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?
08 June 2010
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.
02 March 2010
More gab about gab
In a comment on the last post I casually remarked that actors and musicians rely solely on their art to communicate with the audience. Poets, on the other hand, tend to gab.
Even as I clicked Publish, I realised I was wrong about musicians. How could I have forgotten? When I was a kid way back, folk song was popular and every little town had its folk club with regulars and itinerant performers. Ours was in The Bull on Friday nights, and in its heyday there would have been well over 100 people there. And musicians did links. They might tell something of the background to the song (fishing, canal-digging, mining, political struggle) or its origins (trad, Ewan MacColl), where they first heard it, or what they might have done to adapt it to the voices and instruments at hand.
It's not just folk singers, it's other popular forms like country and western, crooners and, sometimes, jazz. Even rockers might pause in the middle of a gig to ask the audience "Are you having a good time?" if they could be sure the answer would be a resounding "Yes!" (OK, maybe that was just to distract the audience from the retuning of guitars.)
I'd thought the habit was a feature of popular music, but in a recent Independent, there's a letter from Judy Vero, correcting an earlier article I'd missed:
Music, like poetry and theatre, is a temporal art. The curatorial notes* in art galleries are often written precisely because (most) visual art outstays the moment and context of its creation. For the same reason, they're easier to ignore: they occupy visual space, not temporal space.
But note how the curatorial can shift into the personality:
The music becomes far more personal when he explains what it means to him and how he interprets it. (Vero)
... Barenboim's charisma was only part of the reason that the audience was rapt... (Lister)
Conductors are some of the greatest personalities in the world of music, and by virtue of what they have to do with an orchestra, some of the greatest communicators, yet we never hear them speak or even see their faces. (Lister)
... would it be so terrible to have a screen above the orchestra so that one could see the facial expressions of the conductor, his or her glances at various sections of the orchestra, rather than just staring at a back all evening? (Lister)
(My bold. And yes, it would be so terrible.)
It was a treat to be addressed at all by a conductor at a classical music concert. One can imagine a few aficionados being disdainful of anything that mediated between them and the music, but perhaps they would stay at home anyway, just reading the score. More profess resentment of the curatorial notes at art exhibitions (and a fortiori those recorded Walkman tours), which they regard as patronising and limiting. I haven't hired one for years: surely they have improved. But I always read the notes. They are always informative. Sometimes they have a wonderful lightness and wit. For some brilliant curatorship, where the talk virtually takes the place of the object (cf poem, symphony, song), listen to Neil MacGregor on Radio 4: A History of the World in A Hundred Objects. MacGregor is the Director of the British Museum, and in each programme chooses one of its exhibits to cast light on the society from which it emerged. When he places the Olduvai artefact into the hands of someone like David Attenborough to respond to and interpret, it's beautiful radio.
Some poets' gab tends more to the curatorial than the charismatic. I suspect the poetry audience tolerates more of the latter than the former. And not much of that. They particularly resent being instructed how to interpret the poem. The Author is Dead, remember?
I'm straying from the point. I started looking at gab as an overlooked part of the performance, and it's led to the point where the gab is the performance, with the referent playing a supporting role - offstage, in the case of A History of the World.
I'm still developing my theory of gab. Meanwhile here are a few more thoughts.
Our receptivity to gab relies on
• the relevance of the gab
• the authority of the gabber
• the skill of the gabber
• the personality of the gabber
• our expectation that there will be gab
* I'm interested in the idea of museum object by way of contrast to performed art: immutable but open to interpretation the way a music score or a poem is - or at least the idea that the interpretation of it can be artistic as well as scholarly. How far can the museum artefact be distinguished from a contemporary work of art, like a painting or a poem? Of course it has a historic provenance and purpose which, however disputable, are in theory knowable. Or in another theory, perhaps not. I don't know the first thing about curatorship theory, but it must be as rife with different factions and revisions as any other area of intellectual effort.
Even as I clicked Publish, I realised I was wrong about musicians. How could I have forgotten? When I was a kid way back, folk song was popular and every little town had its folk club with regulars and itinerant performers. Ours was in The Bull on Friday nights, and in its heyday there would have been well over 100 people there. And musicians did links. They might tell something of the background to the song (fishing, canal-digging, mining, political struggle) or its origins (trad, Ewan MacColl), where they first heard it, or what they might have done to adapt it to the voices and instruments at hand.
It's not just folk singers, it's other popular forms like country and western, crooners and, sometimes, jazz. Even rockers might pause in the middle of a gig to ask the audience "Are you having a good time?" if they could be sure the answer would be a resounding "Yes!" (OK, maybe that was just to distract the audience from the retuning of guitars.)
I'd thought the habit was a feature of popular music, but in a recent Independent, there's a letter from Judy Vero, correcting an earlier article I'd missed:
David Lister asks why conductors do not address their audiences more often (6 February). Here in Birmingham it happens regularly.So I looked up the David Lister article:
Sir Simon Rattle began the trend many years ago, and it has now become an established feature of concerts by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. Our dynamic and highly talented young Latvian conductor, Andris Nelsons, has clearly set out to build a rapport with his audience. We look forward to the moment when he turns to face us and addresses us as "Dear ladies and gentlemen..." The music become far more personal when he explains what it means to him and how he interprets it.
...Before conducting the Schoenberg piece, Barenboim gave what was described as an "illustrated talk" from the podium, introduced the various themes from sections of the orchestra, explained how they fitted together and how the motifs were subtly altered and repeated. This prelude to a 21-minute piece lasted nearly half an hour. The audience was rapt, partly because this was a master showman at work, with a sense of comedy and timing to be envied by many a stand-up comedian. By the end of the talk he had the audience, not quite whistling Schoenberg as he had promised, but at least learning to love him, which is quite an achievement.It's worth reading the whole article. It's instructive that Lister cites charisma and entertainment, but the main purpose of Barenboim's address was instruction. The talk lasted half an hour. That's not gab, that's a lecture. Clearly a lot of thought and preparation had gone into it. It was billed as an "illustrated talk", so they were expecting it. Even the most devoted Barenboim fan would have started to get a bit restless if they'd gone there expecting only music.
But Barenboim's charisma was only part of the reason that the audience was rapt. I also think it was because it was a treat to be addressed at all by a conductor at a classical music concert...
Music, like poetry and theatre, is a temporal art. The curatorial notes* in art galleries are often written precisely because (most) visual art outstays the moment and context of its creation. For the same reason, they're easier to ignore: they occupy visual space, not temporal space.
