Against the Football

Shore Poets on Sunday went head to head with the Euro 2008 finals. That, coupled with the start of the holidays, might well have had something to do with the somewhat reduced numbers. I have to say, it was a cracker of an evening.

The new poet, Simon Pomery, was one of the best we've had for a while. He wasn't the most relaxed in his introductions but, once he got into the poems themselves, he read well. And there were some really strong poems in his set. There's some of his work here. He read "Jeremiah" and several poems from his "Divina Lux" series, but not the ones you can view online. Simon has a pamphlet coming out with Tall Lighthouse in the autumn, if I remember rightly; worth looking out for.

Roddy Lumsden is behind the Tall Lighthouse pamphlets, which provides a link between Simon and the Shore poet for the evening: Angela McSeveney, with whom Roddy overlapped at Edinburgh University. Angela read with her usual skill and aplomb from Slaughtering Beetroot, her fine new Mariscat pamphlet. She's currently poet of the month on the Scottish Poetry Library website.

Richard Price, the main reader, read from his first two books as well as new work. Richard is a fabulous, mesmerising reader. His work is always fascinating, stimulating and strangely beautiful. You can hear him on PoetCasting and the Archive of the Now and I recommend you take a listen. Better still, buy Lucky Day, Greenfields and/or some of his pamphlets.

Interestingly, Richard has been writing a lot of rhyming poetry recently. Although this takes him away from the spare modernism of earlier work to a certain extent, a Richard Price poem in ballad form is still unlike anything else you'll read or hear. Nonetheless, there's an extremely strong song element to these poems, so it's no surprise he's been writing song lyrics too. In fact, her read one song; you'd be hard pushed to distinguish it formally or stylistically from some of the recent poems. And I mean that as a compliment.

That gives us a kind of link to Sunday's music. Stewart Hanratty was excellent, with powerful, jazz-tinged songwriting and guitar playing. After his song about hats, it was inevitable that Angela should read her poem on the same subject. You'll just have to buy the pamphlet to read it, though!

Sunday's event was my last as a Shore poet. I've stepped down from the group after, I think six years, owing partly to a busier family life. It has been great fun to be part of Shore Poets, but it's time to concentrate my energies elsewhere. I still plan to be around the readings, so this won't be the last SP gig report you'll read here. I went out on a high, though: I won the famous Shore Poets lemon cake.

The Price of Pomegranates

Why would anyone pay £1.50 for a pomegranate? I like them and all that, but £1.50 for a single piece of fruit? Oh yes, silly me: they're superfoods, a class of comestible scientifically proven to make the marketing managers salivate three times as fast.* We got two for 35p apiece from the reduced-to-clear basket the other day. I mean, if they can flog 'em off for that, what's the original mark-up?

*Did you like that null comparative? Sarcasm's miles better.

Back to Front?

There's an extensive, thoughtful and very positive review of the sampler over at Jim Murdoch's ever stimulating blog The Truth about Lies. Jim comments on each of the poems in turn, as well as on general aspects of the pamphlet as an object and collection. This is the paragraph that most interests me:

As a poet myself I'm inclined to have my meanings at the forefront of my poems, not that I discount feelings but they've always tended to be something of an aside with me. Philip's poetry, to my mind, concentrates on feelings and the meanings are put on the back burner. These are poems you can't read, tick the box – Yeah, I get that one – and then pass onto the next one. ... A star has exploded and these are fragments rippling away, getting further and further apart, remnants; they meant something when they were whole. Now they are not meaningless but they mean less and Philip is desperately trying to cling onto that meaning. The feelings are clear and unambiguous however.

Always fascinating to see how others read your work, isn't it? I'm interested that Jim thinks I put meaning "on the back burner". I'd certainly agree that meaning is not "at the forefront" of my work as it is for him. That's perhaps the fundamental difference in our poetics: I don't discount the skill and craft of writing something with meaning at the forefront--perhaps I even do it occasionally--but that kind of poetry has never interested me as much as more layered, multivalent poetry has. So that's often what I aim for: something that layers meaning; that can access a sense beyond the surface meaning; that will draw the reader back to discover new meaning on subsequent readings.

I wouldn't call that putting meaning "on the back burner". To my ears, that phrase sounds a touch pejorative in this context. However, Jim is anything but negative about the pamphlet, so I guess he didn't mean it that way. In fact, he says the sampler is

a collection of poems by a man trying to make sense out of something that will never make sense, trying to imbue words with meanings they were never intended to hold and, where that fails, creating new words to try and get his point across.

Absolutely spot on. This is perhaps where we come to the emotions in the poetic. The poems in question being largely about grief and bereavement,* it's hardly surprising that emotion should strike a sensitive and intelligent reader as being at the forefront. Nonetheless, Jim acknoweldges the attempt to make sense (ie, meaning) out of it.

What we have here is the collision or collusion of meaning and emotion. Writing poetry has probably always been to me a means of thinking through my emotions, even more vitally so since I began writing about losing my son, Aidan. And I mean thinking through in a double sense: making sense of my emotional life; and using my emotions as a stimulus to thought. That's not the sum of my poetics, but it's probably a central part. After all, we're talking about an important aspect of the way I'm made: a reasonably intelligent/intellectual individual but, at the same time, uncommonly emotional for a man.**

Thinking again about the relative positioning of meaning and emotion in my poetry, I'd like to suggest that I'm not backgrounding meaning but foregrounding possibilities in the language. Fundamentally, poetry is about language: what we can do with it and what we can do to get beyond it.*** The poem's meaning is a function of the poem as an instance of language--a language event, if I can put it like that--with all the complexity of interaction between the text, the writer and the reader(s) that that implies. That too is a central part of what I'm trying to do. I'm not saying I apply this understanding in the most sophisticated way, but it's definitely mixed into the mortar.

