Michael Nyman, Trees and Isabel Galleymore

This week has been a whirlwind. Monday feels like it was a century ago. I’m still not 100% convinced yesterday happened yesterday. What I am sure of is that R and I went to get our infusion the old Komorebis earlier today. Definitely today. We had a lovely walk at Nymans and saw this beautiful thing as we wandered round.

An awful photo of a beautiful tree

Once upon a time I’d have tried to stretch this into a post about how hard it is to capture nature well, but I’m wise enough now not to do that. I could also try and work out what eco-poetics is?

(NB: It’s “Similar to ethnopoetics in its emphasis on drawing connections between human activity—specifically the making of poems—and the environment that produces it, ecopoetics rose out of the late 20th-century awareness of ecology and concerns over environmental disaster. A multidisciplinary approach that includes thinking and writing on poetics, science, and theory as well as emphasizing innovative approaches common to conceptual poetry, ecopoetics is not quite nature poetry.” according to this glossary from Poetry Foundation.)

Instead, I’m just going to post two poems from Isabel Galleymore‘s ‘Significant Other’. I picked this off the shelf fairly randomly, but there’s two poems in there that have caught my eye. The first for the trees and because R had mentioned a pair of Blue Tits in our holly tree this morning, the second because this week has also seen us popping into our elderly neighbour’s house (with the key she gave us) four times a day to help her with eyedrops after a recent cataract op. Her TV has been up LOUD!!!!!!


Harvest

After stripping the branches of berries
the robin held a handful of seeds
in her stomach: the robin carried a tree
— in fact she secretly sowed a whole forest —
a store of bows and arrows and shields.
Years found the bird had planted a battle,
her tiny body had borne the new king.

Men looked up to the skies and blessed
or blamed the planets moving overhead.
A blackbird, meanwhile, started to pick
at fruit both armies had left.


Into The Woods

For those who want to invest in disasters,
the INCH pack includes a sling-shot,
fishing rod and tarp. It stands for
I’m Never Coming Home.
Walk into the woods and don’t look back.
I learn this from my neighbour’s watching
of Doomsday Preppers at full volume —
her October general ears believe
everyone is mumbling. On the street
she leans in uncomfortably close. Hey say
such impairments come by degrees.
We’ll be right back with Brian’s missile silo.
I give up my book, fill the kettle.
sunlight floods the living room;
the birds and branches of the papered walls
fade Ana rate not considered change.

Both poems taken from Significant Other, Carcanet. Arguably both could be considered eco-poetic, but honestly, who cares if they do or don’t. They are great.

I see she has a new pamphlet out, this has been added to the to purchase list.

This also reminds me about Isabel’s excellent poems in a recent issue of Poetry Review.

In other news, I must point you to a couple of things.

1. I think the full videos will be up on YouTube soon, but for now here’s two videos from the recent reading night

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Resonance Poetry Night (@resonance.poetry)

Jack Emsden at Resonance Poetry Night 1

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A post shared by Resonance Poetry Night (@resonance.poetry)

Some idiot reading at Resonance Poetry Night 1

2. The latest batch of OPOI reviews are up at Sphinx, featuring my review of Kathrin Schmidt’s Twenty Poems

3. I do remember reading this article by Grayson Perry at the start of the week and thinking there’s a blog post in some of these responses, particularly his points about abandoning work and creative visions. I also remember thinking Bastard!! when I saw Roy Marshall had already had a similar idea about a post here. Roy’s posts are always excellent and useful, so read them. Read them all. His recent post (via The Friday Poem) about putting a pamphlet together is one that is starting to feel relevant to me.

THE WEEK IN STATS

1 walk in a woodland area
21K running. First longer run in ages this week (11K)
1 50th birthday party
0 hangovers
0 x acceptances
2 rejections: Definitive no from New Welsh Review and Frogmore Press
0 poem finished:
1 poem worked on: Bedside Manner
0 new submissions:
26 poems currently out for submission.
68 Published poems*: Was 69, but one was not used in the end, having been accepted.
43 Poems* finished by unpublished
26 poems* in various states of undress
554 Rejected poems* Eg I’ve decided they are not good enough
1 review to write (I’ve read the book)
3 days without cigarettes…I was doing well…
0 Days since drinking
1 more week that I’m not having an affair with Eva Green

* To date, not this week. Christ!!


