Ogogo (og)

I am grateful to my father, Phil, who pointed out this little masterpiece last week.

Football result

Dagenham and Redbridge 0 Notts County 3 (Davies, 44; Hughes, 47; Ogogo, og, 85)

Even better than when Parker scored from the spot and it said Parker (pen).

Poetry Live for Haiti

Poetry Live for Haiti, Westminster Central Hall, January 30, 2010

Poetry did its bit for a good cause as Carol Ann Duffy's imagination and position as the tribe's poet-in-chief brought out the great and good and some old troopers to raise a few bob to send to the stricken and needy.

The major surprise guest appearance was Gordon Brown and his wife, Sarah. Mr. Brown made some fairly predictably laudible comments before resorting to default mode and made a political speech, for all the world as if he were at conference or was an embattled Prime Minister. His big announcement was that his government have bought up all the corrugated iron in this country and it is being sent to Haiti by ship. This is a noble and great gesture but not necessarily a vote winner among those of the electorate who make things out of corrugated iron. But he was generously received and he stayed to hear a fine Dannie Abse reading before being ushered off by Ms. Duffy. He has a country to run and needs to keep up with the Raith Rovers score.

At such an event there is bound to be some heartfelt expressions of humanity and some political points made but humanity and politics alone do not great poetry make. Some of these broadsides or specially and hastily written poems looked a bit de trop or too colossally obvious to need saying. At a performance like this, in a large auditorium, it is the 'performers' that become the highlights however fine some of the poets usually are on the page or in more intimate venues. Thus folk recorder-player John Sampson, Carribean old-timer John Agard and Daljit Nagra provided the most memorable performances while I won't be as impolite here as to mention those highly respected names whose poems were not really worthy of being put before such an audience.

For me, on a day useful to see and hear a number of poets one wouldn't have gone as far to see if advertised separately, Maura Dooley and Lachlan MacKinnon were revealed as candidates for further investigation. Owen Sheers is perhaps the one poet that parents would be pleased to have a daughter bring home and introduce to them, as he is very presentable indeed and a very competent poet in the making. Robert Minhinnick came as a big surprise, like a brooding bad boy who looks like he means business. Others with credentials included Gillian Clarke, National Poet of Wales; Christopher Reid, recent winner of the Costa prize and Roger McGough, whose Chinese-syled excursions supported by Andy Roberts on strummed instrument, followed by Brian Patten, reminded us that the 60's are still in living memory.

I would mention Jo Shapcott, Andrew Motion, Glyn Maxwell, Imtiaz Dharkar, Moniza Alvi, Robin Robertson, Collette Bryce, Elaine Feinstein, Ian Duhig and Grace Nichols, too, but fear this website doesn't carry long pieces very well and I would worry that I'd forgotten someone. All of them appeared for gratis, the hall and administration were given as acts of charity and the communal singing of the Scottish bard's Auld Lang Syne, following the laureate's atmospheric performance accompanied by the charismatic John Sampson, was a moving moment.

To think that all the usual self-promotion of the poetry circuit, the waffle and self-serving of reviews, the internecine 'poetry wars' and the essay writing in pursuit of daft degrees in universities could provide such a great coming together was quite humbling to see. A feelgood factor predicated on unthinkable disaster a long way away, no doubt, but we paid our money, turned up and took some memories away and so it is very hard to pick holes in it even if one wanted to.

Hats off and thanks to Carol Ann Duffy for being the prime mover in such an event, poetry's Live Aid, on a day when poetry for once had reason to feel good about itself. The benefit event will have been of benefit to many, both here and hopefully further across the world.

Bright Star

Bright Star (2009), dir. Jane Campion

A film review on this website. Whatever next.

It is the habit of film reviewers to remark upon the 'special effects', the tawdry and expensive cheap thrills that beset the blockbuster genre. But one can be sustained by mere rapturous photography alone when a film is such a banquet for our tired eyes as Jane Campion's account of John Keats and his most tragical dalliance with Fanny Brawne.

