good literary causes. I will set up an annual two-week poetry festival in Oxford. I will fight against the marginalisation of poetry, literature's perennial poor relation. I will buy anyone who votes for me a drink. I will, if necessary, go into coalition with Geoffrey Hill. I will back proportional representation in future elections. I will lecture on the role of poetry in society, starting with the Greeks and ending about a week last Tuesday. And I faithfully promise not to publish too many of my execrable poems. Can we win it? YES WE SCAN!Sanskrit scholar Vaughan Pilikian's ambitions are as wide ranging as Lewis's, if harder to visualise.
I intend a lecture series to range across some, if not all, of the following topics: the poetics of science in the atrocity exhibition; antiaesthetics, esoterrorism and metempsychosis; the rhythm of the dig in the Negro spiritual; Japanese death poetry; rhymed trajectories to heaven in the Iliad and the Mahabharata. My aim in this august office will be to pull poetry from the drawing rooms and the garrets and the palaces, and send it forth. For poetry is a weapon, bloodsoaked and glinting. It is a gnostic heresy, a counterattack on all that holds us captive, a challenge to the cruel symmetries and stifled laughter of the Demiurge. It is only through poetry that we might revenge ourselves on time.It is only through poetry that we might revenge ourselves on time. I could almost be persuaded of that.
Full Candidate statements here
I haven't voted yet.
07 March 2010
John Rety, RIP
Poet, publisher, impresario, chess fiend, émigré, anarchist.
Rumpled, principled, opinionated, informed, generous, challenging, uncompromising. Occasionally bloody rude.
And much loved. Having been away for a while, I only learned of John Rety's death today, when I read Harry Eyres's tribute in the FT. Rety was part of the poetry landscape, always there.
A quick search revealed a couple of good obits in The Camden New Journal and The Daily Telegraph. (Don't laugh - the torygraph has well informed poetry obits.) I wonder what Rety, an anarchist since the ("rather late") age of 13, would have thought about his coverage in the right wing capitalist broadsheets. If the Guardian has published an obituary, it hasn't hit Google yet. There are one or two generous appreciations on blogs, but I'm surprised that there hasn't been more coverage.
His press, Hearing Eye, and the readings at the (tiny) Torriano Meeting House seemed to punch way above their weight in terms of influence. The Torriano readings commanded top readers, such as Dannie Abse, John Hegley, Adrian Mitchell, while the famously inclusive "readings from the floor" were a template for many other venues.
Even as I write a Torriano session seems to be in full swing. All but one of the chairs are occupied, and latecomers lean against the walls, listening intently. I recognise at least half the audience. John has made some preliminary announcements, and has berated poets in general for their lack of response to the political situation. Several have already leapt up onto the wooden stage and unfolded a scrap of paper from a pocket. There have been sonnets and doggerel, rants and lullabys. It's been a mixed experience, shall we say, with some gemstones on the beach. Most of us are waiting for the featured poets. Heavily laden and swathed in many layers against the cold, an elderly woman comes in late, excusing herself past knees and folded overcoats to the least accessible seat in the house, by the wall. The singing man carries on singing, oblivious. She settles herself dramatically (but wordlessly so as not to draw attention). Surreptitiously, she rummages in her crackling carrier bags throughout the rest of the session. What does she have in there? Poems? Knitting? Fish?
Although I read for him a couple of times I didn't know him well, or visit Torriano that often - regular engineering works make London a nightmare Sunday destination by rail. Now I wish I had. And I wish I'd taken seriously his offer to publish one of my pamphlet-length pieces.
I heartily recommend Marius Kociejowski's lively and astonishing minibiography in PN Review 187, last May. Among many fabulous anecdotes, that story about the writing desk is going to come around again and again.
Rumpled, principled, opinionated, informed, generous, challenging, uncompromising. Occasionally bloody rude.
And much loved. Having been away for a while, I only learned of John Rety's death today, when I read Harry Eyres's tribute in the FT. Rety was part of the poetry landscape, always there.
A quick search revealed a couple of good obits in The Camden New Journal and The Daily Telegraph. (Don't laugh - the torygraph has well informed poetry obits.) I wonder what Rety, an anarchist since the ("rather late") age of 13, would have thought about his coverage in the right wing capitalist broadsheets. If the Guardian has published an obituary, it hasn't hit Google yet. There are one or two generous appreciations on blogs, but I'm surprised that there hasn't been more coverage.
His press, Hearing Eye, and the readings at the (tiny) Torriano Meeting House seemed to punch way above their weight in terms of influence. The Torriano readings commanded top readers, such as Dannie Abse, John Hegley, Adrian Mitchell, while the famously inclusive "readings from the floor" were a template for many other venues.