But note how the curatorial can shift into the personality:
The music becomes far more personal when he explains what it means to him and how he interprets it. (Vero)
... Barenboim's charisma was only part of the reason that the audience was rapt... (Lister)
Conductors are some of the greatest personalities in the world of music, and by virtue of what they have to do with an orchestra, some of the greatest communicators, yet we never hear them speak or even see their faces. (Lister)
... would it be so terrible to have a screen above the orchestra so that one could see the facial expressions of the conductor, his or her glances at various sections of the orchestra, rather than just staring at a back all evening? (Lister)
(My bold. And yes, it would be so terrible.)
It was a treat to be addressed at all by a conductor at a classical music concert. One can imagine a few aficionados being disdainful of anything that mediated between them and the music, but perhaps they would stay at home anyway, just reading the score. More profess resentment of the curatorial notes at art exhibitions (and a fortiori those recorded Walkman tours), which they regard as patronising and limiting. I haven't hired one for years: surely they have improved. But I always read the notes. They are always informative. Sometimes they have a wonderful lightness and wit. For some brilliant curatorship, where the talk virtually takes the place of the object (cf poem, symphony, song), listen to Neil MacGregor on Radio 4: A History of the World in A Hundred Objects. MacGregor is the Director of the British Museum, and in each programme chooses one of its exhibits to cast light on the society from which it emerged. When he places the Olduvai artefact into the hands of someone like David Attenborough to respond to and interpret, it's beautiful radio.
Some poets' gab tends more to the curatorial than the charismatic. I suspect the poetry audience tolerates more of the latter than the former. And not much of that. They particularly resent being instructed how to interpret the poem. The Author is Dead, remember?
I'm straying from the point. I started looking at gab as an overlooked part of the performance, and it's led to the point where the gab is the performance, with the referent playing a supporting role - offstage, in the case of A History of the World.
I'm still developing my theory of gab. Meanwhile here are a few more thoughts.
Our receptivity to gab relies on
• the relevance of the gab
• the authority of the gabber
• the skill of the gabber
• the personality of the gabber
• our expectation that there will be gab
* I'm interested in the idea of museum object by way of contrast to performed art: immutable but open to interpretation the way a music score or a poem is - or at least the idea that the interpretation of it can be artistic as well as scholarly. How far can the museum artefact be distinguished from a contemporary work of art, like a painting or a poem? Of course it has a historic provenance and purpose which, however disputable, are in theory knowable. Or in another theory, perhaps not. I don't know the first thing about curatorship theory, but it must be as rife with different factions and revisions as any other area of intellectual effort.
03 February 2010
Gab
Bernard O'Donoghue, to whom I owe the title of this post, self-deprecatingly dismisses his entertaining interstitial chat as "just gab". I’ve never heard him use those killer words "This next poem..." His intros are tangential. They may illuminate the poem from a distant place, but make no attempt to explain it, let alone render a prose version. The prose version gab is a betrayal of the poem.
Gab between poems. Like it/don't like it? How much? What sort?
These questions are prompted by a recent reading where some readers gabbed and others took the piano recital approach of reverential silence. (Knowing chuckles from the audience, coughing, shifting and recrossing legs permitted.) Odd, really, because some of their poems are so dense they need recovery time. And sometimes I'd appreciate it if they gave the occasional poem a leg-up, given that this was a rare chance to hear the poet in person, rather than just the tape running in my head when I hold the book.
One non-gabber even prefaced his reading with a brief gab-denouncing gab. I thought I detected a certain froideur between the two camps.
Although I’ve been thinking about it for a while, it’s not easy to formulate a critique of gab. While there is a lot of commentary on reading the poem itself, I haven't found much about the bits in between. Here are some fairly inchoate initial thoughts on a large and divisive subject.
What is gab?
Anything which isn’t a poem - whether a few introductory remarks, or a long chat between poems. It includes modes of speech known by more polite terms, such as conversation, talk, chat, anecdote, aside, reminiscence, yarn, joke, ad lib, etc. Proponents of gab will say that it’s a perfectly natural interaction between performer and audience. You might wonder why on earth I’m angsting about it, but bear with me. It also gets called more derogatory names, such as patter, spiel, waffle. By using this term I’m trying to be dispassionate about it for a bit.
We’ve come to hear the poems, so why gab?
Gab has complex and overlapping functions, both informative and phatic, not always consciously employed (and not always successful):
• To acknowledge courtesies.
• To get the audience used to the sound of the poet’s voice.
• To establish goodwill.
• To establish or adjust status – eg I may have a reputation for being difficult to understand but I’m just an ordinary person like you really. To democratise.
• To provide context for something arcane, to explain an unfamiliar reference.
• To release tension, eg after poems about highly emotive subjects. Done badly, it can drain energy from the performance.
• To provide breathing space between poems. This is the most commonly cited. There is a perception – which may be wrong – that some audiences cannot bear too much non-stop poetry, that they need to pause and consider what they’ve just heard. Gab requires a much lower level of attention, but it may undermine the period of reflection it’s intended to provide. A short period of silence may work better.
• To avoid monotony.
• To entertain.
• To deal with interruptions.
• To establish or re-establish control.
Critics of gab might add further categories such as:
• To disarm or befriend. Those who favour a conversational style of reading will slip more naturally into chat with the audience.
• To control interpretation of the poem.
• To let the poet off the hook. To evade commitment to the poem.
• Habit
• Fear
• Vanity
I wonder too if the prevalence of gab is something to do with the growing requirement of the market. Like other writers, poets are expected by publishers these days to market themselves as personalities. This doesn’t come naturally to everyone, but when audiences start looking for personalities and newspapers can publish two-page interviews with a poet without quoting a single line of poetry, gab is hardly a surprising by-product.
Some audiences ask for gab. On occasion, when invited to read I’ve been specifically asked to give background to the poems. (Younger listeners know very little about the Cold War, and no one knows much about V bombers.)
How prevalent is gab?
It's so widespread it’s almost taken for granted in some quarters and doesn't get the attention it deserves. Less experienced readers are inclined to absorb the performance style of people they admire. When I first started reading to an audience the perceived requirement to say something non-fatuous between poems was far more anxiety-inducing than speaking the poems themselves. I’d have saved myself some agony early on if I’d realised that saying nothing at all was an option.
