I’ve never been very good at sport. I think I’ve mentioned playing for the village cricket team as a twenty-something and while I could bowl a bit, I was essentially there as a warm body to make up the numbers. I also played rugby for a while as a teen, but I had the same sort of impact there, and while in the under 16 team was often farmed out to the under 18s as cannon fodder/to make up the 15 needed. That said, the U-18s had their cigarettes brought to them instead of half term oranges, and had a better time in the clubhouse afterwards, so there was that. We will gloss over the time I cycled home full of Guinness and cider and fell off my bike on a muddy path, waking up with said bike on top of me.
However, I think the pinnacle of my ability to make up the numbers was one evening while sitting in my local pub and was press-ganged into joining the pub darts team into playing—again, I have feeling I’ve mentioned this, but hey ho. We went to Alysham’s Black Swan. I have no idea how the game went, or how I played, and hadn’t thought of it for a while, but that night popped straight into my head this weekend after reading this poem by the wonderful Oliver Comins over at the excellent Wild Court.
It’s been what can only been described as an absolute kick-bollock-scramble at work of late (no, there are no other phrases that work. I’ve tried them all), and that has left me struggling to keep up with reading journals, emails, books, road signs…anything really. And that starts to build up a pressure, a feeling that I’m not reading enough, not being engaged enough. That is likely entirely wrong, and very much a pressure of my own making, but it’s there and if I stop I worry I may never start again.
That won’t happen, but it can sometimes feel over-whelming trying to keep up with the journals that arrive, the books to review, the books I’ve bought and want to read, the music to listen to, the films and programmes to watch, the articles to consume…
Every new thing to read/listen to, watch, probably smell, maybe even touch that arrives can feel like email at work does, sometimes. Each one responded to begets another one and so on and so forth. Each journal sends me off to explore new poets, work by poets I know already, but may to have read, new albums, new shows, etc…
It’s all grist to the imaginative mill, but when I caught myself this week signing up to another newsletter I had to pause and wonder if it will ever be read, or will it be like the many bookmarked articles, the emails sat in my inbox addressed to myself with the caption “TO READ”, etc and all sit in the realm of potential knowledge/inspiration or even just fun.
I’ve flung the darts, but they’ve not made it to the board yet. Actually, that does sound a lot like the way I play darts.
Christ, what a load of first world problem-esque grumbling. Sorry, you should have stopped at the end of the second paragraph.
Now, let’s have a look at what you could have won…
Let’s be more positive. I’ve spent some of this weekend catching up on podcasts and the like, and today involved listening to a recent episode of The Verb about first drafts, and was particularly down to what one of the guests said about their work. Polly Paulusma is a singer-songwriter and a folk historian, and she was discussing her work being based on the accumulated knowledge of her work studying folk songs and how all artists are the sum of the things they have read, conversations they’ve had, etc. This is clearly not a new thought, but it fits nearly with some of the gibbering above.
And, of course, not having heard of her work before, now I want to go and listen to that. Damn it.
Despite the manicness of this week, it was listening to another podcast—this time it was Poetry Planet, the Shane McRae episode that got me thinking about a new draft. I was listening to it as I walked along Leather Lane towards the station on Wednesday evening. Something about Shane’s poems got me thinking about the big and the numinous, and an idea entered my head. I scribbled it down as soon as I got on the train. It already feels way worse than it did when it was just in my head, but perhaps that is the way of all drafts.
This week’s poem has appeared at exactly the right time for me. It feels like it links to stuff I’ve said above about overload – that feeling of doom-scrolling. The mention of Caravaggio triggers something I noted down ages ago based on a tweet I saw by the journalist and broadcaster Laura Barton in 2017 about Caravaggio never painting a candle. Not sure if that is a true fact, but I like the idea. One day I hope it makes its way into a poem. It may be enough that it’s made its way here.
I won’t say more about the poem as Jo’s book is one I’m reviewing at present
Chiaroscuro
In the fractured dark we’re all doomscrolling
before dawn, lit up like Caravaggios:
arms stretched across burning beds,
brows trenched like Judith surveying the head
of Holofernes caught against her bright blade,
baffling our morning brains with fresh dread.
In the pale light of refrigerator dawn
we stroke our kettles, wake our computers,
watch the same horrors on bigger screens.
Tag yourself: Salome looking away,
the unflappable crone, the white-shouldered
executioner with pity in his lips,
the head of the prophet on the platter
lit like pearl, all played out, prophecies stopped.
Jo Bratten, from Climacteric, Fly On The Wall Press. First published at One Hand Clapping
Bonus poem by Nicholas McGaughey via the good folks at The Friday Poem just because of good timing—my beloved came home with some pictures she’d had framed this week. The framer was a local man with a dog called Ralph.
