Christmas TV Review

There was a time that Christmas television required the planning and logistical organisation of a military campaign to accommodate all the highlights and essential programmes.
It is not so now, though, and instead of covering the schedules in rings of biro, one has to scour them in the hope of finding some scrap of entertainment, even if it is only an evening of On the Buses on ITV4.
The obvious choice was always going to be John Hurt in the re-make of Whistle and I'll Come to You on Christmas Eve and it didn't let us down. Sparse dialogue, lots of darkness and minimal cast made it as if re-interpreted by Beckett, especially given Hurt's gaunt look which seemed like a visual inter-textual borrowing from the bleak Irishman. Previews had played down the scariness quotient of this adaptation but it was plenty worrying enough for me, thank you, and Hurt, the English coast in winter and some crescendos of anonymous door-hammering provided a real classic and all one might have hoped for from it.
Somewhat more formulaic was the return to Upstairs Downstairs, now in 1936, with Jean Marsh returning to the house she had run for the previous generation. The comparison was clear. Here the acting was as hammy as the sandwiches and the plot telegraphed well ahead of it happening so that as soon as a character appeared their story wrote itself for them. As the first episode set out the situation, the best moment came when Mrs. Simpson was expected to bring the King to a house party but turned up with Ribbentrop. But the second episode took off into a quite moving and more coherent piece on the rise of Oswald Mosley, blackshirts and fascism in general after the house had taken on a Jewish lecturer as a maid. The final episode perhaps tried to include one more story line than necessary, each being told in a series of set piece scenes, before the baby was born at Christmas, the King abdicated, the reformed servant got his old job back and Lady Percy high-tailed it to Germany so that it all ended as happily ever after as it could have hoped.
So far this year Celebrity Mastermind hasn't produced any moments comparable to Stuart Maconie doing C20th British Poetry or Beverley Knight's heart-warming win over Michael Howard but it's been good to be able to pick the winners with so much horse racing cancelled. I thought Hilary Kay looked a good bet in the first heat and then picked Samira Ahmed to beat Giles Coren, who looked somewhat crestfallen to find he had blown his half-time advantage. It's hardly Mastermind, really, and so one can feel quite know-all about it by getting more answers than the worst of the contestants and you know who that will be because they used to play sport.
On the subject of which, the award for Gormlessly Misplaced Lack of Perspective of the Year went to Radio 5's Breakfast Show, woefully hosted by substitute Ian Payne, when it asked the listeners to vote for the Feel Good Moment of 2010. The shortlist had Ann Widdecombe nominating the engagement of Prince William and Kate Middleton, Phil Tufnell with the Ryder Cup and Russell Howard with the Chilean Miners. This was supposed to involve a choice. I know Radio 5 is partly a sports channel but this was an appalling bit of misjudgement.
I didn't hear the result but if the golf and the royals got 2% between them then there needs to be an enquiry.

Rimbaud - The Double Life of a Rebel

Edmund White, Rimbaud - The Double Life of a Rebel (Atlantic)

Whoever 'they' are, they say that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. The little I knew about Rimbaud had suggested he was not my type at all, seemingly over-rated, juvenile, flashy, rambling and unpleasant. But I thought I'd take Edmund White's account of him for the Christmas holidays as a bit of entertainment and see what happened.
White is a fine writer who has not let me down before and he does great service to Rimbaud here, too, by overturning the most assumative of my assumptions and it just goes to show that you can't make any judgements until you have something more solid than hearsay and prejudice to go on.
It might just be the respective biographers who are responsible for all this re-organizing of judgements in French C19th poetry but whereas I thought I liked Baudelaire until reading the book by Claude Pichois and Jean Ziegler, Edmund White has taken Rimbaud in the opposite direction.
Rimbaud was a dedicated radical aesthete, devoted to his anti-bourgeoise agenda and a genuinely out of order misfit that puts more recent puny hell-raisers to shame.
It is his friend, Paul Verlaine, who is presented in this version of events as hopeless and dependant although it has to be said that both halves of this unworldly couple were drama queens incapable of maintaining themselves that kept on running back home to their mothers whenever anything went wrong or they ran out of money, which was most of the time.
Rimbaud's poetics move on from Baudelaire with new forms and an insistence on impersonality, the dark interest in the exotic and the wilful 'systematic disordering of the senses' and the 'double life' referred to in the title here designate the 'wild rebelliousness' and 'dry-eyed realism' as contradictory.
So, rather than ever credit Ezra Pound with quite so much of the invention of the modern or modernist in poetry, it is to Rimbaud I'll be going in the new year to see if the poems hold up to the sympathetic claims made for them here. Yes, of course, the boy was a nightmare and the litany of self-styled wannabe wild boys that cite him as vital to their very art (the likes of Kerouac and Jim Morrison) mean he's got even more to answer for than he thought. But the most convincing part of the story is the coda, after abjuring poetry at the startlingly early age of, was it 24, he lives on in an even more adventurous style, as an entrepreneur in all kinds of things, largely in Africa, and whenever asked about poetry, he doesn't even want to talk about it,
Rimbaud had nothing but scorn for his previous literary life. When his boss, Bardey, for instance, asked him about his time in London, he dismissed it as 'a period of drunkenness'. And when another curious colleague in Africa asked him about his career as a poet, Rimbaud said, 'Hogwash [rincures]- it was only hogwash'.
And that, after being such an ardent revolutionary in the subject, is the part I found the most heroic.

The Christmas Sledging

Thus far, the academics at Hull University don't seem to have found any evidence of Philip Larkin sledging on Christmas Day. I did it yesterday, however, for the first and last time in my life. The first little run was okay but the second attempt, on Swindon's answer to the Cresta Run, was somewhat more traumatic and after early turbulence in which my hat flew off in awkward reverence, pilot and conveyance also went their separate ways.

The Christmas Sledging

That Christmas, it was great sledging away
And not until
My second run ended in disarray
At the bottom of a much steeper hill
Was my short-lived sledging career packed up.
Something that perhaps shouldn't have started,
Or, having done once, shouldn't have again.
It's faster than it looks and didn't stop
That time until I and sledge were parted
And felt something somewhere becoming pain.

Photographs by Pam Chadwick. Thank you very much.

Daisy & Davey's Christmas Annual

DAVEY, DAVEY, QUITE CONTRARY,

HOW DOES YOUR GARDEN GROW?

I DON’T KNOW.

---

That's my highlight from Daisy & Davey's Christmas Annual.

For more, please visit http://daisyanddavey.com/

Top 6 - Christmas Carols

My favourite Christmas carol is O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, a dark, surging piece, apparently a political invocation, ‘Redeem thy captive Israel’, with no mention of a cute baby. It says here it comes from the C12-13th and they certainly wrote them to last in those days. More recently arranged as a Percussion Concerto by James Macmillan and given a memorable performance in Portsmouth Guildhall by Evelyn Glennie with the composer conducting, its power is carried forward and renewed into our time.
Christina Rossetti’s In the Bleak Midwinter is very different but just as brilliant in doing what it does. ‘Earth stood hard as iron’ could be from Hardy and I always liked singing the mysterious, meter-satisfying line, ‘Yet what I can I give him’.
But it doesn’t all have to be dark and bleak and I’ll always have O Come, All Ye Faithful, with the chorus building through the first plaintive, ‘O, come, let us adore him’, with more of the congregation joining in for a second time and then a full blast from the whole assembly which ought to be made as rumbustuous as you can. ‘Very God’ is a great line, too.
I was always interested to know that the Feast of Stephen was the last time that Good King Wencas had ‘looked out’. It made me wonder what he had been hiding from since. Even now, many years after going to his cathedral in Prague, and realizing his name was Wenceslas, the early misapprehension hasn’t quite left me. But it is a heart-warming story of a grand man who is kind to a peasant seen gathering winter few-ew-ell. And there he is in the picture.
Ding Dong Merrily on High is another tremendously rousing effort with its extended Glorias, the obvious way a little lad who knows about little more than football hears ‘Chelsea’ in ‘hosanna in excelsis’ and the way that I have managed to outgrow the nickname ‘Ding Dong’, which I suppose I might have earned after some infant fascination with it and perhaps even impromptu performances of.
And in the tradition of making the sixth selection of this feature a bit of a novelty, I must give my usual seasonal mention to Michael Jackson’s passionate and wonderful rendition of Little Drummer Boy.

Portsmouth Poet Laureate

http://www.portsmouth.co.uk/newshome/Portsmouth-in-search-for-its.6657362.jp

What a coincidence. Just when you think you might be needing a new job shortly, the fates provide you with one. The Poet Laureate of Portsmouth.

Of course, there is an accumulating bandwagon of support suggesting that I should 'allow my name to go forward' and it could have its moments if one were to be given the job. One thinks about it for about a nano-second before remembering that one is Portsmouth's answer to Philip Larkin, not John Betjeman.

One shudders at contriving the invitations to go into schoools to promote poetry without a bodyguard; one realizes that 'civic occasions' will require more celebrations of Nelson, the Ark Royal or 'Play Up Pompey' than satires on council corruption, Mike Hancock's latest dolly bird or unpatriotic thoughts about not going to war; there might be a need to present odes and panegyrics at the Portsmouth Festivities; one might need to research naval history, Dickens, and ignore the fact that although this city is the main gateway to France and the rest of Europe, it often prefers to look inwards rather than outwards.
And, of course, the post is 'honorary', which means there's no wages. Not even the big pile of bottles of booze that I've seen a picture of Ted Hughes with. That would at least be a start.

