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.