Oh woo, my first review…(Cuthbert, Dibble and Grub)

I started training for a thing called Race to the King about 4 years ago. It was my first (and to-date only) Ultra Marathon. It started in Arundel and ended in Winchester.

I say this for a few reasons. Mostly because I’ve just been tidying up my home office and found my medals (On a side note, I’m seeing a trend in running medals towards wooden medals. I am fine with this for environmental reasons, but they did’t make the same satisfying clank).



However, the other reason was I was reminded of something earlier on a run when my running buddy was discussing a big run they’d done a few years ago, and they talked about the existential crisis that followed it..the training and the event was done, and nothing felt right for a while after that. 



He, my running buddy, had mentioned this to me when I was training for RTTK, and I totally dismissed it. Surely that won’t happen to me, I thought…I love running..I can’t do much at the moment due to knee knack being back (damn my doggone bones), but goddamn it, the swine (lovely man) was bang on. The hangover (not booze-related) or perhaps it was more like a sort of adrenalin-based jet lag lasted far longer than the blisters and aches…I think I’ve documented this here before, so I won’t dwell on it (what, for longer than four paragraphs, Mat??)

Anyhoo, it also made me think of something that I’ve noticed in the last twelve (TWELVE!!) days since my book (MY BOOK!!!) came out (I HAVE A BOOK OUT!!!).

And that’s a dip in excitement. It is basically 4 years to the day since I got the nod that it would happen. Obviously, I’ve been working towards it for the last 40-odd years (eg something like 40 years and 40 FUCKING ODD years) since I first wrote some sort of rhyming thing in pink felt tip in my nan’s utility room…(WHERE’S THE BLUE PLAQUE FOR THAT?)

I have to caveat all of this by saying I am massively overjoyed about all of the having-a-book-out, and that none of this is due to a lack of gratitude for anyone that has been part of the voyage. it’s just that it feels like a sort of weird combo of closure, fear of what next and a sort of of loss of ownership of the thing.

It’s a closure because all of the work, all of the writing, the editing, the obsessing over commas vs semi-colons, the syllabics, the turning of phrases, the replacing phrases, the putting them back in then removing them again, the worrying over running orders (thanks to the cats for mixing it all up whenever I laid the poems out), the proofing of pdfs, the cover work, the gathering of endorsements, the phone calls, the touting it out for reviews (more on that anon), the waiting on deliveries, the organising of the launch, the launch, the actual hangover after; it’s all over. 
All done.

I have all the poems (and their drafts, all the scribbled running orders, the proofs and notes in a box) that I’ve finally stowed away after it sitting on my desk for the last 18 months like some sort of monolith. It made me think of the scene at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Scroll to 1.23 in case you have no idea what I’m talking about

The CtD time capsule

All the other finished poems

The unloved and the discarded poems

There’s a fear what next because what if I don’t get to do this again? Will I ever get another pamphlet published, let alone a full collection (Say hi if you fancy publishing either)? Will I ever accrue enough new poems to put in one (of either stripe)? Will I write any bloody poems? I think I’ve managed 5 new poems this year. I have a backlog of older ones that didn’t make the pamphlet—should they be considered? Will I have moved on enough? And who is that moving on for? me? Some notional reader? Who bloody cares? Musicians often talk about the ‘difficult second album’, about having their whole life to write the first record and then a rush to follow that up if it is any sort of success.

I’m not 100% sure what success looks like in poetry-land, but I think Collecting The Data has been a success so far; we’ve shifted almost 200 copies in twelve (TWELVE!!) days, and the majority of those are actual sales. I think that’s pretty bloody good.

Sheila is printing more, so does that count as a second edition? NB if it does, I have 9 copies left of the first edition, so get in fast. NB in a positive move, I listed the book on ALCS this week; that felt weird.



I’m not going to worry about all of the above too much because it’s far too soon and all very irrational. One poem after another will be enough to accrue an answer to most of the questions. I’ll start submitting again too in order to maintain momentum, etc

As to the loss of ownership, I can’t really explain it, but the idea of the book and the actual content has been swirling about between a very small group of people for the last year. Yes, individual poems from it are out there in various mags and journals (thanks to them all, as ever), but as soon as the book started selling it was in the hands of people, and they form their own thoughts and opinions. I hope it will all one positive, but I’m not there to read it, explain stuff, etc. That’s scary, and massively requires a letting go.

And not all of the above is bad by any chalk or stretch of the imagination; they are just thoughts and considerations that have occurred to me. However, there are clear positives from all of this.

I have a book. Written by me. I will have that forever, even if I never write some much as a stanza again.

I have a book that I will be reading from for a while.

I’ve had several lovely messages from people telling me they love it, and that they are either inhaling it or slowly reading it.

I have three reading dates lined up next year. I want more because the back of the tour t-shirt currently look like 

Jan 23
Feb 23
LONG GAP

September 23

Anyone that puts on a reading night and wants me there, I will either be in touch or don’t let me stop you getting in touch with me.

And while there is a sense of loss of ownership, there is a sense of it opening up and discovery. People are telling me poems they like from it. Clearing My Dad’s Shed is getting a lot of love among others, and this week I had the honour of what i m referring to as my first official review. The lovely man that is Matthew Paul asked me for permission to publish a poem from CtD on his internationally renowned blog.

If you’re not reading it or subscribed to his posts then I urge you to do so. I joked on the socials that reading it usually costs me money as he reads so widely, and recommends or reviews so well that I end up buying books all the time. I also joked that for once it had cost me money upfront this time to get him to say such lovely things.

I very much didn’t pay him, but I owe him a pint for this (if not more).

Have a read of it when you get a sec here. My jaw hit the floor when I read the review—which was embarrassing as I was standing on the platform at Notting Hill Gate waiting to go home from a shit day at work. I positively floated home after that. I’ve almost to dared to go back and read it again in case it was a hoax, but it’s not, and it’s been wonderful to see someone say such amazing and insightful things, to see where he’s absolutely picked up on things I intended to do like



“and also gives a pleasing half rhyme between ‘been’ and ‘Blaine’ (which is echoed later in the poem by the full rhyme with ‘domain’)”. 



That was as deliberate as I can make it. Domain wasn’t there from the get go, but looking back at the drafts it was there from draft 2 (of 14). I note it was called ‘ That Bastard Rhesus Monkey At Longleat” in draft 1 and then ‘Evolution‘ in draft 2, so when Matthew notes 



“The title of the poem helpfully tells the reader where and when the poem is set, with the implication that this is a probably-much-anticipated family visit; but it also assists the poet because the title does enough scene-setting to allow him to dispense with preliminaries in the poem itself and instead open it with two lines of description which plunge the reader straight in.”




he’s absolutely bang on. That appeared in draft 5 and opened up a lot of ground. The poem took it’s shape by draft 5, and I’ve just noticed that the Blaine reference didn’t appear till draft 8. It was Penn and Teller before that, but that half and internal rhyme must have followed soon after.

However, what has been even more instructive is the stuff he’s highlighted that wasn’t deliberate, or certainly wasn’t a conscious decision.

“It’s noteworthy that the verb construction in the second line is in the future tense and not the past; compounded by using ‘might’ in the third line. Does this mean that this reminiscing about the trip is happening during the same half-term holiday?”



I’d love to say that it was a deliberate move to suggest the timeline of the remembering was happening in the same half-term, but it would be a lie. However, I’m going to claim it was moving forwards and because if I’d have thought about it consciously at the time I’d have ruined it, I suspect.

I already loved it enough to put it in the book, but I am so pleased by what Matthew has seen and picked up on. It’s making me look at the poem again with a deeper love than before. It’s also made me worry that the reviews that are coming might not be so glowing. I hope they are, but I’m braced for them not to be. (So you say, Riches. You’ll be a dribbling wreck if someone so much as says a word about a misplaced full stop). Let’s see. And let’s stop here. 



Although before I go, head here to read a poem from Matthew’s excellent full collection. And head here to read new work from him over at The High Window. Music, in particular, is a masterclass in control, delivery and covering a lot of ground in as few a steps as possible.

If you think I gave this post the title have as an excuse to post this, you’re wrong, but I am happy about it

THE LAST WEEK IN STATS

HEALTH STATS
3.5K running. Very little due to time, tiredness and some knee knack. The next weeks will be better.
2 days without cigarettes…
2 day since drinking

LIFE STATS
1 very busy week
1 promotion at work
1 very accidental late night
1 box of top up books arrived

POET STATS
0 loose ideas/articles gathered
0 poem finished:
0 poem worked on:
0 poems committed to the reject pile
3 submissions: Wild Court, Northern Gravy, Creative Leicester
0 withdrawal: 
0 acceptances:
0 Longlisting:
1 reading at: Cafe Writers Open Mic
1 reading attended: Cafe Writers. Jill Abram and Paul Stephenson (+ open mics)
0 rejections:
1 5 poems are currently out for submission. 1 simultaneous sub
104 Published poems (including what’s in the book)

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

READ/SEEN/HEARD/ETC

Music
r= Radio, A = Audiobook, P=Podcast. The rest is music
Makushin: Move into the Luminous
The Archers (p)
That’s How I Remember It: Bob Mould (p)
REM: Up
Pixies: Come on Pilgrim It’s Surfer Rosa
Dropsonde Playlist
Various 80’s tunes at the accidental party
The National: First Few Pages, High Violet, Laugh Track, Sleep Well Beast, Trouble Will Find Me

Read
Split Screen (Red Squirrel Press)
Collecting the Data

Watched
Shetland

Foundation
Monsters thing
For All Mankind

Ordered/Bought
R’s birthday present

Arrived
R’s birthday present

 

Altering the colour of words

Unusually for me, I had loads of stuff lined up to write about last week. While I didn’t have a poem lined up, I had plans to talk about Robin Houghton’s post about How to be successful enough. It has memory in, charts, a sense of acceptance and places to aim for. In many ways it is the perfect poetry post. I may well come back to it.

I had plans to discuss the debate I’d seen on Twitter about publishing online. I can’t find it now, but the gist was that the poetry world needs to move on a bit. The question was whether publishing a poem on eg the socials would discount it from being published in a magazine (print or online). It also covered, if I recall correctly, the publishing of images of poems from mags and/or books. I’ve sort of covered that before.

On the former part, I can see the argument on both sides, but still land on the side of not putting poems out there on socials. Once they are then there is less incentive to go and find it in a magazine (print or online). I am always slightly aghast when I see poets publishing photos of their work on eg Instagram, etc when a mag has just been published in print. What is the incentive for a friend to then go and buy the mag after that? I assume we want people to do that and to help keep the mag world afloat. I did share a photo of one my recently, but only after the mag/journal themselves had done the same. Perhaps that’s the key..wait till the mag has done it themselves.

Anyhoo, I don’t want to get bogged down in all of that. It’s all feels a bit pointless.

This week, I have the poem line up and no real idea how to write about what I want to write about…so forgive me if this lurches all over the gaff.