I'm not sure, but I'm not convinced I'm the public figure they have in mind.
I dare say they'll ideally appoint an outgoing, larger than life enthusiast for verses and most likely a 'performance poet' who can enliven an event with audacious rhymes and grand gestures. I'll look forward to supporting whoever gets the job, the Portsmuthian Ian Macmillan perhaps, but I somehow, and slightly reluctantly, I'm afraid, have to suggest that it isn't going to be me.

Stanley Middleton - A Cautious Approach

Stanley Middleton, A Cautious Approach (Hutchinson)

Stanley Middleton died last year just a few days before his ninetieth birthday. He left his forty-fifth and final novel which advertises on the front cover, 'From the Booker Prize Winning Novelist' and might well add, 'of thirty-six years ago'. For although this is by all means contemporary fiction from a respected author, Middleton's manner seems to come from a now bygone age. That is not necessarily a bad thing but the main character here, George Taylor, is 45 years old and like the friends he makes during the 219 pages, he speaks and acts with a civility and unerring consideration that isn't recognizably typical of anyone I know from my generation. Middleton can't help but write from his own comfortable, highly civilised point of view but perhaps hasn't noticed that most people wouldn't think like George who, having offered both custard and cream to his guests to go with their Christmas pudding, and the lady and Andrew 'confine themselves to custard', partakes of both and feels 'he'd be judged as a sybarite'.

Having had an intended moment of humour on page one, I increasingly had to wonder which of Middleton's linguistic niceties were meant to make me laugh and which were simply his genteel tone and found that I enjoyed it all as the latter while constantly wondering if the book was really set in the twenty-first century or a previous age of greater courtesies.

Middleton's method is to let his characters tell the story, much of it reported from one to another in conversations, sometimes on the telephone, and in lengthy accounts of their back stories and those of others and they are prompted by questions from their interlocutors, which although politely expressed, seem to me sometimes shockingly intrusive.

The characters enjoy each other's company and tell each other so, as well as how interesting they find each other; they make each other happy just by having a conversation, feed each other with delicious, carefully-prepared meals and occasionally chide each other with sharp retorts after perceived indiscretions in sudden changes of mood. It's a comedy of manners in a way but one is never quite sure when to laugh. Even, presumably, in 2009 we are asked to believe than an elderly lady had never got used to using the telephone.

But even though this is an attractively old-fashioned, middle-class world and the action is for the most part, sedate, we still get two deaths, two episodes confronting violent youth and a house fire and one is gradually led into to the story with its slightly creaking devices until it becomes more involving, gathers momentum in its last chapters and eventually proves to be a well-made novel.

Middleton is, in his way, a good painter of character, his story develops and then twists and it is impossible not to have sympathy for the educated postman, George, who can quote Doctor Johnson, Virgil and conveniently shares the author's enthusiasm for classical music and poetry. One does fear somewhat for George's life with Mirabel because the signs are that he's going to be second-in-command in that relationship, but there are men who prefer it that way.

For all that the book assumes that the status of a postman is less than that of a teacher, that people wouldn't be offended at being told quite so frankly what their new friends thought of them, or ask quite such direct questions, it becomes a modestly profound and perceptive story. Although readers new to Middleton might need a while to adjust to his way of writing, it is in the end more fluid and better than it first appears. I enjoyed it much more than I thought I was going to and, hopefully, mostly for the right reasons.

Your Correspondant at the Chess Match

You will have found me in the audience of the chess match, I know you will.

But here's the detail that provides the answer.

If I'm caught up in some difficult murder enquiry, by any chance, these arty pixels will be my best alibi.

Fingers crossed, then.

London Chess Classic 2010

London Chess Classic 2010, Round 3, Kensington Olympia, 10 December

The Times crossword is now so perfectly designed that it takes exactly the train journey from Portsmouth to Waterloo to do it and allow 10 minutes to put your pen back in your pocket and then artfully fold the paper to show anybody who wants to look that you've finished it.

8 Down, Cloisonne, was my favourite, 16 Down Maharishi was good, etc. but the real intellectual business of the day was to be the highest rated ever chess tournament to be held in Britain on the day that the top two players in the world were to play each other.

One of the long-odds outsiders, Luke McShane, pictured above in the foreground of a picture of me, had beaten hot favourite, Magnus Carlsen, on day one and so the cat was already among the proverbial pigeons and then with McShane winning again in round two, it was looking like one of those horse races where the 100/1 shot goes off much too fast for his own good. But, hats off to Luke, because with wins counting three points here rather than one, it makes a big difference.

Action was set in motion by a selected child making the opening move for World Champion, Viswanathan Anand. Organiser Malcolm Pein asked the mascot if he was going to ask Anand which move he wanted or if he was going to play a move of his own. It could have been bad for Anand as the junior player declared their intention to play a move of their own, but when it turned out to be e4, the situation was saved because that's what the Indian maestro wanted anyway.

Hikaru Nakamura, the American 'A bomb', did his usual blitz through his moves, using much less than an hour all told while David Howells took every second of his allotted time. The Nakamura Queen was unable to get beyond the Howells' Rook and Bishop fortress, though, and they were first to finish, drawing by repeated position.

On the opposite side of the stage, the British numbers one and two also made a draw when Nigel Short defended his awkward position with doubled pawns on e7 and e6 against Michael Adams.

McShane might have been making inroads into Kramnik but it was an interestingly open position that was probably always going to be drawn with possibilities for both. Having to leave soon after 7 p.m., I found out the result back here at home.

It was a shame that Anand had to test and ask so many questions of Carlsen before winning because I thought I was going to be able to see the finish of that and the inquest but I left thinking that Carlsen was losing but might somehow hang on. It wasn't to be. Anand prefers to stay in his chair, as does the highly concentrated Howells, while the other players wander about the stage, and off it, for a stretch of the legs or a nosey look at the other boards, as if they need even more chess than they already have in progress. Anand has the dignified demeanour and patience of a doctor and when I get poorly, I'll be glad to trust his diagnosis. Having contrived an attacking position against Carlsen, who was manning the barricades grimly in the corner, he had to fiddle and prod away at the Norwegian's defences with calm but terrible inevitability. When other sports are said to be 'like a game of chess', the commentators might refer to a game like this to see that only a game of chess can be quite as much 'like a game of chess' as this one. If you see what I mean.

But, Anand is the tip to win this tournament now with Carlsen perhaps not at his best for reasons of his own. And, for calm and carefulness, Viswanathan Anand, having seen him in the flesh, is probably promoted to my favourite current chess player, if I'm ever asked in a questionnaire to name one. Although it has to be said that out of all the people in the auditorium or commentary room, I probably had the least idea of anyone apart from a few juveniles as to exactly what was going on up there on the boards.

Kramnik didn't use the move I suggested (Nd4, yes, it was presumably a rubbish idea) to the spectator next to me in my most hushed of whispers. Conversations aren't encouraged in the room where the action is but I was potentially going to be embarrassed when this man next to me had his mobile phone go off and we were treated to a long stare from the adjudicator. Look, I've never met this bloke before and it can't have been me because I'm one of the last of the golden generation of old fogeys who don't own any gadget of mobile telephony.

But it was another entrancing day out and a look into a strange, heavily male-dominated world that I'll never feel a part of and will always have to guard against expressing an opinion about(which isn't like me at all) because I know that whereas on a train ride I can sometimes finish The Times crossword, there is no way I could finish a chess match with any of these people in anything other than second place.

Night Snow

There must come a time for some poets, perhaps many poets, when the biggest question they have to face is whether it is better to write no poems at all rather than write bad or somewhat unsatisfactory poems.
I've abandoned or ditched my last three efforts over the last few months, sure in the knowledge that too much poetry is written and that if I'm not happy with something I've done I can hardly expect anybody else to think much of it.
Those yesteryears when I, at least, was thrilled by my own work might have gone but I remember thinking and saying something similar when I was in my twenties and I'd like to think I returned to form and improved a bit after that.
If only one knew for sure it was all over, one could edit the Collected Poems, stick it on a shelf somewhere and concentrate on becoming moderate at chess rather than mediocre. But you can't ever be sure of that.
It snowed a lot here overnight, like it did in most of Britain. Snow poems are plentiful enough, like snowflakes themselves. But unlike snowflakes, which scientists have proved that under microscopes, they all look exactly the same, all snow poems are slightly different.
So, I give you my brand new, less than an hour old, and so fresh and unspoilt, Night Snow.

Night Snow

The snow that balanced picturesque
on spider’s webs that joined the fence
to the house just below where
the window looks out
passively on gardens, white again,
like they were this time last year,
a few weeks later actually,
was added to by more snowfall
that drifted silently all night
from thick, dark skies
unseen but no doubt beautiful.
But far too heavy in the end
for the fragile nets of silk
that weren’t there in the morning.

