Another Review at Sabotage

I have another review of two very interesting pamphlets on the Sabotage website.

The review discusses Cara Brennan's Destroyed Dresses (2012) and Michael Stewart's Couples (2013). Both are from Valley Press and well worth a read.

Never Apologise.

A seminar room in a college or university somewhere in the UK. The students, aspiring journalists, have been set the task of writing a piece for the cultural pages. Just to make things more of a challenge, they've been asked to write about something they know all of their readers will hate - poetry.

'Don't forget', the tutor says, raising an admonishing finger, 'you have to start by reminding your audience how dreadful poetry is. Poetry is dull, alienating, intellectual, inaccessible, la-di-da. Or it's effete, over-the-top. Most of it doesn't even rhyme, that is to say, it isn't actually poetry at all.'

The students tap away frantically at their laptops, getting this all down.

'But the secret to writing about it,' the tutor continues, 'is to get all of that out of the way first, which will allow you to then do your big reveal - the reading, event or festival you are writing about is actually...'

He pauses for dramatic effect. Fingers hover over keyboards. Jaws slacken in anticipation.

'QUITE GOOD!'

Image: Concordia University Magazine

Now the students look less convinced.

'No, seriously - poetry in the UK at the moment is vibrant, exciting, moving, all of that stuff. In fact, I'm not sure it ever stopped being that way. But we can't say that in print, UNLESS we start by emphasising that, in general, it is pretty awful. You will only ever convince a reader that anything to do with poetry is worth paying attention to by making clear that whatever you are taking about is very much the exception to the rule.'

A murmur goes through the class. They are almost ready to be persuaded.

'Don't believe me? Well, just take a look at just about any article on poetry in the non-specialist press, listen to any mention of poetry in broadcast media. It's common practice and what the punters expect.'

A hand goes up.

'But what about opera, Dr Hackensack? That's just as turgid and elitist as poetry, surely?'

Another hand.

'Yeah, and ballet?'

The tutor smiles the smile he reserves for questions of such naivety.

'Oh no, no. Other minority arts' - he scratches some scare quotes in the air - 'are just not in the same category. I know we're supposed to encourage critical thinking, but this really is one of those eternal laws of journalism. No editor will be able to explain it, but that's just how we do things. I look forward to reading your articles.'

**

Well, that's how it must happen. Otherwise, this journalistic reflex seems hard to explain. Is there no better way journalists can find to talk about poetry than to begin their pieces by apologising for its existence. I've read this sort of thing far too often.

And it infects poets, too. I had to turn off my radio recently when the otherwise excellent Paul Farley began his Radio 4 series The Echo Chamber by reassuring his audience that contemporary poetry really wasn't as scary as they reckoned. This apologetic and negative stance does poetry no good and is actually patronising to the audience, who don't need to be told what they feel about anything. Poetry needs to present itself on its own terms and let the audience make up its own mind - and journalists are not helping that process by prefacing everything they say about poetry with negative stereotypes.

Review of 'The Debris Field' at Sabotage Reviews

My review of 'The Debris Field' by Simon Barraclough, Isobel Dixon and Chris McCabe has just been published at Sabotage Reviews. I'm looking forward to writing some more for this excellent website in the near future.

Poetry = No Rules

National Poetry Competition season has been upon us. Nick Laird, one of the judges - and an admirable poet himself - has added to what must now, I think, be considered a sub-genre of poetry crit: the 'how not to do it' guide.

These sorts of interventions have something of a tradition, one of the most famous being Ezra Pound's 1913 essay 'A Few Don'ts by an Imagist'. There are even poems by disgruntled competition judges and editors dedicated to the things you should never do if you want to get your work published, for example by Todd Swift, Michael Mackmin of The Rialto, and Fleur Adcock. I also regularly come across blogposts with lists of 'what not to dos' by established authors.

When this advice relates to how to deal with editors and others who have a say over whether your work gets published, much of it seems to be sound. I'd certainly agree that making demands or even threats is a bad way to go. It's just plain rude, for a start.

But then there is the advice about how the poetry itself should be. Don't use commas at the end of lines. Don't use cliché. Never repeat a word in same poem. Never repeat a significant word within a collection or sequence of poems. Never write 'shards'. Never write 'gossamer'. Never use a rhyming dictionary. Write simply. Only use everyday language. Use footnotes if you are making obscure references. Never make obscure references. Never use adjectives. Never use more than one adjective in the same line. Never use semi-colons. Never use dashes. Never ask questions in poems...

All of these pieces of advice (and there are plenty more where those came from) are things I have read in guides to poetry writing or heard repeated by fellow poets, in the latter case quite often with the (frankly infuriating) rider that 'my poetry tutor said...'

