Words Unlimited

The Week In Other Words & Music

Maybe it's because the weather is suddenly so sunny and the days long but I seem to be getting out more. It's so easy to lose sight of the pleasure of writing or any creative activity. There's no better way to return to that pleasure by finding pleasure in the creativity of others. I feel well nourished this week by music and poetry.

Sunday 22 June
In Aldeburgh for the 'Musicircus ' - part of the Aldeburgh festival - a re-creation of a John Cage Happening, first performed at the University of Illinois in 1967. Fast forward to a Suffolk seaside town 2014. Between 11am and 1pm on Sunday morning, around 700 musicians lined the beach and the Crag Path to play. The 'audience' was free to move among them, creating their own 'concert'. Highlights for me: the percussion section of the CBSO, freed from the back of the concert stage, came forward to play a spirited piece on upturned dustbins.

More drummers paraded along the sea front - students from The Guildhall, London.

On the beach there was the lone piper with boats plus the mugs and plates hanging from what looked like a clothes airer and many more.

As a kind of 'finale' the whole of the CBSO turned up shortly before 1pm. Dressed in Sunday casual gear, and conducted by Thomas Ades, they performed part of Ravel's Ma Mere l' Oye in a tent on the front. Seagulls joined in. Ades's face was fascinating to watch as he conducted - not something you'd see in the concert hall at Snape - it was filled with the joy, the pleasure of making music.

 

Monday 23 June

To The Rugby Tavern, London, for the launch of two new chapbooks from Shearsman and readings by two fine poets, Martyn Crucefix and Robert Vas Dias. Crucefix's subtle poems in The Time We Turned explore memory and the Cumbrian landscape.

Vas Dias's Arrivals & Departures brings together his prose poems. Reading Crucefix on the bus home, I was reminded of the power of the unpunctuated line; Vas Dias reminded me what fun you can have with a short prose piece.

Tuesday 24 June

To Keat's House, Hampstead for the launch of the latest issue of Poetry Review - refreshing interlude, indeed. Evening sun in a beautiful garden, meeting other poets, sipping wine, before going inside to hear some stunningly fresh poems. Sean Hewitt and Sarah Howe are both young poets to watch and it was interesting to watch Simon Armitage watching them read. Doesn't seem a moment since he was the 'young poet to watch' and there he was, the voice of experience.

Sarah Howe described her work as 'hybrid, like me, half Chinese, half English. They are somewhere between a poem and a footnote.' 

Sean Hewitt's rich lyric poems took us deep into the woods. 

 

Simon Armitage's reading took us back to his childhood, that watchful boy up on the moors above Marsden, West Yorkshire. There was an elegaic quality to some of these deeply felt and pin-point accurate lines. As if to lift the mood, and to remind us that he also has a

sense of humour, he ended by reading 'Bringing It All Back Home' from Seeing Stars. It was a treat to hear him read from that marvellous book, and it reminded me, for the second time this week, of the power and potential of the prose poem. I shall be re-reading Seeing Stars and look forward to my copy of Poetry Review, due through the letterbox any day.

Earlier in the evening we had a further treat as the winner of the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize was announced - Mir Mahfuz Ali.  He gave a powerful reading of 'MIG-21 Raids at Shegontola'. The Geoffrey Dearmer Prize is awarded to the best poem published in Poetry Review during the year by a poet who hasn’t published a full collection at the time their work appeared in the magazine.

Mir Mahfuz Ali now has a collection, just out from Seren, Midnight, Dhaka. Another one to add to my reading pile.  Well, if the weather changes, I've plenty of creative company to keep indoors.

Last Week In Other Words ...

It's always a good week when I get out, leave the computer, the current draft and deadline, in order to enjoy other people's words.

Saturday 7 June - To the Betsy Trotwood for the launch of poet Cath Drake's Sleeping With Rivers, which won the 2013 Mslexia Pamphlet Competition, now published by Seren. The book was also the PBS Spring Pamphlet Choice. 

Congratulations to Cath who gave a wonderfully animated reading.

The poems draw on her life growing up in Australia, they are witty, wise and inventive. Cath invited her key mentors to guest read. So it turned into a poetry feast with sets from Mimi Khalvati, Roddy Lumsden and Pascale Petit.

Monday 9 June - to The Troubadour to hear Paul Muldoon in conversation with Cahal Dallat. Muldoon says he first wanted to be a painter, which is, perhaps, why his work has a strong engagement with the image. He’s recently been inspired by the paintings of Rita Duffy. He admires the way a painter can explore an idea, distil it so you 'see it in an instant.'

There is also his passion for film, in particular the Western.  He often tells his students to treat the first draft of a poem as if it were a shooting script for a film – ‘what are we looking at?’

On rhyme: ‘I don’t think of using it, rhyme is what the poems want to do.'

On fashions in poetry, the Poetry Editor of The New Yorker says, he doesn’t see that any ‘single view is to the fore.’