Poetry Books Catalogue

I now have 450-ish poetry books. Not all of them poetry books, but some of them novels or short stories by poets.
If and when invited to a house I've not been to before, I'm always keen to sneak a look at the bookshelves. Well, there is no need to come round here because these are the poetry books I own. I thought I'd better have a catalogue of them for insurance purposes, just in case they wanted to give me fifty quid for 'some poetry books' when actually it's perhaps one of the best collections in Hampshire with some irreplaceable items.
Of course, it is intended as a statement of taste and intent in poetry matters but I have been honest enough to include those titles that I bought long ago which are now a bit embarrassing and those that didn't prove to be as good as I'd hoped. But I enjoy looking at the long passages of Gunn, Larkin et al. Larkin occupies over two feet of shelfspace and I thought he was supposed to be frugal. Like one of the Banana Splits.

Agenda Thom Gunn at Seventy
Alvarez, A. The Shaping Spirit
Alvi, Moniza The Country at My Shoulder
Amis, Moraes, Porter Penguin Modern Poets 2
Armitage, Simon Kid x2
Armitage, Simon Seeing Stars
Armitage, Simon The Not Dead signed
Arnold, Matthew Selected Poetry and Prose
Auden, W. H. About the House
Auden, W. H. Collected Longer Poems
Auden, W. H. Collected Shorter Poems 1927-1957
Auden, W. H. Selected Poems
Auden, W.H. and MacNeice, Louis Letters from Iceland
Bate, Jonathan John Clare, A Biography
Bate, Jonathan The Song of the Earth
Baudelaire Selected Poems
Bedient, Calvin Eight Contemporary Poets
Beeching, Guest, Mead Penguin Modern Poets 16
Berry, Paul A Bequest of Fire
Berry, Paul Homages and Holiday Snaps
Betjeman, John Best of Betjeman
Betjeman, John Betjeman's London
Betjeman, John Collected Poems
Betjeman, John Continual Dew signed
Betjeman, John Uncollected Poems
Bishop, Elizabeth Complete Poems
Blake, William sel and ed J. Bronowski
Bolan, Marc The Warlock of Love
Bold, Alan Thom Gunn and Ted Hughes
Bradford, Richard First Boredom, Then Fear, the Life of Philip Larkin
Brennan, Maeve The Philip Larkin I Knew
Brodsky, Joseph On Grief and Reason
Brown, George Mackay Selected Poems
Bryce, Colette Self-Portrait in the Dark
Bryce, Colette The Full Indian Rope Trick
Burke, Carolyn Becoming Modern, the Life of Mina Loy
Byron Selected Poems
Carey, John Donne, Life, Mind and Art
Carpenter, Humphrey Auden, W. H.
Catullus The Complete Poems
Catullus The Poems
Chaucer Canterbury Tales
Chaucer Love Visions
Chaucer Troilus and Criseyde trans. Coghill
Chaucer Troilus and Criseyde
Clanchy, Kate Samarkand
Clanchy, Kate Slattern
Conn, Stewart In the Kibble Palace
Coote, Stephen John Keats, A Life
Cope, Wendy If I Don't Know
Cope, Wendy Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis
Corcoran, Neil English Poetry since 1940
Crabbe, George Selected Poems
Crichton-Smith, Iain Selected Poems
Crichton-Smith, Iain The Law and the Grace
Crucefix, Martyn Beneath Tremendous Rain
cummings, e.e. 73 Poems
cummings, e.e. Selected Poems
Davenport-Hines, Rupert Auden
Davie, Donald A Winter Talent with signed letter
Davie, Donald Collected Poems 1950-1970
Davie, Donald Purity of Diction in English Verse and Articulate Energy
Davie, Donald These the Companions
Davie, Donald Thomas Hardy and English Poetry
Davie, Donald Under Briggflatts
Davis, Dick The Covenant
Didsbury, Peter Scenes from a Long Sleep
Donaghy, Michael Conjure
Donaghy, Michael Dances Learned Last Night, Poems 1975-1995
Donaghy, Michael Safest
Donaghy, Michael The Shape of the Dance
Donne, John The Complete English Poems
Duffy, Carol Ann Selected Poems signed
Dugdale, Sasha The Estate
Duhig, Ian Pandorama signed
Duhig, Ian The Speed of Dark
Dumas, Bethany K. Dumas E.E.Cummings, A Remembrance of Miracles
Dunn, Douglas Barbarians signed
Dunn, Douglas Dante's Drum-kit
Dunn, Douglas Elegies
Dunn, Douglas Northlight
Dunn, Douglas Secret Villages signed
Dunn, Douglas Selected Poems 1964-1983
Dunn, Douglas The Year's Afternoon
Durcan, Paul A Snail in My Prime
Dymoke, Sue A Sort of Clingfilm
East Coker T.S.Eliot poet 1888-1965 booklet from church
ed. Astley Tony Harrison, Bloodaxe Critical Anthologies
ed. Brian Gardner Up the Line to Death
ed. Brown and Paterson Don't Ask Me What I Mean
ed. Chambers An Enormous Yes, in memoriam Philip Larkin
ed. Donaghy 101 Poems about Childhood
ed. Dyson Thom Gunn, Ted Hughes and R.S. Thomas. Macmillan Casebook
ed. Emrys Jones The New Oxford Book of C16th Verse
ed. Fleur Adcock The Faber Book of C20th Women's Poetry
ed. G.B. Harrison Willobie His Avisa 1594
ed. Gerald Bullett Silver Poets of the C16th
ed. Herbert and Hollis Strong Words
ed. Hulse, Kennedy and Morley The New Poetry
ed. Hunter Modern Poets Five
ed. Jarman and Mason Rebel Angels, 25 Poets of the New Formalism
ed. Keast, William. R. Seventeenth Century English Poetry
ed. King and Crichton-Smith Twelve More Modern Scottish Poets
ed. Leader, Zachary The Movement Reconsidered
ed. Lucie-Smith British Poetry since 1945
ed. Lumsden Identity Parade
ed. Morrison and Motion The Penguin Book of Contemporary British Poetry x2
ed. Motion First World War Poems
ed. Motion Verses of the Poets Laureate
ed. O'Brien The Firebox
ed. Pollard Andrew Marvell Poems Methuen Casebook
ed. Reid Sounds Good
ed. Scammell The Poetry Book Society Anthology 3
ed. Schmidt New Poetries II
ed. Schmidt and Lindop British Poetry Since 1960
ed. Summerfield Worlds
ed. Thwaite Larkin at Sixty
ed. Tom Scott The Penguin Book of Scottish Verse
ed. Weiner At the Barriers, On the Poetry of Thom Gunn
Eliot, T.S. Four Quartets x2
Eliot, T.S. Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats
Eliot, T.S. Selected Poems
Eliot, T.S. Selected Prose
Eliot, T.S. The Complete Poems and Plays
Evans-Bush, Katy Me and the Dead
Farjeon, Eleanor Edward Thomas, the Last Four Years
Farley, Paul The Boy from the Chemist is Here to See You
Farley, Paul The Ice Age
Feinstein, Elaine Ted Hughes, the Life of a Poet
Fenton, James An Introduction to English Poetry
Fenton, James Out of Danger signed
Foster, Brighton, Garland An Arundel Tomb Chichester Cathedral
Fraser, G.S. ed John Keats Odes Methuen Casebook
Frost, Robert Selected Poems
Ginsberg, Allen Howl
Graves, Robert Selected Poems
Gray, Kathryn The Never-Never
Greville, Fulke Selected Poems ed. Neil Powell
Grovier, Kelly A lens in the palm
Gunn, Thom A Bibliography compiled Hagstrom and Bixby
Gunn, Thom Boss Cupid
Gunn, Thom Boss Cupid signed American edition
Gunn, Thom Collected Poems
Gunn, Thom Fighting Terms Faber
Gunn, Thom FightingTerms Hawk's Well Press
Gunn, Thom In Conversation with James Campbell
Gunn, Thom Jack Straw's Castle x2, 1 signed
Gunn, Thom Moly
Gunn, Thom My Sad Captains x2
Gunn, Thom Poems selected by August Kleinzahler
Gunn, Thom Shelf Life
Gunn, Thom Talbot Road signed limited edition
Gunn, Thom The Man with Night Sweats
Gunn, Thom The Occasions of Poetry x2
Gunn, Thom The Passages of Joy
Gunn, Thom The Sense of Movement
Gunn, Thom Touch signed
Gunn, Thom and Gunn, Ander Positives
Gunn, Thom and Hughes, Ted Selected Poems
Gurney, Ivor Collected Poems
Hannah, Sophie First of the Last Chances
Hannah, Sophie Hotels like Houses
Hannah, Sophie Leaving and Leaving You
Hannah, Sophie Pessimism for Beginners
Hannah, Sophie The Hero and the Girl Next Door
Hardy, Thomas The Complete Poems
Harrison, Tony Black Daisies for the Bride
Harrison, Tony Laureate's Block and other poems
Harrison, Tony Prometheus
Harrison, Tony Selected Poems
Harrison, Tony The Birds
Harrison, Tony The Gaze of the Gorgon
Harrison, Tony The Shadow of Hiroshima and other film/poems
Harrison, Tony The Trackers of Oxyrhynchus signed
Harrison, Tony Under the Clock
Hartley, Jean The Philip Larkin I Knew
Hawkesworth, Pauline Bracken Women in Lime Trees
Hawkesworth, Pauline Developing Green Films
Heaney, Seamus Death of a Naturalist
Heaney, Seamus District and Circle
Heaney, Seamus Door into the Dark
Heaney, Seamus Field Work x2
Heaney, Seamus Finders Keepers
Heaney, Seamus Human Chain
Heaney, Seamus North
Heaney, Seamus Seeing Things signed
Heaney, Seamus Selected Poems 1965-1975
Heaney, Seamus The Spirit Level
Heaney, Seamus Wintering Out
Henri, McGough and Patten The Mersey Sound Revised Edition
Henryson, Robert The Testament of Cresseid and other poems
Hill, Geoffrey Collected Poems
Hillier, Bevis John Betjeman, the Biography
Hofmann, Michael Corona, Corona
Holland, Jane The Brief History of a Disreputable Woman
Homer The Iliad trans. Lattimore
Hopkins, Gerard Manley Poems and Prose
Horace and Persius The Satires
Horace and Persius The Odes