Well, it's all guff. Total and utter guff. I have read excellent contemporary poems that do all of those forbidden things (although not usually all at the same time) and bravely fail to follow the accepted wisdom. No doubt such wisdom is helpful in some ways, if only to make us question what we are doing and pull us up when we are writing lazily, but there also comes a point where we have to have the courage of our convictions and say, 'I know that isn't supposed to work - but it does.'

Another problem with the don't-ers, is that they limit poetry. Pound was pushing an aesthetic agenda, and this is true of any maker of prohibitions in art. On some level, they want poetry in general to be like the kind of thing they like. But isn't that a strange thing to wish for? Would it make sense for someone to say, 'music should be like this, and only like this', when music as an art form is so immensely diverse? That 'a painting can be like this and only like this'? Then why do so for poetry?

I'm more than happy for there to be poetry I don't like, since nobody yet has forced me to keep reading it, and I can see when I am reading something I don't care for how I would do it differently. But to suggest that there is a way to 'get it right' turns poetry into something akin to a sport, like diving or synchronised swimming, where the reproduction of an ideal set of moves is what counts, not the testing of the boundaries.

So let's have an end to these supposed rules of poetry. They are snake oil. And the excellent winner of this year's National Poetry Competition is proof of that, since it marvellously contravenes one of my own personal (and vehemently espoused) don'ts - 'don't write poems about World War One'.

Who'd a thunk it?

Image: Thunk

A quick mention for Thunk, a South West-based magazine for fiction, journalism and poetry that is about to launch its first issue. I will be in Issue 2, scheduled for June, but in the meantime they have published one of my poems on their website. For those who know me, the central figure in this poem is an amalgam of various characters I've worked with over the years, not any particular individual - and the joke is really on the narrator of this tale, not its subject.

Poem at 'Antiphon'

I'm delighted to have a poem in Issue 6 of the excellent on-line poetry journal Antiphon.

Moving house last summer involved the disassembly and reassembly of a greenhouse - a process we had already been through once when we had bought it second hand and transported it in pieces from the outskirts of Birmingham. On both occasions, it was an extremely long-winded and fiddly process, but - as poets probably say too often - at least I got a poem out of it.

Photo: D. Clarke

In keeping with their name (antiphony is when a song features a call and response between the singer and the choir or audience), the editors are keen for readers to comment on the published poems and tell them about their favourites. Click here for more information. I know that Orbis have been doing this very successfully in print for a number of years, and it seems only logical that on-line magazines should provide a forum for this kind of discussion. So, why not get in touch if you have enjoyed the work?

There is Nothing in the Garden

I've had the above image up on the blog for a few days, and I'm pleased to see it has been getting plenty of traffic. A busy week has meant that I haven't been able to write anything about it until now, but this is just to fill in some background.
Chaucer Cameron is a member of Poetry Factory, a workshop group and occasional poetry performance collective based in Cheltenham. It's a cliché to talk about poetry being 'haunting', but Chaucer's work really is that - her poems stick in the mind in ways that other people's just don't.
Working together with photographer Helen Dewbery, Chaucer has now produced a film for the forthcoming Cheltenham Poetry Festival. There is Nothing in the Garden explores themes of loss, alienation, and transformation, using maternal and ecological metaphors. Its aim is to explore the possibilities of transforming loss into movement and combines both still and moving images with lyric and narrative poetry. The film travels across a diversity of  landscapes, sometimes stopping in a quiet country garden, sometimes trawling through the remains of a devastated Japanese city after an earthquake, where things are not quite what they appear to be.
This is an ambitious project, and I am looking forward to seeing the end result. Full details are above, and you can click on the image to go to the associated blog.

A Loved-Up Top 10

Love makes poets of us all, but love poetry isn't all about hearts and flowers. Here's a selection of poetry for Valentines Day that provides ten very individual views of love's agony and delight.

1. 'Flowers' by Wendy Cope

This little poem packs a real punch. The line 'Now I can only smile' so subtly suggests physical loss, but love and memory triumph over it.

2. 'Romantic Moment' by Tony Hoagland

Hilarious and oddly moving. Hoagland is one of the best American poets currently working, if you ask me. There's a video of him reading the poem here. (NB The version of this poem that appeared in Hoagland's collection Unincorporated Persons of the Honda Dynasty has a variant and, to my mind, better ending. But I'll leave you to search that out yourselves).

3. 'The Shipwright's Love Song' by Jo Bell

A spine-tingling performance here from Jo Bell, the UK's Canal Laureate, and a beautiful extended metaphor for the thrill of new passion.

4. 'A Subaltern's Love Song' by John Betjeman

This ought to be doggerel, but Betjemen's handling of the rhyme and metre is so masterly, while at the same time apparently so uncontrived. As you can hear from the audience reaction on this great recording from The Poetry Archive, it's a real crowd-pleaser. I love the way the poem manages to combine breathless, boyish infatuation with hints of sexual frisson, for instance in that 'warm-handled racket [...] back in its press.'

