The LBJ

I've just received Issue 1 of The LBJ. The initials, as all you birders out there will know, stands for Little Brown Job (not Lyndon B Johnson), and is sometimes rather dismissively applied to all those less colourful small birds such as sparrows, many finches and buntings and, in Europe at least, most warblers.

Here, though, it also stands for Literary Bird Journal, and is subtitled Avian Life, Literary Arts. It's a handy notebook size, but the full colour picture of the Ovenbird on the cover serves notice that it isn't going to do things by halves. Alongside poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction and literary journalism, all of an ornothological bent, it also contains a number of full-colour plates.

I'll post a full review when I've had chance to read it properly, but it's a fine publication, from the Department of English at the University of Nevada, Reno, and a nice addition to the magazine world for those of us (and there are many) who like to mix our birding and literature.

It costs $9 per issue, and you can find out more about subscribing by logging on here.

Englyns

Also while in Wales, I bought a couple of books of poetry. One was Chase Twichell's Perdido, which I haven't started yet, and the other was Lynette Roberts' Collected Poems, which I've barely put down since.

Roberts is a very interesting figure. She was undoubtedly a modernist, but a highly idiosyncratic one (not surprisingly given her background, born in Argentina to Australian parents of Welsh descent), and much of her work wasn't widely available until quite recently.

She touches on one of my recurring poetic obsessions - englyns. These are a Welsh form of verse, involving very strict rules, but although I can think of quite a few poets who have had a go at them (Gillian Clarke, Richard Caddel, Robert Graves, for starters), I think they often tend to be rather anglicised versions, without adhering strictly to the cynghanned pattern. I might be doing those poets a disservice, though, and must go back to their books to check.

Anyway, I even included a (again very anglicised) version of one in my own book, and I often mess about with them, even if it's just to get me writing. They're satisfyingly compact and punchy, I think.

Ramblings

I was in South Wales at the weekend, and bought a copy of Saturday's Western Mail. There was a (mostly positive) review of Patrick Jones' book darkness is where the stars are, just out from Cinnamon, the launch of which in Cardiff, you'll remember, provoked all sorts of controversy.

Now while I haven't changed my view that Waterstones acted pretty badly in the whole affair, I can't say I'm grabbed by what I've read of the poetry. But the reviewer pointed out that in a recent online search for the top 100 Welsh heroes, Jones made it to No.32, and was top poet behind RS Thomas, Dylan Thomas and Dafydd ap Gwilym, which suggests that his poetry does engage with a wider public than usual.

So, is it a bit churlish of us as poets to complain that too few of our kind tackle real issues and attempt to get the general public interested in poetry, and then complain again when a poet does exactly that, just because the poetry isn't to our taste? No, it's perfectly reasonable, I think, but I can't help thinking Patrick Jones could teach most of us something about marketing.

On the opposite page, there's a column called The Insider by Peter Finch, chief executive of Academi, the literature promotion agency for Wales. His occupation of that role might be seen as giving the lie to the claim that the avant-garde are excluded from all positions of power in the literati, given that he has been, at times, as 'out there' as any British poet. But maybe he's just an exception - whatever, it's a fine column, looking at a number of writers who are turning out fine work in their later years. Among them are Meic Stephens and Herbert Williams. The latter's Come Out Wherever You Are, about a mass German POW breakout from Island Farm, Bridgend, has been reissued. I remember reading it as a kid at my grandparents' house, almost within sight of the abandoned camp, and my mother telling me about seeing General Von Runstedt being marched from Bridgend station to the camp when she was a child. I must get hold of the book again.

Lady Godiva & Me

Next Wednesday, December 3rd, Liam Guilar's new Nine Arches pamphlet Lady Godiva & Me is being launched with a reading at The Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, Jordan Well, Coventry, at 7pm.

You might already have seen some of the poems through the e-mail tasters Nine Arches have sent out - if not, you've missed out, because they've been excellent, going way beyond simply retelling the story of Coventry's most famous daughter. Instead, a whole cast of voices from the city are brought to life by Liam, who's Coventry-born, but now lives in Australia.

The support will come from yours truly - I'll be reading from Troy Town and some newer poems.

Two new links

Scottish poet Eleanor Livingstone has a new website here (and about time too!). There's poetry, links, and even YouTube footage of Eleanor reading, so take the time to have a browse. Eleanor's excellent HappenStance pamphlet, The Last King Of Fife, was launched the same night as mine, and I also read with her last year, and she's always good to hear. Her poems are a lot steelier than they sometimes appear at first glance, too - they always repay a bit of close attention.