Housman, A.E. A Shropshire Lad
Hubbard, Sue Venetian Red
Hughes, Ted Birthday Letters
Hughes, Ted Collected Poems
Hughes, Ted From the Life and Songs of the Crow
Hughes, Ted Letters
Hughes, Ted Moortown
Hughes, Ted Selected Poems 1957-1967
Hughes, Ted Wodwo
Hughes, Ted Wolfwatching signed
James, Clive Reliable Essays
Jennings, Elizabeth Collected Poems
Jennings, Elizabeth Selected Poems
Jones, Alice M. Nine Poems signed
Jonson, Ben Selected sel. Thom Gunn
Joyce, James Pomes Penyeach
Juvenal The Satires
Kavanagh, P.J. An Enchantment
Kavanagh, P.J. Presences, New & Selected Poems
Kavanagh, Patrick Collected Poems
Keats The Comlete Poems
Kees, Weldon The Collected Poems
Kennedy, David New Relations
Keyes, Sidney Collected Poems
Keyes, Sidney The Iron Laurel
Khalvati, Mimi Mirrorwork
King, P.R. Nine Contemporary Poets
Kirkup, James A Correct Compassion signed
Kleinzahler, August Cutty, One Rock
Kleinzahler, August Green Sees Things in Waves
Kleinzahler, August Live rom the Hong Kong Nile Club
Kleinzahler, August Music I - LXXIV signed
Kleinzahler, August Red Sause, Whisky and Snow signed x 2, and one unsigned
Kleinzahler, August Sleeping it off in Rapid City
Kleinzahler, August The Strange Hours Travelers Keep
Langland Piers the Ploughman
Larkin, Philip A Bibliography 1933-1976 Bloomfield
Larkin, Philip A Girl in Winter
Larkin, Philip All What Jazz
Larkin, Philip Collected Poems 1988
Larkin, Philip Collected Poems 2003
Larkin, Philip Early Poems and Juvenilia
Larkin, Philip Further Requirements
Larkin, Philip High Windows
Larkin, Philip Jill
Larkin, Philip Letters to Monica signed Thwaite
Larkin, Philip Required Writing
Larkin, Philip Selected Letters
Larkin, Philip The Less Deceived
Larkin, Philip The North Ship
Larkin, Philip The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse
Larkin, Philip The Whitsun Weddings
Larkin, Philip Trouble at Willow Gables
Leavis, F.R. Revaluation
Leech, Geoffrey A Linguistic Guide to English Poetry
Leishman The Monarch of Wit
Leonard, Tom Intimate Voices 1965-1983 x2
Levertov, Rexroth, Williams Penguin Modern Poets 9
Lewis, Alun Collected Poems
Longley, Edna Louis MacNeice, a Study
Lowell, Robert Poems, a Selection
Lowell, Robert Selected Poems
Loy, Mina The Lost Lunar Baedeker
Lumsden, Roddy Mischief Night
Lumsden, Roddy The Book of Love
Lumsden, Roddy Third Wish Wasted
Lumsden, Roddy Yeah, Yeah, Yeah
MacCaig, Norman Collected Poems
MacKinnon, Lachlan Monterey Cypress signed
MacKinnon, Lachlan Small Hours
MacKinnon, Lachlan The Jupiter Collisions signed
MacNeice, Louis Selected Poems
MacNeice, Louis The Strings are False
Mahon, Derek An Autumn Wind
Mahon, Derek Harbour Lights
Mahon, Derek Life on Earth
Mahon, Derek Selected Poems
Mahon, Derek The Yellow Book
Mandelson, Edward Later Auden
Marvell, Andrew Complete Poems
Masefield, John The Dream signed
Maxwell, Glyn Hide Now
Maxwell, Glyn Tale of the Lord Mayor's Son
Maxwell, Glyn The Breakage
Maxwell, Imlah, Reading Penguin Modern Poets 3
McGough, Roger after the merrymaking
McGough, Roger Gig
McGough, Roger In The Glassroom
McGough, Roger Watchwords
Michelucci, Stefania The Poetry of Thom Gunn
Mole, John Passing Judgements
Mooney, Martin Blue Lamp Disco
Mooney, Martin Bonfire Makers
Mooney, Martin Brecht & An Exquisite Corpse
Mooney, Martin Escaping with Cuts and Bruises
Mooney, Martin Grub
Mooney, Martin Rasputin and his Children
Moore, Marianne Complete Poems
Moraes, Dom Collected Poems, 1957-1987
Morrison, Blake The Movement
Motion, Andrew Danderous Play, Poems 1974-1984 signed
Motion, Andrew In the Blood
Motion, Andrew Independence
Motion, Andrew Natural Causes
Motion, Andrew Philip Larkin
Motion, Andrew Philip Larkin, a Writer's Life
Motion, Andrew Public Property x2, 1 signed
Motion, Andrew Salt Water
Motion, Andrew The Pleasure Steamers
Muir, Edwin Collected Poems
Muldoon, Paul Hay
Muldoon, Paul Horse Latitudes
Muldoon, Paul Maggot
Muldoon, Paul Moy Sand and Gravel
Muldoon, Paul New Selected Poems 1968-1994
Muldoon, Paul The End of the Poem
Murphy, Richard New Selected Poems
Murray, Nicholas World Enough and Time, the Life of Andrew Marvell
O'Brien, Sean Afterlife
O'Brien, Sean Dante's Inferno
O'Brien, Sean Downriver x2, 1 signed
O'Brien, Sean Ghost Train x2 signed, 1 'Sean's reading copy'
O'Brien, Sean HMS Glasshouse
O'Brien, Sean Night Train
O'Brien, Sean The Deregulated Muse
O'Brien, Sean The Drowned Book
O'Brien, Sean The Frighteners
O'Brien, Sean The Ideology
O'Brien, Sean The Indoor Park
O'Brien, Sean The Silence Room
O'Hara, Frank Collected Poems
O'Reilly, Caitriona The Nowhere Birds
O'Reilly, Caitriona The Sea Cabinet
Osborne, Charles W. H. Auden, the Life of a Poet
Oswald, Alice The Thing in the Gap-Stone Style
Ovid Amores I
Ovid Fasti Loeb
Ovid Heroides and Amores Loeb
Ovid Metamorphoses I Loeb
Ovid Metamorphoses II Loeb
Ovid The Art of Love and other poems Loeb
Ovid Tristia and Ex Ponto Loeb
Padel, Ruth 52 Ways of Looking at a Poem
Padel, Ruth Darwin, A Life in Poems signed
Padel, Ruth Rembrandt Would Have Loved You
Padel, Ruth The Poem and the Journey
Paterson, Don Landing Light
Paterson, Don Rain
Paterson, Stuart A. Saving Graces
Patten, Brian Little Johnny's Confession
Paulin, Tom Minotaur
Paulin, Tom The Secret Life of Poems
Paulin, Tom The Strange Museum x2, 1 signed
Phoenix 11/12 Philip Larkin Issue
Pichois, Claude and Ziegler, Jean Baudelaire
Plath, Sylvia Ariel
Plath, Sylvia Ariel facsimilie manuscript edition
Plath, Sylvia Crossing the Water
Plath, Sylvia Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams
Plath, Sylvia The Bell Jar
Plath, Sylvia The Colossus
Plath, Sylvia Winter Trees
Poe, Edgar Allan Spirits of the Dead: Tales and Poems
Pollard, Clare The Heavy-Petting Zoo
Pound, Ezra Poems selected by Thom Gunn
Powell, Neil A Halfway House
Powell, Neil George Crabbe, An English Life, 1754-1832
Powell, Neil Selected Poems
Pritchard, William H. Lives of the Modern Poets
Raine, Craig A Martian Sends a Postcard Home signed
Raine, Craig History: the Home Movie
Raine, Craig In Defense of T.S. Eliot
Raine, Craig Rich
Reidel, James Vanished Act, The Life and Art of Weldon Kees
Riggs, David The World of Christopher Marlowe
Rogers, Byron The Man Who Went into the West, the life of R.S. Thomas
Sagar, Keith The Art of Ted Hughes
Sassoon, Segfried Selected Poems
Scannell,Vernon Selected Poems
Schmidt, Michael Lives of The Poets
Shakespeare Sonnets Sonnets in French
Shakespeare Sonnets ed. Katherine Duncan-Jones
Shakespeare Szonnetek Sonnets in Hungarian
Sheard, James Dammtor
Sheard, James Scattering Eva
Shelley A Choice of Shelleys Verse ed. Spender
Simmonds, Kathryn Sunday at the Skin Launderette
Smith, A.J. Donne Songs and Sonets
Smith, Stan Edward Thomas
Southam, B.C. A Student's Guide to the Selected Poems of T.S. Eliot x2
Spender, Stephen Selected Poems
Spiers, John Chaucer the Maker
Steele, Timothy The Color Wheel
Steele, Timothy Toward the Winter Solstice
Stevens, Wallace Selected Poems
Stevenson, Anne Bitter Fame, the Life of Sylvia Plath
Stevenson, Anne The Fiction Makers
Stubbs, John John Donne, The Reformed Soul
Symborska, Wislawa View with a Grain of Sand
Tennyson In Memoriam, Maud and other poems
Tessimond, A.S.J. Not Love Perhaps
Thomas, Dylan selected and edited by Walford Davies
Thomas, Dylan The Poems
Thomas, Dylan Under Milk Wood
Thomas, Edward A Literary Pilgrim in England
Thomas, Edward Collected Poems
Thomas, Edward In Pursuit of Spring
Thomas, Edward Oxford
Thomas, Edward Richard Jeffries
Thomas, Edward Selected Poems and Prose
Thomas, Edward The Annotated Collected Poems ed. Longley
Thomas, Edward The Happy-Go-Lucky Morgans
Thomas, Edward The Icknield Way
Thomas, Edward The South Country
Thomas, R.S. Later Poems 1972-1982
Thomas, R.S. Selected Poems 1946-1968
Thomson, James The City of Dreadful Night
Thwaite, Anthony Selected Poems 1956-1996 signed
Thwaite, Anthony Twentieth Century English Poetry
Tolley, A.T. Larkin at Work signed
Turner, Jeffrey An Angled Boat
Ungaretti, Giuseppe Selected Poems
Vaughan, Henry Selected Poems
Vendler, Helen Seamus Heaney
Virgil The Aeneid trans. Jackson Knight
Walcott, Derek Selected Poems
Welton, Matthew The Book of Matthew
Welton, Matthew We needed coffee but…'
Whitman, Walt Selected Poems
Wilbur, Richard Collected Poems 1943-2004
Williams, Hugo Writing Home
Williams, Tony The Corner of Arundel Lane and Charles Street
Williams, William Carlos Selected Poems
Wilmer, Clive Poets Talking
Wilmot, John, Earl of Rochester The Complete Poems
Yeats, W.B. Selected sel. Heaney
Yeats, W.B. Selected Poems sel Jeffares
Yeats, W.B. The Works of
Yeh, Jane Marabou
Yevtushenko, Yevgeny Selected Poems

