Simon Armitage Library Tour, Portsmouth BookFest

 Simon Armitage Library Tour, Portsmouth BookFest, Menuhin Room, March 4

It appeared to fall nicely that Simon Armitage's 10-year tour of libraries coincided, when it reached the right part of the alphabet, with Portsmouth's BookFest. Having been a student of Geography here and visited a couple of times recently, he knew his way.

As diplomatically as I am able, I need to explain that poetry is a broad church, as is music, as is painting, and if one 'likes poetry' one doesn't necessarily like it all. 

The host from BookFest displayed an overwhelming enthusiasm that made up in hyperbole for everything it lacked in irony. If her build-ups and reactions to the support acts, Maggie Sawkins, Portsmouth’s own Laureate Sam Cox, and Majid Dhana, went unquestioned, her next level left Simon with little option but to pause at the microphone and say, 'no pressure, then'.

The Menuhin Room fitted in 100 and tickets were much sought after. They could have given away- for it was free - plenty more. I dare say the majority took Sam and Majid's exuberantly affirmative performances at face value and felt enabled, inspired and uplifted by their messages of hope and deeply sincere belief in good in the face of all the evidence. But their poems have only one layer and while rhythm and rhyme are essential elements of the music that can make 'poetry' something other than 'ordinary language', not necessarily when that's all it has. When my friend discreetly got up and went out to having a coughing fit - luckily we were near a door- I thought the same as when another friend had done so in Portsmouth Cathedral during a sub-standard performance but, no, they were genuine coughing fits on both occasions.

And, no, we are polite people, happy to give anyone a hearing and well aware that what we are hearing might be brilliant to others, that it might even be us that are wrong. But for me the sincerity was overdone, the righteousness was comic and the poems were not my sort of thing.

Maggie Sawkins, opening the second half, provided the improvement that I was confident she would. She has a more guarded attitude and can do wry humour. I look back at her poem, A Sort of Bargaining, her reading copy of which she gave me after just snatching a competition ahead of me many years ago and by now can think, yes, that's fair enough. She's any good, knows what she's about and thus uses language in subtler ways than bashing it about like a Tonka toy.

And then came Simon, a class act who has done such things so many times and is entirely at ease working an audience with his self-effacing stories. There was nothing at all to find fault with at all in the delivery of the other poets, only the fact they were trying too hard while not having any but the standard poetry reading devices to do it with. Simon doesn't look like he's trying very hard. Probably because he isn't because he doesn't have to. He's had audiences spellbound by his methods time and again. It's a sort of anti-showmanship but, exuding a calm confidence, it entirely works.

Simon's not on my list of especially favourite poets and poetry readings generally are low on my agenda. If one doesn't know the poems already then it's not easy to assimilate them on one first hearing although all four of them did well to read poems mostly not so demanding that one needed much more.

Apparently there's a 'poetry boom' in progress. I can remember several such before. It doesn't mean that Simon is going to be as recognizable a figure as Tennyson was in his time. I happened to see him from a bus, approaching the railway station in Portsmouth City Centre the next day and he wasn't being mobbed or signing autographs. He had quite rightly answered a Q with his A that none of the more popular art forms needed to worry about poetry.

He is tremendous at what he does, however realtively few have the slightest knowledge of, or interest in, what that is. By all means it's a dubious undertaking and not an obvious one to get rich by. There are football players that not even football supporters have ever heard of earning much more money than the most eminent poets that every poetry reader has heard of.

So be it. Everybody had a good time. Even me. 

The End of Pushkin

 I'm glad I went back to the Pushkin biography (by T. J. Binyon). It wasn't heavy going, there was just so much of it. How so much detail has survived from so long ago is a thing in itself. Like any rip-roaring roller-coaster, it built to a tremendous, highly-charged dramatic climax. Tragedy is often inevitable and so it seems here with the circumstances and the personalities involved.

Pushkin himself is hot-headed, some might say reckless, but he is worthy of some sympathy when it comes to the appalling Baron Georges-Charles de Heeckeren d'Anthès who was a persistent nuisance in his pursuit of Natalya, Pushkin's wife. One has to say he does look like a cad. I'm not sure how many times Pushkin in his turn had tried his chances with other spoken-for women but that is not the mindset of the alpha male who regards anything he wants as rightfully his and everything that's his to be exclusively so.

Despite the drawn-out intercessions of those close to the bitter rivals, the duel that Pushkin had demanded could not be averted. The rules of a duel are brilliantly fair, like a game of 'chicken'. There is a limit beyond which neither side can move any closer but they begin several paces behind that. They can move towards it and shoot whenever they see fit but they only have one bullet and, having shot it, must stay where they are with their opponent able to take his time before using his. I say 'his' - it's hard to imagine women being quite so daft as to want to do such a thing.

