Stanza 2008: What Andy Did

I jumped into the car first thing yesterday morning and zipped up the road to St Andrew's for my fix of StAnza 2008, listening to The Guardian CD of great 20th century poets on the way to get me in the mood. My first event was the masterclass in translation with Helmut Haberkamm and Fitzgerald Kusz, who both write in the Franconian dialect of German, and, from the Scottish side, Robert Alan Jamieson and Sandy Hutchison. I was irritated with myself that I hadn't managed to do or submit translations of any of the masterclass poems, but it was an extremely worthwhile event for the discussion of dialect writing and translation*. It also gave me the chance to catch up a wee bit with Donal McLaughlin, Jim McGonigal and Chloe Morrish. And I came away with some free back issues of the Berlin-based poetry and fiction periodical lauter niemand and it's English-language adjunct, no man's land.

After a somewhat hurried lunch, I was back in the Town Hall for the French-language translated poets reading. French isn't really one of my languages, but I've complained in the past about translated poets only being during the week when there isn't a hope of my getting to StAnza so, having missed the Frisian and Franconian poets' readings because I was unable to be there on the Saturday, I felt I ought to go to this one. It was a fascinating reading. Neither of the poets--Heather Dohollau and Soleïman Adel Guémar--was actually French. Heather Dohollau is Welsh but has made her home in Brittany and writes in French, translating her own work into English. Soleïman Adel Guémar is Algerian and writes in French but is now living in ... where else? ... Wales!

I have to confess that the exhaustion of the previous day's 1st birthday party was beginning to tell by that point and I didn't get as much out of the reading as I should have done. But I'd certainly look out for their work again. To combat the tiredness, I headed to the Byre for a cuppa before Wholly Communion, a film of a massive reading at the Royal Albert Hall in 1965. To judge by this, poetry--or at least the Beatier end of it--was so much part of the counter culture it could fill an establishment venue like that to the rafters in those heady days. It's a mad, mad film. Some of the camera work made me feel sea-sick (I'm serious; O for a steadycam!), some of the poetry was equally shaky (but some was still good) and some of the audience likewise. (Well, probably most of the audience and writers were under the influence of something. These days, you wouldn't even be able to smoke a cigarette in there, never mind what was probably in the majority of the roll-ups visible on screen.) Adrian Mitchell's "To Whom it May Concern" was one of the best bits of the film and here it is:

After the film, Rob Mackenzie and I had a coffee in the Byre before heading to the pamphlet fair. By the time we got there, it was really winding down, and there wasn't much doing. We browsed what there was and chatted with Jim Carruth and Tessa Ransford, the force behind so much of the promotion of poetry pamphlets in Scotland over the past number of years.

Back at the Byre, I bought myself a ticket for the 5:00pm performance by Belfast poet Gearóid MacLochlainn with guitarist Dave Burnett, on the recommendation of Donal McLaughlin. And I'm glad I did. His billing as a performance poet doesn't tell you the half of it. Readers of this blog will know I'm sceptical of the animal performance poetry, generally thinking the bulk of it is better less spotted and spouted, but MacLochlainn is the real deal. He writes in, across, over and under Irish and English. There's a very strong flavour of the elaborate soundscapes of the great canonical Gaelic poetry and song, such as Duncan Ban MacIntyre to use a notable Scottish example, but it's deeply contemporary in feel and content and--get this--he does it successfully in English too, perhaps not least because he brings this tradition into collision with elements of rap. I was, shall we say, hugely impressed and bought his CD, Rakish Paddy Blues II, my travelling companion on the way home.

The comparison with Duncan Ban is, by the way, not random: one of the pieces MacLochlainn performed was a poem in praise of an Irish travelling piper, Johnny Doran. MacLochlainn's poem emulates the rhythms of Irish "open" pipe music and then slips into those of "closed", dance music (hope I got those terms the right way round!). The distinction sounds not unlike that in Scotland between ceòl mòr (or piobaireachd) and ceòl beag and, of course, Duncan Ban's great poem "Moladh Beinn Dòbhrainn" ("In Praise of Ben Doran") is written in the form and rhythm of a piobaireachd.

Gerry Cambridge mentioned to me that Iain Crichton Smith had translated "Ben Doran" and that the version was in his Collected Poems. I hadn't realised that, despite having the book on my shelf. After a quick look this morning, I'm impressed with the degree to which Smith successfully renders the rhythm, meaning and some of the rhyme (he ignores some of it, presumably because it's just so elaborate it would be nigh on impossible to do in English). Julie Johnstone said she thought one of the films showing on the day's loop was partly about the poem, so I went up to have a look: she was right and, luckily for me, Moladh Da Bheinn (In Praise of Two Mountains) was the last one to show in the loop.

For me, the last event of the day was the Adrian Mitchell and James Fenton reading. Mitchell was a likeable chap with a very loose, relaxed style of presentation but, while I liked some of the poems, much of it did nothing or as near as for me. Probably the best was his slightly updated rendition of "To Whom It May Concern". However, I wish there were more poets as passionately pacifist as he is.

Fenton's work I don't really know at all, I must confess. However, from the extracts of his book on metrics that appeared in The Guardian a good few years back, I do know that he's quite conservative in many of his aesthetic views and that came across in the work he read. At times I found myself wondering whether Modernism had ever happened. That might well be an uncharitable, uninformed view, but it was my reaction. He read some beautiful, powerful, hugely accomplished and intriguing poems--and read them extremely well--but, but ... I don't know, something didn't quite engage me at the level and in the way I really wanted. One of the most interesting and powerful pieces he read was "Jerusalem", certainly worth hearing and reading.

Still, it was an extremely good day, full of good, interesting poetry and conversations with friends and strangers, many of whom I've not mentioned here. That's one of the things I love about StAnza. I overheard somebody say he preferred it to the Edinburgh Book Festival. I know what he means: even people you don't know talk to you, which doesn't happen so much in Charlotte Square. There's a sense of community and everyone seems glad to be part of that community.

*Of course, the term "dialect" is not one I'm comfortable applying to Scots as a whole, but the fact is that, because there is no standardised form of the language, everyone who writes in Scots writes in or out of a particular dialect of Scots, regardless of whether they confine their Scots vocabulary to that dialect.

A Footnote to "Les Troubadours de HappenStance"

"Things often move slowly in the poetry world!" said I. Do you think if we rechristened poetry "slow books" it might become as vaguely trendy as the slow food and cittaslow movements? But then even vague trendiness is probably not what poetry needs. Remember, it was once the new rock 'n' roll. Now, it's The Guardian's new selling point (for a week or so, at least)*.

*See the footnote to this excellent piece by Sean O'Brien.

And, despite my sarcastic tone, a genuine hooray for The Guardian's free booklets (except the Great Interviews series)!

Shore Poets February 2008: Photos

Mark Ogle's family and several Shore Poets past and present.

Alison playing.

The Mark Ogle Memorial Poem trophy.

Hamish Whyte, Jacob Polley and Diana Hendry relax.

Angus Peter Campbell receives the trophy from Lizzie and Deborah.

Angus Peter with Mark Ogle's family.

(These photos, with full tags, are also on the Shore Poets Facebook pages.)

Les Troubadours de HappenStance

News just in: there'll be a HappenStance Press reading at Coffee House Poetry at the Troubadour in London on 26th May. Several HappenStance poets will read, including Rob A Mackenzie, Eleanor Livingstone, Michael Mackmin (editor of The Rialto), Gregory Leadbetter, me and Helena Nelson (Mme HappenStance herself). I've been thinking about trying to read in London for a while, and rumours of something like this happening have been in the air since Siriol Troup passed Tonguefire on to Anne-Marie Fyfe a while back. (Things often move slowly in the poetry world!) I'm particularly looking forward to hearing HappenStancers I haven't heard before. Should be great fun. Now to work out the travel ...