Some of these thoughts have been rattling round in my wee heid for a while, but it's taken Jim's appraisal to get them out into the open, slightly random though they are. My thanks to him for providing the impetus and, above all, for taking the time to read and review the pamphlet so thoroughly.

*This holds for "Tonguefire Night" too in ways I didn't know and could never have known when I wrote it, although I understood at some level the cultural grief and bereavement that it touches on.

**Though not especially sensitive to emotional atmosphere, strangely enough. Aren't we humans complicated sometimes?

***"Poetry is only there to frame the silence", as Alice Oswald said in an interview.

More Laurels for Morgan

Somehow, I had missed until the middle of this week the news that Edwin Morgan has won this year's Sundial Scottish Arts Council book of the year award for A Book of Lives. Shame on me!

Not having read the collection--or any of the other finalists, for that matter--I can't comment on its merits, but there's no doubt that Morgan is and always has been a remarkable writer. He's perhaps the most widely known of that significant seam of writers who have demonstrated how possible it is to combine experimental and mainstream poetics in one career, even in one poem. Above all, his work--serious, subtle and craftful as it is--teams with imagination, verve and wit. He is a poet for the variousness of today. Incidentally, he's the first poet I ever saw read live and probably the first living poet I read extensively off my own bat, unprompted by any course syllabus.

It's always encouraging to see poetry winning when it goes head to head with other genres in awards like this one. The poetry shortlist was strong; Carcanet dominated with three titles, while Cape and Edinburgh's Luath had one apiece. But Morgan wasn't the only poet among the finalists: the winner of the first book category was fellow Linlithgow resident Jane McKie, whose first collection, Morocco Rococo, is published by Wales's Cinnamon Press. She was up against a Cape chicklit title and a non-fiction book from Scotland's Sandstone Press so, all in all, it was a good showing for small presses too.

Sampler Listed

Andrew Philip: A Sampler is now listed on the HappenStance website. I'll update the sidebar in due course.

[Sidebar updated.]

Making the Most of the Web

Four poems by Matt Merritt, whose fine HappenStance pamphlet Making the Most of the Light came out in 2005 and whose first full collection Troy Town was published by Arrowhead earlier this year, have just been added to Alex Pryce's fantastic PoetCasting website. Well worth a listen.

PoetCasting itself has just had some good very news: it has secured funding from the Arts Council England to continue until mid 2010. It'll allow the site to start collaborating with poetry magazines and live poetry performance events, as well as enable it to continue podcasting an admirably broad range of poets. Gaun yersel, Alex!

A Beetrooty Launch and a Groggy Reading

A week past Tuesday, I went to the launch of Angela McSeveney's new Mariscat pamphlet Slaughtering Beetroot at the Scottish Poetry Library. I can safely say it's the only launch I've been to where beetroot cake was on offer. Angela had baked it herself, and it was, you may say, delicious. And the poetry was at least as good. I think this could be Angela's best collection yet. Her characteristic "clear-water shine" (Iain Crichton Smith) is, of course, in evidence, but it grows ever stronger mixed with a certain wry determination and a sense that she is perhaps more relaxed in herself and her writing than in previous work. Well worth parting with £5.00 for it.

-----------------------------------------------

Last Sunday was the final Poetry at the Great Grog before the summer break. Jim Carruth was the first reader. His is a distinctive voice, bringing the farming experience to us urban dwellers in unsentimental, inventive poems. No hint of the romanticising of the rural life here, although there is plenty of anger and regret, often below the surface. His love poem to silage (I kid you not) was a tour-de-force of rhyme. I'd quite like to get a hold of it and subject it to my usual "Reasoning Rhyme"-type analysis.

My memory of the order has gone a bit hazy at a week's remove, but I'm reasonably certain it was Mike Stocks next, before Eleanor Livingstone. Mike read very well from his collection of sonnets, Folly. However, I have to say, although there were some fine examples of what you can achieve within those confines, it left me feeling you can have too much of a good form, as do Alan Spence's all-haiku readings. That doesn't mean I don't enjoy such readings at all. Mike can write powerful* and funny sonnets, but sometimes I wanted him to make the form disappear.

Eleanor read well, mostly from new work, including memorable poems about her Fife childhood escapades and her daughter's reading habits.

Kapka Kassabova was the final reader. Kapka is from Bulgaria, via New Zealand, and writes about the experience of exile in a way that communicates strongly to us non-exiles. I say "us non-exiles", but there were other exiles in attendance and, besides, there's something in the Scottish psyche that could almost be described as exiled from itself or from its own history and culture. To me, Kapka's work speaks to that aspect of Scottishness, perhaps not directly, but powerfully.

I also met Julia Rampen, who will be reading at the Great Grog at some point next year. Julia was one of the Foyle Young Poets winners in 2005 and 2006, as well as a runner-up in the Tower Poetry competition in 2006 and one of the winners in The Rialto's fifth young poets competition. To judge by the poems I've linked to, she's obviously talented; I'm looking forward to hearing her read.

