And some good news

Great to hear that HappenStance have been nominated in the Michael Marks Awards for Poetry Pamphlets - it's recognition of the tireless and incredibly valuable work that Helena Nelson has done over the past few years, both in publishing new poets and in boosting the profile of pamphlets generally through her magazine Sphinx. I'm proud and rather humbled to have been one of her poets, and her advice and editorial input have made a huge difference to me over several years. Fingers crossed that she wins, but whatever happens, it's a huge feather in the press's cap.

Just one book...

I've been away all week, and returned to the depressing news that Salt Publishing is going through a major financial crisis at the moment, sad when you consider what they've added to the UK (and international) poetry scene in recent years. You can read more about it here.

There is hope, though. They're still trading, for a start, so now's the time to support them (and other small presses, for that matter). Have a read of the message below from Salt supremo Chris Hamilton-Emery, and treat yourself to some summer reading. I've talked about a few Salt titles on here recently - Rob Mackenzie's The Opposite of Cabbage, Andrew Philip's The Ambulance Box, Shaindel Beers' A Brief History of Time, Sian Hughes' The Missing, and the Salt Companion To Lee Harwood - any one of them would be as good a place as any to start.

JUST ONE BOOK

1. Please buy just one book, right now. We don't mind from where, you can buy it from us or from Amazon, your local shop or megastore, online or offline. If you buy just one book now, you'll help to save Salt. Timing is absolutely everything here. We need cash now to stay afloat. If you love literature, help keep it alive. All it takes is just one book sale. Go to our online store and help us keep going.

UK and International
http://www.saltpublishing.com/shop/index.php

USA
http://www.saltpublishing.com/shop-us/index.php


2. Share this note on your Facebook and MySpace profile. Tell your friends. If we can spread the word about our cash crisis, we can hopefully find more sales and save our literary publishing. Remember it's just one book, that's all it takes to save us. Please do it now.

With my best wishes to everyone,
Chris

Review: The Opposite Of Cabbage, by Rob A Mackenzie

Salt, 2009, £12.99

I fullly intended to review this collection alongside Andrew Philip's The Ambulance Box. After all, they were published on the same day in March, and both poets came to notice the same way, with fine chapbooks from HappenStance in 2005.

Both are Edinburgh-based, too, and they’ve read and worked through their collections together, but that’s not to say that the results are notable for their similarities. Instead, one of the most enjoyable aspects of reading them one after the other was seeing how they’d arrived at very different takes on some of the same subjects. So, to do them both justice, I thought I'd post them in fairly rapid succession - expect to see a review of Philip's book later in the week.

I’ve read and enjoyed Mackenzie's pamphlet, The Clown Of Natural Sorrow, several times, read with him, and stayed in fairly close touch, and yet this book managed to surprise me again and again.

Not that there’s anything flashy, any “look at me” posturing, about the way he springs those surprises. Early in the book, the wonderfully atmospheric The Listeners starts with:

The thrill of the fair is not in the glamorous machinery
and its spin, or in the clamour of infants longing
to be heard, but in the hour when music stops
and lights blink out, when a man threads a dark path
among greyer darknesses of once-bright carousels,
and becomes, with them, a bearer of absence,
night’s counterpart, impossible to bring to focus.

It could almost be a manifesto. Mackenzie handles the “glamorous machinery” of poetry very well, in a number of technically deft pieces, and many of these pieces are highly musical, but he’s never in thrall to formal constraints. And, while he generally maintains a quietly ironic distance, observing modern life with wit and intelligence, he doesn’t bury feeling too deep. Ashbery is an acknowledged influence here, but you’d struggle to level the same accusation ­– of being all about surface glitter – at Mackenzie as sometimes gets aimed at the great New York poet.

In a poem such as the excellent Glory Box, he juxtapositions the intensely personal with the clutter, confusion and absurdity of the everyday, undercutting any danger of sentimentality while, paradoxically, heightening the emotion conveyed. There’s a back story here, and a definite trajectory for the collection as a whole, but he hits a good balance between poems that thrive in each other’s company and a rattling good read that can be dipped into just about anywhere.

