The Fourth Ingredient

You're not going to be surprised to hear that I love libraries, and can happily spend all day in even the smallest and most scantily stocked. One of my favourites was Canton Library in Cardiff. I only used it for a few months, just after I moved to South Wales in 1996, before it was burned down, but it was a nice old building, with a good collection for a small suburban branch library.
The piece below, by my old friend Mark Howard Jones, is about another South Wales library. I don't suppose you'd see its like these days, unfortunately.


Metal, wood and paper. Those were the only ingredients. Or, at least, the only physical ingredients. The only visible ones. But there was a fourth, hidden and invisible.
Old wooden shelves lining the walls, alongside newer metal ones standing free; all holding up masses of heavy paper, bound into books.
And not even a proper library, it seemed. A leaky old drill hall, remnant of a ‘Dad’s Army’ mentality perhaps, but now pressed into service as a town lending library. The public purse could only stretch so far, after all.
Through the narrow double doors and up a short flight of steps, turn right and into the carpeted quiet of the large room. This is where the books lived.
No windows, just skylights, usually running with rain. To the left of the door was the issue desk and, through an opening behind that, the children’s library. I don’t remember staying there long, though, before pushing out into the deeper waters of the main collection.
And when you slid a book off the shelves and opened it, the fourth ingredient, the missing something, spilled out all over you – ideas.
Waiting for me there were the terrors and treasures of Ray Bradbury, the strange and daunting words of James Joyce, Picasso’s sickly-looking blue acrobats staring down from the wall above the shelves.
I was dumbfounded and appalled by Bob Dylan’s novel ‘Tarantula’ but delighted to the point of incoherence by BS Johnson’s collection of short pieces ‘Aren’t You Rather Young To Be Writing Your Memoirs?’
The intellectual conundrums of Jorge Luis Borges’ ‘The Aleph’ defeated me several times over the years, so much so that I grew wary of the Argentinian librarian’s twists and turns, only coming to love his work long after my library card had expired.
More earthly joys were to be found in the sophisticated and challenging adult fairytales of Angela Carter in her collections ‘Fireworks’ and ‘The Bloody Chamber’, while Michael Moorcock’s cool and multi-faceted creation Jerry Cornelius, along with his many friends and enemies, pointed towards dangerous delights to come.
There were hints of sexuality outside ‘the norm’, discovered, it seemed, in Alexandria by the likes of Constantine Cavafy and illustrated in 1960s Technicolor by some Yorkshireman called David Hockney. Though I was fairly sure this exotic brand of love wasn't for me.
A Frenchman called Baudelaire, long dead, did strange and enticing things with language (or perhaps it was all the fault of his translator). And a book of Concrete Poetry (strangely light for all that) introduced me to words straining to be pictures as well. Or vice versa.
American poets like Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath and Wallace Stevens seemed to hold a glamorous allure, beckoning from their ranks along the back wall of the room. Poetry crammed with ideas by the likes of Octavio Paz jostled for position with more popular verse from Rod McKuen, while, closer to home, the work of Idris Davies, Peter Finch and Herbert Williams proved there was poetic life right here in Wales.
In the non-fiction section, Wilfred Mellers’ book ‘The Twilight Of The Gods’ taught me that there was more to The Beatles’ music than met the ear, while a huge book of photographs by Lord Snowdon called ‘Private View’ introduced me through its richly-coloured pages to many of the important British painters of the 1960s.
And there were so many more. Their titles have slipped beyond the reach of my memory now, but each of them was a stone laid in the path that led me beyond the narrow confines of school, street and home.
This extraordinary literary phantasmagoria, now long disappeared, was the work of just one man, the branch librarian. Fur-hatted like a Soviet commissar against the Valleys winter and striding out of his small corner office in a big overcoat, his beard and eyebrows set firm. An unsettling figure to a small boy.
Only years later did it become clear why he had chosen the books I had the pleasure to read. Despite what he did to earn his daily bread, he wasn’t REALLY a librarian at all; he was a poet in disguise.
Swansea-born, Oxford-educated and a former Royal Navy seaman, Harri Webb took up his job at Mountain Ash in 1964, virtually creating the library service from scratch.
His own poetry found a place on the shelves, of course, and I found it entertaining if too political for my then limited understanding. I’ve since met people who knew Harri Webb personally and I’ve found out about his fervent Welsh nationalism. But I prefer to remember him as the enigmatic and important keeper of the books, with his stern gaze and grey-flecked beard; if I’d met him, no doubt that character would have disappeared like mist being burned off by sunlight. But he retired in 1974, passing away in 1996, and I never did get to meet him.
That library has gone now and a new one has taken its place, across the bridge and down the main road a little way. I don’t live in Mountain Ash any more, so I’ve never visited it, but I know without looking that the books there wouldn’t be half as enticing or mysterious as the ones in the old drill hall. It’s still here in my head, of course, and echoes of it remain on my own shelves.
No doubt there were pennies to be pinched in the relatively halcyon days of the 1960s and 70s, just as there are today, but Harri Webb did it in an elegant, learned way and never bowed to the pressure of the merely popular.
One autumn day, I picked out a book written by a man with a glamorous name. Wolfe. Thomas Wolfe. A strong, dangerous name if ever I’d heard one. This had to be a good book; nobody with a name like that could write a bad book, surely? Flipping open the cover to taste the first paragraphs, I passed the date stamps and couldn’t help but notice when it had last been borrowed. Over five years ago. Imagine that, the poor unloved thing.
My teenaged mind thought that maybe this wasn’t such a good book after all. But then, I reminded myself, so many of the others that had sat largely ignored on the shelves had proved to be crammed with jewels.
Maybe ‘You Can’t Go Home Again’ would similarly introduce me to ideas I wasn’t quite ready for, dictionary-hard words previously unread and novel notions that would stretch my thoughts beyond the everyday.
I clapped the cover shut, making more noise than I’d bargained for, and headed for the issue desk, hoping to negotiate the formidable library assistants without any problem and sneak my latest find out to the windy, unworthy street beyond the narrow double doors.