In the event, d'Anthès shot first, hit Pushkin who was injured but insisted he could still take his shot. His effort wasn't as fatal as that of d'Anthès proved to be a few days later. D'Anthès was sentenced to hang for taking part but pardoned by the Emperor. Arrangements for Pushkin's funeral were amended to lessen the possibility of insurrection by any revolutionary group seeing it as an opportunity to promote their cause.

The debts left behind were enormous but Nicholas I not only covered all that but looked after Natalya and her children generously which did nothing to quieten suspicions that she was, or had been, his mistress but there is no solid evidence for that.

Legends grew up around poets in the C20th but, blimey, they didn't make them like Pushkin any more. For better or worse.

--

And so, right on time, while writing that there was a knock on the door and it was the delivery of Fall Quarter, the novel by Weldon Kees, all the way from America. That is good timing.  

The Ivory Duo at Lunchtime Live !

 The Ivory Duo, Portsmouth Cathedral, Mar 5

At the obvious risk of appearing overly highbrow, the way the local music year moves on might might be compared with Ovid's Fasti, a calendar of customs, holidays and rituals. Having so recently had the Brighton New Music composers at Lunchtime Live! and the English Piano Trio in Chichester, the latest recurrent event was the always welcome return of the Ivory Duo.

Most often seen and heard as four hands on one keyboard, Panayotis Archontides and Natalie Tsaldarakis were today mostly two soloists.

With Natalie on first, Debussy's Pour Le Piano: Prelude was a dark drama that unloaded a few explosives that didn't match with the sunlit nave. At least as technically demanding in what was going to prove to be such a programme, Ginastera's Danzas Argentinas was rhythmically complex in no. 1 before hauntingly pretty in no. 2 but both presenting different dancing challenges, had one wanted to try.

Panayotis took over and was soon up to a similar level of viruosity in the op.12 Bagatelles of Miklós Rózsa. After the short, sharp shock of Kleiner Marsch, Valse Lente complimented the light, Canzone was long on the palette and, there's often a clue in the title, Capriccietto was capricious to the point of frenzy.  

In a bumper edition of Lunchtime Live! an extensive selection of Hugh Benham's work included Home Street, more pyrotechnics with glimpses of lyricism, Memoranda about a Wiltshire childhood which might not have been a text book idyll, the full-blooded chiming of Pigeons on a Wire and the brisk, invigorating duet Good Morning. 

By no means all 'easy listening', there was much to admire in the energy and musicianship. There were times one might have thought there were four hands at work when there had been only two. 

English Piano Trio in Chichester

 English Piano Trio, Chichester Cathedral, March 3

I listen to Schubert more intently since a little while ago hearing myself say to an eminent local musician that I never found him 'down-hearted'. The look of disbelief that that elicited was concerning. Do I even understand the first thing about what I'm hearing or do different people take different things from the same pieces of music.
The Sonatensatz in B-flat major might not provide the ideal test case, though, it having been written when he was 15. In one Allegro movement, it brought the light from the Bishop's Palace garden, where Spring was happening, indoors. The Chichester faithful are by now familiar with the fluency and ease with which Jane Faulkner, Pal Banda and Timothy Ravenscroft combine to make such a consummate sound.
Rachmaninov's Trio élégiaque in G minor was an entirely different thing, beginning mistily before Timothy's cascading piano accompanied the melodic line in the violin and cello. Reaching a climax somewhere near halfway, it recapitulated until drawing to a sombre conclusion. While still identifiably Rach, it didn't quite overflow like the piano sonatas that have recently annexed my turntable in preparation for a big, upcoming date that I felt the need to be ready for.
On a previous visit, Pal had explained how his cello had spent some time at the Esterhazy court and so there's a fair chance it already knew Haydn's Trio in E-flat major, Hob. XV:29 or something like it from long ago. It's not usual to enquire after melancholy in Haydn and the blithe violin-led Allegretto with elaborate piano variations immediately introduced us to the debonair classicism that civilisation once made possible. But he's not that simple and needs to direct the Andantino's poignancy towards innocentemente and perhaps the most gorgeous part of a gorgeous programme. The Presto finale came in a florid hurry, which makes one wonder about the etymology of 'flurry'. Timothy had explained that when asked if the piece is hard to play, he says, yes, it is. By way of compensation, it's very easy to listen to.

Karen Kingsley plays New Music from Brighton

Karen Kingsley, Portsmouth Cathedral, Feb 26

 

 Some musicians have composers they specialize in while others range widely across many and various. Few more so than Karen Kingsley and she adds new music to her curriculum vitae with these programmes of premieres from the Brighton New Music group. A recent innovation, it has quickly become an item on Portsmouth's calendar to look forward to. 

In the 1960's and 70's, any journey into 'new music' was in danger of proving to be an intrepid misadventure but by now one can approach with more confidence. 

