Wait for Me

Wait for Me

Suddenly the park is vast,
its distances like those between the stars.
The tiny bike is heavy

and designed more for safety than speed.
And Daddy has never looked so small,
so far away, and on his mobile phone.

It seems like now or never
or forever will take place on this machine.
Daddy. Stop a minute. Wait for me.


Bransbury Park, 28/4/13

Not Single Spies

When books come, they come not single spies but in battalions, as Richard III says in Edward Marlowe's play that ends with him being murdered in excruciating fashion in Berkeley Castle.
O, yes, you can trust me with the apposite literary quotation because I did Eng Lit at University, you see, and nobody left Lancaster in 1981 with a better English degree than me. But, quite honestly, I'm not sure that what I knew and could do then was really worth a degree, and perhaps not even what I could do now. Or perhaps a degree is not all it's cracked up to be.
But a few weeks ago I was struggling to find something to read, scratching around Amazon for something new and wondering what there was on the shelves here that I felt like re-reading. I ended up with Kate Atkinson's Behind the Scenes at the Museum and was very glad of it because it was a revelation, a long overdue acquaintance that was genuinely laugh out loud, brilliantly conceived in its handling of time scales and hugely confident for a debut novel. After that, I progressed to her short story collection, Not the End of the World, which is also very good. A little bit 'magic realist' perhaps at times but still a marvellous read.
But Kate has been put to one side for the time being, and she can wait a week or so, because drought has suddenly turned into surfeit and I now have four books officially on the go.
I was very kindly lent a copy of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart following the Nigerian laureate's death and I began that, not being anywhere near impolite enough to turn it away in the circumstances. But then, somewhat ahead of schedule, the new volume on the subject of Shakespeare authorship arrived, Shakespeare Beyond Doubt: Evidence, Argument, Controversy, co-edited by Stanley Wells, and since that is a specific area of interest, that has to become a priority.
And then Michael Symmons Roberts' new collection, Drysalter, turns up as well. And I can honestly say it's now hard to know which way to look as all four of these books are excellent, and so one does the obvious thing, absolving oneself of all responsibility, and drinks half a bottle of gin. But time is on my side with Atkinson and Achebe and so the Shakespeare and the poetry are the weekend reading because this website likes to get in quick with its reviews if and when it can.
The permanent discomfort of my reading is that I'm not happy if I have nothing specific to be involved with but, once I am reading something that I'm going to want to make mention of on here (and let us not glorify my efforts as 'reviews' too often), I want to finish it as soon as possible and bang my notice up on the interweb. It's a sad and strange affliction. In fact, doing this website, the benefit of which is only to keep me honest, is not particularly good for my reading health, if I were to ever care about that. 
But, next up, if the drought recurs, I have a plan to fill in the bit of English poetry history that my B.A. (Hons) from 32 years ago didn't include in the sweep from Elizabethan to Seamus Heaney. I didn't do C18th Literature. I feel as if I've read sufficient Romantic Poetry in the years since 1981, and Keats seems to me like the poetry equivalent of Sibelius- someone that surely everyone must like, even if Keats does swoon a lot, but Pope and Dryden remain a bit of a mystery. For the very good reason that I've never fancied them much, it has to be said. But, between Milton and Wordsworth, I am aware of a gap that I really ought to bodge up with some attempt at understanding and so my next hiatus might be solved with a cursory look at C18th English Poetry. I can't say I'm looking forward to it but I've been surprised before and I have hopes of Pope even if I'm less confident of Dryden.

St. Aldhelm's Head Walk

The Dorset coastline and ideal April conditions provided an excellent walk yesterday with St. Aldhelm's Chapel, Chapman's Pool and the imperious Coastwatch Station among many features of interest.