Mark Howard Jones is a prose writer who lives in Cardiff. His latest novella 'The Garden of Doubt on the Island of Shadows' is available from Manchester's ISMs Press at www.kissthewitch.co.uk

What a Carve-up?

I came across this fascinating New York Times article the other day. It raises some important questions, I think, about the degree of influence an editor has over a writer's work. If Carver really was desperately unhappy about planned changes, should his editor have given way? After all, the edited versions are what made Carver's reputation. Is the issue, in fact, that editors get too little credit, when we're talking about live writers, at least (they generally get a better deal when they've rounded up the works of dead writers)? In the music world, for example, producers are often recognised for the large amount of creative input they have, so why should it be different in the world of literature?
I'd have to say that my own very limited experience of editors, with my chapbook and with magazines, has been very good. It's good to be forced to justify (to yourself as much as to anyone else) just why a certain line or image needs to stay in place, and of course there's always the couldn't-see-it-for-looking-at-it type of howler or bum note.

Poetry launch

I got an invitation the other day to a launch reading being held at The Guildhall, Leicester, next Monday at 7.30pm. The books in question are Torso, by Robert Hamberger, and Catch, by Katie Daniels, both published by Redbeck, while Robert will also be reading from his Flarestack sequence Heading North, which looks at John Clare's 1841 escape from High Beach lunatic asylum.
I wouldn't have thought it's by invitation only, so if you're interested in finding out more, you can email kfeatherstone@leics.gov.uk
Say hello if you're there!

Word association

The details of your own blog at statcounter.com occasionally make worryingly addictive browsing. In the past, visitors to Polyolbion have tended to arrive via disappointingly mundane searches, but a look at this week's Key Words Analysis reveals that things have changed somewhat.
"words to mason williams’ them poems" just about makes sense, but "ventriloquism goldfinch"? "poem describing george best?"? And lastly, "who was"? God only knows how many results they got for a search like that.

FIN

Martin Stannard's blog Exultations and Difficulties contains news of the launch of a new Nottingham-based poetry magazine, FIN. I'd give it a plug in the interests of local solidarity anyway, but the contributors mentioned look both varied and excellent, and it's a very reasonable £12 for four issues. Well worth a look.

