Patrick Hamilton - Twopence Coloured

Patrick Hamilton, Twopence Coloured (Faber Finds)

Patrick Hamilton was 24 when his third novel, Twopence Coloured, was published. After too long out of print, the Faber Finds series has given us the chance of comparing and contrasting with Hamilton's later, better known work.

The story follows the career of Jackie Mortimer, an actress of particularly good looks and some ambition, through a series of episodes that provide a vehicle for portraits and satires on the theatre in London and the provinces.

Theatre producers are seedy, middle-aged men with cigars, the acting profession is tawdry, threadbare and takes place in a twilight world behind the garish glamour of lights and curtains. Thus, one might think that Hamilton at this stage was a somewhat one-dimensional writer of character, his plot predictable and nothing is likely to surprise.

That isn't the case as the final chapters do take an unexpected turn and the ending is certainly not what I expected. Early Hamilton lacks the sinister, exploitative edge of the West Pier trilogy or Twenty Thousand Streets under the Sky. While there are glimpses of the gin-stained heartlessness and cynical manipulation of his major books, which comes to the final disintegration of style and morality in Unknown Assailant, this is more straight-forward and relatively innocent account of London theatreland. In fact, one might be taken aback by what a sensible girl Jackie is and how little grief befalls her.

The world of matiness and stage doors is understood all too well by Hamilton's keen eye,

The plots of these melodramas....dealing as they did, exclusively and traditionally with infamously monocled scoundrels, pathetically credulous young women, oily-mannered (but black-hearted) solicitors, young men vaguely on His Majesty's Service (but with plenty of time for white flannels, father-defying, and yachting caps)....

and he is already brilliant at putting a character's sincere feelings in contrast to the superficial world they inhabit,

And it caused her to recall, in a sad mist, the very great beauty of their little time together. And it struck her that her spirit had been alive and poignant then, and that it was dead and beautiless now, and that this ornate chattering and idle gossiping around her, this foolish orchestra and foolish play, this tawdry, stuffy, smoke-ridden foyer- were irrelevant and very paltry phenomena to one whose spirit had once been alive.

Twopence Coloured is not an early curio of a writer who went on to become greater but one of his several books, worthy of attention in its own right, at a stage in the trajectory of his career when the balance in his world view had not yet tilted towards a crueller and meaner interpretation of human nature.

Top 6 - R.E.M.

The shortlist for Top 6 R.E.M. went to a dozen very quickly so it was never going to be an easy process.

One item that was never going to get left out is Losing My Religion, a long-standing classic and favourite that has only its familiarity to count against it. Apparently a hymn to some kind of existential angst, one is often not quite sure what Michael's writing about but one appreciates his oblique 'poetry' and takes the rest on trust.

One suggestion I received having solicited them was Find the River and since it was high on the shortlist, it goes in with its sense of longing and nostalgia. That is a recurrent theme, one soon finds if one didn't realize already, but the tour de force The Great Beyond, which seems to find Stipe on top form describing what it feels like to be on top form provides a great counterbalance to regret and doubt,
I'm pushing an elephant up the stairs
I'm tossing up punch lines that were never there
Over my shoulder a piano falls
Crashing to the ground

I'm breaking through
I'm bending spoons
I'm keeping flowers in full bloom
I'm looking for answers from the great beyond.

And then I have to add in Leaving New York, which was a very emotional piece on first hearing, on an otherwise lack lustre album, before I even realized it was about 9/11,
You might have laughed if I told you (it's pulling me apart)
You might have hidden a frown (change)
You might have succeeded in changing me (it's pulling me apart)
I might have been turned around (change)

It's easier to leave than to be left behind (it's pulling me apart)
Leaving was never my proud (change)
Leaving New York, never easy (it's pulling me apart)
I saw the light fading out
You find it in your heart, it's pulling me apart
You find it in your heart, change...

All of which leaves us already with only two selections left and a lenghty list to pick from. There's not going to be room for a novelty no. 6 here.

I've got to have So. Central Rain with its contained melancholy becoming a thundering cry of desperation and so it is a vast problem to be left with only one choice. There will be many whose precious personal favourite isn't mentioned here but those are the rules, you can only mention six.

I've very reluctantly admitted it's not this, it's not that, so it's between these. I'm going to go with The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite but it would be no problem to furnish another six without any need to start compromising.

Well done, R.E.M., and thanks for having been there for so long.

