"Do you know who I am?"

An amusing post over on Volatile Rune about unwittingly coming across T S Eliot's Gerontion without realising who it's by and judging it 'better than average'... (The blog's well worth a regular read too, btw).

It reminds me of the fantastic book Practical Criticism by I A Richards (yes, I've got rather old-school tastes sometimes), in which he recounts his experience of giving a variety of poems to his Cambridge undergraduates without saying who they were by. Some were by 'great names', others by far 'lesser' figures. The results were intriguing and didn't generally fit with the recieved opinion about which were 'better'.

There are many conclusions which could be drawn from the experiment. I'm sure many would say that it shows that 'The Canon' is a load of bunkum. But I'd be inclined to suggest that it shows (as with Volatile Rune's experience) that we often read poetry in a way that's not equipped to recognise all of the depth, subtlety and context of the poem. And that's ok. Perhaps we note which are worth a reread, and that's when we start to sift the wheat from the corn (having already sifted out the chaff). After all, 'better than average' isn't a wrong description of Eliot's poetry.

Dylan or Dylan

I went to see Jarvis Cocker play a hometown gig in Sheffield this week, at which the highlight was the projection of the standard crowd banter onto the backdrop ('good evening Sheffield. Are you feeling all right? I can't hear you. That's better' etc) whilst the great man himself (tGMH)wandered around the stage.

Anyhow - at the end, tGMH started reciting that bit of Dylan Thomas. 'Do not go gentle into that good night' and so forth. And it seemed to almost work. Which reminded me of how Dylan T was a sort of synthesis of the old 'Dylan or Keats' question. It's not too much of a leap from there to Oasis' Champagne Supernova, after all...

The Man Who Was Thursday

Speaking of poets and politics, I've just been reading G K Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday, at the insistence of my sister (and yes, she's right: it does make a bizarre type of sense of the post-9/11 world). It opens with a debate between two poets about whether poetry owes alliegance to order or anarchy. One argues that:

An artist disregards all governments, abolishes all conventions. The poet delights in disorder only. If it were not so, the most poetical thing in the world would be the Underground Railway...The poet is always in revolt.

The other counters:

Take your books of mere poetry and prose, let me read a timetable with tears of pride...What is there poetical about being in revolt? You might as well say that it is poetical to be sea-sick. Being sick is a revolt...The most poetical thing in the world is not being sick.

There's something, to my mind, in both of these points of view, though they point to very different poetic traditions.

That quote in full...

Thanks to Miriam, who's just forwarded me the context of the Mahon quote that Seamus Heaney referenced in the interview mentioned below. Ahem:

"Battles have been lost, but a war remains to be won. The war I mean is not, of course, between Protestant and Catholic but between the fluidity of a possible life (poetry is a great lubricant) and the rigot mortis of archaic postures, political and cultural. The poets themselves have taken no part in political events, but they have contributed to that possible life, or to the possibility of that possible life; for the act of writing is itself political in the fullest sense. A good poem is a paradigm of good politics - of people talking to each other, with honest subtlety, at a profound level. It is a light to lighten the darkness; and we have had darkness enough, God knows, for a long time."

I love the phrase 'people talking to each other with honest subtlety'. It precisely articulates one of poetry's gentle powers, as well as how the most sensitive and transformative people I know communicate. Perhaps they recognise themselves in my description: I hope so.

Speaking of Magma...

...the magazine has launched a new blog here, as part of their new website here. Doesn't seem to be very busy on there yet, but give it time. Magma's always struck me as one of the poetry magazines that most 'gets it' in terms of being readable, accessible, contemporary, interesting and generally part of a world that you'd recognise from everyday life.

The blog will also, apparently, include contributions from Rob Mack of Surroundings (which is how I found out about it).

American politics and poetry

In the light of all the excitement about Barack Obama being seen in public with a copy of Derek Walcott's Collected Poems under his arm, I was reminded of seeing an anthology of Langston Hughes that John Kerry edited in the run-up to the 2004 election.

It's hard to imagine such things happening here in the UK: Gordon Brown protesting "Arctic Monkeys? No, no: I said I love Moniza Alvi" or David Cameron cycling to work with a copy of Paradise Lost being driven in a car behind him. Although, to be fair, I do remember a thoughtful article by David Blunkett about Philip Larkin in Magma a little while ago. Perhaps the revolution will be poeticised, after all...

Glory Box

I've just come across a poem by Rob Mack of excellent-blog-Surroundings-fame, that is (pleasingly consistently) excellent (imho). It's called Glory Box and it goes like this: 'a-one, two, a-one, two, three, four...'.

Oh ok, I'll link to it instead. Here.

People are shouting: it must be politics...

A storm in a teacup seems to have erupted following Poetry Review discussing political poetry here. There's an interesting follow-up by the writer of one of the original articles here as well. What strikes me most forcefully (I may come back to the issue at issue at a later point) is the sheer angriness and rudeness of some of the comments in response. 'Ignorant and frightened bunch of bores', 'reactionary conservatism', 'one of the most reactionary and tedious magazines', and various suggestion that the writer of the article is a 'moron' and hasn't read beyond 1967, or 1981 or some other time well in the past. There is, of course, plenty of back-story on this one, but it doesn't seem very constructive and good-natured. Peace and love, people; peace and love...

Setting the darkness echoing

A fantastic interview with Seamus Heaney in the weekend Guardian - as ever, he has some resonant and thoughtful things to say about the creative process and how poetry works. Sometimes I wonder if he's not an even better critic than poet. The following quotes stuck me particularly:

'I'd say you aren't so much trying to describe [experience] as to locate it'

'anybody serious about poetry knows how hard it is to achieve anything worthwhile in it'

'all of us probably had some notion that a good poem was "a paradigm of good politics"'

'Each poem is an experiment. The experimental poetry thing is not my thing, it's a programme of the avant-garde...The experiment of poetry...happens when the poem carries you beyond where you could have reasonably expected to go'.

His matter of fact description of why the filtering process of time is, broadly, just is also refreshing. Read the whole kit and caboodle here.

Laying siege to Shakespeare

Another reason to include Shakespeare (as if I need one) is that it's good to enlarge the sense of the possible: it's a curious thing that returning to the most staple of the staples of English Literature seems to do that more than anything else.

One argument I was repeatedly puzzled by was the attempts of scholars to date the plays by putting the most similar ones next to each other. I'd have thought the opposite principle (in moderation, of course) was more likely. As a working dramatist and entertainer, continually providing something different seems more desirable than repeating the same elements before moving on. That he managed to engage in such radical experimentalism and variety at the same time as being generally entertaining is one of the most remarkable things about him. And whilst there are obvious progressions of style, some of the plays seems like determined efforts to do things differently. Even within the two sets of four history plays (that include Henrys IV to VI and Richards II and III) there are several different types of play: a tragedy of court intrigue, a poetical and symbolic study of weakness, a counterpoint between low-life comedy and affairs of state, a triumphal statement of nationalistic pride. If the sets of plays vary within themselves so much, it's no wonder that the one-off plays switch from the daring ruinousness of Hamlet to the classical lines of Othello in quick succession.