Poetry at the Great Grog will be back in September with Michael Schmidt, Helena Nelson, Dorothy Baird and another Foyle Young Poet, Charlotte Runcie.

*Perhaps none more so than the one here, which nearly made me cry when I read it. It wasn't in his set.

I Had to Pinch Myself

It's been a momentous week in this neck of the woods. As you'll know if you've been following this blog for a while, I've been working on a full collection of poetry, swapping manuscripts with Rob A Mackenzie and submitting to publishers. On Tuesday, the collection--The Ambulance Box--was accepted by Salt, who propose to publish in the spring. I'm delighted. Salt not only have a really strong list, but a positive, 21st century approach to the web, which publishers ignore or downplay at their peril. I'm thoroughly looking forward to working with them.

Poems in the Big City

Sleepers. A fine idea if you can book a berth but a complete misnomer if cash and demand force you into a recliner (read "seat that hardly moves back") for the eight-hour journey. And my seat on the way down to London was the worst possible option: right next to the door to the toilet area and facing another occupied seat. Lots of shuffling and stumbling about next to my head. Ergo, no sleep till berth time (ie, the return journey).

I arrived in London Euston at 7:01 am--godforsaken shed of a place at that hour. I'd left a sunny Sunday in Scotland to come to a sodden Monday in London, with 13 hours to fill before the reading. I had breakfast at chop'd* in St Pancras; found out when the British Library opened; made my way down to Earl's Court to locate the Troubadour and time the journey, picking up a copy of Geoffrey Hill's Canaan for £1.50 en route in a Samaritans book shop; went back up to the British Library, where I sat in the cafe and mulled over a set for the evening before wandering round the exhibition on the Ramayana (fascinating, but a bit much on so little sleep); had lunch in a random noodle bar and observed the terminally damp Africa Day concert in Trafalgar Square.

Then, at 3pm, I was rescued from my wet solitude when I met up with Siriol Troup and Lorraine Mariner for coffee in the National Gallery. Siriol, Lorraine and I also went to the exhibition of new Alison Watt paintings. Beautiful, haunting work, as I've come to expect from Watt. In these, the sense of presence-in-absence is intensified by a new feature: substantial openings in the folds in the fabric that draw the eye, as you can see in this image.

After the gallery, we hopped on the Tube down to Earl's Court and the Troubadour. Helena Nelson and Eleanor Livingstone were already there waiting for the HappenStance band and supporters slowly gathered. Nell had me sign 50 copies of the sampler (sitting in a back room signing books: another sign of being a writer!). I'd not met any of the non-Scottish HappenStancers, but there were so many of us in the party I didn't get much of a chance to talk to them. However, I did have a great natter with Katy Evans-Bush of Baroque in Hackney fame and the chance to catch up with Sinéad Wilson, who I hadn't seen in a few years.

The reading was downstairs in the cellar bar and, when we headed down there, the place was already reasonably full. I was utterly amazed and delighted to see one of my Dutch friends among the audience, another friend I hadn't seen for ages. (He was in the country for an academic conference and had seen the reading trailed here.)

I was first up. At Nell's suggestion, I read the six uncollected poems from the sampler: "Singularity", "Lullaby", "Still" (which is a response to Alison Watt's painting of the same title), "Saxifrage", "Dream Family Holiday" and "Coronach". Not an easy set for the audience, perhaps, but it went down really well. It wasn't an easy set for nor for the other readers to follow either, but the reader who followed me directly was Rob A Mackenzie, whose set was completely different and superb, as I'd expect from him. (For me, his was the best set of the first half.)

There was just time in the break to chat to one or two friends and audience members but, unfortunately, I had to leave shortly after the second half began. However, I managed to hear Tom Duddy, who read quietly from his very fine pamphlet The Small Hours. For a good summary of the whole reading, see Rob's account. It was a shame not to be able to hear Michael Mackmin, whose Twenty-Three Poems is another strong chapbook, or Gregory Leadbetter, who I didn't get the chance to meet either, but at least I managed to sleep a bit on the train home!

All in all, it was a great trip. The reading buzzed with a livelier atmosphere than anything I've been at certainly in Edinburgh, possibly in Scotland full stop, and the audience was obviously attentive. In fact, the dozen copies of the sampler that Nell put out all sold, as did a good number of other pamphlets. Now, that just wouldn't happen in Edinburgh!

*Daft apostrophe but good hot porridge, which is just what a cold, wet traveller needed.

Sampler Review

Sorlil has very kindly reviewed my sampler on her blog. As far as I know, it's the first review of this pamphlet and I'm very pleased with what she has to say about it. She comments:

"These poems are unlike most of the poems I read these days, there is something very different and at times uncomfortable about them which certainly makes them stand out and difficult to forget",

which is the kind of thing any writer would want a reader or reviewer to say about their work. I'll be interested to see whether there are many comments on her post.

Meanwhile, why not contact HappenStance and order a copy?

Angus Calder

As other bloggers have already noted, Angus Calder has died. I can't claim to have known him well, but he was a kenspeckle character on the Edinburgh poetry scene and a fine writer. I have clear memories of him reading "Deer on the High Hills" at an event to celebrate Iain Crichton Smith and of an energetic reading from his own Horace in Tollcross he gave for the Shore Poets. But my strongest memory is from the launch party for Tonguefire: before proceedings began--before there was more than the merest handful of folk there, in fact--Angus marched up to me with a copy of the pamphlet and slapped it down for me to sign: the first person ever to ask me to sign my work. He will be missed.

