Whatever happened to The Rockingbirds?

My post about Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers a couple of weeks back sent me rummaging through my collection looking for his albums. While I was doing that, I came across the record that made me check his music out in the first place, The Rockingbirds’ eponymous 1992 debut.

Now country music from Camden might not sound too promising, and I guess it depends to a large extent on how you feel about country in general, but it’s a great record. It’s only a little bit ‘alt’, really, being much more straightforward, tuneful country-rock, owing a lot to Gram Parsons (and maybe Mike Nesmith) and coming drenched in lashings of pedal steel.

Track four on the album (which doesn’t seem to be available anymore) was Jonathan, Jonathan, a heartfelt and exuberant tribute to the great man (it even incorporated a Roadrunner-style ending), but there are plenty of other goodies on there. The opener, Gradually Learning, heads towards country-soul, there’s a good cover of John Hartford’s In Tall Buildings, and there’s at least two mid-tempo classics, Restless and Halfway To Comatose.

They did record a follow-up (which I haven’t got, unfortunately), but sadly faded away into obscurity. For a moment, though, they were briefly fashionable (even the NME liked them), and for once, it was for all the right reasons.

DA Prince book launch

A couple of weeks ago, Scottish chapbook press HappenStance published its first full-length poetry collection, DA Prince's Nearly The Happy Hour. I haven't got it yet, but this is a poet whose work appears in all sorts of poetry magazines on a very regular basis, and it's always high quality, so I will. I read with her in Nottingham last spring and she was compelling in a very understated way - that's the way her poems work, too, so treat yourself.

HappenStance goes from strength to strength, and hopefully there'll be more full-length collections in the future to complement the growing and ever more varied range of chapbooks.

Snyder at 78

I just came across this piece in The Guardian, about the beat poet Gary Snyder, who has just won this year's Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize.

I only really came across his work four years ago, when I went across to California to a friend's wedding. The town near which it took place, Davis, has a campus of the University of California, and the branch of Borders there was full of Snyder's books, I think because he had been (perhaps still is?) a lecturer there. Anyway, I liked them, and bought a couple. The new and selected, No Nature, is a pretty good introduction to his work, and although I'd probably agree with some of the comments on the article, that his earlier work is more rewarding than a lot of the later stuff, there are gems from all periods to pick out. It's quite unlike the work of the other beats, being heavily indebted to Far Eastern poetry, mythology and religion, but I think I like it more than any of them, except perhaps Gregory Corso.

Anyway, good piece - I'm going to dig out some Snyder books when I get home tonight.

Poets in person 2

Last week I mentioned the very positive review that In Person: 30 Poets got at Stride Magazine. At the weekend, Frances Leviston gave it a similar thumbs-up in The Guardian. Looks like an absolute must to me - I'll have a look to see if Borders have it when I'm in Leicester tomorrow.

Latest review

I was surprised and more than a little delighted to come across Rob Mackenzie's review of Troy Town on his blog, Surroundings, this morning.

As I've already mentioned in the comments there, the thing that was most thrilling about it was that Rob has put his finger on a number of things about the poems, both good and bad, that I'd been groping blindly towards myself without really being able to articulate them, to myself, let alone others! I reckon that's pretty much what a review should do, among other things. Have a read yourselves...

Poets in person

Not much to add to this review, except to say that I agree - it's good to see something like this from a major poetry publisher like Bloodaxe (very reasonable price, too), and I suspect quite a lot of other publishers will be wondering why they didn't do it before now.

Anyway, great idea, great review, and I'm off to order a copy now.

Radio on!

Also in the Guardian review was this article on Jonathan Richman, or more specifically the first Modern Lovers album, a long-time favourite of mine.

I'm not entirely sure I get all the points being made about the relationship between Boston and New York (and the rest of the USA) in the feature, but it's an interesting read anyway.

Richman's later albums tend to divide opinion pretty starkly, although I'd argue that there are plenty of little gems on them too*, among all the nursery rhyme soundalikes, not least on the splendid Jonathan Goes Country**.

But whatever, The Modern Lovers is a bona fide classic, fully justifying its reputation as a missing link between the Velvet Underground and punk.

* That Summer Feeling - I rest my case.
** Since She Started To Ride is great, but it's all excellent.

Silver Jews

I had plenty of time to read over a long Bank Holiday weekend, and as well as catching up on a lot of poetry (and reading The Great Gatsby for the umpteenth time, I made my customary trawl through the weekend reviews.