About ten years ago we formed Joy of Six. I’ll blog about that one day, but for now the relevant thing is that we read our poems without any gab in between, often without even giving a title. We choose poems that can withstand a quickfire delivery. It doesn’t matter if the audience doesn’t get everything as it wings past, so long as the poem delivers something: a promise, a mystery, a teasing sound. The next poem will aim for another effect, intensifying or contrasting. We often read to audiences who aren’t used to hearing much poetry. Our enthusiastic comments book suggests that the “breathing space” theory doesn’t necessarily apply to multi-voice performances.
Gab is not always appropriate
The TS Eliot readings allow only 8 minutes a poet, so there's no time for it. Anyway, that occasion seems to require solemnity. Nevertheless, a creeping gabbiness can be detected. It was clear a few years back that performers had been warned off any gab whatsoever, because nobody said a word but their poems. It was oddly formal, but not displeasing. I can understand the injunction against gab, because poets famously have no idea how long it takes. But this year, almost everyone had something to say that wasn't a poem. Even the rigorously non-gabby Alice Oswald felt constrained to comment on how Weeds and Wildflowers had come about as a collaboration.
The gabless performance
Foregrounds the poem.
Foregrounds the language.
Foregrounds the voice as performance.
L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets favour it.
Poets with a sculptural sensibility, such as Elizabeth James, favour it.
Poets with a dramatic sensibility, such as Paul Durcan and Alice Oswald, favour it.
It takes courage.
Gab as performance
Poet, wit and raconteur: Michael Donaghy was an exemplar of gab. Simon Armitage*, when he's on form, can give Ian McMillan a good run for his money. John Cooper Clarke blends poetry with standup. John Hegley adds a mandolin. Michael Rosen has it down to such a fine art you can't tell where the gab ends and the poem begins. That's not actually a criticism, since the whole thing is about giving a performance. At a very basic level it's about holding the tribe’s attention, whether with stories, jokes, political rhetoric, music or the language of the poems themselves.
We are talking about many different sorts of performance and venue here: the concert hall, the SCR, the pub. It would have been weird and alienating, I think, if John Burnside hadn’t chatted to the audience at the intimate reading at Toppings.
Gab or pure poetry?
I was talking to a couple of poet friends about this last night. S said he had no time for gab. It's self-indulgent and boring. He hates it when poets give the background to a poem, and he hates it when they tell tangential stories. Or else it shows lack of confidence in the work: above all, he hates it when the poet tries to give the impression he's an ordinary bloke like them, and tries to be their friend. He doesn't need to like the poet. He doesn't need to know anything about him. He has come to hear the poems. He cited a reading recently where each of the readers had chatted away between poems: it virtually sent him to sleep. When he gives a reading, he doesn’t feel the need to address the audience other than through the poem, because everything he wants to say is in the poem.**
J completely disagreed. She thought the poet could seem arrogant and rude if she didn't address the audience. She cited the example of a well known poet years ago at the Troubadour, when the performance space was half the size it is now. In refusing to engage with the audience he came across as contemptuous of them. The audience are people, individual human beings, not disembodied intellects. Some are listening with their heads, some with their heads and their hearts. Some audiences are not just randomly collected, but bonded communities.
She thinks too, that people need downtime between poems, otherwise it all gets too intense.
Bad gabbers?
This is a public space.
Oh, all right then:
A few years ago at Aldeburgh a distinguished foreign poet felt obliged to introduce each poem. Although it’s very common, gab is not a universal expectation there. Unable to trust herself to ad lib, she read from a script. It drained all the energy from her performance.
Archie Markham. His gab was fascinating, and the only reason he is here on the bench where he can't defend himself is that when I heard him I found myself wondering when he was going to read an actual poem. However interesting the gab (and it was), people had come to hear his poems.
People have very different reactions to gab. It can be seen as an integral part of performance, or an aesthetic insult. Surrounding the poems with silence like piano études can be seen as either professional or arrogant. Some people insist they go to hear the poems; they don't want the poems explained or undermined, and they certainly don't want the poet trying to ingratiate himself. If the poem is baffling in places, the language should carry it through, and in any case there will be another one along in a minute. In fact, this is the theory behind our Joy of Six performances - to keep the energy level high. Yet when we perform individually, we all gab. Appropriateness of gab depends on the audience and venue.
There is a lot more to say about all of this, and if anyone can recommend some studies, please let me know.
There are some things that everyone agrees on:
• People have come to hear poems.
• It's a mistake to assume that anyone will be interested in your domestic arrangements. (Well, they probably will if you are someone famous.)
• It’s a mistake to explain the poem. This next poem is my attempt to show the transience of beauty, and the irony that... (Sorry, I already nodded off.)
• The prose version gab is a betrayal of the poem.
• It’s fatal to apologise for the poem.
• It is better to be silent than to gab badly.
*"Simon began to read and immediately had the audience in the palm of his hand. The first two poems he picked were hilarious; the first on the surreal musings of a sperm whale and the second on the quasi biblical crossing of a causeway before the tide was properly out. He had his rather staid audience rolling with laughter. His ad libbed comments between the poems were also funny, and his timing when reading was like watching the best of comic actors. Having got us totally onside he moved on to a range of poetry covering a great mix of styles and emotions. His preambles before each poem made everything quickly accessible even if you had not heard that poem before, or if the poem proved difficult."(Juxtabook)
**Which, come to think of it, sounds just like the attitude some men have to sex
Gab between poems. Like it/don't like it? How much? What sort?
These questions are prompted by a recent reading where some readers gabbed and others took the piano recital approach of reverential silence. (Knowing chuckles from the audience, coughing, shifting and recrossing legs permitted.) Odd, really, because some of their poems are so dense they need recovery time. And sometimes I'd appreciate it if they gave the occasional poem a leg-up, given that this was a rare chance to hear the poet in person, rather than just the tape running in my head when I hold the book.
One non-gabber even prefaced his reading with a brief gab-denouncing gab. I thought I detected a certain froideur between the two camps.
Although I’ve been thinking about it for a while, it’s not easy to formulate a critique of gab. While there is a lot of commentary on reading the poem itself, I haven't found much about the bits in between. Here are some fairly inchoate initial thoughts on a large and divisive subject.
What is gab?
Anything which isn’t a poem - whether a few introductory remarks, or a long chat between poems. It includes modes of speech known by more polite terms, such as conversation, talk, chat, anecdote, aside, reminiscence, yarn, joke, ad lib, etc. Proponents of gab will say that it’s a perfectly natural interaction between performer and audience. You might wonder why on earth I’m angsting about it, but bear with me. It also gets called more derogatory names, such as patter, spiel, waffle. By using this term I’m trying to be dispassionate about it for a bit.
