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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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

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 ...