launch of mobile poetry archive leads to "April madness"

Never a huge fan of April Fool's Day - I think I took it personally as a child because my birthday was not long after, and resented the implication - I have slightly edited this press release from the Academy of American Poets, and am bringing it to you a fashionable two days late.

Gotcha...

April 1, 2008—When the Academy of American Poets announced the launch of a mobile version of their poetry archive in March, no one could have predicted that poetry would become the concern of Fortune 500 companies across the nation. But this is just what is happening, says Rich Richardson, CEO of Tercet, a Duluth-based import-export firm.

"It started in a very benign way with an all-company email," Richardson says. "Our comptroller forwarded 'Birches' by Robert Frost. This poem touched many of our employees, leading several to spend their work hours looking for poems on Poets.org."

Says Richardson: "Once they had a taste for lines like 'They click upon themselves/As the breeze rises,' there was no stopping them."

Richardson says he began using SmartFilter, a tool for blocking websites, to combat his employees' Poets.org usage. "Unfortunately, this did not keep them from getting their poetry fix on their mobile devices," says Richardson.

Tercet's CFO, Abby Abramson, says the widespread internet searches for poems during business hours will not be tolerated beyond National Poetry Month. "Despite the obvious personal benefits of reading poetry, we can't condone something that decreases productivity," Abramson says. Abramson estimates that employee interest in poetry could cost the company $2.2 million in lost revenue by the end of the fiscal year.

"Printing out Elizabeth Bishop's poem 'The Moose' and posting it in the cafeteria is fine. Reciting 'The Moose' to your spouse on the phone during work hours then using Poets.org to find more poems about animals is an abuse of our employee policy," says Abramson.

Tree Swenson, executive director of the Academy of American Poets, sympathizes with the concerns of Tercet's management, but her responsibility is to the poetry readers. "We believe that poetry expands the possibilities of daily life, as imagination alters reality,” says Swenson. "If that possibility is blocked, you may have a revolution on your hands."

That revolution may come during National Poetry Month, when the Academy of Amercian Poets launches the first national celebration of Poem In Your Pocket Day. Poetry readers across the country will be carrying a poem in their pocket and sharing it with co-workers on April 17, says Swenson. "I would hate to hear that Tercet's workers were being penalized for acknowledging those 'unacknowledged legislators of the world,' our poets."

Happy April Fool's Day.


Nice work, eh? They must have had fun writing that. And imagine naming your child Tree - that part's real.

elegant second April

Here is Edna St Vincent ("Vincent") Millay in 1913, when she was 21. Her long poem Renascence had gained her a degree of acclaim the previous year by coming third in The Lyric Year competition - it was widely regarded as the best poem by far in the resulting volume - including by the winner, who said he felt his prize was an embarrassment - which resulted in a scholarship to Vassar, among other things.

Here is the beginning of Renascence:

All I could see from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood;
I turned and looked another way,
And saw three islands in a bay.
So with my eyes I traced the line
Of the horizon, thin and fine,
Straight around till I was come
Back to where I'd started from;
And all I saw from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood.

Over these things I could not see;
These were the things that bounded me;
And I could touch them with my hand,
Almost, I thought, from where I stand.
And all at once things seemed so small
My breath came short, and scarce at all.

But, sure, the sky is big, I said;
Miles and miles above my head;
So here upon my back I'll lie
And look my fill into the sky.
And so I looked, and, after all,
The sky was not so very tall.
The sky, I said, must somewhere stop,

And -- sure enough! -- I see the top!
The sky, I thought, is not so grand;
I 'most could touch it with my hand!
And reaching up my hand to try,
I screamed to feel it touch the sky.

I screamed, and -- lo! -- Infinity
Came down and settled over me...

Millay's collection Second April - one of her prodigious output of books - was published in 1921.

Millay was, I may as well say here, a huge influence on me as a child. I'm sure I've written that before. I was given a book of her poems edited for children at about age 7, and read and read it. They were so simple! They were fun! "We were very tired, we were very merry/ we went back and forth all night on the ferry" - once you've read that and know it's poetry, you never have to be afraid of poetry again.

Older, I read the sonnets, of which I do feel some people miss the point nowadays. Yes, they are written in flowery, "sonnet" language. But they are poems about sex and love written by a young woman in the teens and twenties, so the content alone was shocking enough. Plus she livedin Greenwich Village and was bisexual. Millay was fiercely intelligent and independent and sure of her own identity as a writer - and as a woman - at a time when middle-class women didn't work after marriage (she had an open marriage for 26 years and was devastated when her husband died), women couldn't vote, and to be a brainy woman must have seemed almost a contradiction in terms. And she was very pretty, too. (All the pictures I've ever seen of her showe her wearing simple, chic, dark clothing, with white blouses: very elegant.) And her letters are wonderful. Happy Second April.

