Spores, the Pity

Lots to get through this week, so let’s not hang about.

Firstly, it’s happened. My beloved child has finished her GSCEs, and apart from a leaver’s assembly, and the all important trip in to collect her results, that’s it, she’s done with secondary school. Crikey. It was only yesterday that we were waving off this shy year 7 who was all overawed by the idea of big school. Now she’s afraid of nothing and awe-inspiring. Happy summer and well done my child. Well done to all the Year 11 and year 13s that have finished their exams.

Secondly, Thanks to The Friday Poem for publishing my review of Ella Sadie Guthrie’s ‘Poems for Pete Davidson‘ on Friday. I’m still not 100% sure I know enough about Pete Davidson, I’m also 100% sure I don’t think it will make my life any better or worse, so onwards and sideways there.

Thirdly, thank you to Eleanor Livingstone for reminding me to listen to The Ballad of Syd & Morgan on the iPlayer. I had seen it mentioned late last week and made a note to listen, but forgot. I’m glad Eleanor gave me the nudge as I think the play has now come off the iPlayer. If you can’t catch it, it’s about an imaginary meeting between Syd Barrett (of Pink Floyd fame) and EM Forster (of EM Forster fame) and is more a meditation on creativity and the price of art. I thought it wore its research a little too heavily, but it was an enjoyable and interesting hour none the less. I was particularly interested in the discussion between them where Forster talks about creativity involving dropping a bucket into a well and seeing what comes up. Sometimes it’s good, and sometimes it’s nothing at all.

Later on, he also talks about the parable of the Venerable Bede and the sparrow. While this is mainly a warning about the brevity of life, I thought of the visit of the sparrow as another visit of creativity, and that we should enjoy the visits we have had more than worrying about when and if the next one might come.Bonus poem on the subject by Isobel Dixon (NB Buy her new book, A Whistling of Birds. It’s out this week. I loved Bearings)

I’ve never really got into Pink Floyd, and have violent reactions to most of it (especially anything touched by the absolute knobhead that is Roger Waters), but I will allow the Syd-era stuff occasionally, and I am a fan of Syd Barrett’s own stuff. I think it was REM’s cover of Syd’s Dark Globe that got me interested, and that was back in the Automatic For The People days, so he’s been around in my memory for a long time. However, I don’t know much about Forster (and must remedy that, perhaps when I’m on holiday…Not long, Mat, not long…Hang on in there), but

I am also grateful to Eleanor for her sending me copies of her early books. I am looking forward to diving into them soon. However, I am even more grateful to her because our initial email exchange about the books led to the radio recommendation which led to somehow me being visited by a sparrow/dropping my bucket in a well to write a draft/note for a draft of a poem about comedy (except it isn’t, obviously). I mean, I don’t know what it’s about yet as I haven’t finished a first full draft yet, and it’s finding it’s way into the light, but I am happy to have got this far.

At the moment, it’s just called Comedy, and so it was timely to read this article in this weeks TFP about titles. . I have toyed with the idea of “He won’t sell many ice creams at that speed”, but perhaps that was just because Morcambe and Wise were on my mind after seeing the classic clip with them and the recently departed Glenda Jackson this week

“All men are fools and what makes them so is having beauty like what I have got”
Glenda Jackson CBE
The Morecambe and Wise Show
1971 pic.twitter.com/jDyG208c07

— The Morecambe & Wise Archive 👓🌞♥️ (@eric_ernie_col) June 15, 2023

Fourthly, there’s a new intake over at IAMB. Get on it here.

Right, let’s have a poem then

In fact, let’s have two..and while we’re at it, let’s have two tenuous links to justify them being here (Not that I need to justify it…my gaff, my rules, etc). Let’s go ladies first because chivalry and all that, yeah?

At the start of the week Rach and I finished watching The Last Of Us . I’m not a player of computer games, so I can’t speak to that, but we enjoyed the show. If you’re not aware, the premise behind is that the world is twenty years into a pandemic caused by a mass fungal infection, which causes its hosts to transform into zombie-like creatures and collapses society. The show covers a lot of ground, literally and emotionally, and talks about parental relationships, the way we treat the world, mankind’s ignorance, dictatorships, resistance and a lot more. We really enjoyed it, and without giving the game away, I’d seen a lot of plaudits for episode 3. They were totally right. Beautiful stuff.

Anyhoo, for all it’s focusing on fungus and the like as the way nature starts to claim back the world, I was intrigued to read this poem by Angela France this week on my commute (Wednesday, I think).

Rooting Out

Tangles of roots baffle my fork’s tines
as I push down into invaded earth,
each root twisting through clumps
of anchoring soil to clenching depth.
They snake to depths beyond my reach,
every knot pulled and shaken loose
leaves strands and fragments
of rhizomes to wait for space and rain,
sprout in neglected corners.

Mycelium nets under the grass,
through the woods, fibres feeding
on what has fallen, growing strong
in the rotting dark. There is no end,
no beginning, no centre to dig out,
only the evidence of bulbous clusters
swelling overnight in shady places.

