Scrappy do

Hello, how are you? Where was I?

Our holiday was lovely. Thanks to Kefalonia for being glorious, and for the loungers by the pool being very amenable to sitting on and allowing me to read. I worked my way through some of my TBR pile, as well as a number of cans of Greek lager. You’ll see the reading list in the usual place below. You might see the cans, cats and books on my Instagram feed. See the header for one of the excellent cats we met. We named him Baked Bean.

I’ve been making notes for posts since the last one, but in order to get caught up we will first have a bit of a link dump, then we can get to the poem.

Firstly, my review of Genevieve Carver’s Landsick was published the week we got back over at The Friday Poem. I’d started it before we went and finished it the day after we got back. Thanks to past-Mat for booking the day off. And thanks to Hilary for posting the review.

Speaking of the Frip, I enjoyed Helena Nelson’s article about ‘After’ poems. She articulates many things I’ve thought about, especially the part about ekphrastic poems and the need to have seen the work of art. Is the article tongue-in-cheek? Possibly partially, but also not. You decide.

While reading/catching up on Dave Bonta’s Via Negativa blog compendium, I came across this interesting post by Donna Vorreyer. They make some interesting points about giving up on submissions to certain journals (they will vary by poet). I sometimes feel like walking away from some submissions, but it’s also about knowing which journals, etc are not likely to be receptive in the first place. I suspect the list that are receptive to my sort of poems is shrinking, but I hope not.

It was also lovely to read this interview in the Guardian with the legend that is Vini Reilly this week. He talks about walking away from the life he’s built as a guitar player after 60 years, and I enjoyed what he said about seeing guitarists playing in pubs that he thinks are better than him, but they don’t get the chance to make records. Is the poetry world any different? Either way, give Vini’s music a go. Start anywhere…It’s all beautiful.

Did you see the article this week about previous poet laureates? If not, it’s here.

If you’re a fan of any of Glyn Maxwell’s work/or enjoyed his On Poetry book then it looks like a good idea to sign up here. He seems to be writing his next non-poetry book in stages and publishing as he goes. Worth a try. I’m waiting on the first post.

I’ve not listened to it yet, but harking back to a previous post, this episode of the Mouthful of Air podcast discusses the old venerable Bede and his swallow via Isobel Dixon’s poem.

That should get me up to date on all the links I want to share, or at least the ones I made notes to share.

Right, let’s have a poem then

It was Eleanor Livingstone who put me on to the Bede and the swallow story, see posts passim, and so it is Eleanor who I turn to for a poem now. I’ve been reading her books Even The Sea and The Last King of Fife. Both, sadly, are out of print at present, but there is a new and revised book coming out soon I believe, so I look forward to that.

I didn’t know her work at all before reading these books and I hope she won’t mind me sharing this bit of a recent correspondence between us. (I wrote this).

“I feel like I’ve learned so much about control and writing by reading it. The detonations behind it aren’t flashy at all, it’s not a firework display. It’s like watching Fred Dibnah bring down a chimney. Apologies for comparing it to a bloke, but everything that’s needed is in exactly in the right place and the end result is calculated to fall exactly as it should do.”

I hope that works for you, but if not have this .

July evening

you’re behind me in the room
busy with music
every window in the house 

open
             when a sudden gust
comes from nowhere

catches the trees
unaware, lifts branches
like a summer skirt

or an orchestra rising as one
for applause

while all my paperwork 
stirs a breath’s height off the desk,
the windows buck

and somewhere in the house
one slams shut
like a bolt

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Published with the permission of the author. Taken from Even the Sea by Eleanor Livingstone, Red Squirrel Press, 2010

You know how I like a coincidence, but it doesn’t take a genius to work out that it’s July, it’s currently the evening and this week has seen some wind rattling around the house (behave!!) disturbing papers. Oh yes, that it’s just lovely. The natural world doing what it has always done always will do by challenging any order we try to place on things, even if the impact of it is just “a breath’s height”. How high is a breath? I don’t know, but it also doesn’t matter; we can absolutely picture it.