Shakespeare seems rarely to get enough credit for his inventiveness: much emphasis is placed on his 'all encompassing humanity' and such stuff, but his inventiveness seems to be treated more as a by-product of his achievement: the emphasis is placed on him showing all human life, rather than varied human life (though the former admits of the latter as a necessity). Whilst there are, of course, many themes and patterns between his plays, the sheer variety within over three dozen works should be obvious. One side-effect of this is the necessity of working out the aesthetics that each play demands to understand it for itself, rather than being able to bring critical apparatus from play to play like a siege engine from castle to castle...

No holds bard

I've been revisting Shakespeare over the last couple of weeks: rereading plays such as As You Like It, Timon of Athens, Othello and (currently) Richard II. And reading a pile of criticism, too (mainly from the 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s: gotta love retro criticism with it's humming and hawing about the ruinous modernity of the times). Anyhow - my point is that I was disinclined to post on here about it, because it's 'not proper poetry'. But, of course, I'd let myself get blinkered by the particular dish our poetry gets served up in these days. Shakespeare, or at least much of it, fits the definition of 'irregular margins' quite as neatly as anything else.

Something else, then something else again

I've just reread Miriam Gamble's collection This Man's Town, with pleasure. It's published by Tall Lighthouse, who set out to publish talented young writers and they've definitely succeeded here. I've said before that she's a fine critic, but clearly, she's also a fine poet.

One of the poems, Interface, concludes with the lines:

Momentarily, you snuffle, and rise for tea,
then I lose you to the depths again. Your breath gutters

like a stuck pig's, your eyelids leak an underwater tear.
There is havoc at the gallery, you say, taking
my wrist. And Plato's on the river bed. Then you roll over without
so much as a 'Help me'.

This is striking writing - and also reminds me of a poem from John Wain's 1961 collection Weep Before God:

Anecdote of 2a.m.

'Why was she lost?' my darling said aloud
with never a movement in her sleep. I lay
awake and watched her breathe, remote and proud.

Her words reached out where I could never be.
She dreamed a world remote from all I was.
'Why was she lost?' She was not asking me.

I knew that there was nothing I could say.
She breathed and dreamed beyond our kisses' sphere.
My watchful night was her unconscious day.

I could not tell what dreams disturbed her heart.
She spoke, and never knew my tongue was tied.
I longed to bless her but she lay apart.

That was our last night, if I could have known.
But I remember still how in the dark
She dreamed her question and we lay alone.

Awkward Movements

Back to those Collected Poems. I’ll write a fuller review another time, but one thing that’s struck me is this: for a movement called ‘The Movement’, its writers had at best a curious sense of movement in their verse. This occurred to me when getting entangled in the following couple of lines by Amis about ivy damaging a wall: ‘Then it would all become a legal quibble: / Whose what has wrecked what how and by whose what’.

This style is archetypally ‘Movement’, like Thom Gunn’s ‘I know you know I know you know I know’ in Carnal Knowledge. Their role model, William Empson is perhaps the only other poet (at least since the most extreme contortions of John Donne) to write such self-consciously wooden lines. Which isn’t to say they’re bad, exactly, just that they’re so heavy on their feet, even while they’re going through an elaborate pattern of steps. It’s as if they lack all sense of movement...

Obsession

I’ve been reading Kingsley Amis’ Collected Poems recently – part of an over-comprehensive spurt of reading seven books by or about him in a row (with more ordered, too). This is, to put it mildly, an odd way to spend time. I’m not even a particular fan of Amis, but there’s something that’s prompted me to read his work in large draughts. Something about my interest in The Movement and a frustrated academic interest in them, perhaps. Some sort of challenge that his plain and populist writing poses (particularly having dosed myself up on Modernists for a long time).

Something about Kingsley Amis being an interesting individual, as well as an interesting writer.But there’s also something refreshing about having these odd pockets of over-thoroughness in your reading, even if the work you’re reading isn’t of itself that striking. It’s a different way of reading that encourages a more comprehensive and generous understanding. It can also give something to quarrel with. And perhaps the quarrels you get drawn to against your better judgement can be revealing in themselves...

The Broken Word

A rather bloody start to the week, reading Adam Foulds' The Broken Word on the train. It's a fast-paced and vivid account of a young man's experience of the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya in the 50's and his life after, back in England. By 'young man', I mean more particularly a young White man: the son of a settler family, who stays and performs acts of brutality out of fear and a half-hearted going-along-with his neighbours' macho desire to protect some kind of Englishness.

There's plenty missing in this long poem, despite the fact it's an entertaining read. Almost because it's an entertaining read (as much as I instinctively applaud it for that). There's a curious absence of credible motivation, of politics, of deep compassion. I heard about the book through the Poetry Book Society, in whose magazine the poet wrote:

No immediate relevance was intended. Nor was it meant to be an expression of moral outrage or a lesson of any kind. That extra-judicial killing and mass internment are bad didn't seem a point that needed making. I was simply interested in being inside the Kenyan Emergency...

Something of this positionlessness comes through, and it's unsettling. You don't have to agree with Adorno's supposed soundbite that 'to write a poem after Auschwitz is barbaric' (interesting commentary about that quote here, btw) to think that writing poetry about Auschwitz that is 'just interested in being inside' the experience, without moral outrage, is at the very least, missing something important. And the same goes for this other bloody chapter in mid-century history.

What's missing in this book is obvious in comparison with Ngugi wa Thiong'o's breathtaking novel about the same uprising, A Grain of Wheat. This novel is fiercely politically engaged, but still emotionally nuanced and understanding of all sides and the complexities of engagement. And perhaps it shows a greater confidence in the immediate importance of literature than Adam Foulds' book does.

It's interesting that Adam Foulds chose to recommend Christopher Logue's War Music in the Poetry Book Society Bulletin, too. His book certainly has the flair, readability and cinematic violence of War Music (although to return to my earlier point, it's less pressing to do justice to mythologised figures like Hector and Achilles).

And speaking of justice, I want to be clear that I enjoyed this book greatly and was drawn in (as if reading a thriller, or watching The Last King of Scotland). And whilst I didn't find Tom (the central character) fully drawn, and felt the last section set back in England failed to integrate convincingly with the emotional experience that Tom had been through, there was much to admire and respect in the writing. It is indeed, as described by both Michael Longley and Craig Raine, 'a brilliant debut'. But perhaps 'brilliance' sounds a bit unengaged for this subject matter...

Isn't it awfully nice to have a penis?

I greatly enjoyed Alan Gillis' Hawks and Doves, but I couldn't help noticing that the poem The Lad was based on a familiar, if amusing, idea. In the poem ,the lad describes how he leaves the pub and:

'I grip my Adam's whip,
my hazel wand, my straw-haired vagabond,
my Pirate of Penzance, my lilac love lance,
my ramrod, my wad, my schlong, my tube, my tonk' [etc - for two pages].

Anyone else remember this?:


via videosift.com

Three cheers for Miriam!

That's Miriam, the commenter on this post. The first two cheers are for recommending Leontia Flynn's Drives and Alan Gillis' Hawks and Doves (both of which I've now read - more on them later). And the third, for writing this review of Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch: far more insightful than mine on the same collection...