It is too easy to rest, leave
a calm surface undisturbed, forget
what cells and spores lie beneath,
nursing malice as they spread.
Too easy to turn away from dark edges
and hard labour, ignore its silent seething,
until it shoots in all the overlooked quarters,
strong beyond all hope of rooting out
unless we can re-make the earth.

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Shared with the author’s permission, taken from Terminarchy, Nine Arches Press, 2021

I love the way the poems in Terminarchy build on the work in Angela’s previous collection, The Hill. And the (not-so) gentle reminder at the end of this poem that it’s likely to be the funguses of the world and other plant matters that will inherit/repossess our planet if we don’t buck our ideas up. There are plenty of other poems in Terminarchy that act as such a reminder. Can a poem make us buck our ideas up? Possibly not on its own, but it was timely to see this article about whether art can change attitudes towards climate change. I think if we can present the issues in contexts such as France has done then we can look again. That seems to be the gist of the article—he says having skim read it so far.

I’m guilty of having slept on my copy of The Hill, and it’s been a while since reading Hide, so I’ll get them back into rotation ASAP. Oh yes and find the work that came before them.

My Angela France fleet

Go on, have another poem

The second poems for this week (and there could have been a third if I’d got my act together sooner, but at least I’m sorted, in theory, for next week) is by Erik Kennedy. He’s also available on Twitter

I came across it reading the latest issue of Strix. I’m glad to see Strix back after their sabbatical. It remains on my wishlist of mags I’d like to place a poem in…one day, perhaps.

I knew of Erik, but didn’t really know his work. I’m sure I’ve seen some about, but in mags. I’ll track them down eventually, and will be getting copies of his two collections, ‘Another Beautiful Day Indoors & ‘There’s No Place Like the Internet in Springtime‘ ASAP. I fell instantly in love with the three poems he has in Strix, and would cheerfully have posted either or all of them.

I nearly went with a poem called ‘Can’t get a moment’s peace’ for it’s use of the phrase “vaporised by the anti-word death rays / I have positioned in my head’, but I’ve gone with the poem below because of the tenuous connection to the coffee grinder and coffee beans I bought my mum this week for her birthday.

Reviewing the fleet

A thing I like about
nuclear powered ballistic missile submarines
is that you can run
as many espresso makers as you want,
because
nuclear reactor = pretty much unlimited energy.

A thing I don’t like about
nuclear powered ballistic missile submarines
is that if you fire the missiles
housed in a few of these subs,
you can destroy the world.

A lot of situations are like this,
with good and bad aspects.

Sometimes it seems like it’s impossible
to tell
whether the good ultimately
outweighs the bad,

and I’m here to tell you:
no, it really isn’t.

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Shared with the author’s permission, taken from Strix #9. Apologies to the folks at Strix if this shouldn’t be up. I’ll take it down if you want, but I urge you all to go and buy a copy of Strix.

Yer actual Strix #9

When I asked Erik for his permission to publish this he mentioned an almost secret, joke in the title that alludes to the old tradition of the Spithead fleet review. I don’t really know much about that, and it’s probably a joke more for the writer than the reader, but it helps to know these little things keep writers happy.

I enjoyed this poem immensely (Not least for reminding me of one of my own), and the dualities that are set up and then wiped out at the end. It also feels to me like Angela and Erik’s poems have something in common as well, and I hadn’t picked up on that until just now.

I was going to spend a bit of time talking about the news Jeremy Corby is launching a poetry anthology, and as much as I think there is much to admire about old JC (and as much to be annoyed about too), the idea of a poetry book filled with non-poets has annoyed me a bit. I may have missed the point, but perhaps that’s one for another day; I’ve gibbered on here enough.

A Song that is in some vague way linked to something above

Public Service Broadcasting, Lit Up (it has a connection to the Fleet review mentioned above) NB contains some excellent drunk broadcasting

THE LAST WEEK IN STATS

HEALTH STATS
8K running. A 3k for the Dino Dash in Crystal Palace. Good, and no exploding head this time, but it was hot. And a gentle 5K on Saturday.
2 days without cigarettes…
1 days since drinking. 

LIFE STATS
1 daughter finished GCSEs
1 drunk daughter
1 cupboard made
1 cocktail evening
1 Dino Dash

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: Comedy
0 poems committed to the reject pile
0 submissions:
0 withdrawal: 
0 acceptances:
0 Longlisting:
0 readings: 
0 rejections:
18 poems are currently out for submission. No simultaneous subs
83 Published poems

Reviews
0 review finished:
1 reviews started: Genevieve Carter
0 review submitted: 
1 reviews to write: Luke Samuel Yates

