Dating the collective

12/11/202312/11/2023 / Mat Riches / 2 Comments

It’s currently 2pm on Sunday 12th Nov 2023. Collecting The Data as a tangible thing landed in my life on the 2nd. (I’m not sure the video quite captures how giddy I was at opening the box, but it had been a long day at work—they all are at the moment). The official publication data and launch event was on 7th. The final poem was read about 9.15, so I’m declaring that the moment it was officially out there.

And it’s only now that I’ve managed to really sit and think about the fact that I have an actual book out there in the world. I’m not 100% convinced I will ever truly come to terms with it. There’s certainly a feeling of well, what now…? The poems are out there, people actually own them in a book. I’m not there to read them to them with an intro. That’s quite a strange feeling to come to terms with, but I’m getting there. What do I write next? When? How? For who? All good questions, but not for today. And not a question for this book.

I’ve found myself sitting and staring at it whenever I’ve had a spare moment. It’s a beautifully produced thing, just looking at it as an object it astonishing. And I can’t say thank you enough to Sheila for publishing it, Gerry Cambridge for typesetting it and the cover, Nell for the editing, Matthew for the same and for pushing me to submit in the first place. Spookily, it will be the 4th anniversary of Sheila replying to my email to say she was interested in publishing me.

As an aside, I’ve just looked at the poems I sent her as a sample. Only one of them made the distance to end up in the book. I can also say that the book was going to be called Honest Signals at that point.

The few days since the launch have been a blur of work, more nights out (remind me to have a word with my social secretary, but weirdly a lot of it has been connected.

Let’s start there.

The launch was wonderful, it was full of people I’ve not seen for a while, or people I see all the time, but wouldn’t normally see in a poetry context, and then people I didn’t know or not met yet. It was wonderful to finally meet Sheila and Eleanor. I got to chat all to briefly with loads of lovely people like Matthew Paul, Clare Best, Davina Prince, Oliver Comins, and Mike Bartholomew Biggs. There was an odd moment at the end of the night where my oldest mate and me were chatting to Tristram Fane-Saunders. That’s a mix of worlds. And it makes me happy.

I can’t vouch for all the other poets, but I think it makes for a better reading to have non- poets there. And a crowd makes for a better event. I think the venue did well out of the night, and my non-poetry friends (be they work colleagues, oldest mates, local friends, or whatever) have all said how much they enjoyed every reader. I’m obviously glad they were there to support me (I mean the friends, but also the other readers), but it’s heartening to see that as Matthew noted on the night, this poetry lark can appeal to everyone. It was also an honour to be reading alongside two other book launches- thank you Eleanor and Matthew.

I know some people will have bought their first poetry books on Tuesday night…Job Done. Incidentally, we sold out of books on the night…I wasn’t prepared for that.

Everyone was exceptionally good. If there were nerves it didn’t show (even from me, and I was shaking the proverbial defecating dog from about 6.30 onwards). It’s impossible to single anyone out, so I won’t. That is a small cheat, but whevs, man…

I managed to get some shots of the readers, but I was to the side, so they are what they are. Send me any you might have if you can please. Here are some from what I took/have had so far. These are not in chronological order…

Florence filmed some of it, I just need to get it online somewhere. I’ll save that for later though.

I ended the night (well, the reading part) with a poetry cover version. I read Michael Donaghy’s ‘The Present‘ mainly because it’s lovely and because I wanted to dedicate it to my beloved wife, but also because it contains the phrase “your hand in mine” in the final stanza. Your Hand In Mine is a song by a band called Explosions In The Sky who I was going to see at The Troxy in Limehouse the following night.

Explosions In The Sky, playing Your Hand In Mine

It was a wonderful thing, marred slightly by two dickheads talking through it. Words were had.

EITS play an instrumental kind of music, so the lyric balance was restored the following evening when I went with Christopher Horton to see Simon Armitage read at Marylebone Theatre. He was mainly reading from his recent book of collected lyrics, although he dipped into his translations too. It was a fantastic reading, and I learned a lot of technique watching the old hand at work, but the night got weirder after the reading.