Subject-wise, he’s generally interested in threading that dark path mentioned earlier, in being a “bearer of absence”, in suggesting (but never making explicit) what lies just out of reach of the light. And, as the final phrase of the stanza above suggests, his surprises usually work by subtly disorientating the reader.

Scotland, not surprisingly, figures as a subject on a number of occasions, and perhaps because the poet has spent long periods abroad (in Italy and South Korea), his view of his own country is a complex, multi-faceted one. In Scotlands, he talks about:

…each fibre waiting for
the sudden drop, for a patch of earth in which to root itself.

That suggests the position he arrives at elsewhere, that the changing face of the UK following devolution offers opportunities to create all manner of new communities, owing nothing to flag-waving or nationalism.

But that word “community” is probably a key one, because Mackenzie, a church minister, never loses sight of the threads that connect us, even when, as suggested earlier, they lie somewhere in the shadows.

Which is where we came in, really, because what is poetry about if not making connections, preferably surprising ones?

The Opposite Of Cabbage is available from Salt, here, or through Rob Mackenzie's (highly recommended) blog, Surroundings.

Highs and lows

On Wednesday, the gravel pits and reservoirs of central England seemed to be swarming with Black Terns, with the odd Little Tern thrown in for good measure. Unfortunately, commitments of a cricketing nature meant I couldn't get out to look for any of them (one consolation is that our ground is playing host to a Cuckoo this year).

Instead, I got up absurdly early yesterday morning, but was foiled again by mist and fog that made seeing anything difficult. So, on the way home from work yesterday, I tried again, first calling in at some of my regular sites, then working my way along the Trent Valley.

No luck at Trent Valley Pits, although there were huge numbers of Swallows skimming the water, and it was the same story at Aston Gravel Pits, where you have to stand on a concrete block just outside the main entrance, ignore the traffic whizzing past on the A50 just behind you, and crane your neck to see as much of the pits as you can.

Crane your neck. It's playing on my mind, you see. Because when I got to my final stop, Willington Gravel Pits, I met two birders walking down the lane. When I asked them if there was much about, one replied: "Nah, nothing much. We must have just missed the Cranes."

Missed the Cranes!!!!! What Cranes? Well, apparently two had been seen at around 5pm, but it was now 7.30 and they were seemingly long gone.

At this point, I was in two minds as to whether to go home. It had got incredibly dark, and there was a fine, misty rain falling. Cold, too. May isn't supposed to be like this. It's supposed to be all balmy evenings, sitting round with a cold beer, perhaps after watching a lot of obliging migrants dropping into your local site.

I carried on anyway. On the main reserve, there were masses of Black-headed Gulls, a few Common Terns, the usual mixture of ducks, and a sprinkling of Lapwings, Redshanks and Oystercatchers, all looking to settle down to roost for the night, and bickering over the best spots. A little flock of 10 Dunlin flew round and round, just above the water, jinking this way and that at high speed, and occasionally looking to land on one of the gravel spits. They'd come in, lower their legs in anticipation of landing, then pull out at the last moment in reaction to the agitation of the gulls. Finally, they found a quieter spot over near the Redshanks, and that was that.

I walked over to the Canal Pit, and just as I reached it, the clouds cleared slightly, the rain stopped, and the light improved significantly. You're forced to view the birds at a fair old distance, though, so it was quite a challenge picking out anything on the muddy shores, even if the hirundines were a bit more obvious over the actual water.

After about 10 minutes scanning, though, I was able to find three Black-tailed Godwits feeding enthusiastically in one little bay, and nearby was a Wood Sandpiper. Both good local ticks, especially as I've kept missing the occasional godwits that drop in from time to time.

These are one of my favourite waders - very elegant, despite the fact that their long legs and very long bill really ought to make them look a little absurd. The name, if my memory of the Readers Digest Book Of Birds (a much underrated volume) serves me correctly, comes from the Anglo-Saxon 'god wiht', meaning good thing. Meaning good thing on a plate with some veg and gravy, specifically. In fact, they were considered a delicacy until quite recently, and they're still hunted in France, despite the fact that the Western European population is under considerable pressure.

As I was getting back to the car, four Black-tailed Godwits were flying overhead, probably a different group altogether, with their white wing bars showing up well in the fading light.