Salt, Carcanet, Bloodaxe and the poetry 'establishment'

The best poetry blog I've found so far is the thoughtful Surroundings by Rob Mack (see links). At the moment, there's an interesting post here, liking to another thought-provoking post here by George Szirtes.

They make a good argument against some of the infighting that seems to happen so much in poetry and a useful reminder of the ideas behind Carcanet, Salt and Bloodaxe. In the long run, it's ideas that make the difference.

I think Rob's right to argue that even the largest poetry publishers aren't The Establishment, but I'm not so sure when he says:

The 'establishment' is the dull, mediocre nonsense that fills the shop windows of bookshops - celebrity memoirs, TV chefs, populist fiction etc. It's disposable pap and is against anything that asks for a genuine human response. The pressure to embrace it and dumb down everything is greater than ever, but nothing acts against that tendency more than publishers dedicated to the production and selling of quality poetry, allowing it to be seen and heard in however modest a way. There's nothing 'establishment' about that.

Likewise, in George Szirtes' post, when he says:

People, particularly institutional and institutionally-funded people, whose chief concern is an accountably-representative ledger of bums on seats worry about the future of poetry. I have never worried... True poetry is always underground.

Both of these statements don't give enough respect, it seems to me, to the views of that majority of people who are into that 'dull, mediocre nonsense' - and rather implies that it's only a minority that are having a 'genuine human response' to what they're reading. I don't think we should assume that the views of the wider population don't matter, or that those who produce poetry shouldn't try to engage, and respond to the interests of, a broader audience. I say this in the context of having great respect for both Rob and George: I agree we should avoid in-fighting: but perhaps we should avoid out-fighting as well...

Duchesses

I've just been dragged (ok, winsomely invited) by G to see The Duchess. It was surprisingly good, considering - with a deeply unsympathetic, but not entirely inhuman portrayal of the Duke by Ralph Fiennes. It seemed an unusually steady representation of the combination of social duties and personal authority in a member of the aristocracy. His unflinching response to his wife's infidelity, with cruelty fired by underlying personal jealousy, was reminiscent of another Duke... Sure enough, as I checked when I got home, the parallels to Robert Browning's My Last Duchess were striking:

She thanked men, — good! but thanked

Somehow — I know not how — as if she ranked

My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name

With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blame

This sort of trifling? Even had you skill

In speech — (which I have not) — to make your will

Quite clear to such an one, and say, "Just this

Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,

Or there exceed the mark" — and if she let

Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set

Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,

--E'en then would be some stooping, and I choose

Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,

Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without

Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;

Then all smiles stopped together...

Another apology...

Following the link to the review of Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch, I got an email from a friend, which included the following comment:

I might also say - a challenge, so watch out - that I really didn't like your review of Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch's poems...your review told me more about you than it did about her poetry: what her strengths and weaknesses are; why they are strengths and weaknesses etc. In short, there was nothing constructive - nothing she or others could learn from - in your review. I did like your use of the Manic Street Preachers: a way of popularising poetry (which I know is one of your intentions) and critiquing Wynne-Rhydderch from an interesting angle. But primarily I thought, 'God, I don't like this reviewer.' You had an ego and an ugliness that surprised me.

Strong words, which prompted me to reread the review and think about it again. I was surprised to realise that what I'd meant as a sharp and entertaining challenge did, as he said, have 'ego and ugliness' - as well as a rather poisonous tone. Consequently, I've amended it to draw out the worst of the poison (at the kind agreement of the editor, who really shouldn't be troubled with writers suddenly realising that they had been unnecessarily unpleasant). And also, in the (what I'm assuming is the unlikely) event that the poet or publisher read this: I apologise. You deserve more respect, kindness and humility from a reviewer. I'll try to live up to that standard better in future.

Disclaimer

Something else I probably ought to say at this point is that although the post in the last review was on digyorkshire.com, which is part of the company I work for, this blog is not connected to Audiences Yorkshire in any way. All views (particularly the erratic and wrong-headed ones) are mine and mine alone (if that, sometimes: I reserve the right to be needlessly provocative) and don't reflect anyone else's individual or corporate opinions. Furthermore, no animals, children or international poetry conglomerates were harmed in the making of this blog.

Please read poetry responsibly and in moderation. Careless poetry reading can seriously harm yourself and those around you. Irregular Margins does not accept responsibility for any negative effects that you or others experience when reading poetry recommended by this blog. We're even wary about taking responsibility for any positive and euphoric effects you experience. You can't be too careful. It could all end in tears.

There: hopefully that's sufficient to avoid being fired or sued. Disagreement, pillorying or ridicule I can just about handle...

Not In These Shoes

I've not been totally idle the last few months. Here's a link to a review I've written of Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch's Not In These Shoes. I probably ought to point out that I'm not saying I'm against Welsh poetry, just the assumption that there is somethng uniquely poetical about the Welsh (or any other) soul. Ok, I'm protesting too much...

UPDATE: The link is now to a revised version of the review - I'll explain why in another post...

I know it's called Irregular Margins...

...but five months between posts is a bit much! Joking aside, this blog is going to get a whole lot more regular, as of now. After a summer recess to think through future plans and improvements (as well as go on holiday and do the day job), Irregular Margins is back. There'll be a few changes, which will become more evident over time. Please do keep reading and commenting, tell your friends and watch this space.

An apology

Hearing a friend reading a poem of his the other called Pylons, I was reminded of a poem by Stephen Spender that I read over ten years ago. I smirked to myself. The Pylons, I remembered vividly, was one of the worst poems I'd ever read. It included some ridiculous image about the pylons being like naked girls, which even as a teenager I realised they obviously weren't. In one swoop I decided that Stephen Spender was not worth reading - fortunate, really, since I had no inclination to, anyhow.

Rereading it the other day, I feel a small apology is in order. It does have its moments of silliness, but all in all, it's not such a bad poem. Judge for yourself:

The Pylons

The secret of these hills was stone, and cottages
Of that stone made;
And crumbling roads
That turned on sudden hidden villages.

Now over these small hills, they have built the concrete
That trails black wire;
Pylons, those pillars
Bare like nude, giant girls that have no secret.

The valley with its gilt and evening look
And the green chestnut
Of customary root,
Are mocked dry like the parched bed of a brook.

But far above and far as sight endures
Like whips of anger
With lightening's danger
There runs the quick perspective of the future.

This dwarfs our emerald country by its trek
So tall with prophecy:
Dreaming of cities
Where often clouds shall lean their swan-white neck.

Great Poets of the Twentieth Century: No. 4 - Philip Larkin

There's a curious paradox about Philip Larkin. He's probably the most widely admired and accomplished English poet since Auden (with only Ted Hughes coming close), yet most comments on him start with some sort of defensiveness or apology. Take Andrew Motion's introduction here: despite a positive first paragraph, he goes on to say that:

...his reputation underwent a spectacular revision. The loveable Eeyore was really a porn-loving misogynist whose view on race, women, the Labour party, children, mainland Europe (and most of the rest of the world) were repugnant to any fair-minded liberal person.

