Best Poem and Best Collection 2015

It has taken more thinking about than usual to arrive at a decision about which was the Best New Poetry Collection I read in 2015. The shortlist of four titles posted here a few weeks ago would all have been very worthy winners, which is what being on the shortlist means, but it has taken from then until now to decide because it was by no means obvious.
Most of the subsidiary honours I augment these two main titles with were awarded at the shortlist stage but since then Steven Isserlis's performance of the Shostakovich Cello Concerto has been supplemented to the  Best Event category. It has to be admitted that I've not been to very many spectacular events this year compared to others but it is unlucky for Index Cantorum, the choir whose lunchtime concert in Winchester Cathedral in September, with its Tavener, Monteverdi and MacMillan, that Portsmouth ought to be bloody grateful that Isserlis comes here and it's almost beginning to look as if some of us pick our Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra concerts on the basis of whether or not Shostakovich is on the programme. But, what can you do, it was quite clearly the best thing I've been to all year, although very difficult to compare in any meaningful way with my nephew's first bike race.
There were the usual small handful of tremendous poems that will remain in the memory as long as the memory remains. Kate Bingham's Open was shortlisted previously when I first saw it and is now included in her book, Infragreen, but it can't really be shortlisted as 'new' twice; in any other year, I'm sure Caitriona O'Reilly's The Airship Era, or perhaps also The Servant Question, from Geis, would have been the best poem I'd seen but Sean O'Brien's The Beautiful Librarians was an instant classic, bringing with it its own 'realms of gold' to inhabit. It was compared in Poetry Review to Larkin's At Grass for its nostalgia, and perhaps there is the vaguest similarity. But there is no danger of Tom Paulin mistaking Sean's tribute for a lament for the loss of empire because, of course, it is subtly political not so much in its adoration of the librarians and the books but in its lament for the ongoing closure of the libraries. It isn't just the best poem of this year but one of the greatest poems of the century so far.
But it wasn't quite so easy to decide which collection to say was best and I had to first wonder how to decide before deciding, although no strict set of rules can be made to work. Eventually, one has to just know.
The first two or three poems in Don Paterson's 40 Sonnets had me thinking that, if this continues, this is going to be the best book of poems I've ever read. But the facility, the cleverness, the understandable impulse to stretch the limits of the 'sonnet' perhaps counted against it in the end.
Kate Bingham is a wonderful poet and will always be one to seek out for her beautifully made pieces. Infragreen is her best book yet and only, I think, her third, so she's likely to be considered here for as long as such considerations take place.
And it is much to my chagrin that Prof. O'Brien, 'majesty', had not been awarded a Best in the now seven years I've been undertaking these deliberations until the paragraph above because he is a long-standing poetry hero of mine, in his best poems.
But the book that does the most with 'poetry', has the most range and has the deepest, most resonant effect  -even if it explores further into the lexicon than some might think necessary and possibly fancies itself more than is good for it- is Caitriona O'Reilly's Geis, mainly for the two poems mentioned above but, then again, for its ambition because although ambition can often be a bad thing, one can't achieve much without it.
It wasn't easy to arrive at the decision but once I had, I was happy with it.
The cheques are not in the post to the winners because the prize is only what recognition I can add to the poets, which isn't much more than they already have, but it comes with my thanks for having done what they did. Poetry is a dubious enterprise nowadays and possibly always was but it is the likes of these admirable highlights that make it all worthwhile.