Even as I write a Torriano session seems to be in full swing. All but one of the chairs are occupied, and latecomers lean against the walls, listening intently. I recognise at least half the audience. John has made some preliminary announcements, and has berated poets in general for their lack of response to the political situation. Several have already leapt up onto the wooden stage and unfolded a scrap of paper from a pocket. There have been sonnets and doggerel, rants and lullabys. It's been a mixed experience, shall we say, with some gemstones on the beach. Most of us are waiting for the featured poets. Heavily laden and swathed in many layers against the cold, an elderly woman comes in late, excusing herself past knees and folded overcoats to the least accessible seat in the house, by the wall. The singing man carries on singing, oblivious. She settles herself dramatically (but wordlessly so as not to draw attention). Surreptitiously, she rummages in her crackling carrier bags throughout the rest of the session. What does she have in there? Poems? Knitting? Fish?
Although I read for him a couple of times I didn't know him well, or visit Torriano that often - regular engineering works make London a nightmare Sunday destination by rail. Now I wish I had. And I wish I'd taken seriously his offer to publish one of my pamphlet-length pieces.
I heartily recommend Marius Kociejowski's lively and astonishing minibiography in PN Review 187, last May. Among many fabulous anecdotes, that story about the writing desk is going to come around again and again.
18 January 2010
Personation
Just back from the TS Eliot readings. This isn't a post about that, though. It would be boring if I opined on who read well and who less well, and anyway no one would agree with me. Some fine poets didn't read their best poems, or read them well... But it was a vintage evening. Last year was a strong one: if anything this was even stronger. People can argue about whether it was really as diverse as Armitage claims, but it's an impressive sampling of the mainstream (whatever that means).
Not for the first time Sharon Olds was an anomalous American on the list. Not for the first time the work of an absent poet was read by someone else. There were mutterings that it should have been an American voice reading the poems, the English cadences were all wrong.
I don't agree. Jo Shapcott read with controlled passion. It was very English, yes, but she was engaged with the poems. She really cared about them. It surprised me. Although I admire Olds for her skill in shaping experience and sense of drama, I've long had misgivings: about portentousness inclining to bathos (eg Connoisseuse of Slugs, Animal Crackers - and if that's wit I don't get it), about incongruities of vocabulary (eg, how she slips that "gold endorphin light" into The Ride as she shifts gear) - oh, and other things but this isn't a post about Sharon Olds either - and above all her personal involvement with the material. Even as artifices, the poems insist on their fidelity to experience. I'd almost started to think of her as the Tracey Emin of poetry: that what mattered most about her work was that it (sc. the raw material) had happened to her. I ran a thought experiment where the poems were written under a nom de plume by one Shaun O'Leary, a former English major at Iowa, now a lawyer forced by unexpected literary success to perpetuate his fraudulent identity. Nonsense, but I was trying to explore how much a reading might depend on assumed biographical knowledge, even though we know the poems are fictionalised if not complete fiction. (I'm not going to pursue this line of argument into Ern Malley territory tonight.)
What Shapcott's voice did wonderfully for me was to distance the work from the Olds persona. It distanced it (riskily) even from North America - and the poems survived. At last I can hear the words separated from the voice that first spoke them. The poems are released. From whatever cage I've been locking them in.
Another thing: if it had been an American reading the poems, would it have seemed like an impersonation?
And a couple of observations:
It's fantastic to see such a large audience for serious poetry. It gets larger every year, and they'll have to move to the Festival Hall soon at this rate.
And kudos to the sound engineers. We were in the back row, and the sound was fabulous. Music venues don't always work well for spoken word, but this was delicate and crystal clear.
Not for the first time Sharon Olds was an anomalous American on the list. Not for the first time the work of an absent poet was read by someone else. There were mutterings that it should have been an American voice reading the poems, the English cadences were all wrong.
I don't agree. Jo Shapcott read with controlled passion. It was very English, yes, but she was engaged with the poems. She really cared about them. It surprised me. Although I admire Olds for her skill in shaping experience and sense of drama, I've long had misgivings: about portentousness inclining to bathos (eg Connoisseuse of Slugs, Animal Crackers - and if that's wit I don't get it), about incongruities of vocabulary (eg, how she slips that "gold endorphin light" into The Ride as she shifts gear) - oh, and other things but this isn't a post about Sharon Olds either - and above all her personal involvement with the material. Even as artifices, the poems insist on their fidelity to experience. I'd almost started to think of her as the Tracey Emin of poetry: that what mattered most about her work was that it (sc. the raw material) had happened to her. I ran a thought experiment where the poems were written under a nom de plume by one Shaun O'Leary, a former English major at Iowa, now a lawyer forced by unexpected literary success to perpetuate his fraudulent identity. Nonsense, but I was trying to explore how much a reading might depend on assumed biographical knowledge, even though we know the poems are fictionalised if not complete fiction. (I'm not going to pursue this line of argument into Ern Malley territory tonight.)