Walliams on Larkin

You can trust Radio 4's Sunday afternoon 4.30 slot not to deliver some of the uncomfortably contemporary 'street' literature that Ian MacMillan sometimes enthuses over on Radio 3's The Verb. Although last week, Paul Muldoon was on The Verb, I still after all these years don't think MacMillan is a Radio 3 presenter.
Radio 4 wouldn't upset its audience with anything quite so chatty and broad church. We are safe there with our funny uncle, Roger McGough, and when he's taking a break, there's another poetry feature. Nice things like Frank O'Hara or Andrew Motion talking about Philip Larkin. But who was he talking to about him today? David Walliams, of Little Britain and escort to all the young flappers you've never heard of until he got married.
Walliams is, of course, a fine actor and no fool but it seems like only yesterday that Larkin's reputation was at the level that Gary Glitter's now is and yet now any number of celebrities are lining up to put on record their admiration on TV quiz shows, in the newspapers and on the wireless. What goes round does indeed come around and attitudes change. You can't find a shrill feminist, or even Alan Bennett, to denounce Larkin for love nor money now (or can you?) and Larkin is as 'cool' as he couldn't ever have dreamed of being. For those of us who knew that all along, we can only nod wisely and reflect that fashion will catch up with us eventually.
It seems that Walliams is in the habit of reading Larkin poems at family gatherings, like weddings and funerals, and although Motion added the expert commentary that he always does so judiciously, he agreed with most of what Walliams had to say and it was a cosy meeting of minds rather than a debate.
The 'Enormous Yes' in For Sidney Bechet was identified as an insight into the life-affirming side of Larkin when the general perception of him has been to expect an enormous 'No' or at best a 'Perhaps'. Even the bleak Aubade was used as evidence that Larkin actually enjoyed life because otherwise he wouldn't be so dismayed at the prospect of its forthcoming cessation. If we continue at this rate, with everybody finding the happier side of Larkin, some of us are going to have to change sides and start re-emphasizing the miserabilist themes to redress the balance.
Some of the less anthologized poems, like The Mower and Mother, Summer, I were considered and the 'rented' nature of life was a detail that Walliams picked up which suggests that he has read Larkin quite thoroughly and also that the relatively meagre oeuvre has strength in depth so that stable stars like The Whitsun Weddings or An Arundel Tomb can be rested for some games.
The comparison with Morrissey might have been taken further. Yes, the gloomy provincialists differed in that the singer went to live in Los Angeles while the poet stayed in Hull but the pop star actually espoused celibacy whereas the librarian had three girlfriends on the go at once.
But as the latest in an ever accumulating catalogue of Larkin features, this was an amiable chat and filled half an hour most pleasantly. Larkin, who wrote a poem called Nothing To Be Said, would be surprised to find how much there still seems to be to say.

Picador Prize Shortlist

http://www.picador.com/Latest/News/PicadorPoetryPrizeShortlist.aspx

One short poem by each poet is obviously not sufficient to make a proper judgement on who should, shouldn't, will or won't win the Picador Prize. On the other hand, it might be fun to see what one makes of them and their possibilities.
The standard issue consolation e-mail to those not selected said that they had had an 'overwhelming number of entries' that where 'of extremely high quality'. and then you look at the ten poems picked to represent the shortlist and then you check if the first e-mail really was from Picador.
Frankly, I'd have been tempted to abandon the competition rather than publish a book by the winner if this was the best they got in but I had little doubt about my winner on a first read through the poems and didn't change my mind on the second, so it's Gill Andrews for me, please, whose poem doesn't do a great deal that one hasn't seen done before but seems to me to achieve what was within the author's scope and do what it does quite nicely.
So, then I looked up Gill Andrews on the interweb to find out more and what I immediately found out was that, 'she....(went) to study for an MLitt in Poetry at St. Andrews University, working with Don Paterson, Robert Crawford and Kathleen Jamie.'

Oh, no, please, surely not the Don Paterson who judged the competition.

What did I say when this competition was announced? 'They want to give the prize to someone who can join their club.' There might not have been any need for a competition in the first place. Anyway's, here's Gill and it's hardly her fault she won.

http://www.happenstancepress.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=312:gill-andrews&catid=29:poets&Itemid=63

Best of luck to her in the dodgy world of poetry.

Daisy & Davey's Christmas Annual

Laugh? I thought I never would.

So I'm looking forward to Daisy & Davey's Christmas Annual.

It will be here soon - http://www.daisyanddavey.com/

Say it ain't so, Simon, say it ain't so

So, it was a C.B.E. for Simon Armitage, was it. I must have missed the honours list when it was announced.

I remember a letter in Cycling Weekly many years ago where a reader bewailed a photograph of Eddy Merckx smoking. And this picture gives me a similar feeling.

Why would a poet, and a quite fine one at that, want the suffix 'Commander of the British Empire' appended to the perfectly adequate name they have already. A much less worthy poet, Benjamin Zephaniah, is better placed to explain and once did explain why not.

It doesn't make one's poems any better and, to be honest, one looks a proper charlie with the silly jewellery on.

It says here that Bonnie Greer and John Cale received similar awards at the same ceremony. How the mighty are fallen. If these gongs were not arbitrary enough in the first place, they spoil the names of the recipients with those atrocious words as well.

I don't understand it. Simon Armitage, go back two spaces and miss a turn.

Top 6 - Norman MacCaig

Thanks to BBC4 for marking the centenary of Norman MacCaig on Friday night, a poet who might not always be given his due south of the border but is rightly regarded as a major poet in Scotland.

The interview first broadcast to mark his eightieth birthday showed a poet not quite as self-effacing and humble as the poems might have led me to expect. Although quiet and reflective, he was clearly a poet sure of his own worth and although by no means self-regarding or full of himself, he didn't look as if he'd be readily gainsaid or suffer fools gladly. Thus the nostrum still widely fashionable when I was being taught, that the text is the only object of literary study, was dismantled further as the poems look different after seeing the man in action.

Interestingly, and to his credit, MacCaig described his early efforts in poetry as personal and difficult in a way that experimental modernism would have been in his formative years but after a friend had queried the obcurity of his language, MacCaig determined on a more accessible style and benefitted from it for the rest of his life. Looking back through the Collected Poems, the clarity of each and every poem is immediately striking, the common sense of the man is carried over directly into the poems.