It says something about the literary classes that disliking a political party which has lost more elections than it's won is seen as controversial. But that aside, it frustrates me that people are so awkward about Larkin.

Yes, he's got his limitations as a writer (his limited range of subjects, his repetitive use of images, the constricted emotional range of his work) and clearly, he had flaws as an individual (it's interesting to track the strands of his personal failures through his work, though a bit like shooting fish). But, bluntly, so what? Given that he's written more, better, poetry than anyone from this country since the War, perhaps we should be asking fewer questions of him and more of all those who failed to match his achievements. Many were probably nicer and even ideologically more respectable (hell, they may even have preferred Kinnock to Thatcher). And yes, he was in many ways a bit of a shit. But he was a major poet (oh, ok: an important minor one). And it's surely preferable to read poetry by someone who's a bad man but a good poet, than a good man and a bad poet (to simplify hugely). The complication with Larkin is that the sources of his human failures were so closely tied to both his successes and ultimate failures as a poet. But looking through this selection, what successes they were.

The poem XX from The North Ship hints at how close Larkin got to being a truly terrible sub-Yeatsian poet. Likewise, in Vers de Societe, the stuff where 'the gas fire breathes, the trees are darkly swayed' warns of a mooning nonsense which is a far more terminal vice in a poet than Thatcherism. And yet the slangy punch and insight of his late poems here (High Windows and This Be The Verse in particular) shows how far from his murky juvenilia he got.

Dockery and Son just keeps growing on me, and not just for the cameo appearance that Sheffield makes, where he 'changed / And ate an awful pie, and walked along / The platform to its end'. Interesting, its 'furnace glares' are picked up in another of his great set pieces here, Aubade, where realisation of death's inevitability 'rages out / In furnace-fear'. Behind the voice that could describe life as 'first boredom, then fear', there was a recognition of his own limitations. He didn't like the big, noisy, messy, industrial, modern world and he was scared of death. In one poem, he travels from Oxford to Hull, questioning his life's journey and having a realisation looking out on 'the fumes / And furnace fires' of an industrial city. In the latter, facing the idea of death raises the same image in a more obviously symbolic context. Larkin was in many ways as tragic a figure as Sylvia Plath, though someone doomed to live, rather than electing to die. Perhaps these 'furnaces' give a glimpse of his hellish self-awareness. But before he's damned, he should be recognised as a damned fine poet.

Well what d'you know...?

There's an article on the winners of the National Poetry Competition here. First place has gone to Sinead Morrissey, who I've recently been raving about on this blog. Now I'm not saying that I told you so, but... well, you get the idea.

Abse makes the heart grow fonder

Dannie Abse and Louis Zukovsky are the book-ends of English poetry: its two alphabetical extremities. For that reason alone, I've been aware of Dannie Abse for a long time. Nonetheless, it was only hearing him on the Oxfam CD Life Lines 2 recently which gave me a particular spur to read his work. It was another Oxfam store which duly obliged, with a selection of his poems from 1963 (I'm aware he's had time to move on since, having published his latest collection, Running Late, in 2006).

The poem which stood out to me was one which provided an amusing commentary to society's current focus on environmentalism. Like the John Wain poem I referred to recently (which was published in 1956, just a year before this one), Letter to The Times provides a comic look at how humans differ from nature. Why do we bother to look after roses, it asks, when they make no effort to look after us? Why do we protest the cutting down of trees, when not one tree wrote 'an angry note in its sly green ink' when London was being bombed? Likewise, rivers are dishonest because they reflect swans upside down and stars 'are even too lazy / to shine when we are most awake'. His tongue-in-cheek conclusions are 'away then with trees and roses. / They are inhuman' and that 'we should pity them no more, / but concern ourselves with more natural things'.

It's a charming and pointed satire of people's hostility to nature and on its own made looking out his poetry worth the effort. There's an interesting commentary on his work by Peter Forbes here.

Childish pleasure

Speaking of Bloodaxe, I've just been to their site and noticed that they've got a 'virtual catalogue' available from their homepage, with turning pages and everything. Ok, so it's useful to have all the information about their titles presented like that, but more importantly: what an exciting little toy!

Who needs a calendar?

The Poetry Society's website, despite the insipid blue and yellow colour-scheme of its new look, is a mighty handy resource. There's lots on there of interest, including latest news from the world of poetry and the poetry landmarks listings, which are patchy but a useful way in to what's going on in a given area. But of particular value is their month by month list of forthcoming poetry publications. It's their gift to the art of salivation, I suppose.

A couple that jump out to me from this year's forthcoming titles: a new collection from Pauline Stainer, published by Bloodaxe, with a characteristically bleak title (Crossing the Snowline) and Neil Astley's latest anthology Being Human (also, unsurprisingly, published by Bloodaxe: what with him being their editor). The latter's a likely bet for best selling poetry collection published this year and if Staying Alive and Being Alive are anything to go by, it'll be a highly enjoyable collection (although no doubt it'll also be criticised for being too popular. Sorry, 'populist').

I've also got my eye on Matthew Francis' Mandeville (Faber), which is already out. Its blurb makes it sound like a quirky and absurd reworking of invented traveller's tales from the Middle Ages. Which can't be a bad thing.

Worth keeping your eyes on that link from time to time, anyhow.

Great Poets of the Twentieth Century: No. 3 - Sylvia Plath

There are two things that it is almost impossible to avoid mentioning when writing about Sylvia Plath, a fact which tends to constrict discussion of her work. As a result, Plath tends to be treated as a tragedy or a battleground, rather than a poet. This is unfortunate not just because it gets boring, but because it distracts from her work.

And what visceral, unsettling, forceful poetry it is. Plenty of poets turn up the emotional volume or try to unsettle the reader: for all the familiarity that comes with her work's fame, Plath is still unique as a poet who can make me feel physically sick with the strength of what she's writing. Margaret Drabble's comment that she wrote from the body (like her striking opening that 'Sylvia Plath was the first poet to write great poetry about childbirth') is an important observation. She also forces the reader to read from the body, as well. The images are physical and immediate and connected by emotional associations rather than cool logic. (Icy logic, sometimes, yes). It is unfortunately that the term has been so misused (and associated with negative overtones) because her poetry is, in a real sense, hormonal: the all-encompassing emotional response of the body's most forceful way of communicating with itself.

Everything is focussed on maximising her impact: her stripped, pounding verse forms, her reuse of striking imagery, the preponderance of imagery in general. And also, a disturbing habit of using race and racism for shock value. This can leave a nasty taste, for example when in Daddy she identifies with Jews using the most startling stereotypes ('with my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck / And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack / I may be a bit of a Jew'). It's not just T S Eliot who can engage in racial stereotyping, it seems. It should be seen as a part of her method, however. Showing a lack of empathy, yes, but race is used as another shocking image to convey her own emotional horror.

This is just one more way in which her work feels radioactive: energetic, powerful, a defining force of the mid-century and subject to mathematically strict laws of decay. As Beckett said about Joyce's Finnegans Wake:

Here words are not the polite contortions of 20th century printer's ink. They are alive. They elbow their way on to the page, and glow and blaze and fade and disappear.