Saturday's Guardian had this preview (scroll down to the bottom) of forthcoming gigs from Silver Jews, a band who started off as something of a Pavement side project (or more properly, I think the two bands developed side by side). Anyway, main man David Berman is also a poet, and last year I read and enjoyed his collection, Actual Air. Not sure whether he has anything more in the literary pipeline, but either way, I recommend both his records and his books.

Whatever happened to...

Saturday’s Guardian contained this review of a new collection by Stephen Romer, which was slightly strange, as just a few weeks back I’d been wondering what became of him, having liked some of his work back in the early 90s (I remember it as being a bit Hugo Williams-ish, but maybe my memory is playing tricks) but come across precious little since.

Of course, just because a poet is taking his time between collections doesn’t mean he isn’t busy, and Romer’s French connection has always been a strong one. Living on the other side of the Channel for more than 25 years pretty much ensures that your poetic profile in this country is lowered somewhat, I’d guess.

It set me thinking about another “where is he now?” A while ago on this blog, I mentioned having bought three of Oliver Reynolds’ four collections in secondhand shops, and having enjoyed them all (the fact he often writes about Cardiff helps, because I lived there for a few years. In fact, he deserves an award for getting the placename Splott into a poem - I'd guess Peter Finch might also have managed it sometime, but probably no one else). I recently also bought what I think is his most recent book, Almost, but even that is eight or nine years old. I think he has also worked extensively in theatre, but he seems to be a very low-profile poet, which is perhaps a little strange given that his first two books seemed to draw an awful lot of critical plaudits.

So, I'd be interested to know, what does anyone else think of his work? Any ideas what he's doing now? He doesn't seem to me to fit very comfortably into any particular 'school', or into any stereotype of Welsh contemporary poetry, so is that one reason why he's not so visible? I'd love to know more...

Humphrey Lyttelton, 1921-2008

Sad news at the weekend of the death of Humphrey Lyttelton, jazz trumpeter and long-time host of BBC Radio Four’s I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue, which one of his obituaries quite rightly described as more collaborative improvisation than panel game.

Now I won’t pretend to know anything at all about jazz, but I’ve been a long-time fan of I’m Sorry… Without taking anything away from the regular panellists, the programme’s success was down to ‘Humph’, whose persona – veering between exasperated bewilderment and perfect deadpan – allowed him to get away with the sort of double entendres that would normally be tucked away well after the watershed.

These days, far too many people get described as a British ‘institution’, but in the case of Lyttelton, it’s absolutely the right term to use. I just hope they won’t try to replace the irreplaceable.

* Here's Richard Herring's blog post on it. As he says, filthy jokes somehow sound so much more filthy, and funny, coming from the lips of an 86-year-old man.

Kleinzahler's latest

Good review of August Kleinzahler's Sleeping It Off In Rapid City: Poems, New and Selected here. He's a poet I always enjoy reading, and this sounds like a decent overview of his work.

Elsewhere, the new issue of Quattrocento is out. It's a very nicely produced little mag, and it always contains interesting work, so have a look at it if you get the chance.

Meanwhile...

Plenty of good stuff over at Stride. There are these poems by Jennifer Olds - some great stuff from her also featured on the site last summer.

There's a review of Kelvin Corcoran's Backward Turning Sea, which includes the chapbook Roger Hilton's Sugar, which I reviewed for Sphinx a couple of years back. I liked it a lot, and Andy Brown is similarly positive about it.

Finally, there's a review of Stephen Romer's new collection. I remember reading some of his poems years ago and liking them a lot, and I was thinking just the other day that it was a long time since I'd seen anything from him.

Still starting

Here's my colleague Mike Weedon's photo of that Peterborough Redstart, which is still hanging around. I was lucky enough to see a similarly fine male at Thornton Reservoir, near Leicester, yesterday, although I didn't catch up with the Bittern at Cossington, or the Arctic and Black Terns and Little Gulls reported from several locations. An early start tomorrow beckons...

Making a start

Just had to dash out of the office and walk the mile or so to Ferry Meadows to see one of these little fellas. Gorgeous birds (pictures never really do them justice), and unfortunate that I only ever see them while they're on migration. What a week for redstarts.

The Slab

Things usually move pretty slowly in poetry world. Not at all surprisingly, of course, given that an awful lot of editors and publishers are doing the job purely because of their love of it, and anyway one pleasant side-effect of all this is that you sometimes get unexpected surprises in the post, getting replies from magazines you’d long forgotten about submitting poems to, or even better, getting a copy of said publication with your poems inside.