On much of the programme, the titles told us what it was we were listening for. Not necessatily in Temptation of Doubt by Martyn C. Adams in which a gentle song led to a lively variation or two. More so in Unfolding-Forming-Dissolving, the first of Three Meditations by Barry Mills. Gradually becoming less abstract, There but for Fortune and Mysterious River were slow moving, the latter in an unsettled way.

Chris Gander's two haiku, for Spring and Summer were full of short, sharp shocks, the latter opening with a right hand reminiscent of Jerry Lee Lewis before resolving more quietly. Then The Monkey and the Raincoat definitely conjured mischief and precipitation.

David M. Hoyle's Sketches of Childhood mixed playground chants with daydreams before its vigorous ending. In contrast, Marion Maidment-Evans's Two Night Pieces were in turn one of fitful sleep and then a more restful encroachment on nothingness.

But there was not much ostensibly Egyptian in Basil Richmond's Nefertiti. Technically the most challenging pieces, the leitmotif in the first part was elaborated into an involving freize, The priests of Amun had the two hands embarked on different rhythms and Aten was an insistent outpouring and a good choice on which to finish.

Karen's versatility and virtuosity in bringing these pieces to life is impressive. As with chess, there are endless patterns that can be made out of the limited number of black and white resources but most people can't find many of them. It takes a rare talent, and considerable application, to make the most of them.

Crossword

Across

1. Che burst out about unfinished composer (8)

6. Except for place to get a drink (3)

8. Stride into Beirut somehow to give things out differently (12)

9. Obscure Britpop band (4)

10. The most adjacent around the end of the Levant and thereabouts (4,4)

12. Cricketers follow on after big innings left out initially made by city in Mississippi (6)

13. Musical type of monkey? (6)

16. Plan Gino had to rearrange for anteater (8)

18. Capital in GPO's losses (4)

20. Ring villeins about cloud content (6,6)

22. A day on Mars in isolation (3)

23. They could be anything (8)

Down

2. Sung with no end of Bach's 35th (5) 

3. Be subjected to the first parts of Gotterdammerung after a French one and the German (7)

4. Alien sets about what is necessary (9)

5. Peak in the middle of story (3)

6. Good book found in Nairobi, blemished (5)

7. Tries again to redesign streets (7)

11. Info in creative work creative work in a country (9)

13. These (7) 

15. Noise or otherwise is wearing down (7)

17. Donated the last of meal to get hammer (5)

19. Slight loss of head made for illumination (5)

21. Oxford and Cambridge dispute? (3) 

British Poetry in the 1990's and other stories

 Thirty years ago, and more, and some of it seems like yesterday. One is getting old when one can remember new titles by Ted Hughes and Thom Gunn being published, Betjeman being Laureate and Heaney being young. But the idea has been growing on me that the 1990's were a Golden Age. One can never tell at the time but it is as much history now as WW2 was in the 70's.

Not having been around at the time of Eliot and Yeats, of Auden, Dylan Thomas or the 1950's, I don't know what it was like then but I've been re-living the 90's with the additional benefit of some hindsight through the pages of a pile of Poetry Reviews. It's remarkable how much interest there is in them. Some names haven't remained as fashionable, some of the commentary is overdone (not much changes there) and, sometimes for the better, we didn't know then what we know now but it comes across vividly in a bright magazine as a period of energy, with lots of developing talent and I'm not sure the century and, in fact, the millennium didn't end on a high point comparable with almost any other decade you might care to mention. 

And so I have begun to set about saying so in what is very unlikely to be anything book length. It could be dissertation length since I see that 5000 words can count as that these days. It's 2000 words already, having set out the first chapter but it's from hereon in that it will test out the stamina to stay the distance. The problem is that it won't go anywhere, not see print, and so it doesn't really matter beyond providing me with a project. It could be a further pdf, I dare say.

It's the weight, as in extent, of the subject matter that becomes daunting. As soon as one's made half a dozen names essential to the period, another half dozen seem to want to ask why it's not them, too, and so on. There is no limit to how much one can write until one reaches one's own limit. But it's got a title, some sort of vague thesis and a first chapter. Nearly all of the required texts are here so let's see how far I can get with it. 

--

It might be some time before the posthumous novel by Weldon Kees arrives from America so the Poetry Reviews came in useful to put off the return to Pushkin and the heavy biography. It's not that I'm not interested but I've got the gist of it and imagine that the last 250 pages will be much like the first 400. There are further stories of his to look at, I had promised myself a biography of Schubert and there is no shortage of re-reading available but that little run of one thing leading to another is at an end.

--

Taking back the Larkin's Jazz box-set of discs from the lend they had been on, they are most welcome to a re-run through. I'd have been a trad man, too, had I been of the right generation and it's a great old world to step into, not having to know it all, just for the sheer enjoyment.