 

 

Wednesday 11 June - To Tunbridge Wells for the launch of Digging Up Paradise, Sarah Salway's book of garden stories, poems and much more. It was one of the most warm and welcoming launch parties I have attended in a while. On a hot June evening Sarah did a reading outside, much to the delight of guests and passers by.

 

 

Writer In The Garden

I’m delighted to tell you that next week I’ll be adding another author interview to the Words Unlimited collection. Sarah Salway - novelist, poet and Writer In The Garden blogger - will be talking about her new book, Digging Up Paradise, to be published in June. It’s a fascinating blend of garden history, horticulture, photographs and her personal response, in prose and poetry, to over 20 gardens in Kent, written during her time as Canterbury Laureate.

Here’s a taster of what’s to come, her poem written when visiting Derek Jarman’s garden at Dungeness. 

 

That Path to the Sea

Let’s build a path like a woman’s spine;

we’ll keep eyes closed to feel our soles,

the spring in our heels,

put down grass, and sand, sheepskin,

smooth oak, and cashmere,

until no one knows what’s coming next,

a line of feathers


so thick it’ll feel like floating,


warm wool giving under toes,

steel girders, resin, piano keys.

We know how it will hold us up,

however heavy we are with sadness,

it will hold us up.

 

photo: Sarah Salway

As part of The Chelsea Fringe you can join Sarah on 3 June and 8 June for more garden stories - Lost Gardens of The Stand. Book your ticket, here. I've just booked mine ...

Mark Doty At The Troubadour

I’m still thinking about that wonderful Troubadour event on 7 October – a reading by the marvellous Mark Doty. There was a moment when it looked as if he wouldn’t show. Gone 8 and no poet? It turned out he’d been stuck in a tunnel on the Underground.

Unleashed, he was soon pouring the characteristic energy and openness into his reading - mainly new work - and the Q & A session with Cahal Dallat.

Doty’s latest book, A Swarm, A Flock, A Host: a compendium of creatures - in collaboration with artist Darren Waterston - is a 21ist Century take on the medieval bestiary.  Dallat asked Doty about his pre-occupation with animals – dogs feature large in many of his collections. “Animals are sentient beings that have a consciousness but it’s not the same as mine. It’s the wordlessness of the animals that invites poetry. Poetry is about reaching towards the unsayable.”

 

The more he writes poetry the more he feels that, “The magic is in the sonics - It’s how a poem sounds that points to depths of meaning or feeling. Poetry is about gesturing in the direction of meaning, not nailing it down.”

For Doty, poetry continues to be “a practice of knowing,” a way of exploring and understanding experience.

When asked about influences, he singled out Frank O’Hara who he sets apart from others in the New York School. “O’Hara can seem all chatty surface, but the poems have infinite depth.” Currently he is reading a lot of Brenda Hillman, the Californian poet, who he admires for her boldness.

Either side of the Q & A he read several new poems from a series called ‘Deep Lane.’ He’s written 14 Deep Lane poems and they will form the spine of a new collection.

You can hear him read a Deep Lane poem, here; and he’s written about the significance for his poetry of the actual Deep Lane, a road near his home on Long Island, on his blog.

He reckoned the Deep Lane collection would probably be out in a year. Can’t wait. 

Paul Muldoon & Don Paterson on Seamus Heaney

Talking, as I was in my last post, of getting back to words, I must write about a memorable poetry reading that I was lucky enough to catch last Saturday. I happened to be up in Manchester the day Paul Muldoon and Don Paterson were reading as part of the Manchester Literature Festival.

Seamus Heaney was to have read with Muldoon, and so this proved to be a moving event. Barely two weeks after Heaney’s death Paterson and Muldoon paid tribute, bringing the spirit of Seamus into the Cosmo Rodewald Concert Hall.

Don Paterson prefaced his set by saying he made no apology for the sadness embedded in his choice of work. Clearly still in melancholy mood at Heaney’s passing, Paterson recalled the text message he’d received from another poet on hearing the news. It read: We’re on our own now. He’d had to agree, said Paterson, “it’s as if the head of the household has gone.” 

He then read with great affection a clutch of Heaney’s poems, including 'St Kevin and The Blackbird,' before moving on to reading his own recent and unpublished work – all sonnets. Paterson admitted he’d had a period of two years not writing poetry and that it is to Heaney’s work he turns when needs to be reminded of how poetry works.

Paul Muldoon also paid tribute to the influence Heaney had had on his own work by first reading a Heaney poem, then moving on to one of his own that, in some way, owed a debt to or had a corresponding image. 

As this reading was also part of the British and Irish Contemporary Poetry Conference, the audience was thick with poets, among them: David Wheatley, Kathleen Jamie, Deryn Rees-Jones, Helen Mort and Amanda Dalton.

There was much murmuring of agreement when Muldoon ended the evening by saying, “The spirit of Seamus will hang over us for a long time,” then, as if to prove the point, read Heaney’s ‘Harvest Bow’ with such tender pacing, particularly in the last stanza:

The end of art is peace
Could be the motto of this frail device
That I have pinned up on our deal dresser—
Like a drawn snare
Slipped lately by the spirit of the corn
Yet burnished by its passage, and still warm.

