Birds in poetry

In the latest issue of the American Birding Association's journal Birding, there's a long (and unfortunately rather dry) article about birds in American poetry, starting with Anne Bradstreet in 1659 and going right through until the present day.

It ends with a list of 11 recommended bird poems, namely:
Who Called That Pied-Billed Grebe A Podilymbus Podiceps Podiceps? - Ogden Nash
The Peace Of Wild Things - Wendell Berry (it features Wood Ducks)
Buteo Regalis - N Scott Momaday (features Ferruginous Hawks)
Shorebird Watching - Amy Clampitt (Dunlin, Black-bellied Plover, Golden Plover and Turnstone)
On A 3.5oz Lesser Yellowlegs, Departed Boston August 28, Shot Martinique September 3 - Eamon Grennan
Barn Owl - Ted Kooser
To The Saguaro Cactus Tree In The Desert Rain - James Wright (Elf Owl)
Twilight: After Haying - Jane Kenyon (Whip-poor-will)
The Author Of American Ornithology Sketches A Bird - David Wagoner (Ivory-Billed Woodpecker)
The Need Of Being Versed In Country Things - Robert Frost (Eastern Phoebe)
Shrike Tree - Lucia Perillo (Loggerhead Shrike and Northern Shrike)

That list told me two things. Firstly, that I know far too little American poetry to be able to make an informed judgement on whether that really is a representative selection. Second, that as I suspected, American birders tend to have better names for their species.

But it also set me thinking of a top ten British (and Irish) bird poems. I've already got a few, and I'll post my selection in the near future, but all suggestions are welcome...

Inextinguishable

I've just received Inextinguishable, the third chapbook by Scottish poet James W Wood. It's a 32-page, full colour pamphlet featuring his poems, and responses to them by 14 young artists from the Edinburgh College of Art, and the result looks positively mouth-watering.

It's the first Knucker publication I've seen, and they do perfect justice to an idea that, in lesser hands, might have ended up looking a mess. I've written before on Polyolbion about how the physical appearance of a book or pamphlet can greatly add to my reading pleasure (if that makes me a fetishist of some sort, then so be it), and this is a perfect example. It's so beautifully produced, you can't help but want to keep picking it up and reading it.

And the contents fully match the surface richness. So far I've only flicked through, picking out two or three poems to read, but they maintain the thematic and formal variety, not to mention lightness of touch, that characterised Wood's excellent chapbook The Theory Of Everything (HappenStance, 2006).

I'll be posting a full review when I've had time to read the collection properly, and think about the artists' responses - watch this space...

Kelham Kingfisher

I’ve not done much birding locally over the last few weeks, for one reason and another, so I got out when I had the chance for an hour last night.

It was grey and overcast, but dry and very still, so I had a stroll around Kelham Bridge. There were plenty of Sedge and Reed Warblers (although the Grasshopper Warbler that was there a month or so ago couldn’t be heard), a Whitethroat or two, and, from the second hide, a Kingfisher perched on one of the posts in the water.

I was very close, but it didn’t startle even at the considerable noise made opening the shutters, and stayed there for around 15 minutes, diving three or four times. Each time, it came up with a small fish, and did its familiar ritual of battering it against the perch to make sure it was dead.

What’s really interesting, though, is how Kingfishers can change appearance dramatically in an instant. When I first spotted it, for example, I could only see the orangey breast and the white cheek patch. Then, as it turned round, the blue plumage became visible, but it appeared dull, unremarkable almost, certainly nothing like the electric flash of colour you usually get when you see one dashing along a riverbank. It was only when it finally flew away that the blue seemed to kindle and spark.

On the way home, I finally caught up with my local Little Owls (they’ve been very elusive this year) down a lane about a mile from my house. They’ve been nesting in the same tree for years and years – I can remember seeing them there when I was about 9 or 10. Judging by the amount of noise they were making, they’re raising a brood, too, so I daresay they’ll be there for years to come.

Swan song

I've raved before on here about The Triffids, the best group ever to come out of Australia (yes, even better than The Go-Betweens). When they appeared on the scene in the mid 80s, they were rightly lauded by the music press, but like so many other great bands of that era, failed to quite cut it commercially, even when they moved from an Aussie indie label to Island.