Lean times

It is, apparently, going to be a tough winter over here for small birds. The berry, beechmast, seed and acorn crop has been poor both here and in Scandinavia (bad years usually follow particularly good years), so expect your garden to fill up with birds desperate to find your feeders overflowing. I've already seen loads of Jays on the move, and some big flocks of Goldfinches, and my parents saw a Bullfinch in their garden the other day for the first time in about 25 years. So do what you can - even if you don't put actual feeders out, the odd bit of soft fruit can make a big difference.

A Rattling good read

The Fall 2007 edition of excellent online mag Rattle is available here (you can download it as a PDF). I've only had the chance to have a quick scan through it so far, but it looks good.

The name game

Some poetry competitions, especially pamphlet comps such as The Poetry Business's, require you to put a pen name on your work, in the interests of anonymity.
I'll be honest - it's fun, thinking of a whole new name for yourself. In the past, I've tended to use names out of the old family Bible, just because most sound appropriately ordinary, although I've yet to use James James, a name that crops up more than once in my family tree. I suspect most judges would be very wary of any wacky, or overly eye-catching names, so that also rules out using the splendid Green Willoughby (my dad's grandfather, or great-grandfather, I can't quite remember). Or Skeffington Liquorish, a real name a friend came across on a tombstone in Leicester (it sounds like it belongs in a Dickens novel).
What about you? Names chosen at random from a phonebook? Family names? Fictional characters? I'd be delighted to know which...

So Here We Are 6

You can click here to listen to the latest in David Caddy's series of Poetic Letters From England. As always, it's good stuff.
If you'd prefer, you can read the text here. You'll notice our man Michael Drayton pops up in there this month, along with the real Polyolbion. Three cheers for Warwickshire's second finest!

Foiled again

I didn't get to that reading last night - let's just say that circumstances conspired against me. Still, I'm sure there'll be others soon. I did start that Karen Solie collection, though - Short Haul Engine - and it's well up to expectations.

Big day

Today is National Poetry Day. In the UK, pretty much every day and week is designated as National Something Day/Week, my favourite being National Chip Week, because, obviously, we don’t eat anything like enough chips in this country. A day devoted to poetry, on the other hand, seems like a good idea.
I’m going to that Autumn Leafe reading as my poetry fix, so I’ll report back on that tomorrow. Meanwhile, there’s some news here on the Forward Prize announcement. Can’t say I’m over the moon about Sean O’Brien’s win, really, but I won’t argue with Daljit Nagra’s success at all. Most of the first collections, from what I’ve seen of them, would have been very worthy winners.
As I was going through some books last night I realised that my copy of the Anglo-Saxon poem The Battle Of Maldon was translated and annotated by Bill Griffiths, who died recently. It’s a superb edition, with an original transcript, a literal translation, an alliterative verse translation, and a good introduction and bibliography. I wasn’t grabbed by his translation of the famous “Thought must be the harder, heart the keener, Spirit shall be more, as our might lessens” passage, mainly because he uses “resources” rather than “might”, which sounds too modern, but that’s quibbling because his version is otherwise excellent. The intro, too, makes some interesting points about why Byrhtnoth might have allowed the Vikings across the causeway. Most commentators consider that the poem shows him being undone by “ofermod” – an excess of spirit, or pride. But Griffiths suggests he was being pragmatic – if he refused passage, the raiders could simply sail away and cause havoc elsewhere. By meeting them in battle, he stood a chance of destroying them, and knew that even if he didn’t, he would inflict enough damage on them to make further raiding difficult. Added to that, he may have been trying to set an example to his country and king, the unfortunate Aethelred Unraed (the Unready, but here meaning “bad counsel”, punning on his name, which means “good counsel”).
A few weeks back, I saw this review at Stride, and sent for the book. It's consistently superb throughout, with at least some absolutely stunning poems, such as the lovely Untitled. I was so taken with it I ordered Solie's first collection, Short Haul Engine, and it arrived today, so I'm looking forward to getting stuck into that. Incidentally, they're both really nicely produced books, in a physical sense, I mean. It doesn't matter THAT much, but it's a nice little bonus, considering they're actually a bit cheaper than many a UK collection.
Right, enough. We’re being taken out to lunch at work today, so I’m off to the pub. Chips for me, I think.

What's inn a name?