Our dear dumb friends

As previously mentioned, I was struck with Auden's poem Secrets in the Great Poets selection and also noted the influence of his voice on Larkin. In fact, Auden was an influence on other poets from the Movement as well, as the similarities between the last stanza of Secrets and the following poem by John Wain shows.

The joke, which we seldom see, is on us:
For only true hearts know how little it matters
What the secret is they keep:
An old, a new, a blue, a borrowed something,
Anything will do for children
Made in God's image and therefore
Not like the others, not like our dear dumb friends
Who, poor things, have nothing to hide,
Not, thank God, like our Father either
From whom no secrets are hid.


Sonnet

An animal with a heart (in the ordinary sense
of the expression) would find the going tough,
no doubt of it. Birds, to get enough
to eat, would have to peck - with no defence
against the bully Conscience - worms they were
sorry for. Dear me! And cats would shed
very hot tears for little mice, quite dead;
digested, indeed; and hedgehogs would pay dear

for beetles crunched while happily at play,
and so on, ad lib. Yes, if they had hearts (in
the ordinary sense) and yet still had to eat
and copulate, despite their sense of sin,
they'd be human, just like us, wouldn't they?
But our hearts beat and ache. Theirs only beat.

Meeting half way

Train chaos this weekend (surprise), with the result that I'd read the poetry I'd taken with me by the time I got to York. Not to worry - I nipped into Borders and scanned the shelves in the poetry section. Now, I'm not likely to struggle to find something there to interest me, as may be obvious. But I was struck by the extent to which finding the books on offer interesting depended on my knowledge and enthusiasm, rather than any particularly compelling presentation. If I didn't recognise the names, one slim volume with blurb would seem much like another.

In the end, I settled for Daljit Nagra's Look We Have Coming to Dover! and Jamie McKendrick's Crocodiles & Obelisks. Largely based on the writer's reputations and what I've read of them already, but partly based on great titles and (in Crocodilse & Obelisks' case) one of the most beautifully coloured covers I've seen in ages. When choosing books, I reserve the right to be shallow - not that I think there's anything shallow about liking beautiful things...

It's not just poems which have titles

While writing that last post, I was tempted to write 'George Gordon' rather than 'Lord Byron': it seems wrong to persist in using members of the aristocracy's titles when writing about poetry. But in the end I didn't, for the obvious reason that it wouldn't have been clear who I was talking about, so 'Screaming' Lord Byron it is. But my cap remains firmly undoffed (admiration for his poetic technique aside, you understand).

Intruiging further comment on the great man's name here. Seems it was more complex than I realised, but perhaps George Byron will do as his man-of-the-people name.

Great Poets of the Twentieth Century: No. 2 - W H Auden

I had an odd experience with Auden once. Recommended him by a friend with dependable taste, I took his Collected Shorter Poems with me on an eight-week holiday as the only poetry I packed. (You can imagine the airport security: 'Careful, this one's packin' some poetry'). Anyhow, after detailed rereading of the book I was impressed in parts, but puzzled at my friend's enthusiasm. I challenged him about it on my return. 'Me, recommend Auden? Unlikely: I don't like it', he replied. I was, to put it mildly, even more perplexed.

This, I'm sure, is a much more straight-forward way to meet Mr Auden. Particularly so thanks to the graceful introduction by Rowan Williams, which addresses complex and sensitive issues of politics, sexuality and religion with a light but clear touch. He's got a distinctive prose style, too: sentences with multiple clauses which often start with a parenthesis but which nonetheless are perfectly lucid. The light qualifications of his remarks seem a mark of modesty and scrupulousness, rather than obscurity.

From the outset, he makes the clearest case for Auden's distinctiveness:

'Two things often said about great poets are that they create the taste by which they are appreciated, and that they have the capacity to constantly reinvent themselves. Auden illustrates these features perhaps more dramatically than any other of the great names of the 2oth century'.

It's these, too, that make him so difficult to get a handle on.

His overwhelming importance to his contemporaries in the '30s is, to my mind, baffling. His distinctive, thoughtful, voice sounds more like that of an interesting outsider. Obviously, his form at producing startlingly resonant poems (for example Musee des Beaux Arts, included here) would push him to prominence. But arguably one of Larkin's greatest achievements was to find a way of incorporating that discursive, analytical voice of Auden's in a way that neutralised its tendency to bleach out rounded emotion when used by lesser talents.

Talent and technique are things for which Auden is regularly praised. But I'd take question with Williams' assertion that 'the technical skill is always exceptional'. His strong use of end-rhyme with lines whose meaning flows over one to another creates, to my mind, a dissonant effect: the technique is prominent, rather than deft. This can be compared to Byron, frequently Auden's model, who has true lightness of touch despite being more dazzlingly showy. Equally, the mis-placed stress in the second verse of As I Walked Out One Evening has always infuriated me:

'And down by the brimming river
I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway
"Love has no ending...'

It's like a dance partner treading on your foot: 'ending'. Tsk!

There were many particular pleasures in reading this selection, however. Picking carefully back over Lullaby, I discovered that beyond it's first verse and beautiful and striking phrases ('Lay your sleeping head, my love, / human on my faithless arm', 'fashionable madmen raise / their pedantic boring cry', 'watched by every human love' etc) it does actually make a sort of sense as a whole. And Secrets and Whitsunday in Kirchsetten were both new to me (as far as I recall) and striking poems, too. The latter seems like what the American poet, Robert Lowell attempts, but done more successfully: a discursive and inclusive sensibility, taking in a wide range of subjects, voices and striking phrases and reflecting the fractured texture of post-war Europe. For that broadening of my appreciation of Auden's work, I'm grateful to this selection.

Great Poets of the Twentieth Century: No. 1 - T S Eliot

A friend's kindly passed on this series of seven pamphlets about 'great poets' from last century and I'll be writing about each in turn. It's great to see poetry being so widely distributed and I hope it's given lots of people pleasure and encouraged them to explore further, too.

It makes sense in many ways to start with T S Eliot in the series: he's got a good claim to be the most accomplished and is surely the most influential of the poets included (although arguably it's Pound who was most influential, working through Eliot). Both The Waste Land and Four Quartets stand out among the poetry of the time and his other works on their own would be sufficient to make Eliot a significant minor poet (by his own definition). That he was also a major essayist, publisher and dramatist only adds to his lustre.

Craig Raine's introduction is curious: it's a well-turned short piece that manages to approach Eliot with a degree of freshness (no small achievement, that). It also covers a range of Eliot's aspects, from the humorous (often overlooked) to the erudite (no contradiction) to the nature poet. This latter is perhaps the most striking angle in the piece and not one I'm quite convinced by. Eliot seems to me to be someone who is highly skilled at imitating the way that poets write about nature, rather than a nature poet directly. He also uses nature to get to some other point, rather than as an object of attention of intrinsic interest. But it's true that he's very accomplished at describing it, even in passing.

However, although the introduction is interesting and fresh, it does obstruct the reader at the same time as trying to draw them in. He gets a little distracted by academic and literary historical associations (it can't be helpful to refer to which reader's guides are 'required' to read Pound and Joyce, for example). Which isn't to say that the reference points aren't exactly the right ones - but perhaps he is assuming that his readers are more comfortable with glancing references to Browning than is the case? And, unless I'm huncommonly iggorant, 'The staminate and pistillate, /Blest office of the epicene' is not exactly 'easy to appreciate'.