Their best album, to my mind, was 1986's Born Sandy Devotional, on which they sounded unmistakably Australian (no, scrub that - unmistakably Western Australian). Great, poetic songs about loners and losers, all of them victims of an unforgiving, harsh landscape, with a country-tinged, occasionally epic backing.

By 1989, they were experimenting with drum machines, samples and programming, and although you couldn't describe The Black Swan as an unqualified success (it's far too eclectic, ambitious and thus unfocused for that), it's actually stood the test of time pretty well. And it's just been re-released, complete with loads of bonus tracks (it was originally intended to be a double album), although the best things about it are still probably the 'typical' Triffids tracks - the gorgeously languid Too Hot To Move, the poppy Goodbye Little Boy and the hugely evocative New Year's Greetings. The latter is based on a Les Murray poem, The Widower In The Country, and fully does its source justice.

The album had just come out in May 1989 when I saw them play at Newcastle University. In fact I remember walking past the students' union record shop on a very hot day (we had summers, back then) and hearing Too Hot To Move blasting out, and going straight in to buy the record and tickets for their forthcoming gig.

Live, they were wonderful - intense and brooding one minute, poppy and playful the next. But sadly, that was it. They took a break, never intending it to become permanent, but it did. Singer and main songwriter David McComb released one patchy solo album, and dabbled in other bands, but died in 1999, closing the door on a sadly underrated band.

Do yourself a favour - buy the re-release, buy them all if you can. You won't regret it. In the meantime, here they are in their heyday, performing Wide Open Road.

Mystery poet

This story on the BBC News website is a reminder of just how many 'lost' poets there must be out there - it'll be interesting to see if they manage to track down any more information.

Kleinzahler review

There's an interesting review here of August Kleinzahler's Sleeping It Off In Rapid City: Poems New And Selected, which I mentioned a few weeks back. I think I largely agree with it - Kleinzahler is a poet whose work I often like a lot, but it's usually when he's a bit more empathetic. At other times, he can teeter on the edge of becoming a parody of himself, and it all gets a bit predictable and wearing. Still, either way, it looks like a book worth having.

Southwell Library Poetry Festival

Nottinghamshire seems to do pretty well for poetry events - Nottingham itself is home to a fine magazine, more than one press, and plenty of good poets, there's a book festival at Lowdham, and now there's this, just down the road at Southwell, which you may know better as a horse-racing venue.

My apologies for not having posted this sooner - I'd stored it up then was unable to get it online in time because I was between PCs. But late is better than never, I hope.

The Festival runs until Saturday (July 12th), and events include:

• An introduction to Irish poetry.
• A poetry writing workshop for beginners.
• A talk on the poetry of D H Lawrence.
• Four regional poets laureate reading together - Cathy Grindrod, River Wolton, Anne Atkinson and Sibyl Ruth.
• Poetry and food from around the world.
• Poetry by two visiting American poets, together with a concert of songs written by Woody Guthrie.
• Readings of Shakespeare sonnets and an event for children.

Obviously, my tardiness means that some of those events have alread taken place, but a full programme is available from Southwell Library by calling Nicola Ellis on 01636 812148, and further information is also available by calling Ross Bradshaw on 0115 969 3597 or 07740 845 664.

Werewolves of London

I've just been re-reading a book called Hotel California: Singer-songwriters and Cocaine Cowboys in the LA Canyons, by Barney Hoskyns. It traces the history of all those Californian bands and artists of the era 1965-1977 (approx.), and there's not many of them come out of it smelling of roses. Joni Mitchell and Neil Young at least score more points for artistic integrity than most, but basically it's a tale of monstrous egos running out of control, and ideals being sold to the highest bidder.

I'm not a huge fan of many of the artists featured (aside from Young) - Jackson Browne and his ilk always came over as a bit too smug for their own good - but I do love the late, great Warren Zevon, who features in the book as something of a footnote. He was a bit like a more rock and roll version of Randy Newman (to be fair, I like Newman too), but sadly, even now, he doesn't get the credit he deserves.