What Shapcott's voice did wonderfully for me was to distance the work from the Olds persona. It distanced it (riskily) even from North America - and the poems survived. At last I can hear the words separated from the voice that first spoke them. The poems are released. From whatever cage I've been locking them in.
Another thing: if it had been an American reading the poems, would it have seemed like an impersonation?
And a couple of observations:
It's fantastic to see such a large audience for serious poetry. It gets larger every year, and they'll have to move to the Festival Hall soon at this rate.
And kudos to the sound engineers. We were in the back row, and the sound was fabulous. Music venues don't always work well for spoken word, but this was delicate and crystal clear.
25 October 2009
if it doesn't come bursting out of youI was at a reading tonight where a friend read this poem, one of his favourites. The audience cheered. Part of me cheers too, finding congruence with Keats writing to his publisher: if Poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree it had better not come at all. I certainly feel like cheering when I get to this bit:
in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.
Charles Bukowski - so you want to be a writer?
don't be dull and boring andBut he is wrong. Seductive, but wrong. The poem ends like this:
pretentious, don't be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
and if you have been chosen,A dictum that would have condemned Elizabeth Bishop, who spent years looking for the right word, to silence. And think of Plath, whom Hughes described working with a thesaurus on her lap.
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.
there is no other way.
and there never was.
The thing that most riles me - for a moment - is the prescriptivism. One of the chosen defines who else is chosen. It would be tempting to discuss the soteriology underlying that word "chosen" if one could have more confidence that the word itself had been chosen rather than simply occurred as, say, leaves to a tree.
Romantics. Men channelling the collective unconscious. Duende. Let them talk for themselves. But they are not simply talking about themselves, they are also talking about the way they would like to write. Or at least, the way they'd like to be seen to write. The skill is in making it look natural. Poetry favours the prepared mind. Those poems that come quickly and seem to need little revision - don't they arouse suspicion? It shouldn't be that easy. That way lets in cliché, lazy thinking, push-button emotions, rhymes that are there for no other reason than the sound.
Keats was one of my first loves. Bukowski bores me. I'm irritated at the dismissal of work. Keats took dictation from his prepared mind. Bukowski, not so much. Bishop took the protestant work ethic to an extreme. Hey, even the sainted Don Paterson claims to write dozens of drafts. There's room for everyone.
Poetry can come from the head, the heart, the toil or the soil - what matters is where it lodges. It doesn't matter how long it took to fashion the arrow, if it finds its mark.
09 October 2009
Andrew Philip
Congratulations to Andrew Philip for making the Aldeburgh shortlist against stiff competition from 92 other first collections.
I highly recommend The Ambulance Box. The Squared interview with Andy is here.
The final winner will be announced at Aldeburgh Poetry Festival on 7 November.
31 July 2009
Biographical fog
At a poetry workshop recently someone brought in a powerful piece of work I wish I could post here. It's not linear let alone narrative, mixing apparently random snatches of sharply sensory observation while it plays with voice and register, including a couple of innocent-seeming lines of tabloid-speak. For any smell or texture it evokes, each reader will have different personal associations. The cumulative effect is disturbing, suggestive of abuse, and I'd say among other things it explores the perspective of time and how that can transfer power from abuser to victim. The effect on the reader is to feel voyeur, complicit, accused.
Then our paid-up member of the awkward squad asked a taboo question: What made you write this? The poem made her feel very uncomfortable, manipulated, she said. She felt as though she were being exploited through sympathy to read something she would rather not. But if she knew that the poem came from personal experience rather than a gratuitous attempt to be sensational, she said, she'd feel less antagonised.
It was an uncomfortable moment. The general rule in our workshop is that the writer doesn't say anything until the crit is over, and anyway this sort of question is off-limits, but the questioner felt that this was an important factor in the analysis. The writer said with dignity that they'd rather just talk about the poem. The questioner wasn't very happy about this, or about the direction our discussion took.
Some of us spoke up for the poem to be taken on its own terms. If the poem were in a magazine, the reader could choose to stop reading as soon as she felt uncomfortable. (Anyway, since when has it been the job of poetry to let people feel comfortable?) In the workshop, she could excuse herself at any time. While it's perfectly OK, helpful even, for a workshop member to explain why they find a particular poem in bad taste, or even offensive, or why for them it misses its mark - it's not on to complain that the poem shouldn't have been written. It's one thing to suggest that a poem strikes the reader as second hand, or manipulative, or any other sort of fault, but quite another to question the bona fides of the poet. That's too personal.
So we got that sorted. In the end.
Sort of.
It leaves me with the perennial puzzle of biographical fog. Time and again I've come across poems in workshops and elsewhere read and misread and excused in the light of biographical knowledge: Oh, this must be about his divorce, or, it can't mean that because he's never had children/been to China. No, it's all about the words. Just read the words.