READ/SEEN/HEARD/ETC

Music
r= Radio, A = Audiobook, P=Podcast. The rest is music
Monday
This is the Kit: Careful of your Keepers
Gabor Szabo: The Szabo Equation
Jenny Lewis: Joy’All
Squid: O Monolith
Keaton Henson: House Party
Yusef Lateef: Eastern Sounds…And Other Sounds
The Wedding Present; 24 Songs
The Boo Radleys: Eight
Tuesday
The Archers (P)
LRB Podcast: Brenda Shaughnessey & Amy Key (P)
Radio 4: The Ballad of Syd and Morgan (P)
Weds
The Archers (P)
The Cure: Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me
Dropsonde Playlist
Thursday
This is the Kit: Careful of your Keepers
Yusef Lateef: Eastern Sounds…And Other Sounds
The Groundhogs: Who Will Save The World?
The Pastels: illumination
Ligeti: Complete Piano Music Vol.1
The Kingsbury Manx: Bronze Age
Friday
Stanley Turrentine: New Tine Shuffle
The Mighty Lemon Drops: Laughter, Sound
Marta Salongi: Music for Open Spaces
Saturday
Dropsonde Playlist
The Archers (P)
Sunday
Weather Station: All of it was Mine
Daughter of Swords: Dawnbreaker
Bad Lieutenant: Never Cry Another Tear
Pink Floyd: Piper At the Gates of Dawn
The Mighty Lemon Drops: World Without End

Read
Rialto 100
Strix 9
Angela France: Terminarchy
Nikki Heinen: There May Not Be A Reason Why

Watched
Love Island
The Last of Us
Colin From Accounts

Ordered/Bought
Jo Farragher: Good Works, Great Technology

Arrived
Jo Farragher: Good Works, Great Technology
Simon Armitage: LX
Eleanor Livingstone: Even the Sea, The Last King of Fife, A Sampler

 

A Bat(tlestar), Galactico from Heron in

I had considered employing ChatGPT to create this week’s blog, but despite feeding it all my previous posts, tweets, emails, and letters, the AI still couldn’t quite capture anything like the level of gibbering, so forgive me for the gibbering* that follows, it’s all me

*Apart from the poem and the links, they’re all good.

Incidentally, there’s a good article here about ChatGPT, what it can and can’t do, and the implications for humans.

As with last week, I’m going to link to a few things as this week has been too busy to think about much else.


This week has seen a long serving star of the scene, someone that always delivers, but has yet to win the ultimate plaudit and accolade finally achieve the pinnacle of their chosen field

No, not Lionel Messi and Argentina winning the (Men’s) World Cup—at the time of writing that isn’t guaranteed, France have just pulled a goal back. Christ, now they’ve equalised—where else do you get live commentary, eh?

No, I mean Matthew Stewart and his appearance on the final Poetry Planet podcast of the year….I’ve loved all of the PPP’s to date, but go and have a listen to this one. Matthew makes a lot sense…and says the word “Exactly” a lot.


When you’ve heard that, it would be worth spending some time reading the following.

Bad Lillies. Issue 11 is out now. I can’t lie, I’ve not read it yet, but the line up looks very strong, so I reckon it can’t fail.

London Grip – I did read this all yesterday, and despite theme of poems about poems and mothers, what stood out for me was Glenn Hubbard’s Heron poem. I think it resonated because I saw a heron on the roof of the house behind mine this week.

Also launched this week is the latest wave of Iamb A Poet. Wave 12. Bravo to Mark for another gathering of excellent poets. I’m still working my way through it, so it won’t be fair to pick one out as yet.

This was an interesting article about someone I thought I’d heard of, but I’m not 100% sure that’s true. Rod McKuen appears to be have been what could almost be called an Instagram poet, but in the late Sixties. The article charts his rise and fall. Enjoy.

Finally, before it’s too late, if you haven’t then check out Jo Bell’s Writers Advent. Lots of handy tips to be had here for the writer in your life (and let’s be honest, that’s you.) Other writer’s Advents are out there. Read them all, or don’t.

Despite the Naush Sabah article last week abut submitting less, there’s still always time for some submission advice, so why not have a read of this article from Wendy Pratt.

And this reminds me, earlier in the week I saw a link to an article about how to deal with rejections. I can’t find the link now, but it did remind me of the patented Riches method. Stand by, this is complex stuff.

If you receive a rejection from a mag or journal you should simply read the rejection and move on.

Keep practising.

Finally, not a link to an article, but the singer and radio presenter, Cerys Matthews does a lot for the poetry world, so she warrants a note here. I was listening to the last album by her first band, Catatonia, this week. The album is called Paper, Scissors, Stone and a lyric to the song, Fuel stood out.

“Go ask the government
you voted in on trust
where is our fuel…?”

It came out in 2001, but seems about as pertinent as it has ever felt. **Ben Elton voice “Liddle bit o’ politics”

Release The Bats

I’m too young to recall this first hand, but I am lead to believe my mum once had to shut herself in the bathroom at our first home while my dad ran round the living room attempting to catch a bat our cat had brought in.

I’ve not seen the latest version with R Patz in, and it’s arguable that the world doesn’t need more Batman films, but I recall enjoying the Christian Bale trilogy as directed by Christopher Nolan. However, I think the best Bat-related film is the one below.

While I can’t imagine my mum commentating in the same way as this excellent video, but I’m pretty sure my dad’s dress sense is represented.

And finally a poem

All of this bat talk is lovely, but why? Well, I was reading Space Baby by Suzannah Evans this week. It’s a book that has been sat on my TBR pile for a while, roughly since the start of the year, largely because the reviews and mags kept coming in and pushing it back down the list, but I’ve been chomping at the bit to read it.

My copy of Space Baby with a Space pen above it earlier today

I first came to Suzannah’s work when I read her Smith|Doorstop pamphlet, Confusion Species. I loved the whole thing, so when her first full collection, Near Future, came out, I ordered it almost immediately, and was very happy to review it for London Grip.

