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.

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.

Big Word, Little Oomph

Went to the Big Word Slam for the first time in my life last night. Does it surprise you that I was a slam virgin? Well, in the general run of things, Thursdays are not convenient evenings for me. And although I love poetry readings, I've never been convinced by performance poetry as a genre*. Nonetheless, I thought I'd give it a shot, in part because Jennifer Williams was competing. (If I'd have tagged her as anything, it would have been more as a slightly experimental poet than a performance poet, but blurring the distinctions ain't a bad thing.)

In one important sense, I remain a slam virgin, since I went as an audience member not a slammer. Don't think I'm likely to be hurrying back, though: I was largely underwhelmed by the quality of writing on display. I don't want to hear another -ation rhyme for years. Or possibly ever. Any Tom, Dick or Harry can rhyme anything ending in -ation and the choice is wide, if largely abstract, so a string of such rhymes is little demonstration of skill, craft and creativity.

Last night illustrated what I see as a big problem with slams: third-rate writing can be hidden too easily behind an energetic, audience-pleasing performance whereas good writing that comes with a quieter performance can suffer, no matter how assured the delivery. It's written into the rules at Big Word, where the judges are supposed to score on each of three aspects: the quality of the writing, the performance and the audience reaction. Democracy is a great way to run a country, but I'm not sure how good a way it is to run a poetry event. Though the fact that the judges have hardly any breathing space to formulate their judgments and scores on one heat before the next begins might mitigate even more against a just outcome.**

Of course, it's not that a really good writer can't share a brain and body with an energetic performer, just that there was little evidence of it in what I saw yesterday***. A loud and lively performance is fine and dandy, but there has to be electricty in the language as well. Otherwise why call it poetry? Nor is it that the quieter writing doesn't stand a chance, but the odds are stacked against it when the quality of the writing is only one criterion in three.

I mentioned JL Williams; I've been impressed by her work and readings in the past and, even if last night's poem wasn't her best by a long stretch, she deserved to go through to the semi-final more than some of the slammers who did. Personally, I think she suffered from not being noisy enough, but that's not her style. Her delivery has a fine measured, mesmeric quietness. That stood out, but it obviously didn't please enough.

However, nick-e melville, whose poem for the heats was constructed of phrases taken from television adverts, was way out in front. It wasn't only the writing technique that distinguished him, but the humour and intelligence of the composition. Oh, there was plenty comic writing on offer throughout the heats, as you might anticipate, but there was nothing else that managed to be simultaneously so entertaining, clever, intelligent and stimulating. He was a good reader too, and I kind of regret not sticking around to hear what else he had to read. On last night's showing and the work you'll find if you follow the links in his name above, I wouldn't peg him as a performance poet at all. I'd say he's more of a concrete, visual or experimental poet so, if I spot him on a future bill, maybe I will go back.

*Individual writers identified as performance poets are another matter.

**Maybe that's the origin of the slam saying "the best poet never wins", which was even the subject of one of the pieces.

***I left early, partly due to tiredness (long day at the day job), but that probably means I missed the best work.

What is Mainstream?

I've been musing a little about the usefulness or otherwise of the term "mainstream" in relation to Scottish poetry. I think it's fair to say that, in UK terms, Hugh MacDiarmid would not be regarded as mainstream. His non-mainstream status is emphasised by the fact that he turns up in the marvellous PENNsound archive, which focuses on the more experimental/avant-garde end of American poetry, and the fact that Eliot Weinberger considers his work in an admiring essay in Karmic Traces. And yet MacDiarmid is a hugely significant figure in 20th century Scottish poetry by anyone's standards. This surely makes him mainstream in a Scottish context, which perhaps emphasises his contention that Scottish literature is a separate tradition to the so-called English literature canon and market.

An analogous situation obtains with Gael Turnbull. Gael's role in injecting postwar modernist American poetry and poetics into the British scene was highly significant. He was an unceasing experimenter and his work sits comfortably with Shearsman Books, who published his Jacket tribute also fitted easily into the much more mainstream arena of Shore Poets, of which he was a valued (and is a much missed) member. Is Gael's work mainstream or experimental? Why should I (or anyone else) care? It's full of inventiveness, wit, insight, beauty, energy, playfulness and seriousness. It's simply worth reading.

Does this mean that, in Scotland, we have less of a distinction between the mainstream/accessible and the experimental/difficult? I'd like to think so, but I'm not convinced. After all, the poetry scene in which I'm involved is pretty much the main stream. But then, where do writers such as Frank Kuppner, David Kinloch or Price sit in relation to this supposed dichotomy? They have all appeared and/or are appearing on the bill at Shore Poets and other mainstream poetry readings, but they certainly don't row down the main current of the main stream, as indicated by the fact that Kinloch and Price both appear in the Archive of the Now.

Gists and Piths

Gists and Piths is a newish British poetry and poetics blogzine, which seems to lean towards the experimental. I haven't read the poetry on the site, but I enjoyed "Some thoughts on the mainstream" and the review of Daljit Nagra's book (which I also haven't read yet). Should be worth following this blog's development.

New Links Added

I've added a few new links and rearranged the sidebar a little by creating a "Poetry Resources" section, not that I'm that clear as to what the precise division is between that and "Words", but there we go.

A couple of sites I've only just discovered are Modern American Poetry, which contains useful critical material on a large number of American poets from Dickinson on, and the Archive of the Now, a site that complements the Poetry Archive's more mainstream operations with its dedication to "innovative poetry being written or performed in Britain." I've also added a link to UBUWEB, one of the inspirations behind the Archive of the Now.

All this stuff to explore, and so little time to do it!