LBF on Facebook

Linlithgow Book Festival now has a Facebook presence. With the full programme listed there, it's a great way for Facebookers to keep up to date with what's happening with West Lothian's literary festival.

The Onslaught of Beauty

The audience for Sunday's Shore Poets was a little thinner than usual, possibly because of the holiday weekend. Music was provided by Just Voices, a four-part acapella group, who treated us to French, Bulgarian, Scots and American songs. Beautiful stuff.

Stephanie Green kicked off the poetry in the newcomer slot. I've seen Stephanie around the scene for quite some time (indeed, she's a regular at Shore Poets) but had never heard her read before. The poem of hers that worked best for me was her first: a well-crafted, interesting mediation on her inheritance--genetic and otherwise--from each of her parents. (Her write-up of the evening is here.)

Honorary Shore poet Ken Cockburn read second. Ken is a former convener of the group, as well as former fieldworker/assistant director of the Scottish Poetry Library and founder, along with Alec Finlay, of platform projects. I enjoyed his set, particularly his take on the myth of Penelope and her suitors, in which Odysseus's wife is signed up to an internet dating site, and his translations from German.

I'd heard good things about the evening's main reader, the Belfast poet Alan Gillis, who is now based in Edinburgh. He did not disappoint: intense, serious, funny poems with striking imagery and a strong sound world. The man has a great ear and he reads well. You can hear him read some poems here, though I haven't had a listen to those files yet.

After the reading, I headed up to Waverley to catch my sleeper to London. There was enough time for a reasonably relaxed pint with Rob A Mackenzie before I found my way to my--ahem--recliner and began my purgatorial progress southwards.

Back from London and, after two less than restful nights on the sleeper (the one on the way down was by far the worse) completely puggelt. Proper reports of Sunday's Shore Poets and last night's reading in due course, but suffice to say it was a cracker of a night.

Sampled!

Andrew Philip: A Sampler came through the post today, 12 author copies of a slim, simple and elegant pamphlet--slightly to my surprise, as I wasn't expecting to see it before the Troubadour reading. And a lovely surprise, too: Helena Nelson has, naturally, done a fantastic job on it and it feels beautiful in the hand. I'm really looking forward to reading from it on Monday, when it'll go on sale for the first time.

Troubadour Poems: Helena Nelson

The final poem in the pre-Troubadour series is by Helena Nelson, founder and editor of HappenStance press. It is very much in the spirit of her wonderfully quirky and deliciously, irreverantly playful pamphlet Unsuitable Poems.

Like

I was like Read this poem
He was like You must be joking
I was like Pleeeease
He was like Fancy a drink?

I was like Get lost
He was like I really like you
I was like Read this poem then
He was like Do I have to?

I was like Yes
He was like Omigod she means it
I was like Shutupandreadit
He was like Gimme the poem


*****


I was like Did you like it?
He was like What was that about?
I was like What did you think?
He was like It was like, like…

I was like That’s the point
He was shocked, like.

Mirrorball

Less than a week to go to the Troubadour reading, and there's already another HappenStance date in the diary: several HappenStance poets--including myself, Patricia Ace, James Wood, Eleanor Livingstone and Margaret Christie--will be reading at St Mungo's Mirrorball on Thursday 2nd October. Full line-up and more details nearer the time but, for the moment, those of you in Glasgow and environs put it in your diary!

Troubadour Poems: Andrew Philip

Originally, I wasn't going to post one of my own poems in this series, but I've changed my mind and am posting a piece from Tonguefire that hasn't appeared anywhere else.

Pedestrian

Someone was standing in the middle of the road.
She stood astride it, just beyond
the blind spot on a sharp, countryside bend,
so hidden that I nearly ran her over.
At first, she seemed an ordinary figure
—jeans, a fitted t-shirt, long brown hair—
but for the confidence with which she stood
where any car would slam straight into her.
Almost as soon as we jerked to a halt
and I got out the car to remonstrate,
the space around her ruptured
with the opening of wings
as colourful as the flocks of paradise.
She stretched her hand towards me, said
I know you’ll take good care of it and poured
from her palm into mine a sleeping child,
scarcely the size of a nut and sprouting
from its belly a shoot topped off by a tiny leaf.
I tried to ask the obvious questions, but she
folded herself from our vision.
I felt her gift stir slightly, though it slept
as soundly as it does now in my hand.
How can I drive on with this entrusted to me?
I’m rooted here, keeping watch
on the growth of what is planted in my palm—
this difficult, unasked-for joy.

Troubadour Poems: Martin Cook

Martin Cook's life has included soldiering, tea planting, advertising, marketing and social work--the kind of CV that once was almost de rigeur for a poet. His pamphlet, Mackerel Wrappers, was published in 2007.

Falling
After Chagall’s Los Novios del la Torre Eiffel

We should never have climbed that phallus.
We were, after all, Brits and when you heard
a squeaky fiddle playing Greensleeves
and thought you saw your pet goat taking off
from the Eiffel Tower towards Spain,
you went goofy and leant out to stop it.

I over-balanced trying to save you
but landed, with you in my arms
on a big duck with a cock’s comb.

You’d forgotten your goat and were
clutching a blue fan and dreaming of cherubs
while I had the Kama Sutra on my mind.

Neither grotesque birds nor angels
with violins and silly wings could save us;
we wasted an expensive wedding gown.