R.E.M. Split

I have just heard on a BBC wireless broadcast about the split of R.E.M. So, it was true after all, because one memory it brings back was when Britain left the Exchange Rate Mechanism, was it in the late 80's or early 90's, the E.R.M., and Danny Baker was on Radio 5 assuring listeners that they need not worry, R.E.M. had not split.
But they have now, and although I've been a great admirer over the years, it's not before time. It's been 31 years, everyone runs out of ideas eventually and, in the same way that Bowie or Cliff albums were welcomed as a 'return to form', they very rarely were.
But they were excellent at their best. He's a great songwriter and they were the model 'indie' band if you like that sort of thing. Great minds can think alike and I was glad I had at least shown my new poem, Kiss, to one friend on the Wednesday before Michael sang At Your Most Beautiful on telly on the Friday night with its line about 'counting your eyelashes'.
It's not a great loss. I remember the surprise of my schoolfriends circa 1973 when Lindisfarne split and I wasn't upset but I'd seen it coming when Alan Hull had released the solo album, Pipedream. I also predicted, or almost advised, that the Sex Pistols should split after one album.
But, as we have seen in recent years, it's never really over. Even the Velvet Underground reformed however briefly a few years ago because we all like money, don't we, and there's money in such appearances. And, even if my Top 6 feature has been in abeyance recently, that also is never going away completely and I'll do a Top 6 R.E.M. shortly. If you have any suggestions, please e-mail them in.



You are the star tonight.
Your sun electric, outasight.
Your light eclipsed the moon tonight.
Electrolite.
You're outasight.

Always the last to know

You can't let the opportunity of seeing (and in my case, a bit weirdly for a nearly 52 year old, touching) Mark Cavendish, the fastest man in the world on a bicycle made for one, go by. And so I met my nephew and his mate in Westminster for the last day of the Tour of Britain.

Young Christopher, himself already a veteran of a Land's End to John O'Groats ride last year, compared to my mere days out in 12 Hour races in the 1990's, spotted this sign on the Embankment that he couldn't help thinking reminded him of some wonderful demo pop songs he heard a few years ago, mostly the work of my genius friend, Tim, but with enough bits added in by me to make the writing credits officially Curtis-Green.

Now, if Tim has set up a huge hit factory in central London, a new rival to Tamla Motown, I don't know. I could have been number one in the hit parade for the last few months and I wouldn't know. In fact, it would be the best way of keeping it a secret from me. But I've written to him to ask, just in case.

But that's the trouble with alarmingly significant signs - it's the things they say to me, the things they say to me, make it seem that I'm a millionaire.

View from the Boundary

I haven't seen the sales figures for my books recently. I don't need to. Anyone who wants one has to get it from here and so I know that sales have remained slow. But sales isn't really the point of it, they can be free to a good home or, as this week, exchanged with others for copies of their books.
Brian Wells is a founder member of Portsmouth Poetry Society which celebrates its fortieth anniversary this year and I gave him copies of the three in print David Green (Books) books for two of his, A Few Words More (2006) and Afterthoughts (2009). By coincidence, where Ovid's Waitress is the first poem in one of my booklets, he begins his with poems on Ovid and Catullus respectively.
It's going to take a lot to ever convince me that haiku should be written in English but some of the better one's I've seen are here, most notably,
Picturing the clouds
as creatures, I saw a bear
smoking a cigar.

There are war poems, many poems with a strong sense of a long historical perspective and we share further interests in Lindisfarne and prizes from the much-missed Ottakar's poetry competition. But the most impressive things in these booklets for me were two sonnets at the end of Afterthoughts, Colour Sonnet and Yet Love Endures. The first begins,
Lay my dust where it shall enrich the ground
and so some future poet's progress ease,

in a hope for continuity and a long-term sense of a community of poets. The second poem is a generous tribute to a long and happy marriage. You can see an obvious sympathy with the spirit of Edward Thomas throughout both books. They are sincere, modest and enjoyable.

I don't know if I will be getting The Bees, the new book from Carol Ann Duffy, but I'm not sure if it's modest to have 'Poet Laureate' printed on the front of your books even if you are entitled to. Is this purely for information, in case browsers in bookshops don't know, or is it to boost sales, giving this volume the edge over books by non-laureates. Surely it's not the vanity of one making the most of her strange but time-honoured title. The appointment has done some of its holders no favours at all. It has wrecked some old reputations simply by keeping their names nominally in the public's awareness, Alfred Austin or Colley Cibber perhaps. Motion had writer's block; Hughes wrote one good laureate poem which he almost certainly had written already and Ms. Duffy has produced a succession of laureate poems that don't do justice to the tremendous work that made her a prominent enough poet to get the job. It is to be hoped that The Bees shows that her best work has continued away from the pressure of her public position but one does wish that the incumbents wouldn't keep supplying the abolitionists with so much ammuntion.