We’ve come to hear the poems, so why gab?
Gab has complex and overlapping functions, both informative and phatic, not always consciously employed (and not always successful):
• To acknowledge courtesies.
• To get the audience used to the sound of the poet’s voice.
• To establish goodwill.
• To establish or adjust status – eg I may have a reputation for being difficult to understand but I’m just an ordinary person like you really. To democratise.
• To provide context for something arcane, to explain an unfamiliar reference.
• To release tension, eg after poems about highly emotive subjects. Done badly, it can drain energy from the performance.
• To provide breathing space between poems. This is the most commonly cited. There is a perception – which may be wrong – that some audiences cannot bear too much non-stop poetry, that they need to pause and consider what they’ve just heard. Gab requires a much lower level of attention, but it may undermine the period of reflection it’s intended to provide. A short period of silence may work better.
• To avoid monotony.
• To entertain.
• To deal with interruptions.
• To establish or re-establish control.
Critics of gab might add further categories such as:
• To disarm or befriend. Those who favour a conversational style of reading will slip more naturally into chat with the audience.
• To control interpretation of the poem.
• To let the poet off the hook. To evade commitment to the poem.
• Habit
• Fear
• Vanity
I wonder too if the prevalence of gab is something to do with the growing requirement of the market. Like other writers, poets are expected by publishers these days to market themselves as personalities. This doesn’t come naturally to everyone, but when audiences start looking for personalities and newspapers can publish two-page interviews with a poet without quoting a single line of poetry, gab is hardly a surprising by-product.
Some audiences ask for gab. On occasion, when invited to read I’ve been specifically asked to give background to the poems. (Younger listeners know very little about the Cold War, and no one knows much about V bombers.)
How prevalent is gab?
It's so widespread it’s almost taken for granted in some quarters and doesn't get the attention it deserves. Less experienced readers are inclined to absorb the performance style of people they admire. When I first started reading to an audience the perceived requirement to say something non-fatuous between poems was far more anxiety-inducing than speaking the poems themselves. I’d have saved myself some agony early on if I’d realised that saying nothing at all was an option.
About ten years ago we formed Joy of Six. I’ll blog about that one day, but for now the relevant thing is that we read our poems without any gab in between, often without even giving a title. We choose poems that can withstand a quickfire delivery. It doesn’t matter if the audience doesn’t get everything as it wings past, so long as the poem delivers something: a promise, a mystery, a teasing sound. The next poem will aim for another effect, intensifying or contrasting. We often read to audiences who aren’t used to hearing much poetry. Our enthusiastic comments book suggests that the “breathing space” theory doesn’t necessarily apply to multi-voice performances.
Gab is not always appropriate
The TS Eliot readings allow only 8 minutes a poet, so there's no time for it. Anyway, that occasion seems to require solemnity. Nevertheless, a creeping gabbiness can be detected. It was clear a few years back that performers had been warned off any gab whatsoever, because nobody said a word but their poems. It was oddly formal, but not displeasing. I can understand the injunction against gab, because poets famously have no idea how long it takes. But this year, almost everyone had something to say that wasn't a poem. Even the rigorously non-gabby Alice Oswald felt constrained to comment on how Weeds and Wildflowers had come about as a collaboration.
The gabless performance
Foregrounds the poem.
Foregrounds the language.
Foregrounds the voice as performance.
L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets favour it.
Poets with a sculptural sensibility, such as Elizabeth James, favour it.
Poets with a dramatic sensibility, such as Paul Durcan and Alice Oswald, favour it.
It takes courage.
Gab as performance
Poet, wit and raconteur: Michael Donaghy was an exemplar of gab. Simon Armitage*, when he's on form, can give Ian McMillan a good run for his money. John Cooper Clarke blends poetry with standup. John Hegley adds a mandolin. Michael Rosen has it down to such a fine art you can't tell where the gab ends and the poem begins. That's not actually a criticism, since the whole thing is about giving a performance. At a very basic level it's about holding the tribe’s attention, whether with stories, jokes, political rhetoric, music or the language of the poems themselves.
We are talking about many different sorts of performance and venue here: the concert hall, the SCR, the pub. It would have been weird and alienating, I think, if John Burnside hadn’t chatted to the audience at the intimate reading at Toppings.
Gab or pure poetry?
I was talking to a couple of poet friends about this last night. S said he had no time for gab. It's self-indulgent and boring. He hates it when poets give the background to a poem, and he hates it when they tell tangential stories. Or else it shows lack of confidence in the work: above all, he hates it when the poet tries to give the impression he's an ordinary bloke like them, and tries to be their friend. He doesn't need to like the poet. He doesn't need to know anything about him. He has come to hear the poems. He cited a reading recently where each of the readers had chatted away between poems: it virtually sent him to sleep. When he gives a reading, he doesn’t feel the need to address the audience other than through the poem, because everything he wants to say is in the poem.**
J completely disagreed. She thought the poet could seem arrogant and rude if she didn't address the audience. She cited the example of a well known poet years ago at the Troubadour, when the performance space was half the size it is now. In refusing to engage with the audience he came across as contemptuous of them. The audience are people, individual human beings, not disembodied intellects. Some are listening with their heads, some with their heads and their hearts. Some audiences are not just randomly collected, but bonded communities.
She thinks too, that people need downtime between poems, otherwise it all gets too intense.
Bad gabbers?
This is a public space.
Oh, all right then:
A few years ago at Aldeburgh a distinguished foreign poet felt obliged to introduce each poem. Although it’s very common, gab is not a universal expectation there. Unable to trust herself to ad lib, she read from a script. It drained all the energy from her performance.
Archie Markham. His gab was fascinating, and the only reason he is here on the bench where he can't defend himself is that when I heard him I found myself wondering when he was going to read an actual poem. However interesting the gab (and it was), people had come to hear his poems.
People have very different reactions to gab. It can be seen as an integral part of performance, or an aesthetic insult. Surrounding the poems with silence like piano études can be seen as either professional or arrogant. Some people insist they go to hear the poems; they don't want the poems explained or undermined, and they certainly don't want the poet trying to ingratiate himself. If the poem is baffling in places, the language should carry it through, and in any case there will be another one along in a minute. In fact, this is the theory behind our Joy of Six performances - to keep the energy level high. Yet when we perform individually, we all gab. Appropriateness of gab depends on the audience and venue.