Wading Through ... Or Not

On the train into Edinburgh for Polly Clark's reading the other night, I finally started to read Sean O'Brien's Forward and TS Eliot prize-winning collection The Drowned Book. Now, I might be missing something--I must be missing something, if the judges of both prizes aren't--but I simply couldn't get into it. It's not that it's what one might call difficult poetry, it's just that I found it ... well ... dull. Granted I've only read the first three or four poems, so maybe there's something more later in the book, but it would go against all the principles of constructing a collection to put your least interesting poems at the front.

Has anybody else read The Drowned Book? Do you find it dull? If you don't, I'm willing to be persuaded. I don't intend to abandon it quite yet, but there was little or nothing in those opening poems that would naturally draw me back, especially when I'm having fun reading Milton along with Rob Mackenzie, Jane Holland and others. If you're a Drowned Book fan, what is it about the poems that grabs you or draws you in?

Two by Two

Out last night to Polly Clark's reading at Edinburgh Uni's Office of Lifelong Learning, where she's the Royal Literary Funding writer in residence. Polly was reading along with three OLL students.

Debbie Cannon, who read at last month's Shore Poets, was the only poet of the three. She kicked off with a reduced version of her Shore Poets set, and I have to say I enjoyed hearing the poems again. Of course, hearing poems read isn't like reading them on the page and, if they're any good, they should bear being heard again, which they did. The pleasure changes, of course, from the surprise of discovery to the enjoyment of knowing what's coming--a deeper pleasure in a way.

I'm afraid I can't quite remember the other two readers' names: Sean Morris and Katie something, I think. Sean read an entertaining excerpt from a novel in progress about the "beast girl" (i.e., an animal keeper) in a circus. Katie read from a dark and absorbing mystery set in Victorian London. An interesting contrast to Debbie and Polly's sets.

Polly came after the break, reading from her two published collections--Kiss and Take Me With You--as well as from Farewell My Lovely, a collection to be published next year. Much, if not all, the published work she'd read at the Shore Poets in September but, again, that was no problem for me. The new work she read was mostly about marriage and motherhood, though Polly pointed out that the new book isn't solely about those themes. In the best tradition of contemporary poetry, it was not only celebration but exploration. In fact, it sounded a more interesting and therefore more enlightening approach to writing about motherhood than Kate Clanchy's Newborn, for instance, even if the latter book does contain a couple of beautiful poems.

After the reading, Polly, her husband Julian and I went for a drink before I caught the train back to Lithgae. We ended up in Centraal (where I've been only once before, I think; before a Bruce Cockburn gig at the Queen's Hall a couple or more years back) for one drink and a good, relaxed chat about babies, writing, my day job, vocabulary and where we were on Sept 11th 2001 and the day Diana died.

100 Favourite Scottish Football Poems

One of the questions that one always faces with an anthology is what is its rationale, its purpose and aim? Like its team mates 100 Favourite Scottish Poems and 100 Favourite Scottish Poems to Read Aloud, 100 Favourite Scottish Football Poems, edited by Alistair Findlay, hints at a kind of democratising of the canon in its title and cover design, which is reminiscent of the earlier edition of The Nation's Favourite Poems in typeface and layout. However, although the 20 of the 100 Favourite Scottish Poems (which, presumably, nobody would ever dream of reading aloud) were chosen through a Radio Scotland listener poll, the other 200 are, as far as I can tell, chosen by single editors.

So, if we don't have a popular poll, what do we have? One man's take on how poetry has addressed an endlessly popular subject, perhaps. Findlay instinctively sides with the crowd, which, he says is "really only another name for 'the people'." Perhaps it was an awareness of the disjunct between his role as sole arbiter of what's in and what's out and the requirements of his Marxism that led him to the rather odd decision to number not the pages but only the poems and state that they are "in an order of reading proposed by the editor", which is to state the obvious, really.

But what you really want to know about is the poems. Readers of this blog will know that I'm no football fanatic, though I confess I'm not entirely averse to watching the odd Aberdeen or Scotland game and have been known to kick a ball about. All of which makes me pretty reasonably well-placed to judge the book as an anthology of poems without becoming misty-eyed about the footballing aspect or writing it off in anti-football disgust.

If you're looking for a golden treasury, go to Palgrave. For my taste, there are a few too many paeans to great footballers and I find many of them dull poems. One notable exception in that genre is Matthew Fitt's wonderful "Jim Leighton", a poem that, certainly read aloud (as it is on The Jewel Box), would curely make the hardest footiephobe concede that there must be beauty and heroism in the game.

But don't just turn over to the black and white film on the other channel. There is a lot more to this book than the footballing hall of fame in verse. If it contains a good handful of poems that will interest only the enthusiast, it also contains at least as much that's well worth the general reader's attention. Football runs deep, deep in the Scottish psyche and male Scottish society, and the real strength of Findlay's anthology is that it presents us with a portrait of that deep place in a more profound and, certainly, more entertaining way than any academic study could.

Every aspect of football's appeal is here: the highs and lows, the tribalism and sectarianism, the communal experience and the shared memories, the inextricable link between the sport and Scottish tribal identities. The book shows how far back this goes: the earliest poem is a quatrain from 1580, and one of the most pleasurable discoveries for me--there were plenty, I assure you--was the exerpt from "The Christmass Bawing of Monimusk, 1739", proof that the divines of Scotland have never been Calvinist dourness through and through.

Sectarianism, is of course, unavoidable. Findlay does an admirable job in this regard. "The Fields of Athenry" and "The Sash My Father Wore" sit side by side in the book--could you do otherwise?--and there's plenty sharp, funny and poignant commentary on the sectarian question from several of the poets. Dennis O'Donnell captures so much of the ambivalence, threat and fear in his "Fid. Def." (another poem that stood out for me), while Robert Crawford's "Identity League" sums up the nation's carnaptious obsessions with typical Crawfordian wit and invention.

It's interesting that, although the book includes a good deal by many of our leading poets, it's often far from their best work and that many of the most interesting and effective poems in Findlay's choice are not those by the biggest names. Perhaps there's something in football that raises the game of the lesser writers and maybe the bulk of the greats, MacDiarmid not least, have missed what's most poetic about it. There are also a few odd choices in Findlays list, poems that are shoehorned into either the rubric of "Scottish" or "football", but he does a good job of defending them in his spiky introduction.

Despite this, depsite its slight uncertainties about canon building and democracy, and despite overdoing the eulogies from a general reader's point of view, this book is a lively, entertaining and emotionally informative anthology of poetry. If you want to understand Scotland today, you need to read this kind of stuff, not just the academic and semi-academic analyses of where we are and how we got here. Findlay has done us a service in collecting it between these covers.

"OF MAN'S first disobedience ..."

Perhaps I was too harsh on Rob Mackenzie's schedule for reading Paradise Lost: I made it to the same point as him yesterday. Rob is doing a good job of summarising the poem and there are already a few interesting comments on his first post, so I won't repeat what's already on Surroundings. I have to say, I am enjoying it. Milton writes some truly great blank verse. There are so many justly famous lines and dazzling passages in those first 330 lines. So, many thanks to Rob for the spur to read the poem.

Reasoning Rhyme: Lightness that Drew Me: Rhyme in Gaelic

One question that arises for the new terminology is whether it can cover rhyme practice in languages other than English adequately. It ought to be able to, as it's based on phonetic/phonemic correspondence rather than any single tradition of what does or doesn't constitute a rhyme. In this post, I start to test it out against Scottish Gaelic rhyme practice.

