Armchair birding

There are times when you're grateful for a hangover. Sunday was one of them - belated birthday celebrations had left me a touch, er, fragile, shall we say, and while the rain had ceased for a few hours, I was in no mood to take advantage by going out to do any actual birdwatching.

So I did the next best thing. I'd just received a copy of the splendid Birdbook II - Freshwater Habitats from Sidekick Books, so I got comfortable on the sofa and got stuck in.

Now, admittedly I am biased, as I appeared in Birdbook I, but this really is a fantastic little volume. Not only is it jam-packed with excellent poetry from the likes of Derek Adams, Jo Bell, Mark Burnhope, Gerry Cambridge, WN Herbert, Kirsten Irving, Ira Lightman, John McCullough, James Midgley, Jon Stone, Chrissy Williams and many, many more, but there's also fantastic artwork. I mean, BBI was a handsome volume, but this is really at a different level again. Maybe I'm allowing my liking for waders to sway my opinion too far, but I'm not going to apologise for that.

Rather than reviewing it, I'll try to take an in-depth look at a few of the poems soon, but in the meantime, you can buy it here.

Redshanks and Turnstones, Burghead

The Holy Place - Caroline Gill

I've just received a copy of The Holy Place, the first chapbook from Caroline Gill (who you may know better as Caroline At Coastcard).

In fact, it's a chapbook co-authored with an American poet, John Dotson, and is the fifth publication in the Poet To Poet series from The Seventh Quarry and Cross-Cultural Communications, New York. It sounds like a great idea, pairing a British poet with a writer from elsewhere in the world, and I'm intrigued to see other books in the series.

Anyway, you can read more about it, and a little interview with Caroline, here, and I'll be reviewing it at a later date, so watch this space.

A fond farewell

I received an email late last week carrying the sad news that the last issue of Umbrella has just been published.

Over the past six years it has been a consistently high-quality presence on the literary scene, and it's some compensation that the archive of its past issues will remain online for the foreseeable future.

Of course, running a literary magazine of any sort, let alone one as well presented and skilfully edited as Umbrella, is a time-consuming and often thankless task, so I'd like to say a heartfelt thank-you to editor Kate Benedict for many hours of enjoyable reading, as well as the honour of having appeared within its pages on a couple of occasions. Umbrella will be greatly missed.

New Networks for Nature

I spent Friday and half of Saturday in Stamford, at the fourth annual New Networks for Nature symposium. The organisation has the long-term aim of establishing a festival celebrating the cultural significance of nature in Britain - on the evidence of this year, it's well on its way to doing just that.

It's really a bit unfair of me to pick out highlights, given that there were so many, and I'd be hard-pushed to find a poart of the programme that I didn't enjoy.

It all opened with Hanna Tuulikki singing entirely unaccompanied, but then she has such an extraordinary voice that no accompaniment could do it any justice. She somehow manages to make links between folk song and birdsong that really need to be heard to be believed - at the time I tweeted that she sounded like a cross between Bjork, Sandy Denny and a curlew, which I suppose at least ought to give some idea of what a unique voice she is. I have the feeling that I'm going to be looking for and downloading a lot of her work.

Conor Jameson's talk on Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, and the debt we owe to it, was really excellent. I've read his own Silent Spring Revisited (highly recommended), but there was plenty more to take away from this, not least the conviction that change can be achieved relatively quickly. The following talk, by Jim Perrin, was equally inspiring, arguing for the value of 'rapture' in our relationship with the natural world.

The panel debate, preceded by Ruth Padel reading three poems (one of her own, plus others from Clare and Larkin), considered the question "Do the British care about nature?" You wouldn't expect to come up with hard and fast answers, but there were some intriguing leads.

In the afternoon session, the hard science provided my early highlights, with Chris Hewson's look at the satellite-tracking of Cuckoos, and Nick Davies' analysis of exactly how Cuckoos trick host birds into raising their young in the first place. Bruce Pearson's talk on albatrosses was excellent too, with his artwork adding an extra dimension.

