The Go-Betweens: "Bye Bye Pride"

In July and August 1990, I was working at the DHSS in Loughborough just before my last year of university. It was a very hot, dry summer, with day after day of blue skies, and all things considered, the job (as a clerical assistant) wasn't a bad one. The work was generally interesting, and I spent large parts of each day walking from one office to another, so I was out in the open air. It was also reasonably good money.

The downside, where the latter was concerned, was that the office was directly opposite The Left-Legged Pineapple, Loughborough's legendary independent record store. Inevitably I spent most of my lunchtimes, and far too much of my wages, on various albums I dug out there.

In retrospect, by far my best find was a newly-released compilation, The Go-Betweens 1978-1990. Beforehand, I'd heard of the Aussie band, and heard and enjoyed a few tracks by them, but didn't know nearly enough. They were critical darlings (NME was fond of calling Grant McLennan and Robert Forster the Australian Lennon and McCartney), but that was pretty much all I knew.

So I bought a tape copy of the album (because it had a few more tracks than the CD), and played it to death all that summer. Perhaps it helped that the very un-British weather made their songs all the more evocative of the steamy, Queensland coast*, but mainly it was down to the fact that here were compact, often ridiculously catchy pop songs with literate lyrics. About a year later, the tape snapped, so I replaced it (by then I'd also started to buy my way through their back catalogue in secondhand record shops), and when that copy also wore out, a few years later, I bought the CD.

On the way to Australia the other week, the iPod's shuffle function threw up the track above - Bye Bye Pride, probably my favourite of theirs. Apart from not being able to believe that it's 20 years since that summer (my other main memory of it is watching a teenaged Sachin Tendulkar make a brilliant 100 against England - he's not aged badly), it reminded me that McLennan's no longer with us, sadly. He and Forster did belatedly get a little of the recognition they deserved, but never enough. Anyway, enjoy possibly the only rock song ever built round an oboe riff, and listen to McLennan's superb lyrics.

* A similar thing happened with my other Aussie favourites, The Triffids. I first heard them blasting out at a record shop on a blisteringly hot morning that perfectly fitted the setting for all their best songs. I sometimes wonder if I'd have been as instantly grabbed by them on a foggy morning in November.

Nightingale mystery solved

Thanks to David Morley for flagging this up - fascinating research on arguably our most iconic (although not necessarily best, or best-known*) songbird, combined with a bit of Cavalier poetry. We rarely get Nightingales in my part of the world, even passing through, so seeing or, more likely, hearing one, is always a red letter day.

I've probably mentioned before that I like the fact that in Spain, where they're still much easier to find, their name is Ruisenor - literally, "the noisy man". They really can be astonishingly loud, especially in the middle of the night.

* I'd rank Blackbird, Blackcap and Garden Warbler above them, for starters, although there's no beating the Nightingale for sheer resonance.

Anon 7

Interesting to see the spy story breaking on the other side of the Atlantic earlier - I have a poem in Anon 7, just out, entitled Request Hour At The Numbers Station, which comes from a long-standing fascination with some of the strange communications methods used by Cold War spies.

As you'll see, there's loads in there - an interview with John Glenday, articles by Claire Askew and others, and poems from the likes of Rob Mackenzie and Juliet Wilson. It's a great little magazine (always loved the pocket format), so buy a copy or subscribe now.

If you want to know more about numbers stations, by the way, there are recordings of a few here.

Robin Hood

I finally got round to seeing the new Robin Hood film last night, being a sucker for anything connected to Nottingham's favourite hoodie.

And the verdict? Well, it's certainly an enjoyable enough couple of hours, I suppose, although it suffers from two of Hollywood's current major vices - using a film for little more than setting up what it hopes will be a series of lucrative sequels, and applying more and more layers of sound and fury in place of a decent plot or dialogue.

Still, the performances are generally good. Russell Crowe is as watchable as usual, Cate Blanchett is a safe pair of hands as Marian, and there are some decent turns from the supporting cast, notably Max von Sydow and William Hurt.