There is a lot more to say about all of this, and if anyone can recommend some studies, please let me know.
There are some things that everyone agrees on:
• People have come to hear poems.
• It's a mistake to assume that anyone will be interested in your domestic arrangements. (Well, they probably will if you are someone famous.)
• It’s a mistake to explain the poem. This next poem is my attempt to show the transience of beauty, and the irony that... (Sorry, I already nodded off.)
• The prose version gab is a betrayal of the poem.
• It’s fatal to apologise for the poem.
• It is better to be silent than to gab badly.
*"Simon began to read and immediately had the audience in the palm of his hand. The first two poems he picked were hilarious; the first on the surreal musings of a sperm whale and the second on the quasi biblical crossing of a causeway before the tide was properly out. He had his rather staid audience rolling with laughter. His ad libbed comments between the poems were also funny, and his timing when reading was like watching the best of comic actors. Having got us totally onside he moved on to a range of poetry covering a great mix of styles and emotions. His preambles before each poem made everything quickly accessible even if you had not heard that poem before, or if the poem proved difficult."(Juxtabook)
**Which, come to think of it, sounds just like the attitude some men have to sex
31 January 2010
The real thing and the bar room manoeuvre
I went to hear John Burnside read in Ely the other night. We were upstairs at Toppings, a real bookshop. I've been meaning to go there for ages: they have an excellent programme of readers. Twenty chairs just about packed the place. It's a welcoming den to idle away a few hours, in case you haven't already got enough books in the house. I was racking my brains to recall what the shop had been when I lived there back in the 80s. A bakers, a gentlemen's outfitters perhaps? There's no trace; Toppings have made it completely their own, and it feels as if they have been there forever. Fabulous! I shall be back.
I wish them every success, and they seem to have both the curatorial sense and the critical mass for it. A much smaller bookshop opened in our village in the 90s and flourished until Amazon and Tesco killed it off. The proprietor was keen on poetry, and knew someone at OUP (remember when they published poetry?), so we had a succession of readings: Michael Donaghy, Peter Porter, Anne Stevenson, Stephen Romer - and others who weren't on the Oxford list, like Katrina Porteous and Kevin Crossley-Holland. There was even wild talk of getting Anthony Hecht over. What days! It could seat about a dozen people on various chairs, tables and bar stools. Much wine was consumed (and Michael played the whistle). It closed last year, the poetry-loving proprietor having long since retired.
It's the first time I'd heard Burnside in person, and found him engaging, thoughtful and unpompous. It was interesting to hear him talk about his work as well as read from it. His publicist won't want to know that he read from his latest poetry collection, The Hunt in the Forest, as well as from the second volume of memoir he is really supposed to be promoting, Waking Up in Toytown. But if she's reading this, she should know he was worth travelling for. I'm reading The Hunt in the Forest right now. It's good to have heard his voice so I can put the poems to it.
At the reading I found myself sitting next to G, whom I hadn't seen in twenty years. We went for a swift half to a pub I'd never set foot in during all the years I lived there, as back then it was a bit too spit & sawdust even for me. It's under new ownership, so G wanted to check it out. He stepped through the lobby to the glazed inner door, and couldn't open it. Push, push, this side and that. Standing behind him, I could see what he couldn't: below his eye level, a sign that said Pull. Who ever heard of anyone pulling open the door to a bar room? That's no way to start a brawl.
It's elf and safety, you see. If there's a fire (even less likely now smoking is forbidden) then the panicking customers must be able to get out quickly. But that oddly placed handle should have been a warning.
Everything had been ripped out, every surface levelled and sanitised. There were some low armchairs and there may even have been a potted plant. Perhaps the imagination supplies that, because it resembled nothing so much as the foyer of a modern mid-market commercial hotel. While we stood at the immaculate bar supping our Adnams, reminiscing about the livestock market and trying to ignore the smell of paint, several other punters batted at the door, finding it as baffling as G had. What sort of pub was it? It was near enough. It served decent beer. It was smoke free and there were places to sit down. There was no canned music, no slot machine (but neither, as far as I could tell, dartboard, pool table or jukebox). No ugly behaviour brewing. But all the while, I felt there was something I was not getting about it. I enjoyed my beer, and was in good company, but what was this pub for? It was almost empty. There was a group of young women talking quietly in the corner, one of whom G knew slightly and nodded to. They were subdued and respectable. It didn't seem to be the sort of place where you should raise your voice.
Like a poem that evinces all superficial properties of a poem apart from actual motive, this called itself a pub, and it sold beer. It certainly provided somewhere out of the rain to yarn away with an old acquaintance. But it didn't feel like a pub. The men confounded by the door finally entered, trailing tobacco smoke, and looked round bewildered. You could tell they wouldn't be stopping long.
I wish them every success, and they seem to have both the curatorial sense and the critical mass for it. A much smaller bookshop opened in our village in the 90s and flourished until Amazon and Tesco killed it off. The proprietor was keen on poetry, and knew someone at OUP (remember when they published poetry?), so we had a succession of readings: Michael Donaghy, Peter Porter, Anne Stevenson, Stephen Romer - and others who weren't on the Oxford list, like Katrina Porteous and Kevin Crossley-Holland. There was even wild talk of getting Anthony Hecht over. What days! It could seat about a dozen people on various chairs, tables and bar stools. Much wine was consumed (and Michael played the whistle). It closed last year, the poetry-loving proprietor having long since retired.
It's the first time I'd heard Burnside in person, and found him engaging, thoughtful and unpompous. It was interesting to hear him talk about his work as well as read from it. His publicist won't want to know that he read from his latest poetry collection, The Hunt in the Forest, as well as from the second volume of memoir he is really supposed to be promoting, Waking Up in Toytown. But if she's reading this, she should know he was worth travelling for. I'm reading The Hunt in the Forest right now. It's good to have heard his voice so I can put the poems to it.
At the reading I found myself sitting next to G, whom I hadn't seen in twenty years. We went for a swift half to a pub I'd never set foot in during all the years I lived there, as back then it was a bit too spit & sawdust even for me. It's under new ownership, so G wanted to check it out. He stepped through the lobby to the glazed inner door, and couldn't open it. Push, push, this side and that. Standing behind him, I could see what he couldn't: below his eye level, a sign that said Pull. Who ever heard of anyone pulling open the door to a bar room? That's no way to start a brawl.