Picture details: Edna St. Vincent Millay at Mitchell Kennerley's house in Mamaroneck, New York, by Arnold Genthe. Autochrome made 1913. I know the picture looks a bit girly-wirly (but then, so do Steichen's photographs, for example, of New York) but I do love her dress.

not to brag...

... but one has begun National Poetry Writing Month ("NaPoWriMo" just annoys me, sorry) by writing the first (naturally) drafts of two poems, or two parts of one poem entitled First: the first and First: the second. I'd love a third part for it, but nothing came to me today; maybe it will on the third.

(Once I wrote a poem about bigamists on different sides of platforms, waiting for trains, and intercut this with images of Mother and Child Divided, the cow and calf cut in half by Damien Hirst and suspended in formaldehyde. The poem is in three parts, numbered i, ii, and i. No one has ever got it. It's can't go in Me and the Dead because there is not room, but I like it - it will go in the next one.)

So I'm thinking April might work out after all.

clinging to the future like one of those little clippy koala bears

Well, National Poetry Writing Month has so far got off to a bad start.

I know it's early days yet: my horoscope says that today I will succeed through creativity, so I can cling to that - although last Saturday it said I would meet my deadlines through getting a late start, and that basically sounded a lot better than it was. In practice.

Of course, horoscopes are not supposed to be just about the future, they are about deepening the present, and that is what National Poetry Writing Month is all about. Innit. So we'll cling to that instead.

Edited in: the koalas, or else the spirit of Ted, or else my creativity, or else my Facebook list, are helping me out here. As my kids could tell you - as any fule kno - when playing computer games the thing that makes you good is knowing the cheats. One day maybe I'll tell you what happened when Matty Bradley found the cheat for free will on Sim City. Well, it seems I've found one for this! For my Facebook chum Robert Lee Brewer has got a gig blogging NaPoWriMo prompts on a magazine called Writers' Digest! One a day! That's before the Academy of American Poets poem lands in your inbox, but after you thought you'd run out of ideas. Great stuff. And if I never get a usable poem out of it at least I get to spend the month kidding myself. I might also keep a list of rhyme words open on my desktop...

Meanwhile, here's a picture of Ted Hughes.

keep the doctor away

Every year people are saying to me - okay, on the internet not as I walk down the street or whatever - "Hey. it's National Poetry Month in America, everybody's writing a poem every day for the month of April, wanna try?"

I walk on by stony-faced. I don't have time for that kind of shit.

This year, though - perhaps because I'm not feeling quite overcommitted enough, or maybe there's a little patch of blue hovering over beyind the horizon of my Ted Hughes letters piece (due mid-April), or maybe it's just a mystery - I thought, well, why not? Let's give it a go.

Yes, folks. That's a poem, a whole new poem, every day for thirty days (hath September, April June and oh yes so that's okay then). It sounds good from here, write on the tube, jot down in lunch hour, maybe a scribble in bed of an evening... but then that's how I currently do all the other things I'm doing! The things that make it so I can't write poetry! But then the whole point is that I do, occasionally, write a poem. I fit them into the cracks. Isn't that where they belong, really, I mean really? (Hm. Tell Ted Hughes that. Or Milton. But then, women have always written in the cracks.) And but thirty, in one month? Maybe by the end of it I'll be like the old guys, Keats and Shelley etc,who could knock off a perfectly-rhymed sonnet as a parlour game, or Byron who could write Don Juan while fighting a duel with the other hand...

Anyway, the good news is, it seems that the Academy of American Poets is going to give us something back. I love their little pill box. By signing up to their newsletter you can receive a poem a day, every day, to sweeten the pill of having to write one of the damn things. Not sure it will keep the doctor away in practice: I fully expect to go insane trying to keep up.

And I won't be posting them up here. Bit redundant, that. But I might tell you about them.

what a difference a word makes

The banana split boat hasn't sailed, has it? Some reader of mine, somewhere, must have missed the storm in a sundae dish over the anonymous poem found in the House of Commons - or somewhere - nobody has actually said where it was found, or how - was it lying upon the stair? Anyway, somehow everybody got to know of it, and very funny it is too:

"As I was going down the stair, I met a man who wasn't Blair.
He wasn't Blair again today. Oh how I wish he'd go away!"

And no one knows who wrote it! It's a complete mystery - a government scandal! A couple of ministers have completely denied that it's anything to do with them, but then, they would say that, wouldn't they.

Of course we're all jolly glad whenever anyone isn't Blair, and we hope it stays that way, but you have to admit that it's a fine thing for Parliamentarians to be taking to their pens like this. It may be only doggerel but revolutions have been started with less. And it pleases me, partly because the original upon which it is based ("As I was going up the stair/ I met a man who wasn't there./ He wasn't there again today...") was told me many many times by my dear Papa, le duc de Baroque, back when he was about ten times bigger than me.