But, and it's a big but, I came away rather unsatisfied. For a start, director Ridley Scott makes a big point of making sure we see a blood-and-horseshit version of the Middle Ages, with gritty realism the order of the day. Trouble is, where the plot's concerned, he doesn't bother paying too much attention to the actual history of the times, the original content of the ballads, or the legend as it has developed. Instead there's the usual thing of trying to rewrite the story to suit Hollywood, except that it's done without any real agenda or purpose. Why is Nottingham shown as little more than a hamlet? Why do the invading French storm ashore from what appear to be landing craft (and why do they land at the bottom of steep cliffs, for that matter?)? Things like these are annoying rather than being in any way definitive, but they're also pointless. Why not just try to get things right, if you're trumpeting the film's 'authenticity' elsewhere?

Crowe's been quoted as saying that he thinks the film gets as close to the 'truth' of the matter as ever, but in fact he and Scott seem to have cast aside almost all traces of the legend, or possible historical models and archetypes. They may emerge in the sequels, but I won't hold my breath.

The characters of Robin's fellow outlaws are left largely undeveloped (although Mark Addy makes a decent fist of injecting some of the legend's spirit into Tuck, despite looking disconcertingly like Terry Scott), as is that of the Sheriff of Nottingham. Presumably they'll come into their own in any sequels, too, although in the latter role there's zero chance of Matthew Macfadyen coming anywhere near Nickolas Grace's great turn in the 1980s TV series. Here he's so wooden it's a wonder he doesn't get lobbed onto the outlaws' campfire.

Finally, there's the accents. I didn't find them particularly distracting (and it wouldn't honestly have bothered me if Crowe had played RH in his own accent), but they are wildly uneven. Both Blanchett and Crowe often sound more Irish than anything else, while the rest of the time Crowe commutes between Middlesbrough and Merseyside, only occasionally stopping anywhere near Mansfield.

So, probably about 6 out of 10. Not bad, but could do better, and could do better without too much effort.

Poets on iTunes

A couple of weeks back, poet David Morley made mention on his blog of the success of Warwick University's iTunes channel.

I'd come across it quite by accident a while back, and downloaded several readings and interviews with the likes of Lee Harwood, Anne Stevenson and David Morley himself. Anyway, I listened to most of it while hanging around various airports in the last week, and very good it is too. Just need to go back to some of the texts now that I'm home.

Birding in Australia's Top End

Just back from a work trip to Australia's Northern Territory, starting and ending in Darwin and taking in the Kakadu National Park, parts of the Arnhem Escarpment, and a three-day canoe safari down the Katherine River.

The birding was utterly astonishing, with all sorts of 'Top End' specials, such as Hooded Parrot, Chestnut-quilled Rock Pigeon, Banded Fruit Dove and the absurdly colourful Gouldian Finch (tracking these beauties down, thanks mainly to the patience and skill of our guide, Chris Parker, was one of the highlights), as well as a host of other species, nearly all new to me (never having been Down Under before). They included White-bellied Sea Eagle, pictured, which I took at Yellow Water, Cooinda - this bird was totally unfazed by our presence in a boat nearby, and fortunately held still for a few (non-digibinned) shots.

There were also wallabies, wallaroos, and both freshwater and saltwater crocodiles. The 4.5-metre specimen pictured above showed up on the first day, just as we were having a sandwich and a cuppa at Fogg River Dam, close to Darwin. I managed to digi-bin the pic above (we were up in a viewing tower, so my hand wasn't shaking!).

Added to all that, there was loads of breathtaking scenery and a lot of Aboriginal rock art to enjoy, usually with the two combined. It's a wonderful part of the world, and I'll definitely be going back. I'll post more pics and reflections later, but having done the whole trip, including flights, within nine days, I think I need to get my head down first!

PS. It's always nice to learn new skills, so I should probably add that I was also introduced to the Tim Tam Slam, an Australian practice that takes dunking a chocolate biscuit in tea/coffee/hot chocolate to a whole new level. Utter genius.

Hooray for HappenStance!

Wonderful to get back to the news that HappenStance won this year's Michael Marks Award for Poetry Pamphlets. Matthew Stewart has the news here, and although I know HappenStance supremo Helena Nelson wasn't able to attend the awards night, poets D A Prince and Clare Best were there (and their own books are both great examples of the high-quality work the press is publishing).

I hope HappenStance will continue to go from strength to strength - production values are very high, but most crucially, Nell has the knack of unearthing fine poets.