Browsing through the splendid Infowisps the other day, I came across a piece about pub names. They always fascinate me, and it reminded me of this equally excellent website -
The Public Houses Of Whitwick.
Now before you get the impression that the village in which I live is hopelessly given over to the demon drink, I should point out that neighbouring Coalville, now by far the bigger settlement of the two, has relatively few pubs for a town of its size. The many housing estates and residential streets on the Leicester side of town have next to nothing, in fact, so we in Whitwick are merely balancing things out. And last week I noticed that North Street Working Men's Club (shown on the website as the Liberal Club), has closed down, so there's one less drinking establishment (although the site fails to mention that you can also get a drink in the leisure centre - you do your workout, you replace the fluid, right?).
I've always been baffled as to where one of Whitwick's pubs, The Man Within Compass, gets its name, although locally it's anyway known as The Rag And Mop. Does anyone have any idea about either? One suggestion is that both have a Masonic connection, but I've never seen any proof of that.
My house, incidentally, is about 100 yards from The Black Horse, and had they photographed it from a slightly wider angle, it might have got in there. It's a nice little pub, although I usually prefer the short walk to the equally pleasant Hare and Hounds (or Mary's House, as it gets called). Confusing, isn't it?

Rumi

I came across this on the BBC News website earlier. I've not read that much by Rumi, just a few poems in anthologies, really, but it's not difficult to find his work in bookshops here. I should read more, soon.
Without being flippant, the idea of working all summer so that you can spend the winter inside, eating and singing poems, is an appealing one. Except for the working all summer bit.

Year of the Phalarope

2007 has been the Year of the Phalarope for me. I'd never seen any species of these dainty, quirky little waders before May, when a fantastic Wilson's Phalarope in full breeding plumage showed up on the Nene Washes just outside Peterborough. More details, including links to pics, are here and here.
On Saturday, I went to Blithfield Reservoir, near Abbots Bromley, Staffs, to see the first-winter Grey Phalarope that has been hanging around there. I know - that's the behaviour of a twitcher, but it's somewhere I go anyway now and then, and it was a lovely day and I fancied a long walk, so I thought why not? It was easy to find, bustling its way along the shoreline in the company of a juvenile Knot (much underrated birds, in my opinion) and incredibly confiding. I've not yet figured out my new camera sufficiently to be able to digiscope it, although you could get so close you could take record shots with just the camera zoom.
Sometimes it's a bit worrying when a bird lets you get that close, but this pair looked absolutely fighting fit, and their lack of fear is probably down to never having seen humans before up on their high Arctic breeding grounds.
I was able to watch them for about an hour, as they fed non-stop. The Phalarope occasionally popped into the water for a quick swim, and on one occasion had a bit of a go at the Knot, but otherwise it was all sweetness and light, both birds making the most of a fine-weather stopover on their long migration south.