Not having been out in Glasgow for absolutely ages--possibly not since I read at Tchai Ovna west end in 2006, unless you count the Mitchell event Helena Nelson and I did with the Scottish Poetry Library--I really enjoyed heading west to join the audience for the reading at Tchai Ovna southside on Friday night. I met up with AB Jackson and Rob A Mackenzie for a quick drink first. Just as well, because I hadn't clocked it was the Shawlands branch we were going to and would have gone to the wrong place otherwise. Rob had been at the Christian Aid book sale in Edinburgh and come away with a fine haul of books at knock-down, bowl-you-over, irresistible prices, including several doubles of books he already had, which he very generously gave to Andy Jackson and me.

As Rob says, Tchai Ovna southdie is a tottie wee place of a venue. It would be a fantastic place to meet someone for a tea (superb tea, it has to be said), but is was a bit too small for the 14 readers plus musicians and audience. The musicians, Wing and A Prayer, were excellent. The quality of the writing was, well, as you'd expect at an open mic session, variable. Rob and Alexander Hutchison were way the best, to my mind, even if the audience didn't seem to connect with what Rob read. Afterwards, Rob and I joined Sandy Hutchison and Cheryl Follon for a swift drink before we scooted back off to the train in my case and bus in Rob's. Pity we couldn't stay longer, but the last train is the last train. I'm hoping to get back through to Glasgow for a Les Murray reading in June, so it won't be quite as long before I'm back out in the city.

Troubadour Poems: Eleanor Livingstone

Eleanor Livingstone is artistic director of the StAnza poetry festival. Her chapbook, The Last King of Fife, from which "The Monimail Spider" is taken, was published by HappenStance in 2005. More recently, she edited Migraasje, migration o words, a pamphlet of Scots and Shetlandic versions of Frisian poems, published to accompany the reading by Frisian poets at this year's StAnza.

The Monimail spider

Not some economic migrant
who’d deliberately stowed away
under a leaf; nor refugee, surely
from that gentle organic space;

rather a victim of a natural disaster
swept up with his plant
then whirled across the county
friends, dependants, web
left far behind.

A dose of water flushed him out
and he escaped over the edge
eight legged it from the pot
to spin his way through fences,
concrete posts and traffic noise

hoping for a gleam of emerald –
or ruby slippers, four pairs
spider size.

Listed

Just a quickie to say the HappenStance Troubadour gig is now listed on the Troubadour site's programme pages. Can't quite believe I'll be heading down to London for it in a fortnight's time! Last time I was in the city was in 2003 for a Keith Jarrett Trio gig. So much has happened since then, and I'm looking forward to having the opportunity to catch up with some old friends.

Troubadour Poems: Gregory Leadbetter

Gregory Leadbetter has been an environmental lawyer, worked in TV production and written TV drama; he is currently researching Samuel Taylor Coleridge. His pamphlet, The Body in the Well, was published by HappenStance in 2007.

The Scientist

All this talk travels years ahead of him,
a laughing gas in the air-conditioning
at the Royal Society and the British Academy,
a memo circulating at the BBC.

Priests declare him a man of the fields
going barefoot in the city streets,
but reluctantly leave room for doubt.

Mathematicians predict he’ll carry
a ball of superstring in his pocket,
but fear it’s not that simple.

Those of us who’ve seen him
are content to tell you stories

because it’s not the man
we’re chasing now

but the butterfly inside his skull
that raises a storm with a wing-beat.

A Charity Case

I've often thought that I would have arrived a little more as a writer if my publications were to pop up in a second-hand bookshop or a charity shop. Not that it wouldn't be a double-edged feeling, but I always assumed I'd take pleasure in it, knowing how many books I've found in such outlets. Well, yesterday, I had the chance to test that out when my Gaelic tutor told me he'd picked up a copy of Tonguefire in a charity shop. Apparently, it was in the window with several other small poetry collections. Now that does please me. It pleases me even more that somebody who appreciates it bought it, but I can't help but wonder who got rid of it and why ...

While we're on the subject, it seems an opportune moment to mention that HappenStance is soon to go to press with a new pamphlet of my work, in time for the reading at the Troubadour towards the end of this month. It's the first in a new series of single-poet samplers: not full-blown chapbooks but 10 or so pages of poems with slightly more substantial biographical information on the back. The print run is 150 copies, but it's not a limited edition in the official sense. My sampler will reprint "Tonguefire Night" with some slight revisions from the version published in Tonguefire alongside six newer poems. It's a tight little selection, if I do say so myself, and I'm looking forward to launching it in London.

The Visible Image

Interesting short post about Christianity and poetry on Todd Swift's blog Eyewear. Swift says:

Christian poetry, in Britain, has become nearly as invisible as God - partially due, no doubt, to the fear on the part of would-be practitioners of such verse, that such discourse would lead away from the irony, or ambiguity, expected (or required) of poetry now, towards something too dogmatic, earnest, or even, "too emotional".

I'm not exactly sure that Christian poetry is that invisble. Of course, it largely depends on what Swift means by "Christian poetry", which he doesn't define, and my reluctance to agree with his assessment might in large part be due to my being an enthusiast and practitioner.

However, I wouldn't call the career of Michael Symmons Roberts, for instance, invisble. Let's not forget that his collection Corpus, which is profoundly Christian in its concerns and imagery while also being fresh and contemporary in the same, won the Whitbread poetry prize in 2004. Nobody can understand Michael's work properly without understanding how it arises from and interacts with his Christian faith.