5. 'Rubbish at Adultery' by Sophie Hannah

Maybe not such a great poem for Valentine's Day, but a reminder that, if you are going to cheat on your beloved, you might as well enjoy it. I've seen Sophie Hannah read this live - a real treat.

6. 'An Arab Love Song' by Francis Thompson

Swooning and exotic. A great suggestion for this list from Jennifer Farley.

7. 'The Garret' by Ezra Pound

Pound's work is infamously difficult and cerebral, but this poem is not a typical one. A defiant, plain-spoken little lyric that captures the 'us against the world' feeling of new love.

8. 'Epithalamion' by Dannie Abse

An epithalamion is a song or poem for a wedding, but the lovers in this poem make their own church and their own religion.

9. 'Sleeping Hermaphrodite' by John McCullough (scroll down to p. 11 of this sample of McCullough's first collection, The Frost Fairs)

This is so clever, sexy and seductive. McCullough's poem gives voice to a sexual outsider, empowering a figure who would otherwise be the object of a voyeuristic gaze. Could this poem be more perfect?

10. Lullaby by W. H. Auden

If Pound's lovers in 'The Garret' are defiant, Auden's couple are embattled by history and the morality of their times. And the fidelity of the lovers themselves is also in question. Nevertheless, love, like the lover's innocent sleep, provides some protection, some hope - if only temporarily.

Making It

There's been a considerable brouhaha in poetry cyberspace of late about a case of plagiarism relating to a young poet, a poetry competition and now - it transpires - some prestigious magazines. I'm not going to go into the details here, as that ground is well covered elsewhere.

My first reaction to the story was one of puzzlement and mild disbelief. Why would anyone do that? However, on reflection, it seems almost inevitable that this should happen at some point. I can have no insight into the psychology of this individual case. And yet it seems to me that any system that seeks to recognise intellectual or creative merit is bound to lead to unfair practice at some point.

In education, demonstrating learning and intellectual ability is the key to getting hold of a certificate that will help you to get a better job and have a better life, in the material sense at least. That isn't the only thing education is about, but it can't be ignored. When students mis-use the work of others, they can often feel like they deserve that qualification and that better life, but find themselves disadvantaged by pressures of all kinds: not least of time and money in these days of high fees and working low-paid jobs to make ends meet. Plagiarism in an academic context is often a symptom of desperation, not a sign of deviousness.

In the world of poetry, with lots of hopefuls and limited exposure to be shared around, a clear system has developed that provides recognition to some, and little or none to others. There are plenty of guides to this sort of thing, and young poets are regularly counselled to try to win competitions and get published in the right sort of journal. If you are looking to get a collection published, the web pages of the small presses will soon tell you that you need to be able to provide this kind of evidence before they will consider your work. That makes sense to them, as it will at least weed out a few of the many submissions they will in any case receive. As a whole, this system is not planned by anyone, but it all amounts to a fairly coherent set of mechanisms that can leave young people feeling that it's difficult to 'make it', as the co-editor of the Salt Book of Younger Poets, Eloise Stonborough, recently complained.

Need this be so? Not necessarily. The mechanisms of selection in different areas of intellectual or creative activity vary from culture to culture. For example, over the last few years, German politics has experienced a series of revelations about high-level politicians who have been caught plagiarising their doctoral theses. This problem wouldn't occur in the UK, where there is no expectation at all that a politician will have a PhD. In Germany, many young politicians making their career try to study for a doctorate on the side and find that they just haven't the time - the temptation to plagiarise is clearly significant.

In poetry, we certainly need some sort of filter that brings some to prominence. That filter is as much a service to readers as to anyone else, as they would easily get lost in the mass of poetry books and magazines produced every year. There may be other ways of providing that filter that are less likely to produce the feelings Stonborough expresses. Nevertheless, we will have to accept that, whatever system we have in place, it's bound to produce aberrant behaviour among a small minority for whom 'making it' sadly becomes an end in itself.

Cheltenham Poetry Festival Programme Announced

Rejoice, poetry-lovers of Cheltenham and environs! The programme for the Cheltenham Poetry Festival 2013 has been published and tickets are on sale now!

(Source: Cheltenham Poetry Festival)

I haven't yet had a chance to really look at the detail of all of the events, which this year cover two weekends and the whole of the intervening week (20-28 April 2013), but I've already spotted some must-see gigs, including the launch of a collection by local hero Mikki Byrne, and readings from the always surprising Bobby Parker and young poet-of-the-moment Liz Berry. Alongside slams and themed readings, there's a roster of established names (Fiona Sampson, Bernard O'Donaghue, Elaine Feinstein, Jeremy Reed, Christopher Reed). It will also be good to catch up with Maria and Jonathan Taylor and Nichola Deane.

With the extension of the festival from one weekend to nine days, and with such a packed and high-quality programme, it feels like Cheltenham is moving into the poetry festival big league - a major achievement for such a young festival. If enough of us support it (and why wouldn't you?), it will be here to stay.