Summer Farm is the title I associate most memorably with MacCaig and I'm surprised how early in appears in the book, on page 7 out of 448, in fact. It is typical in many ways, adding brilliantly concise observation and description to a profound and well expressed idea,

A hen stares at nothing with one eye,

The picks it up.

The poet's mind is cleared of thought before,

Self under self, a pile of selves I stand

Threaded on time.

One way journey similarly celebrates a deceptively anti-intellectual attitude,

There was a time, where I take short holidays,

Before man came shooting his morals

At what created him. I can praise

What never was tortured between true and false.

This middle period of poems from the late 1960's and 70's is the strongest. Basking Shark is another encounter between the thinking MacCaig and the apparently unreflecting nature that he admires,

...I count as gain

That once I met, on sea tin-tacked with rain,

That room-sized monster with a matchbox brain.

The later poems become slightly more tangential or transcendental, less fixing their attention on the natural world. My volume here ends with an image of the poet's future growing 'smaller and smaller' but it's a wry observation still of a part with the earlier dry humour in, for example, Concerto, where

Miss pianist bows her lovely back

under the hail of notes

that she's returning, slightly damaged,

to Beethoven.

MacCaig is keen to debunk pretension and does so in a number of poems comparable perhaps to Larkin's Vers de Societe. But he is better in appreciation of the non-human, as in Culag Pier in which the gulls pick off herrings from the fishermen's catch.

You can pick six from almost anywhere in the book but I've found it more likely to find better poems towards the beginning where Night no more real reads like Baudelaire in a good mood, if that were possible.

Scottish poetry and English poetry are not necessarily the same thing, with many Scots poets using their own dialect and language to make the point. With MacCaig writing in English, he is the more accessible outside of Scotland and so it's not for me to be nominating the finest Scottish poets of the twentieth century but there aren't very many others I'd be putting alongside him on a shortlist.

Top 6 - Edward Thomas

With apologies for missing Remembrance Sunday with this feature, it is long overdue that Edward Thomas had more than a passing mention in these pages. He has long been a part of my firmament of poets and writers and should have been here long before in more than a passing reference.

Locally, it is a short train ride to Petersfield to walk around some sites associated with him at Steep, where he lived, not least the memorial stone on the Shoulder of Mutton, a climb so vertiginously steep that these days it has become somewhat forbidding, but it's a nice view on a clear day and I must do it again one day.

The Edward Thomas Fellowship keep up regular meetings in his memory http://www.edward-thomas-fellowship.org.uk/ and I might hope to coincide with them eventually.

I was also interested to find a letter in Eleanor Farjeon's book, Edward Thomas the Last Four Years, that he wrote from Hucclecote when staying with his friend, Jack Haines. Hillview, where Haines lived, was very close by where we lived in Gloucester in the late 1960's and 70's, and after that he was going to Coventry, apparently by bicycle.

I was first tempted to select six books by or about Thomas, which would be Edna Longley's excellently informative Annotated Collected Poems, the Farjeon book above, Stan Smith's fine study published by Faber, and three of his prose books, The Icknield Way, The South Country and In Pursuit of Spring. And perhaps that's the better idea because, re-reading him last night, I found it more difficult than expected to find six poems that I admired as much as I'd hoped.

Thomas is certainly all one wants of the thoughtful, solitary, close to nature writer, and more than would be necessary at his age, preoccupied with mortality although from 1914 to 1917, one can understand why he might be. But some of the poems began to seem a bit more precious than might be ideal. Less sentimental than Housman and more innovative stylistically than he might be credited for alongside Hardy, he is an essential part of the 'English' tradition and, I might suggest, closer to Larkin in style than Hardy, he is also aware of his own sensitivity and method,

I should use, as the trees and birds did,

A language not to be betrayed;

And what was hid should still be hid

Excepting from those like me made

Who answer when such whispers bid.

I never saw that land before is a fine poem and one I thought a banker for a pick of six of his poems but those final lines now make me think he should just do it and not tell us he's doing it.

But there are enough poems to furnish a fine half dozen without reservation and show that Thomas is not only an essential part of C20th Eng Lit, not really a 'war poet' as such and exactly the quiet, reflective sort of poet that should be valued and preserved.

We were well catered for at school in Eng Lit and it's something I've remained eternally grateful for, learning much from being given Adlestrop to learn for homework. It's about as perfect a piece as one would want and familiar enough in all its nuances not to need me to add summary or comment except to say that Adlestrop station is no longer there but the poem and the station sign are now in the bus stop in a very pleasant spot indeed.

At the Team's Head Brass is a war poem and, as Longley notes, both different to but a companion piece to Hardy's In time of 'the Breaking of Nations' . Thomas is closer to the land than he is to history, it might appear.

Having already selected a train poem, it's easy to add another set piece of English poetry, a rain poem, in the poem Rain which is given more depth in the passage it comes from in The Icknield Way, a meditation on mortality and solitude that had strange resonances in the prose book for me when thinking I'd read it somewhere before.

Celandine and Tall Nettles are perhaps the best realized of the many observations of countryside and nature, where Thomas allows us our fantasy of English pastoral escape whether or not it was ever really there. But rural life isn't idealized except in a way comparable to Marvell's very dissimilar poetry that also appreciates 'a green thought in a green shade'. Thomas knows the human place in rural life, having been born in London, and the very early poem Up in the Wind does it as well for me as other, later, more noted pieces.

The stray shell that robbed us rather unnecessarily of whatever would have been Thomas' later work, after only three years of writing poetry, is one of those culpable objects in history that defies understanding, especially as he had seemed to live a charmed life with several near misses before the ending of the war. But we need to treasure the man and his example as unsentimentally as possible in the circumstances. It was an example that English poetry could return to after the subsequent decades of misadventure into some distorted versions of modernism and one we must be grateful for.

What Larks

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00w8kf0/Only_Connect_Children_in_Need_Special/

Congratulations to Larks on their fine win on Only Connect. Three Philip Larkin fans proved just too good for three Wheel Men, who despite my sympathy with their bicycling theme, were not my favourite three celebrities. But the Larks were a fine set of men, Andrew Motion, Stuart Maconie and Michael Bywater, all of whose writing and personalities I have enjoyed for several years.
And not only did the game provide the desired result, as if that mattered, but it established an unlikely precedent that it is possible to enjoy a Children in Need event.
Well done, boys. And thanks to the redoubtable and photogenic Vicky Coren in the chair.

Signed Poetry Books - Neil Powell

Enthused as I have been with Neil Powell's writing in recent PNR's, I looked at Amazon to see what they had and saw this biography of Crabbe, which I have thought about reading before, at one of those giveaway prices that makes you feel guilty for a moment that the author is not benefitting at all from your purchase.

Just for a moment, before happily clicking on the 'one-click' order button and then sitting and waiting for the postman to come.

Thus it was an added bonus to flick through the book and it's a signed copy and an unexpected addition to the collection.

Having just a trace of shopaholicism where books are concerned, I'd better go back and see which of his books of poems are available. I remember reading Carpenters of Light, his book on the post-1945 poets, in about 1984. That's quite a long gap between books. I probably can't afford to leave a similar gap before reading the next book.

Picador Prize Update

My prospects of a state funeral and an eternal resting place in Westminster Abbey receded slightly further last night on receipt of the e-mail regretting that I had not been selected for the shortlist of the Picador Prize.
They were heart-broken, obviously, but went on to explain about the 'overwhelming number of entries received, and of their extremely high quality'. At least several of which were better than mine.
You have to be tough in this business, suffering such arrows of outrageous fortune, but I'm being brave about it.
It is, of course, much more a blessing in disguise. It would have been a helluva prank to have been on the shortlist with the satisfying feeling that one had prevented somebody else from being on it but winning the prize could have been disastrous. Seeing the book reviewed in august places and commented on by very important people, perhaps having to promote the book by turning up and doing readings, even sitting behind a desk to sign copies. I couldn't have done all that and, more than anything else, even if we could have stretched my poems into a 'full-length' collection, there would never be enough for any kind of follow up ever.
So I will keep a look out on their website for the samples of the shortlisted poets so that we can see if any of them are any good. The premise of the competition is sound. There is bound to be one or two poets out there worthy of this contract.
The reverse is probably also true. There must be numerous poets with book contracts that should never be seen in print again. I'd volunteer to judge that one.