Perhaps it might not be so obvious that another Cape poet, Robert Crawford, is a Christian, but a reading of his work with this in mind will shed light on the impetus for, and imagery of, a number of his poems. Les Murray, of course, while not being a British poet, is still a well-known figure in these islands and, again, Christianity is a strong feature of his work. Then there's Gillian Allnutt, who might be best described as post-Christian but cannot be described as anything other than a religious poet.

I wouldn't call that invisble.

Swift also says:

Christian poetry... needs to engage with the difficult, the tentative aspects of its style, its subject area ... - appropriate, since language, too, is invested with the same problematic, indeterminate elements as faith. It is only the (empirically or theologically) strident that needs to be resisted, not writing which seeks, inquires, and, importantly, ethically engages, with the mystery - and yes, often the beauty - of existence.

Well, that seems to me to be a reasonable description of what the above-named writers are up to, in different ways and with different musics; it's also not a bad description of what I aim for.

Perhaps the invisiblity Swift feels is less to do with the degree to which faith shapes the poems contemporary Christian writers produce, the way it shapes them or how that shape is received in the wider poetry--which I have generally found to be warm--than with the growing blind spot in wider society's knowledge and understanding when it comes to Christian, or any other, faith. The challenge for religious poetry in this society is not only to do what Swift says above but to find ways of doing it that neither ignore the riches and depths of religious traditions nor lean on them in a lazy, uncommunicative fashion. That said, Swift's small contribution to bringing into wider view the possibilities of contemporary poetry with a Christian perspective is certainly most welcome.

Troubadour Poems: DA Prince

DA Prince was born in Leicestershire of Welsh parents in 1947. Her book, Nearly the Happy Hour, published this month, is the first full-length collection from HappenStance.

What time is it, Mr Wolf?

Mr Wolf has eyes creased tight, his fists
balled into dumplings, concentrating
on the rules. Today he’s learned thistles,
a difficult door-handle, excuse me,
crackle of the cornflakes packet, the cat’s nose,
broccoli, striped curtains, woodlice,
the smell of doormats. He has eaten
half a boiled egg, toast with Marmite
(but left the crusts), a banana.

The sun tickles like a blanket, the sort
his aunt keeps spare in a wheezing wardrobe
where sneezes hide. He knows
he mustn’t laugh at the sun’s fingers
but keep as still as church. He wants to feel
how they creep closer, mummy, daddy,
inching like grasshoppers, like the giggle
that can’t be stoppered. He’s got to get this right,
listening in puckered darkness
for the tilt of shadows,
for light splitting open,
for Dinner time!

Putting the Brakes on the Breaks

The Sunday Herald reports that the SNP Scottish Government is abandoning its manifesto pledge to provide Irish-style tax breaks for artists, musicians and writers and, instead, conducting a substantial review of arts funding in Scotland. It's hardly a surprise that it should ditch the tax plans: the Scottish Parliament doesn't have the powers to implement them anyway and it was always extremely unlikely that the UK Government would enable such a scheme to proceed.

With the bill to merge the Scottish Arts Council and Scottish Screen into Creative Scotland going through the Scottish Parliament now, perhaps it's an opportune moment to review arts funding. Interesting that this news comes hot on the heels of the SAC's latest funding announcements, with significant cultural institutions, including Scottish Language Dictionaries and the Scots Language Centre, receiving none of its three-year "flexible funding". If the review results in more cash to go round, that would be welcome. We'll see what it comes up with.

Troubadour Poems: Tom Duddy

Tom Duddy teaches philosophy at the National University of Ireland, Galway. He is the author of of A History of Irish Thought (2002). His first collection of poems, a chapbook entitled The Small Hours, was published by HappenStance in 2006.

Side Street

I don’t often pass through this part of the city,
though it’s on my way uptown as the crow flies.
I don’t feel at home here, or streetwise - it’s cold,
even when the sun is warming the chimneys,

and dark to boot. My footsteps lose their beat,
the paths are so skewed, so irregular here.
The people are not the same as mainstreet people -
a woman comes dashing out of the shoe repair

(Heels-While-U-Wait) shop and cries Sorry; pieces
of burnt paper float from somewhere behind me,
and the man loping rapidly ahead of me
without looking back shouts Shag off, will ye!

(but not angrily) at some guys just out of range
of the corner of my eye. They say nothing at all,
these guys, as the loper increases his lead,
nor do they overtake me. The hot sharp smell

of burnt paper darts to the back of my throat,
and I think a small fragment, like a green flake
of distemper from the wall of an old porch,
has landed on my shoulder, but I can’t check

or be seen to brush it off. Stepping into mainstreet
is like returning through the looking-glass without
a moment’s notice -- shoppers tucked in behind me,
not a thing on my shoulder, slight catch in my throat.

Rocks, Rags and Russian Dolls

Well, it was a trimmed-back audience last night at the Shore Poets. I don't know whether it was the Grangemouth strike that kept people away, but it can't have been the weather unless everyone had fallen asleep in the sun. Whatever, we were maybe around 20 down on the usual number, but it was a good night nonetheless, if I do say so myself.

Julie Sheridan was the first reader. She read very well indeed, though her voice didn't come over best through the mike for some reason. Some of her work seemed to me to be trying too hard, but there was a lot of promise there and one poem, "Russian Dolls", sounded spot on.