Static Exile, by George Ttoouli

Penned In The Margins, 2009, £7.99

I could offer the same excuse here as I did with Michael McKimm's collection, as regards actually getting round to reviewing it. If anything it's even harder to get a handle on, with the result that I've started and almost finished this piece half a dozen times, before changing my mind and going right back to the beginning. Although you wouldn't, admittedly, be too far wrong if you concluded that I'm just bone idle.

So, where to start this time? Well, the beginning's as good a place as any, with opening poemGists and Piths straight away exploring the inherent slipperiness of language and meaning. It serves as notice that Ttoouli's work is going to take some getting your head round. It also fizzes with energy, and it's fun. I mean, laugh out loud, read-it-again-and-again fun.

That Ttoouli manages to maintain that acute seriousness of purpose alongside a willingness to, above all, entertain the reader, is one of the great pleasures here.

Take the title poem, this book's centrepiece, in which Godzilla is re-imagined as a satire on our post-9/11 society. Paranoia and confusion reign ("if only someone knew what was happening / & could say it / & couldn't be ignored"), and the language moves from the brutal to the absurd via all points in between. It's a surprise, and a cause for complaint about modern poetry, that too often it fails to engage with politics in any meaningful way, but that's not an accusation you could level here. This is satire, and often genuinely caustic satire, too - if, as I suspect, it's about to make a comeback in UK poetry, then I'll be applauding all the way, and cheering Ttoouli's place in the vanguard.

Then there's Ghosts, a superbly taut and deceptively simple piece that considers the lives of immigrant workers overlooked and shunned by the society they're helping to build and maintain. It ends with the poet swimming:

with the ghosts in the pool by the flats,
their wakes skimming behind their empty shapes

It's a memorable image, but there are no easy answers offered, no escape or consolation.

Elsewhere, Ttoouli's Greek heritage is a strong strand running through the collection, with myths reworked, and a strong sense of past and present existing alongside each other ("Into the bar walks a minotaur, / orders whiskey sours and waits for his paramour"). Again, his gaze is as unforgiving and occasionally dizzying as a midday Mediterranean sun.

Finally, there are forays into the personal, too, with This Poem All The Time a particular favourite, managing to be tender, funny and questioning at the same time.

It's getting late now, really late, and I'm uncomfortably aware that, yet again, I haven't done this book justice, but I'm determined I won't scrap the review this time. Your best option at this point, I'd suggest, is to buy it yourself, enjoy its many very considerable strengths, write your own review, and show me how it's done. My best option, I suspect, is to read it all over again.

Shindig! reminder

A final reminder that the latest Leicester Shindig, part of Nine Arches Press's ongoing series, takes place at the usual venue, The Looking Glass (on the corner of Braunstone Gate and Narborough Road), next Monday, 14th June.

As usual, it's all free and there are readings from Jacqui Rowe, Deborah Tyler-Bennett and George Ttoouli.

Jacqui Rowe’s poems have been published extensively in magazines, including Mslexia, Tears in the Fence and Poetry Review. Her latest collection is Apollinaire (Perdika Press). She is co-editor of Flarestack Poets, one of whose titles is shortlisted for the Michael Marks Award and also an independent producer of literature events and works as a writer in schools.

Deborah Tyler-Bennett’s first collection was Clark Gable in Mansfield (King’s England, 2003). Her latest collection, Pavilion, is set in Brighton and on Dandies Pavilion and is published by Smokestack Books. She had work included in Shoestring’s Take Five (2003), and has published over 400 poems and short fictions. Recently, a selection of her work has been translated and broadcast on Romanian radio.

George Ttoouli is an Honorary Teaching Fellow for the Warwick Writing Programme. He co-edits Gists and Piths with Simon Turner, an experiment in poetry e-zining, and he is Reviews Editor for Horizon Review. His debut collection, Static Exile, is now available from Penned in the Margins.

There'll be plenty of open mic slots available - sign up on the door. The first couple of Leicester Shindigs have been notable for the quality of the open mic-ers, including plenty of first-timers, so give it a go.

Still This Need, by Michael McKimm

Heaventree, 2009

I've been trying to write about this book for a good few months now. It's a measure of its quality that it has taken me so long, because every time I think I've got it pinned down, I find something else to intrigue and delight me.