Prizes, poems and fat cats

I’ve just seen the office copy of BBC Wildlife Magazine, which contains the winning entries in the 2007 Poet of the Year competition. I’m absolutely delighted that my own poem, Hares In December, came 2nd in the adult section. I wrote it for NaPoWriMo in April, although I made the notes for it much earlier, after walking round Rockingham Forest looking for Red Kites one December day (we found them, plus loads of Hares).
My prize, a huge package of bird food, plus feeders and a nestbox, arrived in the post the other day. The slight problem is that I don’t really have anywhere suitable to put any of it, because I have a pretty small garden without trees or high fences, and in addition the main part of the garden is out of sight of the windows (I live on a terrace, and there’s a communal path between the houses and the gardens). The one or two places that would accommodate them would be far too open to cats.
So, I thought I’d pass the prize on to my parents. They have a bigger (although far from huge), much more varied garden, and although it’s in a pretty built-up, suburban location, over the years they’ve managed to attract a fair amount of wildlife. As well as all the more common garden bird species – Robin, Blackbird (loads of them), Dunnock, Wren, Song Thrush, Starling, House Sparrow, Blue Tit, Great Tit, Long-tailed Tit, Coal Tit, Greenfinch, Chaffinch, Collared Dove and Woodpigeon – there’s plenty of corvids, including Magpies, a large family of Carrion Crows, occasional Jackdaws, and, a couple of summers ago, a Jay who insisted on filling every available space (including my mum’s peg bag) with acorns, and on trying to collect people’s hair as nesting material. There have been occasional Green and Great Spotted Woodpeckers, a regular pair of Sparrowhawks, a Kestrel, and in winter, visiting Yellowhammers, Goldcrests, Reed Buntings, Pied Wagtails, Goldfinches and Bullfinches. In the summer, Chiffchaffs and Willow Warblers are sometimes around, plus plenty of Swifts and House Martins overhead. A Buzzard flies over now and then, and a Pheasant once found its way there. There’s a Heron that lands in nearby gardens, but hasn’t yet made a visit. All quite impressive, given that they have one (very large and conspicuous) cat, plus a sort of timeshare on another (he flits between several owners). Oh, and next door’s cat likes to pop over for a bit of a light-hearted chase around the plant pots.
The reason why their cat (the unfortunately named Gizmo) is no deterrent to birds goes back to his early days. When he was about six months old, he went and launched himself at a group of Herring Gulls on the lawn (sadly, they never visit anymore, although there’s the occasional Black-headed). He grabbed one by the leg, and it and its mates then turned on him. He just managed to escape before he was carried away or filleted by their beaks, and has since shown little interest in birds (neither did the cats we had when I was a kid, although one was a prolific mouser), often stoically suffering close-range taunting from the Crows, Magpies and that Jay.
He doesn’t bother mousing, either. Again, when he was very young, he chased a squirrel in through the patio window, and it then ran up the curtains, along the pelmet, and back down the other side, before escaping back out of the window. He seemed to take this disappointment quite badly, and now refuses to acknowledge the existence of mammals other than cats. Foxes visit quite regularly, and I’ve seen him sit almost back to back with one, each pretending that the other isn’t there.
I’d imagine , then, that he’ll have no problem with Robins using the nestbox. Now and then, he’ll do that strange chattering thing that cats do at birds (Magpies are the only ones that seem to provoke him), but otherwise, he’s a walking refutation of the claim that cats are wiping out songbirds.

Festival time

I'm terrible at getting myself organised to go to any kind of poetry or literary festival. I'll see that it's on, and think it looks good, and promise that I'll go, then either completely forget about it or leave it too late to buy tickets.
But Liz Bassett flagged up the Derwent Poetry Festival over at Word Doctors, and I'm determined to get along there. After all, it's a lovely part of the world anyway, so I can intersperse the poetry with a bit of walking and/or birding. Just need to decide whether to go for the Saturday or Sunday, or both.
In the meantime, I'm going to go to to the Autumn Leafe reading, by Martin Stannard and CJ Allen, in Nottingham next Thursday evening. I got the details from a flyer that I don't have to hand at the moment, but from memory I'm pretty sure it's at the Broadway Cinema, starting at 7.30pm. It's organised by the always excellent Leafe Press, by the way.
UPDATE: I've just discovered the online details about that Leafe reading - here they are.

Big, bad Wolfe

I recently bought a secondhand copy of this. It's great. I vaguely remember reading about Thomas Wolfe (not the white-suited gobsh*te - that's Tom Wolfe) years ago, but why's he not better known in this country?

Bill Griffiths

Very interesting piece at Fretmarks about the death of Bill Griffiths. I can't claim to know much about him, but oddly enough his name has kept cropping up in my reading for the last month or so (mainly to do with his work translating Old English texts). I'll have to do more digging into his work.
The rest of the piece deserves to spark some discussion, too. Readings ARE strange things, I think, but I suppose their value depends very much on how they are done. I sort of agree with the writer being the last thing the listener or reader should think about, but sometimes it's hard not to.
It was a quiet weekend. Friday, before leaving work, me and my boss ventured out onto the Fens at Eldernell in search of a reported Purple Heron. We got great views of a juvenile Marsh Harrier, plus a Hobby and plenty of Kestrels hunting despite a wind that made it difficult to stand up. No heron, though. Or was there? We did watch a distant heron fly off, and remarked on its dark colouring, but didn't get excited because we'd made the elementary error of not consulting the bird guide first, and so were under the impression that Purple Herons are much smaller than our own Greys. Afterwards, checking in the book, we weren't so sure. They are smaller, but not a huge amount. We've put it down as a might-have-been.
Otherwise it was two days of reading, writing and watching India knock the Aussies out of the World 20/20. When he's batting like he is at the moment, Yuvraj Singh combines power and timing better than pretty much anyone I can think of. It's just a shame that I'm cooped up here at work while the final is on.