Chris went to get a book signed. I’d totally forgotten to bring any of my Armitage books, having rushed out of the house to make it on time after work. (NB I’d taken a stack of books with me on Tuesday night to ask poets to sign my copies. I didn’t get everyone, but it was lovely to get a few meaningful signatures on the books).

Anyhoo, Chris was chatting to Simon afterwards and eventually mentioned I’d launched my book that week. We happened to have a spare copy with us, so I plucked up the courage to give it to Simon, and he asked me to sign it.

I’m not quite used to signing books yet—it felt most odd on Tuesday, and I need to learn to write less, but when our Poet Laureate and a person I admire a great deal asked me to sign my book, I didn’t know what to write. I won’t say what I put, but I hope he saw the funny side of it. I hope he reads the book. I guess he’s still trying to track me down to offer me a support slot.

I felt duty bound to buy something, so got a copy of his Marsden Poems book. Some of which I have in other collections, but it was something to read on the way home, and a good reminder of how good his work can be/is.

I did ask him if he fancied a pint with Chris and I, but he had to be off to meet his daughter in Limehouse (where I’d been the night before). Chris and I did get talking to someone in the pub who turned out to have a sister who was a poet back in Columbia, so there’s that too.

Leafing through the book on my way home that night, I settled into reading and got a jolt of recognition from this poem.

A Few Don’ts about Decoration

Don’t mope. Like Rome
it will not be built in a day,
unlike those raised barns
or Kingdom Halls we’ve heard of
with their pools of labour,

the elders checking
each side of the plumb-line,
the daughters and their pitchers of milk, full
beyond the brim. Their footings
are sunk before breakfast,

by sundown the last stone
is dressed and laid.
Don’t let’s kid ourselves, we know less
about third degree burns
than about blowlamps. Don’t forget:

it’s three of sand to one of cement,
butter the tile and not the wall,
half a pound of split nails
will sweep clean with a magnet, soot
keeps coming and coming, sandpapers

smells like money.
Don’t do that when I’m painting.
Don’t begin anything
with one imperial spanner and a saw so blunt
we could ride bare-arse to London on it.

Also, when you hold down
that square yard of beech
and your eyes widen and knuckles whiten
as the shark’s fin of the jigsaw blade
creeps inland …

don’t move a muscle.
And don’t you believe it: those stepladders
are not an heirloom but a death trap;
they will snap tight
like crocodile teeth with me on top

and a poor swimmer. Don’t turn up
with till rolls like stair carpets. Don’t blame me
if the tiles back flip from the wall
or the shower-head swallow dives into the tub
and cracks it.

Don’t give up hope
till the week arrives when it’s done,
the corner turned, it’s back
broken, and everything comes on
in leaps and bounds

that even Bob Beamon would be proud of.
OK, that’s a light-year away
but like a mountain — it’s there.
Don’t look down.
Don’t say it.

*********************** Taken from Kid, By Simon Armitage. Faber Poetry, 1992

I may have mentioned once or twice how we’ve been redecorating our hallway. It’s been going on bit by bit for months and it’s nearly done. I think it’s two weekends away from being done, so this felt like an obvious reminder to keep ploughing on.

And the lines about heirlooms, etc put me in mind of my own poem about inheriting tools from my dad, so I’m sharing it here as well.

Clearing Dad’s Shed

Tobacco tins of tacks and screws
cover every surface and shelf.
A hatchet is Excalibured
in a chopping block by the door.

The spiders have been working hard
to lash together oiled chisels,
cables and caulking guns. His words
linger in curls of shavings.

I drag out offcuts of old planks
to burn in the rusted brazier,
the ash settling and mixing in
with the dust that covers each box

of random tools piled up beneath
his hand-built workbench. It’s obvious
I’ve got “all the gear but no idea”
when I carry them to my car

to let them gather new dust at home.
The long drive back is spent blaming:
him for not showing their uses,
me for not asking him.