On Saturday morning, David Tipling's all too brief opening slot was superb. Most birders are familiar with David's photos (we certainly use them whenever possible at Bird Watching), but everyone in the theatre gave a little gasp at a couple of his recent photos of Hares. Katrina van Grouw is someone else I know through her work for the magazine, and her current book, The Unfeathered Bird, is terrific, but her talk about its making was something else again - the phrase "labour of love" doesn't really cover it.

I read three birdsong-related poems myself, before Charles Bennett read from his poem/song sequence The Angry Planet, as well as talking about its composition. He touched on a theme that kept re-emerging throughout the two days - how to avoid giving in to hopeless pessimism about the state of the natural world, without offering easy answers.

Finally, Hanna Tuulikki retuened, along with Nerea Bello and Lucy Duncombe, to sing Air falbh leis na h-eoin (Away With The Birds), a large-scale vocal composition inspired by the Western Isles. Suddenly my rather glib tweet of the previous day looked a bit closer to the truth - this was music that both imitated and completely transformed wader calls and songs.

There was, as I said, much more that's worthy of mention, and as always it was good to catch up with friends and colleagues (and frustrating to miss one or two others). But there was always a feeling of momentum really starting to build, and next year's event has the opportunity to develop that in a big way.

A gleaning

Over at Kumquat Poetry the other day, this rather splendid piece, Kings, appeared from Mark Goodwin. It's gleaned from my own poem Once and future kings, which appeared at Kumquat a few weeks ago.

Many thanks to Mark for taking the time to engage with my own work, and to Kumquat for showing such interest too.

Sein und Werden

The autumn edition of Sein und Werden is out now. Titled Pulp Punks, it's hosted by Cardiff novelist and fiction writer Mark Howard Jones. I have a contribution in there, a poem inspired by Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe.

The first 10 people who buy a copy (and all current subscribers) will receive a FREE chapbook - The Garden of Doubt on the Island of Shadows, by Mark Howard Jones. One issue costs just £4.50 / $8.50. One year's subscription is a measly £16 / $32.

November's Leicester Shindig!

The latest Nine Arches Press and Crystal Clear Creators Leicester Shindig! takes place at The Western, 70 Western Road, Leicester LE3 0GA a week on Monday, 19th November, at 7.30pm.

The night's guests are Jo Bell, Dragan Todorovic, Ian Parks and David Cooke, and as always there'll be open mic slots available on the night.

David Cooke won a Gregory Award in 1977 and published Brueghel’s Dancers in 1984. He then stopped writing for 20 years. A retrospective collection, In the Distance, was published in 2011 by Night Publishing. A new collection, Work Horses, has just been published by Ward Wood Publishing.

Jo Bell is a former Glastonbury Poet in Residence, director of National Poetry Day — and now the UK's Canal Laureate. A boatdweller and former archaeologist, her poems are about everything from Roman forts to sex on the towpath (between ducks). Current projects include a collaboration on a sequence with Martin Malone, charting the progress of a passionate relationship.

Dragan Todorovic is a multimedia artist and author of eight books of nonfiction, poetry and fiction. He’s worked extensively in print and electronic media, in Serbia (where he was born) and in Canada (where he lived between 1995 - 2005). Little Red Transistor Radio from Trieste is his first collection of short stories.

Ian Parks is the only poet to have poems published in The TLS and The Morning Star on the same day. His latest collection is The Exile’s House (Waterloo Press) and he is currently Writing Fellow at De Montfort University, Leicester.

Entry is free.

Hidden Nature workshop

I'm running a poetry workshop at Attenborough Nature Reserve, just outside Nottingham, on Sunday, February 10th, 2013 - there are full details of it here on the Nottingham Writers' Studio website.

You just need to bring a notebook and pen, some binoculars (although I'll have some available to lend out), warm, dry clothing and footwear, and a lot of enthusiasm - it's for all levels of writers, and for everything from the casual TV wildlife-watcher to the hardcore rarity-chaser.