Don't believe the hype

I'd have to say I wasn't one of those who was bowled over by Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident Of The Dog In the Night-time when it came out a few years back. It was a perfectly enjoyable read, but a bit uninvolving, and I didn't think the central character particularly captured the psyche of an Asperger's Syndrome sufferer (from my admittedly very limited experience of them).
When Haddon's first poetry collection, The Talking Horse And The Sad Girl And The Village Under The Sea, came out in 2005, I read a few reviews of it (they were very mixed), and forgot about it.
Recently, though, I've been trying to give the credit card a rest and borrowing poetry collections from the library, rather than splashing out, and when I was there last Friday I saw Haddon's book and grabbed it. I'd have to say, it's certainly a lot better than the bad reviews it got (and than the one on Amazon - it sounds like the reviewer has some bizarre ideas on poetry in general). On the other hand, it doesn't really live up to the most positive reviews, or to the synopsis, that says:
"That Mark Haddon's first book after 'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time' was a poetry collection perhaps came as a surprise to his legions of fans; that it is a collection of such virtuosity and range did not. The gifts so admired in Haddon's prose are in strong evidence here too - the humanity of his voices, the dark humour and the uncanny ventriloquism - but Haddon is also a writer of considerable seriousness, lyric power and surreal invention, and "The Talking Horse and the Sad Girl and the Village Under the Sea" combines bittersweet love-lyrics, lucid and bold new versions of Horace, comic set-pieces, lullabies, wry postmodern shenanigans (including a note from the official board of censors on '18' certificate poetry), and an entire John Buchan novel condensed to five pages. Consolidating Haddon's reputation as one of our most powerful myth-weavers and spell-makers, 'The Talking Horse and the Sad Girl and the Village Under the Sea' also confirms him as one of the most outrageous and freewheeling imaginations at work in contemporary literature."
I presume that was taken from the blurb (I haven't got the book to hand at the moment), and it does rather overdo it, and therein lies the problem, I think. I'm sure the more outrageous claims just put reviewers backs up, and do the poet no favours. For example, "such virtuosity and range" - really? Honestly? "Surreal invention" - the surrealism is rather clumsily done, I thought, and easily the worst thing about the collection. "Uncanny ventriloquism" - no, I can't go for that (see earlier comments on the novel). And finally, "one of our most powerful myth-weavers and spell-makers" and "one of the most outrageous and freewheeling imaginations at work in contemporary literature." Oh come on! In what way outrageous? And where are these myths, exactly?
This isn't intended as an anti-Haddon diatribe. The same could apply to any number of recent poetry collections - I understand the need to market them, but surely making wildly overblown claims just turns the book-buying public off in the long run? I've enjoyed the collection on the whole, but very much despite the extravagant claims made for it.
Understatement is, we're always told, very much the order of the day in contemporary poetry. Perhaps reviewers should use a little now and then.