It's elf and safety, you see. If there's a fire (even less likely now smoking is forbidden) then the panicking customers must be able to get out quickly. But that oddly placed handle should have been a warning.
Everything had been ripped out, every surface levelled and sanitised. There were some low armchairs and there may even have been a potted plant. Perhaps the imagination supplies that, because it resembled nothing so much as the foyer of a modern mid-market commercial hotel. While we stood at the immaculate bar supping our Adnams, reminiscing about the livestock market and trying to ignore the smell of paint, several other punters batted at the door, finding it as baffling as G had. What sort of pub was it? It was near enough. It served decent beer. It was smoke free and there were places to sit down. There was no canned music, no slot machine (but neither, as far as I could tell, dartboard, pool table or jukebox). No ugly behaviour brewing. But all the while, I felt there was something I was not getting about it. I enjoyed my beer, and was in good company, but what was this pub for? It was almost empty. There was a group of young women talking quietly in the corner, one of whom G knew slightly and nodded to. They were subdued and respectable. It didn't seem to be the sort of place where you should raise your voice.
Like a poem that evinces all superficial properties of a poem apart from actual motive, this called itself a pub, and it sold beer. It certainly provided somewhere out of the rain to yarn away with an old acquaintance. But it didn't feel like a pub. The men confounded by the door finally entered, trailing tobacco smoke, and looked round bewildered. You could tell they wouldn't be stopping long.
19 January 2010
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
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.
09 January 2010
London and the Provinces
NASA: Snow across Great Britain 7 January
This picture was on the front page of at least four daily papers this morning. They are full of how difficult it is to get to the office, and occasional complaints that compared with last February the London snow is frankly a bit disappointing.
Back in the seventies I was an articled clerk in Lincolnshire and set out after work one Friday to catch the train from Grantham, 30 miles away, to join my boyfriend visiting his big sister in London. The roads were thick with snow and I was dubious about making the journey. Oh don't be silly, Rosamund said on the telephone, there's no snow here. We're expecting you and it's roast lamb. From my small market town office window I looked at the tyre tracks neatly laid out in the street below and realised she thought I was a wimp. Snow is evanescent. There was no snow in London so the snow in Lincolnshire didn't really count. I drove carefully, staying in the tracks. Twenty miles out from home, coming downhill near Ancaster, I collided with a road sign warning of the bend.
The front end of the car crumpled.
It wouldn't start.
I was rescued by a policeman who took me to his house where his wife cleared the toys from the carpet and made me tea. The snow walloped down outside. When he'd finished his paperwork, the policeman gave me a lift to the station.* Rosamund was annoyed that I was late for supper, but amused that I'd pranged my car.
Lesley is a Devon farmer. Read her account of working through snow, if you think this latest lot is frankly a bit disappointing.
Seriously.
As I write the farmer is trying to dig the milk tanker lorry out of the lane a mile away so he can get to their tank and take milk to the processors. It’s currently 19.30 and that lorry has been on the road since 6am. Apparently only 40 out of 400 hundred dairy farms in the region have had collections in the last few days. There has been no lorry taking animals to the abattoir. Beef and sheep are not going to market either. Three people including us have not had a requested visit from our vet – also without a 4 wheel drive car. Fortunately my sick goat is stable but I need a blood test on her to assess what is going on. Others with animals needing immediate caesarians for example will have to watch them die.
Let's hear it for the farmers.
*Crikey, that policeman and his wife were wonderful. Would that happen now? Do village policemen live in police houses any more? Is there even such a person as a village policeman?
10 December 2009
Othermes
Anne Berkeley is Assistant Professor of Theatre Arts at Utah State University
anne berkeley is a program assistant in colorado's child support enforcement program
anneberkeleyx3 on twitter: he is the same as me!! xD i dont like that -_-
It's disconcerting to find that there are other people out there with the same name. Perhaps if you are John Smith or Jane Brown it feels a bit different from how it feels for me. But still. There is this aural space you feel entitled to occupy, this signifier which since you were a child you expected to own uniquely.
You grow up. You learn you aren't unique, nothing about you is unique. You even get round to finding this exit from solipsism oddly consoling. Then along comes the internet. Google. Twitter.
There is someone with the same name as me who tweets @ someone called Andrew. How dare she so casually assume my name? And who is Andrew? A late adopter of blogs, a reluctant participant in facebook, and with no desire to tweet, I suddenly feel like the woman who returns from holiday to find someone else living in her house, only it isn't her house after all. It never was.
Is she like me? Are we perhaps related? And does she feel annoyed that there's this Limey using her name?
anne berkeley is a program assistant in colorado's child support enforcement program
anneberkeleyx3 on twitter: he is the same as me!! xD i dont like that -_-
It's disconcerting to find that there are other people out there with the same name. Perhaps if you are John Smith or Jane Brown it feels a bit different from how it feels for me. But still. There is this aural space you feel entitled to occupy, this signifier which since you were a child you expected to own uniquely.
You grow up. You learn you aren't unique, nothing about you is unique. You even get round to finding this exit from solipsism oddly consoling. Then along comes the internet. Google. Twitter.
There is someone with the same name as me who tweets @ someone called Andrew. How dare she so casually assume my name? And who is Andrew? A late adopter of blogs, a reluctant participant in facebook, and with no desire to tweet, I suddenly feel like the woman who returns from holiday to find someone else living in her house, only it isn't her house after all. It never was.
Is she like me? Are we perhaps related? And does she feel annoyed that there's this Limey using her name?
I work for your credit card company, you can trust me
I'm in town with OH when his cellphone rings. It's for you, he says, puzzled, handing me the contraption.
I do not know anyone who would contact me on that number.
When I've figured out which way round to hold it, there's a voice from the depths of southern Asia telling me that this is my credit card company calling and they must check a few security details with me before they can tell me what it's about. They won't tell me anything until I answer their questions, as they want to be sure they are talking to the right person.
Huh? Someone rings me out of the blue about my credit card, on someone else's telephone, and wants to check my security details?
- How do I know you are who you say you are? I don't want to give any information over the telephone to a stranger. Can you tell me what this is about?
- I am sorry madam, I am not permitted to discuss anything about the account with you without first clearing your security details.
(Things like the colour of my grandmother's eyes, and the check digits on the back of the card. Things that would be jolly useful to someone wanting to use my card.) This really isn't a good time to call. OH and I in the middle of trying to buy a car. She is insistent. She suggests I call their customer service department, and starts to dictate a number.