I can’t prove this, but in my head, Space Baby sees her work getting a little bit more distance from humanity (despite or perhaps because of the titular poem), and yet it’s never been more about humanity as these poems pick apart what we’re doing to this planet and the life within its atmosphere, and what we might do when the time comes to abandon ship. And more.

Oh yes, the bats.

Despite the it having nothing to do with them, the moment I read the poem below the “memories” above about my mum, and the bat video were set off, and I knew I’d have to have this for sharing here. Thankfully, Suzannah agreed.

What is it Like to be a Bat?

after Thomas Nagel

For a bat to be a bat, I mean,
to use its whole body as an organ of sense

to rattle through the high-pitched dusk
feeling the geometry of cave walls

crunch the exoskeletons of mayflies
and taste their sticky wings

to sip in flight from the surface of a river
to ground itself and elbow up

ping back into the air
like an elastic band

to swaddle itself with its arms, grip
and swing from its feet

to slow its metabolism into winter, wake
with the hunger of a season’s sleep

to tangle with humans in the lofts
of old buildings, feel them lumbering

slow as planets through space
to zip between their heads

gone
long before the gasp.


Published with permission of the author. Taken from Space Baby, Nine Arches Press


I love the way the couplets grow and shrink back, almost like a bat sending out their signals via echolocation. The way it’s one long swoop of a sentence, barely punctuated, but never leaves you out of breath. It also feeds nicely into the themes of the book as a whole, the bat far more connected to the world that surrounds it as an “organ of sense” than us human with our lofts in “old buildings”, and it could be me, but I read that as the buildings are abandoned.

Go, read more of Suzannah’s work.

THE LAST WEEK IN STATS

HEALTH STATS
9K running. Piss poor this week due to icy conditions, attempted more today, but impending lurgee and an aching knee caused us to bail out at 9k.
3 day without cigarettes…really, really need to knuckle down here to help with the above
1 days since drinking.
1 sleepless night
1 sore foot and a slightly achy knee
1 impending cough/cold

LIFE STATS
1 really fucking busy week
1 day off to write (may have impinged on the above, but fuck it)
16 cups of coffee
8 cups of tea
0 trips in and out of London

POET STATS
0 loose ideas/articles gathered (this allows me to kid myself I am writing all the time)
0 poems finished:
4 poems worked on: Caution Horses, Popular Mechanics In The Local Night Spot, Personal Bests, Bed Poem
0 submissions:
0 acceptances:
0 readings:
0 rejections:
24 poems are currently out for submission. No simultaneous subs
80 Published poems


0 review finished:
0 reviews started:
0 reviews submitted:
3 reviews to write:


1 more week that I’m not having an affair with Eva Green

* To date, not this week. Christ!!

READ/SEEN/HEARD/ETC

Read
Suzannah Evans: Space Baby

Zooms: None

Music
My Morning Jacket: Live Vol2; Chicago 2021
Polly Paulusma: The Pivot On Which The World Turns
Jadu Heart: Freedom
The Brian Jonestown Massacre: Don’t Get Lost
David Bowie: Low
Dawn Landes: RowDead Meadows: Force Form Free, ST
David Crosby; If Only I Could Remember My NamePaul Heaton & Jacqui Abbott: N.K. Pop
Death Cab For Cutie; Asphalt MeadowsCass McCombs: HeartmindMall Grab: What I Breathe
Catatonia: Paper Scissors Stone
Katy J Pearson: Sound Of the Morning
Širom: The Liquified Throne of Simplicity
Bernard Butler & jessie Buckley: For All Our Days That Tear The Heart
Catherine Anne Davies & Bernard Butler: In Memory Of My Feelings
Stanley Turrentine: Up At Minton’s Vol 1 & 2
Explosions In The Sky: The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place
Andrew Bird: Echolocations:Canyon, FingerlingsAndrew Weatherall: Qualia
Fujiya & Miyagi: Slight Variations
Gastr Del Sól: Mirror RepairGene Clark: Echoes
Gillian Welch: Harrow & The Harvest, Hell Among The Yearlings, Revival, Soul Journey, Time (the Revelatory)
Glenn Jones: Against Which The Sea Continually Beats
REM: Automatic For The People
Stella Donnelly: Flood
Stephen Fretwell: Busy Guy
Planet Poetry: Matthew Stewart
Rachika Nayar: Heaven Come Crashing, Our Hands Against The Dark
The Archers

Watched
Amelie
Strike (bloody awful)
The Mosquito Coast
Slow Horses
The White Lotus
Argentina Vs France

Ordered/Bought
Kaweco Sport Fountain Pen
Present for a friend
Present for my wife on behalf of my child

Arrived
Kaweco Sport Fountain Pen
My Faber Castelle Fountain pen was returned after being sent off to be repaired
Present for a friend

Andrew Bird, from his album Echolocations

HMHB. Best song about bat walks ever

Hambling On

The season of spookiness has been and gone, again. No trick or treaters at the door (the boiling oil did it’s job last year!!) and while it’s all a bit sad, I’m not usually one for the dressing up, etc or all that witches and ghouls malarkey.