Anyway, the book set me searching YouTube for vids of the Big Z, and here he is performing his (almost) novelty hit, Werewolves Of London. OK, so it's a bit silly, but listen to those lyrics. That line "Huh! I'd like to meet his tailor" makes me laugh out loud every time.

Latest at Litter

There's always something worth reading over at Litter, the online magazine edited by Nottingham poet Alan Baker. Incidentally, he also runs Leafe Press, which has put out chapbooks by the likes of Lee Harwood, CJ Allen and Martin Stannard (and his own Not Bondi Beach, which is excellent).

Anyway, at the moment, Litter contains plenty of good stuff, with poems by Peter Riley, Todd Swift, Rupert Loydell and Andrea Brady, plus a review of three Rupert Loydell titles. The test of a good online mag, I always think, is how much of it I want to print off to read again at my leisure, and this has been keeping the inkjet busy for a while now.

So Here We Are 14

The latest in this series by Tears In The Fence editor David Caddy is now available here as a download, although as usual you can also read the text here, on David's blog.

As you'd expect when the subject is JH Prynne, it's a pretty weighty read, but it's well worth it. I was immediately struck by what David says about Prynne's poetry frequently getting described as "difficult" and "arid". Difficult is fair enough (not that difficult is ever necessarily a bad thing), but arid seems far too perjorative. Whatever else Prynne's poetry is, I'd have thought it's extraordinarily fertile with possibilities.

But anyway, have a read yourself. If you're already reading Prynne, or thinking about giving it a go, this puts his work in some sort of context.

Today's Poem

As I mentioned last week, my Ringing Redstarts is today's poem over at Poetry Daily. It's from Troy Town, which is available now direct from Arrowhead Press, or by e-mailing me using the link on the right. If you would like to buy a copy from me, I'll also include a free copy of my HappenStance chapbook, Making The Most Of The Light.

Dylan & Dylan

There was no getting away from Dylan Thomas this weekend, with all the papers carrying reviews of The Edge Of Love, the new film about his complicated love life. I wouldn't have high hopes for it anyway, because as Simon Armitage says in All Points North, films about poets are generally pretty wretched, but this one has the additional handicap of Keira Knightley's acting.

But I have a bit of a problem with the whole concept, anyway. To me, it encourages people to treat the poetry itself as autobiography. It's the same sort of uncomfortable feeling I had with Ted Hughes' Birthday Letters, or Carol Ann Duffy's Rapture. Not that they weren't both fine books, but I did feel that too much of the interest in both was down to prurient interest in the poets' lives, and indeed the other poets in their lives.

But enough complaining. Saturday's Guardian also contained the first in their latest series of giveaway booklets (chapbooks, in fact). They're all about great lyricists, and perhaps not surprisingly they started off with Bob Dylan. A small selection of lyrics (including Desolation Row, Visions of Joanna and Tangled Up In Blue) presented as poetry, plus an intro by Greil Marcus and two 1965 articles about the great man. We've talked before on here about whether lyrics are ever true poetry - this little book made a good case for, I think.

Coming soon

One of the poems from Troy Town - Ringing Redstarts - will be the Poem of the Day at Poetry Daily a week on Saturday (June 28th). In the meantime, have a good trawl through the site - it's a good place to catch up on poetry-related articles.

Salt snap up Andrew Philip

Great to hear that Andrew Philip - whose wonderful pamphlet Tonguefire was a standard-bearer for HappenStance - has had his manuscript The Ambulance Box accepted by Salt, for publication next year.

As Andrew says, Salt have a very strong list (I was in Borders this afternoon and was struck by what an eclectic but high-quality range they boast), and are also at the forefront of marketing poetry through the web, the potential of which they've probably only just started to explore

Anyway, it's the first must-buy of 2009 on my list - if you want to know exactly why, have a look on the HappenStance site and get hold of Tonguefire, or the Andrew Philip Sampler, just out. Proof that quality wins out.

PoetCasting pushes on

No sooner had I mentioned PoetCasting than Alex Pryce received the excellent news that she has secured Arts Council funding to continue the project until mid-2010. While the site will continue to showcase both emerging and established poets, it will also move into collaborations with poetry magazines and live poetry performance events, and will develop its own events. Sounds like it'll be going from strength to strength, and quite right too.