In Gaelic poetry, rhyme is traditionally considered to focus on vowel sounds, with no reference to the coda consonants of the rhyme syllables. Because stress is on the first syllable of a word in Gaelic, the rhyme vowel in end rhyme often falls on the penultimate syllable of the line. However, this isn't feminine rhyme, as the final syllable doesn't participate in the rhyme correspondence. Final-syllable rhymes are nonetheless perfectly possible (there are plenty monosyllables in the language), and it's also common to find internal rhyme, in which a vowel sound rhymes with a stressed vowel at a given point in a preceding or following line. It's also worth noting that vowels do not necesarily have to be identical, but closely related: /e/ and /E/ can rhyme, for example.

Meg Bateman's beautiful short poem "Aotramachd" neatly demonstrates the rhyme on the penultimate vowel sounds:

Aotramachd
B’ e d’aotromachd a rinn mo thàladh,
aotromachd do chainnte ’s do ghàire,
aotromachd do lethchinn nam làmhan,
d’aotrmachd lurach ùr mhàlda:
agus ’s e aotromachd do phòige
a tha a’ cur trasg air mo bheòil-sa,
is ’s e aotromachd do ghlaic mum chuairt-sa
a leigeas seachad leis an t-sruth mi.

Lightness
It was your lightness that drew me,
the lightness of your talk and your laughter,
the lightness of your cheek in my hands,
your sweet gentle modest lightness:
and it is the lightness of your kiss
that is starving my mouth,
and the lightness of your embrace
that will let me go adrift.

There's so much going on in this densely wrought lyric, with its rich mix of semantic, grammatical and phonological parallelism, but the feature I want to focus on is the end rhyme scheme. According to the Gaelic criteria outlined above, the poem rhymes AAAABBCC. The A rhyme is on à (thàladh:ghàire:làmhan:mhàlda), the B on ò (phòige:bheòil-sa) and the C on u (chuairt-sa:t-sruth mi). The first four lines--those that rhyme on à--are concerned with what drew the speaker to the object of her desire; they unpack the attractive lightness of the first line. In the subsequent four lines, as the lightness repels instead of attracts and the lovers drift apart, the rhyme scheme changes and fractures into two couplets.

It will not have escaped the astute reader's notice that the scheme of "Aotramachd" is more or less nuclear rhyme. In fact, analysed in these terms, we can break it down further into a clear A1A1A2A2BBCC structure. Before we do that, a quick note on Gaelic phonology is necessary.

Gaelic understanding recognises two classes of vowels and consonants: the broad and the slender. Slender vowels are i and e in the orthography, which represent the high front vowels /i/, /e/ and /E/; the rest are broad vowels. The slender vowels are sounds that, across languages, cause palatalisation of consonants*. And that's what the slender consonants are: palatalised versions of the basic, broad consonants (except that, in some dialects, the /rj/** is pronounced as a [T] or [D]). This means that what might be a secondary articulation for a consonant English is a significant difference in Gaelic, significant enough to create a separate class. I'm sure I needn't point out the importance of that for the possibilities in rhyme.

The A1 rhyme thàladh:ghàire transcribes roughly as /hAl6G:GArj@/. The rhyming vowels are identical. In the codas***, we have /l/ and /r/, which linguists class together under the term liquids. The correspondence of /h/ and the voiced velar fricative /G/ is less obvious but, if we take into account the morphophonemics--the interface of grammar and phonology--we get a clearer relationship. In their unmodified form, the rhyme fellows are tàladh and gàire, so their first sounds are /t/ and /g/ respectively: two non-nasal stops. However, because they follow the possessive adjectives mo (my) and do (the singular and familiar form of your) in the poem, they are lenited. That is to say, the stops weaken to fricatives. In the change from the velar stop /g/ to the velar fricative /G/, the place of articulation stays the same. However, in Gaelic, the voiceless coronal stop /t/ always lenites to the voiceless glottal fricative /h/. Not a close correspondence phonetically or even necessarily phonemically, but a clear morphophonemic correspondence.

I don't even need to transcribe the A2 rhyme for it to be obvious that it's a texbook example of segmental swapping: làmhan:mhàlda. However, perhaps a comment on dialect is appropriate here. In all dialects of Gaelic, the grapheme mh represents /v/ when it occurs at the beginning of a word. The word-medial mh in làmhan would be realised as /v/ in some dialects but, in others, it would be a /w/. Happily for my analysis, a recording of Meg Bateman reading the poem is on hand in The Jewel Box: it reveals her pronunciation to be /lAv@n/. Even if it was a /w/, it would still share the labial place of articulation with /v/, so it would be a case of featural swapping rather than segmental.

The B rhyme, phòige:bheòil-sa, transcribes as /fO:kj@:vjO:ljsa/. As is clear from the orthography and transcription, the place and manner features of the onsets are identical; the only major difference is in voicing. The codas might seem less closely related, but the /kj/ is a palatalised velar stop, which brings the blade of the tongue into a position much closer to that for /lj/ than in an unpalatalised /k/ so, in Gaelic terms, both codas are slender consonants. Interestingly, in the second rhyme fellow, the onset consonant /vj/ is palatalised. There's a lot going on in this apparently simple rhyme.

Finally, there's the C rhyme, chuairt-sa:t-sruth mi. It transcribes as /xuartjsa:tru:#mi/. Again, there's some segmental swapping going on here, with a /rtj/coda becoming a /tr/ onset. The second rhyme fellow has an empty coda. We could borrow the /m/ from mi, which would involve the sonority and the stop features of the /m/ breaking into the /r/ (sonority) and /t/ (stop) from the coda in chuairt.

There's much much more I could say about the poem, but this analysis indicates two things: that rhyme in Gaelic can, in fact, go beyond the vowel and that the new terminology is well placed to describe a non-English rhyme tradition. I might, in future posts, test it against older Gaelic poetry, but this will do for starters!

*Note that the presence of a vowel in the spelling doesn't necessarily mean it's pronounced. Like English, Gaelic has plenty of digraphs (two-letter symbols that represent one sound). However, the orthography often indicates historical pronunciation and the presence of slender vowels around a consonant always means that that consonant is slender.

**I use the /j/to indicate palatisation. Hence, /rj/ is a palatalised form of /r/.

***In these words and several others in the poem, what I'm treating as codas would probably be better described as the onsets of the second syllable. Therefore, as there are clear relationships, we can say that they are borrowed from the second syllables, which doesn't really participate in the rhyme scheme, as is shown by the varying vowel sounds and the variation between syllables with and without codas.

PaLoReaMo?

Rob Mackenzie has thrown down a gauntlet: to read Paradise Lost with him this month. "Paradise Lost in a month?" I hear you ask, as you fall off your chair in disbelief. It seems so. I will be joining him, although I guarantee I'll fall behind his exacting and somewhat artificial schedule, which apparently works out at about 300 lines a day! There's an online study guide here, although I haven't the faintest whether it's any good.

Much more manageable is the latest incarnation of Rob's manuscript collection, which I read a couple of weeks ago. There are some really cracking poems in it, I have to say, and it's certainly a stronger book than when I last saw it. I enjoyed reading it so much I could hardly put it down. He just gets better and better, so somebody should snap him up. (Any publishers listening?)