TS Eliot Prize 2012 shortlist

The shortlist for this year's TS Eliot Prize has been announced - I suspect all the usual arguments will start, and I don't intend to get involved in them until I've read more of what's on the list. Good to see Deryn Rees-Jones on there, though (I have read her book, and very good it is too), and I've been meaning to get hold of that Julia Copus collection, so this will spur me into action.

Jon Stone on cynicism

Excellent piece by Jon Stone here over at the Magma blog - I find myself agreeing with much of what he's written, although I suspect the comments thread might be a busy one.

The Marshall plan

Lovely to see that Leicester poet Roy Marshall will have a debut collection coming out with Shoestring Press next year - his Crystal Clear Creators chapbook Gopagilla is excellent (I'll be blogging about it and some of the other CCC pamphlets soon). Roy has some interesting things to say about the book and the pamphlet here.

Shoestring, run by John Lucas, is a fine little press, too, with excellent production values and, over the years, a varied line-up of poets. I've just enjoyed Gregory Woods' pamphlet Very Soon I Shall Know, from them, for example.

New Walk 5

The new issue of New Walk magazine (No.5) dropped through the door yesterday, and as usual it's an intriguing mixture of poetry, reviews, fiction, interviews and articles, featuring the likes of Alison Brackenbury, Sinead Morrisey, Alan Jenkins and Sheenagh Pugh.

I've got three poems - Magnetite, Petrichor and Greenshanks At Montijo - in there. It's lovely to be in such good company, and to be in a Leicester-based magazine.

V

I noticed on Twitter earlier today that this weekend's Independent On Sunday is running a rare full interview with Tony Harrison, marking 25 years since its sister paper The Independent published his poem V. in full.

I can remember the furore that surrounded the poem at the time, with Tory MPs queuing up to condemn it and the plans to screen a film version of it on Channel 4. The reason was the 'obscene language' used, with the protestors predictably missing the point of the poem (if they'd read it in the first place, that is). One MP, Gerald Howarth, said Harrison was "probably another bolshie poet wishing to impose his frustrations on the rest of us", to which Harrison's retort was that Howarth was "probably another idiot MP wishing to impose his intellectual limitations on the rest of us". 

Anyway, I'm not a huge Harrison fan, but the stir that this poem caused helped kindle my interest in poetry at the time, so I'll look forward to reading the interview.

New at Kumquat

I have a new poem, Once and future kings, published today over at the splendid Kumquat Poetry. As I've mentioned before, there's new work being posted there every day, so keep an eye on it, and have a good trawl back through the archives, too.

Robert Minhinnick

I like the look of this - Robert Minhinnick's a poet (and prose writer, for that matter) who's never less than interesting, and frequently much, much more. Add to that the fact that he has written a lot about a part of South Wales I know well, and it'll be a must for me.

The other Hughes

I spent Friday, Saturday and Sunday in Mid Wales, for work, although of course birdwatching in bright sunshine and gorgeous scenery isn't exactly back-breaking toil.

In between dashing around Radnorshire, I managed to pop into Hay on Wye for a browse around the many secondhand bookshops (although a couple of the better ones have disappeared since I was last there).

At the Poetry Bookshop, I picked up a copy of John Riley's Selected Poems - I've seen a couple of pieces from it blogged about recently, and really liked the sound of them, so it was a nice book to get hold of for a tenner.

Elsewhere, I bought W S Graham's Collected Poems at a knockdown price, battered old copies of the Child Ballads and Stephen Romer's Idols, and an even more battered copy of Glyn Hughes' late 60s / early 70s collection Neighbours.

Hughes is an interesting poet - several of the pieces that I've read so far seem a bit out of step with the poetry of that era, although he does call to mind Ted Hughes at times (and no, not just because of the name and the West Yorkshire settings of the poems). I'll have to get hold of some more of his work soon.

A taste of Extremadura

Poetry readings, on their own, can be strange things. It depends entirely on who’s reading, of course, but there’s always the risk that the audience will sink into a bit of a stupor after the first couple of poems.

