PN Review 198

Jeffrey Wainwright's report on Geoffrey Hill's First Lecture is a useful piece in the latest PNR, demonstrating, as if there had ever been any doubt, that this was the right appointment of Oxford Professor and all the shenanigans of the previous election were an unnecessary shambles.

Hill is reported to have offered some healthy scepticism about Creative Writing courses and said that 'if there is someone 'out there' working at a pitch equal to the demands set by the history of poetry 'she will know who she is' without interference'.

Some thought on the value of criticism were followed by the advice to would-be poets, 'don't try to be sincere, but do try to be inventive'.

His message is that contemporary poetry is only ever what it is by virtue of its past and that its history cannot be elbowed aside by the self-important contemporary.

There are Dannie Abse and Anne Stevenson among the poets here but my preference was for Greg Delanty's versions from The Greek Anthology.

Jason Guriel seems to fancy himself as jauntily iconoclastic in some lengthy disparaging of Heaney's Human Chain but his off-hand tone is somewhat studied if not even disrespectful and the only one belittled by such contrariness is the critic themselves.

He says,

Other moments in Human Chain seem downright parodic of an earthy, folksy poetry, knocked together in a shed.

Well, if only we could all be quite so confident of our own superiority to be able to take such a view.

Ahren Warner, recently risen superstar and much admired by cognoscenti, interviews C.K. Williams with a series of questions based on close readings and fairly abstruse points. This is not the lightweight chat interview of Parkinson or even Melvyn Bragg but the despairingly particular that surely only its participants could find fascinating.

Iain Bamforth's Catchwords is as entertaning as usual and would be one thing that might justify extending my subscription which I think lapses with this issue but I'm afraid there aren't enough others to go with it. I'll not be missing PNR too much and will investigate a replacement order for Magma very shortly.

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Rather more positively, I showed up at the Portsmouth Poetry Society's meeting this week and enjoyed it very much. Denise Bennett and Pauline Hawkesworth continue to run a friendly and relaxed group of local poets and poetry readers which this week looked at poems on a theme of sunlight. With other topics of interest forthcoming on their programme, I'll be hoping to attend more regularly than my rare and sporadic visits over the last 30 years. Anybody in the Portsmouth area who might enjoy such an evening without bringing too much of an agenda should bear in mind its the first and third Wednesday of each month at St Mark's church hall, Derby Road, North End at 7.15 and would be made welcome.