Well, one learns to be disciplined in reading. Je est un autre. We all know that. We aren't misled by the first person. Poets are fiction writers. To go to a poem in search of biographical truth is to make a category error. Poets will write what they are interested in. Notoriously, they adapt reality to their own ends. The poem has rights of its own, irrespective of any mere biographical happenstance. Yet poetry gets stuck with this authenticity rap more than any other genre. Readers don't quiz PD James about how many murders she's committed.
My introduction to formal criticism at school, years ago now, was I A Richards's Practical Criticism. Aeons ago, and it was ancient even then. His aim was to get students to read closely, just the words on the page, without knowing who'd written them or when. So much can be learned from the text alone. My teachers were disdainful of the baggage of biography, which was only so much tittle-tattle. But there's no escaping it, is there? Close reading is the beginning of reading, not the end. Borges had fun with the idea in Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote. Menard rewrote Don Quixote word for word, in the same words, and the critic finds his version "much richer in allusion than Cervantes's 'original' work because Menard's must be considered in light of world events since 1602."
Quite so. Il n'y a pas de hors-texte. Or, consider these thought experiments:
Heaney has an essay in Preoccupations (which I can't lay my hands on for the moment) where he describes urging his students to overcome their feelings of delicacy to crit Dulce Et Decorum Est. His students are reading the witness and, he suggests, prepared to let poetry off the hook. Does Owen overplay his hand? Is "coughing like hags", or "His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin" over-writing? Pressing buttons of sentimentality?
(It's tempting to sidetrack into the huge territory of war poetry and whether the poetry lies in the pity as Owen contentiously claimed, or whether it's more accurately the reader's sympathy that lies there. But this post, which is only a knee-jerk stab in the fog, would never get written.)
There is a suggestion that we tend to cut a bit of slack for the witness. A reader who finds she's been cutting slack for an impostor can feel cheated. On the one hand, if the poetry really is in the pity, the work has borne false witness. People who have been relying on whatever truth it purports to deliver feel cheated to discover it's just been pandering to the usual prejudices. Hence the common rage at debunked misery memoirs, marketed as autobiography. On the other is the argument that this can't apply to poetry; if the writing holds us, why should we mind that it isn't true?
Which brings me back to the workshop. The flip side of the coin is the workshop session that ignores, through professional detachment, the person who wrote the poem. If someone writes about despair, or dying, or a sick partner, is this something we should follow up on a personal level after the workshop? I recall reading a letter in The Rialto a while back where a poet complained of what she called insensitivity - her fellow workshoppers gave her a crit on the poem, but ignored the suffering human being who'd written it. I'm not so sure. It depends on the workshop, and the poet, their relationship with fellow members, and their general powers of ordinary communication. Workshops aren't therapy sessions. The poet who expects that is making a category error similar to the reader who expects biographical accuracy. Shouldn't we treat poems as separate entities, and poets as grown-ups who can ask us directly in conversation outside the workshop if they need to offload grief? In fact, isn't the poem sometimes precisely such a formal distancing mechanism for the poet?
And if so, where does that leave poems? Adrian Mitchell once said that he wrote poems because there were some things he could not say directly to the people he cared about.
Then our paid-up member of the awkward squad asked a taboo question: What made you write this? The poem made her feel very uncomfortable, manipulated, she said. She felt as though she were being exploited through sympathy to read something she would rather not. But if she knew that the poem came from personal experience rather than a gratuitous attempt to be sensational, she said, she'd feel less antagonised.
It was an uncomfortable moment. The general rule in our workshop is that the writer doesn't say anything until the crit is over, and anyway this sort of question is off-limits, but the questioner felt that this was an important factor in the analysis. The writer said with dignity that they'd rather just talk about the poem. The questioner wasn't very happy about this, or about the direction our discussion took.
Some of us spoke up for the poem to be taken on its own terms. If the poem were in a magazine, the reader could choose to stop reading as soon as she felt uncomfortable. (Anyway, since when has it been the job of poetry to let people feel comfortable?) In the workshop, she could excuse herself at any time. While it's perfectly OK, helpful even, for a workshop member to explain why they find a particular poem in bad taste, or even offensive, or why for them it misses its mark - it's not on to complain that the poem shouldn't have been written. It's one thing to suggest that a poem strikes the reader as second hand, or manipulative, or any other sort of fault, but quite another to question the bona fides of the poet. That's too personal.
So we got that sorted. In the end.
Sort of.
It leaves me with the perennial puzzle of biographical fog. Time and again I've come across poems in workshops and elsewhere read and misread and excused in the light of biographical knowledge: Oh, this must be about his divorce, or, it can't mean that because he's never had children/been to China. No, it's all about the words. Just read the words.