Oh Babe, What Would You Say

Since the announcement of my shortlists for the Best Poetry of 2015 last week I have been taking my responsibilities very seriously. The Isserlis/BSO Shostakovich was immediately supplemented to the Best Event shortlist and wouldn't have been were it not a very serious contender. The Best Poem category has been pretty much a forgone conclusion for months. But the Best Collection decision is a very difficult one to make.
It is my usual practice to read the shortlist again to make sure of my choice so on Sunday night I collected the four titles together to keep them by the bedside for ongoing consideration. The Don Paterson and Kate Bingham books were there already so I just had to add the O'Brien and O'Reilly. They were not by the bedside so must be downstairs. Not by the computer, not on the table, not in the executive attache case I take to poetry redings or meetings. So, they must have been upstairs. Move the bed, no, they haven't fallen down the side, no, not here, not in the drawers. Back downstairs, emptying the bookcase which is double stacked with poetry books, from time to time realigning the Derek Mahons together, putting Lachlan MacKinnon back next to Wendy Cope, re-uniting the Muldoons. Systematically taking out handfuls of books and replacing them in a different order each time. No sign of the two fugitive volumes. Upstairs again, then downstairs again. Sunday night is gradually deepening towards late but by now I know I won't sleep if I don't find them. I sit down and think.
Oh, yes, that spare shelf on the big bookcase between the Larkin shelf and the Gunn shelf. I 'tidied up' by moving a pile of miscellaneous books and put them on there. And there they were.
But, having found them hasn't yet helped me towards a decision. Usually, a few bits of re-reading arrives one at a decision without the need of defining what 'Best' means but this year it's so close that I am having to decide how to decide.
They all have some excellent poems in them but merely counting or measuring their greatness isn't satisfactory. How much is it to the detriment of a book if it contains some less good pieces. Does one rate technical excellence above personal preference. Is there one aspect of any book that really should put it ahead of the others. No approach provides an obvious answer and the decision could conceivably still go any one of four ways. This year, Muldoon and Lumsden didn't make the shortlist but that hasn't made it much easier. It is the closest heat of this underwhelmingly disregarded award since its inauguration, and there have been some very competitive years. I imagine the offices of the LRB are lively with debate on the issue. However, it will be decided by finally closing the books and meditating for a while on which book is the most memorable for the overall impression it leaves of its attitude, world view but, mainly, of course, its words.
The winners will be announced in mid December.
--
Meanwhile, Romola has been embarked upon in this, my year of George Eliot, which will mean I'll have read all bar the already-read Middlemarch this year. It wasn't a promising start with its 'proem' and first chapter but then began telling its story and we were back in the wonderful land of George Eliot prose. The atmosphere of C15th Florence and references back to classical culture with some outrageous scholarship in evidence give her the office to indulge in even more gilded fine prose than ever and one can see common themes surfacing that make this less of an outlying curio among her stories than it first seemed to be. It's early days but the sheet I insert into each novel to make notes as I go is already filling up, and my biggest worry is how, when I come to trying to compile some sort of essay on the novels, I am going to see them all at once when each has supplanted the last in the memory and it is now thus a while since Scenes from Clerical Life made such a promising debut.
It is one thing that has impressed me with academics, how they can apparently retain so many books to talk about at any given time, if indeed they all can. But, in a pre-academic age, George divides the creative artists from the commentators in words given to Bardo,
'It is enough to overlay human hope and enterprise with an eternal frost to think that the ground which was trodden by phiolosophers and poets is crawled over by those insect-swarms of besotted fanatics or howling hypocrites.'  
and you wonder whose review of which of her books prompted her to write that.
--
I could never have been an academic. It seems in the end a dreary world and I inhabited an equally dreary one for what has been most of my paid employment except for how hilarity and absurdity cheered it up. However I was very tempted by a notice in Betfred's window yesterday to consider seeing out my last few years in a bookmaker's. I have weighed the options very seriously, which include the advantage of not having to take Cheltenham Festival week off because it will be on at work. But I've got this far by taking few risks and, even in these difficult times, it might be best to stick with that tried and so far successful policy. I can see how living in a bookies these days might not be all about horse racing but about servicing the clientele who are more or less paying your wages via their unfortunate habit. I feel more Methodist about it than I thought I would but I'll keep the idea in mind. 