Poetry On The Beach

 

I’m really looking forward to this coming weekend in Aldeburgh.

On Saturday 27 and Sunday 28 April poet Tamar Yoseloff will be writer-in-residence in the south lookout tower on Aldeburgh Beach. She plans to create a temporary reading room, a wall of words, an installation of found objects.

She’s invited poets to read with her on Saturday evening on the theme of the sea and I’m delighted to be one of those lucky poets.

This event is the latest in the programme of the Aldeburgh Beach South Lookout Project, devised by cultural entrepreneur, Caroline Wiseman

Granta Best of Young British Novelists 2013

Many congratulations to Ross Raisin and Evie Wyld, both ex-Goldsmiths students who have published excellent novels, won prizes and have now made it on to that most prestigious of literary lists – Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists.  Well deserved! 

Both Raisin and Wyld have given interviews on their writing process to Words Unlimited -  read Raisin on the writing of In God’s Own Country, and Wyld on how she came to write After the Fire, a Still Small Voice.

Newspaper Taxis - London Launch

Looking forward to this Friday evening when I’ll be reading my poem, ‘Ringo Hated Onions,’ at the London launch of the anthology, Newspaper Taxis, published by Seren.

Delighted to find my poem in such distinguished company – others in the book include: Simon Armitage, Carol Ann Duffy, Elaine Feinstein, Peter Finch, Adrian Henri, Philip Larkin, Lachlan Mackinnon, Roger McGough, Sheenagh Pugh, Jeremy Reed and Carol Rumens.

Featured in The Guardian's What to read in 2013, the anthology tracks the influence of the Beatles’s creativity on successive generations, with poems that respond to songs, events and much more. Further details, here.

Do come along for the reading and buy a copy. It’s all in a good cause as royalties are being donated to Claire House Children's Hospice, serving those children and young people of Merseyside with complex medical needs since 1998.

I'm not sure how many of the poets will be reading on Friday, but I'm pretty sure Philip Larkin won't be among them. Hope to see some of your there:

The Betsey Trotwood, Clerkenwell, London

Friday 15 February 8pm

Troubadour Triumph

To the Troubadour last night for an amazing evening. This was no ordinary poetry reading, more an event of spontaneous spoken word. What We Should Have Said, re-invigorates what an evening of poetry can be.

On stage three poets – Liz Lockhead, Liz Berry and Julian Stannard – were joined by musician Huw Warren on keyboard and improv philosopher, Stuart Silver.

Not much is planned. One poet reads, a theme or a mood is picked up and the next poet comes to the mic. The music falls in with the rhythm of the words, the first poet might return to speak, or Stuart Silver might pop up with a surreal anecdote or wry observation.

Last night, one theme that was explored you might call, ‘education’, but it was nothing Michael Gove would recognise. Each performer, in their different voices, offered alternative curricula, subversive ways of knowing.

No doubt about it, this is the kind of event where, well, you really had to be there.

Liz Berry, teacher and unofficial patron saint of schoolgirls, is a huge talent and a perfect   choice for such an event. Her black country accent, and seductive tale-telling was at the heart of the evening. I'm looking forward to her first full collection. Meanwhile, she has a pamplet with Tall Lighthouse. 

 

Light for the Darkest Day

Mariko Mori: Rebirth, Burlington Gardens, Until 17 February 2013 

Anyone in central London looking to escape Christmas frenzy or the end of the world – due today, apparently –  would do well to head for the Royal Academy in Burlington Gardens and this wonderful exhibition by New York based Japanese artist Mariko Mori

This is work to calm and rebalance the mind, inviting reflection on life’s cycle of death and rebirth, and our connection to the natural world.

Mariko Mori Tom Na H-Iu II, 2005-06. © Mariko Mori Studio Photo: Richard Learoyd

 

When I visited earlier this week I could have stayed for hours in the room with Tom Na-Iu II. The large totem stands alone in a white room, pulsing with light. Five metres high, it is lit from within by hundreds of LED lights and connected to Super Kamiokande, Institute for Cosmic Ray Research at The University of Tokyo. The observatory, apparently, detects neutrinos emitted by the sun and other such phenomena which the work displays in real time, in constantly changing light patterns. Awesome. Worth the ticket price for this alone.

Fascinated equally by ancient cultures and cutting-edge science, Mori draws on the aesthetics of Shintoism, Buddhism, astronomy, particle physics and technology.  I particularly enjoyed White Hole, to be found in a dark space at the end of a spiraling white corridor. A helpful attendant lights the way for you with a torch.

Whatever transpires on 21 December 2012 – end of the world or start of a new era – either way, sitting with one of Mori’s installations, you’d be in a good place.

On until Sunday 17 February 2013, 10am – 6pm daily (last admission 5.30pm). Late night opening: Fridays until 10pm (last admission 9.30pm) £10 full price, concessions available

For more information visit the website of the Royal Academy, here.