Well, one learns to be disciplined in reading. Je est un autre. We all know that. We aren't misled by the first person. Poets are fiction writers. To go to a poem in search of biographical truth is to make a category error. Poets will write what they are interested in. Notoriously, they adapt reality to their own ends. The poem has rights of its own, irrespective of any mere biographical happenstance. Yet poetry gets stuck with this authenticity rap more than any other genre. Readers don't quiz PD James about how many murders she's committed.
My introduction to formal criticism at school, years ago now, was I A Richards's Practical Criticism. Aeons ago, and it was ancient even then. His aim was to get students to read closely, just the words on the page, without knowing who'd written them or when. So much can be learned from the text alone. My teachers were disdainful of the baggage of biography, which was only so much tittle-tattle. But there's no escaping it, is there? Close reading is the beginning of reading, not the end. Borges had fun with the idea in Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote. Menard rewrote Don Quixote word for word, in the same words, and the critic finds his version "much richer in allusion than Cervantes's 'original' work because Menard's must be considered in light of world events since 1602."
Quite so. Il n'y a pas de hors-texte. Or, consider these thought experiments:
Brian Turner (real name Briony) has never been in the Army, but writes copy for mail order catalogues.(Heck, if people can believe they faked the moon landing, they can believe anything.) The power of the writing makes the suggestions bizarre, but can we separate it from what we know of these poets' lives? Would we read the poems differently? Can we avoid asking why someone would write such poems? I've seen a reviewer describe those who write in the first person about second-hand tragedy as "the cockroaches of poetry". He didn't mean to liken them to archy but was suggesting that they hitch a ride on undeserved sympathy.
Sharon Olds is the nom de plume of Shaun O'Leary, a former English major at Iowa, now a lawyer forced by unexpected literary success to perpetuate his fraudulent identity.
Wilfred Owen stayed at home, pruning his roses. He died in obscurity in a retirement home in 1984.
Heaney has an essay in Preoccupations (which I can't lay my hands on for the moment) where he describes urging his students to overcome their feelings of delicacy to crit Dulce Et Decorum Est. His students are reading the witness and, he suggests, prepared to let poetry off the hook. Does Owen overplay his hand? Is "coughing like hags", or "His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin" over-writing? Pressing buttons of sentimentality?
(It's tempting to sidetrack into the huge territory of war poetry and whether the poetry lies in the pity as Owen contentiously claimed, or whether it's more accurately the reader's sympathy that lies there. But this post, which is only a knee-jerk stab in the fog, would never get written.)
There is a suggestion that we tend to cut a bit of slack for the witness. A reader who finds she's been cutting slack for an impostor can feel cheated. On the one hand, if the poetry really is in the pity, the work has borne false witness. People who have been relying on whatever truth it purports to deliver feel cheated to discover it's just been pandering to the usual prejudices. Hence the common rage at debunked misery memoirs, marketed as autobiography. On the other is the argument that this can't apply to poetry; if the writing holds us, why should we mind that it isn't true?
Which brings me back to the workshop. The flip side of the coin is the workshop session that ignores, through professional detachment, the person who wrote the poem. If someone writes about despair, or dying, or a sick partner, is this something we should follow up on a personal level after the workshop? I recall reading a letter in The Rialto a while back where a poet complained of what she called insensitivity - her fellow workshoppers gave her a crit on the poem, but ignored the suffering human being who'd written it. I'm not so sure. It depends on the workshop, and the poet, their relationship with fellow members, and their general powers of ordinary communication. Workshops aren't therapy sessions. The poet who expects that is making a category error similar to the reader who expects biographical accuracy. Shouldn't we treat poems as separate entities, and poets as grown-ups who can ask us directly in conversation outside the workshop if they need to offload grief? In fact, isn't the poem sometimes precisely such a formal distancing mechanism for the poet?
And if so, where does that leave poems? Adrian Mitchell once said that he wrote poems because there were some things he could not say directly to the people he cared about.
I am: yet what I am none cares or knows,
My friends forsake me like a memory lost;
I am the self-consumer of my woes,
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost;
And yet I am! and live with shadows tost
Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
And e'en the dearest - that I loved the best -
Are strange - nay, rather stranger than the rest.
I long for scenes where man has never trod;
A place where woman never smil'd or wept;
There to abide with my creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie;
The grass below - above, the vaulted sky.
John Clare
18 July 2009
Andrew Philip
I'll be interviewing fellow Salt poet Andrew Philip here on 5 August, as a coda to the Cyclone tour for his new collection The Ambulance Box.
The Ambulance Box is a timely reminder of the range and power of the lyric – from philosophical exploration to tender and intimate elegies. This is a powerful debut, and Andrew Philip's is a significant new voice.
Michael Symmons Roberts
12 June 2009
An Anthology of Modern Verse
chosen by A. Methuen, with an Introduction by Robert Lynd
This is a curiosity I picked up from my local Oxfam a while back. Unfortunately the online text is totally scannered, so there are idiocies like "rliythm" for "rhythm" - you just have to use your wits.