TITLE GIVEAWAY
Deus ex macchiato
It is now appropriate to clap

READ/SEEN/HEARD/ETC

Read
Mona Arshi: Dear Big Gods
Victoria Kennefick: Eat Or We All Starve
Stephen Payne: Windmill Proof, Patterns of Chance

Music
808 State: ex:el, Gorgeous, Transmission Suite
Kate; British Road Movies
The Long Blondes: Someone To Drive You Home
Nicole Atkins: Italian Ice, Mondo Amore
Mountain Man: made The Harbor
Fur: When You Walk Away
Admiral Fallow: The Idea of YouPele: Teaching The History of Teaching Geography, Elephant, A Scuttled Bender In A Watery Closet
Caspian: Live At The Larcom
Chapterhouse: Whirlpool
Pedro The Lion: Achilles Heel, Phoenix
Glenn Jones: Bob, Fleeting, This is the wind that blows it out
Pip Boom: Welcome Break, Boat
Explosions In The Sky: Live, Earth is Not A Cold Dead Place
LYR: Cascade Theory
Gracie Abrams: This Is What It Feels Like
Corrina Repp: How A Fantasy Will Kill Us All
The Archers
The Verb:

Watched
Only Murders In The Building
New Girl S3
The Walking Dead
Succession
Shetland
Taskmaster

Ordered
Balloons

Arrived
Balloons

Mickey Nyman and a Trees reference..Ace!!

Sadly, Bubonique’s excellent tribute to Michael Nyman isn’t on any streaming or video services, but if you email me I will send you a copy.

No, You Are…

This week saw another return to the “live arena” or the “meat space” to read at the inaugural Resonance Poetry night at The Three Hounds.

I love that my local booze emporium is branching out and doing different things to bring in the punters. They run music nights, games nights, and a running club. I am a founding member of the running club, and had worrying visions earlier in the week that running and poetry club (the first rule of which is….) would be on the same night. The fear that crossed my mind as I wondered how it would look if I ran in, hyperventilating and sweaty, clad in lycra to then begin a poem…dear god..thankfully they were far more organised and had them on separate nights.

The night is organised by the irritatingly young and talented Jack Emsden, and I commend his excellent Stephen Wright-themed poem to you here. He opened and closed the evening with some wonderful and affecting work that managed to touch on the personal and the universal without ever over-simplifying things. I hope we see more by the lad (although not in lycra as he is also part of the running club).

I have found myself reading work with less personal stuff in of late…probably at the last three or four readings I’ve stuck to poems that aren’t about family or friends, but more of what a friend calls my “riff poems” and I hadn’t really noticed this until I read this post recently by Renee Emerson called Why I Don’t Want You To Read My Book (collected via the excellent Via Negativa by Dave Bonta).

In the post Renee, whose work I’m ashamed to say I don’t know, talks about the fear of people you know reading your work and not getting it, or worse not liking it, and this is something that I ponder on a lot. I don’t have to worry about it from a book POV, yet, but when people I know are coming to readings (as we all want them to) I seem to be pulling back from showing that side of my work. I will have to work on that and learn to strike more of a balance I guess. Or not, I’m sure no one had even noticed.

• 

• 

After the “gig” I was talking with my friends and Jack, I asked Jack if he had new work coming out and we discussed the sometimes lengthy wait between work being accepted and appearing. He has something coming out in about three months— I think, the beer had been flowing by then. I remembered I’d had two accepted in March this year that aren’t due to be out till Feb next year. I’m chuffed they will be out there, but crumbs….

I’ve been starting my sets with a poem called ‘No, You Are…’ of late. I quite like it because it’s got the potential to raise a laugh and it’s always a good idea to get the audience on side with a laugh. It was accepted and published in Raceme earlier this year*, so I’m happy to post it here no, but I was surprised and delighted by a small coincidence the next morning when the first album I put on to accompany my working day was by Honey Ltd and the second track was called ‘No, You Are’. Spooky enough for Halloween. Sod it, it is now.