Later, at home, I was having a read of The Salt Companion To Lee Harwood. One of the essays (I can't remember whose) was talking about Harwood's interest in nature, and quoted him talking about the pleasure he gets from being able to name plants, birds and so on. On the face of it, that sounds like the rage for order that is usually blamed for the British male's passion for spotting and/or collecting things. But in Harwood's poetry, what also comes through, I think, is a constant desire to reassure one's self that the world really is as various, to use Louis MacNeice's phrase, as we hope it is.

Anyway, much more on Harwood very soon. And coming this weekend, reviews of Andrew Philip's The Ambulance Box and Rob Mackenzie's The Opposite Of Cabbage.

More Troy Town feedback

I’m much indebted to Caroline Gill over at Caroline At Coastcard for these very kind and perceptive remarks about Troy Town. It’s always nice to get positive feedback, to feel that your poems have hit the spot, so I was delighted to read it.

The Titanic Cafe revisited

Jane Holland has blogged at Raw Light about David Hart’s utterly splendid new book from Nine Arches Press, The Titanic Cafe closes its doors and hits the rocks or: Knife, fork and bulldozerultra modern retail outlet complex development scenario with flowers.

Her review says, far better than my meagre effort, just why this is a must-buy, but I’ll add one more thing. Having now got my hands on the actual book (I did the review from a preview copy), it’s a real thing of beauty, and even includes a pull-out map. I love maps, of any kind, so combining them with poetry is an absolutely surefire winner where I’m concerned.

We Get The Future We Deserve: JG Ballard's inner landscapes

by Mark Howard Jones

We'd been told by the media - that fractured lens of intellectual failure and popular psychosis - that he had terminal cancer. It was only a matter of time, we'd been led to understand.

But when J G Ballard actually died and the media scrambled to gather biographical data on perhaps the most mysterious of British writers, I felt a shock that I was surely no longer supposed to feel in our peculiarly numbed times. But what had started in one man's mind had become the world I now lived in. I felt like a prophet had died.

He was a 'celebrity', so the media was comfortable with that. But it seemed puzzled by the apparent normality of his everyday existence, compared to the near-deranged quality of his best writing; his seemingly subtle yet actually seismic re-interpretation of the world that we live in, or that he saw we would soon be living in.

Then Hollywood rode to the rescue (doesn't it always?). Spielberg had made a film of one of his more 'normal' books - stitch that together with some salient biographical details and that would do to 'explain' the man. You could hear editors and illiterate imbeciles in newsrooms all over the country breathe a collective sigh of relief. Not realising that they were behaving in a way that Ballard predicted several decades earlier. The symbols had taken over from the substance, and they could refer to something easily accessible without getting their hands or their minds dirty.

My own introduction to the familiar yet paranoid world of the quietly-spoken Englishman came at the tender age of 9, or maybe 10. I was quite badly asthmatic and often kept home from school. In an effort to keep me amused, my mother would buy me science fiction paperbacks from the local Woolworths.

She had no interest in the contents herself and, as many of them were anthologies, the cover blurb spoke about them in a very general way. On the cover was usually an innocent-looking rocket ship or space station. But many of the anthologies contained stories by the 'New Wave' writers from both sides of the Atlantic, and were more to do with the mind that any mission to Mars.

In one such anthology I came across Ballard's short story 'The Terminal Beach'. On the surface it is about a man called Traven who has willingly exiled himself on a former nuclear test island following the death of his wife and son. The island is covered with abandoned concrete blockhouses, interspersed with the odd observation tower and the hulk of a wrecked bomber. There is the corpse of a dead Japanese soldier, and a fly that keeps him company. Two scientists are exploring an abandoned submarine pen at the other end of the island, hoping to find new forms of aquatic life created by the nuclear tests. Traven becomes lost, both mentally and physically, knowing he is waiting to die.

The story was unlike anything I had ever read before. To an ill, anxious child it both underlined that I was right to be anxious and, at the same time, informed me that there was a world where survival and status were not at the top of everyone's list of priorities. That other, more esoteric, concerns were a valid way to respond to the narrow demands of an invalid society.