Hear, hear

A little while ago, I recorded four poems - At Home; Show, Don't Tell; Spurn; and The Memory Of Water - for Alex Pryce's excellent PoetCasting site, and they're now available to listen to here.

They'll be on the front page of the site for the next week or so, but I'll also put a link to them on my sidebar. And while you're at PoetCasting, take the time to trawl through the archives for a wide range of very fine poets reading their work. It's always illuminating to hear poems as they were intended. Enjoy!

Cynical opportunism

It’s not often I touch upon politics on this blog, but having spent most of the last 24 hours listening to endless analysis on radio and TV, I feel compelled to comment on David Davis’s resignation as an MP to “defend British liberties”. And yes, this is the same David Davis who served as an MP under Thatcher and Major. In fact, he was a Government whip; his distaste for parliamentary deals and so on evidently didn’t weigh so heavily with him then.

It’s hard to know where to start. What about the claim, by various of his friends and colleagues, and some in the media, that this is a brave and courageous decision? What definition of those words are they using? Because as far as I can see, Davis is risking next to nothing. At the very worst, he might lose his job (I have no idea whether or not he, like many MPs, already has a second job – it’d be nice to see a few of them get upset about that, too), in which case he’ll have to kick his heels, maybe while accepting a few well-paid directorships, for a couple of years until he gets selected for a safe Tory seat at the next General Election.

Except that he made sure to get the agreement of the Liberal Democrats NOT to stand against him in the forthcoming by-election. Given that they are the only realistic threat to him in the constituency, where’s the risk? He also knows full well that whatever he might say, people in Haltemprice and Howden will not vote purely on their views on the 42-day detention debate. They’ll vote, as they always do, on a whole range of issues, not least of them Davis’s own record as a constituency MP, which by all accounts is very good.

What about Davis’s so-called principles on this particular issue. He’s been keen to mention Magna Carta at every opportunity, but as far as I know, it didn’t make provision for holding prisoners for 28 days without charge. Davis has made no objection to that shorter (but still very long) period, just the 42 days. He’s no more an upholder of the principles of Magna Carta than Gordon Brown is. The inescapable conclusion is that what he’s doing has nothing to do with political conviction, and everything to do with opportunism and an ego running out of control. He realises, I suspect, that by losing the Tory leadership election a couple of years back he lost his only real chance of ever becoming PM, and now he’s making a last-ditch bid to grab the political spotlight – this is the act of a desperate man.

Finally, where was he in the 1980s, when the party for which he was and is an MP was trampling over all sorts of civil liberties in the UK, including press freedom and, more than anything, workers’ and union rights? Engineering strikes in order to use the police as the paramilitary wing of the Tory Party and crush the unions (the court actions that followed the 1984 Battle of Orgreave are very instructive) isn’t what you’d expect from a party concerned to uphold the rights of the individual. Strangely, the Tories, including Davis, don’t plan to repeal a single one of the anti-union laws should they come to power (and it’s to Labour’s shame that they’ve done little in that regard, too). We faced a very real terror threat then, too, but Davis and the Tories showed none of this new concern for civil liberties in Northern Ireland.

Personally, I see no reason to have 42 days detention, any more than I do 28. There are far easier and more transparent changes that could be made, if the security situation demands it. But even if I did share the same view as Davis, his position would stink to high heaven of hypocrisy of the worst kind.

New release

I received my copy of LouAnn Shephard Muhm's Breaking The Glass (Loonfeather Press) at the weekend, and a very fine debut collection it is, too. It comes highly recommended by no less a poet than Jane Hirshfield, who says of it:

"Breaking the Glass is a book of fierce heart and strong hands, glinting recognitions, and hard-won perception. Its many brief, bright shard-poems, especially, cut through surface consciousness, bringing the reader to unexpected and moving comprehension. Vulnerable with longing, fully alive, LouAnn Muhm’s words ring resonantly true."

Having read the manuscript to do a blurb for it myself, I can vouch for that. It's a very strong book, with not a word out of place. It's also a very nice looking book (regular visitors here will know that's a nice little bonus that I'm always looking for) - I like that cover photo.

