Inextinguishable - James W Wood

Inextinguishable
James W Wood (Knucker Press, www.knuckerpress.com)
If you enjoyed James Wood’s 2006 HappenStance chapbook The Theory Of Everything half as much as I did, then you’re probably not going to take too much convincing to buy this, his latest pamphlet, a handsome full-colour publication matching the response of 13 artists to his poems. So, my apologies if you’re already converted, because I’m going to preach to you anyway (something the poems never do, incidentally).

The first thing to say is that this collection represents significant progress from an already impressive starting point. That HappenStance pamphlet was notable for the sheer variety it offered, with Wood leavening the more serious, resonant moments by taking off at all sorts of playful tangents. The poems in Inextinguishable, on the other hand, are much more homogenous, the better to carry their considerable elegiac weight.

And carry it they do. The first poem, An Fraoch Mhor, sets the tone simply but movingly, both looking back to the past and imploring “Let memory go now”, and several of the other pieces here explore that tension – on the one hand, wanting to do justice to people and places past, on the other, wanting to move on into an uncertain future.

Fine craftsman that Wood is, he knows just when to deploy that plain, unvarnished style elsewhere. The Craws, for example, contains the lines:
“…You were
no prize-winner, sportsman or great thinker,
just a man like any other, and one
whose life asks us for little grieving.”

The emotional impact of the poem is all the greater for that willingness to speak a simple, unvarnished truth, to do much more than a little grieving without ever slipping into sentimentality, an effect that’s replicated elsewhere.

Another favourite was Catherine Wheel, an elegy which closes with the fine:
“…you were
a Catherine Wheel blazing brilliantly

in a ploughed field at midsummer, a spark
that might have cloaked us all in fire
if only we could have seen it.”

And the final poem, The Orchestra Plays Nielsen’s ‘Inextinguishable’, serves to gently but firmly restate what we’ve already taken from what’s gone before:
“music is life, and like it, inextinguishable.
A principle
for every anxious soul to follow,
forged and hammered in our heart’s crucible,
the beat that trips and will not rest,
all things in ebb and flow.”

Taken on their own, these poems add up to a very strong chapbook collection, so maybe I saw the artists’ responses as something of a pleasant but inessential bonus. Perhaps a few too many seem to interpret Wood’s words a little too literally, but I liked Jaimie Lane’s By The Station Café, Fiona Purves’ Thirteen and Elizabeth Walker’s Catherine Wheel in particular.

But it’s the poems that I really want to talk about. Buy them, read them, and wonder when this man is going to get the full collection his talents deserve.

Killer Bob (Browning)

I’ve posted on here before about my unease when a poet’s work is interpreted as being wholly autobiographical. I can’t imagine that’s ever the case, even with ‘confessional’ poets. Poetry is, after all, art, and as such contains imagination and fictions.

With that in mind I meant to link to this piece in The Guardian a few weeks back, which seemed to me to carry that autobiographical notion to absurd extremes. I didn’t, because I was too lazy, but I opened today’s Guardian to find that Sheffield poet Geraldine Monk had done my work for me (and done it far better than I could).

Her letter reads:
“I read Elizabeth Lowry’s article about Robert Browning (“Portrait of a lady”, July 19) with mounting incredulity. To adduce murder from a poet’s writings is as serious as it is shallow. My last volume of poetry contains monologues and imaginary letters by Mary Queen of Scots. I have never once harboured any desire to murder either my husband or the Queen.”

Says it all, really. I bet it won’t deter the next would-be literary detective, though.

Going live

Time for a bit of self-advertising. I'll be reading as part of the Zest! Open Floor Poetry Night, at Alexander's Jazz Theatre Bar, Chester, at 8pm on Monday, September 22nd. I'll also have plenty of copies of Making The Most Of The Light and Troy Town available, so I'll work out a little package deal.

As the title of the event suggests, there's also an open mic spot, so you can bring along your own or a favourite poem to read (I like that idea of having a few 'cover versions' at a poetry reading).

The venue is in Rufus Court, off Northgate Street, and entry is £3/£2. See you there.

The Fifth DH Lawrence Festival

The DH Lawrence Festival – held in and around Eastwood – started on August 15th and runs until September 11th. Brochures can be ordered by calling 01773 717353.