I didn’t get to write a post last week (like that matters) as I was knackered after a long weekend in Norfolk. I went back to see my friend John Rance. John is the dad of my two closest friends, but I have always thought of him as a friend too. He’s always treated me the same way- certainly since we’ve all be old enough to buy him a pint…(I jest, mostly). John has been ill since a series of strokes starting back in September last year, and it was made clear to his family a couple of weeks ago that he wasn’t going to recover—despite there having been some positive signs at the start of the year.

I’m glad I went and spoke with John and said my goodbyes, as the message I was dreading came on Tuesday afternoon to say that John had passed away. It had been utterly devastating to to see a man that had been so full of life reduced to the shell he was in the Norfolk and Norwich hospital. John had lived so many lives as a parent to five children, husband to two wives (not at the same time), travelling across Europe as a young man, living in New Zealand while in the army, working as a salesman, a landlord for a working man’s club, a pub, becoming the artist he’d always wanted to be in later life. He was the first to help start an occasion and often the last to leave, the first to say something wise, the first to see the silly side of something, an inveterate creator of myths and legends (apparently West Ham won us the World Cup). His laugh filled a room, his determination to play jazz sometimes cleared it. A friend of mine recently wrote that John introduced him to so much in the way of art, music and film that he could never fully say how grateful he was, and that seems a fair assessment. And also nowhere near enough to describe the man. John’s art hangs in my kitchen. John’s light and shadow (he’d appreciate the art of that, I hope) will hang over my life forever.

If it was devastating to see him reduced in life, then it was a billion times worse to get that call on Tuesday. I was at work at time, and the moment the message landed I gathered my things and set off for home. The world of media research seemed exactly trivial after that.

I stood on the platform in a daze and decided to blot things out with a podcast—music didn’t seem right at the time, and I played the latest Planet Poetry episode. It featured an interview with Robert Hamberger. Robert is a poet I knew of, but hadn’t yet explored his work, so I listened with interest as he talked about his life, his work, his work within form and how it’s less of a straitjacket and more of a way of finding freedom to let the poem say what it wants to say. I nodded along (inwardly, making a loose mental note to finally push the button on buying Robert’s books…and knowing I would, eventually, but probably not straight away). I think he’d read a poem before this, but then he read a poem called ‘Moments’ and I came close to utterly disintegrating on the Circle line to Victoria station.

I tried to recall the lines of it. I emailed my local bookshop to order the book it came from, The Blue Wallpaper and then composed myself. The ordering was easy, the composure less so. The next day I emailed Robert to ask his permission to publish the poem and he said yes almost immediately. Not long after his reply, the bookshop replied to say they couldn’t get the book via the publisher and that I should go direct. I did and I await it’s delivery. However, Robert had very kindly sent me a copy.

Moment

You stroked his arm, quietly said He’s gone.
I knew the air had dimmed because
he no longer breathed in it.
By walking and speaking
he altered the colour of words,
made each room he moved in
a space I wanted to share: now
this secluded ward that held four of us,
until you quietly said He’s gone,
shattered three of us, except of course
it still bore his weight on the sheet
in the centre of the room, as though
his bed had become the world’s axis.

His bed had become the world’s axis
in the centre of the room, as though
it still bore his weight on the sheet,
shattered three of us, except of course
until you quietly said He’s gone.
This secluded ward that held four of us
(a space I wanted to share now)
made each room he moved in.
He altered the colour of words
by walking and speaking.
He no longer breathed in it.
I knew the air had dimmed because
you stroked his arm, quietly said He’s gone.


++ Published with permission by the author. Taken from The Blue Wallpaper, Waterloo Press, 2019++

I wasn’t there when John passed away, but his family were, so this is as much for John as it is for his wife, his sons and his daughters.

Lines like “By walking and speaking / he altered the colour of words, / made each room he moved in / a space I wanted to share:”
all seem as accurate as it is possible to be. As if Robert knew John by name and reputation, but oddly enough I don’t even recall them from the podcast. It was the second and third lines that hit me. I don’t even think I really heard much more of the poem, and I certainly failed to take in the specular form as Robert read it, but I knew inside 3 lines how beautiful this poem was.

I do recall that he mentioned he’d written the poem for his friend Clifford and that he bemoaned the lack of poems about male friendships, and so it certainly rang through my mind a bit later in the journey when I was catching the end of our Poet laureate’s interview with his friend, Glyn Maxwell, in his series, The Poet Laureate Has Gone To His Shed. The interview was full of discussions about moving away from home, what constitutes home, the way the place we grew up can dictate who we are, and then plenty of recollections of times shared as mates.

As is customary at the end of this series, Armitage shared a new poem with Maxwell, and he (Maxwell) is heard to say, “Aw, thanks, man”. That casual use of “Man” was such a throwaway thing, but put me in mind of my own relationship with John’s sons, and other male friends. It was exactly the sort of thing I think Robert was referring to. Exactly the sort of thing I was trying to write about in these two poems (Working Out and The Long Game – both feature two of John’s sons)

I should probably now make some sort of throwaway gesture about football and the like. I won’t (although, I sort of have). Instead, I’ll point you to one of John’s son’s recent works. His adaptation of Measure for Measure.

John Rance with his favourite son, Bertie.

Before I go, a thank you to Matthew Paul for his kind words here and for introducing me to the work of Geoff Hattersley. Damn it, more books to buy. Have you seen how prolific he is…?

And I note that the day before I had acceptance of my poem telling Aliens not to bother coming to earth there was an article suggesting they were coming for 8,000 of us. Clearly this didn’t happen. And they say poetry doesn’t change anything. And that’s before the poem is even published. Christ, the aliens will be giving us Elvis back soon.

A Song that is in some vague way linked to something

Bob Dylan, Boots of Spanish Leather – I think this was one of John’s favourite Dylan songs

THE LAST (TWO) WEEK(S) IN STATS

HEALTH STATS
15ishK running. My knee is improving now I’ve started trying to stretch my hamstrings. This week has seen 3 actual runs and almost no pain This is encouraging. I am very out of breath. This is not so much.
5 day without cigarettes…This is encouraging
0 days since drinking. **Pours another gin**

LIFE STATS
1 sleepless night
1 lost friend
2 nights of drinking
1 holiday booked
1 drive to Norfolk and back
1 sourdough loaf made (by Rach)
1 book finished, I think
1 sunday roast
1 mate’s birthday


POET STATS
0 loose ideas/articles gathered (this allows me to kid myself I am writing all the time)
x poems finished: Several for the book
x poems worked on: Lots for the pamphlet, 1 new draft
0 submissions:
0 withdrawal:
2 acceptances: Black Nore, New Welsh Review
0 Longlisting:
0 readings:
1 rejections: The Stinging Fly
11 poems are currently out for submission. No simultaneous subs
83 Published poems


0 review finished:
0 reviews started:
0 review submitted:
1 review 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

Music

Monday
Death Cab For Cutie: Asphalt Meadows (Acoustic)
Dinosaur Jr: Green Mind, Where You Been, Hand It Over
Tuesday
The Archers
The Verb: The Secret Lives of Women
Cinema Under the Stairs: Oscars
The Wonder Stuff: Hup
Unwed Sailor: Truth Or Consequence
Tara Clerking Trio: ST
Tallies: Patina
Weds
Stina Nordenstam: And Then She Closed Her Eyes
VA: Thai Beat A-Go-Go Vol1
Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine: 101 Damnations, Post Historic Monsters
Tom Verlaine: ST
The Wonder Stuff: Hup Live
Thurs
William Bell: Phases of Reality
The Kissaway Trail: Breach
VA: Thai Beat A-Go-Go Vol2
The Meat Purveyors: Someday Soon Things Will be Much Worse
Dropsonde Playlist
Miles Davis: In a Silent Way
The Archers
Various songs while drunk
Saturday
Dropsonde Playlist
The Archers
Sunday
Dropsonde Playlist
Miles Davis: In a Silent Way
Monday
Miles Davis: In a Silent Way
Bar Italia: Bedhead
Miles Davis: Bitches Brew
Stina Nordenstam: Memories of a Colour
Counting Crows: Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings
Tuesday
The Orielles: Disco Volador, La Vita Olistica
The Poet Laureate has Gone To His Shed: Olivia Senior, Glyn Maxwell
The Archers
Planet Poetry: Robert Hamberger
Miles Davis: Kind of Blue
Weds
Charlie Mingus: Tonight At Noon, Presents Charles Mingus, In Your Soul
John Coltrane: Giant Steps, Stellar Regions, Sun Ship, Traneing & Dakar, Transcendence
Thurs
John Cale: Guts
Taylor Swift: Folklore, Evermore
Deacon Blue: The Hipsters
Sharon Van Etten: Tramp
Arrooj Aftab: Love In Exile
Fri
The Reds, Pinks & Purples: The Town That Cursed Your Name
A House: I Am The Greatest
Hot Snakes: Jericho Sirens
Horse Feathers: Appreciation, House With no Name
Heron Oblivion: ST
Heather Nova: Siren
Sat
Heather Nova: South
Dropsonde Playlist
Sun
Bill Janovitz: Lonesome Billy, Up Here, Walt Whitman Mall
Bill Janovitz & Crown Victoria: Fireworks On TV
Bob Dylan: Desire

Read
Suzanna Fitzpatrick: Fledglings
BH Fairchild: The Art of the Lathe
William Gilson: Spider Time
Poetry Salzburg Latest

Watched
Endeavour
Interior Design With Alan Carr
The Mandalorian
For All Mankind
The Thick of It

Ordered/Bought
A new remote for the TV
Zaffar Kunial – England’s Green
Cal Flynn – Islands of Abandonment
Rebecca Goss – Girl
TS Eliot The Poems of TS Eliot
Selected Poetry of John Clare

Arrived
Orbis 203
A New TV remote

Cromer, Fango, Have I Read Enough?

What a week to come back to…at one point about this time a week ago I was pretty sure we weren’t going to be home at all. I was desperate to get back to Blighty, but a cancelled flight and then further delays meant it was looking decidedly debatable that we’d make it home. We ended getting back home at 8pm on Sunday instead of about 3 in the morning, but having left our hotel at 6pm (Turkish time) the night before it had been a long day.

I won’t bore you with the long story about long waits in queues at airports and horrendous hotel stays after the flight was cancelled. And I won’t bang on about the lovely holiday we had before the last stage other than to say that we all loved it. We all felt rested, we all ate too much, I definitely drank too much (but not to excess – I’m learning) and there were no major sunburn incidents (not major, but there was certainly some redness about the shoulders for us all). We met many delightful cats.

I almost wish we could have stayed in that little bubble now, given what we’ve come back to. An idiot for a leader and a king instead of a queen. There’s nothing to be said about the latter that is worth saying beyond I find the whole affair pointless. As to the former, I suspect it will go from bad to worse and it was already a fucking disaster. Did I mention we met many lovely cats while away?