Toads, jazz and a bad dance

The new issue of PNR has Neil Powell as its highlight, as he has been so often during my latest special offer subscription. The rest of the magazine is really beyond me in far too many places and I tire before reaching the end of many of the essays and reviews. It long ago seemed to cease to matter what erudite point was being made when one's mind has wandered.
In no. 196, Powell is considering some of the contributions to the Larkin25 anniversary, mainly the set of jazz CD's but, before then he manages to disapprove of the toads that Hull has been populated with. I'm glad that it's him and not me that goes into battle first even if it's only in passing and understatedly. There appears to be a sort of political correctness about this sort of celebration that means one shouldn't disapprove of them in the same way that one ought to sponsor charitable runs, walks or other ventures however feeble the project might be.
My preferred reason for not disapproving is that if something isn't to one's taste it isn't because it's no good but more likely because one is not in its target audience, not who it was designed for. If a record by Cheryl Cole or The Saturdays doesn't do anything for me and sounds manicured into meaninglessness as a product, it's not necessarily for me to say because there are plenty of pre-teen girls who love it and grisly 51 year old blokes are not supposed to like it and in fact might be in danger of getting put on some sort of list if they did.
But a world without bad reviews and some disapproval of stuff would be antiseptically clean and ultimately pointless. The cosy world in which everything was admissable and nothing was allowed to fail produced a miserable, truculent and spolit generation who were misled into thinking that everything was easy and hardly anyone failed whereas it might be closer to the truth to believe that most things are hard work and very few things succeed.
So I'm glad Neil Powell broke this taboo and suggested he didn't reckon much to the toads because from the pictures I've seen they look like the sort of unfunny, kitsch memorabilia you can buy at seaside emporia and their connection to Larkin is a bit tenuous.
Powell's consideration of the Larkin's Jazz compilation expresses reservations but is more or less in favour. I'm sure it's very listenable but the early days of trad jazz are not really my area. What it does do, though, is make me wonder if any previous poet has had their admirers try to recreate their record collection. Trevor Tolley made a list in the About Larkin magazine a few years ago and has now worked on this new release. It's harmless enough and in a way Larkin set himself up for this treatment by reviewing jazz in the newspapers for so many years. So it is only Larkin's jazz and not his favourite music, which as we all now know included a large helping of Handel, too. But, in future, could all poets please leave a list of 4 discs worth of music among their papers so that their record collections can be posthumously revisited by anybody not satisfied with only their poems, reviews, letters, life story and miscellaneous jottings.
So far, not so bad, until I am reminded of another release earlier this year, an album of Larkin poems set to music, most notably and badly by the Holy Orders who really did push the boundaries of decency with their 12 minute version of The Dance. I take it on trust that it lasts the advertised 12 minutes because I haven't managed to listen to it for anywhere near that length of time on my few attempts thus far.
Larkin abandoned the poem not only before he had reached an end but also ostensibly before he'd done much work on this rough draft which doesn't look anything like finished Larkin. Neither does this poem, and hardly any other by Larkin, lend itself to being set to music. Larkin's poems, in a technique learnt from Edward Thomas as much as anywhere, run lines across the rhyme scheme, adopt conversational rather than lyrical tones of voices in many places and are intended for the page or spoken recital in a way that makes them very difficult to set to music, which the Holy Orders demonstrate very well indeed.
It's a tortuous experience to hear the anguished performance and the horrors it perpetrates. One is not inclined to wonder what Larkin might have thought because there's nothing one can do about such atrocities but the greatest shame is that it is intended as a tribute, as a labour of love, 'inspired by' Larkin's poem when it adds nothing to the Larkin oeuvre at all and if anything, disrespects it.
All these add-ons, these sub-Larkin projects and enterprises ultimately suggest that the poems themselves aren't quite enough. Well, they are, and that's the point. Everything else added on around them, beginning with the biographies, the letters and juvenilia - which are more or less legitimate- down to the statue, the toads and the settings of the poems aren't the main point and at their worst they constitute an insult. It's a pity because they are clearly not meant to be.

From the Archives - 'Walking on Water' interview

My colleague, Daniel Parsons, has been looking through his old blogs with a view to possibly making a return to the medium. He reminded me of the interview he kindly invited me to do with him in 2007, mostly on the subject of my booklet, Walking on Water. We are both still quite pleased with it and so I've adjusted it slightly and exhume it here for the sake of posterity.

How would you describe your collection ‘Walking on Water’ in one sentence?

It’s relaxed and confident.

Why did you choose the poem ‘Walking on Water’ as the title for your latest collection?

It’s the best title for a collection of all the poems in it. But it also probably refers to the confidence and perhaps, at a push, refers to the thing that poetry at its best can do with language. Like doing the seemingly impossible, although you can see how it’s done if you look closer.

If you could recommend somebody to read just one poem in ‘Walking on Water’ which one would it be and why?

It’s such a short book that it wouldn’t take very long to read it all. But I wonder if ‘Piccadilly Dusk’ is somehow the best thing in it. I hope it translates the moment into something the reader can share and I think it is a well-made thing. I was lucky to have the word ‘expatriate’ waiting in the back of my mind, ready for use, and it fitted in nicely here.

Notions of nature, weather and the seasons are well represented in ‘Walking on Water’ do you have any particular environmental and ecological views?

I remember someone who read ‘Museum’ in 1991 remarking that there was a lot of weather in it. I don’t do it consciously- perhaps it’s an English obsession. Perhaps being a bike rider, I’m always looking at the weather with a view to my next ride. Or perhaps the weather and the seasons are moods, easy and useful ‘objective correlatives’, in Eliot’s famous phrase.
I think the planet- and our lives on it- has probably been damaged beyond repair already but it’s not meant to be a theme in my poems.

When did you become interested in, and start writing, poetry?

Creative writing was always an easy option at school from the earliest age. I can’t really remember not being interested in words but it wouldn’t have been until I was 14 or 15 that I deliberately set out to write poems. It’s hard to say when, or if ever, I wrote my first successful poem. I began ‘Re-read’, the selected poems, with Ferdinand, which I wrote when I was about 18 but the poems I had in the school magazine for a few years before that were okay for a teenager. I still haven’t written my essay on how ‘ poet is the easiest job in the world’.

Who would you cite as your most significant influences in poetry?

Thom Gunn was the poet who made me want to be a poet in the same way that George Best made me want to be a footballer. After that, the example of Philip Larkin. And after him, many of them. Once I could have pointed out lines here and there where my poems echoed Hardy, Auden or several others but I’ve gradually forgotten where the bodies are buried. ‘Sometime Gone’ in Walking on Water is deliberately homage to James Fenton’s poem ‘Out of Danger’. But I don’t think about other poets in those terms so much now, or try not to.

I understand some readers in the past have been slightly critical of your cerebral approach and technique, contending that you don’t write enough for the ‘common man’ (whatever one of them may be). How do you respond to this accusation?

I remember that Martin Stannard wrote in PQR that my Tycho Brahe poems read like ‘biography by numbers’ and that he suggested I wrote too many poems about other works of art. Giles Darvill wrote a review of ‘Re-read’ in South magazine that said the effect was of ‘human feeling and energy packed into the discipline of a silicon chip’. The Darvill was a much more positive review than the Stannard but I don’t see either accusing me of being overly cerebral. If one wants ‘cerebral’ poetry one goes to Prynne, Basil Bunting, Ezra Pound and those who attend the conferences at Cambridge. I’m with Larkin, Edward Thomas and those who would like to be accessible at a first reading, although I’d like to think that one reading is not all that it would take to enjoy a poem properly.

What advice, if any, would you give to any poets, aspiring or otherwise?

You have to enjoy it for its own sake. It certainly doesn’t do any harm to read lots of different poets. But there’s no money in it and it’s a cliquey, small industry so it’s best not to make any plans for a career in it. I’m glad to be outside of most of that.
Enjoy the words and the ways one can use them. If your poems make you genuinely happy with what you’ve done then that's a great feeling and as much as one can ask.

Best Poem of 2010

I have re-read the shortlist a few times, notwithstanding that there were any number of other poems that deserved to be on it and also acknowledging that these are six very fine poems that I admired on first reading and found more in subsequently. Reducing the shortlist down to a winner is a process of discrimination, which can sometimes be a good thing, between the already very good to find the slightly better. And I'm very glad not to have to judge a proper poetry competition of such quality for a real prize because, quite honestly, I don't think prizes is what it's really all about. But, good game, good game, and how dare I even pretend I have any right to decide which poems are better than any others.
It would be a big ask to give it to James Sheard's long (by today's standards) poem, it creates a dark and threatening atmosphere and I like some bits of it better than others but it refers to the process of poetry, which isn't always a good thing and, compared to, for example, Derek Mahon's poem, which looks better every time you look at it, it neither is nor was probably meant to be quite such a coherent whole.
I can't give it to the Heaney because although Todd Swift seems to want to challenge the perfectly obvious assertion by Sean O'Brien that Heaney is 'the English-language world's greatest living poet', the point seems to have more going for it than going against it but if this is by no means his best poem and if it were to be made this year's best by anyone, it elevates his really good pieces to an even higher level. It is a wonderful poem but I'm not going to say that Heaney in third gear can outrun allcomers.
Kelly Grovier's new poems in PNR prompted me to order his book of poems. By some mistake that might have been mine I first received a copy of his book The Gaol on the history of Newgate prison and it has proved to be a happy accident in that it is a far better read than the poems. The Ratio is a poem placed firmly in an area of my interest, on the subject of Mozart's downloading of Allegri's Miserere from The Vatican on one hearing but I can't in all conscience select a poem that thinks that this is a line of poetry,

transcendence, quintessence - substance

No. I'm sorry, but one has to draw the line somewhere.

I really want to pick Jane Yeh's poem because I like its self-consciousness, its knowing way, its superb control and choice language. I'd give anything to have wriiten that poem. Almost anything. It is a brilliant finish and I made it best poem on the shortlist for the National Poetry Competition anyway. But Mahon's An Aspiring Spirit has set a passionate standard, even if it is only 'after Quevedo' and all the clever irony in the world isn't convincing me yet.
It takes not only Muldoon's immense and almost objectional talent and cleverness to outdo Mahon's elemental life-enhancing sonnet but also his mesmeric use of the word 'tatterdemalion', which I now see has attracted some other internet discussion. I'm not entirely sure I gather entirely everything that The Fish Ladder is about and how it does what it does but I sometimes like that air of mystery when one knows something is even better than one is capable of appreciating.
Although at first I had no idea which was the best poem of 2010, it has become clearer now. An award from this tatterdemalion little website is hardly likely to show up on Paul Muldoon's list of poetry honours, but it is sincerely meant and has been thought about a lot.