Sometimes it’s not about the big moments, it’s the little ones, and this just works. Was it fortuitous timing? Who cares, that’s when poems land the best. Sometimes.

Go on, have another poem

When I was reading Eleanor’s pamphlet, The Last King of Fife, I came across the next poem. When poets bring poems from a pamphlet into a collection to see I’m always intrigued to see what gets left behind. The poem below is one that got left behind. I can’t see why, but that’s for the poet to decide.

Anyhoo, I chose this as one of the books I read (and am still bloody reading) while I was away is The English & their History by Robert Tombs. I’ve had the book for about 8 years now. It was a recommendation by an erstwhile work colleague (Hi, CP) and has been with me on two or three holidays now, and I’ve never managed to get on with it.

This time I had to do it. I just have to finish it (90 pages to go at time of writing), not least because it reduces the size of my TBR pile quite considerably —think about how many slim volumes I can pack into that space, but also because I am shamefully ignorant about our history. I’m never going to remember the names and dates, but the book has given me a better sense of things than I had before. I am sad to learn that Tombs is something of a Brexiteer…I think that contributed to my reluctance to start it, and I get the sense from the way the book is written that he’s a Tory, but no matter. The boo was still interesting and peppered with little facts/factoids like “George VI had eight boxing champions attending his coronation as pages”.

So when I came across the note at the back of The Last King…” In 1752 Britain joined the Gregorian calendar by cutting out 11 days that year, from 3rd to 13th September” I knew I wanted to include the poem here. There’s something that chimes with the pro-Brexit mentality in there, or more like the way we can explain it, in the last two sentences of the poem.

It also has me in mind of the infamous BBC incident when they reported no news. I read about it, but I wasn’t there, FFS. It was in 1930.

Catching up with time

For eleven days here
in 1752, no-one died
and not a single child
was born.  The records 
for those days are blank. 
No crimes were committed
nor avenged.  No shoes 
wore out, no cakes
were burnt.  No songs
lightened the hours; 
no poems called. 
Still, no-one died; no-one
was killed.  One night
the country went to bed
and woke up twelve days
later.  Give us back our lost
eleven days, they said
just one day older
and no wiser.

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Published with the permission of the author. Taken from The Last King of Fife by Eleanor Livingstone, HappenStance Press, 2005

Oh go on, have another another poem

Something else I read earlier this week was this long read about the decline of the fish and chip shop. It’s a sad story about the impact of Brexit, rising costs and the cost of living for punters. The article mentions chippies in many locations but doesn’t mention Scarborough. My wife informs me that’s where the best fish and chips come from. Who knows, she may be right. The ones we had from Silks a few years ago were marvellous, but the fryer at Silks moved on and we don’t know where they have gone.

The idea of fryers moving between chip shops puts me in mind of football transfers, but the article and the reverie also have me in mind of one of my own poems. This was published in The Poet’s Republic a few years ago now. For a while, it was in contention for the pamphlet, but it’s not strong enough. I am fond of it as it covers the time I went to Scarborough with Rachael for the first time and had fish and chips with her in a place called Whackers. I may come back to the poem one day

Scraps

We keep stumbling over
the ends of each other’s sentences
but joke that the only house white on offer
is the batter clinging to ingots of fish
fingertip-dipped
into molten animal fat.

Buttered bread and radioactive milkshakes
pass by on a waitress’s tray.
Scraps and mushy peas are standard issue.

I arrange the sauce bottles
and salt and vinegar
into a constellation
that we name Condimentia Seven:
a smile breaks across both our faces.

I tuck-in at your side,
enjoy what’s on offer.
I want to leave here
as part of your nostalgia.

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

Julian Cope. Trampolene

THE LAST THREE WEEKS IN STATS

HEALTH STATS
65K running. inc 3 or 4 8ks and a 10K yesterday
2 days without cigarettes…
0 days since drinking. 