We named this lad Fango…

While the time away wasn’t as productive as our last holiday, I did manage six new drafts…two that arrived just under wire and happened on the flight back. I think the last time I got through 10 or more, but given how slim the pickings have been this year I will take six. Who knows what will happen to them. The ≥10 from last time mostly turned into good and useable poems, some of which should make it into the book, so I have hope. I’m just glad to be writing things again. I also managed to work on a draft I’d started before we went, and have even revived an old poem that had been binned that is now a contender for the book, so I will take that as a win.

I can’t afford a trip to, but probably earn too much to warrant a reduced fee for a writing retreat, so these periods of productivity are useful as a way of setting me up to work own stuff for the rest of the year, or until the next burst. Obviously, if new poems want to come in between then I will not that gift horse (the poem) in the mouth (the spontaneousness).

IN OTHER NEWS…

After a week where we saw the shite outcome of one longlist and one shortlist finally get whittled down (See what I’ve done there), I saw there was an interesting debate online about longlists and shortlists as part of the magazine submission process. There are two threads—one on Matthew Stewart’s Twitter, he kicked it off, like the touch paper lighter he is, and another under Zoe Brigley’s, which is sort of in response to Matthew’s question.

The debate was all pretty good tempered, and the response quite divided. Some in favour, some not .

As ever, I can see that there’s no real right or wrong here. It all depends on many factors…I think how long you take to get a response is probably a big one. If it’s a few weeks and then a couple more for the longlist to become a yes or no then it’s fine. Longer than that then it’s likely to frustrate; it certainly would frustrate me.

I can also see that being told you’ve made the list (long or short) can be a fillip to someone. I can also see why it would be annoying too, so a lot comes down to the recipient and the way they see a glass with 50% liquid in. Incidentally, if you find you have a fence in need of someone to perch themselves on it, let me know.

Having been on the receiving end of a couple of longlistings of late I am grateful for the news. I think I’d prefer to be told that if and when it’s a no. If there’s a shortlisting and the decision is imminent then that’s not so bad, but much as the endless sitting about in Antalya airport last weekend, it’s the waiting that kills you.

I suspect most editors are coming from a good place and want people to feel wanted, so it’s probably a good thing. I suspect some of it is buying themselves some time. Ask me again when my recent long-listing becomes a not this time. (Can you guess which way I tend to describe a glass with 50% of its liquid capacity in?)

Finally, a poem

One of the best things about having been away was the chance to read. I set myself the target of a novel a day, and I think I just about achieved it if I average it out…some days were better than others. I was going to avoid poetry completely— and I’m still reeling that I didn’t take any non-fiction, but it was unavoidable. You’ll see the list of stuff I read while I was away below in the stats section, but one book I enjoyed immensely was Christopher James’, ‘The Storm In The Piano‘. I forget where I saw the recommendation , but I recall being prompted to read his Arc collection, ‘Farewell To The Earth‘, and enjoying it very much. NB the prompt for Storm was here.

As someone that really enjoys writing about characters and imagined situations, Chris’s work really appeals; not least for the sheer inventiveness of the situations, but as work that I can learn from. His control of this situations and the information he imparts is incredible. His blog appears to have disappeared, but I’m sure I recall him saying he’d had a long break from poetry there. I am very glad to see he has a book out again. I need to fill in the blanks in my collection.

My keen reader will note that while I was away I set up a post for a M.R. Peacocke poem. While I was away I received an email quite rightly reminding me that I should be seeking permission to share the poems that I have been sharing. This may mean a slow down in sharing poems for a while as I tend to choose the poem on the day/make it up as I’m going – you may or may not have noticed.

However, on this occasion I have planned ahead and have Christopher’s permission to share a poem. I wasn’t sure what to share, but I note that there is a connection between ‘The Storm…’ and ‘Farewell…’ in the shape of a poem that mentions Cromer. And I also note that my brother cycled to Cromer this morning, stopping at the excellent Grey Seal Coffee shop (yes, I will take a sponsorship deal), so how can I not post this. It also feels oddly in keeping with the encouraging news coming out of the Ukraine about beating back Russia.

Today Cromer is Moscow

Seagulls preside on the spires
and onion domes of Cadogen Road.
There are snowdrifts in the belfry
of the parish church. In the Hotel de Paris;
they’re serving Rassolnik soup
and vodka so cold it makes your glass
smoke with ice. In an upper window,
the ghost of Galina Ulanova looks out
across the waves balanced on a single toe.
At the end of the pier the oligarchs
are watching The Tremeloes sing Kalinka
while on the seafront crab fisherman
dance the troika in their wellingtons.
Ice-cream men wear bearskin hats
and play Stravinsky to summon
the children from their homes
because today Cromer is Moscow.
In the lighthouse they’re reading
Pushkin and playing chess to pass the time.
Down on the beach, old cosmonauts
skim stones into the sea while
beneath their feet, the faces
of the tsars are imprinted in the sand.


Taken from ‘The Storm In the Piano’, Maytree Press

Just because it occurred to me today, and just because of some events (although entirely un-related to the most obvious one), and because the seasons are changing, and because the whole of Beckenham was alive with the sounds of a Drum n’Bass night last in the local park last night, and because the weather has been all over the shop this week, because I have permission, and quite frankly just because it’s bloody marvellous, here is a poem by Matthew Paul. It’s taken from his excellent book, The Evening Entertainment. It’s long overdue a follow up, so come on, Matthew…Get that sorted please.

Queenie Queen

After the storm subsides, you find
your glass garden table in smithereens,
kites of plane-leaves sprawling over the fence,
and the closest to silence you’ve ever heard outdoors.
You’re alive as the young cat who appears once a week,
her eyes like a frog’s peeping out from the pond
your neighbours say you must get filled in.

But as another dreary year accumulates,
like autumn’s rain within a cracked terracotta pot,
you hear instead the last few blackberries –
for bramble jelly, crumbles and fools –
still singing lustily on their bush.

Taken from The Evening Entertainment by Matthew Paul

And finally…

Finally, thanks to the folks at Resonance Poetry for the chance to read at their open mic on Monday. It was nice to read some things I haven’t read live before. And on that note, dinner is nearly ready.

REM – Airportman

THE LAST TWO AND A BIT WEEKS IN STATS

HEALTH STATS
5K running. Yesterday was the first run in a while, but my knee didn’t hurt, so I’m hopeful that this is the start of things improving
2 days without cigarettes…I was doing so well..
0 Days since drinking.
0 sleepless nights:

LIFE STATS
7 hours at Gatwick waiting for a flight to Turkey
4 hours flying to Turkey
1 cancelled flight
1 flea-infested overnight hotel,
1 x 17 hours delay coming back, but one wonderful holiday.
1 mountain of food eaten,
1 lake of beer drunk inc 8 Al Capones

POET STATS
5 poems finished: Settling, Swimming Lessons, Dewars, New Mothers, Ingratitude, Drink With the Locals
8 poems worked on: What’ll It Be, Two Beds, Spider That Bit, Not Horses, Sponsorship, Swans, Cat Poem, A Drink With The Locals
2 submissions: Berlin Lit, TLS
0 acceptances: 1 Longlist for Poetry Wales
1 reading: Foley, No you are, A Drink With The Locals, New Spider Poem, Ad blockers, Apples
0 rejections:
19 poems are currently out for submission.
78 Published poems
35 Poems* finished but unpublished
Twelvety poems* in various states of undress
554 Rejected poems* Eg I’ve decided they are not good enough

0 reviews finished:
2 reviews started: Well, read and thought about
0 reviews submitted:
4 reviews to write: How the fuck did that happen…

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

* To date, not this week. Christ!!

READ/SEEN/HEARD/ETC

Read
Anna Kirby: Where The Dead Walk
WG Sebald: The Rings Of Saturn
Cynthia Miller: Honorifics
Don Paterson: The Arctic
Louis De Berniere: So Much Life Left Over, The Autumn of The Ace
Hilary Menos: Fear of Forks
Max Porter: Lanny
Christopher James: The Storm In The Piano
Ben Wilkinson: Way More Than Luck, Same Difference
Jon McGregor: Lean Stand Fall
Junicherō Tanizaki: Some Prefer Nettles
Seamus Heaney: Selected Poems 1988-2013
Michael Laver: After Earth

Zooms:

Music
Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith & Emile Mosseri: I Could Be Your Dog/I Could Be Your Moon
Luke Sital-Singh: The Fire Inside
Bengt Berger: Bitter Funeral Beer
Television Personalities: Some Kind of Trip: Singles 1978- 1989, Top Gear
First Rodeo: ST
Yeah Yeah Yeahs: Fever To Tell
The Albert: ST
Caroline Spence: True North
The Archers
Simon Armitage: Larkin Revisited Going, Going, Aubade, To the Sea, Bridge For The living, High Windows, Talking In Bed, Toads revisited, Love Songs In Age
Larkin/Essay – Ambulances (Raymond Antrobus)
The National – Sonic Juicy Magic Oneida: Success
The Afghan Whigs: Black Love
Jaimie Brach:Fly or Die
Mathew Halsall: The temple Within
Bardo Pond: Is there A Heaven?
Kathryn Calder: Bright & Vivid
Cass McCombs: Heartmind
The Cure: Wish
Joni Mitchell: Song To A Seagull, For The Roses
Andrew Tuttle: Fleeting Adventure
Craig Finn:A legacy of rentals
Explosions In The Sky: Big Bend, the Wilderness
Angel Olsen: The Big Time
The Cure: Bloodflowers
Joan Shelley: The Spur
Explosions In The Sky: The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place, Take Care x 3
The Durutti Column: Amigos Em Portugal, Vini Reilly, Short Stories For Pauline
Bill Orcutt: Music For Four Guitars
Pale Blue Eyes: Souvenirs
The Church: Priest= Aura
Julia Jacklin: Pre-Pleasure
Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith: Let’s Turn It Into Sound
Kevin Morby: This Is a Photograph
The Archers
Caterina Barbieri: Spirit Exit, Ecstatic Computation
KH: Looking At Your Pager
The Dirty Three: Cinder, ST, Whatever You Love, You Are, Towards the Low Sun
Joni Mitchell: Mingus
Scrawl: He’s Drunk
The Afghan Whigs: How Do You Burn?
Tenniscoats: All Aboard
Mudhoney: Superfuzz Bigmuff, Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge
Wilco: Kicking Television
Prefab Sprout; From Langley Park To Memphis
Caspian: Live At Old South Church
Caribou: Suddenly
The National: Sleep Well Beast
Tallies: Patina
Chris Forsyth: Evolution Here We Come
Built To Spill: When The Wind Forgets Your Name
Morphine: Cure For Pain
Oliver Sim: Hideous Bastard
Jockstrap: I Love You Jennifer B
Bell Orchestre: House Music
Rachika Nayar: Our Hands Against the Dusk
David Grubbs: A Guess At the Riddle
Joan Shelley: Electric Ursa
Laura Veirs: Found Light
Sharon Van Etten: We’ve been Going About This All Wrong
My Morning Jacket; ST
Ryley Walker: Primrose Green
Echo & The Bunnymen: Flowers, Heaven Up Here, Porcupine, Crocodiles, Reverberation
Self Esteem: Prioritise Pleasure
The Boo Radleys: C’mon Kids
Courtney Marie Andrews: Old Flowers, May Your Kindness Remain
Madi Diaz: History Of a Feeling

Watched
Endeavour
Bad Sisters
Only Murders In The Building
Shetland
The Thick of It
Grey’s Anatomy
The Good Wife
Trom

Ordered
Don Paterson: The Arctic

Arrived
Hilary Menos: Fear of Forks
Don Paterson: The Arctic
Bruce Robinson: The Peculiar Memories of Thomas Penman (Via Jane Lovell)

We Bulls Wobble, But We Don’t Fall Down**

Owing to a busy week and the political distractions going on around us I have very little to offer up beyond some poems this week. It should really be enough, and is hopefully far more interesting than the stark ravings of, well, me.