No, you are…

When filling out a magazine quiz,
your scores are mostly always Ds.
Do you even read your small print?

You’re quite the quietest panjandrum
—after scratching beneath your surface,
we found a load more surfaces.

You’re sugar poured into petrol
conversations. Have you ever
been picked up by an algorithm?

Run up a flagpole, your ideas
are stuck underneath quarter-mast.
You’d bring trowels to a gunfight.

So, to summarise recapped facts
your in-a-nutshells last for days.
I think I’m speaking to myself.

Published in Raceme, issue 11

No, You Are by Honey Ltd

* Issue 11, including poems by Tamar Yoseloff, Dominic Fisher, Ann Williams, Pat Simmons, Myra Schneider, Rosie Jackson, Alyson Hallett, Tim Cumming. John Freeman, Matthew Caley, Christopher Heath, Stephen Payne, DS S. Maolalai, Sue Dymoke, William Thompson and Sharon Phillips.
New title for Arecibo

THE WEEK IN STATS

1 walks in a woodland area
1 visiting mother in law
15K in the last week. Really slow week.Need to up my game some more. I can feel myself getting unfit again
0 x acceptances
1 rejections: Assumed the North have said no. I expect it’s the same with New Welsh Review, but if they want a little more time to think I’m happy to give it to them
0 poem finished:
1 poem worked on: Bedside Manner + an idea for something called Rodeo
3 new submissions: Banshee, The Stinging Fly, Bad Lillies
36 poems currently out for submission.
68 Published poems*: Was 69, but one was not used in the end, having been accepted.
43 Poems* finished by unpublished
26 poems* in various states of undress
554 Rejected poems* Eg I’ve decided they are not good enough
1 review to write (I’ve read the book)
2 days without cigarettes…I was doing well…
0 Days since drinking
1 more week that I’m not having an affair with Eva Green

* To date, not this week. Christ!!


TITLE GIVEAWAY
Shouting At A Passing Mongoose
Power Tuiles

READ/SEEN/HEARD/ETC

Read
Donald Justice: Collected Poems
Rishi Dastidar: Supercut Scenes
Olga Dermott-Bond: A sky full of strange specimens
William Wootton: Looking At The Horsemen
Kostya Tsolaikis: Ephebos
Poetry Salzburg #35
Derek Mahon: The Hunt of The Night

Music
David Crosby & Graham Nash: Wind On The Water
Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers: The Witch Doctor, Mosaic
Wye Oak: Civilian, The Louder I Call
Floating Points: Reflections – Mojave Desert
Zoey Van Goey: The Cage Was Unlocked All Along
Cymbals Eat Guitars: Why There Are Mountains
Craig Finn: I Need A New War
Mirah & Thao: ST
Joy Wants Eternity: The Fog Is Rising
Speck Mountain: Some Sweet Relief
Thee Oh Sees – Warm Slime
Telstar Ponies: In The Space of a Few Minutes
The Surfing Magazines: ST
Jolie Holland: Pint of Blood
My Morning Jacket: ST
Jaymay: Autumn Fallin’, Various Singles, Long Walk To Never, Lvng Rm Ep, To Tell The Truth
Lucy Dacus: Historian, Home Video, No Burden, 2019
Hop Along: Painted Shut
Honey Ltd. : LHI
Christian Lee Hutson: Beginners
Mary Lattimore: Collected Pieces, Hundreds of Days
Debashish Bhattacharya: Calcutta Chronicles: Indian Slide-Guitar Odyssey
Dinosaur Jr. Emptiness At The Sinclair
REM: New Adventures in HI Fi

Watched
Only Murders In The Apartment

Ordered
Rebecca Watson: Little Scratch
Holly Singlehurst: The Sea Turned Thick As Honey

Arrived
Rebecca Watson: Little Scratch

Rein(new)statesmented

Home, sweet home…after a few days up and down the country.

It was very strange to spend a couple of days in Norfolk this week, but to not stay with my mum. R and I had two nights in a hotel, and it was glorious..just to get out of London, to not be parents for a day or so and to meander. To paraphrase Elaine Terranova at the end of her poem, Shells, we “miraculously regained our balance”.