The story haunted me for years and I kept going back to read it, poring over its Cold War symbolism and technological ghosts. Britain in the late 1970s and early 1980s was full of wreckage, both human and industrial, that echoed the images in Ballard's writing. I began to see his influence everywhere and recognised people who were unwittingly living lives that he'd transmitted the essential data about years ago. We were all wandering through a world that was increasingly 'Ballardian'.

Ruined psychology paralleled the rusting technology that surrounded it. A world where the 'Space Age' had failed to lift off, blowing up on the launch pad and causing millions of casualties.

Boys growing up in the late 60s or early 70s all wanted to be astronauts; but after reading Ballard, we all wanted to be psychonauts instead.

Standing in the ruined hotel lobby in the abandoned desert resort, waiting for the renegade psychiatrist and his crippled daughter, we suddenly realised in a flash of compacted, enigmatic symbols that there was so much inner space still left to explore. In fact, we'd hardly begun.

So we handed in our spacesuits and pointed our cars away from the de-populated hinterland of 'normality' that hid behind the everyday, hoping to die with the movie star of our choice in a head-on collision before we reached our uncertain destination.

Coming next...

I wanted to write something about JG Ballard following his recent death, but my old friend Mark Howard Jones has done a much better job, so I'll be posting his piece up here tomorrow. It's a fitting tribute to a writer who the media never quite seemed to know how to deal with.

Happy birthday!

Nine Arches Press celebrated its first year last night, and a very busy year it's been, what with books by Jane Holland, Liam Guilar, Tom Chivers and David Hart, and two issues of Under The Radar (a third is imminent), plus a number of readings. Oh, and books by Peter Carpenter and press founder Matt Nunn are on the way later in the year.

Anyway, the birthday party at the University of Warwick last night was excellent, with good music (Fan Tan Jack, as Jane Commane has reminded me), good cakes, and of course good poetry. There were readings by Jane Commane, Matt Nunn, Jane Holland, Sian Hughes, Simon Turner, George Ttoouli and myself, and plenty of chat. It would be unfair to pick out highlights, really, but a couple of George's poems (Ghost and another whose title escapes me just now) kept going round my head all the way home. I also bought a copy of Sian's book, The Missing, having enjoyed her reading and remembering several of her poems from magazines.

For the record, my 'set list' was:
At Home
Things Left In Hotel Rooms
The Memory Of Water
Worst Case Scenario

Oh, and many thanks to Matt for mentioning both Walkers Crisps and Englebert Humperdinck when introducing me! Chuck in Gary Lineker too and you'd have the Holy Trinity where us folk at the north end of the M69 are concerned.

More reviews

Catching up on the blogosphere after a computerless few days, I came across this on Matthew Stewart's excellent Rogue Strands.

I'm much indebted to him for his very positive assessment, and I only hope I can live up to it! But, never one to let a plug like that go begging, I'll also take this opportunity to remind you that Troy Town is available here or direct from me (email me at the link on the right), and that I also have a very few copies of Making The Most Of The Light left (but going fast).

Missed again

I was away for most of the weekend, but got back in time to try to twitch the male Ring Ouzel that's been in a field off Charley Lane, near Bawdon Castle Farm. It was bitterly cold, more like February than May, and the wind was strong. I arrived just about at the same time as Dave Gray, and although we both gave the field in question a thorough grilling, we had no luck. Dave did find several Wheatears including a Greenland bird, and had heard Curlew calling nearby. It doesn't help, though, that the field contains several half-buried black plastic sacks, guaranteed to momentarily raise your hopes when you see them move in the wind at a certain angle.

I even went back this morning on the way to work, but again no sign of the Ouzel. There were at least two Curlew calling over towards Beacon Hill though, and a couple of the Wheatears were still around. But as if those black sacks weren't enough, two male Blackbirds occasionally appeared near the house at the top of the field to again raise hopes. I seem destined to keep missing Ring Ouzels this year, though.

Breaking news....

It's been one of the worst-kept secrets in the UK for the last week or so, but Carol Ann Duffy has just been named the new Poet Laureate, the first woman and indeed the first Scot to get the job.

Not sure if there's really any truth in the story about her being passed over last time, but I don't think there'll be too much quibbling with the choice this time around. She is one of the relatively few current poets to be both popular and critically well thought-of, so there's little chance of the decision to choose a woman being dismissed as tokenism.