I'd like to think that such publicity was the last thing I'd ever want. But, then, why write this website or anything else at all. I had thought I'd done my last poetry reading and thought I'd never have to worry about spoiling a line, stage fright or audience reaction. But then it was only half an hour after demurring about whether I would appear with the Portsmouth Poetry Society people that I began to get really quite interested in the idea. So the advert below, if you can make it on National Poetry Day, is all you need to know.
The Society's meetings are on the first and third Wednesday of each month, except August, in St. Mark's Church hall, Derby Road, Portsmouth and anyone with an interest in poetry is welcome. I notice from the newly issued programme for the coming year that on Feb 15th next year it's likely to be the hottest ticket in town, the Poetry of Ovid introduced by, ahem, me.

National Poetry Day in Portsmouth

PORTSMOUTH POETRY SOCIETY

reading at Southsea Library, Palmerston Road

Thurs, 6th October, 1.30-2.30 pm

with
Denise Bennett
Pauline Hawkesworth
Brian Wells
Margaret Banks
David Green

The Public

I'd like to think this is a 'work in progress' that might extend eventually to 8 or 10 stanzas of this sustained attack on 'everybody else apart from us', and thus finish any next booklet I publish on a long poem in the fashion recently in vogue with such models as O'Brien, Harsent, Mooney et al.
That is what happens. You think you are your own man and think you only do what you want to do but you crave to be like the people you admire.
Although, for the most part, the poem seems to provide a rickety raft from which to lob missiles from a superior position at virtually everybody else, it will have missed its point if the ending doesn't make it clear that the speaker is guilty of many of the faults he finds in others. Not long after starting to write it, I realized how difficult I find it to write a poem that Larkin hadn't done much better several decades ago and in this case it is Show Saturday,

The Public

They are everyone else but us, the ones
not here to defend themselves or listen
to what we think of them or recognize
that it’s them we mean. For we wouldn’t wear
clothes like that, Adidas or Matalan,
or drink the wine they buy in restaurants
but they are in our way in queues or aisles
of supermarkets, texting each other

messages that we wouldn’t understand.
And they are everyone we’re not, guilty
of everything we’d never want to do,
the pop records they dance to that they heard
on the radio in traffic jams, on
i-pods because they thought they wanted to
and thought that it might look good at the time.
They like it when the weather’s warm and spread

themselves in outdoor places making it
untidy and decide they are in love
with one of the rest of them, usually
someone who’s quite conveniently nearby.
I’m glad we are not like them and would die
rather than do such things for we are made
of finer stuff and deserve much better
than them. And that is why I love you so.

Not At All

I am aware that the number of labels on this website marked 'Music' are gradually surging ahead of those marked 'Poems'. It wasn't intended to be like that but I don't write very many poems, let alone good ones, or ones that I necessarily think ought to be exhibited here, ostensibly advertising my presence to the world as, ahem, a 'poet', as absurd as that seems to me.
Nonetheless, 'Poems' need to make up some of the deficit.
My Japanese correspondant writes the most beautiful e-mails you'd ever want to receive.

Not at All

I am sorry for say such a foolish things.
Yuka Watanabe

Just after daybreak your e-mail arrived
from a summer afternoon in Japan.
You think your English is badly contrived,
Will I understand? Well, of course I can.
In fact, if anything, it says much more
for all the effort that you have put in,
more moving and more beautiful. Therefore,
your English writing doesn’t only pin

your meaning to the page but brings with it
a sense of Yuka from so far away.
And here am I, almost monoglot Brit,
who knows shogun, sake, kamikaze
but no more than that of your language. Please.
I couldn’t write to you in Japanese.

Proms Saturday Matinee 4 and Prom 65

Proms Saturday Matinee 4, Natalie Clein, BBC Singers, Britten Sinfonia, Gubaidalina, Tavener, Tippett, Cadogan Hall/Tasmin Little Literary Passions, Royal College of Music/Prom 65 BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Marc Andre Hamelin, Elgar, Michael Berkeley, Rachmanninov, Kodaly, Royal Albert Hall

In yesterday's Times crossword, the clue for 5 down was 'Four or five men left in the concert venue (5,6,4)' and the answer was 'Royal Albert Hall', the four or five men being Roy, Al, (Al)bert and Hal plus an L for left.

How did they know. It's the sort of uncanny occurence that would make one believe in any and every superstition that there is until one reflects on how many times I've done crosswords on trains and they hadn't contained my destination among the answers and that every single other thing that happened during the day was not in the least coincidental. But I suppose they are just the endless mass of non-coincidences, the exceptions that prove the rule.