However, all do come from things I’ve read this week and there are, as ever, some nebulous connections.

Firstly, I found an old copy of The Frogmore Papers on my TBR pile. Issue 98 had somehow slipped through the net. TFP is a magazine I have been trying to appear in for a long time. I’ve come close, but not managed to clip the end of and light the proverbial and/or literal cigar yet. Onwards and sideways though…

Reading this issue, many poems, as ever, stood out. This list isn’t exhaustive, but I enjoyed poems by Mike Barlow, Paul Fenn, Denise Bennett, Simon Wilson and Marion Hobday. I almost shared Nick Pearson’s excellent and excellently titled, ‘Reading Jeffrey Archer’s Wikipedia Page Outside Furniture Village‘. However, I’ve gone with ‘A Heavy People’ by Marc Tritsmans (NB Dutch Wikipedia—see, the links are appearing already)..

A Heavy People

We are of old though a constipated people
of soft gravity, of butter, cream and eggs
of far too frequent and interminable table
conversations in which eagerly we sink
together to the floor and ridicule ourselves.

How ignominiously we lag behind those
fleet-footed, over-energetic, ever-sprightly,
sinewy peoples who almost seem to float
upon an airy asceticism fuelled by
coriander, olive oil and lemongrass.

Wallowing and wisecracking we’re surely
waiting till their resistance is finally broken.

Note: On viewing a Flemish menu from 1925
Taken from Issue 98 of The Frogmore Papers. Translated by John Irons.

While this poem doesn’t seem to be obviously about the British—is it about Belgians, the Dutch or someone else?—it feels like it could so easily be applied to a version of Brits, or perhaps the Little-Englanders that have landed us up to our necks in the current mess we are in… I , for one, am absolutely here for “..an air asceticism fuelled by / coriander, olive oil and lemongrass”. Although, given the increases in costs of olive oil of late, perhaps not.

I like the idea, and this is just my reading, that we will be waiting a long time until “their resistance is finally broken.”

Just to square the circle here, I also found out this week I hadn’t won the recent Frogmore Poetry Prize. Congratulations to Laura Jenner for her poem, Smoothing, and the runners up: Elizabeth Best and John Lancaster (I am assuming not the same John Lancaster as I worked with many years ago – Was it in my regional press or my magazine days…Christ knows, and who cares, but if it was regional press then I can make a connection to Furniture Village as I used to do a lot of work for them back then).

The next poem is one one I went back to this week having read Matthew Paul’s excellent essay on the poet Ted Walker at The Friday Poem this week. I somehow acquired a copy of Walker’s fifth collection, Burning The Ivy, a few years ago—I can’t be sure but I think it was in a box of books given to me by my old boss, Trak Julyan (back in the regional press days…vague-connection fans). Either way, I didn’t read it until a couple of years ago, so I was pleased to see Matthew mention him this week and to feel like I, for once, had some prior knowledge of something—it happens so rarely.

I think, when I’d read the bucolic poems in Burning The Ivy, I’d intended to go back and read more Ted Walker, but forgot to do so. There are always more people to read, more books to buy, but reading Matthew essay has caused me to order two more Ted’s…The Night Bathers and Gloves To The Hangman. The latter of which will be worth it alone for this stanza as quoted by Matthew in his essay. It’s taken from a poem called ‘A Celebration of Autumn’.

Something has wearied the sun
To yellow the unmolested dust
On the bitter quince; something is lost
From its light, letting waxen bees drown
In their liquor of fatigue.

However, I’m going to quote from the book I do have to hand. I was going to include the poem, Night Rain, as it’s one Matthew describes as one of the loveliest in the book, and it is, but instead I am going to quote from the sequence that closes the collection, Creatures of a Zodiac. I am not one for astrology and the like, but as I am apparently a Taurus it feels fitting to quote from the second poem in the sequence.

The Bull

Ted Walker, Burning The Ivy, Jonathan Cape, 1978

Hard as a wall of sandbags,
he fathers herds in test-tubes.

A man in a clean white coat,
satisfied, washes his hands;

like udders, the rubber gloves.
At market, lot 22

got dumped from a Land Rover:
bull calf, born of a milk breed,

useless. It fell on its knees
like a Muslim at prayer. I

bid my sentimental pound.
In sharp suits, pie-men guffawed

and the auctioneer yawned
while I led Plug through kingcups

to a pond to drink the moon.

While, I would argue that the “I” at the end of the fifth stanza doesn’t work, and that the image he uses in the same stanza is one that could charitably be called “of its time”, (UPDATED AT 19.30 ON 10.07.22) and in reality is an awful and objectionable phrase that no-one in their right mind would use now, it’s a powerful poem, and the last image of what I presume is his dog being led to “a pond to drink the moon” is worth the price of admission alone.

I also have an ulterior motive for choosing that particular poem…It allows me to link to the other book I’ve been reading this week, Caleb Parkin‘s This Fruiting Body. I mentioned a few weeks ago that I got to read alongside Caleb (albeit remotely) at the recent Finished Creatures launch. I’ve had my copy of TFB on the TBR pile for a while (connections and a trite rhyme too—you lucky people), and having recently heard Caleb on Planet Poetry, I thought I should crack on. I’ve not finished the book yet, but so far I am loving it.

While the book, so far, has dealt with largely ecological themes, it’s absolutely living up to the billing on the back page as a “playful invitation to a queer ecopoetics that permeates our bodies and speech, our gardens, homes and city suburbs’. I’m looking forward to finishing it on my commute this week.

The poem I’m picking to share is ‘Minotaur at the Soft Play Centre’.

Minotaur at the Soft Play Centre

Caleb Parkin, This Fruiting Body, Nine Arches Press, 2021

While the calves play, the other children-children huddle
by the counter of the snack bar (beef burger ‘n’ chips £3.99).
Minotaur sits on a chrome chair, latte in his vast hand,
watching the calves tumble and snort through padded rollers
or down spiral slides. He rests a hulking elbow on the holographic
tabletop and issues a hefty sigh.

Every time the calves go out of sight, the timpani of his bull’s heart reverberates
Each time they vanish behind some painted frieze of children-children
jumping, screeching, reappearing with bovine eyes widened
in overexcitement, he hears echoes of thoughts he hoped
he’d shut away. Hooved thoughts, from years within

those corridors, his meaty leaf-shaped ears rotating
like radars, shifting sharply to the sounds of those
frantic human-human feet. Soles like his
endless and disposable; heads like his
endless and disposable.

I picked this poem for two reasons.
1. Caleb’s work feels like it’s at the other, more urgent end of the eco spectrum in comparison to Ted’s.
2. It has a minotaur in and Ted’s had a bull…I don’t just make this shit up as I go you know…*
3. I am a sucker for poems that imagine the extended lives of well-known characters . I am using this a poetic moodboard for a poem I’m working on at present about the life of the spider that bit Peter Parker
4. Yes, I said two reasons
5. I make the rules.
6. Having spent plenty of time in soft play places I can identify with our bovine friend
7. I can identify with our bovine friend…full stop.
8. “the timpani of his bull’s-heart reverberates”…Oh come on, that’s ace.

Right, that’s enough. Time to draw a close with a final, most tenuous connection. I went to see Pearl Jam in Hyde Park yesterday. I’ve mentioned before how much of a fan I am, and their song Wishlist is something I’ve written about here too. I texted a video of them playing it to Flo last night.

Couldn’t really get any good shots of the band – we were too far away from the stage, so here is my friend and I bawling along to either ‘Black’ or ‘Alive’ last night.

However, the vague connection is that one of the people I was there with was a friend of a friend, and she was part-Belgian, which sort of brings us back to our Flemish menu earlier, no?

I’ll get my coat.

* Obvs, I do
**The punchline to a gag told to me by an ex-girlfriend years ago

REM’s Find The River. Included for it’s mention of “Of Ginger, lemon, indigo /
Coriander stem and rose of hay” because it makes me think of the first poem above, and because I have only just been made aware of the beard sported by Peter Buck.

THE WEEK IN STATS

0K running. Still knee-knacked. I hate it. I tried a small run yesterday, and it was sort of ok, but knee sore again today.
2 trips to central London for work
Seen Live: Pearl Jam, Stereophonics, Johnny Marr & The Healers
1 week of taking a hard look at myself
0ish (at least) journeys to dance lessons and back for Flo
1 rejections: Frogmore Poetry Prize
0 new poem finished:
1 poems worked on: New thing…something to do with spiders
0 poems published:
1 submissions: Obsessed With Pipework
2 acceptances: …Both for #100 of OWP
13 poems are currently out for submission.
5 poems left to submit beyond makeweights
77 Published poems
37 Poems* finished by unpublished
25 poems* in various states of undress
554 Rejected poems* Eg I’ve decided they are not good enough
0 reviews finished:
3 reviews to write: How the fuck did that happen…I keep finishing them and then they keep coming. I agreed to another this week. Dammit.
1 days without cigarettes…I was doing so well. Mid week got to me, but back to it.
37 Days since drinking
0 sleepless nights:
1 more week that I’m not having an affair with Eva Green

* To date, not this week. Christ!!