This "fine and catholic collection of modern verse" was first published May 12th 1921. It's dedicated to Thomas Hardy, O.M. Greatest of the Moderns. It went through seven editions in that first year. My copy is the thirtieth edition, published in 1940. I don't know how much longer it continued in publication.*
The poets are all from the British Isles. (Well, OK, Eliot's La Figlia Che Piange sneaks under the wire of date and residence.) Of the 92 names represented, more than half would be recognised today. How much of this familiarity was because of the persistence of the anthology, and how much did the anthology persist because of the popularity of the poets? The two must have fed off each other. At any rate, people were buying it.
I enjoy old anthologies not just for seeing reputations in the making, but for the snapshot - or rather, flickr stream - of history. There's a glimpse of people hardly read these days - eg Alice Meynell, JC Squire (I'm including them in the category "recognised") - consigned to a label "Catholic/Suffragette", "Georgian/fascist", but who had a way with words that merits a glance even if you don't share their politics or religion. And right next to Squire is James Stephens, and after him RL Stevenson.
The poets are presented in alphabetical order. No dates are given. It's rather touching to consider the publishers of each (Mr. John Lane, Mr. Wm. Heinemann, Sir Henry Newbolt, Mr. Basil Blackwell, Lord Desborough, Messrs Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd and so on). The compiler, Methuen, says nothing about his criteria for selection. His 1921 note remarks that "considerations of copyright have prevented the inclusion of one or two eminent writers", that "roughly, the pieces chosen are either the work of living poets, or with rare exceptions, poets who have died within the last fifteen years. It is hoped in any case that the spirit of the new poetry inspires this little book."
It was rather a shock to discover that Methuen's first name was Algernon, and that his surname was really Stedman. I'd love to know the story behind that. He didn't write the introduction though. Robert Lynd, who did, was a name new to me, but felt familiar:
Every child is a poet from the age at which he learns to beat a silver spoon on the table in numbers. He likes to make not only a noise, but a noise with something of the regularity of an echo. He coos with delight when he is taken on an elder's knee and is trotted up and down to the measure of "This is the way the ladies ride," with its steady advance of pace till the ultimate fury of the country clown's gallop. Later on, he himself trots gloriously in reins with bells that jingle in rhyme as he runs. His pleasure in swings, in sitting behind a horse, in travelling in a train, with its puff as regular as an uncle's watch and its wheels thudding out endless hexameters on the line, arise from the same delight in rhythm.Well, that's a cosy middle class childhood, from back in the days when the middle class weren't forever pretending not to be, before they grew ashamed of themselves.
After suggesting that poetry can be distinguished from verse by its exercise of imagination, and from prose by its music, he makes the case for popular poetry:
Whichever may be the sense in which we use the word, there is a good defence of poetry as, not the possession of a select few, but as part of the general human inheritance. Poetry is natural to man: it is not a mere cult of abnormal or intellectual persons.Hear, hear!
*Perhaps not for many years longer, as Lynd himself edited an anthology for Methuen's firm in 1939. It had considerable overlap with Methuen's own but as well as including Housman (curiously omitted from Methuen's), it edged into the modern with Auden, Day Lewis, MacNeice, Spender, Dylan Thomas and others - and the fifteenth woman, Ruth Pitter.
What's a heaven for?
In last week's TLS, Peter McDonald has a column urging the case for Geoffrey Hill as candidate for the recently vacated Poetry Chair. Hill's learning and wit would make him a splendid academic choice.
McDonald insists that the holders of the Poetry Chair
Let's say it was the Chair of Tennis. There would be those saying the job would be to encourage the future Wimbledon champions. Others might suggest it could entail encouraging those who'd never done so much as pick up a racquet to start enjoying the challenge and exercise, the company of like-minded people. Isn't it possible to do both? He is quite right to dismiss self-promotion as a role of the Chair, but in rejecting proselytising for poetry itself Mcdonald assumes that the audience for poetry is rightly self-selecting. I'd like to hear more from him about how he sees that sensibility developing in young people.
Eh, forget all that and read Christopher Reid's review of Ian Hamilton's Collected Poems.
McDonald insists that the holders of the Poetry Chair
are not there to proselytize (sic) for poetry, or indeed for themselves as poets, but to try to say things that matter about the art itself.Nice turn of phrase there. Reaching within: a leading poet telling us how poems are made, where they come from in the tradition, how they make new myths, how they form neural networks of the imagination. Paul Muldoon's The End of the Poem was a tour de force. That's the sort of energy and erudition we require from our professors.
"Reaching out" is not required; but reaching within certainly is.
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.Generally to encourage the art of poetry in the University. That seems pretty wide open to interpretation. It could mean encouraging the best to write better, or encouraging neophytes to start reading and writing.