LIFE STATS – Holiday
Average of 4-5 beers per day while on holiday
Average of 5- cigarettes while on holiday
1 moussaka
1 sea bream
1 pork belly
1 chicken souvlaki
1 Kefalonian Meat pie
1 lamb chops
1 beef stew and orzo
1 Club sandwich
2 delayed flights


LIFE STATS
1 bedroom redecorated
1 work away day
1 takeaway curry
8 days of DIY
1 Sunday lunch with old friends
2 incidents with foxes

POET STATS
1 loose ideas/articles gathered (this allows me to kid myself I am writing all the time)
1 poem finished: Designated Driver
7 poems worked on: Busy week, Comedy, Designated Driver, Dance Lessons,Stick, The Gallery, Hellraisers
0 poems committed to the reject pile
0 submissions:
0 withdrawal: 
0 acceptances:
0 Longlisting:
0 readings: 
1 rejection: I forget now. Doesn’t matter
15 poems are currently out for submission. No simultaneous subs
83 Published poems

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

READ/SEEN/HEARD/ETC

Music
r= Radio, A = Audiobook, P=Podcast. The rest is music
Monday
VA – Silberland Vol2- The Driving side of Kosmische music
Slowdive: Souvlaki, Just for a Day
The Big Moon: Here is Everything, Walking Like We Do, Love In The 4th Dimension
Tuesday
VA – Silberland Vol2- The Driving side of Kosmische Music
Belief; ST
Geese: 3D Country
Gracie Abrams: Good Riddance
Weds
The Archers
Dropsonde
Thursday
Dropsonde
Friday
Silberland
Sunday
The Go-Betweens. 16 Lovers Lane
Mon
Dropsonde
Warpaint: Exquisite Corpse
Tuesday
Slowdive: ST
Wednesday
Mojave 3: Puzzles Like You
Miles Davis: Miles Ahead, In A Silent Way
The Clientele: Minotaur
Thurs
Dropsonde playlist
Bleach Lab: Lost in a Rush of Emptiness
The B-52s: Wild Planet , Cosmic Thing
Saturday
Dropsonde playlist
The B-52s: ST, Mesopotamia
Jason Isbell: Weathervanes
The Watson Twins: Holler
Monday
Felt: Ignite The Seven Cannons
The Clash: ST, London Calling
LYR: The Ultraviolet Age
The Afghan Whigs: How Do You Burn
Tuesday
Karen Dalton- Green Rocky Road
Brigid Mae Power: Dream from the Deep Well
Warpaint: ST
Cory Hanson: Western Cum
VA – Silberland Vol1- The Psychedelic side of Kosmische Music
Cowboy Junkies: Such Ferocious Beauty
The Wooden Sky: Every Child an Daughter, Every Moon A Sun
Wednesday
Kieran Hebden & William Tyler: Darkness, Darkness
Wand: Spiders In The Rain, Laughing Matter
The Hold Steady: Heaven is Whenever 2021
The Archers (p)
Thurs
The Archers
Blur:13
Friday
Blur: Thank Tank, The Magic Whip, Modern Life is Rubbish
Black Spire: Only Ghost EP
Saturday
Dropsonde Playlist
Sunday
This Is The Kit: Careful of your Keepers
Dropsonde Playlist
Monday
Willy Mason: Carry On
Luke Howard: All That Is Not Solid
Luke Howard & Naadje Noordhuis: Ten Sails
Sheryl Crow: Threads
Thelonius Monk; Brilliant Corners
Thin White Rope: The Ruby Sea, Sack Full of Silver
Tuesday
The Archers (p)
Goat: The Gallows Pole OST
Dropsonde playlist
Planet Poetry: Richard Skinner (p)
The Verb: Fathers & Time (p)
Wednesday
Wet Leg: ST
VA: What It IS! Funky Soul and Rare Grooves 1697-1977
Waxahatchee: Saint Cloud
Thursday
The Waterboys: All Souls Hill, Dream Harder, Fisherman’s Blues
Walcot Cherry Vasconcelos: Condona
Vin Südenfed: Tromatic Reflexxions
Van Hunt: the Fun Rises, the Fun Sets
Ultimate Painting: Up
Tv On The Radio: Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty babes, Return to Cookie Mountain
Toy: Clear Shot
Friday:
Toy: Happy In The Hollow
Guided By Voices: Welshpool Frillies, Warp & Woof
The Durutti Column; Time Was Gigantic…When We Were Kids
Andy Shauf: Wild, The Party
Samia: Honey
The Lilac Time: Dance Till All The Stars Come Down
Blur: The Ballad of Darren
Sebastian Rochford; A Short Diary
Saturday
The Archers (p)
Dropsonde playlist
Verb : Fathers and Time (p)
Sunday
Matthew Halsall: Salute To The Sun Live
Slowdive: St
Guided By Voices: How Do You Spell Heaven
Luke Howard Trio: The Electric Night Descends