Three-Michelin-Star Tele

I've only ever got hooked on two--ahem--reality TV shows: Musicality and Masterchef. Both, of course, are basically talent shows with a reality TV element injected into them. (Perhaps we could call them soft reality TV rather than the hard reality [sic] TV of, say, Big Brother. Who I'm not watching. Ever. Sorry.) Both also lack the glitz, pizzazz and superhype of other talent shows such as The Zzzzz Factor, Any Idea Will Do or How Do You Solve a Problem Like the Ratings?. Instead of hype, the focus in the two Ms is/was on unadorned talent, hard work and, in the case of Masterchef certainly, sheer creativity.

Another crucial element both programmes--certainly in the latter stages of the competitions--is the narrative arc of the contestants' development. The lack of glamour and the narrative focus together give the impression of following a real personal emotional and experiential journey, as opposed to observing the manufacture of another identical pop unit for market consumption. That even goes for Musicality, where the ultimate prize was to perform in a West End show. That narrative arc is what hooked me. That and, in the case of Masterchef, the madcap, prodigious brilliance and innovation of Emily's dishes.

Another thing: in one sense, Masterchef shouldn't work. The crux and climax of a programme is the contestants' cooking, which only the judges are able to assess. The viewer can assess presentation, of course, but not flavour, seasoning, consistency or texture. That's the opposite of Musicality or the phone-in voting contests, where everyone has seen and heard the contestants' performances and everyone has an opinion on them.

But perhaps that's the genius of Masterchef as reality TV: it forces the viewer to imaginge what the dishes must taste like. In the other shows, the viewer's imagination is uncalled-for. In fact, it's cancelled out, particularly by the higher-budget, glitz and glamour end of the genre. Masterchef therefore has soul in a way that not even Musicality, for all its emotional journey, could manage. Perhaps that's why I finished watching the grand final last night and felt that drive to write returning with fresh vigour.

Whaur Extremes Meet?

I know this is a bit behind the times, but there's an interesting post on "official verse culture" over at Eyewear, on the back of the result of the TS Eliot Prize. One wonders whether Edwin Morgan--one of those whom Todd Swift and other bloggers (well, Rob Mackenzie at least) hoped would win those laurels--didn't get the prize partly because he's always sat slightly athwart that culture. I've said this kind of thing before, but it seems to me that ability to straddle the mainstream and experimental is something that Scottish poets are particularly good at. I have no idea whether the proportion of poets from Scotland to whom that applies is any greater than that among the ranks of our English and other Anglophone brother and sister poets but, if it isn't, we certainly seem more readily able to recognise and celebrate them. Perhaps it's a function of size: oh, we can be a gey carnaptious lot, but sometimes we just stick together.

The Oscars? Who Needs the Oscars?!

It was a packed house and a night of surprises. A night to remember, even if it wasn't a night of tears. No, I'm not talking about that minor award ceremony in Holywood. I mean the Shore Poets reading last night. The crowds turned out--well, the Mai Thai was crowded--to hear Jacob Polley, Debbie Cannon and Diana Hendry and for the first Mark Ogle Memorial Poem, from Angus Peter Campbell. It was lovely to have a strong contingent from Mark's family there--his widow and daughter with their partners and his twin sisters--as well as several of Mark's old friends.

Angus Peter may have missed out on the Oscars and we may not have been able to compete with Tinseltown on glitz, red carpets and sartorial swish, but the lack was made up in depth and quality of speech. It was one of those nights when everything fitted together as neatly as if it had all been planned in detail. Debbie Cannon kicked off with a good set well read. For me, her first poem--a strong sonnet about seeing her mother's face in the mirror--had the most impact. (You can read it here. The closing couplet is what makes the poem stand out.) It set the theme for most of her set and, in a way, most of the evening.

Diana Hendry continued the family theme all through her set of typically sharp, witty poems form her forthcoming new collection. Jacob Polley started off in family vein with "Smoke" from his first collection, The Brink, but, with poems from his latest book, soon introduced the second theme of the evening: rain. There were smiles among those of us who knew exactly what was following his set. Diana and Jacob share another link: friendship with the late William Scammell. Diana read a poem for Scammell, while Jacob read one of Scammell's poems.

The reading culminated in the Mark Ogle Memorial Poem. It's a new feature of Shore Poets life but a celebration of one of the group's earliest members. In fact, as founder-member Brian Johnstone said, it was Mark joining him and Morelle Smith that made Shore Poets a group as such. And my! Haven't we grown! Brian's tribute to Mark set the tone of celebration. Mark's widow, Deborah Nelken (who bakes the famous Shore Poets lemon cake) spoke about how much the inauguration of the memorial poem means to Mark's family and his daughter Lizzie presented Angus Peter with the trophy that comes with the commission. It's a beautiful, simple carving of a boat, representing Mark's family connection with the sea and his conviction that life is a journey. Into the top is carved a line of Mark's: "a secret ballast/ steadied your spirit".

Angus Peter then read. He had been asked to respond to a poem of Mark's--"English Rain", which you can read here (third poem down)--and had written three poems, one in English as a direct response and two in Gaelic as slightly more oblique responses. He read the latter two first, before reading Mark's poem and his direct response,"Our Rain", beautifully and movingly. I'll post a link to "Our Rain" once it's been published on the Shore Poets website.

Music for the evening was provided by our very own Alison Reeves on the fiddle. Alison played three sets of three tunes, a lively mix of Irish and Scottish music. She wrapped up the evening by bringing us full circle to family with tunes she'd written for her parents' 50th birthdays. A suitably celebratory note to round off a night of magical connections.

Mark Ogle Memorial Poem

Besides the usual fine fare at Shore Poets this Sunday, with Jacob Polley, Diana Hendry and Debbie Cannon, there'll be something extra special: acclaimed Gaelic poet and novelist Angus Peter Campbell will launch the Mark Ogle Memorial Poem.

Angus Peter will read Mark Ogle’s poem “English Rain” and “Our Rain”, the poem he has written as a response.

Mark Ogle (1948–1999) was one of the earliest members of Shore Poets and one of the first to read at the group’s original venue, the Shore Gallery in Leith. A poet of great depth and sensitivity, his reading so impressed the founders that they invited him to become the third Shore Poet.

Always closely involved in the running of the group, Mark played a considerable part in organising the appearances of Norman MacCaig and Edwin Morgan at the 369 Gallery. Mark continued this level of involvement even once the group had been expanded and gave many memorable readings at all Shore Poets venues.

It was with particular sadness that group members heard of his final illness and subsequent death, at the early age of 50, in February 1999. A Memory of Fields—a selection of his poems edited by Brian Johnstone and Hugh Dailly of Shore Poets, in consultation with Mark’s wife Deborah Nelken, with an introduction by Stewart Conn—was published by Akros in 2000.

In 2007, Mark's family and Shore Poets decided to commission a poem annually as a memorial to him. The commission is offered to the poet among the previous year’s Shore Poets readers whom we feel is most in tune with Mark’s sensibilities.

The poet is asked to respond to a poem of Mark’s, chosen by his family, and receives a fee of £500, plus a year’s possession of the Mark Ogle Memorial Poem trophy. The fee and trophy are presented and the poems read at the Shore Poets event in February, the month in which Mark died.

A Note on Joy and Sorrow

"The joy of the Lord is your strength." (Nehemiah 8:10)

It's a verse often used in certain quarters, under the rubric of encouragement, to bludgeon the hurting for a failure to demonstrate happiness in pain. No thought given to the harm this misapplication does or what it implies, namely that God is not to be found in the pit. Not only is this scriptural illiteracy ("De profundis", anyone?), but it seems to me tantamount to a denial of the incarnation.