Let's say it was the Chair of Tennis. There would be those saying the job would be to encourage the future Wimbledon champions. Others might suggest it could entail encouraging those who'd never done so much as pick up a racquet to start enjoying the challenge and exercise, the company of like-minded people. Isn't it possible to do both? He is quite right to dismiss self-promotion as a role of the Chair, but in rejecting proselytising for poetry itself Mcdonald assumes that the audience for poetry is rightly self-selecting. I'd like to hear more from him about how he sees that sensibility developing in young people.
Eh, forget all that and read Christopher Reid's review of Ian Hamilton's Collected Poems.
05 June 2009
An Evening of Magnanimity
My old friend and Joy of Six colleague Andrea Porter launched A Season of Small Insanities last night at the Maypole in Cambridge, and a very jolly event it was too. While I've been to several launches where the author invited support acts from a few friends, this is the first I can recall where the host's generosity extended to quite so many readers: Ian Cartland, Emily Dening, Fraser Grace, Wayne Hill, Peter Howard, André Mangeot, Helen Mort, and me. Andrea wanted the evening to be "a celebration of poetry" and urged guests to approach readers to buy their books as well as her own.
Guests came from Dublin, London, Bath, Chatteris... The place was packed; people had to keep going out to find more chairs, then face the even bigger challenge of finding somewhere to put them. With Andrea opening and closing each half, the rest of us made an eclectic mix of voices. It's unfair to single anyone out, though several people had the courage to do a hands-free reading, including Helen Mort with work from her forthcoming A Pint for the Ghost, and Wayne Hill who with Deep Frontiers reminded us why he was such a powerful member of Joy of Six, and how we miss him now he's down in the west country. Fraser Grace's Mr Evans illustrated the argument that "performance poetry" is more than an energetic reading. Grace is an actor and playwright (who adapted Andrea's Bubble for Radio 4). Beware actors bearing props. His performance will remain with us even longer than it takes to wash the great smell of Brut out of our togs.
As for Andrea, her book is wonderful. She took us from the absurd and insane, through real tragedy, into celebration of life, finishing with the hilarious and risqué DIY, which she delivers with panache. The poem is in the downloadable sample on Salt's website here (pdf). I like Fraser's comment: "The forensic eye and the killer detail, Porter's poems take you to worlds you deliberately forgot, you emerge feeling stronger, almost heroic - humanity reinforced, always laughing, always hungry for life."
Thank you, Andrea, for a great and generous evening.
16 May 2009
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.
Michigan State University Audio.
Whitman College Lecture Audio.
University of Alberta (Scroll down to the bottom of the page.) Audio.
14 May 2009
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.
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 whosejob 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.
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
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.
13 May 2009
OxPo Foes
Sickening. Vandals.
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.
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.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.
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.
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.
04 May 2009
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:
25 August 2009
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
27 April 2009
A Stupendous Leg of Granite, Discovered Standing by Itself in the Deserts of Egypt, with the Inscription Inserted Below.
Katy Evans-Bush thinks much can be learned from an unsuccessful poem about what makes poems fail. She shows us the other Ozymandias, written by Shelley's friend Horace Smith in that famous competition. One can only hope that Smith himself saw instantly how outclassed he was. Do go there and read it - it's most instructive.
I've long had a fantasy of editing an anthology of bad poems, with a commentary, as a tool of instruction, but Nicholas Parsons got there first with his Joy of bad Verse. Lack of imagination, failure of nerve, and above all a lack of sensitivity to language are the commonest failings. McGonagall is treasured for his tin ear and his heroic mastery of bathos. Smith isn't in this sort of class either. He's just not terribly good.
But perhaps it's not so much what makes Smith's poem fail, as noticing, as Katy does, that it has a couple of good bits. And it's a question of what makes Shelley's poem so good. Where Shelley makes things up, and visualises them for us, Smith's poem is for the most part literal, unimaginative. He doesn't recognise the potential in the data. Starting with the same material as Shelley, almost every decision he makes is conventional:
Here's the fragment of statue, all alone; the Leg is all that's left of the civilisation; it could be the same for London one day. Civilisations pass. Smith takes Ozymandias for granted, is uninquisitive about the nature of power, save for its transience.
The first good bit - and I concur with her judgement - is the image of the Hunter "[thro' the wilderness/ where London stood,] holding the Wolf in chace". I don't know why Katy likes this bit, but I like it because it gives us an identifiable agent in the poem in contrast to the undefined and almost abstract "We"), and a new perspective of time, a sense of the altered state of London now a forest; that lovely period diction "holding the Wolf in chace" manages to suggest a relationship between the Hunter and hunted, some kind of controlled distance, like a dog on a lead. The Hunter is skilled. There is something intimate about it.
And how distracting that Hunter would find "some fragment huge", so ill-defined and unexpected, on his purposeful quest. It distracts us too: I wondered how a bit of statue had got from Egypt to London - via the British Museum perhaps? - before I pulled myself together. Oh, and I have a weakness for post-apocalyptic scenarios.