It's been a big year, with several big names publishing new poems in books, but, one might think, not all of them doing any better than they've done before.
Next year we can look forward to new books from Roddy Lumsden and Martin Mooney, or so I've heard. I can only look forward to the challenge of deciding which book and which poem I like best out of those.

Best Poem of 2010

I don't read very many poetry magazines these days and also don't think awards and prizes mean much beyond creating a discussion and some publicity so perhaps my award for Best Poem of 2010 actually transcends itself by being the Most Redundant Literary Award of 2010 above and beyond whichever poems it nominates. But I did say earlier in the year that Lachlan Mackinnon's book Small Hours would deserve to win a share of this year's prizes and even though it's been taken on by books from Derek Mahon, Seamus Heaney, Paul Muldoon, Simon Armitage and other somewhat major names, I think it has held on to its position as my favourite book of this year.
Much of the power of Small Hours, however, depends on the long prose poem sequence, The Book of Emma, and it is not a straight contest to put that moving and subtly powerful work up against the general fashion these days for poems that don't expect us to turn over many pages before we get to the end. There are several excellent other poems in the book but none that have made it onto my shortlist.
Last year, in an effort to try to give this award some history, I probably liked Don Paterson's poem The Day best without making Rain the best book of the year. So I'd like the best poem not to have appeared in the best book.
2010 was a year that several celebrity names added new titles to their bibliographies but, Mackinnon apart, few of those new books achieved tremendously much that their authors hadn't showed us already but that isn't to say it wasn't a good year.
I've had a relaxed look through the books I've bought and reviewed here this year, and tried to recall what I've seen and liked in magazines and on the internet and made a shortlist, which has been reduced to these, with no poet allowed more than one poem on it as the sort of arbitrary rule that these sort of shortlists sometimes give themselves.
So,

Derek Mahon, An Aspriring Spirit, from An Autumn Wind
James Sheard, The Strandperle Notebooks, from Dammtor
Paul Muldoon, The Fish Ladder from Maggot
Seamus Heaney, 'The door was open and the house was dark' from Human Chain
Jane Yeh, The Body in the Library,
Kelly Grovier, The Ratio, both from PN Review 195.

I'm honestly not sure which way it's going yet and none would be shortlisted if they didn't have a chance. Having left out some excellent poems to get this far, I'll have to give it some more thought before selecting the winner. I'm sure the poetry world will be on hot bricks in anticipation of my decision.

Pictures of Gregory

Research in old diaries and archaeological excavations of piles of old magazines, programmes, photos and general cultural detritus have established that the date I saw Gregory in Bournemouth was Monday 27th February, 1989 and eventually dug up the pictures I took.

In an unfortunate bit of bad planning, I'd had used up the film before he took his hat off to reveal the full dreadlocks but it was an excellent concert and in pictures like the first one here, I suspect he knew I was there and held the pose for the photo. Or maybe that was just my imagination.

Top 6 Gregory has to begin with my two most memorable, the duets with Dennis Brown, Let Off Sup'm, from Judge Not, and Big All Around from No Contest, with its choice studio effects http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcBzFPBJqHk . Hush Darling and If I Don't Have You represent Lover's Rock where really you can perm as many as you want from the selection without losing out.

Night Nurse is as big a UK hit as there was and so is included for form's sake but there's a wealth of candidates in a vast output that includes classic cuts throughout and a Top 20 or 30 might tell the story better because there aren't necessarily stand-outs in such a high class field. And of course the sometimes novelty sixth selection has to go to Puff the Magic Dragon.

Gregory Isaacs (1951-2010)

My favourite singer died on Monday. I'm not saying that as a tribute or to claim him as mine but if I happen to outlive Al Green, you must come back and check that I don't say the same about him.

I have a heavy pile of vinyl upstairs that establishes my allegiance, something like 35 LP's plus 12 inch singles, and some CD's closer to hand down here, the Live at Brixton Academy album playing right now. But my collection is nowhere near an effort at completism. In the mid-90's there was a review in Q, or it might have been Mojo, entitled 'that difficult 137th album'. Great admirer of his best work though I am, I'm not above thinking that some of those albums were the most perfunctory of contract fulfilment.

The two LP's repackaged as the double album, Lover's Rock, along with the Night Nurse set represented a high point in the reggae chic that Gregory was undisputed champion of. By no means the international icon that Bob Marley was, he had a specialist following in the UK while being a household name and perennial number one in Jamaica and the Caribbean. If Night Nurse crept into the lower ranks of the British hit parade in the original, it was some sort of compensation but not much that Mick Hucknall took the song to a higher position as a cover version.

There was already a considerable oeuvre of bittersweet singer-songwriter material behind him before the 1980's with albums like Red Rose for Gregory and Warning still to come as well as the powerful Judge Not collection with Dennis Brown (and do, please, look up the majesterial duet Let Off Sup'm) and collaborations with Sly and Robbie, the superstar rhythm section of choice. But Papa Gregory also benefitted from a fine backing band in the Roots Radics Band who were just as state of the art.

Equally adept as heartbreaker or heartbroken, the local ladies man, there was also a political strain to his songs in the likes of the rasta hymn Border, and the gorgeously well-judged cover version of Puff the Magic Dragon. His voice was sweet without being sentimental, languid and lyrical. Our first planned trip to see him in London ended in disappointment when called off, reportedly when Gregory was jailed on gun-running charges in the early 1980's but the mythology and rumour was not always easily distilled from the hard facts in those days. I don't know.

I eventually saw him in Bournemouth circa 1989, just after Red Rose for Gregory and enjoyed every minute, knew every word, even though waiting until midnight before he came on, and drove home to Portsmouth to be in bed by 3 a.m.

His passing marks almost the end of a great tradition of reggae, a genre whose reputation and more recent lurches into darker areas make the bygone age of Dennis Brown, Freddie MacGregor and their like seem really quite old-fashioned.

Hush Darling http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3n8old0BNWQ

Great South Run

World class athletics came to Portsmouth on Sunday. Seeing a world champion setting a new course record is quite a moving experience, not as much for the simple anorak feeling of being there to see it but to see just how perfect it looks, the way that whereas for most of us running 10 miles on tarmac would be impossible, joint-breaking or at best a difficult plod, to see World Cross Country Champion, Joseph Ebuya, and Grace Momyani, both Kenya, skim, float across or disdain the ground they cover is entirely 'something else'.

And neither do I have anything but the ultimate respect for those hours behind the planet's most gifted whippets who have trained to take part, find great fulfilment in the achievement and either wave to cameras and crowds in the knowledge that they have only a mile to go and will finish or those who show their suffering, take a bit of a walk or stop to stretch a hurting muscle. Hats off to the dizzying passage of faces and running styles, the courage, determination and unwilling body shapes that they force into the pursuit of achievement. My only suggestion to any but the best of them would be that it is actually easier and more enjoyable on a bicycle.

I found Freya Murray, second in the women's event, as impressive as any on the purely racist grounds that someone from Scotland could be good enough to come second to Grace's prototype distance running. But the main reason I was so impressed is that, somewhat unbelievably now, I did once do something similar as a teenager, up and down the exciting gradients of Churchdown Hill outside Gloucester when I was the merest of schoolboys. It was tough, it was spleen, it was fight and it was guts but, quite honestly, it was a soft option compared to having to play rugby union against the first team of a school that frankly fancied itself at the game and officially outlawed proper football, at which, 15 years old, I was a maverick talent. It was like being an oil painter working among jobbing painters and decorators, or at least I can say that now.

But I'm not sure if the Cross Country title that Ebuya won involved him in climbing over gates or slipping through ankle-deep mud on twilight Gloucestershire November evenings. From what I've seen of Cross Country on the telly, it looks as if they do a few laps of a field with a bit of a slope in it.

So, having not run an inch since finishing a creditable, I thought, 10th, in the Fairford Festival Fun Run of 1995, I was deeply engaged and profoundly impressed by seeing not only what top class distance running now looks like in the flesh- it looks like sprinting for 10 miles- but also how many unsuitable people are giving it a go and getting a huge thrill out of it. You only have to get down to the first of the club runners to begin to see less than perfect running actions but then you notice that they are doing the 10 miles in a time not much longer than I'd take to do it on wheels now. Ebuya running v. Green on bike would nowadays be a bet worth considering although, in my defence, I did do 10 miles in 26.31 in 1995 and so I'd have been hanging around waiting for him at the end in those days when I was fit.

But, absolutely tremendous, all of it, and all of them, and not least the little warm-up sideshow I saw when police jumped on a pickpocket and eventually carted him off. We might find Shakespeare's invention of Autolycus to be a tricksy figure of guile and wonderment in an old play but we don't like crimimal no-marks ruining a lovely Sunday like this when everybody else is having a nice time.