- Sorry, I don't know who you are. I will ring the number on the back of my card.
It's a joint account, that's why they rang on OH's telephone. It transpires that someone had been trying to use my card to buy goods online "in the Pacific area" and the credit card company wanted to check it wasn't me. No, it wasn't. (Where in the Pacific area, I'm dying to know. Anchorage? Honolulu? Shanghai?) My card is now cancelled, a new card is on its way and I must let them know if it doesn't arrive within ten days. Lucky I have another credit card, what with Christmas coming up and everything.
Honestly, I'm grateful that they checked, rather than just paying out and not telling me my credit limit was up until I tried to check out the latest bit of black goods for the offspring's pressie. But what is the mentality of these institutions? They are forever asking us to be vigilant against fraud, yet they act as if they didn't know what it was like to be a customer. Imagine that you'd just paid for a meal in a restaurant where there happened to be a dodgy employee. I know I know, but it does happen. The employee has your name and credit card number, he has the telephone number from the booking; all he needs now are the answers to the security questions to be able to exhaust your unasked-for credit limit.
I do not know anyone who would contact me on that number.
When I've figured out which way round to hold it, there's a voice from the depths of southern Asia telling me that this is my credit card company calling and they must check a few security details with me before they can tell me what it's about. They won't tell me anything until I answer their questions, as they want to be sure they are talking to the right person.
Huh? Someone rings me out of the blue about my credit card, on someone else's telephone, and wants to check my security details?
- How do I know you are who you say you are? I don't want to give any information over the telephone to a stranger. Can you tell me what this is about?
- I am sorry madam, I am not permitted to discuss anything about the account with you without first clearing your security details.
(Things like the colour of my grandmother's eyes, and the check digits on the back of the card. Things that would be jolly useful to someone wanting to use my card.) This really isn't a good time to call. OH and I in the middle of trying to buy a car. She is insistent. She suggests I call their customer service department, and starts to dictate a number.
- Sorry, I don't know who you are. I will ring the number on the back of my card.
It's a joint account, that's why they rang on OH's telephone. It transpires that someone had been trying to use my card to buy goods online "in the Pacific area" and the credit card company wanted to check it wasn't me. No, it wasn't. (Where in the Pacific area, I'm dying to know. Anchorage? Honolulu? Shanghai?) My card is now cancelled, a new card is on its way and I must let them know if it doesn't arrive within ten days. Lucky I have another credit card, what with Christmas coming up and everything.
Honestly, I'm grateful that they checked, rather than just paying out and not telling me my credit limit was up until I tried to check out the latest bit of black goods for the offspring's pressie. But what is the mentality of these institutions? They are forever asking us to be vigilant against fraud, yet they act as if they didn't know what it was like to be a customer. Imagine that you'd just paid for a meal in a restaurant where there happened to be a dodgy employee. I know I know, but it does happen. The employee has your name and credit card number, he has the telephone number from the booking; all he needs now are the answers to the security questions to be able to exhaust your unasked-for credit limit.
15 November 2009
How to Write Badly Well
Joel Stickley makes me weep with laughter. Frex:
When writing radio drama, use dialogue to set the scene
Present your research in the form of dialogue
Always use a thesaurus
Joel is one of the poetry boyband Aisle 16.
When writing radio drama, use dialogue to set the scene
Present your research in the form of dialogue
Always use a thesaurus
Joel is one of the poetry boyband Aisle 16.
10 November 2009
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.
*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.
05 November 2009
The Workforce from Praga
Oh good, I thought, when this came up on Google alerts, a review at last. But "workforce"? Were they going to be accusing me of lucubrations?
So I wandered over and found myself in an alternative universe. As Gary Larson says of another malfunction entirely, the results are disquieting but inexplicably hilarious:
I love the way there is a different translation of "Men" each time, not all of them politically correct. I shall never again see the words "Albert Hall" without thinking of a humble corridor, and the neglected vaudeville entertainer, Albert Hallway. And when the going gets tough, I might well consider getting out mazed with Rebel Alien.
As for jamesmarshallko, the name behind this odd tribute, he seems to be a bot who has crawled over Peony Moon, extracted my poem and run it twice through a translation tool. In case there's any malware floating around, I'm not linking. It is hosted by livejournal, a place I normally associate with keen-eyed ficcers. I didn't click on any of the links over there, which probably take you to Canadian pharmacies or worse. I'm keeping this poem, though.
So I wandered over and found myself in an alternative universe. As Gary Larson says of another malfunction entirely, the results are disquieting but inexplicably hilarious:
Anne writes:I love "geezerhood"! I'm having that. I don't care really, so long as they've spelt my name correctly. And below that, they've printed the poem. They shouldn't really do that without permission, should they? I can tell it's my poem from the shape of it. But hang on, this isn't right. Not right at all:
"Besides as on recent 50p coins, Britannia employed to look on the old British pennies. The influence of society 's, and the province 's, demands on single individuality is something that holds upseted me for many geezerhood."
[That link above is a pukka link handcoded by me to take you directly to Salt.]
Britannia
Anne Berkeley
Careful not to bemire her delicacy Ferragamos,
the grand locomotes discreetly through the herbaceous borderline,
a bundle of cuttings in her bag:
a cardinal, the Queen 's gynecologist, a twelve QCs.
She holds come for the music, course,
but the ambience 's lovely, such elegant lampshades.
There is e'er some Authorities in the garden
where the sheep are maintained in their rightful spot
safely cropping beyond the haha.
There are twenty-two transactions before pall upwards.
The wind is cold, there Holds a whine of rainfall
but the outing must locomote along and be such merriment:
an unfastened window functions coloratura with rap de pate de foie gras.
Everyone holds a carpeting for their genus, and she reminds us
again of her dark at the Albert Hallway,
the swallowing blueness of a million delphiniums.
We can nighly believe in her cloak-pin and shield.
It Holds not what it was, she states: the coarse new edifice,
annually the way to the lily pond more overgrown -
a dialolog of green blackberries and birtwistle.
Hemlines are uprise; already comptrollers rinse au fait the lawn.
Even today, out mazed with Rebel Alien,
I hear her jubilant arpeggios over the waves,
the Broadwood 's V policing round the fiddles.
Britannica ' is printed in The Manpower from Praga
( Salt Publication, 2009 ).
Read more about Anne and The Hands from Praga
I love the way there is a different translation of "Men" each time, not all of them politically correct. I shall never again see the words "Albert Hall" without thinking of a humble corridor, and the neglected vaudeville entertainer, Albert Hallway. And when the going gets tough, I might well consider getting out mazed with Rebel Alien.