However, you know how I love a coincidence…And I’ve noticed a couple this week.

Firstly, I saw a tweet by the journalist Andrew Male (and a few others) earlier in the week singing the praises of the Maggie Hambling (Maggie Hambling: Making Love With The Paint) doc on BBC4.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000nx23/maggi-hambling-making-love-with-the-paint

Click on the link to watch

I worry I’ve not watched enough “educational” stuff throughout all of this lockdown. We’ve watched plenty of good stuff (I’m very much enjoying re-watching Battlestar Galactica, for example), but when the BBC make a good documentary I rarely get round to watching them. Not because I don’t want to, but just because…well, no reason really, but it was very much business as usual when I duly made a note to think about getting round to watching it at some point.

Then I had a conversation with a friend that mentioned people in a particular anthology from the late 80s, it triggered a conversation around an idea I think I’ve mentioned before about investigating people involved in older copies of anthologies or mags, etc.

To add fuel to a point I was making in the conversation I grabbed an old magazine off my shelves (It turned out to be The Rialto No.27, Winter 1993) and looked down the list of people on the back to see the names I recognised.

Rialto, 27, Winter 1993

And there are a few. I did originally plan to start searching out all of these folks to see what had happened to them. There are a few I know without searching, e.g. we all know that Sophie Hannah has gone on to be a novelist and that Julia Copus hasn’t done too badly for herself. There are other names I recognise and plenty I don’t.

As an aside, it was nice that Apollinaire finally made it into the mag. I know The Rialto is one of those mags that can take a while to get back to you, but bloody hell….Given he died in 1918 there’s added meaning to ““How slow life is, how violent hope is.”

I wonder who got his contributor copy.

Anyhoo, I digress. I did start searching out the names on the list to make a start on this (Obvs, it would make for a very long post, and I can’t even guarantee you’re still reading now). My search for “M.J. Armitt + Poet” revealed absolutely nothing that appears to relate to a poet. According to the biog in the back of the mag, “M.J. Armitt is a former lecturer writing again after a twenty-year silence, and seeking publication for the first time.”

A search for “Armitt + Lecturer” revealed a Matthew Armitt, but I suspect he’s either had a lot of Botox/surgery for someone that hadn’t written for 20 years in 1993 or isn’t the person I’m looking for. You judge for yourself.

Meet Matthew Armitt

I will come back to the names another time, with some more research, but it does ask the question about visibility in this day and age (more on that anon). Do we need to have web pages, blogs (I’m not sure I want the answer to that one), Twitter accounts, the Tik Toks, etc…Or is it enough just enough to be present in the mags, to have the books or the writing? Or both? I don’t think there’s really an answer here other than it’s up to you, but if you’re a poet that doesn’t have e.g a pamphlet or book behind you, or have published in digital mags to have created a trace then it’s pretty much impossible to join the dots when you find a poet you like.

This is just one poet, there are several more to investigate, but let’s make it an on-going series.

Yes Mat, but what about the co-incidences?

The real co-incidence came when I flipped the magazine over and saw the cover.

Please control yourself over the flash of knee at the top of this picture

The picture is called ‘Laughing Mouth’ by a certain Maggi Hambling.

You can’t argue with co-incidences like that, and still they keep coming.

The Hambling documentary has a moment where Maggi is drinking Special Brew—last week I finished a poem that mentions my dad getting pissed on Special Brew.

When I actually looked back at the poem by M.J. Armitt, it’s a poem called ‘January Pigeon’. What was last week’s post about?

And now for the biggie…while searching for M.J. Armitt I did stumble across this article. It’s called ‘Cup and Ring Marks in Context’. It’s written by a Clive Waddington, but it cites an I. Armitt.

The extract notes that

“The key argument presented in this article is that a threefold temporal sequence can be recognized in the deployment of cup and ring marks and that these changes can throw new light on the nature of ideological evolution in northern Britain during the Neolithic. It is proposed that the initial phase relates to the symbolic portrayal of the ideological beliefs which constituted the ‘Neolithic’ (c. 4000–3200 BC) by mapping them on the landscape via outcropping bedrock.

During the second phase (c. 3200–2000 BC) the significance of this symbolism is thought to be appropriated, as it is reworked into ‘man-made’ megalithic constructions which ‘monumentalize’ the landscape under the aegis of increasingly overt human control.

By the third phase (c. 2000–1800 BC) a disjuncture is apparent in both the function and meaning of the cup and ring tradition culminating in its expropriation as human control of the natural world becomes more fixed.”

So far, so fascinating, but also so what…However, this week I was asked to provide some feedback on a poem by a dear mate, and would you Adam and Eve it, that poem talks about cup and ring marks.

Please note that when it comes to gifs I will only use Schitts Creek gifs

There’s quite literally nowhere left to go after that. Not without getting more freaked out ad losing sleep. I need my beauty sleep (**Stay in bed a month** is the usually shout here) so let’s move on.

I am morally obliged to make you aware of the launch today of IAMB A POET wave 4. Once again Mark has assembled an excellent group of poets, some of whom you’d think have a “name” that doesn’t require the extra push that Iamb provides, but ultimately, I don’t think IAMB is about that.