The Festival includes introductory material on Lawrence, events for specialists, a photography exhibition on mining, family events and walks round Lawrence's old stomping ground, "the country of my heart".

Less Lawrentian events include a drawing workshop with the man who did the Harry Potter drawings and a family history session. On September 9th there is a talk on dialect in Lawrence's work and a guided walk round Greasley on September 7th.

Prynne at Litterbug

I've been doing a bit of browsing over at Litterbug, poet and publisher Alan Baker's excellent blog. Take the time to go down the page (at least as far as July 13th), and there's all sorts of interesting discussion of JH Prynne. I'd have to say that on first reading I found myself sympathising with CJ Allen's piece, but then I'm coming at it from an angle of almost total ignorance, which is never a good thing, is it?

I find myself wanting to know more, wanting to read more, and then getting put off by the thought of paying money for a book that might, judging by some of the comments there, get tossed into the corner for years after an initial burst of enthusiasm. So where's a good, and cheap, starting place for Prynne? Any ideas?

It's April 1st, right?

First Jeremy Paxman lays into him in an ill-considered and ignorant mini-rant, and now this. What did Burns do to deserve all this?

Still, at least Jacko and his mate are fans of Scotland's national bard, and it's certainly not the first time his poems have been set to music. Will we ever get to hear them, though? Don't bet on it.

Another quick reminder...

A week on Saturday, two new HappenStance poetry publications by Leicestershire poets will be launched – D A Prince’s Nearly The Happy Hour, a first book-length collection for both author and publisher, and Rebuilding A Number 39, by Marilyn Ricci, the author’s first chapbook collection. Come along and listen and celebrate the launch, and talk to the poets and HappenStance publisher Helena Nelson in person.

It's on Saturday, September 6th, at 2.45 for 3pm, at the Friends’ Meeting House, 16 Queens Road (junction with Victoria Park Road), Leicester LE2 1WP. Email nell@happenstancepress.com if you plan to attend. I'll see you there.

The Bestiary - Sam Meekings

The Bestiary
Sam Meekings (Polygon, 2008, £7.99)
You see a lot of talk these days about the extent to which poetry collections need a connecting thread, theme, arc - call it what you will.
My own feeling is that, while such binding agents can often add hugely to the success of a collection, they’re by no means essential. The more old-fashioned, ‘greatest hits’ type of approach (or rather, simply bringing together the best of a poet’s most recent poems) can work just as well for me too.
All this is by way of ponderously getting round to saying that Sam Meekings’ debut collection seems like a perfect example of how to link together poems that aren’t, strictly speaking, a sequence, but aren’t stand-alone efforts either.
As the title suggests, it’s nature that is the common element throughout, although Meekings is at least as interested in fish, amphibians, invertebrates and the shifting borders between land and sea as the birds and animals beloved of so many poets (I plead guilty). There’s a fascination with all sorts of textures and smells (the slimier and ranker the better – slime is a word that crops up regularly throughout), and a gift for rendering them real to the reader, that recalls not only Hughes, but also early Heaney, an impression that’s reinforced by Meekings’ preference for regular forms.
He uses plenty of end rhyme too, with a rare subtlety and musicality, and similarly the links he makes from his apparent subjects to human concerns are generally understated, often only apparent after a few reads.
Very occasionally, I’ll admit, he overdoes it and you long for just a little plain-speaking, or, as in Calves, he strains a bit too hard for significance when his knack for vivid description would do the job on its own.
Mostly, though, he hits a balance that’s hugely impressive for a poet in his first collection (and one who has arrived relatively unheralded). It will be interesting to see where he goes next – he’s created a considerable weight of expectation for himself, but all the signs are that he has the talent to carry it.

Dampened enthusiasm?

Sometimes rain can be a blessing. I've been struggling to write as much as I'd like to over the last couple of months, for a whole number of reasons. I was on a day off yesterday, and after a bit of birding early on (nothing spectacular, but three distant Whinchats at Sence Valley FP were good), the rain set in and left me with no option but to sit in front of the laptop and get to work. And a good thing too.