I'll be posting a full review of it in a little while, but for now suffice to say it's a book I'm enjoying re-reading.

So, what are you waiting for? You can get hold of a copy yourself by clicking here.

Fisher featured

This week's Poem Of The Week over at The Guardian is Roy Fisher's The Running Changes. Not necessarily too representative of his work (but then what is, because he covers such a wide range of poetries?) - still, I like it a lot.

For a change, there's lots of good stuff in the comments section, too. I particularly liked the suggestion that the compound words in the second half of the poem are an echo of Anglo-Saxon poetry and its kennings, and Old Norse, for that matter - Eric Bloodaxe was the king of the Viking kingdom of York. He was also, as I mentioned a week or so ago, the rival of saga hero Egil Skallagrimmson.

Everything I read lately keeps leading me back to the so-called dark ages.

Worth the wait

I was interested to read this review in yesterday's Observer (there was another in Saturday's Guardian). Firstly, because it sounds like a book worth reading. Secondly, though, because of what it says about Mick Imlah not having released a full collection for 20 years.

Of course, that doesn't mean that he's not been busy, what with chapbooks, editing for magazines and anthologies, and so on. But it is a hell of a long time, making Imlah something of a poetry equivalent of The Blue Nile or My Bloody Valentine (not that it did them any harm). Does anyone know of a longer hiatus between full collections?

Anglo-Saxon attitude

Time for a look what's new over at Stride. Lots of new poetry, for a start, of which I liked these pieces by Matt Fallaize the best.

There's also these reviews, especially those of the Old English Poems and Riddles, and the Poems from Egil's Saga. I like the sound of the extracts from the former, and it's always good to see Anglo-Saxon poetry getting plenty of new interpretations (Jane Holland has an Old English translation appearing in her forthcoming third collection from Salt, for example). The alliterative stress metre that it uses can take some getting used to, but once you've tuned into it, it is, I think, capable of carrying more than just the elegaic tone for which it is usually noted. It certainly demands to be read aloud, so as the review suggests, an accompanying CD might have been a nice idea.

Regulars here will know that I'm a big fan of medieval Icelandic literature, especially the so-called 'family' sagas. Egil's is one of the big three, along with Njal's and Laxdaela, and although I wouldn't say it's my favourite (I'd always go for Njal's Saga), the title character is truly memorable, a psychopath quite capable of writing poetry on the spur of moment to save his life, so this book looks well worth checking out.

So Here We Are 13

Here's the latest in the So Here We Are series, from Tears In The Fence editor David Caddy. If you'd prefer, the full text is here. I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but it's always thought-provoking.

Hotfoot after the Redfoot

It's all birding just at the moment. I'd not managed to get out on my local patch since getting back from Spain, but last night I just had to make the effort to try to see the first-summer female Red-footed Falcon that has been hanging around Ingleby, in Derbyshire, for the last few days.

It's only about a 15-minute drive from my house, but once there I was faced with a walk of around a mile, alongside the Trent. I was glad I'd packed my wellies, because at one point the path is flooded to a depth of about 18 inches, but it's a nice atmospheric spot, if you can ignore the redundant towers of Willington Power Station just over the river, and a couple of gravel pits. There's the Anchor Church, a series of natural caves that were used by medieval hermits, and just a couple of miles downstream is Swarkestone Bridge and Causeway, the point at which Bonnie Prince Charlie decided to turn back to Scotland during his 1745 invasion of England (UA Fanthorpe wrote a poem, At Swarkestone Bridge, about this, which always annoys me a little bit because it talks about the 'Midlands plain' - it's not that flat for heaven's sake!). Upstream a mile or two, there's Repton, with its Anglo-Saxon crypt containing the remains of more than one king of Mercia, and where a huge Viking army wintered some time in the late 9th century. And of course, it has a strong poetry connection, WH Auden and James Fenton both having attended the public school there (funnily enough, I think one of the kings buried there shared Auden's first name, Wystan - I might be wrong though. Maybe it was Wiglaf).