No thought is given either to what "the joy of the Lord" might be beyond grinning through grief. But we have here a possessive--"the joy of the Lord"--therefore, it's God's joy, not the believer's joy in him, that is the source of strength. What is God's joy? Perhaps it is the ceaseless adoration of each person of the Trinity by the others, the joy that Rowan Williams explores in relation to Rublev's icon of the hospitality of Abraham, also known as the Old Testament Trinity. We glimpse it at Jesus's baptism and again at the transfiguration in the voice of the Father coming out of the cloud. God's joy breaking through into a broken and fallen world, a world of sorrow and grief. Joy in the Man of Sorrows. That joy is in the background of Jesus howl from the Cross, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?", perhaps (depending on how you view it) the only time when this ceaseless adoration was interrupted.

This is not, is never, a joy that ignores, denies or glosses over suffering. It is a joy that enters pain and grief, comes alongside it and redeems it because the suffering of the Man of Sorrows, the Son of Joy, is eternally part of the life of the Trinity. ("Those wounds, yet visible above ... .") Holding joy in one hand and and grief in the other, this is the life the Body of Christ is meant to model to its members and to the rest of the world. Which is why lament and worship should always be found under the one spire.

Great Grog in the Future

Rob Mackenzie has posted a list of forthcoming readings at the Great Grog. It's an interesting and exciting line-up. I'm slated to reappear in February next year, along with the always-entertaining Tim Turnbull, Andrew Shields (who I'm looking forward to meeting) and AN Other. Before that, the only reading in the diary is the April Shore Poets slot. But if anyone reading this would like to book me ...

The Great Grog: Where were you all?

If you're one of those people who thought about going to the reading at the Great Grog last night but decided to stay in and watch, oh I don't know, the Antiques Roadshow, kick yourself. No: harder. Colin Will and Rob Mackenzie have already blogged on the night, so I won't go on at length, but I can't help adding my enthusiasm. It was an excellent reading, even though the audience was meagre. If Rob keeps up this standard of event (and I see no reason to doubt he will), the Great Grog will establish itself as one of the places to read and be read to in Scotland.

It's invidious to single anyone out on such an evening, but it was particularly good to hear and meet Cheryl Follon. She was a Scottish Poetry Library new voice at the same time as me but our paths had never actually crossed because I missed her reading at the Shore Poets a couple of years back. She's a tremendous reader--strong, feisty, dramatic but not overly performancy--and a fun, energetic individual.

I bought Cheryl's book All Your Talk and Alexander Hutchinson's Scales Dog. Given that I'm on a tight budget, that says something. Sandy is one of those Scottish poets who, like the late Gael Turnbull, can step from something experimental into something deftly formal with delightful ease. Plus he sings.

The Scottish Book Trust has remodelled its entire website, including its online writers register. My page in the register is here. There are a few links to be inserted here and there, but overall the site looks pretty good. The register entries give a lot more information than previously. That makes them considerably more work for us writers, but I'm hoping its worth it in the long run.

Critical Massif

ReadySteadyBook reports that Geoffrey Hill's Collected Critical Writings is due out from OUP in March. I wouldn't expect an easy read, of course, but perhaps his criticism might elucidate his poetic to some extent. Not having read any of it, I wouldn't know, but it should be worth a look. Several of the essay titles intrigue me, anyway. The book will cost £25, which seems quite reasonable for a 688-page hardback collection of 34 essays.

The Secret is Out

Interesting to hear Tom Paulin talking so much about the sound texture of poems on yesterday's edition of The Verb. Worth listening to while you still can (seven days). It's a trailer for his new book, The Secret Life of Poems, which Faber describes as

a primer which offers [47 poems] - or on occasion an excerpt - with succeeding commentary in which rhythm, form, metre and sources are the order of the day, not ethical commentary or descriptive paraphrase.

Sounds interesting. The Guardian Review carried what I assume is a sample from the book in December (an essay on Keats's "Ode to Autumn"). I didn't get round to reading it, but I should. This, of course, connects closely to my own reflections on rhyme (Note to new readers: start at the bottom).

Reasoning Rhyme: Tiel Aisha Ansari's Objections 2

I closed my first post on Tiel Aisha Ansari's criticism of my new rhyme terminology by saying that the mention of structure brought me to her most fundamental objection. She is bothered that my nomenclature

risks broadening the definition of "rhyme" to the point where it loses all usefulness.

This comment grows out of her adherence to the terms assonance and consonance, discussed in the previous post in this series. She says she is "not entirely prepared to agree" with my "assertion" that "these relationships are in fact rhymes".

To a certain extent, the assertion is not mine, at least not originally. It belongs primarily to those poets who have used and who use relative rhymes of any kind in their rhyme schemes. The examples I give are drawn from poems, a fact that Ansari overlooks at certain points. For example, when she calls sang:work "another Philips [sic] example", she neglects to state that it comes from Wordsworth's "The Solitary Reaper" and, instead of engaging with the relationship that I sketch in the relevant post, simply says:

If there's a relationship there, I'm not hearing it.

That's why it's a remote rhyme. There's no identity, but there is a relationship between the corresponding segments in the fellows, even if the /w/:/s/ relationship is fairly distant. But, perhaps most importantly, they're clearly in a position in which, given the rest of the poem, one would expect a rhyme. They're the a rhymes in the last stanza. Interestingly, the a fellows in the first stanza constitute a removed rhyme; in two middle stanzas, they are fraternal rhymes, as in all the other rhymes throughout the poem. Wordsworth's use is therefore clearly structural: there's a signal of opening and closing.

It strikes me that what Ansari misses in her insistence on maintaining a purity of twin rhyme is this structural nature. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory states:

Rhyme has two main functions: (a) it echoes sounds and is thus a source of aesthetic satisfaction. ... (b) Rhyme assists in the actual structure of verse ..., simultaneously opening up and concluding the sense.

The sang:work rhyme fulfils both these functions: it echoes sounds, though more weakly than most rhymes in the poem by echoing features rather than segments; through that weakened relationship, it performs a structural function.

But I can still see why Ansari might be reluctant to admit that as a rhyme. And she would probably respond by referring me to the following comment from her post:

these poems [Armitage's "Kid" and "Poem"] present an overall impression of rhyme, though any particular perceived rhyme may silverfish away when you grab for it.

Well, to my mind, if it patterns like a rhyme and functions as a rhyme, it's a rhyme. To an extent, I can appreciate her reticence about the Armitage pieces and my attempt to parse them (though less so for "Poem" because of obvious structural features that clearly invoke the sonnet), but I don't accept it.

What would Ansari say about poets intermingling twin and relative rhymes? Are those not rhyme schemes? If they are rhyme schemes, how are the relative rhymes not rhymes? And what does she think about Wilfred Owen? I note that she avoids all reference to him, although I devote most of a post to his rhyme practice. I simply can't see how she can say that his peripheral rhyme schemes aren't rhyme schemes.

Moreover, traditional terms such as half rhyme, which The Penguin Dictionary defines as:

The repetition in accented syllables of the final consonant sound but without the correspondence of the vowel sound. ... a form of consonance",*

demonstrate that I'm not the first to recognise the way these patterns have been used and theorise about such relationships as rhymes. It might not please Ansari to hear that the dictionary's entry for "head rhyme" is "See ALLITERATION."

That brings us back to the aim of my terminology: a coherent, comprehensive nomenclature that is based on and points up the different degrees of featural relationship. Ansari is free to use as much or as little of it as she finds useful. In fact, she's most welcome to do so and I'd be delighted if she adopted any of it! However, I hope I've made her reconsider her objections. I've certainly enjoyed the debate so far!