A couple of other provocative statements which (as he no doubt intended) it is difficult to let lie: that 'all contemporary poetry when it is contemporary is initially baffling to its readers' (I'll come back to this one separately) and this gem:

'...a postmodern poetic school led by J H Prynne whose purpose is to be difficult... (not difficult to be difficult, actually).'

I'm not sure that saying it's their purpose to be difficult is a fair characterisation (though clearly, they don't go out of their way to avoid it). But the aside in brackets is a neat point which would be usefully remembered by all of Pound's (and Eliot's) heirs. I doubt whether the heavily armoured knight of obscurity J H Prynne is likely to feel such a pin-prick, though.

But enough of Mr Raine (though he once did Eliot's former job as Editor at Faber, we should not let him occupy the great man's place here). It's an interesting and rounded selection from Eliot's work. It would have been easy to have dwelt only on the big famous poems (and they are the famous ones for a reason). But having some of the shorter, more whimsical pieces does help make sense of Eliot's style when it's in its Sunday best. Even at full pitch, he's playful and (whisper it) on occasion irrelevant (which is part of the pleasure). Apart from anything else, La Figlia Che Piange is one of the loveliest poems I know.

That said, it brings me to one particular issue (admittedly hard to avoid when selecting from Eliot): having two of the first three poems starting with an epigram in a foreign tongue is a little off-putting (perhaps a note or two would have been helpful?). I suppose that feeling of frustration that an otherwise powerfully expressive poem has been held at arms length because of a scrap of Latin is an essential part of the experience of reading Eliot for the first time. But it's not very user-friendly, particularly given the distribution through a national newspaper.

Another intriguing feature of this selection which makes good use of theguardian's involvement is the inclusion of selections from early reviews. It's amusing to hear (ok I'll say it: 'the greatest poem of the Twentieth Century': there) described as 'The Waste Land an accident in which poetry has been wounded to death'. It's illuminating too; not just in a 'ooh weren't they wrong' kind of way. Eliot and his fellow High Modernists did do a lot of damage to widespread enjoyment of poetry. Some folks just don't dig that Greek 'n' Latin vibe.

There's amusement too in the statement (just listen to all the self-satisfied and consternated undertones) 'we [sic] cannot think that an acquaintance with "The Golden Bough," Verlaine, Nerval, St Augustine, Marvell, Kyd, Virgil and Dante displays any deep erudition'. Righty-ho. Still, you'd think that if he was that well read he'd realise that Mr Eliot's not actually too shabby, all in all. Doh!

I celebrate that man and sing that man...

Heartening sight on the train this morning: one of my fellow commuters reading Walt Whitman's Song of Myself. (that is, song of himself, obviously - Walt didn't write about me, for some unaccountable reason).

There is, I thought to myself, still hope. There are one or two people out there who prefer the big beardy bard to news of the McCartney divorce in Metro...

Sci-Fi poetry

Just for a bit of variety among all the poetry, I've been reading a Sci-Fi novel that I found in Waterstones at the weekend. It's the Peace and War trilogy by Joe Haldeman and very entertaining it is too.

The second volume opens with a neatly turned poem that starts 'Men stop war to make gods' and then varies that first line to each stanza until ending 'to stop war, make men gods'. I've no idea what the verse form is (do let me know in the comments if you recognise it) but it also prompted me to another observation: where are all the Sci-Fi poems? Even Margaret Atwood, an accomplished novelist of the imaginary future as well as reknowned poet, hasn't to the best of my knowledge written Sci-Fi poetry.

Though I (like, I suspect, you) shudder slightly at some of the horrors that could be produced in the name of this genre, it's strange to think it could have been so thoroughly overlooked. What have I missed?

There was Fire in Vancouver, by Sinead Morrissey

There's a poem near the end of this collection where Sinead Morrissey describes watching a juggler:

He must have practiced for hours...
...To dance the seven painted skittles
Off his fingers like that.
He has the game whittled

To art. God knows what
Anachronism he took up before...

...He knows
How we anticipate failiure...

...We are nevertheless caught

By the weightlessness, the controlled
Mechanics of air...

...We are not as far out
From faith as we were.

This filletted precis of the poem could describe Morrissey's own work. Having been so utterly impressed by her reading in Belfast, I anxiously anticipated success. Nonetheless, in the sense of practiced performance, the sense of technical accomplishment to a modestly entertaining end and the sense of someone learning a traditional skill and exploring uses for it, this poem is true to the experience of reading the book as a whole.

There's an interesting essay by Hazlitt (called The Indian Juggler) that compares juggling with art, attempting to use one to clarify the boundaries of the other. Certainly, the moments of less original proficiency give a sense of very normal poetic material being shuffled around deftly.

This is not to say that there aren't fine poems in here: Amongst Communists, Awaiting Burial and My New Angels are all well turned. And there are fine lines in others: 'The trees' bold undoing / Is no serious grief, but an accomplishment of practice' in A Performance, for example. To Look Out Once From High Windows is also an interesting comment on Larkin's loss of creativity following the poems that make up his last collection, High Windows, although one that is a little neatly comfortable to feel true of that particular case.

Overall, the book is more reminiscent of Elizabeth Jennings' little gems, such as Delay, or as prompted on the cover, the strongly placed and humane observations of RS Thomas. But it feels that she is still searching for a poetic identity and trying on a range of subject matters. In this collection the result is rather slight, though it's evident that the skill is there. I haven't lost faith, but I look forward to seeing this skill being more convincingly employed in her other collections.

Poetry's House of Lords?

One slight concern I had about the Anvil catalogue was that so much of it was written by men: 10 out of 12 poets with collections written in English and 13 out of 14 in translation.

It's also strange to read about so many books by old(er) writers. It left me wondering whether it was notable simply because most media under-represents older people, or because it really was long-in-the-tooth poetry.

Either way, the contents look very high quality, even if it does seem to have a similar demographic make-up to the House of Lords...

Anvil Press catalogue

I've recieved a copy of Anvil Press' catalogue through the post: presumably they got my details from the Poetry Book Society. I'm pleased they did and not just because I'm all in favour of poetry publishers doing a bit of marketing. It's an attractive catalogue which, thanks to the example poems for each entry, also makes a rather nice little anthology.

There were several books that stood out to me. Michael Hamburger's Circling The Square was one. It's his final collection of poems and it'd be interesting to see what someone who dedicated so much of his life's work to translation chose to focus on in a late flowering. He's definitely one of those people that I think of as 'servants of literature': the people without whom literature wouldn't be the same, whether or not they recieved the limelight themselves.

Another was James Harpur, with his collection The Dark Age. He's not someone I know anything about (though I'm intrigued to see he's got a translation from Boethius in the catalogue as well). He sounds like a serious-minded religious poet, a type which can be surprising ly enjoyable to read, even as an agnostic (Ian Pople and Goeffrey Hill are two others who I'd describe that way).

