Stripey Spivs

(NB as is increasingly becoming a motif of these posts, I am writing this while following Chelsea Vs Arsenal and we are 1 – nil down. NNB* VAR can, at this moment in time, fuck off all the way back to where it came from. NNNB I will try to keep these interjections to a minimum. NNNNB If I self-edited you wouldn’t need to see this, but where would be the fun in that?)

* This works the same as the PS system, yeah?

Enough of this nonsense…let’s get on with it

I first started thinking about this post not long after writing the last one…probably sometime around the Tuesday when I started reading the book from which the poem below is drawn from. The poem below reminded me of sitting in my garden a few days before…just sitting on the edge of my patio and staring into space. It had been a rough day at work—there have been a few of those of late, but the future is hopefully looking brighter—and while I was contemplating my naval opportunities (basically setting off to sea and not coming back, a wasp came sidling up to me like some sort of stripey spiv. A fucking wasp, in October!! I ask you…

The sight of the wasp had me at this time of year had me worried about global warming, but also had me harking back the summer when another one of the apocrita critters had stung me on the back of the neck. I was also nervous having also been bitten on the back of my leg by an ant while sitting in the same spot a couple of weeks ago. What have I done to upset the insects of my garden? I leave them long grass to hide in, there’s plenty of fruits and the like about, stores of water, a bee hotel (slightly run down, but it’s there you ungrateful flying bastards) and still it’s not enough…

(FUCKING HELL, 2 -Nil down. I’m not doing this again.)

Where was I? Oh yes, I was reading a poem and I was reminded of the events in the last two paragraphs…What was the poem that could do such a thing, I hear you ask?

Well, it was this one by Olga Dermott-Bond

my heart

is a wasp’s nest
built slowly in secret
before you realised

i have chewed up all the love
letters I have never written
to you   here     my heart is this

small grey hollowed lightness
that no-one wants near
but now it’s too late to hide
from its papery shape

listen to it —
humming with devotion

+ + + + +
Shared with permission of the poet. Taken from Frieze. Nine Arches Press, 2023

I first came across Olga’s work a few years ago. I think it was a prize reading I saw online for The BBC Proms. I’ve checked, and it was for this  She was reading her poem, Poyekhali! (Let’s Go!)– inspired by Public Service Broadcasting’s excellent song,  ‘Gagarin‘.  We all love their Race for Space album, yeah? And, of course, as poets we will also know their musical setting of Auden’s Night Mail on their first album… (NB I found their last album less interesting, but that’s just me)…

It was enough to send me off to look for more work, and as a result I have very much enjoyed her two pamphlets to date: apple, fallen (via Against The Grain Press, reviewed by some knobhead here) and A Sky Full of Strange Specimensvia Nine Pens. Poems from both can be found in Frieze, but it’s mainly new work—which is a gift given apple, fallen was out in 2020. It’s an impressive work rate for someone that is a teacher and a mother too. I am neither and could’t manage that…Still, if you want something doing, etc…

(GET IN…TWO ALL!!!)

Of course, the other thing this poem made me think of was the wasp nest I found in our loft a few years ago. However, the most important thing is that I love the poem. The buzz of the ess sounds throughout the poem that add to the “humming with devotion”, the minimal punctuation that flows through it (for some reason it makes me think of the unbroken nature of the wasps that live in the nest).

I enjoyed the internalised nature of the unwritten letters being chewed up, or is it over as our protagonist muses on their unresolved and unrequited love.  I am intrigued as to why we have a lower case i at the start of the second stanza, but an upper case one in the line that follows. I can’t work out why that is the case, but I will get there eventually..unless you want to tell me, ODB (I do mean Olga, not the erstwhile rapper from Wu-Tang Clan)…

And more importantly, I enjoyed the rest of the collection, so I would urge you to go out and buy it. And the others too.

(NB The game is over, and we are into a different day.)
I thought of the poem again, as I opened our loft to get a suitcase out to take on a week away with the family. We went to Devon for a few days of walking, eating, collecting sea glass and rest. We achieved most of what we set out to do.