Of slightly less appeal at first sight was the climb to get up to the highest point but even that wasn't quite as fearsome as it looked from the bottom and gave those of us whose days as athletes have faded to somewhat unreliable memories a sense of achievement .
The tiny Chapel is 800 years old and has only this glimpse of a window and so is an atmospheric study of time and darkness.
But it was all good and highly recommended although one can understand that during the season it could be busy with outdoor enthusiasts.
To complete the day, we stopped at the Halfway Inn http://thehalfwayinnwareham.co.uk/ where a rare excursion into culinary reviewing gives me the opportunity to recommend the Vegetable Jalfrezi.
 

Sean on Oysterity

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/mar/19/budget-2013-oysterity-sean-obrien

Yes, I dare say.

But not quite as good, or as profound, as Simon Armitage's observation of last year, or it might even have been the year before, that it might simply be over for Western Europe now.

Perhaps we are not the rich and rightful inheritors anymore and from now on it is going to be a bit harder.

Perhaps the economy isn't ever going to do its usual trick of eventually bouncing back and producing an upturn from which some comfortable types can feel the benefit so that the whole country can rejoice on their behalf.

Perhaps it is all over. But whatever one thought of Margaret Thatcher, there is nothing quite as majestic as a state occasion even if it possibly shouldn't have been one, and I certainly didn't feel like paying for any of it. But there was George Osborne crying. Oh, so you do have some feelings, then, do you. At least we have established that. Even if they were only feelings for the icon of selfishness that you had modelled yourself on.

I have had my reservations about a fair number of politicians over the years but George Osborne is something else entirely.

Honestly

Poems, by which I mean the best of them, are some of my favourite things. Some carefully chosen words chosen by someone quite good at choosing them and put into a shape by them and they are good at doing that, too, when words are already one's favourite and most interesting things.
There can't be much wrong with that, can there. It is a victimless offence if it is an offence at all.
But the word 'poem' has always brought with it associations of something a bit fey. I know that poems can be harder and much more atavistic, if need be, than the appreciation of the 'good shooting scene' I heard being lauded in the office today by two lads who like films, especially if they feature Al Pacino and Robert de Niro.
But poems, as we know, aren't all about daffodils and swooning and, if you want to take on harder blokes than me on the issue then I'd be glad to direct you to Don Paterson, Ciaran Carson, Sean O'Brien and Tony Harrison. And Carol Ann Duffy.
It's not so much that I don't feel happy to be regarded as someone who writes 'poems'. I just don't like thinking of myself as a 'poet'. When I met Ian Duhig a few years ago, he asked my name and thought for a moment and then asked, 'Are you a poet?' and I had to say, no, not really.

I have written some poems. I wish they weren't called that and I wish that Roger McGough, amongst others, hadn't made it sound even more camp by calling them 'pomes' in the 1970's, when fey was the much more the message. But it's too late now to ask for a re-wording, a move to re-name them 'word-structures' in some hopeless, politically correct move that could never hope to succeed. And so, poems, and thus, poet, it is.

But I don't want to be thought of as a 'critic', either. I put my brief summaries of books I have read on here and that is known as 'reviewing', which is fine, but also 'criticism'. But I don't want to be thought of as a 'critic', which is generally regarded as having something bad to say about the work under consideration. In most cases I wouldn't have read the book in the first place if I hadn't expected to like it and so I hope I rarely post serious reservations.
But, as I was re-reading Larkin's Further Requirements, the follow up book to Required Writing, the volume of collected reviews, interviews and sundry items, I was immediately impressed by the way he wouldn't use superlatives to describe the best recent poems or else what would be left to describe the best of all time, among which he mentions Tennyson. But he remains refreshing, after all these years, when reviewing the Guinness Book of Poetry 1958-59, presumably the Forward or Salt book of its day, and saying,
And yet there is not much in it. More potent factors are the rottenness of poetry in any year...