Best Poetry Shortlists 2015

It is plenty early enough to be posting the shortlists for my own idiosyncratic poetry awards but it's not too late for anything else that comes to my attention to be added to the lists before the selection of the winners next month.
Unlike other, more prestigious prizes that have cash to go with them, these honours are bestowed on books that I have found out about, then chose to read and only then can they be considered although they are considered most sincerely and very seriously.

Best Poem

Sean O'Brien, The Beautiful Librarians, from The Beautiful Librarians
Caitriona O'Reilly,  The Airship Era, from Geis
Don Paterson, Here, from 40 Sonnets

Best Collection

Kate Bingham, Infragreen (Seren)
Sean O'Brien,  The Beautiful Librarians (Picador)
Caitriona O'Reilly, Geis (Bloodaxe)
Don Paterson, 40 Sonnets (Faber)

I generally extend these specifically poetry-based lists to other areas-
There won't be a Best Novel this year because I simply haven't read a new novel this year, it having been my year of George Eliot, although David Mitchell's Slade House is a possibility in which case it would have a walkover.
Best Television isn't quite a walkover but the only opposition to Cradle to Grave, the autobiography highbrow enough to be on BBC2, came from the other Greatest Living Englishperson when Vicky Coren presented her series on How to Be a Bohemian.
I'm surprised few CD reviews there are here this year and the earlier ones were 2014 releaeses and so The Orlando Consort's recording of Loyset Compere seem to have it although there is a new Tallis Scholars release which might yet get itself ordered.
The Non-Fiction Book category is a match between Shapiro's 1606 and Bate's Ted Hughes.
Which only leaves the Best Event category, often the most interesting.

Best Event

Chris Chadwick, debut in 25 mile circuit bike race, Castle Combe
Fujita Piano Trio, Chichester Cathedral
Index Cantorum, Winchester Cathedral
Tasmin Little/Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, Portsmouth Guildhall
Southern Countertenors, Portsmouth Cathedral


 

Kate Bingham - Infragreen

Kate Bingham, Infragreen (Seren)

Open remains as fresh and wide-eyed as when I read it in the Forward book a couple of years ago. Coming back to poems after a while they can sometimes lose the sense of wonder that first made one admire them but this, containing its own sense of wonder, is still an inspired and inspiring piece.
There are several more tightly-rhymed lyrics here where the form, however disciplined, extends the range of the poem rather then restricts it which is a sure indication that the poet is in charge of the language, and their talent more than sufficient to be so, rather than the choice of form bossing the poet. Midnight and The World At One are almost as good - private, sane, understated and organized.  
Down is 14 lines, half of which end in 'down' and the other half all on another rhyme. Of course, the 'down/down/down' repetition has an artistic effect, which I think is also a deadpan comic one, but more than that, the use of such structures is always there to remind us that the poem is a structure, an artifice, a game and the point of it is not necessarily entirely to say what it is saying.
My Hand is one of a number of poems that take place at night and/or in bed. The small but enormous space between two people is only partially overcome by need or sympathy,
I looked at you and as you slept
my body, suddenly too warm,
remembered what its blood was for,
my fingers tingled with regret

and reached a second time towards
your folded arms and open neck.

There's a lot to like about such poems but a book of only such articulate accomplishemt might seem a bit one-dimensional, even if it provides a satisfying sense of rounded completeness. As well as the scenes of domesticity, Kate Bingham writes about outside, elements from nature like sunlight, flora and fauna. The danger with such things is that the poet's experience of them might not be that much different from anybody else's and we might think we've seen all that for ourselves. Ultragreen and Infragreen, the first two, short poems in the book possibly get a bit close to such commonplace profundity. While one must never be prescriptive about what a poem should or shouldn't do, use of a word like 'photosynthesis' should usually be considered, considered again and then rejected.
But 'look at the rain', with all its lower case lettering and lines broken into fragments, does something more metaphysical (perhaps), an appreciation of rain,
falling into itself in the street as if only falling matters

and, in Spring, only the page before,
       even the weak municipal crocuses
divide and multiply, insisting they matter.