The second good bit she identifies is the closing couplet, and I must admit it raised a smile to my lips too. The polysyllabic adjectives cling to monosyllabic, simplistic rhymes. The second adjective, in the last line, is even longer than the first, so when the second shoe drops there is a fitting sense of build-up and bathos. It's interesting that Smith felt the need to relate the desert statue back to the situation of the assumed reader. He couldn't trust the statue itself, or the reader, to do the work, but had to draw an explicit moral: "some Hunter may express/ Wonder like ours..." The switched focus leaches energy from the original image. Not that the original image is very clear; it's treated as a given. There is something almost comic about the "gigantic Leg" because it could be anything. Actually there is one other almost good bit, which is the "[gigantic Leg], which far off throws/ The only shadow that the Desart knows".
Shelley lets the statue be the focus. His Ozymandias is a story, "I met a traveller... who said..." and it is the traveller who describes the statue. By putting the words into his mouth, he manages to give it an oral immediacy, both an authority (literally) and mythic status, a distance and a reason for being told.
And thereafter the focus is on the statue. Well, not exactly - because in piecing the statue together, Shelley conjures the subject of the statue himself, zooming in on the "frown,/ And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command" and even the hapless sculptor. We are right there with the antique traveller, seeing a tyrant's statue. And its empty boast. The poem is filmic in its attention. One could use Shelley's poem as a shooting script for a short. And the genius of the ending, which leaves the poem at the point where Horace Smith started his: the bare and level sands stretch far away.
I've long had a fantasy of editing an anthology of bad poems, with a commentary, as a tool of instruction, but Nicholas Parsons got there first with his Joy of bad Verse. Lack of imagination, failure of nerve, and above all a lack of sensitivity to language are the commonest failings. McGonagall is treasured for his tin ear and his heroic mastery of bathos. Smith isn't in this sort of class either. He's just not terribly good.
But perhaps it's not so much what makes Smith's poem fail, as noticing, as Katy does, that it has a couple of good bits. And it's a question of what makes Shelley's poem so good. Where Shelley makes things up, and visualises them for us, Smith's poem is for the most part literal, unimaginative. He doesn't recognise the potential in the data. Starting with the same material as Shelley, almost every decision he makes is conventional:
Here's the fragment of statue, all alone; the Leg is all that's left of the civilisation; it could be the same for London one day. Civilisations pass. Smith takes Ozymandias for granted, is uninquisitive about the nature of power, save for its transience.
The first good bit - and I concur with her judgement - is the image of the Hunter "[thro' the wilderness/ where London stood,] holding the Wolf in chace". I don't know why Katy likes this bit, but I like it because it gives us an identifiable agent in the poem in contrast to the undefined and almost abstract "We"), and a new perspective of time, a sense of the altered state of London now a forest; that lovely period diction "holding the Wolf in chace" manages to suggest a relationship between the Hunter and hunted, some kind of controlled distance, like a dog on a lead. The Hunter is skilled. There is something intimate about it.
And how distracting that Hunter would find "some fragment huge", so ill-defined and unexpected, on his purposeful quest. It distracts us too: I wondered how a bit of statue had got from Egypt to London - via the British Museum perhaps? - before I pulled myself together. Oh, and I have a weakness for post-apocalyptic scenarios.
The second good bit she identifies is the closing couplet, and I must admit it raised a smile to my lips too. The polysyllabic adjectives cling to monosyllabic, simplistic rhymes. The second adjective, in the last line, is even longer than the first, so when the second shoe drops there is a fitting sense of build-up and bathos. It's interesting that Smith felt the need to relate the desert statue back to the situation of the assumed reader. He couldn't trust the statue itself, or the reader, to do the work, but had to draw an explicit moral: "some Hunter may express/ Wonder like ours..." The switched focus leaches energy from the original image. Not that the original image is very clear; it's treated as a given. There is something almost comic about the "gigantic Leg" because it could be anything. Actually there is one other almost good bit, which is the "[gigantic Leg], which far off throws/ The only shadow that the Desart knows".
Shelley lets the statue be the focus. His Ozymandias is a story, "I met a traveller... who said..." and it is the traveller who describes the statue. By putting the words into his mouth, he manages to give it an oral immediacy, both an authority (literally) and mythic status, a distance and a reason for being told.
And thereafter the focus is on the statue. Well, not exactly - because in piecing the statue together, Shelley conjures the subject of the statue himself, zooming in on the "frown,/ And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command" and even the hapless sculptor. We are right there with the antique traveller, seeing a tyrant's statue. And its empty boast. The poem is filmic in its attention. One could use Shelley's poem as a shooting script for a short. And the genius of the ending, which leaves the poem at the point where Horace Smith started his: the bare and level sands stretch far away.
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