I also came across this superb blog, Fades In Slowly, while browsing earlier. It contains all manner of things related to John Peel, so it's essential for anyone who, at this time of year, sets about compiling their own Festive 50.

Shindig! in Leicester

There's live poetry and an open mic at the launch of Issue 2 of Under The Radar magazine, at
Friends Meeting House, Queen’s Road, Leicester, at 7.30pm on Thursday, December 11th.

Readers include:
Jane Holland – editor of Horizon Review, reading from her latest collection Camper Van Blues; Matt Nunn – Birmingham’s finest poetic export, reading from his forthcoming collection, Sounds in the Grass; Warwickshire-based poet Jane Commane reading a selection of her recent work; and yours truly, reading from Troy Town and some newer poems.

It's free, and open mic slots are available - turn up early to register for a place.

More information at www.ninearchespress.com

Quiet here, isn't it?

I haven't posted much recently, having been tied up with work and writing, and that's not about to change for a few days. Not many out of the ordinary birds about (a few White-fronted Geese, and a Marsh Harrier over at Willington Gravel Pits), although I've been happy enough watching some good-sized flocks of Redwings and Fieldfares, and a few local Stonechats.

Last night, I watched Channel 4's much touted new drama series The Devil's Whore, being a bit of a sucker for all things 1640s. I have to say, I rather liked it - they resisted the temptation to go sex it up along the lines of The Tudors, and they seemed to get the tone of the dialogue about right. Not that they went for wholly authentic 17th century language, but at least they avoided any jarringly modern-sounding passages. Promising - I'll be interested to see how it develops.

Free speech?

This from the Western Mail - had it been a little independent bookshop in a small town somewhere, I could understand how they might be bullied into submission, but Waterstones' main Cardiff branch? I think they're creating a pretty bad precedent here.

Overheard

I was in London at the weekend, and among other things went along to the Southbank Centre to record a reading of one of my poems, Treaty House, that appeared in Brittle Star No19. As well as the texts of magazines appearing at the Poetry Library’s Poetry Magazines site, some are to feature sound files too.

Elsewhere I bought a few books, including John Preston’s The Dig, having just popped into the British Museum and been reminded of it by the Sutton Hoo collection and the Franks Casket. It’s a novel about the excavation of Sutton Hoo, in 1939 – I’m looking forward to it.

In the little branch of Foyles nearby, I was browsing in the poetry section and couldn’t help but overhear a young woman explaining to her partner exactly who Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes were. She reached the tragic end of the story, saying “and she killed herself by putting her head in the oven”.

There was a long pause, and then the young man asked, in perfect seriousness: “Was it a gas oven?” Every head within earshot turned their way, with faces wearing expressions that were a mixture of horror and disbelief.

Magma's new look

Magma has a new website and blog, both of them worthy counterparts to what is one of my favourite UK poetry mags (it's one that I tend to buy every issue of, whereas with some I pick and choose a bit more).

You can sample some of the poetry from the new issue, and there's also a couple of interesting pieces, one of them a review of Inventory, Linda Black's Shearsman collection of prose poems, and another Hannah Salt's look at exactly what a prose poem is. Don't ask me for any answers - I'm prepared to accept that a prose poem is a prose poem because the poet says it is.

Buzz

I was away for this year's Templar Poetry Festival, at Cromford, near Matlock, but last night the 2008 Pamphlet Competition anthology, Buzz, had arrived in the post. As ever from Templar, it's very nicely produced, with a good selection of poets and poems. You can also find more details on the 2009 pamphlet competition at the Templar site.

Collected or Selected?

I've just come across a piece advertising a reading by Lee Harwood, in Hove, to mark the launch of his Selected Poems, from Shearsman. Apart from cursing the fact that Hove is halfway across the country (admittedly, living slap bang in the middle of England, that's true of an awful lot of places), it set me thinking.

Two or three years ago I bought Harwood's Collected Poems, also from Shearsman, and enjoyed it hugely. I've gone back to it again and again (in fact, it's my current bedside reading). But several poets and readers have mentioned, in the past, that they much prefer the idea of a Selected to a Collected, the latter symbolically writing an emphatic full stop to the poet's career. Of course, they're often brought out after the poet is dead, but that brings its own problems, not least the fact that they can be packed with juvenilia or poems that the writer would rather had remained consigned to obscurity.

Selecteds, on the other hand, allow the poet to weed out work that he or she would rather they weren't associated with anymore, for whatever reason, and might be thought to provide a truer picture of the poet. They're a good way to spark interest in the poet's individual volumes. The slight problem is that, inevitably, there'll be occasions when they don't include work that the reader only discovers, much later, tucked away in those individual collections. I've had that happen a few times, often with Faber and Faber Selecteds, and as I say, it's probably inevitable.