Beaten to the punch

A lot of my poems take an awfully long time to write. They hang around in notebooks and computer files, half-finished, sometimes barely started, waiting for that original scrap of inspiration to be hammered into shape. Sometimes, it never happens, but more often than not something gets finished, eventually.
One such piece had been sitting on my hard drive for a good two years. It didn't work as it stood, but there was something there, I thought, that might be worth persevering with. Then, a few weeks back, I came across a poem by the Irish poet Eavan Boland, which was startlingly similar in theme and structure to my unfinished poem. Hers used Atlantis in its central metaphor, mine used Lyonnesse, but the idea was the same. We'd probably arrived at the idea from very different directions, but it's hardly the most remarkable coincidence in the world.
Anyway, now I had a problem. Unsurprisingly, her poem was (i) much better; as well as being (ii) finished; and (iii) published. Probably I should just have forgotten about it, but over the weekend I pulled my poem apart, reassembled it in various different forms, and ended up with something very different from what I started with, but which I'm actually pretty happy with. It's still not as good as Eavan Boland's, of course, but I think it's now sufficiently different to survive. I might send it out somewhere eventually.
The moral? Well, there isn't one, really, except to say that sometimes being forced to consider radically changing a poem does you a huge favour.
It was a good weekend. Yesterday, I went to one of my regular birding haunts (I won't say where, because I was reminded earlier that there are people out there for whom raptors are Public Enemy No1) looking for a reported Black-necked Grebe, and with the intention of taking my first very tentative steps into the world of digiscoping (taking pictures through a telescope, using a compact camera). As I arrived, a juvenile Peregrine was overhead, and by the time I'd parked, another (an adult, this time) was perched on the tree that they always use, with its bright yellow talons very visible through the scope. I went off walking, in search of the Grebe (with no luck), and as I returned to the car, I could see what looked like a second Peregrine on the tree. I got the scope on it, and it was. A female, judging by the size. Then, as I looked harder, I realised that a third Peregrine was there, facing away from me. I looked up to give my eyes a break, and there was a juvenile powering over the water, putting the Tufted Ducks and Black-headed Gulls to flight by his mere presence. Four Peregrines - at times I think I'm in danger of getting blase about them, so easy are they to see locally, but this was something else. I did little more than mess about with the new camera, but trial and error is all part of the process.
Finally, lots of good stuff on Stride. I saw Eleanor Rees' book in Borders on Saturday, but was a bit put off by its price, so I'm with Rupert Loydell on Salt's hardback thin volumes. I'll wait for it in paperback. I also saw Luke Kennard's collection, and would have bought it. In fact, I got as far as waiting in the queue, then realised that I'd left my wallet in my other coat. I don't suppose they'd have accepted 87p and half a tube of Polos, so I sheepishly snuck it back onto the shelf, and made my exit. I'll go back for it this week.

Taking monstrous liberties

I'm indebted to The Library Princess for pointing me in the direction of
Got Medieval. As someone who has always thought that history gets REALLY interesting just about when the Romans are packing up to leave, and loses some of its lustre again when the Renaissance comes along (we're talking in relative terms here), it's essential reading.
I'm slightly alarmed to see what's in store in the forthcoming film version of Beowulf (go to the July 17 entry), not to mention disappointed in Neil Gaiman. I don't have high hopes for it, but Hollywood has mangled plenty of other classics of world literature beyond recognition, so why should this be any different?
On the other hand (you knew that was coming, didn't you?), perhaps it will spark an interest in the original in a few people, so who am I to complain? I'm not ashamed to admit that my own interest in early medieval history was kindled entirely by reading the Lord of the Rings. Especially by the Riders of Rohan, with their Anglo-Saxons-on-horseback culture.
Speaking of which, I'm sure I read an article in a Sunday paper a few years back, saying that a translation of Beowulf by Tolkien had been found. It would certainly be a must-buy, given that Tolkien's 1936 lecture on the poem, The Monsters and the Critics, completely revolutionised understanding of it. But I've heard nothing since reading the piece - did I imagine it?

Shakespeare: Who wrote what?

Every few years this sort of story comes along. I'm not sure what to make of it, really. I love a good conspiracy theory, and I can see that there are some reasons for thinking that the authorship of Shakespeare's plays was down to someone else, or several other people. I'm not sure, though, that the reasons offered here are that convincing.
Derek Jacobi's comment that he doesn't think anyone could do it all on his own seems a bit odd - surely you could, and would, say the same about any genius, in any field? That's what sets them apart, isn't it?
His later comment, where he names De Vere the likely author because his life and experiences more closely match the plays, worries me even more. After all, no one's experience can match the plays that closely - they're just too varied and multi-layered for that. It seems to me to downplay the importance of imagination, and there's a hint of snobbery too. It must have been an aristocrat, because no pleb could possibly have managed it. Hmmm. I'm not persuaded.

Workshop responses

I've just come across the responses to that WS Graham themed Guardian poetry workshop. On first reading, I think I liked Eleanor Livingstone's poem best. I'm biased, admittedly, because she's a fellow HappenStancer and we launched our chapbooks at the same reading, but I'd agree with what Matthew Sweeney says - it's a surprising poem, and that's always a good thing.

