The Salt Companion to John James

Not having studied English Literature beyond A Level, I'm not necessarily the best person to be assessing a book of critical essays on a poet who, despite frequently being as accessible as any mainstreamer, remains firmly in the 'unjustly neglected' stable.

Except, maybe I am. Having read two of these volumes (I bought the one on Lee Harwood last year too), it strikes me that they fill a gap in the market not only as far as giving an in-depth analysis of certain poets is concerned, but also in allowing late starters in poetry to get to grips with the whole business of critical appreciation. There's nothing especially difficult about James, and although the essays here lack nothing in academic rigour, there's nothing difficult about them, either.

Edited by Simon Perril, this book provides pretty much every perspective you might need on the Cardiff-born, Cambridge-based James, placing him in several intriguing contexts.

Perril's own pieces, a pithy introduction and an essay on the 'politics of indolence' that locates James simultaneously within the Welsh praise tradition, English Romanticism, and the playfulness of the New York School, are among the most enjoyable reads here. Garry Kelly does a fine job in relating James' work to the worlds of late 70s reggae and punk, too, while John Wilkinson's essays are all excellent.

On the down side, I did struggle a bit with Romana Huk's piece, finding it rather repetitive, although given that one of its subjects was repetition in James' poetry, perhaps that was part of the point that I was missing.

But, that doesn't really matter. It isn't a book you're going to read through in one sitting - you'll want to dip in and out as and when the fancy takes you, probably as you visit or revisit the poetry itself. And in that respect, it does its job admirably. If you already, as I did, loved the poetry of John James, you'll find that it sends you back to the work with renewed enthusiasm. If you're a relative newcomer to it, you'll probably want to get hold of everything the bloke's ever written.

As it happens, Salt have just the thing for that, too. Buy the Collected Poems too, and you've got as good a two-volume summary of a poetry career packed with invention, exuberance and intellectual curiosity as you could ever wish for.

S.O.S.

As you may have seen elsewhere, poetry publisher Salt is experiencing one or two difficulties at the moment, but nothing that can't be solved with a bit of good old-fashioned retail therapy. You go out and buy a Salt book, you read it, you feel entertained/educated/better etc, and Salt is able to go on doing what it does so well.

It's not just poetry, either, now I come to think of it. There's fiction, including short stories, and the likes of The Salt Companion To John James, which I'm currently about halfway through. I'll be posting a full review in due course, but in the meantime I'll just say that it's a great way of getting more from the poetry of one of the UK's most underrated writers.

You might also want to pick up James' Collected Poems, while other volumes in the Companion series look at the likes of Lee Harwood. Serious about poetry, but seriously readable too.

Salt Reading, De Montfort University

It’s been a busy week at work, so I haven’t been able to get to as many of the events at the Cultural eXchange Festival at De Montfort University in Leicester as I’d have liked to.

Last night, though I did go to the Salt reading, featuring John James, Tom Raworth and Simon Perril. It was very well attended, and fully lived up to expectations.

John James read first, and although right at the outset he announced that he wouldn’t be reading The Conversation, a particular favourite of mine, he didn’t disappoint. He reads well, in a slow, measured voice which contains just a hint of his Cardiff origins. I particularly liked Romsey and Romsey, Take Two (it was reading the second of these in Tears In The Fence last summer that got me interested in him and made me go out and buy his Collected Poems), both of which will presumably appear in his next volume, but he’s a difficult poet to pin down. Associated, as he is, with the avant-garde, and especially the so-called Cambridge School, you might expect difficulty or obscurity, but you’d be wrong. He looks back to the New York School, for sure, but beyond that too to the Romantics, and there are times when popular song seems as strong an influence on him as poetry. Above all, his work has a positive and highly sensuous feel to it, something which gives him a highly individual flavour.

I’ve heard Tom Raworth read before, although a long time ago, and I’d forgotten just how much fun he is. Deadly serious, too (quite literally so, given the charged subject matter of some of the poems he read), but very, very entertaining. If I seem to be damning him with faint praise by writing so little about him here, it’s just that I’m not familiar enough with his work on the page to have many meaningful reference points, but I’ll have to put that right. The sheer energy of his poetry made me feel a little breathless - God only knows what it's like for him!

Finally, we had Simon Perril, who teaches at DMU. I’ll admit my heart sank a little when he gave a lengthy introduction to his reading from his new book, Nitrate (long introductions always put me off) but the poetry was well worth the wait. Presented alongside Simon’s own collages, perfectly paced and beautifully read, it worked very well. Again, he comes across as complex but never difficult, the sort of poet you can imagine building a real following. I liked the reading so much that I bought the book, which is written around the subject of early film, and enjoyed seeing some of the pieces on the page during a quick flick-through later.

So, hats off to DMU for putting together such a good line-up – hats off to DMU students for turning out in such good numbers.

This is just to say...

...that occasionally you read a poem that really blows you away. I've been enjoying John James' Collected Poems a great deal in general, and I've been reading it in chronological order, but earlier I skipped ahead a little and, picking up again at random, read a poem called The Conversation. Amazing, exhilirating, and genuinely uplifting. Read it, even if you read nothing else by James (although you really should!)