On the whole, though, my preference would usually be for Selecteds, for the reasons suggested. I wouldn't, as I say, be without that Harwood Collected, nor would I swap my gargantuan Ted Hughes Collected for a slimmer volume. So I guess it comes down to the individual poet. Some need to be read in their entirety because their poetry depends on that much wider context, others simply because you like them so much.

But anyway, I'd be interested to know what anyone else thinks...

* As regards that reading, if you're in or around Hove, this Friday, November 7th, at 6.30pm, it's £6, and is at the Old Market, Upper Market Street, Hove. Ticket price includes free glass of wine and a reduction on books purchased, and is available from City Books, 23 Western Road, Hove, tel: 01273 725 306.

Zbigniew Herbert

Following on from Rob Mackenzie's recent posts on him over at Surroundings, there was this piece on Zbigniew Herbert in Friday's Guardian. As I mentioned to Rob, I don't know nearly enough about his poetry, but I remember years ago enjoying one called The Monster Of Mr Cogito so much that I copied it out. The current resurgence of interest in him, and the literary controversy that has gone with it, has given me the nudge I needed to go and seek out more of his work.

So Here We Are 18

I've been pretty poor at posting anything just lately, although for once it's been because I've actually been getting on with some proper writing.

But anyway, here's the latest of poet and Tears In The Fence editor David Caddy's So Here We Are letters. I'll be having a careful read of it over the weekend, because he touches on a few things close to my heart. One is John Clare, of course, but another is the whole idea of the forest in this country, bound up as it is with the Norman Conquest, Robin Hood, and so on. Over several years, I've been piecing together a sequence of poems about Leicestershire-based Hood inspiration Roger Godberd, and this might give me a bit of new impetus to get on with it and finish it.

He also touches on enclosures - although he's talking about events that took place in the 19th century, it was something that had been going on since at least the end of the 16th century, and was the main cause of another of my historical hobby-horses, the Midlands Revolt of 1607. So, read and enjoy, and expect a flood of historical poems from me some time around 2012.

Vote now!

If you've ever looked at the results of a poetry competition and thought "that's all wrong", then here's your chance to influence the outcome of one. The shortlisted poems in this year's Times Literary Supplement Poetry Competition are here, and you can vote for your favourite. I've had a quick scan through, and already have an idea which one I favour, but I'll read them all a few more times before I make a decision. Enjoy!

Back in Blighty

I’ve just come back from a week in the Azores, where I went to write a couple of articles – one about the archipelago as a birding location generally, and the other about the Priolo Life project, which has been fighting to save the Priolo, or Azores Bullfinch, from extinction.

After a brief stopover on Sao Miguel, it was off to Corvo, the smallest and most westerly of the islands, seven square miles of extinct volcano with just enough flat land for a runway and a village. Like the rest of the Azores, it’s covered with lush vegetation, with lots of small cow pastures between thickly wooded valleys and ravines.



In between some torrential rain, we found a Red-eyed Vireo high up on the mountain, but things really took off just after a large container ship had passed the island.

First, Belgian birder David Monticelli found a Common Yellowthroat in a patch of scrubby bushes close to the village. He couldn’t find any of us to tell us until breakfast the next day, so we headed back to the same spot at first light praying it hadn’t disappeared.

It hadn’t. We thought we heard it call once or twice, and then I found it flitting around a patch of maize in the company of some Blackcaps. Later, David found another (or more likely, his original). As we were waiting, though, he also spotted a chunky, strongly marked passerine, and we both got great views of a Rose-breasted Grosbeak.


It’s well-known that a lot of rare transatlantic vagrants hitch a ride part of the way, and here it was in practice. Unfortunately, I had to fly back to the main island, Sao Miguel, at this point, but the others have since found a variety of North American birds of Corvo.

After a slightly hair-raising night drive along the fog-bound, rain-lashed coast road from Ponta Delgado to Nordeste, I met up with the Priolo Life people. The idea was to get stuck in as a volunteer, to give our readers an idea of how to combine a birding holiday with a bit of practical conservation. So, I spent my time high up in the mountains, clambering up and down steep, muddy trails and getting ripped to shreds by brambles while surveying the native plants the Priolo needs if it’s to survive. And of course, we saw plenty of the birds themselves. They’re not, you’d have to say, as colourful or striking as the European Bullfinch, but they’re a fine sight all the same, and thanks to the project, their future looks a little brighter.