I'll tie up this defenceI by clearing up a couple of smaller misunderstandings. In discussing a rhyme from "Kid", Ansari says that her terminology and mine both

make no reference to the fact that the unstressed syllables correspond, which actually is to my ear the defining feature of the Armitage poem in question.

I agree with the defining-feature-of-the-poem bit, but she's wrong about the terminology: longer:larder is a compound removed:identical rhyme. Compound rhymes are discussed here.

Also, Ansari says of strong:stink:

Note that it's not a remote rhyme because there's no relationship between the nuclei. I think.

For her benefit, I'll repeat the definition of remote rhyme from the post on the basic terminology:

there is no identity, but all segments in the syllable exhibit some relationship to their partners in the other fellow.

Therefore, strong:stink can't be a remote rhyme because there are two identitical segments in the onsets (st and st), even if there is an additional segment in one fellow. Hope that's helpful.

*In other words, removed rhyme, if we're not talking about identical onsets, which the definition simply ignores, even though there is onset identity in peer:pare, one of the rhymes in the Emily Dickinson stanzas given as an example (the first two of this poem), which, of course, makes it a peripheral rhyme.

Latest Publications

I'm a little behind time with this, having had little energy for blogging in the tail end of the old year, but I thought I'd highlight my two latest magazine scalps. I've a poem apiece in issue 63 of The Rialto and issue 25 of that beautifully produced Irish magazine, The SHOp, whose founding editor was one of The Rialto's original editors. I'm in good company in both issues. Notably, The SHOp features new poems by Seamus Heaney and Medbh McGuckian, as well as fellow HappenStance poet Gill McEvoy and Devon poet Mim Darlington, whom I met at Lumb Bank last year.

Speaking of Lumb Bank, there are two other people from that course on PoetCasting now in addition to me and Mim, namely Michael Farry and my Arvon room mate David Foster-Morgan, both worth hearing.

Reasoning Rhyme: Tiel Aisha Ansari's Objections 1

It's good to see Tiel Aisha Ansari's critique of my Reasoning Rhyme posts on her Knocking From Inside blog. This is the first time anybody has taken me to task on any elements of my rhyme terminology and analysis, and it's envigorating.

Ansari says there is a lot she likes about my terminology. However, she's a bit less keen on certain aspects. For example, she states:

I don't quite see why the traditional terms assonance and consonance should be discarded in favor of nuclear rhyme and peripheral rhyme.

It's a fair question, and hope I can persuade her or at least clarify my rationale. Part of it is that I'm aiming for a reasonably consistent, coherent, detailed, comprehensive nomenclature and taxonomy, based on phonetic/phonological correspondences. The rationale for the attempt at consistence is partly to begin to move away from the confused array of terms in traditional usage. Most traditional rhyme terminology is based on aesthetic judgements or is impressionistic. Assonance and consonance don't suffer from that fault, but neither do they fit into the schema of kinship vocabulary that I've used. And my use of that vocabulary is not arbitrary: as I think Ansari understands, I'm trying to illustrate through my choice of words the underlying linguistic connections between the different forms of rhyme.

There is a further reason for not using the term assonance in particular. As I stated when I introduced my basic nomencalture, the definition of assonance makes no reference to the onsets and codas in rhyme fellows. By contrast, nuclear rhyme refers to a rhyme with identical nucleii but onsets and codas that are related, not identical. Therefore, it does not mean quite the same as assonance, although it focuses clearly and transparently on the identity that is highlighted in the definition of assonance.

That objection is understandable, but I find Ansari's comments on alliteration somewhat curious:

Philips [sic] points out that the onset, the consonant or consonant cluster before the vowel of the stressed syllable, is irrelevant to traditional rhyme but becomes important when considering consonance of the onset or coda. What he overlooks is that there is already a traditional term for consonance of the onset: it's called alliteration, defined as the identity of the first sounds preceding the vowels in the syllables carrying the primary stresses of two words. I would like to have seen Philips [sic] develop his terminology to cover alliteration by analogy, rather than redefining it as a form of rhyme.

I haven't redefined alliteration at all; I simply don't think it's the right term to use in the context of rhyme. Ansari is, of course, wholly correct that it's an accepted term for onset identity. However, alliteration goes no further than the onset; rhyme necessarily includes some reference to the other constituent parts of the syllable in each fellow. As far as alliteration is concerned, the rest of the word can do what it likes; for there to be rhyme, there must be some other correspondence, even if non-identical, in nucleus and/or coda. I wonder, for example, would Ansari say that Wilfred Owen's rhyme is alliterative? That would surely be a less than satisfactory description, given how strongly coda identity features in Owen's distinctive rhyme practice.

Besides, alliteration doesn't cover non-identical but related onsets*, which my terminology does. And not all rhyme fellows are lexically stressed syllables. If we follow the definition Ansari uses, an unstressed fellow cannot be said to alliterate, even if its onset is identical to that of the other rhyme fellow. That might be a problem with the definition as much as anything else, but that's what she gave us to work with.

Alliteration is therefore an inadequate term to use when considering rhyme, but it is extremely useful when examining the overall sound structure--the broader consonantal and vocalic music--of a line, stanza or complete poem. It might even be a primary structural device, as in alliterative meter, but that wouldn't make it rhyme and I don't really understand why Ansari believes that I think it would. This isn't in Ansari's definition, but alliteration tends to work within a line, even in alliterative meter. It can work across lines, but that's not the general trend. By contrast, the default for rhyme is to work across lines, although internal rhyme is hardly unheard-of. So there's a further structural reason for not using the term alliteration.

That mention of structure brings me to Ansari's most fundamental objection. However, rather than extend this post, I'll hold my discussion of that over for a separate one.

*Although I'd say that features can alliterate just as well as segments and that any full account of a line's music should take that fact into account.

Twister!

Peter Piper's pop-up blocker blocks a pack of pretty blatant pop-ups.

Grief and Humanity, Pain and the Self

I don't know where Simon Barrow came across this quotation on grief from Rowan Williams, but it's worth reproducing here:

"[G]rief and desperate loneliness aren’t political things but human things. It’s only when we can get to the humanity can we begin to get beyond the sterility of historic racial and religious conflicts. Facing the abiding realities of the human condition, facing death; your own, or that of someone you love, is something that puts everything else into perspective. Change, real change, happens when we’re ready just to be human – not to use our suffering as another weapon against each other, not to argue about whose sufferings are worse, but just to recognise the same love and the same loss."

[Update: I've just discovered it's from Williams's Christmas Eve "Thought for the Day", which you can read in full here.]

And let me add to it this, which I read today, from his Lost Icons:

Authentic religious ... practice begins in the attempt to attend to the moment of self-questioning -- to refuse to cover over, evade or explain the pain and shock of whatever brings the self into question, to hold on to the difficulty before the almost inevitable descent into pathos and personal drama begins.

(((( comfort ))))

Last year, I exhibited three poems at an exhibition at the offices of our church here in Linlithgow, organised by my wife. This year, the exhibition has moved to the bigger space of the church building, expanding its range of media--already wide last year--and the reach of its contributors to include several people from outside the congregation. The blank space space of the sanctuary has been transformed by a batik installation that manages the tricky balance of bringing a strong central focus to the room without distracting from the pieces exhibited around it.

This year's theme is, as the title makes clear, comfort. The image in the flyer above shows one of the exhibits: "A Holding Place", by our friend Raine Clarke, who has worked on some Essence Press publications. It's pure Raine: beautifully delicate, seemingly simple and unassuming yet full of emotional and spiritual depth.

Instead of a poem, my piece for the exhibition is a certain book wrapped in a blue blanket on which are written phrases from the book. One phrase--"I will not look away"--is visible on the outside, but viewers have to unfold the blanket to read the others. In other words, they are actively invited to engage with the piece physically as well as visually and to discover the comfort inside.