*********************** Taken from Clearing The Data, By Me, Red Squirrel Press, 2023

I’m looking forward to selling more copies of the book. We’ve already just about gone through the initial print run of 200 copies in less than a week. Sheila has ordered more. That’s just crazy, but I won’t argue with it. Mind you, I won’t be retiring yet either.

It’s now 6.20pm. Time to knock off…

THE LAST TWO WEEKS IN STATS

HEALTH STATS
12K running. Very little due to time, tiredness and the like. The next weeks will be better.
0 days without cigarettes…
0 day since drinking

LIFE STATS
1 box of my BOOKS arrived
1 lively and lovely lunch with
2 ex colleagues
1 work seminar on the art of leadership
1 impromptu gig: Brigid Mae Power and Steve Gunn
1 visit from my mum
1 planned gig: Explosions In the Sky
1 late night post launch
1 poetry gig – Simon Armitage
1 70s-themed birthday party
Not enough sleep

POET STATS
0 loose ideas/articles gathered
0 poem finished:
0 poem worked on:
0 poems committed to the reject pile
0 submissions:
0 withdrawal:
0 acceptances:
0 Longlisting:
0 readings:
0 rejections:
1 1 poems are currently out for submission. No simultaneous subs
96 Published poems

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

READ/SEEN/HEARD/ETC

Music
r= Radio, A = Audiobook, P=Podcast. The rest is music
Week 1
The United States of America: ST
American Music Club: Engine
Gabor Szabo: High Contrast
Bee Bee Sea: Sonic Boomerang
P.G. Six: Murmurs and Whispers
VA: Trip On Me – Soft Psych & Sunshine
The Archers (p)
Music Is the Drug: Sweet Jane (p)
Explosions In The Sky: End, various songs from various albums
Planet Poetry: Ian McMillan (p)
Craig Finn: Lucinda Williams (p)
The Mission: Carved In Sand, Carved In Sand Live
Roky Erickson & the Explosives: Halloween, Gremlins Have Pictures
The Darkness; Permission to Land
 Marnie Stern: The Comeback Kid, The Chronicles of Marnia
Steve Gunn: 3 albums
Four Tet: Live at Alexandra Palace 2023
Week 2
The Durutti Column: LC
Steve Gunn; other you 
Portishead: Dummy, ST, Third, Rosebowl
Laura Veirs: Phone Orphans 
Explosions In The Sky: End 
Seawind of Battery: Clockwatching
Allegra Krieger: Circles
The Beths: Experts In A Dying Field
Hamilton Leithhauser: Black Hours
Dropsonde Playlist

Read
North
Eleanor Livingstone: Even The Sea, Surprising The Misses McRuthie
Poetry London
Collecting the Data

Watched
Taskmaster
New Girl  
The Long Shadow 
Ghostbusters: Afterlife
Shetland
Invasion

Ordered/Bought
Hockey Shoes for Flo

Arrived
Eleanor Livingstone: Even The Sea, Surprising The Misses McRuvie
My books
Poetry Scotland
Don Paterson: Landing Light

LYR – Call In The Crash Team

26/06/202028/06/2020 / Mat Riches / 3 Comments

I was lucky enough to be invited to review this album, so in a change to the regular levels of rambling…

LYR are, so we are led to believe, called Land Yacht Regatta by their mum when they are in trouble.

However, as Armitage has it in the band’s biog, “There shouldn’t really be a land yacht regatta! But I liked the idea of something that’s a hybrid. It’s like a 3-way contradiction. We were doing something that’s unusual and perhaps even impossible.” The same biog also states they are “a genre-splicing supergroup of sorts, comprised of author and current British poet laureate Simon Armitage, musician Richard Walters and multi-instrumentalist Patrick Pearson”

And it’s this phrase “genre-splicing supergroup of sorts” that stands out. I wondered when I first heard about this album in February—how long ago does that feel now?— whether an album of poetry read out over “ambient post-rock passages, jazz flourishes, atonal experimentalism, as well as swoony strings and piano — and some more unusual instrument choices too, such as the kora” would truly gel, or knit into something greater than the sum of its parts.