Finally, driving back to Ponta Delgado airport, I stopped on a headland along the coast to stretch my legs and tried to tune into BBC Radio 4, to get the India vs Australia cricket score. Instead, I got Start The Week, and by a strange chance the first voice I heard was of poet Jane Holland!



The pictures show (from top): Corvo; Belgian birder David Monticelli trying to photograph the Common Yellowthroat on Corvo; the north coast of Sao Miguel; and Nordeste.

You Are Here - Simon Turner

You Are Here - Simon Turner

(Heaventree Press, 2007) £7.99

Birmingham gets a raw deal, if you ask me. For far too long, the mere name of the city has been a byword for industrial decline and an urban landscape embodying the worst of post-war town planning and architecture.

Me, though, I’ve always liked the place. A lot. The train journey from Leicester to Brum always seemed to involve mile after mile of fragmented, semi-neglected suburbia, and yet it was always exciting. And then the centre, whatever the lack of fit between its Victorian glories and its more recent experiments, was never less than vibrantly alive, yet never managed to attain the sort of glamour or cool that Manchester, for example, has managed.

In the poetry world, though, it does get the celebration it deserves. That’s been down to Roy Fisher, most notably, and in the notes to this remarkably assured first collection, Simon Turner says: “I avoided reading Roy Fisher for a long time, worried that, as a fellow Midlands-based writer, he would come to dominate my style once I had. I was right.”

He’s being far too modest, because while Turner’s poetry does at times bear the trace of Fisher’s relaxed, inclusive modernism, he’s far too good a writer not to let his own voice come through loud and clear.

This is a book in four sections, some relatively lyrical, others dominated by linguistic experimentation, but that fragmented landscape I talked about is a constant presence throughout. It’s there in the nature poems, such as Storm Journal, which choose less obvious subjects than most poets would, and which combine acute observation with a subtle, suggestive language. And importantly, the poet himself is never foregrounded in these works, even when he’s aware of his presence within the scene. The excellent Swifts even references this, being split into the two sections what I say and what they say which wittily rewrite each other from different viewpoints, while in Geographies he even asks: “Why write? These things / are so much themselves.” They are, but his poetry allows for that fact rather than diminishing it.

Turner isn’t afraid to return to the same territory again and again, sometimes within individual poems, but it never gets repetitive because he’s always aware that language has the power to freshen it up each time. The result is a bit like one of those train journeys I mentioned earlier – at times you find yourself moving into a new part of town that looks uncannily similar to where you came from; at others, the passing of time has wrought subtle changes. And so the city is simultaneously ugly and beautiful.

I’ll be honest. A few of the most experimental pieces left me cold, but it’s a good-sized collection and none the worse for taking the opportunity to try things out, take risks. And one of the most impressive features is the way that Turner doesn’t play with language merely for its own sake. Instead, it’s a constant part of the landscape too – crows scry their new alphabet “on the scorched parchment sky”; “the town’s frayed outskirts” become the “furthest edges of speech”; high rise blocks are “a stuttered plea” that the “crazed sky ponders and declines”.

Oh, and one last thing. I’d only come across one Heaventree publication before, Andy Brown’s pamphlet The Trust Territory, but this book confirms the good physical impression made by that. It’s a really nicely put together paperback, with a splendid cover by David Dewis. I know I’ve said it before, but that matters to me.

Of course, it would matter too if the contents didn’t live up to the package, but there’s no problem on that count. Simon Turner is here, to stay I hope.

Why chapbooks matter

Go to Alan Baker's blog, Litterbug, and scroll down to the post for September 21st (there are no titles). He makes what is, I think, a very good point, and one that I touched on earlier in the year - the fact that poetry collections seem to be getting longer, sometimes at the expense of quality, rather in the same way that the advent of the CD encouraged bands to fill every album with 70 minutes worth of music, regardless of whether it was worth recording in the first place.

Of course, it's not always true, and there are plenty of collections of which I'm glad that the poet kept going well beyond the old 64-page mark. But Alan's point still stands, I think. In such times, chapbooks can offer the perfect format for a writer who wants to get work out there in between increasingly chunky full collections.

So Here We Are 17

More good stuff over at David Caddy's blog - here's the latest of his So Here We Are letters.

Weekend reading

I enjoyed this review of Michael Symmons Roberts' new book, The Half-healed, in The Guardian on Saturday. Roberts is a poet I've not really read enough of, but I really ought to catch up some time soon.

I spent most of the weekend reading in the ridiculously summery weather (someone on the radio this morning said that we'd had the sort of day yesterday "that poets mean when they talk about autumn"), and writing one or two reviews. I even attempted to write some poetry.