As for jamesmarshallko, the name behind this odd tribute, he seems to be a bot who has crawled over Peony Moon, extracted my poem and run it twice through a translation tool. In case there's any malware floating around, I'm not linking. It is hosted by livejournal, a place I normally associate with keen-eyed ficcers. I didn't click on any of the links over there, which probably take you to Canadian pharmacies or worse. I'm keeping this poem, though.
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.
01 October 2009
See How I Land
"Come, talk, laugh and break isolation"- Vahni Capildeo ("Filda's Workshop")
This book collects new writing arising from the Oxford Poets & Refugees project - an initiative of the Oxford Brookes Poetry Centre and the Oxford-based charity Asylum Welcome.
In See How I Land the intersection of arts and human rights is vividly demonstrated… It asks us to think again about what it is that we, as humans, value, what it is that we share, and what it is that we desire to protect and to celebrate: freedom, safety, family, and love.– Shami Chakrabarti
Asylum seekers and poets are both searching. Refugees are trying to find a haven for themselves and their families, writers a home for stories, dreams and ideas… When Oxford Brookes brings these two worlds together they give us ‘outsiders’ a place where all our words, and all our lives, are valued.– Benjamin Zephaniah
I'll be writing about it soon.
Misunderstood
I don't often do quizzes, but this one appealed.
Your recommended philosophy-guru is EPICURUS.
Key fact: Epicurus, founder of Epicureanism, is probably the most misunderstood philosopher of antiquity.
Must have: A delight in the countryside and gardens.
Key promise: Peace and tranquillity.
Key peril: Boredom.
Most likely to say: "The true hedonist can find as much pleasure in a glass of chilled water as in a feast for a king."
Least likely to say: "He who tires of the city, tires of life."
Via.
Ars longa, vita brevis
Petition for Roman Polanski
We have learned the astonishing news of Roman Polanski’s arrest by the Swiss police on September 26th, upon arrival in Zurich (Switzerland) while on his way to a film festival where he was due to receive an award for his career in filmmaking. He's a great film maker.
His arrest follows an American arrest warrant dating from 1978an awfully long time ago. Don't you think we can just let bygones be bygones?
against the filmmaker, in a case of morals.We don't judge other people by standards of bourgeois morality.
Filmmakers in France, in Europe, in the United States and around the world are dismayed by this decision. It seems inadmissible to them that an international cultural event, paying homage to one of the greatest contemporary filmmakers, is used by the police to apprehend him.He's a great film maker. We all think so. You can't go around arresting great guys like that. Film festivals are sacrosanct. This is tantamount to arresting a priest in church.
By their extraterritorial nature, film festivals the world over have always permitted works to be shown and for filmmakers to present them freely and safely, even when certain States opposed this.We claim diplomatic immunity for our event. Otherwise, what next? They will be arresting people for showing films that someone doesn't like. This is like McCarthysism.
The arrest of Roman Polanski in a neutral country,Switzerland was neutral in WWII, and is not a member of NATO or the EU and it's um we think it's probably therefore neutral in the enforcement of cases of morals
where he assumed he could travel without hindrance,He's been able to get away with it for so long he thought he could get away with it this time.
undermines this tradition: it opens the way for actions of which no one can know the effects.What next? They will be arresting people for showing films that someone doesn't like. This is like McCarthysism.
Roman Polanski is a French citizen, a renowned and international artist now facing extradition.He should be immune from your bourgeois American moral judgements.
This extradition, if it takes place, will be heavy in consequences and will take away his freedom.And he should be free, because he's a great film maker.
Filmmakers, actors, producers and technicians—everyone involved in international filmmaking — want him to know that he has their support and friendship.He is one of us. He is our friend.
On September 16th, 2009, Mr. Charles Rivkin, the US Ambassador to France, received French artists and intellectuals at the embassy. He presented to them the new Minister Counselor for Public Affairs at the embassy, Ms Judith Baroody. In perfect French she lauded the Franco-American friendship and recommended the development of cultural relations between our two countries.We appeal to all enlightened French-speaking people
If only in the name of this friendship between our two countries, we demand the immediate release of Roman Polanski.
* * *
If a friend of mine were threatened with jail I'd go to some lengths to help keep them out, and if they went to jail I'd go and visit. (Assuming they hadn't done something so gross I didn't want to stay friends.) I'm not going to boycott anyone for signing this petition. There are many people I like and admire who support it. I just think their arguments are woolly.
It's a long time ago.
OK, so you want a statute of limitations for rape. Some jurisdictions have that. No doubt some elderly clergymen wish they had the benefit of a statute of limitations. But you will have to make a better argument than this. He's hardly Jean Valjean is he.
Hollywood, rock stars, the golden days - everyone was messing around with kids back then.
There have been powerful people indulging their urges since time immoral, and society sometimes lets them get away with it. Then people start thinking you can get away with it if you're rich and influential enough. There is never a shortage of victims. There should have been a lot more prosecutions. Why should an auteur be treated differently from a priest, or someone who lives in a trailer?
Her mother knew all about it.
The victim was thirteen. I don't know what her mother has to do with it. (It's a pity she didn't stay around during the shoot.) The sexuality of children isn't - in western society at least - the property of their parents. How many times did that kid say No? I've lost count, but it was a lot.
The victim wants it dropped.
And some offences are so difficult or humiliating that the victim may not want to talk about them. But unless the offence is really trivial, the victim shouldn't have a say in the matter. Otherwise the perp would be able to intimidate the victim into dropping charges, or if they were rich enough, buy the victim off.
But he's Roman Polanski! He makes great films! What about Chaucer, Villon, Marlowe, Byron, Wilde, Eric Gill &c, &c?
Let's separate the man from his work.
And why focus on him when there are all these other guys running around evading prosection?
Because of the petition. People like me are sounding off because we don't think the petition should be unchallenged. We may speculate on why it's taken the US so long to catch him, and why now. They need to catch the other guys as well.
Feelings are running high. There's wild talk of witch hunts, of pitchforks and torches, of lynch mobs. This isn't Salem, it isn't McCarthyism, and it trivialises what the Ku Klux Klan did. It's not even as if Polanski can be claimed an innocent man. It's not totally unreasonable, is it, to call these celebs out on their assumption of entitlement to immunity?
[Edited to remove link to victim's testimony.]
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