NB this link proves my point. Hadn’t heard of Nicholas before and now I have to find more. These emails and sites are a fucking menace for falling down rabbit holes. For example, I just know Matthew Paul’s review of Greta Stodart is going to make me have to buy her work, and I’ve not even read the review. And then there’s the other reviews too, but that’s tomorrow’s reading. Jane Routh is very good on “Hunker” as a banned poetry word by the way.
A fucking menace, I tell you…
And Finally
Something for you to play with/be inspired by is Lyre’s Dictionary Ironically, perhaps, I found out about this via the ever excellent Web Curios email by Matt Muir.
(To steal from Matt’s own site, ” Web Curios is a weekly roundup of stuff that its author – that is, me – has found interesting online over the past 7 days, and thinks worth sharing with its small readership. Web Curios has no real curatorial theme, beyond ‘stuff that its author thinks is interesting’, which may in part explain its steadfast refusal to grow beyond a very niche concern despite its preposterous longevity.“)
To quote Matt from this week’s email, “This is such a nice little toy – “Lyre’s Dictionary is a computer program that generates novel English words based on existing roots and patterns.” Refresh the page to get a new totally made-up but strangely-plausible sounding word, along with its definition; recent examples it’s thrown me include “gymnasis · (noun) the act or state of training” and the frankly brilliant “morsive (adjective) given to biting”, which latter one I am frankly going to start using at every chance I get.”
Have fun with it.
*is a phrase I’ve found myself using in emails a lot at work as a way of passing on an appreciation to someone. I have no idea whether that comes across, or where it came from, but hey ho it’s a thing now.
THE LAST WEEK IN STATS
HEALTH STATS
19K running. 13 yesterday, and a 1 of fast-ish 6k during the week.
1 day without cigarettes…really, really need to knuckle down here to help with the above
0 days since drinking.
0 sleepless nights
1 sore foot and a slightly achy knee
LIFE STATS
1 really fucking busy week
1 tumble dryer still not fixed. Everyone pray for the repairman on Thursday.
1 takeaway
15 cups of coffee
8 cups of tea
1 wife’s birthday
1 meal out for wife’s birthday
1 parents evening
2 trips in and out of London
POET STATS
1 loose ideas/articles gathered (this allows me to kid myself I am writing all the time)
0 poems finished:
1 poems worked on: Hellraiser, Caution Horses
2 submissions: New Welsh Review, The Stinging Fly
0 acceptances:
0 readings:
0 rejections:
19 poems are currently out for submission. NB some are simultaneous subs
80 Published poems
1 review finished: Tristan Moss
1 reviews started: Jo Bratten
0 reviews submitted: Tristan Moss
1 reviews to write:Sarah Hemings
Once these are done I will be review free for the first time in about a year. Imagine that. Obvs, I’ve asked for more.
1 more week that I’m not having an affair with Eva Green
* To date, not this week. Christ!!
READ/SEEN/HEARD/ETC
Read
The North #68
Zooms: None
Music
Cowboy Junkies: Ghosts, Miles From Our Home, Nomad Series Vol. 1-5, Notes Falling Slow
The Archers
Steve Hiett: Waiting In the Grass
The Verb: Playwrights, First Drafts, Centenerary
The Foxhole Companion
Seren Poetry Podcast: Rosalind Hudis
Planet Poetry: Shane McCrae
Damon & Naomi: the Wonderous World of Damon & Naomi
Dion: Wonder Where I’m Bound
Silverfish: With Scrambled Eggs
Peppermint Rainbow: Will You be Staying After Sunday
The Field Mice: Where’d You Learn Too Kiss That Way
The Cure: Wish
The Lovely Basement: St
Chelsea Carmichael: The River Doesn’t Like Strangers
Dr Feelgood: Down By the Jetty
Laura Gibson: Goners
Duke Garwood: Rogues Gospel
Beth Orton: Weather Alive
Polly Paulusma: The Pivot on which the World Turns
The Go-Betweens: Friends of Rachel Worth, Bright Yellow Bright Orange, Oceans Apart, Send Me A Lullaby
Poltergeist: Your Mind Is a Box (Let Us Fill It With Wonder)
Watched
Andor
Taskmaster
The Walking Dead – It’s finally over!!!
Borgen
Stewart Lee: Tornado
Ordered/Bought
Rebecca Farmer: A Separate Appointment
William Thompson: After Clare
New Welsh Review Subscription
Arrived
Poetry Wales
Wear The Fox Hat 
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