Not exactly breaking news, but...

Still a bit bleary-eyed after getting back from London in the middle of the night, having been to the Forward Prize announcement. Not the best of journeys, but even the vagaries of Britain’s railway system couldn’t ruin a really enjoyable day.

You may well have seen by now that Mick Imlah took the Best Collection Prize for The Lost Leader – I’ve only skimmed it so far, but will be taking it with me when I’m away next week for a proper read. I don’t think there’ll be too much argument – from what I’ve read so far, it looks like a worthy winner. It’s terrible to read of his illness, though.

Best First Collection went to Kathryn Simmonds, for her Sunday At The Skin Launderette. That might have qualified as something of a surprise, because I’d guess that most people’s money was on Frances Leviston, but I think this would have been the closest category of all. Anyway, Kathryn’s book was my favourite of those I’ve read, so I was pleased by her win.

Best Individual Poem was won by Don Paterson’s Love Poem For Natalie ‘Tusja’ Beridze. I think Roddy Lumsden hit the nail on the head by describing it as a ‘Marmite poem’ – most readers will either love it or hate it. I’m not a big fan myself, and would like to have seen Tim Turnbull’s Ode On A Grayson Perry Urn win, but never mind.

Anyway, it was good to finally meet Roddy in person, and to chat with some of the judges, publishers and other poets. Congratulations to all the winners and shortlisted poets.

New Sphinx

I got home late last night to find the new issue of Sphinx waiting for me. I made the mistake of dipping into it for what was supposed to be five minutes, and ended up reading Rob Mackenzie’s excellent piece on poetry blogging, a fine interview with poet, artist and Stride Magazine editor Rupert Loydell, and Tia Ballantine’s perceptive (and glowing) review of James Wood’s Inextinguishable. Who needs sleep?

There's plenty more still to read, and of course the website contains a wealth of reviews that complement the printed version. Sphinx editor Helena Nelson mentions that it is likely to go totally online in the near future. It’s a shame in some respects, but on the other hand it will give it the opportunity to maintain its high standards without running up huge bills. Stride itself serves as a good example of just how well an independent online mag can work.

Whatever the format, Sphinx remains an essential read for anyone interested in the poetry pamphlet world. Buy one now.

At last!

Well, who'd have thought it? Only a few weeks ago I was bemoaning the lack of honour accorded to this blog's inspiration, Polyolbion poet Michael Drayton, in his home town of Polesworth, and then this turns up in today's Coventry Evening Telegraph. They've wisely decided against spending any of the cash on a one-off recital of his masterwork, but this will do just fine.

It's that time of year again

A few of the Sunday broadsheets featured poetry yesterday, as always happens the weekend before National Poetry Day. Some talked about the launch of a new initiative to encourage children to learn poetry by heart, while one took a more general approach of asking various celebs and literary luminaries what their favourite poem was.

Of course, that set me thinking what an impossible task it is trying to pick out a single poem (I’d managed to reduce my shortlist to 28 by late last night), but it was also interesting that a lot of the responses were in favour of pre-20th century poetry. Tennyson featured more than once, for example. I’m not sure that says anything significant, other than the fact that in the normal course of things, most people aren’t exposed to a huge amount of contemporary poetry.

Against the odds, the one that particularly caught my eye was Jason Donovan’s choice, which was one of the poems of Harry 'Breaker' Morant, which he had learnt as a kid when his dad was playing Morant in the play of the same name. If my memory serves me correctly, Donovan Senior went on to play an Australian general in the film version, where Edward Woodward took the lead. I’ve no idea about Morant’s merits as a ‘bush poet’, but it’s a great film, and it’s high time it was repeated again (it usually turns up on BBC2 at about 12.15 on a Sunday night).

Day jobs

I came across this piece on the Poetry Society’s website the other day. It would have been nice to see a bit more on each person, maybe, and a wider cross-section of poets generally, but it’s interesting stuff.

There are certainly occasions when I curse the fact that a day job leaves far too little time for writing poetry (not least at the moment), but on the whole I think my attitude probably comes closest to Dennis O’Driscoll’s. Which is to say, however much I think I like the idea of having nothing to do all day except write, in reality I know it would involve a rapid descent into friendless, Crunchy Nut Cornflake addiction in front of repeats of Minder.

On reflection, I think having a day job forces me to be a bit more disciplined in my poetry writing, to make full use of my spare time. Plus, luckily, parts of my job are quite conducive to poetry – long drives, lots of yomping around looking for birds, and easy access to a computer, for example. So what do you think?