(As an aside, I’m sure there were rumblings in 2019 on a Soundcloud page, but that’s now bare – https://soundcloud.com/lyrbanduk)

There’s a worrying moment at the start of this album, where the band’s lead vocalist—we can’t say singer, although there is a singer present, Simon Armitage intones the following words over what sounds like a Rhodes piano.

‘Gone your own way now, nothing to say now…’ and as he said these word, I had a horrifying vision of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Armitage and his fellow band mates in LYR all stripped to the waist, covered in gold paint somewhere on the moors near Armitage’s beloved Marsden.

Thankfully, he follows it with the half or slant-rhyme of ‘Still mouthing your name though’. That ’though’ does a lot of heavy-lifting there and I was immensely happy to hear it. And, even more thankfully, the music is light year away from that mob.

The music description above is both bang on and also not quite enough.There are moments, for example where it can invoke the sort of post rock made by the likes of Inventions or This Will Destroy You. There are moments when all I could think was the theme tune to The Bridge by Choir of Young Believers. There were others where it could easily be Public Service Broadcasting’s fourth album – the words of a poet drawn from the BBC archives instead of recordings from the NASA archives, or Welsh Miners or BBC broadcasters/Auden reading Night Mail.

There are moments when the sort of classical/dance hybrid similar to the sort of music Ólafur Arnalds makes with Kiasmos, or Erland Cooper’s work is all that springs to mind, for example in Urban Myth #91 (although for some reason I also got a sense of a sort of Glitter Band beat there too as it gathers pace.

However, there are also moments where the likes of The Penguin Cafe Orchestra or Michael Nyman spring to mind, the most obvious of these is the track Product Testing. It initially feels like a throwaway track, or like someone has pressed the demo function on a keyboard as Armitage intones “On/Off”, but it quickly turns into a twitchy dance number, or something like what I imagine the inside of David Byrne’s brain to sound like. At the end of the song we hear Armitage say “Yeah, seems to work” and he’s right. It does.

“The origins of LYR stretch back to 2009 when Walters, a big fan of Armitage’s work, approached the poet’s publisher about the possibility of collaboration. Walters wound up setting Armitage’s poetry to music in his 2011 solo song ‘Redwoods’.

“Simon and I talked about the next step”, recalls Walters. “Instead of just taking words and me singing them, we had the idea of a spoken word project that had a bit more of a life around it in terms of the musical setting”. Walters thought of Pearson, who he had met in the early 2010’s, as part of a short-lived, shoegaze inspired band called Liu Bei. Pearson loved the idea, and LYR were born.”

It’s testament to the skill and musicality of both Walters and Pearson that the music never interrupts the words, but is never just wallpaper or mood lighting. These are not backing tracks or soundbeds, they are not foley artists putting real noises under the lines of the actors. These are songs that could quite easily function as standalone pieces. The question is then, does or could Armitage’s contribution add anything to this three-legged stool?

The band themselves suggest ‘It’s not poetry with music underneath,’” says Pearson of the project. “We’d always talked about it as being a focused band project.” Walters agrees: “It’s definitely a universe, the record,” he says. “There’s so many people on it.” Armitage, with characteristic dry wit, is quick to respond, and jokes: “We might make a Broadway musical!”

It’s interesting that the main vocal line of the final song on the album, Leaves On The Line (we’ll discuss this later) is handed to Waters – does this suggest that Armitage could fade back to writing the words for future albums, or is it just that Waters sounded better on this one? Who knows?

I wanted to talk about the music first in this review, because it could so easily be the Armitage show.

“A lot of the lyrics have come about from writing in a time of post-industrialisation, austerity, and the recession,” explains Armitage. “And yet, even through those years and those atmospheres, there’s still been an exuberance around, an exuberance of communication, information, language. I think a lot of the speakers in the pieces are expressing some kind of marginalisation and are doing so as if they’re almost hyperventilating.”

That marginalisation reaches a sort of zenith, if that’s the right word, at the end of Adam’s Apple after a sequence of three songs that end with Waters singing/repeating “It’s all too much for you” in ‘ the exquisite You Were Never Good With Horses, “move on, move on” in Urban Myth #91 and then “let go, let go” at the end of Adam’s Apple.