(((( comfort )))) is open 12-2pm and 7-9pm daily today until Friday and 10am - 4pm on Saturday (15th). Admission is free, refreshments are provided and children are welcome.

A Buyer Who Cares?

On a brief visit to Waterstones at the West End of Edinburgh's Princes Street yesterday, I was very pleasantly surprised to see quite an interesting poetry section. Instead of being populated by the usual suspects with one or two token others thrown in, it included a few American imports and a healthy selection of small press publications--among them a good handful of books from Salt--while even the Mighty Handful were represented by an encouraging range of authors. The shelf space is still not vast, but I came away with the impression that somebody who actually cares about poetry must be buying for that shop. I had a £10 Waterstones voucher in my pocket, and I had real trouble deciding how to dispose of it. In the end, I left with Richard Price's latest collection Greenfields.

Skating on Poetry Loch

One of the things I love about Shore Poets is that the format of our events often produces rich and varied evenings of music and poetry. October's reading with James W Wood, Christine De Luca and the wonderful, quietly intense Gillian Allnutt was no exception (the only problem being that Allnutt's quiet reading voice didn't carry well in the Mai Thai acoustic).

The reading this Sunday just gone was another case in point, with Rachael Boast, Nancy Somerville and David Kinloch, plus music from Ben Young. I'd met Rachael Boast before, but didn't know her work, so it was a pleasure to encounter such accomplished writing at Shore Poets in the newcomer slot.

David Kinloch's set consisted entirely of new poems, displaying all his typical richness and imaginative verve. He's working on a sequence of poems about Scottish painters, from which he read, closing with a poem that entertainingly imagines a painterly wager as the source of the recent controversy over whether Raeburn really did paint The Rev. Robert Walker Skating on Duddingston Loch.

David is one of the driving forces behind the Glasgow Poetry Society, otherwise known as Vital Synz, which enjoyed a hugely successful launch early this month (I wasn't able to be there, unfortunately). There's an interesting programme of events coming up next year.

As well as organising the Vital Synz events, the society is running a new competition: the Edwin Morgan international poetry competition. Unlike most competitions, this one has a college of three judges--and an extremely varied one at that--in Colette Bryce, Donny O'Rourke and Richard Price. Given the diversity of poetics represented there, it looks like they're aiming to make it a stylistically broad competition, appropriately enough for a competition celebrating the protean Mr Morgan.

The Blues and the Reds

Dropped by a wee gathering tonight at The Tun, the first throw in an fresh attempt to establish a self-sustaining network of Christians in the arts, media, entertainment and new media in Edinburgh. My friends Paul Thomson and the painter David Martin are behind this endeavour, a network that aims to encompass the blues and the reds*, as Paul puts it, whereas previous attempts have focused very much on the blue end. No Dave tonight (huvnae seen ye for ages, mate), but Steve Cole of Artisan Initiatives was there. I came away hugely encouraged, feeling like many of the splits that characterise my life at the moment were at least momentarily fused into a unity.

*The theologically conservative and the theologically radical, for want of more precise terms.

In Denial?!

On last week's edition of The Verb, Paul Farley opined that "we" are "in denial about rhyme" because, when "we" rhyme, "we" use relative rhyme*.

If you've read my Reasoning Rhyme posts, it won't surprise you to learn that this is, in my opinion, utter tosh. Far from being a denial of rhyme, relative rhyme is a more linguistically subtle and complex form of rhyme, a realisation of the potentials inherent in the rhyme system but repressed by half-baked aesthetically conservative statements like Farely's.

Note too the insidious nature of the statement: Farley doesn't actually say we shouldn't use relative rhyme, just implies that twin rhyme* is real rhyme, boys and girls. And who is this "we" anyway? I presume it is the mainstream poetry-writing fraternity, Farley being a self-confessed guardian of the mainstream.

I have nothing against rhyming, whether twin or relative. Yes, I will confess to doing it myself sometimes, but only in the privacy of a poem. Moreover, I like some of Farley's work, even if I dislike anyone positioning themselves as mainstream or bust. However, ill-thought-out statements that creep towards closing down possibilities in poetry rather than opening them up really rile me. Okay, so it was radio and maybe it was off the cuff, but it sounded like something that had been bothering him for a while. Thankfully, he was paired in this discussion with Eleanor Rees, who spoke more sense.

There is always a danger that I might make daft statements like that myself, though obviously not such reactionary ones on rhyme. If I do, betake yourself to your local arms dealer and purchase a small surface-to-air missile with which to shoot me down.

*My terms, not his. See here for an explanation.

Summa

This is a substantially revised version of an unpublished poem that one or two readers of this blog might have seen or have heard at a reading. I'll leave it here for comment for a few days before removing it.

[poem deleted]

Rice at the Price of a Word

How many grains of rice are in an average bowl? Idle speculation, I know, but a pertinent question nonetheless when you're simultaneously donating rice to the UN World Food Programme and having fun expanding your vocabulary here.

Radio Silence, Telephone Nightmares

Yes, it's a while since I posted anything! Apologies for the radio silence, but Linlithgow Book Festival, central heating replacement, certain Shore Poets business and putting together this guest blog entry for on writing poetry for Fiona Veitch Smith have occupied much time and energy. Several posts are brewing in my head. Meanwhile, here is some light entertainment (thanks to Penny Culliford for the video):

First Minister to open Linlithgow Book Festival

We are delighted to announce that Alex Salmond MSP, Scotland's First Minister and a son of Linlithgow, will open this year's festival. A short opening ceremony will take place in the Masonic Halls at 6.15 pm on Friday 2nd November. The ceremony will be free and open to the public.

Fitbaw Crazy

Alistair Findlay, notable not least for The Love Songs of John Knox, has just edited an anthology entitled 100 Favourite Scottish Football Poems. More of that in due course but, meanwhile, here here is some related light entertainment, courtesy of the Tartan Army on its way to do its gentlemanly battle with the Ukraine. Proof that ordinary Scots and poetry are not oil and water:

Vital Event

David Kinloch is certainly a busy man this weather: besides being involved in the bid to establish a writers centre in Glasgow's Merchant City, he's the main force behind Vital Synz, a new Glasgow poetry society, which launches on Tuesday 6 November at Òran Mór with a reading by Liz Lochhead and Carol Ann Duffy. A high-profile line-up, and it's rare to hear Lochhead reading at all these days, since she began to concentrate on theatre. Unfortunately, I won't make it, but a society like this is overdue in Glasgow, so all credit and more power to David.

Becoming a Riality

A letter arrived the other day informing me that issue 63 of The Rialto is at the printers. Exciting news, as it's the first time I'll have had a poem in the magazine and, therefore, the first time I'll have been published in an English magazine. Not that I think it's better than a Scottish publication because it's English, but I'm pleased to be extending my reach south. Still, The Rialto is a good magazine, not least because it gives the poems proper space on the page. Personally, I can't abide the cramming of as many poems as possible into the available space. Just let the poor things breathe!

Orkney: Thursday

When Christine De Luca, Diana Hendry (with her partner the poet and publisher Hamish Whyte) and I touched down on a overcast but none too windy Orkney a week past Thursday, we were met very warmly by Pam Beasant, whose brainchild our visit was. While Christine sorted out her hire car, Pam drove Diana, Hamish and me to our hotels in Stromness.