And wouldn't it be great if critics said so more often if given books to comment on that they didn't like. So many reviews these days seem to approach the challenge like an O level student who regards their job as proving that the author in question was a genius and it falls to them to establish the fact. 
Not everything is a new, mind-blowing revolution in the art of letters. Most of it is, inevitably, derivative, and if we must be called 'poets', which is flattering to some of us, or 'critics', which I don't like the sound of, then we ought to do the job properly.
Whatever dirt Larkin was attributed with, and I'll just about allow the Thatcherism into this bargain, there was a certain honesty to admire in him. And, with a curriculum vitae of good, old fashioned, left wing credentials to my name, it won't make me a rabid right-winger to say so.
I'm happy to say that in each year of doing this website I have had no problem in finding something to genuinely admire when picking a favourite to nominate as the year's best but it might be that I've lucky so far.

Satisfaction provided by Paddy Power

I thought I might re-do the blurb at the top of the website. I'd like to advertise this little enterprise as The Poetry and Horse Racing website, or some such catchy slogan. There can't be much competition and I might even be the best in the field.
But now isn't the time to encourage readers with an interest in the turf because I don't do much on the flat these days and certainly don't regard myself as a tipster in non-jumping races and so perhaps I'll wait until October and the new series of The Saturday Nap before making a point of that.
However, bills keep arriving in the summer, too, and it would be nice if bookmakers could help out with paying some of them. I've never done so well as I did in the jump season just finishing and this year so far is showing an unrecognisably healthy profit. This is unfortunate for Paddy Power, to who I have taken my business, but I'll give them the consolaton of the highest recommendation of their enterprising and comprehensive service.
Looking through some of their more imaginative markets last night, I noticed they are betting on Glastonbury. The particular markets of interest are the first and last songs (including encore) played by The Rolling Stones. It's worth a go, if only to reward their enterprise and see if we can study the form and other factors well enough to get it right. I will e-mail them and ask if one can do a double because at present they only offer 'singles' and I don't think it means album tracks are inadmissable.
At present they go 9/4 First Track Paint It Black but it looks like a favourite worth opposing. A little bit of research into recent set lists shows Get Off My Cloud to be the most regular opener but Paddy doesn't quote a price on that, as if he's hoping that punters won't ask and he'll get a 'skinner', a market in which the bookie takes the whole lot with no pay outs. Another candidate would surely be Start Me Up, which is 4/1, and my initial thought was Jumpin Jack Flash, which isn't quoted either. But I can't see it being Wild Horses, at a miserly 6/1.
I haven't made a move in this market yet as I'd like to see prices about the above mentioned runners and be allowed to do a double.
But there's an obvious form choice in the Last Song market, albeit at a short enough 6/4, which is Satisfaction. On recent form, it would seem that only Sympathy for the Devil is a serious challenger, and so at 6/1 would be worth a hedge bet. But JJF is second favourite here.
So, I've had my bobs worth on Satisfaction as the banker but would be interested in the cross doubles of Cloud and JJF to begin and Satisfaction and Sympathy to end.
Paddy will also offer prices on the Mercury Prize where he makes Bowie 7/2 favourite but Foals are an attractive 9/1 shot at present.
They used to say of obsessive gamblers that they would 'bet on two flies going up a wall' but as Cliff sang, in Some People, I'm not like that at all. It's the appliance of science for harmless fun and a possible profit.

Smoke and Mirrors

It's a bit like the 'nervous nineties' in cricket when a batsman knows he's nearly got a hundred but doesn't want to make a mistake. It's a bit like getting 'the yips' at darts when you can't quite let go. And it's a bit like thinking you are really pleased with your nearly finished new booklet of poems and, although you know that precious few other people are likely to care, you do.
On the one hand, you want to get to the printer's shop tomorrow and see how soon they can have it ready but, on the other hand, you dread that feeling of having nothing, not one poem, in the file of worthwhile Uncollected Poems.
Smoke and Mirrors seemed like a fine title. It might take me a day or two to decide if I think I made best use of it in this hasty poem.

Smoke and Mirrors 

I could never do legerdemain.

At card tricks and suchlike, I was a duffer.

I couldn’t even fool a simpleton.

I was Tommy Cooper, opera buffa. 