I tinkered around with a couple of poems that I'd been making notes for over the past few weeks, I wrote a couple of reviews for this blog (I'll put them up in the next few days), I worked my way through a whole load of 'finished' poems that I've been pondering sending out for a while now, making revisions and alternate versions or just throwing them out if they don't come up to scratch, I started another major revision of a sequence of historical poems I've been working on over the last year, and I even started writing a little prose, as much for my own enjoyment as anything else, not having any ambitions in the field of fiction.

The test, of course, always comes the morning after, when you fire up the laptop again and come face to face with what seemed so marvellous the previous night. Well, having worked my way through it again just now, there is something there worth keeping, so I'm planning on using this little surge of energy while it lasts. There's more rain forecast...

At the Birdfair

Well, the rain held off for the most part, so we were spared any Glastonbury-style mudbaths, and another Birdfair passed off very pleasantly indeed.

Every year is different, every year’s the same. So, although there’s always something new to catch the eye, what really makes it so enjoyable is that you catch up with people who you don’t see from one year to the next. Where magazine contributors are concerned, for example, it’s always nice to be able to put faces to what are otherwise names at the bottom of an email, while there are always old friends to bump into. And there are birders of all sorts, from the hardcore twitcher right down to the armchair watcher.

Highlights included Sir David Attenborough, who seemed to be every bit as nice as he appears on the TV, closely followed by the wonderfully hospitable Prom Peru stand, who kept a constant stream of Pisco sours coming (it was wintry enough at times that you needed your cockles warming, so strictly medicinal, you see?).

I even met a fellow poet, Sandra MacGregor Hastie, whose company SMH Books publish the excellent Redbreast: The Robin in Life and Literature. Today, it's back to real work. Bah!

Birdfair

I'll be offline for most of the next few days, because it's that time of year again. I'm off to the shores of sunny (for now, at least) Rutland Water for Birdfair. If you're passing the Bird Watching stall in Marquee 2, pop over and say hello. I'll be back next week.

A riposte

Here's David Marsh's reply to that stream of nonsense from Giles Coren a couple of weeks back. I'm with him all the way. There seems to be a growing trend in all areas of the print media to see sub-editors as surplus to requirements - a false economy if ever there was one.

Chapbook review

I'll be posting my own review of James Wood's Inextinguishable as soon as I get the chance to write it, but in the meantime, there's this excellent piece at Fuselit. Enjoy.

Polyverse Poets

Here's the new Polyverse Poets page - as you'll see, it's a network for East Midlands based writers, and also contains links to the Polyverse Festival page (the event will take place in Loughborough in July next year). Have a browse...

Good on yer, Aussies!

I can't help finding this story just a bit heart-warming. I'm not a huge coffee-drinker, admittedly, being stereotypically British in my preference for a nice cup of industrial strength builders' tea, but when I used to work in the middle of Leicester and have to make very early starts, I was occasionally tempted. Starbucks, though, was always distinctly underwhelming, with the coffee seeming nothing special, and the price and welcome not a patch on the nice people at Cafe Roma (halfway down Halford Street, if you're ever there).

Poetry in motion

This is a slightly bizarre, yet rather charming idea. I'm still not entirely clear what the point being made is, but it sounds like fun all the same.

A rant

First, I’ll declare a professional interest. I’ve spent the last 16-and-a-half years on both sides of the subbing desk. I’ve seen my own copy butchered, and I’ve done the butchering too. Not without believing it needed it, for reasons of space or whatever, but that’s not the point.

However many times I read this, though, I can’t see it as anything other than a very minor celebrity with a vastly inflated sense of their own importance throwing their weight around in the knowledge that their victims can’t bite back. Bullying, I think they’d call it in most workplaces these days, and if I was one of the subs involved, I wouldn’t take it lying down.

Where to start? Well, there’s the fact that poor, sensitive Giles has been lying awake worrying about a single word in his column, and the fact that changing it ruined his would-be joke. Well, if they had mangled the facts, or changed it beyond recognition, I’d be with him all the way (in terms of the content of his letter, not the tone). But get a sense of proportion, for God’s sake – the lameness of the joke is all the proof you should need that this is not worth worrying about. Why doesn’t he just suck it up and live with it, like any number of writers? There’s nothing wrong with taking pride in your work, but it’s not poetry, it’s not a novel, it’s not an academic textbook or a manual on which lives will depend. It’s a cruddy restaurant review that will already be chip wrappers. If he really is as witty and funny as he clearly thinks he is, why does he have to spend so much time explaining his jokes?