But I digress, and mighty boringly, I fear. Naturally, as soon as I left the car, it started to drizzle again, and didn't let up for the three hours I was there. There's been a bit of trouble, apparently, with birders trampling on crops and deliberately flushing the bird from the field, but all those there last night behaved impeccably. Not that there seemed to be a bird to flush, to start with.

We spent ages scanning two fields - one ploughed and seeded, the other pasture being grazed by a herd of Friesians - for the rare vagrant (it's more often found in eastern and southern Europe, but a few overshoot to the UK each year) without any luck. Ditto the various trees, pylons, fenceposts and sheds. At one point, a small falcon began approaching from the north, but even before our hopes were really raised, it became obvious it was a Hobby.

Just at the point when I was thinking of packing up for home, because the increasingly heavy rain would be deterring the bird's insect prey, we realised that it was sat on a fencepost on the far side of the field, clearly having just flown in from some concealed spot. Skirting the edge of the field, we approached to well within 50 yards, but it seemed entirely unconcerned, using the fence as a hunting perch and continually swooping onto insects in the ploughed earth. It didn't do any more flying than that, which I suppose might have been a disappointment if it hadn't been such a handsome bird anyway, but we watched for up to an hour as it fed well.

And that was that. Great bird to restart my patch list with, and ironically far better views of it than the one I saw in Spain last week. Well worth a soaking (exacerbated by a leaking wellie).

Steppe-ing out

Just back from a week in Aragon on a 'fam' trip - birding, eating too much, and drinking lots of splendid wine. I won't even attempt to call it work, because it really was a lot of fun with a great group of people.

One of the things that really struck me was just how huge and empty the landscape is - it's something that takes you completely by surprise in western Europe. Given that around half of Aragon's 1.2 million population lives in the capital, Zaragoza, that probably shouldn't be a shock, but it is. Standing out on the steppes (above left), you can imagine yourself in the middle of the American South West.

Highlights included seeing several glorious Lammergeiers, a Golden Eagle on the nest feeding young, more Griffon Vultures than I could even have imagined, a very showy Rock Thrush in the spectacular setting of Castillo Loarre, a displaying Little Bustard out on the steppes, the maddeningly elusive Dupont's Larks, and both Black and Black-eared Wheatears (one of the latter subjecting a male Cuckoo to the most fierce mobbing I've ever seen from a small bird). And then there were Bee-eaters and Hoopoes galore, Alpine Swifts chattering overhead, and a whole host of great warblers, including Subalpine, Dartford, Sardinian, the not-very-aptly named Melodious, and the lovely Bonelli's (basically the southern equivalent of our Wood Warbler).

I shouldn't forget the Nightingales. Other than on the steppes, they were everywhere we went, and when we stayed a couple of nights in the mountaintop village of Alquezar (pictured right), you could hear them singing throughout the night (luckily, we were far too shattered to be kept awake by it). In fact, the local name for them is Ruisenor, meaning 'noisy man', which hits the nail right on the head.

I had intended to do a lot of reading, but spent most of my travelling time sleeping, so I still have quite a bit to catch up on. But anyway, here's a picture of our tired but happy group to close with...

PS. As you'll see, the rain in Spain doesn't fall mainly on the plain at all.

HappenStance at the Troubadour

On Monday, May 26th, HappenStance poets will be reading at the Troubadour in London. The line-up (in no particular order) will be:

Martin Cook
Tom Duddy
Eleanor Livingstone
Greg Leadbetter
Rob A. Mackenzie
Michael Mackmin
Helena Nelson
Andrew Philip
DA Prince

It’s a great venue, and more importantly, a terrific and very varied line-up. All are fine poets, and if you’re a regular visitor to this blog you’ll know that over the last three or four years I’ve enjoyed HappenStance chapbooks by all of them (except Helena, who is of course HappenStance’s guiding light – her own collection, Starlight On Water, is from Rialto, and is also highly recommended).

Oh, and except DA Prince, who as I mentioned last week, has just had her book Nearly The Happy Hour released as HappenStance’s first full-size poetry collection. She’s another who’s well worth hearing. I read with her last year at a Poetry Nottingham event, and she has an understated but often quietly mesmeric style.

So, if you’re anywhere near London that day, go along. It’s not often you get that much talent on the same bill, for a mere £5. Doors open at 8pm.