However, the real genius of the piece comes in when my brand-new favourite-ever politician, Austin Mitchell MP (Great Grimsby - fancy a weekend away, anyone?) posted this delicious, and far superior, bagatelle on his blog: the cherry on top. Poetry truly lives in the corridors of power! Austin's whole site is well worth a read. Take these snippets from his "House Diary":

"These are the times that try men`s socialism. Polls disastrous. Morale low. New chums wondering if ritual suicide might be helpful. Blairites in the ascendant with crazed proposals to force the disabled back to work (assuming the Poles leave any jobs) or proclaiming the virtues of wealth, Mandy announcing that Gordon has forgiven him, and Tony sucking up more jobs in his flibbertigibbet progress to the throne of Charlemagne II.* ...Oldie of the Year lunch. Hockney harangues me for voting for the smoking ban, announcing that it will be the death of reflection."

Even his home page is fun. And did you see the picture above? He has something I want.**


* Flibbertigibbet is one of my all-time favourite words.
** & I don't mean a house - although, yes please... (edited in: on reflection I think I mean a nice big empty room, with a polished floor. You could have a vast abode and not have that! But mainly it's the Friendly's sign, of course.)

Guy Davenport and Harold J Smith: the link

The great Modernist critic and writer Guy Davenport was also an illustrator and even a cartoonist. I knew he could draw pictures, because he illustrated several of his own books of short stories; his line drawings of Vladimir Tatlin and Stalin are memorable. But what I didn't know was that the manifestation of his skills was so much more multifarious than that. Above, his 1958 book jacket for a Western set in the Civil War.

It's lovely, isn't it? Even aside from the brave, manly-looking soldier, I mean. And his wonderful buttons. There's a whole description and explanation of it (except for the buttons) here, in the middle of a highly interesting essay on Davenport's careers - both literary and visual.

This picture reminds me, in its solitary heroism and impeccable fifties look, of an item I read last week on Amy King's blog. Amy informs us - with a link to her source - that Jay Silverheels, the American Indian actor who played Tonto, also wrote poetry! Of course he did. It was based on his childhood on the reservation, and it is apparently lost.

As disappointing as this is, it can't be as disappointing as the fact that Jay Silverheels' real name was Harold J Smith.

Heigh-ho, Silver!

modernism: what is it?

I got involved in a long conversation this morning about England's perceived failure to produce convincing Modernist works - a perception I tried to counter, first with the statement that, although Pound and Eliot were American, England was the place where they were able to do their work. But the argument persisted - not a new argument either, as it happens - that England is prone to "mimsiness" and tininess, and that its Modernism - lacking conviction in its own identity - attempts to blend with a pastoral sensibility that it simply can't fit. Further countering this with reflections on Ben Nicholson, Stanley Spencer (though I forgot his name, of course; this is the kind of thing that can happen when arguing a point over bourgeois coffee and sausages) et al, it seemed I had hit a wall, a wall of formalism. That is, a tendency of English modernist artists to become preoccupied with form over intellectual substance, which of course is in keeping with a kind of pastoral anti-intellectualism for which England remains so well-known even now.

I know: this all sounds very silly. (nb. Do, please, scroll all the way down that link... it's all a bit post-modernist & intertextual, though I can't promise any lines from "Oh My Darling Clementine".)

But the more we went into the topic, the more European Modernism looked like an extreme position people were forced into by circumstances of world war, genocide, revolution - a degree of hardness only arrived at through extremes of heat and pressure - a dependence on intellect, perhaps, when all else has failed - or desperation for a plan in the face of catastrophe - or possibly simply the need to look forward when the past has been destroyed, which the mind will compensate for by rejecting the past.

The discussion ranged to America, which I said had benefited culturally, along with England, through its ability to take in refugees from Europe, who then continued their activities here, enriching the native soil incalculably. I posited that if Europe's intellectual and artistic life had contracted during the War, those of England and America had correspondingly expanded, and that this was arguably the best thing that could have happened to America's cultural life.

In the end the position we were arrived at was that it was largely the modernists, pace Eliot and Pound, who were the right-wingers, and that one reason Modernism as a movement could never really take off here was the inbuilt English dread of any kind of orthodoxy of thought: the contrariness of a nation of eccentrics whose motto is "A man's home is his castle," and who feel inclined to laugh at anything that takes itself too seriously. Which basically, both the Modernists and the fascists did.

(Cue image of a load of toffs in the thirties, laughing uproariously at Oswald Mosley's funny little ways and lack of a proper dinner jacket, or somesuch. And I know: in Cable Street they weren't laughing. But ultimately, did this laughter help to prevent I Was the Son of a Cable Street?)