Much more annoying is the way he chooses to make his point. I’d be willing to bet he wouldn’t be too chuffed if the subs at The Times chose to write ranting letters (and leaking them into public) every time they came across some careless error in his copy. Why does he think it’s OK for him to do so? Quite apart from anything else, if they’re like the subs on every paper I’ve ever worked on, they’ll have a great deal more on their plate each day than a single sentence in a single article. Giles, on the other hand, has a succession of free dinners on his plate, and then gets paid handsomely for writing about them, in a style that can only be described as a third-rate imitation of the already terrible AA Gill.

If the style of the letter is anything to go by, he’s clearly one of those writers who thinks that even the most basic steps towards making an article ready for the page (using capital letters, for example) is to be left to the subs as well. If he hasn’t got the courtesy to make an effort, why should the subs, especially when the time they should be taking in fine-tuning his article has to be spent tidying up his slapdash presentation?

Probably the most arrogant part of it is “I am insulted enough that you think you have a better ear for English than me. But a better ear for Yiddish? I doubt it”. Yes, because no one could possibly have a better ear for English than Westminster and Oxford educated Giles, could they (although you might think the foul-mouthed near-illiteracy of his letter makes a strong argument against that)? As for the Yiddish, how does he know that none of the subs know it better than he does? And finally, he’s writing in English, not Yiddish. Whatever the origins of the word ‘nosh’, the way the subs used it is just as correct, so tough luck if it ruins your pathetic pun, Giles. You’re writing for the mass-market, not your own private amusement.

As for demanding prior approval, and that the subs never change a word of his copy again without his say-so, well I guess that comes down to the contract he’s on. If he’s effectively a staff writer at The Times, though, I hope the chief sub is telling him even now where he can stick his prior approval.

“It strips me of all confidence in writing for the magazine. No exaggeration. I’ve got a review to write this morning and I really don’t feel like doing it, for fear that some nuance is going to be removed from the final line, the pay-off, and I’m going to have another weekend ruined for me.”

Can you feel your heart bleeding for him? Here’s an idea, Giles. Don’t write for the magazine, if you don’t want to. My guess is that your greed and lust for more and more media exposure will quickly overcome your scruples, though.

Last of all, there’s the put-on cheeriness at the start and end of the letter, so that he can always claim “it was just a joke” if anyone gets upset. And they will have done, I’ll be willing to bet, except they probably won’t fancy their chances in the editor’s office against this posturing fool, so they’ll stay quiet for fear of getting their P45. What they should do is get angry, angry enough to acquaint the pompous ass with employment law and their union rep. Or, failing that, the business end of a pair of Doc Martens.

There is one consolation, though, and it would have occurred to a restaurant critic whose head wasn’t firmly wedged up his own arse. I’d have thought every sub on The Times will now be queuing up to sub his column, giddy with glee at the prospect of coughing a large, metaphorical mouthful of phlegm into the tepid sludge of his prose. Good luck sleeping, Giles.

Poetry in the papers

It’s Monday, so it must be time to recap on the weekend's reading. The Guardian had a great double-page spread on Sharon Olds. She gets, unfairly I think, less attention than she deserves over here, probably because confessional poetry isn’t particularly fashionable or popular, but I think she proves that it’s the quality of the poetry, rather than the style, that’s what matters.

In the Telegraph, meanwhile, Nick Laird was reviewing Mick Imlah, Bernard O'Donoghue and Adam Foulds. I can't say the latter's book appeals to me a great deal, but the other two do. O'Donoghue in particular is another poet who too often seems to slip below the radar.

Another reissue

When Steve Earle first came along in the mid-1980s (although he’d been a jobbing songwriter for about a decade at that point), he was quickly co-opted into the ‘New Country’ camp, a grouping so loose it covered everything from folky guitar-strummer Nanci Griffith (I’ll fight anyone who argues that Gulf Coast Highway isn’t a marvellous song) to Dwight Yoakam (forget the big hats, and just enjoy Guitars, Cadillacs etc.).