I've got mixed feelings about her poetry, liking some of it a lot, and disliking some of it equally (on the whole I prefer her earlier collections), but I think she'll make an excellent public advocate of poetry, which it seems to me is the main justification for maintaining the role these days. Andrew Motion did that part of the job very well, and I think CAD will maintain that momentum.

Name change

Poetry Nottingham is to change its name to ASSENT, as a result of securing new funding from the University of Derby.

The move came after the magazine had its Arts Council grant cancelled in 2007, so the new money ensures the survival and development of one of the real stalwarts of the small mag scene.

Editor Adrian Buckner said that the new name would "combine nuances of openness and aspiration to excellence", but added "if you are interested in the clinching 'that's it!' moment of decision, I would point you to Elizabeth Bishop's poem Anaphora".

Anyway, as a long-time reader of the magazine, as well as someone who has appeared in it a number of times, I'm delighted to see that it's moving ahead under Adrian's leadership.

Birthday party

Nine Arches Press celebrates its first birthday next week with a party/reading/shindig at The Capital Centre, Milburn House, Milburn Hill Road, University of Warwick (actually nearer Coventry).

It’s on Tuesday (May 5th), from 7pm-10pm, it’s free, and will mark the press’s first year in the poetry-publishing business. There’ll be a selection of Midlands poets, including the likes of Jane Holland, George Ttoouli, Matt Nunn and Simon Turner, and there’s an open mic for any up and coming poetry talent.

Oh, and as if that’s not enough, there’s cake too.

Digi-binned bustard

While in Portugal last week, I spent a day birding around Cape St Vincent, right at the south-west extremity of the country (and the continent, I suppose), with the expert help of German tour guide and Algarve resident Georg Schreier. We'd already seen a couple of Little Bustards (OK, OK, no sniggering at the back there) at a fair distance, when the one above popped up not far from the track we were driving along.

He's a male, so he was spending all his time ruffling up his neck feathers and making a strange 'prrrt' noise, a bit like someone trying to blow a raspberry but failing miserably. As we paused there watching him, I thought I'd try to digi-bin him (ie. take photos using a compact camera held up to the eyepiece of my binoculars, which were resting on the door of the car). I was never going to manage anything of any great quality, because I have little experience of the technique, and because it was so windy that the car was shaking like crazy. Still, I did get a few record shots, such as the one shown, with a Fuji F31d and a pair of Bushnell Elite 8x43s.

Georg, meanwhile, digi-scoped (same technique, but using a telescope) the much better picture below, despite also having to rest his scope on the car door.

Birds in poems

Thanks to Caroline Gill for bringing this to my attention over at the Poetry Society's website. I started off pretty well, but struggled quite a bit later on.

Still, there's a few of my favourite bird poems in there - The Sandpiper, The Windhover and Thirteen Ways Of Looking At A Blackbird among them.

Other favourites of mine include Bernard O'Donoghue's The Nuthatch, any number of John Clare poems, and the Anglo-Saxon elegy The Seafarer, which includes such specific bird references that at least one expert pinned the location down to the Bass Rock in the Firth of Forth in April.

Ramblings

Things have been a little quiet here at Polyolbion recently, but it's the calm before the storm, because I've got a whole load of half-written pieces ready to finish and post up.

For starters, there's reviews of Rob A Mackenzie's The Opposite Of Cabbage and Andrew Philip's The Ambulance Box, both from Salt, and both very fine books indeed. I've read and re-read them several times, and keep going back to revise my original thoughts, but I'll get something completed over the bank holiday weekend.

Speaking of my fellow HappenStancers, I'll be reading with Rob, Andrew and James Wood at the Word Power bookshop in Edinburgh, at noon on June 20th, so come along if you can. Edinburgh's always a pleasure, but it'll be great to catch up with the others and talk poetry.

I've also been reading The Salt Companion To Lee Harwood, edited by Robert Sheppard, and Not The Full Story: Six Interviews With Lee Harwood, by Kelvin Corcoran. Harwood's a poet I enjoy a lot, and it's been fun looking deeper into his work with the help of these two books.