The film is Janeite(*) in decorum with the recurrent images redolent of Vermeer's painting as ladies doing stitching or poets reading are caught in the light that filters through windows.

The countenance of Ben Wishaw is more comely than required to represent the poet but it is a truth universally acknowledged that anyone appearing in a film needs to be more handsome than those who do not. The more dastardly Mr. Brown, played by Paul Schneider, provides the angelic Keats with a heavily counterpointed opposite for dramatic and sometimes comic effect. Otherwise I believe the film to be accurate enough in its fidelity to truth and so, in this case, with sufficient reference to the texts, truth is indeed beauty and beauty is truth.

Sad, of course, and there is some inevitability in the dreadful ending but death was in life for these purveyors of poetic langour and life wasn't quite beauteous enough for them. So it may never be counted among the litany of most profound or admirable of the all too few films that I have seen but it was a fine and gorgeous thing to see and I can do more than commend it to you.

* I only once ever saw the word 'Janeite' in print, so I looked it up and found it meant 'pertaining to Jane Austen' but it isn't in either of the dictionaries I have here.

J.D. Salinger (1919-2010)

The death of J.D. Salinger made me think some kind of tribute or obituary was due but we will see.

Perhaps the most fitting tribute will be to say nothing.

The Magnetic Fields - Realism

The Magnetic Fields, Realism (Nonesuch)

http://www.houseoftomorrow.com/

Whereas the last Magnetic Fields album, Distortion, was homage to the Jesus & Mary Chain, like the time R.E.M. put down their mandolin and made Monster, this is advertised as the return to basics. The two albums were apparently conceived as a pair. This has the female figure on the cover where the other had the male.

However, if it was intended as a 'folk' album it might not convince the hard-core traditionalists. With You Must be Out of Your Mind we are immediately back onto the familiar ground of dark lyricism and engaging instrumental arrangements. The cello and banjo ensemble is a rare and lovely combination used to great effect on previous classics on 69 Love Songs and I. John Woo and Sam Davol are a wonderful pairing at the centre of these restrained songs- their gigs in London in 2008 being suggested as the quietest pop concerts in the history of the genre.

For the most part, this is a pretty album, lilting and drifting sometimes sleepily through the subconscious.

It is unlikely that the monumental high points of The Book of Love or Papa Was a Rodeo from 69 Love Songs are going to be reached on a regular basis again and they aren't here but Stephin Merritt retains his camp, quaint, mordant songwriting genius. The yearning, dreamy I Don't Know What to Say seems to be translating into A Groovy Kind of Love but delivers more of the lost romantic charm of his most beguiling moments.

Everything is One Big Christmas Tree is jovial camp, enhanced by a verse in German for added fun. But it is the elegance of the strumming, exotic soft percussion - the cuatro and sitar, no less- that make this an admirable record, hypnotic and contemplative much more than usual. One needs to be careful to listen because it might successfully steal past one unnoticed. It asks unassumingly to be heard rather than demands your attention in an almost self-effacing way. And there's a lot to be said for something like that. It wouldn't come as a big surprise if Stephin Merritt became a Buddhist, refining his unique sensibility out of existence.

Magnetic Fields Realism Sneak Preview

http://www.myspace.com/themagneticfields

Oh, of course, myspace. Why didn't I think of that earlier.

I'll be hoping that We Are Having a Hootenany isn't supposed to be a stand-out track on the new album but, then again, you don't give your best stuff away for nothing. Unless you're me.

But You Must Be Out of Your Mind is suitably as is to be expected,

You call it sunset,
now it's dawn.
You can't go round
just saying stuff
because it's pretty
and I no longer drink enough
to think you're witty.

That'll do fine. Same old, same old dark, heartbroken themes. But, when you have your masterpiece behind you, what more are you supposed to do.

Poets Live for Haiti

http://www.poetryliveforhaiti.org/

I'll hope to make the trip up to London for this on Saturday.

There are enough reliable names and old troopers in among the cast list to make it a worthwhile event, you never know if somebody else might prove to be better than you imagined and it's good to see poetry doing its bit for a cause.