TITLE GIVEAWAY
Ramekin
I’m going to take this “feature” out the back and send it to “the farm”

READ/SEEN/HEARD/ETC

Read
The Frogmore Papers #98
Caleb Parkin: This Fruiting Body
Clare Crossman: The Mulberry Tree

Zooms:
None

Music
Sharon Van Eaten: We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong
The Waterboys: Room To Roam
Joe Harriot & John Mayer: Indo-Jazz Fusions I & II
Alanis Morrisette: Under Rug Swept, Jagged Little Pill
David McWilliams: Volume 2
Pit Pony: World To Me
Unclassified (Radio 3)
Diatom Deli: Time-Lapse Nature
Radiohead: Kid A
Adwaith:Bato Mato
Massacre Massacre: EPDave Boulter: Lover’s Walk
Hi-Vos: No Sense No Feelings
Širom: The Liquified Throne of Simplicity
Sam Slater: I Do Not Wish To Be Known As A Vandal
Katy J Pearson: The Sound of Morning
The Housemartins: The People Who Grinned Themselves Too Death
Peal Jam: Gigaton, Lightning Bolt, Backspacer, Binaural, No Code, ST, Riot Act
Raspberries: Fresh
Laura Veirs: First Light
The Archers
Dave Boulter: Lover’s Walk (Instrumentals)
Jesse Buckley & Bernard Butler: For All The Days That Tear Our Heart

Watched
Ozark
Love Island
Only Murders In The Building
Obi Wan Kenobi

Ordered
2 x Ted Walker books
A Shirt I need to return

Arrived
Poetry Birmingham #8
The shirt I need to return

Why MBA…

(I hope you’re now singing a version of the Village People classic)

It’s been what can only described as a breakneck couple of weeks. The run up to last week was all about organising a surprise birthday party for my wife and then the actual celebration of the day (and dealing with the extensive hangover that followed the first part, but we will gloss over that). There were rooms to decorate at the venue I’d hired, there was me- an idiot- piercing an inflatable mylar balloon while trying to inflate the bloody thing. There was also me—an idiot—not bringing enough helium with me. There was me attempting to make a cake and chilli jam at the same time as well as trying to maintain the surprise element and get R out of the house. But it was all worth it, she enjoyed it. She didn’t hit me when the surprise was revealed, and I think all that attended enjoyed themselves. I was shattered on Monday though.

Then this week has seen a series of late nights as the Exam course work for marketing course I’ve been doing for work was due in. I had to write a marketing plan for an imaginary photocopier company as part of a Mini-MBA in marketing. We had two weeks to do it, but I had to squeeze it into one to sort R’s birthday and fit it round work and life in general, so cue at least three late nights this week and some furious segmentations, etc.

In the middle of all of this I went in for my now standard one day a week in the office with a view to bringing home some of the stuff I’ve accumulated over years. Our floor is being closed down as work wind down our occupancy of our current building, and so I looked a bit like I’d been made redundant as I lugged a cardboard box of rangham* home.

The box mostly contained work-related books (Statistics for Dummies, etc), pens, mugs and the like. But I also remembered to rescue the poem that I had pinned to the divider.

Contingencies – Aidan Coleman

Your
sentiment

tangles
with data

where
analysts

covering
bases

uncover
fresh

affronts
A well

rounded
baby

wakes
assuming

parents

I don’t know or remember how I first found this poem, but it fits perfectly with my day job – where sentiment tangles with data. I know nothing about Aidan Coleman, but I now discover he has a wikipedia page that I’m sure wasn’t there when I first found this poem (about 5 years ago, I think). It looks like I shall be working out how to buy books in Australia.

* I’m not sure I’ve spelled this right, but it’s a word my wife taught me that means detritus and accumulated dreck.

The breakneck pace of this week has meant that I’ve not been able to properly bask in the joy of having two poems go up at Wild Court. These were accepted earlier in the year, and while I knew they would be a while before they went live, I’ve been on tenterhooks since the acceptance. I am grateful to Rob for taking them, and for having me back after the last time. I am also grateful for the learning about the powers of proof reading.

I’ve been working on a review today of Stephen Payne’s The Windmill Proof – Spoiler Alert, I like it. The book contains a poem called ‘Typo’. The first two stanzas of which are as follows…

What the proofs prove
is that there must always exist
more typographical errors
than can be noticed,
even by the most careful scrutiniser.

And among the overlooked
is one that confronts the author
the very first time
he opens the published version.

These lines have never felt more relevant this week. Within an hour or so of the poems going up, and despite me writing circa 15 drafts of the poem, a friend reviewing each of those drafts and Rob proofing the final version four times, a typo still snuck through. I won’t tell you what it is or in which poem as it’s been corrected now, but FSF, FFS.

I would urge you to go and read the poems that surround mine by Stephanie Powell, Tuesday Shannon and Alan Buckley. And while I’m here, please do go and read Matthew Paul’s poem, Pathé News Visits the Ace of Spades, over at The Friday Poem. I know, I know …I need a swear jar for mentioned TFP. Go now, as it will be replaced next Friday (that’s how it works). I can almost taste the decadence and feel the filth when I read this poem. Who can ask for more?

THE WEEK IN STATS
16K running.
0 hangovers
0 rejection: Rialto
1 poem finished: Bedside Manner
0 poems worked on:
3 submission: Crannog, Poetry Wales, Poetry OXford
29 poems currently out for submission.
70 Published poems*: Was 69, but one was not used in the end, having been accepted.
42 Poems* finished by unpublished
25 poems* in various states of undress
554 Rejected poems* Eg I’ve decided they are not good enough
3 review to write : How did that happen, I’ve gone from 1 to do to having more…Hmmm
0 days without cigarettes…I was doing well…
0 Days since drinking
3 sleepless nights: This is not a development I approve of
1 more week that I’m not having an affair with Eva Green

* To date, not this week. Christ!!

TITLE GIVEAWAY
Curried Knees

READ/SEEN/HEARD/ETC

Read
Sam Gardiner: The Night Ships
The notes for my mini MBA in marketing
Inua Ellams: The Actual

Music
Elbow: Flying Dream No. 1
Cate Le Bon: Mug Museum
REM: Automatic For The People
Poltergeist: Your Mind Is A Box…
Explosions In the Sky: Live, Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place
My Morning Jacket: Live Red Rocks 2015
Nadia Reid: Listen To Formation, Preservation, Out of my Province
Poetry In Aldeburgh: Wendy Cope & Rory Waterman
The Archers
Camera Obscura: Biggest Bluest hi-Fi, Desire Lines, Various Singles, Let’s Get Out of This Country
Mary Lattimore: Collected Works
The Dream Syndicate: How Did I Find Myself Here?
Dropsonde Playlist
The Decemberists: The Crane Wife
Avi Buffalo: ST
Caoilfhionn Rose: Truly
Matthew Halsall: Salute To The Sun
Jon Hassell: Vernal Equinox
The Triffids: Born Sandy Devotional
Cowboy Junkies: Ghosts

Watched
Succession
Shetland
Ted Lasso
Brassic
Friday Night Lights
Dexter: New Blood

Ordered
Naush Sabah: Litanies
A replacement part for a vacuum cleaner
A book for Secret Santa at work

Arrived
Jeremy Page: The Naming
The part for the vacuum cleaner

Falcon, Falcoff

Yes, I know it’s not…etc. Photo by Ahmed Badawy on Unsplash

Where does the time go, eh? It’s been a month of missed weekly posts and IT DOESN’T MATTER ONE JOT!!

In that month I can barely say what’s happened, but I can confirm I completed Race To The King and went to the funeral of the magnificent Lorraine Gray. I was asked to read, alongside my two closest friends, Adrian Henri’s ‘Without You‘ (and that reminds me, I must order Andrew Taylor’s book about Adrian), some other folks read Auden’s ‘If I Could Tell You’, so it was a beautiful, poetry-filled event…(Oh yes, and very, very boozy, but it’s what she would have wanted.)

So much of the last few weeks have been spent fixated on that run and then Lol’s funeral that I now find myself a bit bereft of focus. The football has been a welcome distraction, but concentrating on anything seems to escape me at present. I sat down earlier to try and look at a poem for the first time in a month, and while I know the ideas are ok, nothing grabbed me enough to want to write more of them. I was listening to Johnny Marr’s interview with our esteemed laureate yesterday while on a tip run and he talked about turning up, the act of craft, etc and I think perhaps I am out of practice. My habit of daily writing has fallen way by the wayside (as has writing these posts), so it’s time to do something about that. Not, again, that it matters either way…

However, I did, at least, manage to complete one of the many reviews I need to do, so there’s that, and I hope to see it up soon for The Friday Poem (and that’s a place that is going from strength to strength.

This week they published Flying The Lanner by Tony Curtis (a poet that’s new to me) and, in what will now be something of an incredulous leap, I can add to that a poem from the book Ive just reviewed that is also about falconry. As much as I enjoyed the writing about pigeons last November, I reckon falcons and the like are far more impressive.

My wife looked at me like I was an idiot when I named a falcon Dave. Falcon Dave was a falcon (I’m not being sponsored to write the word Falcon as much as possible, honest) we saw in a BBC documentary about Tube lines. They used FD to keep the pigeons out of the Tube Train’s garage. He seemed ace and I fixated on him. I’ve not seen him since, but FD has stayed with me for all that time. He still pops up in conversations every now and then.

FALCON. FALCON. FALCON. FALCON. FALCON.FALCON. FALCON. (Just in case).

Right, some football and then perhaps things can return to whatever constitutes normal. Oh yes, also go and read Matthew Paul’s excellent (in off the) post about football poems

THE (Last 4) WEEKs IN STATS

13.5K , Some couch to 5k and an actual 5k as I work my way back to calf-confidence.
c.3 hangovers
1 funeral
12 hours of drinking.
1 person calling me Michael Stipe for  12 hours
1 toenail fallen off
2 x acceptances I won’t say yet as at least one of them merits a post on its own
1 rejection: Possibly more, but who’s counting apart from me
2 poems worked on: The Kimono Is Ope, Vitiligo
2 new Submissions: Bath Magg, Rialto
28 poems currently out for submission.
68 Published poems*: Was 69, but one was not used in the end, having been accepted.
41 Poems* finished by unpublished
27 poems* in various states of undress
554 Rejected poems* Eg I’ve decided they are not good enough
1 Review* e
5 reviews to write
1 weeks without cigarettes…
1 Days without drinking (if one glass of wine counts)
1 more week that I’m not having an affair with Eva Green

* To date, not this week. Christ!!