And finally, I spent last week on a working trip to the Algarve. The sun shone, and the birding was excellent. Flamingo, Glossy Ibis, Spectacled Warbler, Rock Bunting, Crested Tit, masses of Avocets, Black-winged Stilts, Kentish Plovers and Whimbrels (the latter not a bird I see often over here), loads of Little Terns, and a big fall of migrants at Cape St Vincent, including Golden Oriole, some very smart Pied Flycatchers, and absolutely masses of Spotted Flycatchers.

Oh, and there was a close-range Otter, and a very showy displaying Little Bustard, which I managed to digi-bin. I haven't downloaded and tidied up the pics yet, but I'll post them later. In the meantime, enjoy that gratuitous shot of two Bee-eaters (not mine), just because we saw loads and they're a glorious bird.

I almost forgot. I got home to find that some great rarities had turned up on my local birding patch, so I dashed around yesterday seeing a Pectoral Sandpiper at Cossington Meadows, and two Whiskered Terns at Willington Gravel Pits (there had been eight earlier in the day, but a Peregrine spooked them).

The Titanic Cafe closes its doors and hits the rocks or: Knife, fork and bulldozerultra modern retail outlet complex development scenario with flowers

The Titanic Cafe closes its doors and hits the rocks or: Knife, fork and bulldozerultra modern retail outlet complex development scenario with flowers - David Hart, Nine Arches Press

I've mentioned before on Polyolbion that, despite the image its generally had in the UK, as the butt of every comedian's jokes, I like Birmingham.

I like it even more now that I've read this new long poem by David Hart, which takes the demise of the Titanic Cafe ("still the best tea in the UK") as the spur for a long, poetic ramble through some of the unseen corners of the West Midlands. And I mean ramble in the very best sense - Hart's sharp eye for detail picks out all sorts of little nuggets that the rest of us rush past in our haste to be somewhere else. This is poetry as urban archaeology, and that's no bad thing in my book.

Because of that, it's inevitably going to get compared to some of Roy Fisher's work, but while there are traces of his influence in Hart's sharp, witty and frequently funny free verse, it's never overpowering. That's partly thanks to Hart's use of song and even playground-style rhymes, I think, as he uses them skilfully to hang a certain amount of found material and reported speech on (they also make sure that there's no danger of this becoming po-faced or dry).

It also brought Geoffrey Hill's Mercian Hymns to mind, but while Hart isn't afraid to bring the distant past into his work, he's primarily concerned with the present, no matter how unpromising it might seem. Throughout the poem, he seems to be asking the same question - "Can this be beautiful?" - even if it's only voiced explicitly just the once. And the answer seems to be yes, even if it's an unexpected beauty that he finds in the everyday.

The poem works well with the series of Hart's photos that are published alongside, and the extensive footnotes are a good read in themselves, but of course it's the poem itself that matters most. Its very nature means that Hart doesn't reach for easy effect (hence my reluctance to quote from it, because you really need to read the whole poem), but it's both highly readable and extremely multi-layered - I defy you not to read it straight through again immediately you finish it.

David Hart's THE TITANIC CAFE CLOSES ITS DOORS AND HITS THE ROCKS or: Knife, fork and bulldozer ultra modern retail outlet complex development scenario with flowers is launched on Thursday 23rd April, from 7pm onwards, at The Quaker Central Hall, The Priory Rooms, 40 Bull Street, Birmingham B4 6AF. It's all free!

Sphinx 10

The latest issue of Sphinx is just about out, featuring an interview with George Simmers, of Snakeskin, in heroic couplets, plus features on Worple, Grey Hen, bluechrome, and my interview with Jane Commane and Matt Nunn of Nine Arches Press.

There are also the usual reviews and the wonderful Savage Chickens cartoons, and the magazine's online reviews include four by me - Jane Holland's Lament of the Wanderer, Frances Corkey Thompson's The Long Acre and Anne Caldwell's Slug Language (those two both from HappenStance), and Gordon Jarvie's Watching The Sun and Other Poems.

I won't spoil them for you, but I will say that I enjoyed all four chapbooks - Jane Holland's and Frances Corkey Thompson's were particularly memorable.

Back on dry land

The best part of my job, I’d have to say, is that you get to travel a bit. Not only to the far ends of the earth, occasionally, but also to parts of Britain you might otherwise never get to.

