'Map' among the year's best

Nice end-of-year list here from the Poetry School, featuring Map: Poems After William Smith's Geological Map of 1815, edited by Michael McKimm and published by Worple Press. Admittedly, I do have a vested interest, as I've got a poem in it, but it really is a superb book.

Simon Barraclough's Sunspots and Greta Stoddart's Alive Alive-O are also well worth seeking out, and would certainly make it onto my own list.

Map reviewed

Over at London Grip Poetry Review, there's a review by Martin Noutch of Map - Poems After William Smith's Geological Map of 1815, edited by Michael McKimm and available from Worple Press.

He has kind words for a lot of the poets involved, including myself, for which I'm very grateful. Most of all, though, it's another chance to draw attention to a very fine anthology about a remarkable man and his work. Give it a try.

Map: The launch reading

On Thursday night, I was in London for the launch of Worple Press's anthology Map, which celebrates the 200th anniversary of William Smith's geological map of Britain.

It was an honour and a great pleasure to have been asked to contribute to the anthology, but even more so to hear the many poets involved read their work in the august surroundings of the Geological Society - Smith's map was hanging just outside, in the foyer.

It was good to catch up with Michael McKimm, who edited the book, and to meet Peter Carpenter, the man behind Worple (his own poem was one of my highlights of the night).

Lovely, too, to chat with Alison Brackenbury, Jane Commane, George Ttoouli, Isobel Dixon, Ailsa Holland and Julia Bird, and to meet Alan Buckley - his Red Rocks was another highlight.

There was great variety in the poetry being read, and it was a particular pleasure reading to an audience that, at least partly, came to the subject from another direction entirely. By which I mean they were geologists - I hope we didn't mangle the history and language of their science and one of its great pioneers.

Map: Poems After William Smith's Geological Map of 1815

This arrived the other day - it's an anthology from Worple Press, edited by Michael McKimm, that marks and celebrates the 200th anniversary of the first geological map of the UK (of any country, in fact), and the foundation of a science.

The poets contributing work are Stephen Boyce, Alison Brackenbury, James Brookes, Andy Brown, Alan Buckley, Peter Carpenter, John Wedgewood Clarke, Jane Commane, Elizabeth Cook, Barbara Cumbers, Jonathan Davidson, Isobel Dixon, Maura Dooley, Sally Flint, John Freeman, Isabel Galleymore, John Greening, Philip Gross, Alyson Hallett, Ailsa Holland, John McAuliffe, Helen Mort, Andrew Motion, David M Orchard, Mario Petrucci, Kate Potts, Peter Robinson, Penelope Shuttle, George Ttoouli, Anthony Wilson, and myself.

To buy it (it's £10), go here.

Free Verse 2014

On Saturday, I was down in Red Lion Square in London for the Free Verse Poetry Book Fair. I attended a couple of years ago (or was it three?), and it was obvious then that it had bags of potential, but I was staggered at just how busy it was throughout the day on Saturday. From beginning to end, the main room was exactly as it appears in the above photo, while the readings and talks were well attended.

I particularly enjoyed the Knives, Forks and Spoons Press readings, especially Sarah James (and bought her collection, Be[yond]), and the readings from Bill Griffiths' work by Geraldine Monk and Alan Halsey (pictured below).

As always at such events, a large part of the pleasure was in catching up with other poets and publishers, and I chatted to Helena Nelson, D A Prince, Alan Baker, Michael McKimm, Peter Carpenter and Roy Marshall, among others, as well, of course, as to my own publisher, Jane Commane of Nine Arches Press (below).

It was only afterwards that I realised that, in the hustle and bustle in the Conway Hall, I'd managed to somehow miss Alison Brackenbury and the Sidekick Books stand - that's a mark of how busy it was.

I read alongside fellow Nine Arches poet Josh Ekroy, and Worple Press poets Mary Woodward and Martin Crucefix, at the Garden Cafe out in the middle of the square. There was a decent-sized audience, and we were on just before the arrival of the marchers in support of the NHS (and Billy Bragg, a longtime hero of mine). Me and Josh are pictured below - I think I need to work on my microphone technique.

London calling

I was down in London yesterday, mainly to visit the Geological Society in connection with a poem for an anthology project from Worple Press. It's to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the creation of William Smith's geological map of the country, and I was able to see the map itself. Seen full-size, on the wall of the Society's offices in Piccadilly, it's really an imposing and impressive piece of work. It was great to meet and have a drink with Michael McKimm, who as well as being a very fine poet, works at the Society and is co-ordinating the project.

I also managed to fit in a visit to the Viking exhibition at the British Museum, a bit of research for another literary project (of which more very soon), and some book-buying - Karen Solie's Selected Poems, Hugo Williams' I Knew The Bride, and Christopher Isherwood's The Condors and the Cows. I also couldn't help noticing, in Foyle's, two copies of The Elephant Tests. You'll have to forgive my delight at finding one of my collections in a London bookshop for the first time - it was nice to be sandwiched between WS Merwin and Hilary Menos.

I ended a great day by catching up with an old university friend for a quick drink before the train. It had been far, far too long.

Magma 48

The new issue of Magma arrived the other day, and very good it is too. The poetry itself is excellent, with particular favourites so far being DA Prince's three pieces (especially Bog oaks), and poems by Jonathan Edwards, Helen Mort and Michael McKimm. There's loads more too - they seem to be packing an awful lot in these days.

The articles are the highlight of this issue for me, though. I enjoyed the ten poets writing on 'beauty', and Eavan Boland's piece on Robert Herrick. Best of all is Karen Solie (one of my favourite poets) on first coming across Frank O'Hara's poetry. There are a couple of poems by Solie, too, which are almost worth the admission price alone.

I reviewed books by David Briggs, Rebecca Goss and John Ash for this issue (all very different, but all with a lot to offer too), but the review I really want to highlight here is David Morley's take on Martin Figura's Whistle, a book I've mentioned on here before, and which I'll return to soon. It's a brilliant piece of work, and the review does it perfect justice.

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.

Coming soon...honest

I've not got round to writing that much of substance about poetry on here recently, for one reason and another, but I promise to do better over the next few weeks.

I'll have reviews of Michael McKimm's Still This Need, George Ttoouli's Static Exile, Karen Solie's Pigeon, and a number of chapbooks, and I might even manage to finally finish a piece I was writing about poetry on the page as a sort of musical notation for poetry read aloud. You'll be begging for mercy, I warn you...