Of course, this was morning-coffee talk and exploratory to boot: so I don't really want anyone telling me I'm anti-Modernist or whatever: I've read my Hugh Kenner and Guy Davenport with the rest. Remarking on how strange the turns this conversation had taken, we were content to leave it there in favour of more coffee and the day itself. But imagine my interest later this evening on reading a comment by the "New Formalist" poet Mark Jarman, in reply to a post about the use of the term "New Formalism" on Alfred Corn's weblog, that "the dirty secret of Modernism... was and is fascism."

Now, it is clear to me that this post of Alfred's raised some old Poetry War hackles and that - given the commenters and the disjointed nature of some of the rejoinders - there are possibly some personality issues at play here. However, as surprised as I was by the turn of my morning ruminations I was more surprised to see them said outright, like that, right there.

Is there something everyone else has figured out ages ago, except Ms Baroque? Or is this whole train of thought completely spurious? And is it really true that, as arrived at over the cafétiere this morning, we should be celebrating this particular pigheaded local obtuseness that insists on taking people down a peg or two instead of humouring all their intellectual conceits?

the red earth of Tara: a competition

I couldn't get the image I wanted; indeed, any of the images I wanted. But while we're on the subject, here's a competition for you! There will be a fabulous [sic] prize for the first person who can tell me where the phrase "gone with the wind" comes from.

(Note: All members of the Spaniel family and its tenants and employees are ineligible for this competition.)

Thinking about it, I can offer a bonus if you guess correctly the image I wanted. Note that I will ideally want you to know what's happening in the scene and what the music is doing. (Spaniels may have a go at the bonus question.)

All answers should be emailed to me, at the email address in the sidebar. I will award the prize to the first correct answer, and the bonus to the first correct guess as to the image I was looking for.

In case you don't feel like helping me celebrate my brief "Red Earth of Tara" moment, here is a nice piece of Hollywood trivia from the obituary of Gone With the Wind producer David O. Selznick in the New York Times, June 23, 1965:

"Nothing in Hollywood is permanent," Mr. Selznick said in 1959 on a Hollywood set, as Tara, the mansion built for "Gone With The Wind," was being dismembered and shipped to Atlanta, Ga. "Once photographed, life here is ended. It is almost symbolic of Hollywood. Tara has no rooms inside..."

Click on the image below for more of this kind of thing.

a literary state of affairs

Going over the Baroque archives, it seems to me it's been a little while since I wrote very much about - you know - moi-même. Life in Baroque Mansions. The state of my innards. Les enfants, who are now much larger than their mother and also even more obnoxious. It seems to me that there was a picture, a moving picture if you like, a sort of word film, of our little ménage up here over the rooftops of N16, which has faded dramatically since the return to work, etc. All of a sudden I'm only writing about things like poetry, movies, culture - the things I said I was going to write about - and that can't be much fun for you...

To be honest, though, what with not being about to go blind (that I know of; I haven't written it off completely), not being about to have my guts burst open with pieces of rock flying out in all directions, not being dramatically rushed to Homerton Hospital to be force-fed unsuitable food and five different kinds of antibiotics, and even being over the three-month-long London Cold I suffered from for about - well, three months - the Baroque health has become a rather mediocre affair. I feel a bit tired, is all.

On the bright side, though, I've had the past two two days off in bed, queasy and dizzy (and Sleepy and Grumpy and Droopy and Snory and Peaky), which I wonder what that's about, but whatever it was it wasn't letting me stand up very much. I can't put all the blame on the cheesecake I ate last week - but it is true that I have been too readily reaching for the full-fat products, and my system just isn't coping with them the way it used to. But that's hardly exciting, is it. Let me refresh your attention around the fact that white wine makes an excellent olive oil substitute when cooking things like chicken and white fish.

However, I was severely let down even by my own gluttony, one night last week: just before bed I deliberately tempted fate by eating half an English muffin with toasted chèvre on it, and not one nightmare did I have. I could even say I slept like a lamb.

Anyway, les enfants are mainly residual chez ses père, so those kinds of amusing calamity are much rarer here than they used to be: the fights, the withering sarcasm, the loud music at 1am... The Baby Mummy, whose anti-domesticated antics were so rich and amusing last summer, has long since departed for Other Squats and her baby been scooped up by its grandmama (who is younger than me, but then you can technically be a grandma at 29 so that's not saying much). Briefly reminded of her lately when someone remarked about the acrylic paints on my pillowcases, I could only sigh a nostalgic sigh. Ah for those lost days! Even la petite Mlle B is big, glamorous and surly now, and I do count myself lucky she hasn't yet discovered the joys of paint.