Over the Easter weekend, I was on a wildlife cruise around Bute, Arran and Loch Fyne, in western Scotland. We were lucky enough to get some lovely weather, the birding was good, and the company excellent. You could spend a lifetime exploring this area and still not see the half of it, because there are so many little sea lochs, inlets, islands and hidden valleys tucked away, but let's just say that the scenery is frequently breathtaking and leave it at that.

It was actually reasonably quiet, bird-wise, as we didn't get lucky and see the Golden Eagles nesting near the Arran distillery at Loch Ranza, but there was plenty of interesting stuff. Black Guillemots, for instance, known locally as Dookers - very neat, attractive little birds. Or Hooded Crows paired up with Carrion Crows - we must have been just about on the dividing line between the two species. Flypast Black-throated and Red-throated Divers too.

Obviously, I had to sample a few single malts while on board ship (strictly to ward off seasickness, obviously). Lagavulin and Laphroaig are always a treat, but I'd never come across Caol Ila or Arran before, and neither suffered by comparison with their better-known fellow islanders.

But anyway, I'm hooked now. I'll definitely have to return sometime very soon.

A classic

I’ve just finished reading David Peace’s much talked-about novel The Damned United (I might make it to see the film this weekend). It’s excellent, and part of the enjoyment, I think, is wondering just how much is fact and how much is fiction. I can understand why the Clough family might be a bit annoyed at the portrayal of Brian Clough in it, but I don’t think he comes out of it badly (in fact, I reckon only Don Revie, his backroom staff, and Billy Bremner really do). In essence, the book seems a sort of love story, or rather two love stories – between Brian Clough and football, and Brian Clough and Peter Taylor. It’s as a portrayal of a platonic male friendship that it works best.

But anyway, at the back of the book, Peace includes a list of sources and background reading. On it is The Goalkeeper’s Revenge, by Bill Naughton (best known as the writer of the Michael Caine film Alfie).

When I was a kid, I reckon I read that book more than just about any other. It’s a collection of short stories, mostly set in industrial Lancashire between the wars, although one or two also draw on Naughton’s family background in Ireland. And although they’re aimed at children, they work well enough for adults too. I started reading them again last night, and they didn’t disappoint. A little unsung masterpiece, I reckon.

Polyverse Poetry Festival

Polyverse Poetry Festival is taking place in Loughborough at the end of July, and will feature a host of writers from across the Midlands and further afield. I'll be reading and running a workshop, and I also hope to catch up with quite a few of the other events.

Loughborough's a compact but lively university town with good bus and train links to Leicester and Nottingham, so if you're anywhere in the area, come along and pick and choose a few events to attend.

Oh, and in the grand tradition of special offers, if you see me at the festival, I'll be selling Troy Town at £7 (that's £2 off). I might have a few copies of Making The Most Of The Light left too.

Friday, July 24th, 2009, through to Sunday July 26th, 2009.

English & Drama Department of Loughborough University,
Leicestershire,
LE11 3TT
http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ea/

TICKETS: Will be available imminently. £20 covers whole festival, including all events and a workshop. Other ticket types will be announced shortly.
All ticket enquiries to Ruth Salt, telephone 01509 222 761 (overseas: +44 1509 222 761) between 9am-5pm BST, or e-mail R.Salt@lboro.ac.uk

SPECIAL EVENTS:

DREAMS OF MAY - first public performance of this critically acclaimed one-woman play outside London. It takes place on a train where the woman’s memory is triggered by objects causing her to look over her life and confront her demons. This internal conversation is revealed to the audience through poetry and music. Written by SUE GUINEY http://www.sueguiney.com/
STORIES DRUMMED TO POLAR SKIES by Siobhan Logan.
Exclusive and specially rewritten version of the dazzling fusion of poetry and science spectacular. The original version was performed at the National Science Museum and the Richard Attenborough Centre.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/siobhan.logan1/

ROSIE LUGOSI, renowned vampire poetess, brings her hair-raising poetic cabaret. Be very scared - you might laugh your way to a cracked ribcage.
http://www.rosielugosi.com/
If you want to attend a FREE workshop with Rosie Lugosi, ask for the Rosie Garland one. Details of how to book appear below.