The highlight of the week (aside from all of the above) was the arrival of the final proofs of Collecting The Data. Sheila and Gerry have been working very hard of late, not just on my book, but seemingly every other book going into print this year. After a few rounds of back and forth on the text was settled on, which just left the small matter of the cover. NB I must point out that this all happened over the course of a couple of days and that it would appear that neither Sheila or Gerry sleep (Luckily, or perhaps unluckily for me this was to be a week filled with bouts of insomnia. However, they were less than productive).

When I first got the news about the book (and it was 1 month short of 4 years later when the cover arrived) I was hoping that my dear friend John Rance would be able to do the cover for me, but 2 things conspired to make that not possible. Firstly, Gerry does all the covers for Red Squirrel books —and you can’t (and wouldn’t want to) argue with that as a policy. Secondly, even if you wanted to and could successfully argue with that policy, John 100% ducked the opportunity by dying earlier in the year. The selfish bastard.

Data is a hard thing to represent visually without lapsing into something like a scene from The Matrix (I think, I’ve never finished part 1), and it’s something I struggle with at work on a daily basis, so we ended up with something that doesn’t try to do that. I’ll save the reveal, but we’ve ended up with something I love. I mean I have a fucking book with my name on the front and, in theory, someone that isn’t my mum will buy a copy

I can’t wait to receive my printed copies. Will I be able to resist an un-boxing video? Have I planned an outfit for it?

And now, thoughts turn again to the launch, and to setting up ways for people to buy the book from me..

I can’t have any more National-related stuff for a few weeks, but this seemed obvious as a choice

THE LAST TWO WEEKS IN STATS

HEALTH STATS
10K running. Very little due to time, tiredness and the like. The next weeks will be better.
18K of walks
7 days without cigarettes…
1 day since drinking. ..

LIFE STATS
18 billion meetings about new work structure
1 4 hour drive to Devon
1 five hour drive back in driving rain
1 Sunday lunch (shit) in Beer
3 x walks on beaches
2k of sea glass collected
The prep work for the hallway decorating is done. Finally.

POET STATS
0 loose ideas/articles gathered
0 poem finished:
1 poem worked on: Last Dance
0 poems committed to the reject pile
0 submissions:
0 withdrawal: 
0 acceptances:
0 Longlisting:
0 readings: 
1 rejection: Butcher’s Dog
6 poems retired from circulation due to being in the book and no time to send the out now
17 poems are currently out for submission. No simultaneous subs
96 Published poems

Reviews
0 review finished: None
0 reviews started:
1 review submitted: 
2 reviews to write:

READ/SEEN/HEARD/ETC

Music
r= Radio, A = Audiobook, P=Podcast. The rest is music
Week 1
Seawind of Battery: Clockwatching
Mary Lattimore: Goodbye, Hotel Arkada
Stowaway: Dig The Mountain
Overmono: Good Lies
REM: Accelerate, Collapse Into Now
Don Paterson: Toy Fights (A)

The Afghan Whigs: Gentlemen
The National: Sonic Juicy Magic
Dropsonde Playlist

Week 2
Matthew Halsall: An Ever Changing View

Mary Lattimore:Goodbye, Hotel Arkada
Boygenius: the rest, album

The National: Laugh Track, First two pages of Frankenstein
The Clientele: I Am Not there Anymore
Allah-Las’ Zuma 65

This Is The Kit:Careful of Your Keepers
Camera Obscura: Desire Lines
Death Cab For Cutie: Asphalt Meadows
Don Paterson: Toy Fights (A)

The Archers (P)
Poet Laureate In the Arctic
Robert Wyatt: Rock Bottom

Read
Poetry Salzburg 40
Olga Dermott-Bond: Frieze
Kathryn Gray: Hollywood or Home
Marten Crucefix: Between A Drowing Man

The North

Watched
Invasion
Gardner’s World
Five Easy Pieces
Ghosts
Boiling Point
Murderhüs
Taskmaster
Scandal (We’ve finally fucking finished it)
Brassic

Ordered/Bought
Nothing

Arrived
The North
The Dark Horse
Mike Barlow: A Land Between Borders