and there is a self-deprecating mood in much of Kate Bingham that seems surprised to find, but knows, that the commonplace is extraordinary, the meek perhaps will inherit the earth and such things do matter.
There is rigour and a self-awareness in these poems that make them exemplary in the way they approach the world when lesser poets attending writing groups all over the country would make the same issues seem precious and self-indulgent. I caught up with Kate's first two books after first reading Open. I'm slightly behind times finding this latest book now because it came out earlier this year but I'm glad I found out about it before too long. It contains an idea of plenty within its modesty, its innate intelligence and facility with language delivering more than ordinarily might have been expected.
If anybody thought a villanelle was a difficult thing to do convincingly, Arrangements is two of them using the same words to rhyme on. As 'arrangements' of words, one might eventually have to ask when such self-doubt becomes showing off. We should enjoy the paradox.           

Best Poem and Best Collection 2012

As explained in the announcement of the shortlist for my website awards for 2012, these personal choices depend entirely on me having read them and, thus, having been aware of them and made the decision to read them in the first place. Last year would have been made even more competitive had I read the John Burnside book before the decision but, as it was, the result wouldn't have been any different.
This year has been quieter but that takes nothing away from the decision that The World's Two Smallest Humans by Julia Copus, the only collection on the shortlist, is well worth its place alongside the previous winners of the Best Collection prize.
And when I say 'prize', there isn't one.

Kate Bingham's poem, Open, has been a big favourite since the publication of the Forward anthology and I've read it most nights and love it. It has given the winner everything to think about in a tight finish but the award of this most obscure of honours goes to Julia Copus for Stars Moving Westwards in a Winter Garden from the winning collection. And so congratulations go to her on the first double in the short history of this feature. 

Shortlists for Best Poem and Best Collection

I am delighted to be now in a position to announce the shortlists for this website's Best Poem and Best Collection awards for 2012.

Since their inception, these awards have found their own very obscure place in the poetry community. Untainted by prize-money, they bring with them for the winners only the knowledge and satisfaction that their work was appreciated by me. And anybody who has been following The Saturday Nap feature here will understand why there isn't likely to be anything as tawdry as a cash prize any time soon.
It is a particularly difficult honour to achieve because first of all the work needs to have been read by me, which means it has to have been noticed by me and subsequently considered worthy of my attention. Only then can it be compared with the other candidates and prove its ultimate worth.

The winners will be announced in a couple of weeks' time. The shortlists under consideration for the time being are,

Best Poem

Kate Bingham, Open, from the Forward anthology
Julia Copus, Stars Moving Westwards in a Winter Garden, from The World's Two Smallest Humans
James Fenton, Cosmology, from Yellow Tulips
Chris Preddle, Sharpnosed Fish, from South 45
Jane Yeh, The Body in the Library, from The Ninjas

Best Collection

Julia Copus, The World's Two Smallest Humans.

And, yes, that is a shortlist of one so the announcement of the winner of that category isn't going to be very exciting. I could have made a game of it by including the Fenton and Yeh books but I like to think that anything shortlisted is a serious candidate for the prize and in this case the conclusion is foregone.
Those observers who remain keen on monitoring the gender balance of those successful in the poetry world will be able to note that 60% of the Best Poem shortlist are female as well as 100% of the Best Collection. I don't think this indicates a crisis in the state of poetry written by men. In fact, it is of no relevance whatsoever.

I have collated a list of previous winners, for my own benefit as much as anything.

Best Poem

2011 Martin Mooney, Dream of the Fisherman's Wife
2010 Paul Muldoon, The Fish Ladder
2009 Don Paterson, The Day

Best Collection

2011 David Harsent, Night
2010 Lachlan MacKinnon, Small Hours

Signed Poetry Books - Kate Bingham

This was a bonus.
Having been suitably impressed with the Kate Bingham poem in the Forward anthology, I ordered her two books of poems from Amazon New & Used.
And this one turned out to be signed.