And then a Collected Poems by someone who I'd recently been recommended, by a friend whose judgement I can always trust: Donald Justice. I hadn't realised that (so the catalogue informs me) he owed a debt to Wallace Stevens: I think I've heard him described more as an American Larkin (should such a thing be possible!). Anyhow, his name seems to come up more and more and I'm sure would be well worth a read.

There was something neat and striking about the two examples for Julian Turner's Orphan Sites, too. It would be interesting to see the effect of these shorter pieces within a longer collection; whether they would seem glib, or start to take on a greater depth and freight.

Finally, The New Directions Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry looks like being one of those useful monument anthologies that help set the landscape. I'd also like some more orientation around Chinese poetry, having enjoyed various scattered gems that I've read. Perhaps a book like this would help me put them into some sort of context. Odd seeing 'Jade-Staircase Grievance' in the catalogue, having long enjoyed Pound's more famous translation of it 'The Jewelled Stairs Grievance'.

There's clearly lots in the catalogue to enjoy: I wonder when I'll have the time to read it all though?

For All We Know, by Cieran Carson

This is the first Poetry Book Society Choice I've been sent. It's a collection of 70 poems, with each half of the book having the same sequence of 35 titles. Similar subjects, images and ideas recur throughout, with associations particularly edivent in adjacent poems or between corresponding pairs: it's no wonder there are frequent references to fugue.

And yet, there's a greater sense of discursiveness and incorporating new material than is typical in fugues. This is partly because of the verse form, long unrhymed couplets. It's also because the repeated subjects (violet, watches, Bach, Berlin and Dresden, The Troubles, speaking French, Hesse's beautiful novel The Glass Bead Game, Mont Blanc pens and second hand clothes) aren't similar enough to be inversions of or variations on each other, although they do work together to create a distinctive atmosphere. Here, the doubling is used not for sharpening focus, but opening up possibilities.

A particular challenge for which work very much as a whole, like this one, is to make the individual poems well formed in themselves. Whilst it's an elegantly structured collection, it's not particularly quoteable, because each part depends on the others for its effect. There are some particular pleasures with this approach: the playful reworking of one poem in its twin, for example. This is most obvious where the Edenic Apple Mac's drop-down menus are 'putting words into your mouth' and then the corresponding poem's description of eating an apple called a Discovery. The prominence of such structures and repetitions ensures that, unlike the famous description of Hamlet as ' a play made of quotes', this is definitely a poetry collection before it is a book of poems.

And the winner is...

Despite Ezra Pound's description of poetry as 'news that stays news', I've been looking for information about previous winners of the T S Eliot Prize and have been surprised how difficult it is to find details of the shortlists before 2000. I suppose it emphasises how ephemeral such prizes are. There must be lots of books of poems out there wrapping chips...

Old is the new new

At that conference at the weekend, I was struck by the importance of mediaeval (and earlier) history and literature to Welsh and Irish poets writing today. Perhaps there should be a revivial of Middle and Old English in contemporary English poetry? Simon Armitage's version of Gawain and the Green Knight is a start, although it's notable that the most celebrated version of the headandshoulders best Old English poem, Beowulf, is by an Irish poet (Seamus Heaney).

I'm not condoning the nationalism behind some of the harking back to earlier literature ( I won't be crying out 'For England, Geoffrey and St George!' any time soon) but there's something appealing about the immediacy that the Mabinogion seems to have for Welsh writers.

Desperately seeking Sinead...

I've tried to buy the last two books by Sinead Morrissey today - after the sensational reading at the weekend I described yesterday. To my horror, the Poetry Book Society can't lay their hands on them: they're being reprinted but are currently unavailable. No sign of them in Borders either (or Rumi, frustratingly). Of course, it's great that her books have proved so popular: I just hope Amazon can help...

Seperated at birth?

A friend pointed this out earlier:










Which is Liverpudlian poetic funny man Roger McGough and which is Seinfeld creator, the Enthusiasmically Curbed Larry David?

New Nashcast

The Leeds-based poet and writer James Nash, who's a friend of mine, has a website and blog (see 'other sites of interest'). More particularly, though, he produces a usually-monthly podcast. These are like a gentle, langourous and bookish version of Radio 4: he's got a beautiful and rich voice and it's all very soothing to listen to. More than that though, they contain some telling insights, especially in his interviews with writers: December's Nashcast was a crunchily political conversation with Ian Duhig: February's (out last week) is with Sophie Hannah, mainly about her crime fiction.

James is a talented poet himself (there's a poem of his in each podcast), as well as a regular compere and performer at festivals and events (including Moral Panic, of which more another time). It'd be well worth keeping an eye on his site, as well as the podcasts.

Coincidences

A few coincidences this week: I was reading in the Poetry Book Society quarterly bulletin the other day about Sean O'Brien, which included his poem Habeas Corpus. That evening, my poetry group was cancelled and instead, some members met at a reading that was on in Sheffield that night: by Sean O'Brien. Among the poems he read was Habeas Corpus.

Also in the bulletin, because his book For All We Know was the latest Choice, was Cieran Carson. And who should be reading at the conference I'd been invited to that following weekend but Cieran Carson.

And then who was the highlight of that conference, but Sinead Morrissey: the same Sinead Morrissey who was ackowledged at the end of Cieran Carson's For All We Know, thanking her for editorial support.

It's a small world, poetry.

Who put the M in Belfast?

I've just returned from the Belfast Meets Wales conference, run by Academi in Belfast. It was an stimulating idea juxtaposing Welsh and Irish literature and there was far too much of interest to describe in one go. However, there was one particular highlight.

I'd been looking forward to the tri-lingual poetry reading, despite the name suggesting that I'd only get to appreciate a third of it, for several reasons. Other than the venue (the beautiful Queen's University) those reasons were the poets: primarily Cieran Carson and Gwyneth Lewis, but also the chance to hear a few other names with which I was less familiar.

I was reading and enjoying Cieran Carson's book over the weekend, and he came across well as a likeable, charming and serious character. I had also enjoyed hearing him perform with a band on the previous evening, enthusiastically whooping along to Gaelic singing - and sure enough, the flute was produced again to introduce and play out this event. But these moments of eccentricity and a startling translation aside (a poem in which a human and horse effectively swap eyes because of the human's empathy for the beast), his works didn't grab me as much as I'd expected. He also didn't read from For All We Know, which would have been interesting for me, given that I was reading it.

My other anticipated highlight, Gwyneth Lewis, wasn't able to be there: a more than minor alteration to the bill, whatever the organisers claimed. This left the onus on the other poets performing. Poetical posturing and self-reverence aside (and that's a very generous blind eye, as the conversation in the bar afterward attested), most of the other poets were, I thought, very competent. All managed to get their words across the empty no-man's-land between themselves and the audience both audibly and articulately (and not just when ranting about cling-film, as in one theatrical example). A simple enough challenge, perhaps, but not one universally achieved at the open mic the night before.

So far, so fine - until the true star of the show stepped up. I had an inkling of hope that Sinead Morrissey would be worth hearing, from reputation, but didn't know much about her.