Read
Eleanor Livingstone: Even The Sea, King and Queen
Louis De Berniere ..Captain Corelli’s Mandolin (Going full Greek cliche)
Cavafy: Collecved Poems
Robert Tombs: The English and their History
Rebecca Goss: Latch
Zaffar Kunial: England’s Green
Paul Stephenson: Hard Drive
Emily Hasler: Local Interest
Robert Hamberger: The Blue Wallpaper
Geoff Hattersley: Back of Beyond; New and Selected Poems

Watched
Guilt
Love Island
A Spy Among Friends
The Traitors
The Thick of It

Ordered/Bought
Declan Ryan: Crisis Actor
Spelt Subscription

Arrived
Spelt Subscription
Declan Ryan: Crisis Actor
Poetry Wales

 

Pearls before sauces

At the time of writing I find myself in the weird place of willing Spurs to win…especially after yesterday’s shocker from Arsenal…I’m also in the middle of making an amazing pizza sauce, so will be stopping to check the scores and, like any good journalism, I’m having to credit my sauces. Sorry.

Right, as it seemed to work last week, I’m going to build in the same approach and dive straight in with a poem. Then, hopefully, by then the reason for selecting it will make sense.

Stopping

Philpott is very tired. He would like to stop.

He would like time. He would like time to be careful and slow
like the man down the road who trims the lawn with his kitchen scissors.

He would like to watch the sun on the carpet,
watch it travel from the wall to the chair by the door.

He would like to listen to the noises of the house,
to hear the hair on his own arms stir.

Perhaps it’s a sign. Ill people have to stop.
They stop and listen to the call of pain.

Perhaps illness is coming and he’d better move
quickly before it’s too late, move quickly

before stopping happens. He isn’t in pain
but this wanting to stop-it may be a sign.

Already he has keys in his hand, his leather briefcase
and his brisk face on. He has wasted an hour

and there’s work to be done.

Taken from Pearls: The Complete Mr & Mrs Philpott Poems by Helena Nelson. Published with permission of the author.

I don’t really think I need to do much by way of introducing Nell. Her achievements in publishing for HappenStance and as a reviewer** should really speak for themselves, but I’m not sure her work as a poet gets enough credit. I’m not the person to write an in depth review of her work, but I can certainly point you towards this look at Pearls by young Mr Stewart as a good place to start.

I can say that I have long enjoyed her work. I remember buying Starlight on Water long before I made her acquaintance. And, for those of you that enjoy a tortured and misguided attempt at a connection, I note that the first stanza of the book ends with the word ‘pearls’. Her work is rich and varied, there is an undercurrent of sadness and anger that shouldn’t be, but is surprising when you first encounter it. It is certainly a body of work I want to go back to after opening Pearls this week.

I don’t know about you, but sometimes a poem just hits hard and is the right thing to read at the right time. It’s been one hell of a week at work and in life this week. Despite the wonderful news this week that I now have a publication date for my Red Squirrel pamphlet and that work can now begin in earnest on it (not that it hasn’t already, but you take my point, I hope), the week has been dragged down by the continued decline of our eldest cat, an unexpected and unwelcome outlay on a new washing machine, and a hectic week that has barely allowed for a moment to pause.

