Please note, I am going for a more upbeat approach this week, so bear with me. How’s your week been?
Mine started well, but Tuesday took a downward turn within two stops of my train pulling out of the station. The bottom of my rucksack felt wet, and it soon transpired that the soup in my bag had leaked—despite it being in a sealed Tupperware box and a plastic Ziplock bag. I think most things escaped serious damage, but let’s just say it maybe a while (if ever) before my work laptop connects to a monitor again.
The rest of the journey in was spent working about laptops, dripping soup, smelling of soup and trying to work out if a pen had leaked as well as the floor seemed to be turning blue below underneath my bag. It was as if I’d shot a Predator…except that was green blood and there were no leaves (and thankfully not on the line), so this whole idea doesn’t work, but I’ll leave it in anyway.
Then, to make matters worse, when I got to London Bridge (stage one of my Tuesday journey to work), my knee started giving me gip again. I’d hoped that a week off running would have helped—and it had, but the walking and stairs and soup-fandango meant it was throbbing again. When I eventually got to work and cleaned my bag up I noticed the leakage had stained the bottom of the book I’d taken with me to read.
Not ideal, but worth noting that the soup wasn’t my take on the blue soup from Bridget Jones’ Diary.
Onwards and sideways though. At least the book looks lived in.
On my journey home, I started listening to the Blindboy Podcast. A friend has been recommending it for a while, and I’ve finally got round to it. The ep I played was called Witches Piss and Horse Skulls and had some lovely evocations of January weather, a discussion about global warming, the paintings of Turner and the loss of various folklores/skills. I very much enjoyed it, and it seems a big change from his work in The Rubber Bandits.
The various parts of that episode came to mind when I finally got to read the book that had been soaked. The book was ‘The Action’ by Roger Garfitt. I’m not 100% certain that Mr Garfitt would thank me for mentioning his work in etc same space as a podcast about Witches piss and folklore, but, in the absence of a full poem, here are a few stanzas that stood out from a poem in the book called ‘The Goose Quill’. It’s the last poem in a sequence written on and about a Historic Working Farm.
We need these stories
as a generation goes
that had learned to hold on
by a thread. Old improviser,
remind us of the hidden pulses.
Tell us how to woo the earth
when it turns away.
(c) Roger Garfitt, From The Goose Quill, Carcanet Press, 2019
While I’m not suggesting we can only learn from generations gone by, and I do think all generations learn from each other, there are some skills and specific knowledges that are in danger of being lost. The BB podcast and the sequence of poems just reminded me of that.
While I can’t share an entire poem from the book, as I have no idea about how to contact Roger, I can link to this one. It’s also from The Action and it feels apt after a lovely walk earlier with my wife. It’s a bit early for Spring, but between that walk and some of the comments at the start of the BB podcast, it makes sense to me. That’s enough for me.
Now, I said I was going to be more positive (and to be fair, the above is for me), but the week definitely took an upward turn on Wednesday when the good folks of Poetry Wales published the interview I did with Zoe Brigley last year about my poem, Tomato Plants’. NB I am totally counting the fact that the poem was accepted for this interview series last year as a published poem in the 2022 dataset.
I saw a few kind comments online from friends about it being a good interview, and I’m very conscious of how hard it was to take myself even remotely seriously when answering Zoe’s excellent questions. It took me a lot of effort not to undermine myself with a gag at every turn, but I’m glad I did manage it—for the most part. Of course, now I read it back, I realise there’s loads I should have/could have said, but hey ho…It’s exactly like when we see changes to poems the moment we press submit—that happens to you too, yeah?
Anyhoo, have a look and let me know what you think. And, I recommend the other interviews in the series too.
In terms of recommendations, a couple of articles that caught my eye this week/are stolen from newsletters.
1. Are lazy people more creative? I didn’t finish reading it, so can’t tell you.
2. I like Nick Cave, I enjoy reading or listening to Nick Cave most of the time. I find his fans almost universally insufferable when they write to him at his Red Right Hand website, but I thought this was interesting when he responds to someone that has tried to empty machine learning to create a Nick Cave song. I think the robots are a way off taking over, although part of me sort of wishes they’d hurry up so I can get on with all the taking of laudanum, etc that comes with being a poet. That’s the main part of the job, no?
THE LAST TWO WEEKS( or so) IN STATS
HEALTH STATS
0K running., but a 7K walk today as a tester. I reckon it’s another week or more before I’m running again though.
2 day without cigarettes…really, really need to knuckle down here to help with the above
0 days since drinking.
LIFE STATS
1 soup leakage
1 soaked rucksack
1 damp train journey that smelled of soup
1 excellent night of drinks and Mashups
2 x trips to London and back
2 x log fires
POET STATS
0 loose ideas/articles gathered (this allows me to kid myself I am writing all the time)
0 poems finished:
2 poems worked on: Bed poem – Now called For Ever Given, Under The Surface
0 submissions:
0 withdrawal:
0 acceptances:
0 readings:
1 rejections: Potomac Review
25 poems are currently out for submission. No simultaneous subs
80 Published poems
0 review finished:
0 reviews started:
0 reviews submitted:
2 reviews to write:
1 more week that I’m not having an affair with Eva Green
* To date, not this week. Christ!!
READ/SEEN/HEARD/ETC
Read
Jonathan Davidson: The Living Room
Jack Little: Slow Leaving
Roger Garfitt: The Action
River Wolton: The Purpose of Your Visit
Zooms: None
Music
McCoy Tyner: The Real McCoy
Rozi Plain: Prize
Margo Price: Strays
A Mouthful of Air Podcast: Rishi DastidarThe Verb: Breath
The Archers
Bjork: Biophillia
Blueboy: Bank of England, Clearer and Other Singles, If Wishes Were Horses
Dave Boulter: Lover’s Walk
Five Live: Spurs Vs Arsenal
Calexico: Algiers
Can: Future Days
Martin Carr: New Shapes for Life, Sailor/I Will Build A Road
Mogwai: As The Love Continues
The Delines: The Sea Drift
Eno & Hyde: high Life
Explosions In The Sky: the Wilderness
Feist: Metals
Mary Lattimore: Collected Pieces
Fenne Lily: Breach
Gaz Coombes: Turn The Car Around
Don Peris: Go Where The Morning Shineth
Japanese Breakfast: Jubilee
Kramer: Music For Films Edited By Moths
The Foxhole Companion: The Xmas issue
Arji’s Pickle Jar: Clare Pollard, Deryn Rhys-Jones
The National: I Am Easy To Find
Dead Meadow: Warble Womb
Daphni: Cherry
Oneida: Success
Giant Sand: Purge & Slouch
Tallies: Patina
Idlewild: Interview Music
Kathryn Williams: Night Drives
Alison Cotton: All is Quiet At the Ancient Theatre
Wolf Alice: Blue Weekend, My Love Is Cool, Visions of a Life
The Wedding Present: Bizarro
The Watson Twins: Fire Songs
2ManyDj: A set of songs
Low: Trust
Fleet Foxes: Shore
Captain Beefheart: Trout Mask Replica
Watched
The Mosquito Coast
Happy Valley
Yellowstone
Mr Inbetween
Abbot Elementary
Ordered/Bought
Nothing
Arrived
Strix 8 – A copy I’d not ordered
Wear The Fox Hat 