And shells is a good segue (it’s almost as if I just searched for “Shell poems”, found the Terranova poem and constructed a tenuous link…almost.) to one of my favourite parts of the week. We took a visit to the Glandford Shell Museum. I’d seen someone mention it on the Instagrams (my apologies to the specific person, but I can’t remember who it was) and I’m so glad we went. If nothing else because it lead me to find some amazing potential band names.

I also found myself struggling to remember a line from my own Shells poem as I was looking for a “Thick Lucine” and the like.

The other notable part of this week was the arrival of my poem in The New Statesman.

• 

• 

I was a bit worried that I wouldn’t manage to find a copy (I don’t think the newsagents of North Walsham have a lot of call for it, but that could just be me) and it was a bit sad to see the web version a touch distorted to begun with. It’s not like we just make the line breaks up!!

Ooops…

However, the good folks behind the scenes (thank you to Chrissy and Ellen for the heads up and the web-edits) soon sorted it and I managed to get my hands on a copy when we got back to London.

I am enormously proud of every poem I’ve had published, and to paraphrase most football managers I am looking forward to the next game now (especially as Arsenal are having their arses handed to them at present by Chelsea), but this does feel like this was a big step up for me. I can’t put my finger on it, but to be in a weekly magazine, among articles etc that have nothing to do with poetry feels very different. And to be in among poets like Kathleen Jamie (the latest Makar), Yvvone Reddick, Ben Wilkinson and Matt Howard among others is a massive honour.

Now, on to the next submission and next poem.

Finally, a poem from a collection I finished reading this week, River Wolton‘s ‘Leap‘. I include this not only because I like the first line, but also because I’m not 100% convinced that this isn’t about super heroes, and that it’s more about the quiet bat people. Either way, it resonated doubly last night when Flo told me she thinks she’s forgotten her left and her right. I attempted to explain Jimmy Cricket to her and it fell on deaf ears much as a recent attempt to explain Frank Spencer to the poet Jack Emsden recently. Time to update my references…

THE WEEK IN STATS

15k.
0 hangovers
0 x acceptances
1 rejections: Bath Magg
1 poem worked on: How’d You Like Them Apples
1 new submissions: New Welsh Review
16 poems currently out for submission.
68 Published poems*: Was 69, but one was not used in the end, having been accepted.
42 Poems* finished by unpublished
26 poems* in various states of undress
554 Rejected poems* Eg I’ve decided they are not good enough
0 Reviews* written, but two planned out
4 reviews to write (I’ve read two of the books)
1 week without cigarettes…
0 Days since drinking
8 more hours in the fucking car
1 more week that I’m not having an affair with Eva Green

* To date, not this week. Christ!!

TITLE GIVEAWAY

Biscuit Consumption Strategy
Variations of Limpets

READ/SEEN/HEARD/ETC

Read
The Dark Horse
River Wolton: Leap
Katie Garland: What Girls Do In The Dark

Music
Shire T: Tomorrow’s People
Dropsonde Playlist
The Everly Brothers: Roots

Watched
Case Histories
Fargo S2
Ashes To Ashes

Radio/Podcasts
The Poet Laureate Has Gone To His Shed x 4
Weird Norfolk x 1
The Archers

Ordered
A curry

Arrived
Laura Veirs tickets

 

Post-Rock Shipping Containers

First the big news. Stand back, this is momentous stuff…

Yes, I’ve just brought in the first washing dried on the line since about October last year (I will have to check my diary to be sure), but either way, IKR (as I think the kids say). (**Shout from the wings by an ecologically-minded First Drowned from Under Milk Wood**, “Washing on the line?” In February? Well yeah, but global warming has to have some benefits, surely? NB I don’t think there are benefits to global warming. I will also take suggestions of poems about washing lines, etc)

Marginally less significant is the news that the outright monotony of the week(s) was broken, er, this week by an actual reading in front of…well, in front of my laptop, but sort of people too via Zoom. NB Robin Houghton’s helpful post here came into my inbox about two hours before and was spot on.

The reading was organised via my local fancy booze emporium, The Three Hounds. I’m hoping you can see it below (I’m not convinced it will work, but let’s all cross our fingers).