In fact, readers, it has been borne in on me lately that what I am in is a Transitional Phase. No amount of sounding like a part of a sentence can make that any more fun. It means that the old life - upon which, let's face it, so many of the Baroque japes were founded - is now gone, gone with the wind, like the red earth of Tara, while the new one, upon which one hopes to base new japes, is not yet happening. But it will be a sort of middle-aged one, empty-nested and pre-menopausal no doubt, teaching one new kinds of humility and tolerance (stop it, there in the back!), with grown-up sorts of japes, like maybe boiler problems... unless one of my own kids decides to duplicate the Baby-mummy stunt, in which case we will be more like Rapunzel, with me as the wicked king. Will that be as entertaining to read about?

I only go on about this because people have told me they enjoyed reading about our little life, and I've noticed there's not so much of it to read about these days. Kids do grow. The Urban Warrior is less than a year younger than I was when I came to London and embarked on this whole affair, and he lives at his dad's, often with his girlfriend whom I haven't even given a name yet (I mean, she does have one, but it is a Real One, not a Baroque Mansions one), and I have no idea what their japes are, so there is scant material there. The Tall Blond Rock God has gone very quiet indeed; on a recent cinema trip he did tell me about an internet hoaxer called John Titor, who said he was a traveller from the year 2036 or something, but when I googled the fellow, not one of his predictions had come true - so that was a damp squib. Mlle B says she hates having her friends (aka "the girls", upon whom I did dote) sleep over here now, so I never see them any more either. It's all very boring, for which I apologise.

Of course there have been other things going on, as those of you who really know me will know, but not all of these are amusing. Some of them have been distinctly unamusing, such as the fallout from the death of the Baroque dad, various other bits, and the Family Fight to End All Family Fights, which happened on the Thursday before Christmas: that made the Mills-McCartney divorce look like a Von Trapp Family picnic, and has only just begun to settle down. And there's more! Life does go on, bless its little socks of poly-cotton, but it isn't all bloggable. Sometimes it is a terrible waste of one-liners, but that's just the way it is.

I've had a twitch in my right eye for the past week. It started as a searing pain as I arrived at work one morning, like there was a monster's eyelash caught in there, but nothing was ever found - perhaps it was Nessie's eyelash - and then it dwindled to this twitch. A sure sign that I'm tired. And boring.

I haven't even seen my best friend, the high-powered Ms Rational Self-Determinism, since well before Christmas, she has become so high-powered - indeed, horse-powered - she's bought a car, and a cottage in the country, and another dog, and I think a small snake, and all manner of things that Ms B can never, ever hope to keep up with, unless I stop writing this blog and start writing some sort of chick-lit for grandmothers.

We really are reduced to the literary life.

Which reminds me, I have about five projects on the go, and haven't touched them all weekend or over these two sick days, I've been so out of it. In fact, I've largely been asleep. I've just made some coffee - at this hour! - just to try and wake myself up for the evening, so I can go back to work tomorrow, so I may as well try and do a little something, n'est-ce pas? Maybe work on my Secret Essay, which has been percolating in the background.

And you know what, I did write a poem the other day that I like - I like it quite a bit, I think - so I'm feeling pretty good about that. I was working on it while I was having Chapter Twelve of the FFEAFFs on the phone with the Urban Warrior, which I know would not impress him, but rather pleased me. And there was a depressing one last month about a cuckoo clock, and one about some plastic horses. I can't remember the last time I sent any poems out, I should get on it.

But it is nearly spring - the sunsets are getting nice again over our balcony, and I had the door open the other day. And the book will be coming outm, and there will be some sort of party, and before that there will be other people's book and parties, and in short it's not as if there's nothing to do.

And after all that, as it happens, Mlle B is on her way over for the next two evenings, so there will be rice cooked and Famous Pork Chops reheated (the ones that made me feel so utterly sick yesterday, but they're fine, it was me - & I'm not going to eat) and laundry to do and the bath to fight over and the breadcrumbs to sweep up, unless I can avoid it. You see we're still a hub!

Evans to Betsey

As I wrote the other day, I'm taking part in an evening of poetry tonight, in which hordes of poets and their poetry audience are taking over the Betsey Trotwood pub in Farringdon. The event is organised by Roddy Lumsden; featured readers are him, John Stammers and US poet Dave Lucas, with Amy Key and Ahren Warner. (Not sure what that "with" means; guess we'll find out!)

What Roddy is kindly billing as "quality" floorspots will fill the gaps, from Inua Ellams, Tamsin Kendrick, Simon Barraclough, Yours Truly, and more...

The main bar is open 6.30-11, just for the event. Readings will be from 7.15pm sharp - 10pm, with plenty of breaks for chat and drinks. I'll be reading not much, as you can see, but it will be something from the book and something newer than that. And I've had my hair done!