So when I sat down to read my copy of Pearls this week after it had made its way to the top of my TBR pile, I found myself being absolutely smacked round the chops (in a good way) by reading the poem above. I felt Philpott’s pain. I was there with him in every sentence. There’s a poem in my own ms that I’ve just sent off for its next round of editing called ‘Reading The Signs’ (due out in the next issue of The Frogmore Papers if you fancy a sneaky preview) that is, to my mind at least, the story of the hour that Philpott feels he has wasted.

What shocks me most of all though is that the poem felt new to me, I was sure I hadn’t read it, but in checking my copy of Starlight*** I note that I had read it before. My inability to recall poems is well-documented, but I’m going to chalk it up to the fact that between its publication in 2003 (earlier if it was among the original Philpott poems found in Mr and Mrs Philpott on Holiday At Auchterawe & Other Poems) and last years collecting together of all the Philpott poems, the poem has undergone a transformation. In its “original form” the poem has become mainly couplets – whereas before it was made up of stanzas of varying length.

The second couplet as is now once read: “He would like time. He would like time to be careful and slow / like the man down the road who is trimming the lawn with kitchen scissors.”. The sixth couplet now names illness, but before it was vaguer, “Perhaps it is coming and he had better move”. I could go on, but the new form and the changes serve only to improve the poem. The couplets give the reader an extra pause for thought. The message lands better for the pauses. Perhaps the pauses only serve to amplify the state of mind Philpott finds himself in.

I’m only two thirds of the way through Pearls, but I find myself turning the corner over on almost every page. I don’t know if it’s because I am older now, have been married for longer, or have just become a (slightly) better reader, but I’m finding these poems are landing more with me now than when I first read them.

Now, it’s the 60 minutes into the Spurs game. If I allow for the fact that they scored on the fifteenth minute that means it’s been an hour since I started writing this. Yes, I am going there.

It’s been a (not) wasted hour and there’s work (pizzas) to be done.



* Her Shoestring Press collection Plot and Counter-Plot is also available via the HappenStance site

** Not just at Sphinx, her reviews can be found elsewhere. I haven’t read it yet—that’s for later today, but her review of Don Paterson’s The Arctic should be a good one


*** Check those sources, folks…

THE LAST WEEK IN STATS

HEALTH STATS
0K running., knee still bad
4K walk run..if about 400m of light jogging counts.
0 lengths of the local pool
1 day without cigarettes…really, really need to knuckle down here to help with the above
0 days since drinking.

LIFE STATS
3 x focus groups for work
4 questionnaires written
1 burnt out washing machine
1 renewed driving licence

POET STATS
0 loose ideas/articles gathered (this allows me to kid myself I am writing all the time)
0 poems finished:
0 poems worked on: For Ever Given
0 submissions:
0 withdrawal:
0 acceptances:
0 readings:
1 rejections: Poetry London
19 poems are currently out for submission. No simultaneous subs
83 Published poems


1 review finished:
0 reviews started:
1 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
Fergus Allen: The Brown Parrots of Provedencia
Katie Griffiths: The Attitudes
Helena Nelson: Pearls

Zooms: None

Music

Ann Peebles: Straight From The Heart
Liz Phair: Whip-Smart
Television: Marquee Moon, Adventure, The Blow-Up
The Archers
The Verb: Cities
Native Harrow: Old Kind of Magic
J Mascis & The Fog: More Light
Gladie: Don’t Know
The Afghan Whigs: Congregation, 1965
The Foxhole Companion
Thao & the Get Down Stay Down: Know Better Learn Faster
Terry Callier: Welcome HomeMercury Rev: Yerself Is Steam
Hifi Sean & David McAltmont: Happy Ending
The Go! Team: Get Up Sequences Vol 2
Bardo Point: No Hashish, No Change Money, No Saki Saki
Billy Nomates: CactiComets on Fire: ST
The Reds, Pinks & Purples: Dust in the Path of Love
Lael Neale: Aquinted With Night
Buffalo Tom: Let Me Come Over
Teenage Fanclub: Endless Arcade
SMYL: The Day My Father Died
Sam Burton: Nothing Touches Me
A series of new singles: Inc Girl Ray, Kara Jackson, & Rachel Chinouri
Talk Talk: Laughing Stock
The National: Juicy Sonic MagicJefferson Starship & Paul Kantner: Blows Against the Empire