His first album, Guitar Town, was country with rock flourishes, and lyrics that immediately had him described as the country Bruce Springsteen (they already had a ‘new Springsteen’, in John Cougar Mellencamp). It had at least one bona fide classic, in the form of My Old Friend The Blues, and some other great tracks such as Goodbye’s All We’ve Got Left and Someday. The follow-up, Exit O, didn’t get such a good reception at the time, being perceived as playing up the Boss influence, but I think it’s actually pretty good. There are a couple of good Tex-Mex tracks – San Antonio Girl and I Love You Too Much – plus the understated No29 and the always enjoyable I Ain’t Ever Satisfied.

By album three, in 1988, Earle should have been hitting his stride, but the drug problems that have plagued him since were beginning to take their toll, so Copperhead Road is a game of two halves. Four of the first five tracks are superb, with a massive sound that just about makes the link between hard rock and country, but sadly, the rest is pretty much filler.

Still, the album’s just been re-released, and it’s worth having just for those four tracks. There’s Copperhead Road itself, a tale of a bootlegging, drug-dealing Vietnam vet that absolutely explodes when the drums kick in halfway through. There’s Snake Oil, a witty, honky-tonk piano-driven dissection of the Reagan years. There’s The Devil’s Right Hand, pure country with an anti-gun message. And there’s the wonderful Johnny Come Lately, with The Pogues adding their ramshackle magic to a song contrasting the lot of Vietnam vets with that of World War Two GIs.

There are some extra live tracks thrown in, but they’re nothing special. After this, Earle went down some very dark, strange paths, and they’re not always easy to listen to, but this is him at his best.

Two for the diary

On Saturday, September 6th, the Society of Friends Meeting House on Queens Road, Leicester, will play host to the launch of Leicester poet D A Prince’s Nearly The Happy Hour, the first full-length collection to be published by HappenStance.

Another Leicester poet, Marilyn Ricci, will launch her HappenStance chapbook Rebuilding A Number 39 there, and of course both poets will be reading and signing books. The reading starts at 3pm, and you’re asked to e-mail nell@happenstancepress.com to say if you plan to attend. Both are Leicester poets

Later in September, on the 22nd, I’ll be the special guest at the Zest! Open Floor Poetry Night, at Alexander’s Jazz Bar, Rufus Court, Chester, reading poems old and new (and of course selling and signing copies of Troy Town and Making The Most Of The Light). Admission is £3/£2, and the poetry starts at 8pm, and of course you can come along and read your own work in the open mic slot. The evening is hosted by HappenStance poet Gill McEvoy.

US Poet Laureate

The USA has a new Poet Laureate - it's Kay Ryan, not a writer who was widely tipped for the post, but a very interesting choice. I wonder whether the UK's next Poet Laureate will be someone similarly below-the-radar (admittedly, my relative though diminishing ignorance of the US poetry scene meant that whoever was chosen had a good chance of being below my radar).

Birds in poetry

In the latest issue of the American Birding Association's journal Birding, there's a long (and unfortunately rather dry) article about birds in American poetry, starting with Anne Bradstreet in 1659 and going right through until the present day.

It ends with a list of 11 recommended bird poems, namely:
Who Called That Pied-Billed Grebe A Podilymbus Podiceps Podiceps? - Ogden Nash
The Peace Of Wild Things - Wendell Berry (it features Wood Ducks)
Buteo Regalis - N Scott Momaday (features Ferruginous Hawks)
Shorebird Watching - Amy Clampitt (Dunlin, Black-bellied Plover, Golden Plover and Turnstone)
On A 3.5oz Lesser Yellowlegs, Departed Boston August 28, Shot Martinique September 3 - Eamon Grennan
Barn Owl - Ted Kooser
To The Saguaro Cactus Tree In The Desert Rain - James Wright (Elf Owl)
Twilight: After Haying - Jane Kenyon (Whip-poor-will)
The Author Of American Ornithology Sketches A Bird - David Wagoner (Ivory-Billed Woodpecker)
The Need Of Being Versed In Country Things - Robert Frost (Eastern Phoebe)
Shrike Tree - Lucia Perillo (Loggerhead Shrike and Northern Shrike)

That list told me two things. Firstly, that I know far too little American poetry to be able to make an informed judgement on whether that really is a representative selection. Second, that as I suspected, American birders tend to have better names for their species.