When: TODAY!
Where: the Betsey Trotwood
56 Farringdon Road

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arcana, canis and the arse

By the way, lest we think the debate over the corrupting democratisation of the blogosphere and its hordes of uneducated oik denizens has gone away, here's a fun snippet:

"Don Paterson 'fucking hates blogs' - in case you were interested..."

Now, why is that? (It strikes me that George Szirtes, for example, doesn't.)

I bet Andy Croft has an idea...

Sorry. I've given you homework. Both poets' essays are really well worth reading, though, and Croft in the New Statesman will raise a laugh. He did in me, anyway. Just what you need on a rainy Sunday.

Sunday at the Betsey

I did a Google image search on "Lumsden & Stammers." This is not them.

A one-off poetry event featuring John Stammers, Roddy Lumsden and US poet Dave Lucas, with Amy Key and Ahren Warner and quality floorspots from Katy Evans-Bush, Inua Ellams, Tamsin Kendrick and Simon Barraclough and more.

The main bar is open 6.30-11 just for the event - readings will be from 7.15pm sharp - 10pm, with plenty of breaks for chat and drinks.

The pub is opening just for this event, so it should be a blast! (I mean, not really. You know what I mean. I'm so limited by my lingo... I mean it will be better than when you have to push past hordes of drunken City types.) Come along if you can. Yay!

This Sunday, 16 March
at the Betsey Trotwood pub
56 Farringdon Road

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us and the dead; or, an entire world in your pocket; or, don't let a mobile phone ruin your movie

Well done the Guardian, for their series on Great Twentieth Century Poets: starting tomorrow they will be including free booklets from the likes of Eliot, Plath, etc, with our morning papers. It would have been nice for the list to be a little less obvious than "Eliot, Larkin, Plath" - maybe "Stevens, Auden, Bishop," or even "MacNeice, Bunting, Stevie Smith" - but it feels churlish to complain.

The series was heralded on Saturday with a plea from Sean O'Brien for the common culture we're losing to the Big Brother generation:

"What saddens me is that, when my friends' daughter reads Eliot, material that had remained until recently common property among educated people - for example, biblical allusion - is a closed book to her, a difficulty that seems to offer her attention no reward. She is by no means alone.

"There are many for whom this problem seems trivial. The word 'relevance' looms - that contemporary fetish, so often brandished to mitigate ignorance and justify a failure of curiosity. I would argue that my friends' daughter and many young people like her suffer a loss of liberty when the past is in effect closed down and the present becomes the measure of all things. Such young people have, in effect, no history, and this being so, their own significance is diminished. The problem is not whether Shakespeare or the Bible or TS Eliot is 'relevant' to them, but whether they can see themselves as part of a continuum, a community extending across history."

Of course, this is precisely what we are losing. I know many even quite well-educated people who have little frame of reference outside the right-now: in the arts, particularly, this becomes scary. We will lose access (talk about 'accessability'!) to the roots of our own culture.

It has been pointed out to me in relation to this that "there's so much more present than there used to be," meaning the good old Information Highway (do we still say that?). My friend is an avid reader of novels, blogs, websites, the news, etc. He's no slouch. And he doesn't get the notion that we're losing anything by not getting the past.

Meanwhile, Information Highway firmly in mind, the Boston Globe takes another slant on the same problem, in an article about the forgotten virtues of plain old boredom (as in, what did you used to do when you were stuck in a traffic jam on the plain old Interstate Highway?):

"Marcel Proust describes his protagonist, Marcel, dunking a madeleine cookie into his teacup.

"'Dispirited after a dreary day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake', Proust wrote. 'And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory . . . I had ceased now to feel mediocre, contingent, mortal'.

"Marcel's senses are recalibrated, his experiences deepened, and the very nature of memory begins to reveal itself. But it is only through the strenuous process of clearing his mind and concentrating that his thoughts begin to unfurl completely, immersing him in memory. Had Marcel been holding a silver clamshell phone in his hand instead of the delicately scalloped cookie, perhaps he could have quieted the boredom with a quick game of cellphone Tetris. And had Proust come of age with an iPhone in his hand and the expectation that his entire world fit in his pocket, he may never have written his grandiose novel."

What seems apparent to me is that many people, even in the creative professions - where, let's face it, one might hope to find elastic, intuitive minds - are lacking the ability to make connections - to see something as being "relevant" in the light of something else - to contextualise, in short. Because they've forgotten that we're only a part of the picture. And, with so lilttle white space around them, they've lost the ability to go inside themselves and find their own context.