Watched
Happy Valley
Yellowstone

Ordered/Bought
1 new washing machine

Arrived
Headphones for Rachael and I

I can’t find a Moonbathers thing, so have Explosions In The Sky, The Moon is Down

The work starts here…

When I first started posting here more regularly – roughly three years ago, one of the things I wanted to document was the process of pulling together a pamphlet. I can’t guarantee it will be heavy on the insight. I suspect it will be more a case of following the usual rules (I think Roy Marshall has outlined the main ones here), but I think I’m on the edge of finding out for definite.

When I first got the news from Sheila at Red Squirrel Press that she would like to publish my work I was overjoyed (I still am), but 2023 seemed like light-years away at the time. Now it appears to be hurtling towards us.

With that in mind, I sat down in the garden this afternoon to begin the process.

A delicate flower

All of the essentials. And yes, the grass does need a cut, but No Mow May..yadda yadda yadda…

I have been through the published and unpublished poems I have that I think constitute being “finished”. I’ve separated out the ones that don’t feel strong enough and then made a list of the likely candidates. The act of separating the weaker ones out has been strange as there are several in that pile that at one point felt like they would have been first names on the old metaphorical teamsheet, but now— while I have a fondness for them because of things like first print publication, first major acceptance, etc, they just don’t seem strong enough to warrant inclusion.

I’m working on the premise of circa 25 poems will make it in. The current list is at 27, with four more backups. There is so much to do, each one will need its tyres kicking to make sure it’s as strong as it could be, even the more recent ones where I think my writing has improved.

They’ve all got to earn their place, so after (or is it before) the above there’s the process of seeing how they talk to each other. Do I want sections? It’s sort of loosely fallen into 3 sections so far, but are they something to be called out? It seems like overkill in a pamphlet to me, but who knows if that will change? Do I need a theme? No, I don’t think so as yet. Not least because that probably means more poems need to be written and at the current rate of knots I wouldn’t be ready for 3023, let alone next year. Also, as much as I love a themed collection, it can get a bit samey. I don’t have a theme as yet, so it would be forced.

I’ve just reviewed a debut pamphlet by someone where the work seems to either have been written circa 2008ish (at least when it was first published somewhere) or more recently during lockdown, etc (based on the themes of the poems). I can’t tell which poems fell between those dates, but it feels like an old-fashioned debut of the best poems you have available in the best order and that is just absolutely dandy with me.

There will be loads more prevarications, changes, questions, pacing up and down, heavy drinking (not essential, but I like it) and the like to come, but this feels like day one, a marker in the sand, etc.

A poem

In recent weeks things have started to blur…ok in recent years things have started to blur, but certainly my old more productive routines have fallen away in a rush of work, house stuff and general whatnot-ery, but reading this poem recently, and having attempted to get back into the writing groove this weekend by clearly banning myself from doing any DIY, gardening or chores, means I have started to recover a sense of stopping to smell the roses (my dreadful sense of smell aside) and to take joy in the littler things.

I adore this poem and the first line of the second stanza is worth the entry fee alone.

Against Monotony – Vona Groarke, taken from ‘Double Negative’, The Gallery Press

Today, a two-hundred mile drive and nothing
at the end of it but a glass of Merlot
and a radio fugue for voice and clarinet
which is a lot, when you think about it.

Oh, the squirrelling away of a snick of day
to come upon, unwontedly,
when the drive is polished concrete
and the playing fields, pure quartz:

that, right there, is a trick worth playing,
the kind of dark-blue, offhand trick
to be played maybe the once, and gently,
so you get away with it.