TITLE GIVEAWAY

Tchaikovsky’s Knackers
Eyes down for a full horse
Collapsed Jung

READ/SEEN/HEARD/ETC

Read
John Bolland: Fallen Stock
Kate Fox: The Oscillations
River Woolton: Leap
Under The Radar
Wendy pratt: My Body As A Horse

Music

The Bluetones: A New Athens
Lol 2020 PlaylistCounting Crows: August & Everything, Butter Miracle Suite One
Sleater Kinney: Path of Wellness
Lord Huron:Long Lost, Strange Trails
Chris Corsano & Bill Orcutt: Made Out of Sound
Arlo Parks : Collapsed In Sunbeams
Kaylee Elizabeth: Playing With Fire
Flock of Dimes: Head of Roses
Dinosaur Jr: Sweep It Into Space
My Morning Jacket: Red Rocks 08/02/19, At Dawn, CH1: the Sandworm Cometh
Night Moves: Can You Really Find Me, Pennied Days
Sleeper: This Time Tomorrow
Laura Fell: Safe From Me
Liza Anne: Bad Vacation
Dropsonde – Running Playlist
Mega Bog: Happy Together
Alex Chilton: Bach’s Bottom
Emma-Jean Thackeray: Ley Lines, Rain Dance
Altin Gün: Gece
The Catenary Wires: Birling Gap
Jaga Jazzist: The Tower
Pink Floyd: A Saucerful of Secrets
The Pirate Ship Quintet: EP
Psychedelic Porn Crumpets: And Now For The Whatcamacallit, High Visceral Pt2
P.I.L. : Flowers of Romance
Hem: Rabbit Songs, Funnel Cloud, Home Again Home Again, Eveningland, Departure & Farewell, The World Is Outside
Here We Go Magic: Different ShipsHeron Oblivion: ST
Hold Steady: Live 2019, Open Door Policy, Thrashing Thru The Passion, Teeth Dreams
Luke Sital-Singh: Time Is A Riddle
Mark Eitzel: Hey Mr Ferryman
Manfred Mann: Up The Junction OST
John Murry: the Stars Are God’s Bullet Holes
Land of Talk: Life After Youth
Hiss Golden Messenger: Quietly Blowing It
Albertine Sarges: The Sticky Fingers
Mdou Moctar: Afrique Victime
Ride: Going Blank Again
Various playlists for driving
The Go! Team: Get Up Sequences Part One
Asobi Seksu: CitrusPeter Broderick: How They Are
Phantom Band: Checkmate Savage, Fears Trending, Strange Friend, The Wants
Ryley Walker: Course In Fable, Deafen Glance
S.Carey: Range of Light, Supermoon EP
Sara Watkins: Young In All The Wrong Ways
Saxon Shore: The Exquisite Death of Saxon Shore, Four Months of Darkness
The See Sees: Fountayne Mountain, Late Morning Light
She Drew The Gun: Revolution of Mind, Memories of Another Future
Sky Larkin: Kaleide
Talking Heads: Little Creatures
Tall Ships: Everything Touching, Impressions, There Is Nothing Here But Chemistry
This Is The Kit: Off Off On, Rusty And Got Dusty, Where It Lives
This Will Destroy You:
Those Dancing Days: In Our Space Suits
Tim Buckley: Dream Letter, Goodbye & Hello
Smashing Pumpkins: Siamese Dream, Melon Collie..
Paul Desmond & Gerry Mulligan: Two of a Mind
Sonna: Keep It Together

TV/Film

Waking The Dead S4 E6-10, S5 E1, S6 9-10, S7 1-6
Breeders S2 E1-7Love Island Various
England V Germany,
France V Switzerland
Sweden V Ukraine
England Vs Ukraine
Italy Vs Spain
England Vs Denmark
England Vs Italy
Pretty Woman
Cannonball Run
The Silencers
A Town Called Bastard
15 Storeys E1-4

Zooms, etc
Grandbag’s Funeral Recording

Radio/Podcasts
The Archers
Grandbag’s Funeral
The Poet Laureate Goes To His Shed

Ordered
Under The Radar
The Rialto (renewed Sub)
Acumen
A pair of trousers (in the sale)

Arrived
Under The Radar
Poetry Review
Acumen 99 and 100
Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal 6 (Twice!!)

 

Bang To Rights

I’ve been very remiss since the start of the year with my daily writing habit. I was going great guns prior to January, spending at least 45 minutes every morning before work drafting and redrafting, but a combination of ‘Run Every Day In January’—have a guess what you’re meant to do—and a really busy/stressful start to the year with the day job has meant that I’ve rarely managed it. There have been a few snatched moments, 15 minutes here or there, etc, but I’m hoping to spend more time on it from now on as things calm down a little and my running plans get a little more spaced out.

However, what I have been keeping up is my reading at the end of the day, even if it’s just for ten minutes before my wife nags me to switch off the lights. I started out trying to read things in the order they arrive in the house, but between taking on more review work* and the arrival of mags and journals means that I easily get out of sync – apologies to those that were close to the top of the TBR pile, but have watched cheeky upstarts come in and jump the queue. I promise it will be worth the wait when you move from horizontal on the bedside table (oi, get your mind out of the gutter) to vertical on the bookshelves in our living room.

That’s nice, Mat, but what is the point of this?

Well, there isn’t really any, but let’s ignore that and move on.

All cups of tea are generally amazing, but I’m thinking at the moment one of those cups you have when you have to say aloud “Ooh, that’s a good cup of tea”. The kind that usually only happen either at the start of the day or outside on a cold day, the kind that goes down in three to four boiling hot mouthfuls, but somehow doesn’t cause you third-degree burns of the gullet. You know the type.

This week my pre-bedtime reading has mainly been the latest copy of The North, #65.

The North #65: The New Normal issue

The North is usually a great read and remains high on my list of magazines I’d love to be featured in. NB I have poems out for reading at The North at present, but I’m not writing this as an attempt to blow smoke up any arses, I am writing this because I am half-tempted to burn this copy. Not because it’s bad, quite the opposite. This issue is one of those cups of tea. I’ve come away from it with a long list of poets to investigate further—I suspect this means some of the folks who had found themselves close to the top of the TBR pile may find themselves nudged back down again.

I’ve turned over so many pages to come back to, to look up poets, etc that I probably should have just folded the mag in half when I’d finished. See evidence below.

My first job in media research was for a company called Newsquest Media Sales, which represented 300+ local newspaper titles. I fondly remember my first interview as it was over the phone during my lunch break from Bertrams Books. I was in my local pub with a pint of Guinness in one hand and a Marlboro Red in the other…happy days, but I digress…

Once I had the job one of the first things I learned about was the premium that advertisers would pay for right-hand pages, especially the early ones in the paper. There’s plenty of research around this, I won’t link to it here, but I suspect you can find it on the Newspaper Society website…Update: Hang on, they’ve changed their name since I last looked. It’s The News Media Association

The early right-hand page premium is, I would imagine, the print equivalent of the first in break premium advertisers pay for TV ads. I mention all of this because, even with the high volume of things to enjoy in this latest issue, the thing that has stayed with me the most is that the majority of the poems I enjoyed were almost all been on the right-hand side of the mag. This was true even when a poet had two pages (a double-page spread).

I can’t really single out any one particular poet because there are so many. It wouldn’t be fair at all. I will say that I am very pleased that I received a copy of Rosalind Easton‘s ‘Black Mascara (Waterproof)’ in the post on Thursday as a review copy from Sphinx. Wendy Pratt’s poems also prompted me to order her previous collection – I’m waiting for her new one to become available so I can order a signed copy directly via her website.

Edmund Prestwich‘s review of John Glenday‘s ‘Selected Poems’ was enough to kick me up the arse to pull the trigger on a purchase I’ve been meaning to make, especially since someone had mentioned his poem about Radium Girls.… and Matthew Paul’s** review of Robert Hamberger’s ‘Blue Wallpaper’ has got me ready to order that. It’s worth noting that there are many more I want to get as a result of the reviews in this issue and that is why I should just burn the mag. My bank manager will thank me.

As I say, I can’t and won’t single anyone poet out as they are all amazing, but a cursory flick back through the magazine sees me landing on this poem by Alison Binney. Given me wanging on about tea earlier it seems right to include it here.

This is also spooky/fortuitous as I spent a long time yesterday attempting to get cat hair out of our hallway carpet.

Ain’t it funny the little things you notice?

* Note to self – Get on with it, Riches, you have three reviews outstanding
** His poems in there are also excellent too

THE WEEK IN STATS

41.7k running – The training has begun properly. Enjoyed running in the snow earlier in the week.
0 day of 2 x 7-minute workouts, but the above means I don’t feel so bad
87 days of insults between my friend and me on Twitter. He started it.
1 x rejections: TLS
0 x acceptances
1 poem worked on: Berlin
0 poems finished:
0 new Submissions: None, but have some to go out after the rejection earlier in the week
37 poems currently out for submission
58 Published poems*:
44 Poems* finished by unpublished
31 poems* in various states of undress
554 Rejected poems* Eg I’ve decided they are not good enough
0 Reviews* written. 3 still to do though, so must crack on
1 month, 1 week without cigarettes…Minor cracks this week, enough to count, but we move on.
1 failed attempt to replace our shower
1 more week that I’m not having an affair with Eva Green

* To date, not this week. Christ!!

TITLE GIVEAWAY

Ooh, you are Orpheus, but I like you

READ/SEEN/HEARD/ETC

Read
North #65
Robert Frost: Collected Poems
Arun Jeetoo: I Want To Be The One You Think About At Night.
Poetry London #98

Music
The Weather Station: Ignorance
The Staves: Good Woman
Kikagaku Moyo: ST
Josh Rouse: Bedroom Classics Vol 1 & 2, Country Mouse, City House, Dressed Up Like Nebraska, El Tourista, The Embers of Time, The Happiness Waltz, Home, Nashville, She’s Spanish, I’m American, The Smooth Sounds of Josh Rouse, Smooth…Rarities, Subtitle, Under Cold Blue Stars, 1972
Ride: Nowhere
The Ibrahim Kahlil Shihab Quintet: Spring
Pearl Jam: Yield
Olafur Arnalds: some kind of peace
Kitchens of Distinction: Cowboys & Aliens
Smashing Pumpkins: Siamese Dream, Pisces IscariotAmerican Music Club: The Golden Age, Mercury
Anna Burch: If You’re Dreaming
Apples In Stereo – the song Seven Stars on repeat (19 times)
Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers: Impulse
Atoms For Peace: Amok
Kathleen Edwards: Asking For Flowers, Back To Me, Total Freedom
Apple’s Weekly For Me Playlist
Tanya Donnelly: Lovesongs For Underdogs
The dB’s: Falling Off The Sky
Robin Foster: Empyrean

TV/Film
ZeroZeroZero 1-3
New Girl S3 E1
Derry Girls S2
Superstore S1E1-3

Zooms, etc
None

Radio/Podcasts
The Archers
Grandbag’s Funeral: The Three Gabronies – We discuss Full Metal Jacket, Hexed and Coupe De Ville. Also features Jon’s amazing story about falling asleep on Terry Wogan
Leeds V Arsenal BBC5 Live (currently 4:2 to the Arsenal!!)

Arrived
John Glenday: Selected Poems

Ordered
Rosalind Easton: Black Mascara (Waterproof)
John Glenday: Selected Poems
Wendy Pratt: Gifts The Mole Gave To Me
A new shower

A Coincidence of Oranges

It’s not going to let up, is it? Does it feel like there’s more news because I’m at home more? Probably not, but it does seem to be getting more momentous as the days go by.

Arguably, it’s always politics, all of the time, but as Matthew Paul rightly points out here, it’s almost impossible to ignore the sheer amount of politics going on. However, I’m aware he mentions me in his post and I don’t want this to be a circlejerk, so I’m going to move on. I don’t think there’s anything that I can add to the weight of discourse around current events beyond relief that there appears to be grown-ups on the way in in the US (for all the faults of Biden and Harris, they are at least stringing sentences together and not calling for mass insurrection) and positive news about the vaccines (for all the uselessness of our own government in organising the rollout).

In an attempt to distract myself, I’m going to focus, for now, on the small coincidences of oranges and a poem.

1. I was tidying our fridge earlier and removed two oranges to put them in our fruit bowl. Honestly, the fun never ends in our house.