Anyone who has visited Stromness will know what a quirky wee town it is. The narrow, flagged main street is so tricky to negotiate--what with pedestrians, parked cars and vehicles coming the opposite direction--that even some Orcadians refuse to drive along it. Imagine a single-track rural road with sheer banks of masonry and you'll come quite close. The rest of the town stretches the short way down to the waterfront or up the hill, much of it in narrow closes reminiscent of Edinburgh's Old Town.

Stromness is also, of course, the hometown of the late George Mackay Brown. Wander along the main street away from the hotels, shops and pubs, past the library and you'll find this unassuming council house. The only thing to indicate that it was GMB's home is the blue plaque on the wall:

Mackay Brown's is still a strong presence in the artistic landscape of Orkney, 15 years on from his death. There are mentions of him and quotations from his poetry and prose all over the place. I didn't have any of his work on my shelves before I went, so I bought the Collected Poems from the fantastic little bookshop in Stromness. The shop is that rare thing in this day and age: a real bookish bookshop, crammed with volumes of all kinds and with an interesting poetry section. One delight of the place is the slightly surreal and witty comments on the shelves where one might expect something denoting the genre. The only one I can remember was on the poetry shelves:

In celebration of national poetry day on 8 October, we will be closing.

Anyway, much of my first day in Orkney was not spent in Stromness. After lunch, Pam whisked Christine and me through to Kirkwall for an interview at the pokey and couthy wee BBC Radio Orkney studios. The recording was partly for the weekly Tullimentan (think that's the right spelling) arts programme and partly for Around Orkney. It was a slightly curious experience to come down to breakfast the next morning and hear myself on the radio.

On the Thursday evening, there was a reading at Woodwick House. None of us was involved, but we, of course, went along nonetheless for the fun. When Pam, Diana, Hamish and I arrived at Woodwick, there were flocks of starlings (at least, we think they were starlings) filling the surrounding trees in the half light. Rather eerie. That's what looks like bats in this unfortunately rather blurred but nonetheless atmospheric photo.

The house is another unusual place (anyone spot a theme developing?). Apparently the rooms don't have TVs. Guests are encouraged to walk or to read from the sitting room's wonderfully eclectic little library. The sitting room also contains an upright piano in a beautiful, ornate casing so abysmally out of tune that it can only be described as an unprepared piano. And, along with a varied selection of films on video and DVD, the only TV in the building.

The reading featured Orkney residents Ron Ferguson (former leader of the Iona Community), John McGill and Nigel Wheale plus Shetland writer Laureen Johnson. Quite a varied line-up of prose and poetry. Laureen's set was notable for being entirely--introductions, chat, poems and all--in Shetlandic. John read a gorgeous exerpt from his novel, The Most Glorified Strip of Bunting, in which the main character, marooned on a ice floe, is watching the aurora borealis. Ron read a mix of poems and football prose. Nigel read from his book and very effective new poems the arose from his job as a care worker on Orkney.

Music was provided by flautist Gemma McGregor and pianist Glenys Hughes, who is also director of the St Magnus Festival. They played pieces by the 18th century Scottish composer James Oswald. His work was new to me: a clear and effective combination of Scottish traditional music and European classicism. All the more surprising given that he was writing in the late Baroque era.

The evening passed convivially and a starry night came. That was the end of the first day for me on Orkney.

Writing Among the Merchants?

Maggie Graham, David Kinloch and Robyn Marsack are sending out a questionnaire about the possibility of establishing a Scottish Writers Centre in Glasgow, probably the Merchant City. An e-mail about it arrived in my inbox just the other day. The centre would offer services to writers at all stages of their careers, and to readers groups as well. Sounds a good idea. The survey takes less than ten minutes, so why not fill it out?

A Quick Intimation

Got back from Orkney yesterday after a fantastic few days. I'll blog about it in something approaching detail at some point soon. There will be pictures, though not too many. Now, unfortunately, I ought to go and wash some dishes.

Packing Anxiety Cure Wanted

Well, it was a couple of hours ago, but I got over the anxiety and packed. Off to Orkney tomorrow with fellow Shore Poets. It's just possible there might be an opportunity to blog in situ, but I expect I'll write something about it on my return.

Calling all ex-teens

The message below was forwarded through an e-mail list. Not sure I'll submit, but it's a fun idea.

"Nobody Understands Me" - Call out for atrocious teenage poetry

Calling all ex-teens,

Part public-service, part anti-vanity project; we are putting together the most wonderfully, desperately, earnestly poor collection of teenage poetry we can source and are hoping that you can help us.

We will accept work from anyone over 20 but the work has to be your own, the subject something you can look back and laugh about now, and the quality along the lines of "it's a mystery how this has escaped burning!"

The glory will be non-existent as the poems will be printed anonymously, so this isn't a good option for anyone who is secretly hoping that someone will think their poetry is really rather good and offer them a massive publishing deal. Similarly, comedians need not apply, we're only interested in work which is unintentionally humorous.

Unfortunately we can't pay you; this enterprise is purely for fun and to celebrate a shared pubescent talent-deficit, however a lovely copy of the anthology can be sent to you for the meagre cost of home-printing and postage.

Please have a good root through your old journals and select us some thrilling oddities!Poems should be sent to chickenwire_woman@hotmail.com

Please feel free to forward this onto anyone you suspect may have written poetry every bit as bad as yours.

Many Thanks

Philippa Thomas

Not Quite Back to the Forward

The sharp eyed among you will have noticed that, despite previous posts on the Forward prize shortlists, I've not yet commented on the results. The main reason for this, aside from the usual time pressures, is that so far I've read only one of the shortlisted collections in each of the book lists--John Burnside's Gift Songs and Daljit Nagra's Look We Have Coming to Dover!, which won the first-collection prize--and, until I have at least a couple of the other books under my belt for comparison's sake, I don't feel qualified to comment on whether I think the winners were the most worthy. I'm currently reading Luke Kennard's The Harbour Beyond the Movie; no distance through it yet, but hugely impressed thus far. Sean O'Brien's winning The Drowned Book is high on the to-be-read pile. I'll be back to this topic, time permitting.

Things are coming together for the Orkney trip. Besides the reading with Christine De Luca and local Orkney writers, I'll be leading a workshop for an S1 class (non-Scots read 12-year-olds) at Kirkwall Grammar School on the Friday morning (an 8.50 start--gulp!). Should be fun, although the last time I was in an S1 class was probably when I was part of one.

Meanwhile, here's the poster for the weekend's activities, courtesy of Pam Beasant, the George Mackay Brown writing fellow, and initiator of the exchange.

On the Line

1
In contrast to prose--which, being continuous, pretends to a form of wholeness--poetry, because it is divided into lines, is equipped in its structure to reflect and deal with the brokenness of the world. This it holds in tension with a more intense and therefore more whole scrutiny of language.

2
How can someone accept the monostich and not the single-line stanza? The latter's acceptability is surely a logical extension of the former's or of the assertion that the line is the basic unit of verse. The two amount to the same thing at the end of the day.

3
The line has this equivalence to harmonic progression and cadence in music: it is the place where tension is created and resolved. Good line breaks create and resolve (or not, as necessary) tension in the poem's sense, rhythm or meter and consonantal/vocalic music.

4
Each poem--each line--must find its own balance of tension and release. If the poem--if the line--is unsuccessful, are the tension and release out of kilter?

5
I said "Good line breaks create and resolve ... tension", but tension and resolution can take place within a line. Otherwise, how could the monostich be anything other than tedious?

LBF Website

The Linlithgow Book Festival website has experienced a few--ahem--technical problems, but we've fixed 'em. If you've tried to access it and failed, all should now be well. The programme on the front page has also been updated with a little more information about the renga and the Wallace event I'm involved in. And you can now subscribe to the site's feed.