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:

(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.

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.

A soft chair

So I read to a private group of students in Cambridge tonight. Nice audience, fit but few.

I didn't do a lot of gab, but did once utter those terrible words "this next poem". It was because we were très intime and it would have been wrong to be too polished, somehow. I read from a chair because everyone else had done so - and if I'd stood up to read it would have looked a) precious and b) like an implicit criticism of everyone else who'd read sitting down. I could have stood on the chair, I suppose, to make a comic point - but they didn't look as if they were expecting comedy, and indeed, it would have been practically the only comedic moment in the performance so everything would have been downhill thereafter. Besides, it was a soft chair. At times like this I wish I had more comic poems in my repertoire.

As for the seated position, I can't say I favour it. I recall once seeing Carol Ann Duffy reading from a chair, and she was much criticised for it. I hadn't been to many readings at the time so couldn't see what was wrong. And now, I have a lot of sympathy for anyone who wants to read seated. Who is to know what unspeakable ailment they might be suffering?

No question, it makes a difference. I felt underpowered. It's true about not being able to breathe so deeply, but there's more to it than that. I also felt a certain loss of status. It's an impression that doesn't withstand close scrutiny, but is nevertheless mildly disconcerting. It's something to do with delivery. One feels obliged to curb the slightest tendency to perform rather than read. There is an equality about the situation, particularly with tiny numbers. The audience is seated too: how easily the roles could be reversed. And they were, because to begin with we had poems from people who'd attended the workshop prior to the reading. I'm totally OK with that - but the last thing you want to do in that situation is come on as the Big I Am. So there was a chair, from which the readers read, and other chairs seated around in a horseshoe and we took turns, me last and longest as the guest.

Do I have a poetry voice? Probably, though the thought appals me. Nobody likes to admit they've got one. Most people do, even if it's understated. Duffy does. Robin Robertson does. A poetry voice can be at the other extreme: just think of Thomas Lux.

It reminded me of the time when I went to look round an old merchant's house in Ledbury. No one else had turned up for the guided tour, but the guide nevertheless treated me as if I were an audience of many. She pitched her voice high to reach the back of the crowd, and went into spiel mode, never catching my eye. I think she was too shy to do it any differently, though she seemed embarrassed too. But when I asked questions she answered quite normally.

A poem isn't a normal thing, though. It's not something you've just thought of that you're telling someone, though some poets - eg John Hegley, Michael Rosen - tell theirs so seamlessly you can't tell the join between poem and gab. And there were some of my poems that wouldn't have felt right in front of a tiny audience, at least while I was sitting down, because they are too rhythmical and not at all like ordinary speech.

And yet and yet. This still doesn't explain it. Sometimes I go and read to groups of blind (and invariably old) people; I read them favourites like The Listeners, Cargoes - anything they request that I happen to have in my bag. And I read sitting down, and they will join in if they know it. These are almost invariably rhythmical poems unlike ordinary speech, and I'm expected to ham it up a bit. Is it easier to do a cover version, because the voice is not one's own?

Salt Cellar Reading: The Punter

Salt begins its tenth anniversary celebrations with an evening of poetry, prose and conversation at The Punter on Thursday 28 January.

Readers: Anne Berkeley, André Mangeot, Leo Mellor, Rod Mengham, Drew Milne, Ian Patterson, Simon Perril, Andrea Porter, John Saul and Padrika Tarrant.

Come and find out what Salt has planned for 2010 and where you might fit in…

The Punter
3 Pound Hill,
Cambridge,
CB3 0AE

Writer's Choice

My Writer's Choice is on normblog! Don't go there* expecting something highbrow or poetic. Although I wrestled with the idea of doing justice to various books that might make me look intelligent and cultured, I settled for what first came to mind: some of the first books I remember.




*Edit: I should add that of course you will frequently find things highbrow and poetic elsewhere in Norm's Writer's Choice series, and indeed on his blog in general.

Set list

Toddington Poetry Society are a lovely bunch of people to read to, engaged and responsive. Thank you for asking me.

There's a vogue for recording set lists, so this is what I read last night:

To Paint a Bird (Jacques Prévert, trans AB) - on account of its being 14 July
Holdall (Aircrew)
Yellow Sun, Green Grass
Revesby
The Boasts of Jim McKay
Small Arms
Russkis
Downstairs
Nav Rad
Co-ordinates
The Men from Praga
Britannia
Chamber of Horrors £2 Extra
Chattel

All but the Prévert come from The Men from Praga. The Prévert translation is available on Frank Parker's site here, and the first five TMFP poems are downloadable from the Salt site (pdf file). Nav Rad was featured on small change, and Britannia on peony moon. The title poem is on poetry pf. That still leaves plenty of other poems to read in the book.

At the organisers' prior request for "background" to poems I interspersed plenty of what Bernard O'Donoghue deprecatingly calls "gab". The audience needs a breather between poems, they said, anxiously. Well, of course - and I wondered whose poetry blitzing they'd suffered in the past before it dawned on me that they were probably worried I'd try a one-woman Joy of Six blast. What J6 are doing is something different altogether: the philosophy behind that merits a separate post some time. In the more conventional poetry reading, it's important to give the poem a bit of aural space, but without betraying it. When Bernard does it, it's an artform in itself. It was while listening to him, years ago now, that it dawned on me how good it was not to keep hearing that phrase "this next poem". I've never heard it on his lips, and resolved forthwith to try to banish it from my own.

At the other extreme was a nervous poet I heard at Aldeburgh a few years ago. Much praised and garlanded, she'd flown half way round the world to read at the festival, but some freak of nerves had caused her to write out all her intros and ad libs and read from them as if they were poems themselves. It was horribly embarrassing.

peony moon

Peony mooon has a poem from The Men from Praga.
It's Britannia, not elsewhere online. Britannia, who she?



Just one reason why nationalism gives me the heebiejeebies.

Thank you, Michelle.