My tricks, such as they were, were slapstick tricks,

Reductio ad absurdam, where the joke

was on the joke itself. But now I mix

words with other words like trails of smoke. 

Poems (although not mine) can thrill a crowd,

like one mirror put opposite another,

that multiply the smoke into a cloud

in which the words seem to go on forever.

Poetry Wars

Having been just involved in the slightest of fracas on the interweb again on a poetry issue, I began to wonder if the renowned Poetry Wars were particularly ferocious because they were generated by poetry and how they compare with fallings out in other areas.
Wars, it seems, are most often and disatrously political or religious. I don't think we mean those. Poetry makes nothing happen, or at least nothing on that scale yet. But then we have football, with its intense rivalries. A little bit trivial and perhaps an outlet or an excuse for the venting of pent-up energies in young men. But although rugby is considerably more violent on the pitch, it doesn't cause  such vitriol between its supporters who are proud of their passionate allegiance but bear less of a grudge against their nearest rivals. In England, cricket is even less so. It doesn't even matter to me much who wins as long as you see a good game but that attitude might not carry over to the Indian sub-continent or to an Ashes series. I believe Ice Cream Wars are territorial and between vendors rather than street fights between rival sets of vanilla and raspberry ripple advocates.
Poetry Wars can be those battles for power, like the accounts of in-fighting for control of the Poetry Society in the 60's or the dark art of leaking old news stories about the other candidates for the Oxford Professor job. A genuine ideological war would most often involve zealous, self-appointed revolutionaries (concrete poets in olden days, avantistes now) firing up their rhetoric in attacks on the staid, old guard of the 'mainstream', perceived as conservative, unadventurous and Philip Larkin. But in the same way that in 1970's British politics, several left wing factions concentrated attacking each other rather than the Conservative Party, I dare say these devout theorists are as concerned with occupying the main rebel ground ahead of each other rather than manning the barricades against the 'establishment', whoever they might be (I wouldn't want to be the one given the job to tell Ms. Duffy that she is 'establishment'). It's when they offer candidates for Establishment posts that I start to lose their line of argument. A rebel in charge is suddenly not a rebel any more and I'm sure they don't really want that. I do have specific examples in mind but I'm not going to mention them here.
But, however many courses are set up in universities and even if poetry gets a mention once a month in The Observer Review, poetry is a small world, lots of disparate communities, many of them happily enough unaware of each other, but there isn't much room at the top and there isn't much acclaim, or money, to be shared out among the rest. And so the scramble for attention and need to get one's elbows out and grab whatever one can might be the cause of personal vendettas and animosity.
I've heard stories of poets phoning up reviewers 'in their cups' after midnight to offer feedback of sorts on the review. And an e-mail I long since lost or deleted related stories of what first might have sounded like playground insults but ended more startlingly with threats to 'send the boys round'.
And there was I thinking that if I only listened to Poetry Please and learned the difference between a trochee and a spondee then I'd be fine.
I did wonder if a contributory cause of Poetry Wars being more vituperative than those in other lines of work was that those engaged in it were more erudite, cogent and expressive and thus better at it but, no, honestly, I don't think a lot of them are.
But, really, we could do with less of it. If we are 'unacknowledged legislators', I'm afraid I don't want to legislate for anybody. No position of power has any interest for me and I'm surprised and disappointed if it does for any poet. I prefer the amateur nature of the job and, anyway, where most people seem to see 'power' I'm afraid I only see 'responsibility' and that is enough to put me off.
And so, it worries me that I do get caught up in these little skirmishes from time to time. I blame the internet for providing the opportunity, the gin for providing the impetus and, I suppose, myself for actually caring. It's a wide church and there should be room for everyone to take their little turn.
But, on the other hand, if you do feel like quoting from a review or anything that appears here, I'd be grateful if you could do it properly and in context. Selective mis-quotation is like the blurb on a book that says 'this book is..brilliant' when what the reviewer had said was 'this book is anything but brilliant'. On this occasion I was lucky that I had powerful support that rallied heroically to my cause. I would usually stand up for myself but it wasn't possible on this occasion.
Meanwhile, perhaps it might be possible to go back to enjoying ourselves.