My first stop, though, was the Cadogan Hall to see Natalie Clein, the cello player in this dreadful, demonic duel for my musical affections with Tasmin Little. There isn't time to dwell on the pieces by Tippett because John Tavener's Popule Meus was a major attraction here, a 'lament on man's turning away from God', a battle between the dark, threatening timpani and the clear, serene light of the cello. Natalie put in a passionate performance, one couldn't help but compare the piece with the famous Protecting Veil and then a frail Tavener was brought from the audience to take a huge ovation from those, like me, who were absolutely thrilled to be in his mystical, humble presence.

Sofia Gubaidalina wasn't, unfortunately, present to hear her Canticle of the Sun, a longer piece with choir, a 'battery' of percussion and cello that was at least as unusual as this maverick, idiosyncratic composer would be expected to have written. At first, in a way, it made me think of the paintings of Miro, whose canvasses are often populated by an array of shapes and doodles, the 'teeming creation in which we are all a part of each other'. Based on a poem by Francis of Assisi, this interpretation might not have been quite as first envisaged by the author, fragmentary and using wine glasses filled with water to create notes by running a finger around their moistened rims. Natalie was expected to put down the cello and contribute to the percussion, too, and it was beginning to occur to me that this extraordinary composition was really old Sofia just getting them at it. But it built from there, with Natalie loosening the bottom string I think four times to produce even lower notes from the instrument in one passage, hitting the strings with a drum stick and ending on a remarkable riff which I think might be called glissando, running off the top of the fretboard on the top string to bow no more than two inches of string in notes that, eventually, I suppose, just disappeared off the scale into silence, a tremendous climax and a massive artistic success from such adventurous ideas and resources. This was wonderful and put Natalie right back where she belongs in the stratosphere of my affections- that she never left- because she could do the glamorous bit all day long if she wanted and get away with it but she didn't. She was consumed by the music and brought off what I assume to be a fairly challenging piece. Whether I could play the cello quite so well myself is hard to say. I've never tried.

One stop further along the District Line, I moved from Chelsea to Kensington and was able to include Tasmin's recording of the interval talk for Radio 3 on her literary passions which included Hamlet, Hesse and Hilaire Belloc whose surname the presenter (to hilarious effect) did a bit of Spoonerism with which meant a quick re-take of that line. Having nearly got myself lost in returning from the washroom, I might still be there now among the noises of students practicising their tuba scales in various rooms if my sense of direction hadn't miraculously returned. But I can bear witness to the fact that all the gorgeous sounds of concert music are born of some less demure noises made repeatedly and sometimes woefully in private.

We queued to be Prommers for Prom 65, standing with not the best view of the orchestra for the bargain price of five of our British sterling pounds. A bottle of beer costs nearly that much in there and doesn't last anywhere near as long. One doesn't want to moan too much about such a fine thing as the Proms but it has to be said that the price of a refreshing plastic glass of drink in there is outrageous. But at least nobody will be getting drunk on such a tariff.

It really felt like the Proms when it kicked off with Elgar, the Cockaigne Overture which, it turns out, came from the remains of an attempted symphony. You can stand there and think, here I am, listening to Elgar at the Proms. Let the inner cities burn and the hordes loot and pillage if they must but I am an Englishman and I'm here doing this.

Michael Berkeley was the second major living composer I saw on the day when he took a bow at the end of his Organ Concerto. To be as fair as possible to the piece, the trumpets spread up in the galleries were very effective at the beginning and end and the orchestra did some good work but, no, thank you, Michael. I meant it much more while I was applauding John Tav. Not impressed. If we want you back, we'll let you know but don't sit by the phone all day.

Of course, Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. Why not. In the early parts it seemed to be played in snatches by Marc Andre Hamelin but, there again, maybe that's how it's written. For me, the slower passages brought us the lush Rachmanninov that it would take a very strict disciple of other codes not be enamoured by and the piece improved as it went through its variations. And the highlight of Kodaly's Hary Janos Suite was undoubtedly the cimbalom of Ed Cervenka, reminding me of my much neglected Indian raga CD's of Shivkumar Sharma caressing the strings of his santoor with sticks.

It wasn't a Prom I'd picked for advance booking like the Handel opera or the Gubaidalina but it's a good value ticket for an evening out with a mate of now 40 years standing, and counting, who always provides the kindest and most considerate hospitality on my trips to London which is nothing less than saintly of him when you consider what a rough and ready guest I make. It was a weekend of sustained interest, wonderment and not a moment of doubt that this is how life should be and, just occasionally, is.

Many, many thanks to all those mentioned above for making it so.