It’s more just assembling groups of great poets (and me in wave 2) and letting them speak for themselves (Literally, given Mark has us all recording versions of our work).

Get yourself over there. Listen, read, enjoy.
NB Really must nail what constitutes a “name”.

Now…

THE WEEK IN STATS

27k running – Not bad, will settle for that.

2 days of a the 7-minute workout

0 x rejections: All good.

2 poems worked on. Phantom Settlements and Lucky Foot

3 days without cigarettes…

1 more week that I’m not having an affair with Eva Green

TITLE GIVEAWAY

Over Bar The Shouting
Major Domo
The High Chaperone

READ/SEEN/HEARD/ETC

Music
Beverley Glenn Copeland: At Last
Laura Cantrell: Hello recordings, Humming By The Flowered Vine, Kitty Wells Dresses, No Way There From Here, Not The Tremblin’ Kind, Trains and Boats and Planes, When The Roses Bloom Again
Mint Julep: Stray Fantasies
Blur: Blur, The Great Escape, Leisure, Magic Whip, Modern Life Is Rubbish, Parklife, Think Tank, Under The Westway/The Puritan, 13
Girls: ST
Frightened Rabbit: The Midnight Organ Fight, Painting Of A Panic Attack, Pedestrian Verse, Sing The Greys, State Hospital, The Winter of Mixed Drinks, The Woodpile
The Afghan Whigs: Beautiful Girls OST, Big Top Halloween, Big Top Halloween Demos, Black Love, Burning London (Clash Tribute), Congregation
Margo Price: That’s How Rumours Get Started
Joni Mitchell:The Hissing Of Summer Lawns

Hangouts/Video Calls/Zoom/Etc (not for work)
None this week

TV/Film
Battlestar Galactica: S3 E9-15
Strike: The Silkworm, S2, S3 and S4 E1-3
Inbetweeners S1 E1-2
Maggi Hambling :Making Love With The Paint
The Witches

Radio/Podcasts
The Archers

Ordered
Of Mice & Men for Flo
Frank Wood : Racing The Stable Clock
Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal Sub
JO Morgan: The Martian’s Regress
Colin Bancroft: Impermance

Arrived
Of Mice & Men
Frank Wood : Racing The Stable Clock
JO Morgan: The Martian’s Regress

Read
Charlotte Gann _ The Girl Who
Benjamin Cusden- Cut The Black Rabbit
Nina Mingya-Powles: Magnolia 木蘭

The big iamb

**Look, it’s Tuesday now (cue Afghan Whigs song) but let’s just pretend it’s Sunday. I did start this on Sunday, but ran out of road. The days a blurring anyway, so go with it, yeah***

Short and sweet this week. I don’t want you to spend anymore time than you have to here. Not when you could be over at Iamb. I’ve mentioned it before, but it’s the brainchild of Mark Antony Owen – you can follow him on the Twitters, and I very much suggest you read his Subruria work. Mark is a brilliant poet and I owe him a big debt for advice he gave me about 6 years ago. Yes, it took me three more to start following it, but let’s focus on him for now.

He’s also a relentless promoter and supporter of other writers. And as such he has created Iamb. I’ve put this here before, but it warrants repetition. This is the “lift pitch” for Iamb.

“They say the sincerest form of flattery is imitation. Let’s hope, then, that those behind The Poetry Archive – this project’s inspiration – are flattered, sincerely, by what we’re building here: a place for more poetic voices to be heard … literally.
​
Part directory of poets, part quarterly journal, ‘iamb’ is where
established and emerging talents are showcased side by side. Not just their words but their readings of them, too. Expect 60 new poems, every three months, free to your device of choice.“

So far there are 40 poets for you to read (at your leisure, I’m not that demanding).
You would do yourself no harm and do the poets a great service by starting at the beginning. If you don’t want to read them, there’s links to Soundcloud where we all read our own work.

Go on, get out of here. Go to Iamb. Read them. I’m in Wave two, squeezed between Maggie Smith (She of Good Bones and much more fame) and Matthew M C Smith (he of Black Bough and much more fame). Me, of me and cock all else fame…

THE WEEK IN STATS

23.2k running – The .2 is important. Not a bad week, a 13k today (It’s SUNDAY, remember!!) helped. Still a bit of faking it to make it without the motivation of a race, etc, and the lethargy is hard to shake off, but I’m enjoying it again. Getting out to do Couch to 5K with Flo also helps.

2 birthdays. Mine. And Matthew Stewart’s. I got him a walk outside. Took a lot of negotiation with the Spanish Government. And fair enough, it had to apply to the rest of the population, but not bad as a gift. Tricky to wrap.

1 podcast recorded – Grandbag’s Funeral Ep3. We talked about Richard Stanley’s Hardware, Colour Out of Space, Val Kilmer and The Island of Doctor Moreau and Top Secret. Among other things. And yes, the world does need another podcast.

It’s here, if you fancy it

1 Poem worked on. – Currently called Tea Break or Work Experience…Not sure yet

7 Billion Hangouts for work

0 rejections – Woohoo, but also I wish the outstanding subs would hurry the fuck up and make a decision

Over 179 days now for submissions being out with Tangerine, North and Lonely Crowd. I should count from the window closing and I’m not complaining (much) about waiting, but I’d love to just know one way or the other.

1 day without cigarettes. Fits and starts, yeah!!

1 more week that I’m not having an affair with Eva Green

TITLE GIVEAWAY

1. Lift Pitch
2. At The tenth hour, fifty nine minutes and fifty nine seconds.
3. Ket Wig & The Angry Inch
4. Ket Wig

READ, SEEN, ETC

Arrived/Ordered
New Running Trainers – Brooks
Sarah Corbett – Other Beasts, The Witch Bag, The perfect Mirror
Eavan Boland- Collected Poems
Jens Lekman – Oh you’re So Silent Jens
Laura Veirs – Riptide CD single
KENDRA AMALIE/RYLEY WALKER “Papaya In A Hound’s Tooth
Half Man Half Biscuit T Shirt
Three Hounds Beer order

Read:
Christopher James – Farewell To The Earth
Jo Youngs – Firing Pins
Gail McConnell – Fothermather
Paul Farley – The Mizzy (Roy Marshall’s review here is excellent)
Iamb

Watched:
Hardware
Color out of space
Spooks – S4 E1-2
WestWorld S3 – E2-7
Can You Ever Forgive Me
Howard The Duck

Listened to:
Still going back through old albums…via iTunes to avoid killing the wifi while streaming.

The Cure
Pornography
Seventeen Seconds

AC Newman – The Slow Wonder
The Afghan Whigs – Gentlemen
Alessi’s Ark – Time Travel
All Natural Lemon and Lime Flavors – ST
Ride – Tarantula
Pixies – Beneath The Eyrie
Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy & Matt Sweeney – Superwolf
VA – Soul Jazz Records Presents…Congo Revolution
Dinosaur Jr – Hand It Over
Brandi Carlille – ST
Mamas & Papas- Deliver
Sleater Kinney – Dig Me Out
The Cult – Sonic Temple
The Flaming Lips – The Terror
The Four Tops – Main Street People
Freddie Gibbs & Madlib – Piñata
Gallon Drunk – Black milk
Girls Against Boys   – Venus Luxury No.1 Baby (thanks Ben Banyard for the reminder)
Givers – In Light
Harold Melvin & The Bluenotes – ST
Holly Golightly & The Brokeoffs – Clippety Clop
Hop Along – Painted Shut
Horse Thief – Trials & truths
Houndstooth – No News From Home
Ian Ball _ Who Goes There
VA – I  Lost You In My Mind: Garage Greats 1965-1967
I Was A Cub Scout – I Want You To Know That There Is Always Hope
Ian McCulloch – Mysterio
Velvet Underground – Loaded
Tycho – Awake
TracyAnne & Danny – ST
Tortoise – The Catastrophist

Tim Buckley
Dream Letter
Tim Buckley

The Sun Days – ST (NOT THE SUNDAYS…OH WHEN WILL THEY REUNITE TO SAVE US ALL?)
Miles Davis – Bitches Brew
Cowboy Junkies – In A time Before Llamas

REM
Accelerate
Collapse Into Now
Reckoning
Reveal
Fables of The Reconstruction
Murmur

P.I.L. – Flowers of Romance
Postcode – Zebracore
Prefab Sprout – Swoon
Pavement – Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain
Paley & Francis – ST
Our Girl – Stranger Today
One Thousand Violins  – Hey Man That’s Beautiful
A Northern Chorus – Bitter Hands Resign
Natalie Prass – the Future and the Past

Podcasts
Not a podcast, but Happenstance launch on Zoom

and of course, The Archers…(When will they mention Covid 19???). I note there will be no Archers throughout May…

A Crow In A Crowd Is A Rook, A Rook In A Crowd Is A Crow

I’m not deliberately going bird-themed every week, especially after last week’s chicken gibberish (giblets??)—but there has been something of a crow-theme to this week.

The most notable of these was the launch of the trailer for Crows 3: The Crowening.

Please note, this potentially contains Schitt’s Creek spoilers…

The Crows Have Eyes 3

I’m assuming, of course, that you are a fan of the mighty Schitt’s Creek. If you’re not already, then I wholeheartedly implore you to get over to the Netflixes and catch up on the previous five series.

The above video is taken from series 6 – due here in May, but currently broadcasting in Canada. As it’s an ITV Studios show I’ve been lucky enough to watch the first 8 episodes of this, the last series, on a special internal site and I can say that this series wonderful…so far.

For those unaware, think of it as a reverse Beverley Hillbillies. Although that’s a massively reductive description. I love the show, it’s heart-warming stuff and I will miss it when it’s gone. There hasn’t really been a duff note in any of the episodes, and I can’t decide if I want to be David or Moira when I grow up. Watch it, watch it, watch it.

THAT’S ALL WELL AND GOOD, BUT …POETRY!!

Ah yes, I’m sure you can find TV recommendations anywhere.

Well, yesterday, my friend Mark Antony Owen launched Iambapoet. Have yourself a look over there at the list of excellent poets, but I’ll steal Mark’s own description :

‘iamb’ is part archive, part quarterly journal. A place where established and establishing poets can showcase both their writing and their readings of their own poems. Ten poets will be added each season – at first, by private invitation, then later, through public submission.

I can’t wait to see how the site develops, but it looks great, it has some ace names attached and you can read and hear some excellent poems. Finish reading this post and then get over there.

Ah, you want a crow connection. Well, Mark’s poem on his own site, Subruria, starts with Crows (Ok, Rooks, but we all know how you tell them apart, right?)

THAT WAS TENUOUS, MAT…

Other trends will come and go and come again, but I’m pretty sure it is de-rigeur for poets* to have a crow poem—that Hughes feller casting some sort of shadow—just as there was a trend for bees a while back.

I’ve written both, my bee poem will be available in the second issue of the Fenland Poetry Journal soon – alongside two others, but my crow poem has take a while to find a home. It was one of the first poems I worked on with Matthew Stewart and it’s fair to say it’s largely unrecognisable from the version I first sent him. I was all proud of myself and in love with some of the images and sounds it had. I soon realised I was wrong and had a long way to go (still have), but I very much like where the poem ended up. It had been round a few mags to no avail and so I put it back in the folder until somewhere suitable came up again.

A couple of months ago my friend Gemma alerted me to a call out on Facebook for poems to go into an Anthology designed to raise money to help the wonderful Bookseller Crow On The Hill in Crystal Palace. They have been facing massive rent issues, raised by dodgy landlords and the local council have plans to convert the building next door to a McDonalds. You can donate to their #stokethecrow campaign here, but a last called Susan Watson has pulled together a collection of poems by local writers called ‘Corvids and Others’ to raise money to support the shop.

I’m a little bit stunned to find my little poem (that’s not really about crows) alongside work by Anita Ghahreman (trans. by Maura Dooley with Elhum Shakerifar), Gail Emerson, Anna-May Laugher, Kate Miller (I loved ‘The Observances‘, and now see there’s a new collection due this year), Gail Ferguson, Rebecca Farmer, Matthew Caley, Jenny Lewis, William Wyld, Suzanna Fitzpatrick (my Red Squirrel labelmate – get a copy of Fledglings if you can), Andrea Robinson, Sue Rose, Martha Oster, Jacqueline Gabbitas, Blake Morrison, Anne-Marie Fyfe, Katrina Naomi, Jocelyn Page, and Katie Rose. Some new names to me, all new poems, but from what I’ve read so far it’s worth it. It’s available either at Bookseller Crow On The Hill or via Greatest Happiness Press. There will be a launch event that I hope to be able to read at, or at least attend. I’ll let you know when it is.

I’ve been going to Bookseller Crow since we moved to the area – perhaps not enough, but it, like so many independent bookshops, is a wonderful resource. They have a well stocked poetry section and a range of events on to suit most literary tastes. I bought a copy of the latest Moth yesterday (as well as a copy of Corvids) that I’m saving for reading this week.

As an aside, the shop is next door to a lovely pet shop – we used to take Flo in most weeks to look at the fish and lizards, before popping into the bookshop for something to read. I’m 99% certain we would have bought a lot of our Emily Gravett books there and ‘Monkey And Me’ will always stay with me.



*Other types of writing are available

Finally, please either go and buy some pamphlets from HappenStance. They have some lovely pamphlets left. I’d like them all to be sold, for Nell’s sake and for the poets involved.

Or, get involved with writing reviews for Sphinx Reviews. Nell notes, in her latest newsletter, the ratio of female to male is not in favour of the menfolk. While this is normally a good thing, I think she’d like some more male reviewers. I’ve mentioned OPOI before and two of my reviews have gone up this week.

THE WEEK IN STATS

22.1k running – The 0.1 is very important. A slower week this week, but I completed Red January, and ended up running for

32 days on the trot. I’ll allow a slower week and I’ve gone mad and let myself have three days off. Then the training starts for Race to the King

3 Poems worked on – Cycle, Editing The Arecibo Message and Cod Psychology.

2 reviews published at OPOI

3 poems submitted to Finished Creatures

2 poems fedback to a friend

3 days without cigarettes.

1 more week that I’m not having an affair with Eva Green

TITLE GIVEAWAY

1. Memoirs of a Gopher
2. Knick, Knack, Paddywhack, Give The Dog A Drone
3. For you I’d Swallow Niagara Falls
4. The Implications
5. The Imp Locations
6. Trial A Little Tenderness For Free, + £1.pp P&P
7. I Was All Set To Join The Jet Set Which I Now Regret

READ, SEEN, ETC

Read: 
Plot & Counterplot, Helena Nelson

Watched: 
The Masked Singer, Love Island, Endeavour (S4, E1), JoJo Rabbit, Booksmart and White House Farm Eps 1, 2 and 3. I’ve started Midsommar.

Listened to: 
J Mascis, Elastic Days and Tied To A Star
Erland Cooper, Solan Goose, Skule Skerry, Seachange
Gang of Four, Entertainment (RIP Andy Gill)
Andrew Bird, The Mysterious Production of Eggs and Are You Serious?
Julian Cope, Saint Julian and My Nation Underground
and of course, The Archers…

I’ve always had a soft spot for this song. It’s an unofficial anthem in Worstead