Glyn Maxwell - Pluto

Glyn Maxwell, Pluto (Picador)

With most of the words one might use to describe Glyn Maxwell's new book of poems already used in the extensive blurb, might I lay claim to 'displacement'. Maxwell's theme here is displacement in the aftermath of an affair and so, he is an ex- in the same way that Pluto is an ex-planet, once a part of the planetary system but now, although ostensibly still the same object, reduced in status to minor.
In 52 pages of poems, only 13 are taken up by single page poems and 9 fill the rest of the book. The gradual move away from the facility of the short poem that stops at or before the end of the page continues here in poems that only stop once they have finished and a few occupy as many as 8 or 9 pages. On the other hand, to be very unfair, the morbidly obsessed can sometimes brood at length on the subject of their distress.
But if we are invited to examine the grief and loss of the finally over relationship, it is entirely within the constraints of a disciplined art. This is not a self-pitying outpouring or application for the reader's sympathy. Maxwell has invariably been a poet of formal measure and literary othodoxies and he doesn't abandon them in the face of more personal subject matter.
In Byelaws, the first poem, we are introduced to a technique for which there might not yet be a precise term. It is a sort of hendiadys, a pairing of words- and often phrases, sometimes almost synonyms but also sometimes opposites,
Never have left me, never come back,
mourn me in mini-skirts, date me in black,
undress as I dress, when I unpack pack

Such constructions recur throughout the poems, in their most advanced form perhaps in The Window, an elegy for a friend,
            verse
as separate from other verse as what,
a pane of glass rained-at
from its neighbour-pane of glass rained-at.

which I, for one, thought was very good. The whole poem, not just that.
But the effect is of both the lines turning back on themselves and extending at the same time.
If Glyn and his friend spent time talking about Dylan, as he says here, there is an authentic touch in The Case of After,
              I wrote 'Watching Over'
about you and was blissfully aware
I am writing this and it will still be here

now and you wouldn't.

similar to Dylan saying in Sara, 'Staying up for nights in the Chelsea Hotel writing Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands for you.' And so we are convinced it's true.
Outside of the 'end of the affair' poems are one or two that befit the semi-confessional nature of the book, like Birthplace, a hymn to the ordinary as in Welwyn Garden City, which I thought Maxwell had done something similar to before, but not quite. It was in the Forward anthology. It ends with more of Maxwell's Syntactic Hendiadys with horses standing,
                        by the quiet trees,
beyond which all the yellow rising hills
you think are there are the yellow rising hills
   you thought were there.

And if we think we are reminded of Housman, perhaps we are supposed to be.
It is a memorable collection, sophisticated poetry made from uncomplicated words and a prosodic virtuosity and that is never a bad thing.

View from the Boundary - Join Together

When you hear this sound a-comin',
Hear the drummers drumming,
I want you to join together with the band

I was never a big fan of The Who but they provide a stirring enough theme for the Grand National this year with Join Together, which is the tip. I took 16/1 after the way he jumped round the National fences in the Autumn and then put in a spirited finish and, although he is still 16/1, I haven't seen anything else to put me off him since.
It is about time I backed a National winner as my once great record of having been on roughly one in three of the winners since the early 80's, including two dual forecasts, has lost some of its immaculate lustre by not having found the winner since taking an early 25/1 about Comply or Die when it obliged at about 8/1 fav. But here are The Who anyway, with one of the few Top 20 hits to open with jew's harp and harmonica. I don't think even Medicine Head ever did that,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HDMCCLlGl4

But, just one word of warning. The last time I remember a pop song inspired great expectations of financial reward on the turf was in the 80's when a horse called Protection ran at Cheltenham. I played the single by Graham Parker and the Rumour all morning, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3ETAZSFWWs convinced that it would win, and it came nowhere. I should have known then that any horse even vaguely named after an Elvis Costello song would have been much better.