"You don't have to be an ornithologist (to draw absurd conclusions to suit your prejudices)

It’s not often I’m moved to write to a newspaper, but this particular piece of ill-informed drivel did the trick. At a time when several of the broadsheets are jumping on the ‘let’s control raptors’ bandwagon (The Times had this piece*, and The Telegraph this – there’s loads to argue with in both, but they do at least make passing reference to one or two facts), Richard Ingrams and The Independent take things to a quite spectacular level of ignorance, prejudice and downright malevolence.
Where to start? Maybe with the Red Kites flying “menacingly” over his house. Menacing who, exactly? Does he suppose they’re about to swoop down and carry off young children, or the family pets? They take little live prey as it is, most of it no bigger than a rat.
What about the growing numbers of “larger birds”? By this Ingrams seems to mean raptors, although of course there are plenty of larger birds that are no such thing. If he’s really interested – and of course he’s not – there are plenty of figures available for larger birds, and if he took the trouble to read them he’d find that a lot of them are also struggling. Notable among them is the Hen Harrier, under threat precisely because it is still persecuted by shooting interests.
Connected with that, there’s the fact that the rapid increases in the number of Buzzards in particular, plus some other species of bird of prey, is entirely down to their populations having reached such dangerously low levels not so long ago. And the reason for that? Well, myxamatosis played a part where Buzzards are concerned, but again, systematic persecution by gamekeepers was the main cause.
As for the decline of small birds being down to the increased number of raptors – bullshit. The two we’ve been talking about, Buzzards and Red Kites, take very few birds. In the case of those British raptors who do – Sparrowhawk, Goshawk, Hobby, Merlin and Peregrine – many of their preferred prey species (Blue Tit, Great Tit, Blackbird, Collared Dove, Woodpigeon, to name but a few) are thriving. Ingrams is right to note that certain small birds have declined considerably, but of course it doesn’t suit his purpose to mention that others are doing very well.
The paragraph beginning “You don’t have to be an ornithologist…” is quite staggering in its stupidity. Perhaps you don’t need to be, but a basic grasp of a few facts would be a help. He seems to think, from what he says, that Sparrowhawks do nothing but catch sparrows, when in fact they take a whole wide range of prey. But they’re a native species too (as are all the raptors we’re talking about), so those losses are factored into nature’s equations. Predators do NOT wipe out their prey species, then wonder where the next meal is coming from.
Finally, there’s his little dig at the RSPB. Where exactly did he find out about the declines in small birds? From the RSPB, of course, and the BTO, and all the other organisations genuinely concerned with conservation. Certainly not from his grouse moor-owning, old school tie chums, anyway.
Perhaps the most disturbing thing about the whole piece is what it doesn’t mention. In the whole, long, sad list of bird and animal species that have disappeared into extinction, there isn’t one that was killed off by being preyed on by another native species. If, as Ingrams suggests, raptor numbers grow too large, then populations will experience a levelling off as they find their appropriate level. In the case of Buzzards, for example, that depends on Rabbit numbers. In the case of Red Kites, largely on the availability of roadkill and other carrion. All assuming, of course, that shotgun or poison-wielding types don’t take a hand.
Because there is a common factor in that list of extinctions. Mankind. Our interference with natural habitats and lifestyles is what causes extinction, and that’s exactly what’s happening with those birds now in serious decline, including the House Sparrow and a lot of farmland species. Intensive farming, plus the disappearance of a lot of green space in urban areas (for parking, or patios) is the culprit, not Sparrowhawks or corvids or cats or any of the other reasons suggested by the head-in-the-sand brigade. Lots of farmers ARE making an effort, with and without Government and EU help, and it’s heartening that declines can be reversed relatively quickly, but only if they’re spotted and acted upon in time. And there are always those for whom greed comes first.
There’s one consolation in all this, and that’s that Ingrams’ droolings will only have been read by a tiny percentage of the population anyway, having been published in a paper that sells under 250,000 copies daily, most of them in London and the Home Counties (it's given up even pretending it knows the rest of the country exists). That’s under a quarter of the number of people who pay their RSPB subs each month.
Rant over.
* Once you know that Magnus Linklater owns a grouse moor, it rather colours your view of his objectivity.

New broom

There's a new Poetry Editor at Writers' Forum. Sarah Willans, one of the co-founders of Word Doctors (highly recommended) has taken over the role and is keen to see as many good poets as possible submitting to the magazine's monthly competition. And the real prize, of course, is exposure in a widely distributed and read magazine (it's easily available in WH Smith, for example).
When I started trying to write seriously, the mag was invaluable for giving pointers towards all sorts of magazines, competitions, workshops, courses and festivals, and under Sarah's stewardship, I'm sure the poetry workshop will be essential reading.