I’m up after our compere with the most hair, Jack Emsden. NB How awesome is it that someone who works in one of my favourite shops is a poet.

Also reading were Charlotte Knight, Thomas McColl, Francisca Matos, Ellen Maslin, Kate Wilson, Adam Hart (my old mucker from Beck Beat Beckenham), and a young lad called Dylan. Sorry Dylan, can’t find you online. It was a great evening, everyone read excellently and excellent poems and, as I say, I hope you can watch it below, but the link is also here in case

What’s that? Tell us about shipping containers you say…? Well, OK!

I’ve long been fascinated by shipping containers…no, come back…I thought it started when I heard this podcast

Or was it when I watched/listened to a documentary on the BBC about it (I can’t remember now/can’t find the doc to share) around 10 years ago? Either way, it did eventually dawn on me that my interest goes back even further. back to when I was knee-high to the proverbial grasshopper.

Behind the village hall in the place where I grew up (Worstead, and I’ve realised I posted about this years ago, so you’ll be able to see how things have changed ) was an old shipping container. We used to climb all over it as kids. The brave ones would jump-off, the scaredy-cats (eg me) would hang down and try to sort of make ourselves into slinkys to get as close to the ground as we could before we let go.

As the previous post will attest, I’ve been trying to turn this into a poem for a few years now. The poem has been through at least 18 rewrites over the years since I started typing these things up. I suspect there are more versions in an old notebook, but basically, the poem has been hanging about for several years. Among many structural changes, the thing that stands out the most for me is that I’ve taken out the word ‘Ataraxia’. I first heard it as a title for a song by a band called Pelican and really liked it. That must have made me determined to force it into a poem.

(As an aside, I learned about Zombie Batteries today, so absolutely keep a look out for a poem about them in 2029-ish)

I must have discovered Pelican about the same time as I started this poem. The word means “calmness untroubled by mental or emotional disquiet” and for a long time it made total sense to keep it in, but the more I’ve looked at it, the more I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s just not a word that someone that age would know or use. And while the poem is written from the point of someone looking back, it is in my mind a five quid word in a poem that requires one quid words. Actually, what is the acceptable version of a five quid/dollar word?

(NB IMHO, this is a far better Pelican song)

Anyhoo, a couple of things have happened this week that has resulted in me giving up on trying to find a home for it in magazines.

1. It came back from yet another submission (My notes say 13 separate mags) and a newer poem was accepted (subject to agreeing on some edits). That sort of suggests to me that it’s time to focus on newer work, and not yet another round of revisions to a poem that I already think is strong. Also, I note that like an idiot I sent the wrong version out recently.

Oh Schmitt…(Flo and I have started watching New Girl)

2. We finished watching ZeroZeroZero, an international show about the impact of drug smuggling, and a key feature of the show is a shipping container of said drugs. ZeroZeroZero is a joint production, one of which is Cattleya (who are part of the ITV Studios family, don’t ya know) and the soundtrack is by Mogwai.

(I’ve just realised that between this and the Pelican references this is becoming a post-rock shipping container post (and now I have a title for this, er, post)

And Mogwai has put out their latest album this week, called ‘As The Love Grows‘, and I very much like it.

With those sorts of “coincidences” in mind, I can’t not post the poem here. Ideally, I’d like to find a better home for it but the nature of submissions being what they are I think I’ve exhausted where I can submit it to. I think it is/was different enough from the 2013 version on here to warrant submissions since then, but the universe is telling me to call it a day.

I had also hoped to be promoting this poem around the time that the Utah Monolith was in the news, but oh well…

Shipping Container V18

We asked, but no-one could explain quite how
you wound up here, landed for good this time
with those land-lubbers on the Village Hall’s
leeward side like some monochrome monolith.

Were you sent here to change our dull worlds
or kill us all? Either way, we soon taught
ourselves how to shinny onto your roof,
hauling up bags of books and pilfered food,
to lounge in pure sunshine. We found we could
take some joy from the climb, in aching biceps
and in who is brave enough to jump down
and roll like paratroopers in training.

(I chose to cling on by my fingertips,
to drop the last three feet like a plumb line.)