There are ways round it. Having more than one reader can provide interesting contrasts, as can including open mic slots. As I’ve said before, that often has the interesting effect of producing themes that link disparate readers.

Another way, though, is to marry the poetry to something else entirely. Last night, at Uppingham Theatre, HappenStance poet Matthew Stewart did just that, reading from his new chapbook Tasting Notes, while allowing us to sample the wines that the poetry is concerned with (Matthew's day job is as blender and export manager for the Spanish wine co-operative Viñaoliva).

The event, run in conjunction with Bat and Bottle Wine Merchants of Oakham, drew a quite different crowd to your normal poetry reading, but you got the impression that most people went away having learned something about wine, and something about their own view of poetry. Non-poetry readers often tell you that they think of it as dry, dusty, academic and seemingly resigned to make the reader look stupid, but here it was concise, witty, and simultaneously gently mocked and quietly celebrated commercial language. Of course, one reason that works is that there's often the same feeling about wine talk - that pretentious and high-flown nonsense is being used to confuse the average buyer.

But anyway, if you'd like to sample both the wine and the poetry, have a look at these offers. They could make great Christmas presents.

Oh, and along with the wine, we got to try a couple of cheeses from Extremadura, some of the region's peerless jamon iberico de bellota, and chocolate figs. Very tasty indeed.

Ledbury Festival Competition

I'm delighted to have had a poem - Magnetite - highly commended by judge Ian Duhig in this year's Ledbury Festival Poetry Competition, especially after seeing the three outstanding winning pieces. Have a read of them and see what I mean.

Reckless country soul

As we came out of the Greystones pub in Sheffield on Monday night, my friend remarked on how close the car behind mine was parked. He was right. It was parked in my boot.

When the owner came out, she apologised and said: "I must have forgotten to put the handbrake on". That's not a good idea anywhere, really, but in Sheffield, a city where practically every road is at a 45-degree angle, it's a disaster. Her car had actually been parked on the other side of the road before rolling into mine, so I suppose she could count herself lucky that it had hit mine full-on, rather than careering down to the bottom of the hill and taking out a dozen or so vehicles, plus anyone in its path. She kept saying "It's on a hill", as if this fact had just struck her.

I tell you this not in a bid for sympathy, or as a general moan about the state of modern Britain, but as a bit of context. Because when I finally got home at around 2am, with the prospect of a day of ringing insurance companies ahead, I still couldn't keep the silly smile off my face on account of what we'd seen and heard in the pub a few hours earlier.

I can't remember exactly when I cottoned on to the distilled essence of rock 'n' roll that is Jason and the Scorchers - late 80s, I think, and certainly not when they first came to prominence earlier in that decade. And much as I've loved their records, I'd never managed to see them live, although I've caught up with frontman Jason Ringenberg's solo shows many times.

So, this 30th anniversary tour was always going to be a blast for me. I just didn't dare hope that Ringenberg and guitarist Warner Hodges, fiftysomethings both, would still manage to play with the enthusiasm and energy of a band born yesterday.

Americana, as it gets called these days, has to an extent become its own ghetto. Lots of perfectly good  but ultimately very similar records get made, and there are only two ways to escape this. One is to throw anything and everything into the creative gumbo without worrying too much about spurious notions of authenticity. The other, and this is the route JatS have taken, is to do everything with an utterly un-self-conscious conviction that blows away any doubts.

So, the musical recipe was much the same as ever. Hi-octane, hammer-down country-rock, made up of equal parts Hank Williams, Jerry Lee Lewis, Rolling Stones and punk. Ringenberg is the X-factor - dressed in the same stetson and jacket as graced the White Lies video in 1985, he's capable of injecting a knowing, even sneering tone into the lyrics, but in between songs is as affable and charming as you could wish for. He was in particularly good humour this time, because he was "back in the city named after my own hometown".