Each song is written form the point of view of different characters, Never Good With Horses, for example written from the point of view of some dissatisfied with their partner’s discomfort with the natural world. The partner “comfortable with a steering wheel” and “watching the movie of life layout through the windscreen’s lens”— a nod to Iggy Pop’s The Passenger, perhaps, but they “were never good with horses…my dear, always took a step backwards when they came near. Couldn’t bear to look in the dark rock pools of their eyes”. That last line is when you know you’ve got a poet running the lyrical show.

Having mentioned Iggyy Pop here, there’s a further connection in the form of the excellent 33 1/3 with its lyric which that starts out making you think it’s a hymn to vinyl with references to “captured orbit around the spindle”, but by the second go around we’re talking about “The rope that he swung from/ […] A whirlpooling swansong.” Every repetition of the title towards the end of the song adding more and more weight.

Armitage’s demo of 33 ⅓ was set to a haunting whirr which came from the run-out groove of Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures vinyl. “Ian Curtis is definitely invoked on that track,” says Armitage, of the band’s frontman who committed suicide in 1980. Curtis was found hanging with a record player’s needle stuck on the final moments of Iggy Pop’s ‘The Idiot’.

While the majority of these lyrics were written specifically for the album, Armitage has also reached back into his catalogue of poems to bring a couple to life.
Specifically, Zodiac T-Shirt, which he states in the notes to a recent collection of, to use a musical sort of reference’ b-sides and songs that didn’t find a home. I sort of think if it as discs two and three in the boxset version of his more recent full collection, The Unaccompanied. And now I write that there’s a sort of irony to that.

Regardless of that, in the notes of Sandettie Light Vessel Automatic, he writes

Zodiac T-Shirt, Sandettie Light Vessel Automatic

So while he never expected it to be sung by him, we still have him intoning the poem. It’s close enough for me. Don’t forget we know he can sing after The Scaremongers, and even heard him attempt beatboxing in a recent episode of his BBC podcast, The Poet Laureate Retires Too His Shed.

It’s not the first time he’s done this, The Scaremongers’ album has him using the poem Old Boy from The Motorway Service Station as a Destination in its Own Right. And there’s the case of him having recorded himself narrating his poem ‘The English’ from Universal Home Doctor for indie veterans The Wedding Present in 2017.

The Wedding Present’s very own David Gedge describes the process

“I’d been aware of Simon’s work for a long time – hearing him on the radio and stuff – but I don’t think I actually met him until he interviewed me for his book ‘Gig : The Life And Times Of A Rock-Star Fantasist’ which came out in 2008. He interviewed me in the dressing room of the Picturedrome venue in Holmfirth, which is near where he lives, and we’ve kept in touch ever since. He’s a lovely bloke.

When we were writing ‘England’ I decided that I wanted some form of narration on there but it was actually Jessica who suggested Simon. I asked him if he’d be interested and, by an amazing coincidence, he told me about his poem ‘The English’ which fits perfectly! It’s brilliant when things fall into place like that…

The other moments from his back catalogue comes in the form of the aforementioned Leaves on the Line and The National Trust Range of Paints Colour Card. As I was reading the track listing, I remember thinking ‘Crikey, The National Trust….is almost the most Simon Armitage title of all time. The I remembered that it is a Simon Armitage poem title, and that both poems are found in his pamphlet, Travelling Songs.

On the back of that he says “Describing yourself as a poet is often seen as a challenge or even an alibi. In those circumstances, it’s worth having a few tunes up for sleeve to prove it” . While he was clearly referring to his poems, it feels like he’s finally got the second album’s worth up there 18 years after Traveling Songs was published.

Call In The Crash Team is available at all good retailers – on and offline – Let’s support our record shops if we can.

Also available at your standard issue streaming services.