We’d uncoil our Sargent jumps, tapping your top
as you became our iceberg, Sherman tank,
or high-rise block. Your walls were stormed,
but stayed unopened by broken bricks or pot-shots
from our BB guns. David lost an eye
in the ricochet, though I can barely
recall how he came to be standing there.
You were hauled away for scrap soon after.
I should find out where he is now.

Credit to Andres Canavesi for the header photo via Unsplash

THE WEEK IN STATS

56.6k running – The training has begun properly. I may have slightly overdone it versus the plan this weekend, but aching legs aside it feels good.
0 day of 2 x 7-minute workouts, but the above means I don’t feel so bad
94 days of insults between my friend and me on Twitter. He started it.
1 x rejections: TLS
1 x acceptance (subject to edits)
2 poem worked on: Berlin, Lock in
1 poems finished: Berlin (now called Present)
1 new Submissions: One Hand Clapping, but have some to go out after the rejection earlier in the week
37 poems currently out for submission
58 Published poems*:
45 Poems* finished by unpublished
30 poems* in various states of undress
554 Rejected poems* Eg I’ve decided they are not good enough
1 Reviews* written and submitted. 2 still to do though, so must crack on
1 month, 2 weeks without cigarettes..
1 new cooker installed to replace the one that blew up at the start of the week
1 emergency call to the gas board as the engineer had left it leaking. FFS
1/2 a packet of ginger nuts eaten while writing this
1 trip to assist with measuring some our garden while writing this
1 load of washing hung out and
1 load in the washing machine while writing this
1 more week that I’m not having an affair with Eva Green

* To date, not this week. Christ!!

TITLE GIVEAWAY

Erroneous Monk

READ/SEEN/HEARD/ETC

Read
Poetry London 98
Robert Frost: Collected Poems
Lawrence Sail: Guises
Yeung Rachel Ka Yin: Cheyngu Chinoiserie

Music
Songs: Ohia – Protection Spells
God Is An Astronaut: Epitaphs
The Smubbs: This is the End of the Night
Deer Tick: War Elephant
Shannon Lay : August
Gemma Hayes: Night on my Side
The Pogues: Rum, Sodomy & The Lash
The Gutter Twins: Adorata, Saturnalia
Guy Chadwick: lazy, Soft & Slow
Gwen McCrae: Rockin’ Chair
Hayley Banar: Golder, Impossible Dream, Last War
Ham Sandwich: Carry The Meek
Hamilton Leithhauser & Rostam: I Had A Dream You Were Mine
The Fall: The Unutterable
Fionn Regan: Cala, The End of History
Bob Mould: Black Sheets Of Rain
Bruce Springsteen: Born In The USA, Born To Run, Darkness On The Edge of Town, Dust & Devils, The Ghost of Tom Joad
Mogwai: ZeroZeroZero OST, As The Love Continues
Cassandra Jenkins: An Overview on Phenomenal Nature
The Hold Steady: Open Door Policy
My Morning Jacket: At Dawn
The Waterboys: A Pagan Place
Margo Timmins – The Ty Tyrfu Sessions
Bob Mould: District Line
Pharaoh Sanders: Love Will Find A Way
Tindersticks: Distractions
Toshiko Akiyoshi: Early Numbers
LNZNDRF: II

TV/Film
ZeroZeroZero 4-8
Mischief Movie Night: Love Behind Bars
Fear The Walking Dead S5E14-18 (Brutal bout of insomnia earlier in the week)
Karate Kid

Zooms, etc
Three Hounds Poetry Evening

Radio/Podcasts
The Archers

Arrived
Sam Gardiner: The Night Ships (Finally, see previous posts)
Victoria Kennefick: Eat or We All Starve

Ordered
New cooker.
A tool for removing old sealant
Draft excluding tape
Rebecca Parker pamphlet
A pair of trousers
Ink and Cartridges

My friend Keg’s band, The Container Drivers sort of doing a song about monoliths

(BONUS TRACK FOR POST ROCK WEEK) Mono and Where We Begin…cos, y’ know Mono (lithe) and a poem bout where I grew up…

Bonus Bonus Non-Post Rock song because I said look out earlier