It was a mark of their confidence in their most recent album, Halcyon Days, that they were able to deliver three of their biggest punches mid-show with little fanfare or build-up. Their incendiary cover of Dylan's Absolutely Sweet Marie is still pretty peerless, I Can't Help Myself is as joyously celebratory as they come, and Broken Whisky Glass is as hilarious as ever ("here lies Jason, straaaangled by love").

Newer romps such as Mona Lee elicited an equally rapturous response, and they closed a 100-minute set with an extended version of White Lies that encapsulated everything that makers them great. Reckless country souls, indeed.

Moving and memorable

On Saturday, I went down to Warwick to see Martin Figura's one-man-show, Whistle. I've written before about the Arrowhead collection on which it's based, and I'd heard a lot of good things about it, so I was intrigued as to how, exactly, it would be performed.

Essentially, Figura keeps things simple - he's facing the audience throughout, reciting the poems and a small amount of linking material against a backdrop of photographs. These montages worked extremely well, for me - they add to the words, rather than simply illustrating exactly what's being said, and you can dip in and out of them, if you prefer (although they held the attention well). And of course, they're vital to the story, because Figura is a fine photographer himself, and his father was rarely without a camera without which to document his family's life.

The whole thing is very understated - if you're expecting anything remotely melodramatic, you're not going to get it here. The focus is as much on the social history and the small details of a post-war childhood as on the stark central fact of the piece - Figura's father's murder of the poet's mother.

But for me, that made that central fact all the more horrifying. The impact of the show was all the more jarring for the fact that everybody involved was utterly ordinary and recognisable. It also helps you understand the forgiveness that colours the closing third of the show, and ultimately makes it an uplifting experience.

Figura has a knack (unsurprising given that photographic background, of course) of suddenly bringing a particular detail or scene into very sharp focus, momentarily, before slipping back into an almost conversational tone, and that helps bring that central fact into focus too. There's humour, and a reluctance to aim for a sense of easy closure, with questions of redemption left hanging, all adding up to a moving, memorable experience.

The future at Polyolbion

Following on from what I was saying yesterday, it's nice to be able to report that there seems to have been a sudden leap in visitor numbers to this blog over the last three weeks or so. I'm not exactly sure shy, but I would like to hear from any and every regular visitor if they've got strong opinions on what they'd like to see more or less of.

Interviews have always been popular in the past, and fun to do, so I plan to get some more organised in the near future, but any other ideas are welcome.

The future at Poets on Fire

Someone recently pointed out to me that I don't plug the listings site Poets On Fire nearly enough on here, and they were quite right, so here we go - go to Poets On Fire to see what poetry events are going on in your area. NOW!

If you want your event listed there, send me details at poetsonfire@hotmail.co.uk - my usual practice is to list every event two weeks before it happens, and then again the day before. I might make that a month before, thinking about it. Jpegs of posters, etc., are always welcome, but it's always best to send text unformatted and in the body of the email, if possible. If not, in a Word document will do.

I generally manage to update the site every day, but that's not always possible, so I'm also looking for a couple of co-editors to join up and share the load a little.

That's partly because I'd like, perhaps starting in the New Year, to turn it into more than just a listings site. I'd like to see regular articles and reviews (generally of live poetry, though not exclusively so), and perhaps interviews with a featured poet every week or so. It's all up for discussion, and it might involve migrating the site away from Blogger.

So, if that appeals to you, make yourself known in the comments box below, and we can start thinking about how to move forward.

30 years and still going strong

I blogged last year about the glory days of Jason and the Scorchers, but still managed to completely miss the fact that they're playing a 30th anniversary tour this autumn. I was pretty sure they'd call in at The Musician in Leicester, and sure enough they do, next Friday, but I can't make it.

But, deep joy! They're playing in Sheffield on Monday. I can hardly wait.

Whistle, in Warwick

If you're not already going to this, I can only suggest that you put that right straight away - there are still tickets left. It's a truly unique poetry experience, based around Martin's Arrowhead collection Whistle, and is taking place as part of the Warwick Words festival.

The location's an added attraction - Warwick's a lovely medieval town, with a superb castle. They used to make kings there.