I read the second, Shore poet slot; my last time in the role. In spite of recovering from a tummy bug that had laid me low Thursday and Friday, I felt I read well, and reactions seemed to confirm that. The set was a mix of brand new work and poems I've read before, including the title poem from Tonguefire.

The evening's headliner was Colin Will, blogger, editor and StAnza chair as well as poet. Colin read very well, his looser, more prosaic writing ensuring that we had three very different voices last night. I have to confess, that style of poetry isn't generally what does it for me, but I thought Colin's piece about James Hutton, the father of geology, was superb. The other pieces of his I found most effective were his haiku and haiku-like poems, where the discipline of the short lines and focused, concrete images reigned in the looser approach.

Last night's music was fantastic. It was a real treat to have a mix of blues, rag, folk and jazz from a guitarist as skilled as Callum More. We have some excellent songwriters along to Shore Poets, but fine instrumentalists like Callum provide perhaps the best foil to an evening of words.

Troubadour Poems: Rob A Mackenzie

Rob A Mackenzie is well known in the literary blogosphere as the man behind the popular poetry blog Surroundings. His pamphlet, The Clown of Natural Sorrow, was published by HappenStance in 2005.

Light Storms from a Dark Country

You bend sleetward down grey alleyways,
xxin search of finesse to straighten out
the tangle of the last spat. The sky’s
xxwatery glaze reminds you of that night
you split. A shock of white chrysanthemums
xxdroops from an abandoned briefcase
on the kerb. They shatter in the slipstream
xxof a truck. You count the Christmas trees
that line the tinselled storefront. They flicker
xxpink, blue and saffron like a funeral
in Hollywood. You search for living flowers,
xxas a peace offering, but when you steal
the twisted stems dumped at the cenotaph
xxdays before, you know it must be over.
Freak lightning tears its jack-knife
xxthrough the sky. You swerve under cover
with other hunched men, all asking what
xxflares in love, why it turns to smoke,
why by any other slant of light
xxyou never move forward, never back.

A Shore Poets Swansong

How readings can creep up on you! It's only a few days until this month's Shore Poets, where I'll be reading alongside Colin Will and Julie Sheridan, with music provided by blues/folk/fingerpicking guitarist Callum More. I'm stepping down from the group after June, so this will be my last appearance as a Shore poet. It has been a privilege to be part of Shore Poets, but it's time for me to move on and concentrate a bit more on my own writing.

Speaking of both Shore Poets and my own writing, my latest publication came through the door on Monday: A new orkney anthology, edited by Pam Beasant, the inaugural and outgoing George Mackay Brown Writing Fellow, includes three poems of mine. I haven't had a chance to delve into the contents yet, but it's a beautifully produced volume with contributions from Andrew Motion, the Shore poets who participated in the Shore to Shore exchange and a large range of Orkney-based writers, from the experienced to those seeing their work in print for the first time.

Troubadour Poems: Michael Mackmin

I'm delighted to begin this series of poems with the following nocturne from Michael Mackmin, who is best known as the editor of that beautifully produced magazine, The Rialto. HappenStance published his modestly titled pamphlet Twenty-Three Poems in 2006.

Midnight Garden

As the light moves from deepest blue to black
among the last outlines of vines and roses the white
planes of the painted table top and seats of chairs
slide into that mist where sight and insight wait
the last green flare, phenomenal illumination,
and eyes begin to blur, catching in corners at
the ghosts of rats, auras of uncertainties,
as if and where the lamp of Vichy shines
and the worn cards in their grey gloss fix in the hands.

And then the night: the labouring bee is frozen
on the stem of thyme, the recollections of geranium,
the different reds and white, flitting to those ancient
landscapes of the heart, the voices of sheep
hooves banging on soft stone, all gone dark, obscure,
reliant on memory - the eyes’ pulse
pulling at afterglow, the least glitter, seeing
the sound of the dead wind the tired dry
iron wheels on iron rails, wheels on rails, rails.

HappenStance Troubadours

Over the weeks runing up to the HappenStance reading at the Troubadour, I'll be posting a poem by each of the poets appearing. The full line-up is listed alphabetically by surname below. Poems will appear in a different order and the list will link to the poems as they are posted.

Martin Cook
Tom Duddy
Eleanor Livingstone
Greg Leadbetter
Rob Mackenzie
Michael Mackmin
Helena Nelson
Andrew Philip
DA Prince

Great Grog Again

Last night, though tired out after a busy day that included helping our neighbour to rebuild the fence along our boundary, I headed into Edinburgh for the third Poetry at the Great Grog event.

Elizabeth Gold kicked off. The work she read jumped off from anecdotes, snatches of overheard conversation and tabloid headlines, but took us to unexpected places. She had a cat poem, but please do not run for cover: it was a poem inspired by seeing a cat posing for a portrait of a dog (where else but Hollywood?), written very wittily in the voice of the cat. Really, it was about celebrity, dreams and reality.

Second up was fellow HappenStancer, Margaret Christie. Margaret's wonderfully quirky and individual work is laden with musical references and metaphors and often shifts from serious to hilarious and back again without missing a beat. The poem that impressed itself on me the most was her "Eurydice on Skye", a take on the Orpheus myth from Eurydice's point of view and a sharp observation of the relationship tensions that can arise on a lengthy walk!