Otherwise, these early months are always slow ones in the poetry world. One is always free to do one's own thing and the Portsmouth Poetry Society have already posted some superb meetings but the publishing season seems to revolve around the Spring and Autumn.
My next booklet, The Perfect Murder, is set up as a 'work in progress', with the usual quota of 14 poems to represent four years of frugal verse writing still ideally requiring one more before it gets taken to the printers and so it would only be an optimist who would expect a publication date before the now customary 17th October.
Why would one rush it. It's a great feeling to be sitting on a set of poems one is pleased with but once you have put them out there, available to the world, there is a brief feeling of achievement that lasts a week or so but then you consider what you have for the next one and the page has never looked blanker or harder to fill.
The T.S. Eliot prize is an event in January that I will one day attend, perhaps, but it is a review of the previous year, like Sports Personality for poetry except it happens in that morbid post-Christmas aftermath rather than place itself as part of the pre-festive glow. And so, as I wait for 2013 to kick off, I'm coming home every night this week hoping that Glyn Maxwell's Pluto has arrived from Amazon but it hasn't done yet.
And so, rather than poetry, I offer you a rare venture into fashion and a 'style' feature. I'm wearing new glasses. They're not a major departure from the previous. In fact, they are as close to the old ones that I could find but amazingly quick service, putting one's new prescription into a website and getting them three days later for less than thirty quid. How the High Street shops survive these days is beyond me. Well, quite clearly, many of them don't. That is a bad thing and it's my fault.
But, finally, no self-respecting book reader will be quite as behind times as me but I've been reading Kate Atkinson's Behind the Scenes at the Museum. What a tremendous writer she is. Laugh out loud, beautifully done and yet another reminder never to try to write a novel. One could never do anything like as good as that.

Top 10 Albums of All Time

Radio 2 didn't do itself any favours by revealing which albums its listeners considered the best of all time. Well, if that's who I would be listening with, I'll be tuning into Radio 2 even less often than I do already.
I don't mind Dido. I think I have those albums. I liked the Keane album well enough when it came out.  But surely everybody knows by now that Sgt. Pepper wasn't The Beatles finest moment and the Stones' best effort was possibly Exile on Main Street.
There's not a big issue with those particularly except the question was 'best album of all time' and some of the problem must have been that the poor voters only had Radio 2's nominated list of 100 to pick from and each artist was only allowed one title. But, however it was arrived at, the answer wasn't anything by Coldplay.
I'm surprised that anybody has stayed awake long enough to get to the end of a Coldplay album.

Surely this, and the fact that the only two nominations for Best Live Act at the Brits were the Stones and Coldplay, means that it is time for pop music as my generation knew it to be put to bed and we can listen to A Whiter Shade of Pale in perfect gaga serenity for whatever time remains to us.

Yes, of course, any such poll gets the result it deserves from the constituency of voters that it asks in the same way that in the 1970's, the NME poll results differed from the result announced by the returning officer for Smash Hits.  But one commentator was in the right area when they said that this was a result garnered from people who aren't really interested in music.

I don't suppose many, if any, of the Top 10 I have just thrown together were on Radio 2's shortlist of 100, but here they are anyway. It does have to be remembered that Radio 2 is not only home these days to Bob Harris but also, still, to David Jacobs.
I will give considerably more thought one day to my Top 10 'Classical' (for want of a better term) albums. In the meantime, Radio 2, herewith,

The Magnetic Fields – 69 Love Songs

Bob Marley & The Wailers – Early Music featuring Peter Tosh

David Bowie – Station to Station

Gregory Isaacs – Lover’s Rock

T. Rex – Electric Warrior

Al Green – Green is Blues

The Jesus & Mary Chain – Psychocandy

The Velvet Underground & Nico – Produced by Andy Warhol

Lindisfarne – Nicely Out of Tune

Elvis Costello – Get Happy