POETS CONFIRMED TO READ/PERFORM: Gail Ashton, Carole Baldock, Tina Bass, David Bircumshaw, Julie Boden, Wayne Burrows, Nick Carbo, Sally Clark, Jane Commane, Rosemary Dun, John Elson, Andy Fletcher, Angela France, Mark Goodwin, Radcliff Gregory, Oz Hardwick, Brendan Hawthorne, Sonia Hendy-Isaac, Martin Holroyd, Christopher James, Pat Jourdan, Chris Kinsey, Emma Lee, Paul Lee, Sheree Mack, Bob Mee, Matt Merritt, Ian Morgan, Matt Nunn, Kerry Oramnge, Tony Petch, Leskley Quayle, Susan Richardson, Steve Rooney, Sam Smith, Gillian Spraggs, Ben Stainton, Geoff Stevens, Jon Stone, Carol Thistlethwaite, Pam Thompson, Lydia Towsey, Deborah Tyler-Bennett and Mike Wilson.

ALL WORKSHOPS ARE COMPLETELY FREE!

However, you will need to buy a ticket for the festival to be eligible. You will need book your workshop space in advance if you want to be guaranteed a place.

At present, you can only attend one free workshop, although this may change, depending on demand. To book a workshop, contact Ruth Salt (details below) by e-mail or telephone, and let her know your three most preferred choices. You will then be allocated to your most preferred workshop(s) with spaces left.

All workshop enquiries to Ruth Salt, telephone 01509 222 761 (overseas: +44 1509 222 761) between 9am-5pm BST, or e-mail R.Salt@lboro.ac.uk.

CONFIRMED TO GIVE WORKSHOPS:

Carole Baldock, Sally Clark, Angela France, Nick Carbo, Rosemary Dun, Rosie Garland (aka Rosie Lugosi!), Sonia Hendy-Isaac, Matt Merritt, Mike Wilson.

Full details: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=9528966169#/group.php?gid=9528966169

Weekend birding

It's that time of year when you can leave the house to do a bit of birding and reasonably expect to find new migrants dropping in all over the place, so I spent the weekend looking for some of those new arrivals.

On Saturday, a male Ring Ouzel was reported at Warren Hills, only a couple of minutes' drive from my house, so I headed over there, only to find out from another birder that we were both ten minutes too late. It hadn't been seen flying off, but it seemed to have disappeared behind a distant, and inaccessible, bush. I spent a while looking, then walked round to Charnwood Lodge reserve, to see if it was visible looking up the hill.

It wasn't. I scanned field after field, hope to find it sheltering from the now rather strong wind behind a drystone wall, but no luck. Turning for home, I walked past the point where a little stream goes under another stone wall and into the wood, and peered over, as I always do (I live in hope of finding a Dipper there). To my surprise, a pair of Mandarin were on the other side, in a tiny pool. They looked as startled as I was, and promptly flew away into the trees.

There are a few (maybe 30) of these absurdly ornate ducks in my area, but usually I see them only at long range at one of the reservoirs, so to see the male close up was a treat. More than made up for missing out on some of those migrants. And there's still plenty of time for Ouzels...

Paper round

Saturday's Guardian contained this review, by David Wheatley, of Michael Donaghy's Collected Poems, out now from Picador.

I enjoyed it a lot, although my knowledge of Donaghy is fairly restricted, to Shibboleth and then a handful of other poems in anthologies. It's a gap I really ought to fill, and there's no better way than with a Collected.

Elsewhere, Rob Mackenzie's The Opposite of Cabbage, which I've been enjoying immensely and which I'll review soon, was reviewed in The Times. Great to see a national paper picking up on a first collection like that, and I hope it gives Rob the sales boost he deserves.

Quiz time

I came across this quiz at the highly addictive website sporcle, and gave it a go. I even managed to get 20 out of 20, after some pondering, but what's more interesting than the quiz itself is the page showing you what percentage of people got each answer right (you have to complete the quiz first before it will let you go there). The results, I thought, were pretty surprising. Some of the poets I'd have thought of as better known were not identified, while one or two more obscure ones were apparently easily spotted.

The reason, I think, is probably the difference between school curriculums on either side of the Atlantic, but it's food for thought, and I suspect highlights how any poetic 'canon' is very much specific to the time and place of its making.