THE (LAST TWO) WEEKS IN STATS

c50K running. 31K this week, including 10 miles this morning that were slow, but felt good.
4 trips to central London for work
1 birthday for me
5 Focus groups for work
8 actual Cds burned for a friend. How very old school.
0 massive hangovers, but I did try hard on Thursday evening
1 kitten still awaiting neutering
15ish (at least) journeys to dance lessons and back for Flo
0 rejections:
0 poems finished:
2 poems worked on: Nature Abhors a Vacuum
0 poems published:
3 submissions: Poetry Review, 192, Acumen
1 acceptance: Bad Lillies
25 poems are currently out for submission. No poems left to submit beyond makeweights
75 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.
2 day without cigarettes…I was doing so well, Oh well, back to it. As in giving up, not back to smoking.
0 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
The Home for Retired Running Shoes
Not My Pablum
The Office of Official Fish Fingers

READ/SEEN/HEARD/ETC

Read
Stand: 19.3
Eavan Boland: The Historians

Zooms:
None

Music
One Dove: Morning One Dove
Typhoon: Hunger & Thirst
Hatchie: Giving The World Away
Daniel Rossen: You Belong There
Thom Yorke: 4.17/That’s Just How Horses Are
The Appleseed Cast: Two Conversations
Agitation Free: Last
Sea Power: Everything Is Forever
The Brian Jonestown Massacre: Don’t Get Lost
Creedence Clearwater Revival: Green River, Pendulum, Wily and the Poor Boys
The Sundowners: Pulling Back The Night
Oren Ambachi: Ghosted
Matthew Halsall: Salute To The Sun Live
Elbow: Flying Dream 1
Guided By Voices: It’s Not them. It Couldn’t Be Them. It Is Them.
Symposium: One Day At A Time
Superchunk: Majesty Shredding
Melody’s Echo Chamber: Emotional Eternal
Charles Watson: Yes
The Cure: Concert
Mogwai: Come On Die Young
Keith Jarrett: Eyes of the Heart
HTRK: Over The Rainbow
Ben Ottewell: Shapes & Shadows
Ian McCulloch; Mysterio, Candleland, Slideling
Portron Portron Lopez: De Coléré Et D’Envie
Cranes: Loved
Margo Price: That’s How Rumours get Started
Sharon Van Etten: We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong
Albaster Deplume: Gold
Charlotte Cornfield: Highs In The Minuses
The Archers
Five Live: Arsenal Vs Leeds

Watched
Grace S2
Inside No.9 S6.E1 and 2
Slow Horses
Severance
Derry Girls

Ordered
New running trainers
Sarah Mnatzaganian: Lemonade In The Armenian Quarter

Arrived
New running trainers
Sarah Mnatzaganian: Lemonade In The Armenian Quarter

Inspiral Carpets – Dragging Me Down

I must be ‘Dreymin’: On Becoming A Red Squirrel

I’ve spent a long time thinking how I’d say this, but now that I find myself able to actually write the words I have absolutely no idea how to say it, so I just will…

I have a book coming out!!! An actual book of my poems is going to exist!!!

The lovely Sheila Wakefield at Red Squirrel Press is going to publish a pamphlet of my work in 2023…I can’t wait. I mean, have you seen their books? They are beautifully produced things, and the ones I’ve read have been wonderful. I look forward to reading more of them. Oh yes, and the idea that I’ll have someone like Gerry Cambridge designing and typesetting my poems is a bit of a dream come true.

There is no recorded footage of me receiving the news, so please make do with this fairly accurate recreation of the celebrations.

Not actual footage. I was too stunned to record anything at the time.

Looking forward, I plan to use this blog as a way of documenting the process of getting a book out. At present there isn’t much to say other than that it will exist and that I am overjoyed to be joining the ranks of Red Squirrel Press poets. I wonder if they are they known as a Drey???

I suspect the poems I want to include now might not be the same in a year or two, or the title I have in mind now could be wildly different, but I have a line up of poems for it in my head now which I will write down in the next week or so to post here.

There are lots of people to thank, but for now all I will say is thank you to Matthew Stewart for suggesting I get in touch with RSP and to Sheila for getting back to me and saying yes.

Now, 2023 may sound like a long way off, but it really isn’t. It gives me plenty of time for prevarication, panic and properly working to make it the best it possibly can be. And to read more RSP poets…

I’ve picked the wrong month to lay off the drink, but please join me in raising a glass of something.