Anyway, roll on this Guardian series, though it would be nice to see it backed up with recommendations of a few currently-living poets... you know: the canon of tomorrow...

selling poetry like it's something people want

Great news for Salt Publishing - who, as regular readers know, is going to publish my first poetry collection, Me and the Dead, this summer. They have just won the Neilsen Innovation of the Year award in the Independent Publishing Awards. According to Director Chris Hamilton-Emery, they are "not quite sober yet."

According to the Independent Publishers' Guild, Salt has won this award "for finding new ways to increase sales of its poetry and short stories despite tough market conditions, through online marketing, partnerships and brand development. 'Salt is bucking the trend in poetry by growing its sales'," says the IPG. "'Its innovation in lots of small ways adds up to a major achievement'."

The awards were set up by the IPG in association with The Bookseller and London Book Fair.

With its sales on the increase, improved distribution and a new US Sales and Marketing Director, Salt is showing the industry that poetry can sell. You just have to believe people want it.

Hurrah! May their innovation continue and their revenues increase.

it's a good thing poetry makes nothing happen

In the Telegraph:

"The Board of Deputies of British Jews is considering making a complaint to the police over a newspaper interview with the poet Tom Paulin in which he is reported as saying that American-born settlers in Israel should be shot dead.

Paulin, who appears regularly on the panel of the BBC2 arts programme Newsnight Review (formerly Late Review), allegedly made the comment in an interview with the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram.

The interviewer wrote that Paulin, a consistent critic of Israeli conduct towards the Palestinians, clearly abhorred 'Brooklyn-born' Jewish settlers. Paulin, a lecturer at Hertford College, Oxford, was then quoted as saying: 'They should be shot dead.

'I think they are Nazis, racists, I feel nothing but hatred for them'."

Phew!

"Earlier in the interview, he was quoted as saying: "I never believed that Israel had the right to exist at all'."

ten writery bits

Just to clear it up: that says "writery," not "wittery." But it could as well be either, I agree. Anyway, I never even left the house yesterday, and I did get rather a lot done.

1. Have finally finished transcribing, editing, typing poetry quotes into, fleshing out, etc, a long interview I thought I would never finish, with (the very patient) Ruth Fainlight. The editor in question is calling it "an important document" - which it had better be! It's taken long enough to see it to fruition. In all modesty I can say I think it is a jolly entertaining read, but that isn't really modesty, is it. Though it was mainly Ruth who was so entertaining. There will be champers all round in Baroque Mansions when it finally sees the light of day.

2. Spent the afternoon - after that - gathering piles of paper from all around my house and putting things in folders, the bin, etc, and propping the folders up with two bookends I found in the bins at the end of the building. They're cute: they look like little books. My new study area looks very cosy. Now, if only I could get that blasted G4 working again, that the hard drive blew out! (There seems to be a website where I can buy a hard drive for about £35, and put it in myself. I'm sure I can do that. I just hope it's the hard drive that's the problem. Any geeks out there who care to talk me through it?)

3. But where do you buy light bulbs for a lava lamp from? (Answer: not Morrisons.)

4. Have finished reading - ta da! - Jane Holland's wonderful new unpublished manuscript, Camper Van Blues. If she can brag all the time I can certainly brag about her. Right, Jane? It's marvellous. I'll say no more. The cheque, is it in the post?

5. Have received my copy of the new issue (40) of Magma magazine, guest-edited by the indefatigable Roddy Lumsden, which launches tonight at the Troubadour in Earls Court. The issue contains - as Rob MacKenzie has already posted* - two poems by him, plus a review by him and a review by me. (My poems got lost in the ether, apparently blown away by a cruel wind of fate.) My review was a very hard one to write, and I hope very much that it's all right. Phew. I've had to say I didn't think a book was all that it should be, and trust me: it is just as hard for me as for the author of the book! I've sweated blood.**

6. I'm reading Katia Kapovich's second collection, Cossacks and Bandits, and enjoying it. It's fresh. I'll be reviewing it in Poetry London, with other titles, so that's all I'll say for now.

7. I bought five folders at the weekend. They now have things in them, hurrah! That's five piles of crap that used to live under the (beautiful, Ercol: God how I love it) coffee table.

8. I also had the great luck to read (again) a certain unpublished play in draft form, for comments. More anon. It is ineffably beautiful, and weepingly funny, and has Oscar Wilde in it, and I feel certain it will see the light of day.

9. Plus there is another book, a non-literary one, I am reading for a friend, and it is also a charming read, but golly, all this takes time. I have till Thursday on this one. More anon. They already have a publishers contract.