2. As I did this I remembered that earlier this week I’d seen the poet Clare Best post a picture on Instagram of a few jars of marmalade that she had made. Not sure I can embed it, but it’s here

3. This had reminded me of her excellent poem in her recent collection

Clare Best, Taken From ‘Each Other, published by Waterloo Press

I’ve said plenty about this poem and the rest of Clare’s book here, so if you get rind* to it you can read it

4. I’d sort of forgotten about points one to three happening (all that fun will do that to you), but then it occurred to me again earlier when my wife came back from the shops and mentioned how empty the fruit and veg aisle was. We hoped it wasn’t the knock-on impact of Brexit or Covid, but it’s almost certainly a combination of the impact of both. And, in the words of Ben Elton**, “A liddle bit of politics there, ladies and gentlemen that brings us back round to where we came in***

I must also say a massive thank you to Jeremy Noel-Tod for sending me a copy of ‘Market Lunch: Poems of Norwich’ by Ron Nevett. See here for details, but the book is raising funds for an excellent charity, New Routes, which supports refugees, asylum seekers and isolated migrants, and promotes cross-cultural integration and community awareness in Norwich.

I’ve seen Jeremy posting Ron’s work as it’s been published in the Norwich Evening News, and it’s lovely to see them finally collected together. The market in Norwich is somewhere I spent a lot of time as a young man—especially the stall for bootleg live tapes. I still have the Wedding Present one from Norwich Waterfront where I can be heard shouting for My Favourite Dress. If only I’d known back then that they’d stopped playing it at that time.

Ron Nevett's poems appeared in Norwich bookshops one (1) day before Tier 4 closed them. So for the duration of lockdown I'll be posting copies out for £5 inc. P&P. Just PayPal jnoeltod@hotmail.com. Ron has asked for any profits to be donated to local refugee charity @NewRoutesNR. https://t.co/8BX5UOPM8K

— Jeremy Noel-Tod (@jntod) January 5, 2021

How to buy/donate

However, I did sort of manage to balls up my promotion of it earlier in the week. The tweet below was meant to come across as me being self-deprecating and not having a go at Ron. Ooops, sorry Ron.

As a Freeman of Norwich, I am overjoyed the “fine city” now has it’s own laureate. If it can’t be me, or any of the actually good poets that reside in the ‘folk, then it should be Ron. Thank you @jntod for this gift and the bounties within. I can almost smell the market. pic.twitter.com/XvlbQTuS6U

— Mat Riches (@matriches) January 5, 2021

Time to stop, my laptop battery is on 2%, the charger is all the way upstairs and I have an urgent appointment with an orange.

*Sorry, not sorry as the young folks say
** I may be unshaven****, but I’m not wearing a spangly suit
*** After a fashion
****Unshaven is pushing it. I think I ended up looking like a Russian Submarine commander earlier today.

Taken earlier, pre-family walk, post-orange organisation and post-orange discussion

THE WEEK IN STATS

43.1k running – Carrying on with the Run Every Day in January thing. My foot is sore, so next week may see some shorter runs, but all miles are good miles…

0 day of 2 x 7-minute workouts, but the above means I don’t feel so bad

1 day Wilbur (our cat) spent the whole day sleeping on my desk while I worked

52 days of insults between my friend and I on Twitter. He started it.

0 x rejections: All good.

0 x acceptances

5 poems worked on: Berlin 2016, Giving Up on NYE, Out of Office, Railings, Spider That Bit Peter Parker. Getting back into the daily writing, slowly. As in slowly getting back into it, not writing slowly—although that too

0 poems finished:

0 Submissions:

0 Reviews written and submitted. 1 still to do though, so must crack on

10 day without cigarettes..Thumbs aloft!!!

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

TITLE GIVEAWAY

Projective Techniques
The potential cat among the actual pigeons
Time is flying…But you are a pilot
The Blackpool Ruminations
The Small Coincidences of Oranges

READ/SEEN/HEAR/ETC

Read
Poetry Wales 56.2
Stand
J.O Morgan: The Martian’s Regress

Music
Pixies: Live From Brixton Academy 05.06.04 (I WAS THERE AND IT WAS A MAGICAL EVENING)
Efterklang & The Happy Hopeless Orchestra: Leaves – The Colour of Falling
J Mascis: Elastic Days, Tied To A Star
Matthew Halsall: Salute To The Sun
Paul McCartney: McCartney III
Four let: 871
Eels: Then Cautionary Tales of Mark Oliver Everett
Kevin Morby: Sundowner
REM: Fables of The Reconstruction, Green, Life’s Rich Pageant, Murmur, MTV Unplugged, New Adventures In HiFi, Out of Time, Up
El Vy: Return To The Moon
Lanterns On The Lake: Beings
Hiroshi Yoshimura: Green
Craig Finn : All These Perfect Crosses
Grant-Lee Phillips: Lightning, Show us Your Stuff
Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit: Reunions
The Jayhawks: Back Roads And Abandoned Motels
Jenny Lewis: Acid Tongue, On The Line, The Voyageur
Julian Cope: An Audience With The Cope, Autogeddon, Black Sheep, Beautiful Love EP, Charlotte Anne & B Sides, Christ Vs Warhol, Citizen Cain’d, Dark Orgasm, Droolian, Drinking Songs, Due To Lack of Interest Tomorrow Has Been Cancelled, Fried, Intepreter, The Jehovahcaot Demos, Jehovahkill, John Balance Enters Valhalla

TV/Film
The Expanse S4 & 5 – various episodes
New Girl S2 E1-12
Spiral S8 E3&4
Fear The Walking Dead S5 E6
Zooms, etc
Nothing

Radio/Podcasts
Not even The Archers

Arrived
Market Lunch – Ron Nevett

Ordered
Zoe Brigley-Thompson: Aubade After A French Movie
Eaven Boland: The Historians

A Trophying

There’s been a meme (is it a meme, not sure) doing the rounds on the Twitters in the last couple of weeks that asks participants to name 3 recurring themes in their work. You then tag in other folks and get them to do the same.

I was tagged in this week by Matthew Paul.

3 recurring themes in my work:

– history
– birds
– cricket@SimpleSimonEmma @gregfreempoet @matriches

— Matthew Paul (@MatthewPaulPoet) September 30, 2020

I was pleased to be tagged in, but also it struck the absolute fear in me, worrying about whether I can answer the question. Emma managed to reply the same day, and I’ve managed to spend all week prevaricating and pondering on it. And not because I wanted to write about it here, but because I genuinely don’t know if I know the answer. I’ve been looking up and down the poems I have that have been published and those that are “waiting for a home” and keep drawing a blank, bupkis, nada, zilch or the old goose egg…

While I think Matthew is being slightly flippant with his choices— his work is infinitely deeper and more varied than he makes it out to be as you will, of course, know, having bought The Evening Entertainment, obvs—I did, and still do, find myself asking if should I be able to answer this without thinking? Am I over-thinking it?

I don’t think I’m being pretentious and blah-di-dah about it, all I couldn’t possibly reduce my work to three words, etc, but I am struggling with it. I’ve never felt the need to sit down and work out what my poetics are, perhaps this is a sign I should…just as soon as I work out what it means.

However, as I write this I think I’ve managed to work out the answer. I’m going with the following.

1. Moments of frailty
2. Mockery
3. Inanimate Objects finding/Getting a voice

Apologies to anyone that actually reads this, but you are at least witness to Twitter in action, as it would be unfair to post this here without replying on Twitter, so…hang on…

I really struggled with this (don't know why), and I'm sure you've been on tenterhooks, but here goes…

3 recurring themes in my work
1. Moments of frailty
2. Mockery
3. Inanimate Objects finding/Getting a voice

— Mat Riches (@matriches) October 4, 2020

The proof that I did

Don’t let my wittering put you off!

— Matthew Paul (@MatthewPaulPoet) October 4, 2020

Also proof that I didn’t

The tricky thing now, I think, having worked this out (and getting beyond the idea that it’s based on anything more than a snapshot) is will I now notice these things more and stop doing them? Should I notice these things more? And should I stop doing them? Oh god…I need a rest.

Anyhoo, enough of this flim-flammery.

Now that it looks unlikely that I will be going back to work in any normal sense, certainly not before March, I’ve got comfortable with the idea of having a home office. I’ve shifted my poetry mags up there and a few reference books, and on top of the shelf sits this trophy.

The only trophy I have ever won

I put it there because I hadn’t worked out where to put it (if that makes sense) and just haven’t found a moment to give it a proper home. However, at least three times this week I’ve been asked about it by people on various work-related Google Hangouts or Zoom calls.

I won it back when I was in my early 20s, home from University (nearly left this as Uni and would have had to hit myself in the face) and still living back with my parents. I may have moved out and into Norwich by then and commuted back at the weekend for games, but it’s irrelevant. Or is it? I spent a couple of summers playing cricket for my local village team. I enjoyed the camaraderie of being around these menfolk, all in their 30s and beyond and all the usual trappings of amateur sport, the teas, the sitting around, the jokes, etc…

I was crap at cricket. I had a batting average of 0.5 in the ’99 season. I was usually stationed at Fine Leg or Deep Square (or my favourite name, Just Backwards of Square – this also gives me my musical choice for later) to keep me away from the action when fielding. This wasn’t helpful, given that I couldn’t throw very far.

Ok, so it’s baseball aka American Cricket, but on the other hand, it is Mariah….

However, I could bowl a little bit of spin, although I had no idea of what would happen with the ball once it left my right hand. While the batsmen didn’t either, neither did the wicketkeeper.

(As an aside, the wickie was a lovely man by the name of John Edge. Our local bobby/Busy, he was a Scouser, and was nicknamed, with true panache and consideration, Edgey—somewhat ironic for a wicketkeeper, I think).

Despite bamboozling myself and Edgey, it did help sometimes to get batsmen out. MY favourite was a chap close to his 100 against us. Our fast (and good) bowlers had struggled against him. I think I was the Fuck it, why not option for the captain. Long story short time, I got him out. And if memory serves, it was before he reached his tonne. I very much enjoyed the time in the pub later.

So it was particularly lovely to see this poem in the latest Rialto by Oliver Comins. Please note there are many, many other excellent poems in the new Rialto (and an excellent couple of interviews), but for now we will focus on this one.

Oliver Comins, from the latest Rialto (Issue 94)

I loved Oliver’s Oak Fish Island and have been enjoying seeing his new work come out across the mags and sites, etc, but this one, alongside the questions about the cup, triggered the happy memory. I wasn’t quite in 8fer territory. I may have managed 3 once, but I certainly recognise the ‘all-night grin’.

And now that I’ve realised that Matthew’s original tweet mentioned Cricket and that I’ve been talking about cricket here—by accident, not by design, I can pat myself on the back and stop.