But it also set me thinking of a top ten British (and Irish) bird poems. I've already got a few, and I'll post my selection in the near future, but all suggestions are welcome...

Inextinguishable

I've just received Inextinguishable, the third chapbook by Scottish poet James W Wood. It's a 32-page, full colour pamphlet featuring his poems, and responses to them by 14 young artists from the Edinburgh College of Art, and the result looks positively mouth-watering.

It's the first Knucker publication I've seen, and they do perfect justice to an idea that, in lesser hands, might have ended up looking a mess. I've written before on Polyolbion about how the physical appearance of a book or pamphlet can greatly add to my reading pleasure (if that makes me a fetishist of some sort, then so be it), and this is a perfect example. It's so beautifully produced, you can't help but want to keep picking it up and reading it.

And the contents fully match the surface richness. So far I've only flicked through, picking out two or three poems to read, but they maintain the thematic and formal variety, not to mention lightness of touch, that characterised Wood's excellent chapbook The Theory Of Everything (HappenStance, 2006).

I'll be posting a full review when I've had time to read the collection properly, and think about the artists' responses - watch this space...

Kelham Kingfisher

I’ve not done much birding locally over the last few weeks, for one reason and another, so I got out when I had the chance for an hour last night.

It was grey and overcast, but dry and very still, so I had a stroll around Kelham Bridge. There were plenty of Sedge and Reed Warblers (although the Grasshopper Warbler that was there a month or so ago couldn’t be heard), a Whitethroat or two, and, from the second hide, a Kingfisher perched on one of the posts in the water.

I was very close, but it didn’t startle even at the considerable noise made opening the shutters, and stayed there for around 15 minutes, diving three or four times. Each time, it came up with a small fish, and did its familiar ritual of battering it against the perch to make sure it was dead.

What’s really interesting, though, is how Kingfishers can change appearance dramatically in an instant. When I first spotted it, for example, I could only see the orangey breast and the white cheek patch. Then, as it turned round, the blue plumage became visible, but it appeared dull, unremarkable almost, certainly nothing like the electric flash of colour you usually get when you see one dashing along a riverbank. It was only when it finally flew away that the blue seemed to kindle and spark.

On the way home, I finally caught up with my local Little Owls (they’ve been very elusive this year) down a lane about a mile from my house. They’ve been nesting in the same tree for years and years – I can remember seeing them there when I was about 9 or 10. Judging by the amount of noise they were making, they’re raising a brood, too, so I daresay they’ll be there for years to come.

Swan song

I've raved before on here about The Triffids, the best group ever to come out of Australia (yes, even better than The Go-Betweens). When they appeared on the scene in the mid 80s, they were rightly lauded by the music press, but like so many other great bands of that era, failed to quite cut it commercially, even when they moved from an Aussie indie label to Island.

Their best album, to my mind, was 1986's Born Sandy Devotional, on which they sounded unmistakably Australian (no, scrub that - unmistakably Western Australian). Great, poetic songs about loners and losers, all of them victims of an unforgiving, harsh landscape, with a country-tinged, occasionally epic backing.

By 1989, they were experimenting with drum machines, samples and programming, and although you couldn't describe The Black Swan as an unqualified success (it's far too eclectic, ambitious and thus unfocused for that), it's actually stood the test of time pretty well. And it's just been re-released, complete with loads of bonus tracks (it was originally intended to be a double album), although the best things about it are still probably the 'typical' Triffids tracks - the gorgeously languid Too Hot To Move, the poppy Goodbye Little Boy and the hugely evocative New Year's Greetings. The latter is based on a Les Murray poem, The Widower In The Country, and fully does its source justice.

The album had just come out in May 1989 when I saw them play at Newcastle University. In fact I remember walking past the students' union record shop on a very hot day (we had summers, back then) and hearing Too Hot To Move blasting out, and going straight in to buy the record and tickets for their forthcoming gig.

Live, they were wonderful - intense and brooding one minute, poppy and playful the next. But sadly, that was it. They took a break, never intending it to become permanent, but it did. Singer and main songwriter David McComb released one patchy solo album, and dabbled in other bands, but died in 1999, closing the door on a sadly underrated band.

Do yourself a favour - buy the re-release, buy them all if you can. You won't regret it. In the meantime, here they are in their heyday, performing Wide Open Road.