10. Finished my lunch now. Have you noticed how most of my writing life these days seems to consist of reading? I know.


* Though this post is nothing at all like Rob's blog, it was partly inspired by it, as I realise I am always wittering on about other things, anod not about my writing. But then, most of this stuff is not my writing. Rob is going to read all of Paradise Lost in a month, as a result of reading Claire Tomalin's article in Saturday's Guardian. (It really was rather thrilling.) And that's the difference: Rob read it and decided to read Milton. I read it, reminisced about what Milton I have read, and then tried to think if I could somehow get a blog post out of it in, say, under 15 minutes. In mitigation, I do have Paradise Lost on my iPod.

** Ew!! Not like in La Reine Margot, thank Jesus.

the day Wallace Stevens punched out Ernest Hemingway

It happened in Key West, Florida: "sort of pleasant like the cholera," (sez Hems).

Stevens, the mild-mannered and canny insurance-man-stroke-seminal-Modernist (adjunct anecdote: Stevens to someone from his publishers, who had haplessly called him at the office to sort some urgent piece of business: "What are you doing calling me here? I told you never to call me on this number!"), turfs up at a party in Key West. Stevens says: "By God, I wish I had that Hemingway here now, I'd knock him out with a single punch!"

Hemingway's sister is at the party, and forcefully tries to convince Stevens, through her tears, what a sap her brother is - he's no man, etc. Hemingway, drinking quietly at home,is sent for, and meets the very drunk Stevens coming out of the party into the rain. Stevens swings the promised punch, but misses, and Hemingway punches Stevens three times, "and I knocked all of him down several times and gave him a good beating." Into a puddle, apparently.

Someone suggests that Hemingway take off his glasses: whereupon - according to Hemingway's account in a letter - "Mr. Stevens hit me flush on the jaw with his Sunday punch bam like that. And this is very funny. Broke his hand in two places. Didn't harm my jaw at all and so put him down again and then fixed him good so he was in his room for five days with a nurse and Dr. working on him."

This happened in 1935: Hemingway was 36, Stevens was 56. you have to wonder whether the weekday punch would've floored Hems.

in which I can't lift a kettle, or move my upper right arm forward, and the shooting pains go all the way through my neck, shoulder, elbow and hand

repetitive strain injury
remedial main penury
regressive pain after tea
impressive slain manatee
repressive grain misery
re: pets you've had spayed recently
reptilian stain industry
competitive train allergy
collectively staid orgy
rat-a-tat-tat sprayin' in your tree
repetitive strain injury
repetitive Australian immunity
repetitive stay no relieve
recititive stage ill-at-ease
Castilian sprain energy
reductive brain synergy
ridiculous complain industry
unable-to-lift-the-kettle-silly-me
rebarbative complainant jury
attempted restraint Don Giovanni
retentive neck indignity
suspended bag weight, you see
you-bet-it-is stray ninja, see
tentative strange in a dream
sensitive maid hypocrisy
repetitive strain injury
hesitant torn muscle slave
types with one hand analgese
repetitive dream industry
repetitive blain Nurofen
repetive repetitive indignity
repetitive groin analgesia
restive hand on the mouse
"living with words," don't you see
repetitive pain pain pain foundry
dull aches and a sudden ripping feeling
and here I am typing idiocy
repetitive deadline Saturday
delicatessen no laptop carry
redemptive recycling no carry
competitive Ted Hughes no carry
attempted arm-sling black coffee
repetitive drain idiocy idiocy

les is more (baroque)

Les Murray, Australia's largest and most cantankerous poet and one of my favourites, is in a bit of a kerfuffle. Asked to write a blurb for someone, he replied to the publisher that he was tired of being asked to provide free services, and proposed a deal wherein if the publisher would look at a certain manuscript by Mrs Murray, he would gladly write the blurb.

The publisher has taken umbrage, and there have been words.

The Age, in Australia, reports:

"Contacted yesterday, Murray dismissed the letter as 'a joke' and said his intention was to say no to the publisher, 'but I said it in a baroque way'. Told it did not read like a joke, he replied: "It reads like, 'Piss off,' actually.

For 40 years, he said, 'people have been preying on me for free services and this is only a desire to stir trouble'.

Anyway, he said: 'Blurbs are nonsense — they're all hyperbole and hype'."

Of course, I hate to have to point out that I myself have recently been in the ignominious position of approaching people for blurbs - or "endorsements" - and it is a hideous, gruelling business. All you can do is be businesslike about it. I feel for the poor sod whose publisher was trying to get the blurb from Murray, but at least he wasn't asking directly...

But you know, I have heard Les Murray read, and he was wonderful. He's very charismatic and a good speaker. I love his work. He's made his career out of more of a plain-speaking thing, the humble guy (with a chip on his shoulder) and all that, but maybe he's turning more baroque as he gets older. Maybe I should write to him, one baroque to another, and try my luck. I just need to think of some sort of proposal...

Hat tip to Mark Granier for the story...

nb: I am in love with that picture. Isn't it great?