Just that happened to me yesterday. There was a bulky envelope waiting on the doormat, which turned out to contain The Slab (Slab v.3 – Slab Of Fun), a Hull-based anthology that appears at periodic intervals. All sorts of production problems had delayed the release of this edition, so I’d sort of forgotten that I’d had a couple of poems – Searching For The North West Passage and Watching The Wheatears – accepted for it.

Slab’s the right word, too. It’s a hefty paperback, jam-packed full of poetry and reviews, and as well as my two offerings, there are poems by the likes of Ian McMillan, Geoff Hattersley, Peter Sansom and David HW Grubb, as well as a lot of well-known small press names. It’s fair to say that there’s a strong flavour of northern anecdotalism, but then I like that, once in a while, when it’s done well.

On my cursory flick-through so far, I liked McMillan’s poems, and the work by Geoff Stevens and Naomi Foyle.

Ramblings

The usual trawl through the Sunday papers turned up this story. Not sure whether to laugh or cry, really, but there's much more on it over at Poets On Fire.

In the Sunday Times, Stewart Lee (in between comedy commitments, he's long been their champion of all things alternative) gave this review to another re-release from the back catalogue of The Triffids, criminally neglected 80s Aussie country gothic types. I can't vouch for this one, but their 1986 album Born Sandy Devotional is a classic, and there's also a pretty decent compilation called Australian Melodrama.

Moot point

I just came across this on the Guardian website. I'm not sure what position I'd take at the moment - interesting stuff, though.

Early start

I was keen/brave/foolish enough to be up on Beacon Hill at 6am this morning, in search of Ring Ouzels. I bumped into another birder who told me about the three seen there yesterday, along with a male Redstart, but I was out of luck. Still, it was a good way to wake myself up, standing up there taking in the view while low cloud scudded past and I bitterly regretted forgetting to bring any gloves. And there were a handful of good sightings - two Wheatears in the field full of Highland cattle, a single Tree Pipit in more or less exactly the same spot where I found one last year, and, just as I left, two Curlews flying over the lower pastures doing their trembly, liquid spring song, complete with aerial display.

I had a quick look at the Birds Brittanica entry on Curlews when I got in to work. It says that, unlike some other wader calls, the Curlew's trill almost always lifts the spirits (I'd agree), and quotes Ted Hughes:

"Curlews in April/Hang their harps over the misty valleys...A wet-footed god of he horizons".

That's from Remains Of Elmet, one of my favourite Hughes collections. BB also mentions that the Curlew's song features in one of the earliest bird references in English literature, in the Anglo-Saxon poem The Seafarer. In RK Gordon's translation, the lines run:

"I took my gladness in the cry of the gannet
and the sound of the curlew instead of the laughter of men,
in the screaming gull instead of the drink of mead."

In fact the Anglo-Saxon word used, huilpe (from which the modern name whaup, used for the Curlew in Scotland, derives), could be translated as Curlew or Whimbrel, but I don't suppose there was too much discussion of the finer points of wader ID in the mead-hall.

Last night, I finally caught up with the female Scaup at Watermead CP. It's amazingly confiding, hanging around with the Tufted Ducks and joining them in the scrum for bread. Nice bird, though.

PS. If you follow that Birds Britannica link, you'll see that the review mentions JA Baker's The Peregrine. I've just read it, on the recommendation of Tom Bailey, and it really is a fantastic piece of work. I'll post a full review of it in a few weeks.

Coming soon...

Here's the excellent cover to the forthcoming first collection from Minnesota-based poet LouAnn Shepard Muhm. Regular readers of Polyolbion will know that I liked LouAnn's chapbook, Dear Immovable, a great deal, having received it in the 2007 Poetry Superhighway Great Poetry Exchange.

Well I've already read this collection, having been asked to do one of the blurbs for it (which was a big thrill - Jane Hirshfield was one of the other blurbsters), and it builds on the strengths of that chapbook and then some. I've been through it several times and there's absolutely no excess baggage - every word has a job to do, and does it very well.

To find out more about LouAnn, the book, and ordering, click here or email me directly, and I'll send you a pre-order form.

First review

The first review of Troy Town appeared in the Leicester Mercury the other night. Now, I should probably admit up front that I worked at the paper for five years, and in fact have known the reviewer since we were both 12 (as well as working with him at another paper). Other than that, we have no connection whatsoever.