On the face of it, Eric Gregory Award winner McKimm is a lyric poet with a finely-honed gift for observation, especially of landscapes and nature, and a surefooted grasp of rhythms that renders his work gloriously musical. That's quite enough to be going on with, you might think, and he'd certainly be a noteworthy talent on the strength of that alone, but he also springs all sorts of little surprises that help set him apart from a number of other promising young poets.

For starters, he frequently dodges the default persona of many a male poet under the age of 45 - streetwise, occasionally cynical, always ironic - and instead adopts something altogether more vulnerable, more emotionally direct. In the first poem, Fledglings, the poet and a lover are "two timid fledglings in the sky", and later on, in At Last, the poet finds himself surprised by the effects, both directly sensory and emotional, that four daffodils have on him and his home:

Then put them in a jam-jar. Now you've made

an ornament, a pet, a fire, a home,

now an installation, a mausoleum.

I never thought I'd love such sentiment,

and did not think I'd dare to talk of pain.

I didn't want to take the easy slant

on things. Did not intend. But here we are,

a room, one window, four yellow flowers.

Elsewhere, McKimm rarely takes the easy slant on things, even though his poetry might often appear deceptively straightforward. In his landscape pieces, for example, the influence of Iain Sinclair and Roy Fisher ghosts through the background of what, on the face of it, might appear observational poems of the type that can be found in most mainstream magazines.

McKimm might accurately be termed an eco-poet, because pieces such as The Lammas Lands don't make the mistake of taking any one part of the natural world in isolation. City bleeds into country and vice versa, and McKimm seems equally at home in either.

His Northern Irish background flavours many of the pieces here strongly, too. Dialect words and phrases crop up at regular intervals, but they're expertly woven into his supple rhythms, so there's a never a sense that they're being used in some flashy, look-at-me way. And family is a central concern, with the passing of myths, stories and knowledge down the generations accorded much respect, albeit in a thoroughly level-headed fashion.

The History Lesson was a favourite here (McKimm characteristically tucks his own story half-hidden among several others), but it's a recurring theme throughout. When the final poem, Reprieve, ends on the line "We alter daily, and find our histories malleable", the poet is summing up a collection that repeatedly takes the current moment as the only certainty, and writes and rewrites past and future around it. If that gives him huge scope to expand on this superb beginning, that's something to be grateful for.

Shindig! in Leicester

The latest Leicester Shindig, part of Nine Arches Press's ongoing series, takes place at the usual venue, The Looking Glass (on the corner of Braunstone Gate and Narborough Road), next Monday, 14th June.

As usual, it's all free and there are readings from Jacqui Rowe, Deborah Tyler-Bennett and George Ttoouli.

Jacqui Rowe’s poems have been published extensively in magazines, including Mslexia, Tears in the Fence and Poetry Review. Her latest collection is Apollinaire (Perdika Press). She is co-editor of Flarestack Poets, one of whose titles is shortlisted for the Michael Marks Award and also an independent producer of literature events and works as a writer in schools.

Deborah Tyler-Bennett’s first collection was Clark Gable in Mansfield (King’s England, 2003). Her latest collection, Pavilion, is set in Brighton and on Dandies Pavilion and is published by Smokestack Books. She had work included in Shoestring’s Take Five (2003), and has published over 400 poems and short fictions. Recently, a selection of her work has been translated and broadcast on Romanian radio.

George Ttoouli is an Honorary Teaching Fellow for the Warwick Writing Programme. He co-edits Gists and Piths with Simon Turner, an experiment in poetry e-zining, and he is Reviews Editor for Horizon Review. His debut collection, Static Exile, is now available from Penned in the Margins.

There'll be plenty of open mic slots available - sign up on the door if you fancy taking part. The first couple of Leicester Shindigs have been notable for the quality of the open mic-ers, including plenty of first-timers, so give it a go.

In the meantime, I'll be posting a review of George Ttoouli's Static Exile at the weekend - keep reading...

Birdwatching poets may be celebrating...

...at the news that a male Marmora's Warbler, only the fifth ever recorded in the UK, has turned up and is in full voice just outside Abergavenny.

The reason? It's on the mountain known as The Blorenge, a name that offers one of the only (possibly the only) full rhyme for "orange". An opportunity not to be missed (although I think Owen Sheers might have got there first).