THE WEEK IN STATS

6k running – Lower, again, this week due to still having what I think is hamstring knack…

2 days of a new 7-minute workout. I will build this up, but it’s a start. Hamstring knack is killing my motivation

1 evening in with a mate that was most enjoyable

2 x rejections: Stand and Marble Poetry

1 poem finished – Was called ‘Buttered Dogs’, but isn’t now

3 poems worked on. ‘Tea Breaks’, ‘Hatton Garden’ and ‘Schröedinger’s Catch’

1 day without cigarettes…

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

TITLE GIVEAWAY

Quiet Fire (thanks to my wife for that one)
Trundling In
Oh The Huge Manatee

READ/SEEN/HEARD/ETC

Music
Philip Glass: Symphonies 3 & 8, Early Works 1969 -70
AdriAnne Lenker: Abysskiss
Smashing Pumpkins :Confessions of a Dopamine Addict EP
Bjork: Homogenic
John Hiatt: Slug Line
Kath Bloom: Bye Bye These Are The Days
Suzanne Vaille: Love Live Where Rules Die
Susanne Sundfør: The Sillicone Veil
Tall Ships: Impressions, Everything Touching, There Is Nothing But Chemistry Here
Fairport Convention: Full House, ST
The Family Cat: Magic Happens
Followed By Ghosts: The Entire City Was Silent
Four Ten:Live At Funkhaus, Berlin 2018
R.E.M.: Around The Sun, Fables of the Reconstruction
Rachel’s: Selenography, Music For Egon Schiele
New Order: Power, Corruption & Lies
The Tallest Man In The World: The Wild Hunt
Robbie Basho: Venus In Cancer
Sonic Boom: All Things Being Equal
OSEES: Levitation Sessions
Kevin Morby: City Music, Harlem River, Oh My God, Singing Saw
The Last Dinosaur: Untitled Piece for Piano and Viola, Hooray! For Happiness
Working Men’s Club: ST
Margo Price: All American Made
Sun Ra & His Arkestra: Holiday For Soul Dance

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

TV/Film
Battlestar Galactica S2 E7-13
Selling Sunset S3
The London Marathon – well done to Emma, Rufus and Euan

Radio/Podcasts
The Archers
Grandbag’s Funeral Ep5: NoseyBonk At Chinawhites

Arrived
The North 64
Alex MacDonald – Delicious All Day
Gregory Leadbetter – Maskwork
Poetry News
Socks from Jollies
Nine Pins Mug – Get yours here to support a new press

Ordered
Socks from Jollies
Alex MacDonald – Delicious All Day
Derek Mahon – Selected Poems

Read
Dark Horse 42
Rialto 94

A lovely song from a lovely album….I do actually think these song choices through.

And they say the blogs don’t work

I love a coincidence, I love (although I am a bit of an idiot when it comes to) mathematical formulas, I love telly, telling people they are ace, and I love finding something to hang these posts on, so imagine my delight when I was able to combine the first four and achieve the last one of these particular five horsemen (I’m allowing for inflation) of the apocalypse.

First the coincidence…or maybe it’s a confluence (checks meaning of confluence..yep, that’s close enough)

A few months ago (back before the lockdown/WFH I saw a blog post by Matthew Paul (henceforth known as MP for reasons) about the poet Julie Mellor (JM) praising her pamphlet Out of the Weather. I was intrigued enough to buy it and so I did (also, I think calling MP* a bastard for costing me money).**

And then it sat on the TBR pile…we all have one. Here’s mine…

I think there are several formulas involved here.


Mathematical Formulas

1. The number of books you think you need is always n+1 where n= the number of books you have now
   
2. (Not related to books, but the formula for Pile group capacity is Q = q0 X B2 + 4 x B x L x f (Square)
   Where, Q = ultimate capacity of pile group
   q0 = ultimate bearing pressure of footing of area B2 (B = size of pile group), L = Length of pile, f = shear resistance.
   
   This came up when searching for Book pile formula and it seemed too interesting to not share it.
   
3. Tsundoku is “acquiring reading materials but letting them pile up in one’s home without reading them”. I think there must be a formula for calculating how quickly you’ll get through your TBR pile.
   
   It’s probably to be found in Ramunjan’s notebooks —an excuse to post my poem that mentions him, The Society For The Preservation of Workings Out, but I’ll have a stab and assume that it must be something like.
   
   n= BTBR/TAT
   Where n is time to read, BTBR = books to be read, TAT = total available time
   
   TAT = Hours in day – WOE, where WOE = LOS/TNTDOS
   
   LOS = Lack of sleep, TNTDOS = The need to do other stuff.
   It’s a work in progress.
   
   Christ, I digress.
   
   Anyhoo, Julie’s book sat there for a few months until I saw Matthew Stewart’s (MS) post about her blog (now we’re getting meta…a post about a post about a post…soon we will be post-a post about a post, etc)
   
   It’s also just occurred to me I need a swear jar for every time I mention the two Matthews – this starts from next week.
   
   This reminded me I had the book on my TBR pile (TBRP). Now normally, I try to read the books on the TBRP in the order they arrive (ITOTA), although sometimes this can slip
   
   Please note, I’m being honest here. I could have lied and said it was fortuitous timing. Regardless of this, I picked up Julie’s book and I knew from the moment I read the first poem, ‘The Scar on my Wrist‘, that I was going to be hooked.(NB I want to see the poem that beat this into a commended place.) The confluence (that word again) of subject matter, recognition of the events that take place and then the absolute stunner of a twist at the end said to me that even of the rest of the book was crap, here was a poet to be aware of. Thankfully for me, and Julie, etc, the rest of the book wasn’t crap.
   
   I usually turn over the corners of pages with ace poems, the ones I want to come back to, etc. However, in Julie’s book I’ve turned over almost every page. To be fair, I may as well have just folded the book in half, but I’m glad I didn’t. I commend it to you and her recent work on John Foggin’s excellent site as part of his When This is All Over Project (Her poem is ‘Magician’ – and magical- but I can’t link to it directly. Do check out the rest. She also has a few haiku up at the excellent Write Where We Are Now project. Again, look at all the ace work up there.
   
   
   
   Telling people they’re ace

I think, when we can, we should tell people when we’ve enjoyed their work – I reckon 96.777777777% of poet’s must like being told people enjoy their work, so I emailed Julie to tell her I loved the book, and to ask how I might obtain her first pamphlet, ‘Breathing Through Our Bones‘ (BTOB) as I couldn’t find it on the Poetry Business website.

Of course, five minutes after I sent the email, I found the book on the site, but none the less it was more important to have reached out and passed on my admiration.

I am also now in possession of BTOB by JM…and it’s signed. Ok, not signed, but it has a lovely personalised postcard. That may actually be better.

Now, in further in examples of coincidence…and when I finally address the I like telly part. I know, you’ve been tapping your watch and wondering about that.

MP has put out another post this week about the use of names in poetry. As with the JM review, I can’t add much of any intelligence to what MP has already said, but I can say that this is something I’ve been wrestling with of late (the use of names, not my lack of intelligence – that’s an ongoing battle). I’ve generally avoided using the names of anyone, least of all the people I know, but a few mates’ names have slipped through. However, I’ve not used my wife or daughter’s name yet. Flo has always been, where mentioned, “the child” or “our daughter” until recently when a poem just sort of fell out and no matter how I tried to make it ‘ the child’ it didn’t work. It needed a name and what better name than the name she has. The fact that it was the right number of syllables didn’t hurt either.

Oh yeah, the telly bit

Also, to finish up as I’m wanging on, the post I refer to above about names talks about telly. – Yes, there it is…and I also saw this excellent tweet this week from my lovely colleague in tellyland.

We’ve become mildly obsessed with looking for apt names in TV show credits. Victoria Onions worked on Great British Menu, Damien Eggs on Bake Off and Phil Box on Gogglebox #nominativedeterministictvcrews

— Clare Beckett (@clarebeckett) May 15, 2020

In one final example of coincidence and pseudo-maths, there are 3 x the letter l in Julie Mellor and there have now been three Mat(t)s writing about her. The letter l is next to the letter M in the alphabet.

#makesyouthink #cantarguewithsciencebutyoucanarguewithhashtagsnotallowingpunctuation

* Not the first time I’ve called an MP a bastard
**Please note, you very much should read MP’s review if you haven’t already, he does the book far more justice than I could.

And in true Columbo style, one last thing…It would be remiss of me to say thanks to Richie McCaffery for publishing two of my poems this week on his excellent Lyrical Aye blog.

THE WEEK IN STATS

35.6 k running – A much better week, back on it thanks to

2 x socially-distanced runs at the weekend.

1 finished – The one from last week. Almost a week from start to finish in 7 drafts is some sort of record I think

3 poems worked on – including the above and the one that mentions Flo

1 poem that I think turns out to be a sort of copy of Eliot’s ‘Burnt Norton’. I’d not read it, I promise, until mid this week. I made the first notes for this poem last year.

1 acceptance – Am I allowed to say…? Fuck it, the initials are WC and I am very, very pleased to be in there

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 193 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. Tsundoku Formula
2. Sewing Machine Amnesty

READ, SEEN, ETC

Music

The Blue Nile
High
Peace At Last

Bjork – Biophillia
Afghan Whigs – Black Love
AC Acoustics – O
Admiral Fallow – Tiny Rewards
Alabama Shakes – Sound & Color

Allo Darlin’
ST
Darren
Europe
Henry Rollins Don’t Dance
Hymn on the 45
We Come From The Same Place

Amusement Parks on Fire – Out to the Angeles

Amy Millan
Honey From The Tombs
Masters of the Burial

Analog Roland Orchestra – Watchdog EP
And Also The Trees – Born Into The Waves
Angel Olsen – All mirrors
Ann Sexton – In The Beginning
Anna Meredith – FIBS

Apples In Stereo
The Discovery of a World Inside The Moon
Electronic Projects for Musicians
Fun Trick Noisemaker
New Magnetic Wonder

The Appleseed Cast – The End of the Ring Wars
Archie Bronson Outfit – Coconut
Aretha Franklin – The Electrifying Aretha Franklin
Arvo Part – Alina
Au Revoir Simone – The Bird of Music
Aurore Rien – Sedative for the Celestial Blue
The Auteurs – After Murder Park
Bad Lieutenant – Never Cry Another Tear
Anne Peebles – I can’t Stand The Rain
Gloria Barnes – Uptown
Charli XCX – how i’m feeling now
Kamasi Washington – Becoming (OST)
Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith – Mosaic of Transformation
Hunter Muskett – ST

Explosions In The Sky
Live Bootleg
The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place

Afghan Whigs – In Spades
Maria McKee – Late December
Pearl Jam- Binaural

Ryley Walker
Bogging In Funkerdonk
Help Protect Our Mountains

Thao & The Get Down Stay Down – Temples
Ride – Nowhere
Roberta Flack – First Take
Roland Kirk – Kirk in Copenhagen

Hangouts/Video Calls/Zoom/Etc (not for work)
Rory Waterman’s Sweet Nothings launch

TV/Film
Spooks S5
Kingpin

Arrived/Ordered
Julie Mellor – Breathing Through Our Bones (A gift)
Smoke #66
Under The Radar #25

Read
Rory Waterman – Sweet Nothings
Under the Radar #25

The Blogs Don’t Work – The Verve

This is here because I think this is the only song to name who “they” are…