Oh, except that he lives about three minutes' walk from my house.

But anyway, all those things aside, I'm very grateful to Lee Marlow and the Mercury for reviewing the book so positively. You can read the review here, at my Troy Town satellite blog. Hopefully there'll be more to join it before too long.

P.S.

Well, who'd have thought it? No sooner had I moaned yesterday about the ever-increasing Books To Buy list, than Amazon sent me a gift certificate (they've owed it to me for over a year, but I'd given it up as lost). I've chosen to see it as a sign from a higher power commanding me to buy more poetry - Hartill and that Poetry Wars book, I think.

Tears In The Fence 47

It's always nice to get home and find a magazine has dropped through the letterbox, but the downside is that you usually spend the next few days adding certain volumes to that long list of books to buy.

Tears In The Fence 47 is no exception. It's already reminded me that I must get hold of David Caddy's Man In Black, and the review of Graham Hartill's A Winged Head makes me want to order that too. There's a good piece on Lee Harwood too, a fine review of Joanna Boulter's excellent Twenty-Four Preludes and Fugues on Dmitri Shostakovitch, and much more. Have a look...

More news

Eras seem to be ending all over the place. I noticed the other day that Robert Minhinnick is stepping down as editor of Poetry Wales. It's a magazine I buy now and then (probably every other issue, when I see it on sale in Borders), and usually enjoy. No word yet on who'll be trying to fill his shoes.

Elsewhere, I was surprised to find that Stride Books is quietly passing away (don't worry, though, the magazine continues to be very much alive). It's a shame, because the handful of Stride volumes I've got are, quite apart from their eclectic content, beautifully produced, with a definite house style. I know some will feel that content should be everything, but I'm an unashamed book fetishist. I like them to look good on the shelves (or more likely the floor in my house at the moment), feel good in the hands.

Finally, there's this lovely little plug for Troy Town on the HappenStance site, thanks to Helena Nelson. I'm thinking of taking that "Merritt is the man to take on holiday with you" line entirely out of context, and seeing what sort of offers I get.

In brief...

It's that time of year again already - yes, NaPoWriMo (National Poetry Writing Month) 2008 is upon us. The idea is a simple one - you sign up, and then write a poem every day throughout April, posting them as you go along, and getting feedback from the other participants. Of course, you also get to read their poems and provide constructive criticism.

I'm not going to be taking part this year, because I'm still rather tied up with trying to finish a sequence I'm writing about the Midlands Revolt of 1607 (more interesting than it sounds, honest!). But I can recommend having a go. Last year was a struggle, but an enjoyable one which resulted in a fair number of decent poems. You can, of course, revise them once it's all over, and that's where the crits came in handy.

Elsewhere, I liked these poems by Peter Dent, over at Stride. Oh, and things have gone birdsong-crazy over at The Herald.

Larking about

I’d hazard a guess that Sky Larks have inspired more poetry than any other UK bird (although maybe our old favourite the Robin would come close, as Andrew Lack’s excellent Redbreast – The Robin In Life And Literature attests).

Anyway, last night I went for a stroll around Sence Valley Forest Park. Saturday had been all wind and rain, but the official start of British Summer Time seemed to bring with it a fresh start in terms of weather. Admittedly it took me the best part of the day to come to terms with losing an hour’s sleep and catch up on various jobs, but it was still gloriously sunny and warm as I went out at about 6pm, even if a spectacular electrical storm was away over the Trent Valley in the distance.

Sky Larks were everywhere in the sheep fields on either side of the bridle path. It’s the display flight and song, of course, that gets them noticed, but it was interesting scanning the scope over the hillsides and picking out one bird after another on the ground, all of them betrayed by their white-sided tails.

Further on, a male Curlew was bathing on one of the scrapes, and when I stopped to look for Sand Martins, a Kingfisher dashed down the little stream and across one of the lakes. They’re fairly regular at Sence Valley, but they always make you catch your breath a little bit.

But getting back to the poetry. When I arrived home, a male Blackbird had taken up his usual position on the peak of the factory rook opposite my house, and was singing away. And, however much I enjoy Sky Larks singing, I don’t think they can touch our commonest garden songster, surely the most musical of all British birds. They’re maybe under-represented in terms of being written about, with the Song Thrush tending to get more attention where the thrush family is concerned, but when I checked The Herald’s excellent poetry blog this morning, the day’s selection redressed that balance a little bit.

Finally, I had a couple of poems – Yellowhammers and The American Version – accepted by The New Writer.