Joy Hendry of Chapman fame followed Margaret. Joy is rarely to be heard reading her own work -- I think I've heard her only once before, at some Scottish Poetry Library event or other -- and, indeed, the editor's passion that obviously drives her led her to read not only her own work but a few poems from this book. However, it's her work and performance I want to talk about. Joy has suffered very ill health over the past several years, so it was great to see her looking vibrant and well. She treated us to a lively and varied set of poems in Scots and English, including a Scots translation of the quartet "In a contemplative fashion" from Gilbert and Sullivan's The Gondoliers and a memorable defence of women priests in the Episcopal church.

The last and main reader of the evening was Tom Pow. More than anyone else, Tom had to contend with the music and noise from the bar area -- not a problem on previous Great Grog evenings -- but he made a great job of it, reading mostly from his new Salt collection, Dear Alice--Narratives of Madness. The book is based on case notes from the 19th century Crichton lunatic asylum near Dumfries; it looks an interesting read. The asylum is now the university campus where Tom teaches; he quipped that the only problem encountered in converting a lunatic asylum into a university was the lack of parking. (One of the New Voices events I did for the SPL took place there; there's a report here.)

All in all, it was another fine night at the Great Grog, a unique combination of voices I don't think we'd have heard anywhere else. The audience was a healthier size than in February, perhaps partly because the weather was better, but maybe also because the events are establishing themselves. I spent most of the breaks chatting to artist and pamphlet poet Dorothy Lawrenson, who was along for the first time, as well as to Rob himself, and ended up getting a lift home from Sally Evans. Rob has done an incredible job in sustaining the momentum across the three events so far, and June's gig -- with Kapka Kassabova, Mike Stocks, Eleanor Livingstone and Jim Carruth -- looks to continue the quality and distinctive mix.

There is Somebody Out There

We seem to be having a blog-focused day here: in a typically thoughtful post on the hard work and vageries of literary blogging, Jim Murdoch has very kindly highlighted Tonguefire -- specifically the Reasoning Rhyme series -- among a small handful of lit blogs of note. He has succeeded in adding considerably and gloriously to my information anxiety with the other blogs he mentions, none of which I'd come across and all of which look to be fascinating reading. They are Dragoncave, World Class Poetry Blog, Slow Reading, TerryHeath.com and Geof Huth. Jim provides a little blurb about each, along with links to the post streams he's highlighting. The links above will take you directly to the sites, but make sure you drop by Jim's post first.

One of the issues Jim touches on in the body of his piece is the pressure many bloggers feel to post daily so as to acquire and keep a readership -- or clickership, to use the more accurate neologism he employs. Readers of this blog will know I don't manage anything like that. I simply don't have the time, energy or wealth of ideas. A post of any significance generally takes time to conceive and write, so only the quickest brains and fingers could produce a daily blog of genuine worth and quality. That's part of Jim's drift. Of course, I'd like more people to read what I post here, but I'm much more interested in comments and discussion than raw figures -- I never was that sold on arithmetic -- so please contribute!

Baroque Flittin

Katy Evans-Bush, aka Ms Baroque, has moved her fine blog, Baroque in Hackney, from Blogger to Wordpress. I'll update the link in the sidebar. She's a stylish and intelligent blogger so it's well worth following her flit.

StAnzaTube

Elmar Kuiper, one of this year's StAnza readers, videoed various other festival participants reading around St Andrews. There's a selection on the StAnza Facebook pages and the whole lot is on Kuiper's YouTube pages. I particularly like the intense focus of this one, Brian Turner reading the title poem from his collection Here, Bullet:

What Makes a Poem a Poem?

Rob A Mackenzie got himself in slightly hot water with some comment writers on his blog last week for daring to suggest that he might not consider Magi Gibson's work poetry. Unfortunately, instead of following the question of what makes a poem a poem, which could have thrown up some interesting ideas and insights, the comments took a rather more personal and abusive turn. Disgraceful and disturbing. I for one don't want to inhabit a space where perfectly legitimate aesthetic judgements attract abuse, so good on Rob for standing by his judgement.

Anyway, what does make a poem a poem? I'm interested to know what readers of this blog have to say on that. L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poet Charles Bernstein has an intriguing go at answering this perennial aesthetic question here. In 60 seconds. Of course, his answer throws up all sorts of questions. What does he mean by "the timing"? Is it something intrinsic to the poem or is it about the relationship of the poem to a moment in history and, therefore, to society? If the former, in what way does it differ from prosody, if at all? If the latter, is it possible for a piece of writing that once was a poem to cease being a poem and for one that formerly wasn't a poem to become a poem? Or is that more about the poem's relationship to time and is that different? If, as some scientists think, time is an illusion, where does that leave us?

LBF 2008 Takes Shape

The programme for Linlithgow Book Festival 2008 is beginning to take shape. It's looking good, not least with our first Booker Prize-winning author on the festival in James Kelman. Keep an eye the website for further announcements in coming weeks.

A StAnza Blog Roundup

StAnza reports are, naturally, now popping up in the Scottish literary blogomarble. Colin Will offers a StAnza insider's point of view in his brief sketch. Rob A Mackenzie has two reports: one for the Friday* and one for the Sunday. Rachel Fox muses on her mixed feelings here; while Sorlil gives a StAnza first-timer's view here. I'm sure there are/will be more.

*In passing, I'll just mention that, at the weekend, he was far from the only one raving about August Kleinzahler's Friday performance.

Draft Poem: Onding

Will leave this up for a few days for comment. The title is Scots; here is a link to the DSL definition of the word.

[poem deleted 21/03/08]

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.