She was dazzling. Deliberately pressing each word into the air with softly spoken assurance, this small figure, hunched inside a pale jacket, had the audience captivated. Her first poem was a fairly slight, if clever, response to the titles of York Mystery Plays and the guilds that supported them. But after that, her writing was inventive and assured, for example when imagining her son's experience of the world as a one-year old. I noticed myself relaxing even when she was heading down an apparently predictable route with images, confident that she would veer away from obviousness and delight me with her fresh descriptions. It made me realise the trepidation that I often feel at readings, suggesting that I don't trust the poets not to stumble through the web that they are weaving. But Sinead Morrissey didn't put a foot wrong - balancing confidently along her lines as if in point shoes. I've rarely been that taken with a poet's work on first hearing and I know that many others there agreed.

I was so forcefully struck with her talent partly because her balance of delight in intelligence, inventive imagery and literary and conceptial subjects particularly appeal to me. Nonetheless, it's hard to see how anyone who likes poetry wouldn't like her work. And more than that, I immediately thought of how much some friends of mine who have a similarly-aged child would love her insights, regardless that they aren't regular poetry readers. This suggests to me that her appeal could be very broad indeed.

Versions and translations

As I said, the free book from the Poetry Book Society was Christopher Logue's War Music, a version of Homer. Or, depending which bit of the cover you read, 'Logue's Homer - War Music' or 'Christopher Logue - War Music - Homer'. Or even, once inside, 'War Music: An Account of Books 1-4 and 16-19 of Homer's Iliad'. It is, we're told on the inside of the front cover, 'less a translation than an adaptation', and in the author's introduction 'a dramatic poem dependent on the Iliad'.

This anxiety about what it is exactly is emphasised by the editor's introduction, which discusses early on the misinterpretations of the book as a 'translation'. It seems unfortunate to wrap it in this confusion as it is presented to the reader: perhaps it would be more effective just to clearly reiterate what it is, rather than remind people of what it isn't, or try on different explanations for size. But the editors are clearly tackling a tricky area: people's persistence and inventiveness at misunderstanding translations is remarkable.

To my mind this is both frustrating and unnecessary. I'm rather bored at the introduction to countless books of poetry in translation rehearsing the same fairly basic ideas about the extent to which it's possible to translate poetry, but why it's beneficial, mentioning a few august precursors (often Pound) and the usual humble statements about the difficulty of the process and debts to previous translations. It's a bit like if all collections of rhyming verse had an introduction explaining what rhyme was, its pros and cons and so forth. I think much of the kerfuffle about translation springs from conflating two simple ideas.

There are a range of ways of rendering a poem in translation, from a literal transcription to a 'version', which takes more liberties, to a 'response', which renounces any specific obligations to the original. Each of these have their merits and different purposes: the key is in distinguishing them, for which purpose, presentation is key. War Music, despite drawing attention to confusions, is actualy relatively clear on this point. Anyone using it to crib their Greek translation homework would well deserve the ridicule they'd get for references to Bikini atoll, and so forth.

There is, of course, a distinct (if related) debate about which approach to translation get closest to the original. This is different from claiming that closeness to the original is inherently desirable. But one way of thinking about this question is in terms of two axes. One is the degree of fidelity to the form of the original (shown most obviously in the choice of verse or prose translation). The other is fidelity to the content, the extent to which you say the same thing, with the same inflection and associations. Ideally, for the closest translation possible, it will score highly on both axes (I'm aware that Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society would have thrown me out of class at this point...).

However, reducing the formal fidelity can increase the fidelity to meaning. Viewed like this, the debate centres on what trade-off is worthwhile to achieve these ends. There are some potentially interesting discussions about how significant particular details within these trade-offs. But hopefully, it's clear that this is a very different debate to the one about whether the closest version is preferable.

War Music is very much a version, rather than a translation, and it's none the worse for that.

Making the sale...

I've recently joined the Poetry Book Society. I'd intended to for a while, but hesitated because of their special offer. They were offering a free book on joining: the selected poems of Carol Ann Duffy, Simon Armitage or Roger McGough. Of these, I've got the first, have most of the second in the original collections and have no great eagerness to read more of the third (there's a story there too, for another time). As a result, although I'd have happily joined earlier, even without an incentive, I delayed because I didn't like the sound of the freebie. I didn't want a freebie I didn't want, if you see what I mean.

Fortunately, I found out they had another offer: a copy of Christopher Logue's War Music. That sounded suitably intriguing and something I'd felt I ought to read for a while. Coupled with the fact that it was something I wouldn't ordinarily have bought for myself, I was convinced.

As an aside on a rather neat bit of marketing: War Music contains the first three of five parts of Logue's version of Homer's Iliad. I read it, loved it and have duly shelled out for the other two. Somehow I feel less of a patsy for noticing what was happening, even as I fell in with the marketing trap. War Music was, in a sense, a Trojan horse...

[For more about the Poetry Book Society, see here].

Sean O'Brien reading tonight

I've just been to a reading by Sean O'Brien at Sheffield Hallam University. I was rather curious to see him read, having read his selected poems Cousin Coat last year and been only partly impressed. He struck me as being at his best the closer he got to Peter Reading's style and subject matter and more recently has been hampered by the fact that it's tricky to be an anti-Thatcherite poet in the post-Blair era (though obviously, the judges of a several major prizes seem convinced that he's onto something). He read an epitaph for Thatcher tonight, introducing it by saying that he wasn't a fan of hers and didn't expect anyone else there was either. There's nothing particularly bold or brave about criticising a Prime Minister from 18 years ago in a city that never had much affection for her in the first place. In fact, it's probably fair to say that a Sheffield poetry audience is relatively unlikely to be shocked or affronted by criticism of the Iron Lady, however pointed the epithets or incisive the similes.

However, the whole reading had the comfortable tone of a return to a city he's spent lots of time in, within the same institution where he used to teach, so perhaps that's fair enough. I'd certainly say that some of the poems he read exceeded my expectations quite dramatically, particularly a longish poem about Hull and how its past and water are both near the surface. This poem made me feel more immediately engaged that I've felt with many of his: both in terms of the immediacy of its sensory evocations and its resonance with part of Hull's distinctive atmosphere.

I knew I'd not seen the best of Sean O'Brien on my last reading of his work and this was a useful prompt to reconsider. Given the quality of some of the books shortlisted for the Forward Prize, The Drowned Book must surely have something going for it to have carried off the spoils. I remain ready to be converted.

[For some useful summary information about Sean O'Brien, see here].

By way of explanation

First, by way of explanation: the previous post was the first few lines of Wallace Stevens' Sunday Morning. It's a favourite of mine, despite (or even because of) its complete self-indulgence. Despite my convulted agnosticism, I've got a lot of time for 'the holy hush of ancient sacrifice'. Nonetheless, it's also important to relish in indulgent pleasure at times. After all, as Kingsley Amis put it: 'nice things are nicer than nasty ones'. And so, I'd like to celebrate 'the complacencies of the peignoir', sitting feet up with a book of poetry, for the sheer pleasure of it.

Welcome

Complacencies of the peignoir, and late
coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,
and the green freedom of a cockatoo
upon a rug, mingle to dissipate
the holy hush of ancient sacrifice.