Please also note there is an additional single Called Lockdown that sets Simon’s poem to new music, and features Florence Pugh and Melt Yourself Down. Might I suggest you buy it as the proceeds will go towards supporting Refuge

Final thought. It’s only at the end of writing this that I realise LYR is also the first three letter of Lyrics and Lyre. Ooh, maybe for the next album the band can get other folks to join – like Crosby, Stills and Nash did with that Canadian bloke…

UPDATED TO INCLUDE THE USUAL WEEKNOTES

Two titles to giveaway
1. Set Phrases To Stun
2. Link in Bio

Music
Teenage Fanclub – It felt like the kind of week to just play sunshine
Ain’t That Enough
Bandwagonesque
A Catholic Education
The Concept
DGC rarities
Did I Say?
Dumb Dumb Dumb
Grand Prix
Here
Howdy
I Don’t Want Control Of You
I Need Direction
It’s All In My Mind
Judgement Night
The King
Man-Made
Mellow Doubt
Neil Jung
Norman 3
Songs From Northern Britain
Sparky’s Dream
Thirteen

TFC & Jad Fair
Near To You
Words of Hope & Wisdom

The Temptations
Cloud Nine
Compact Command Performances

Tess Parks – blood Hot
Thao Nguyen – We Brave Bee Stings And All
This is the Kit – Bashed Out
This Will Destroy You – Young Mountain
Throneberry – Sangria
The Apples In Stereo – Just the song 7 Stars on a loop ten times
Bert Jansch – Avocet
Caspian – Live At Church
Charles Mingus – Presents Charles Mingus
LYR – Call In The Crash Team
Phoebe Bridgers – Punisher
Grandbrothers – Dilation
Mogwai – Ten Rapid (after being reminded of this clip from Friday Night Lights)
Mojave 3 – Puzzles Like You
Mount Kimbie – Cold Spring Fault Less Youth
Mountain Man – Made The Harbour
Throttle Elevator Music – Emergency Exit
Jenny Beth – To Love Is To live
Richard Walters – Golden Veins
Snowgoose – The Making of You
Caribou – Suddenly
The National – Trouble Will Find Me
My Morning Jacket – At Dawn

Hangouts/Video Calls/Zoom/Etc (not for work)
In Conversations – Nell Nelson & Alan Buckley

TV/Film
Spook S8 E2-6

Radio/Podcasts
Rishi Dastidar – Poetry For Sale
The Archers

Arrived
Suna Afshan – Bella Donna
Donald Justice – Collected Poems

Ordered
Naush Sabah – Astynome/Heredity

Read
Rob Selby – The Coming Down Time
Sue Rose – Scion

Godrevy, Cornwall after a nudge from Simon Armitage

23/06/2015 / Mat Riches / Leave a comment

I’m waiting on starting a new job at the moment – I start a week today, and I’ve had a few weeks off. I was planning on reading shedloads of stuff. I’ve got a backlog of things to read, and even got more from the library to plough through. As it is I’ve only managed to finish reading Simon Armitage’s Walking Away.

This is the counterpoint to his journey through the Pennines, Walking Home, and it’s set along the south west coast. As I was reading it, I was hoping that it would mention some of the places that we stayed when on holiday last year, and lo and behold towards the end he did. He mentioned Godrevy beach, and what he has to say about it you will have to read yourself, but it chimes nicely with my recollection of the place,and it reminded me that I wrote this at the time.

Godrevy is home to the eponymous lighthouse of Virginia Woolf’s novel.

Godrevy, Cornwall

A warm front and back
as you emerge from
waves, waxy and surf shone.
Skipping over the sea’s wrought iron work
of spread out kelp and bladderwrack.

We can’t leap to the lighthouse off the coast,
A good eye reflecting back as we keep the wolf
from the door, and this to our self.
You take it from me on trust
that lichens are nature’s rust.

I have caught the sun
and hold it in my skin.
There is much to take from this
as keepsakes; we will pick up sticks and stones.
We will come back to this and then go on.

Cornish alien discovered at Godrevy

Flo teaching me to bodyboard

It will be good to be back at work soon, but it has been ace being off. I’ve even managed to get some more writing done. There are a few more poems that have been worked on from a pile of about 50, some were little more than a title and a line, and they now have some sort of skeleton to work with – one literally so.

The work in progress file has the following in various stages of completion..: