The season of spookiness has been and gone, again. No trick or treaters at the door (the boiling oil did it’s job last year!!) and while it’s all a bit sad, I’m not usually one for the dressing up, etc or all that witches and ghouls malarkey.
However, you know how I love a coincidence…And I’ve noticed a couple this week.
Firstly, I saw a tweet by the journalist Andrew Male (and a few others) earlier in the week singing the praises of the Maggie Hambling (Maggie Hambling: Making Love With The Paint) doc on BBC4.
Click on the link to watch
I worry I’ve not watched enough “educational” stuff throughout all of this lockdown. We’ve watched plenty of good stuff (I’m very much enjoying re-watching Battlestar Galactica, for example), but when the BBC make a good documentary I rarely get round to watching them. Not because I don’t want to, but just because…well, no reason really, but it was very much business as usual when I duly made a note to think about getting round to watching it at some point.
Then I had a conversation with a friend that mentioned people in a particular anthology from the late 80s, it triggered a conversation around an idea I think I’ve mentioned before about investigating people involved in older copies of anthologies or mags, etc.
To add fuel to a point I was making in the conversation I grabbed an old magazine off my shelves (It turned out to be The Rialto No.27, Winter 1993) and looked down the list of people on the back to see the names I recognised.
And there are a few. I did originally plan to start searching out all of these folks to see what had happened to them. There are a few I know without searching, e.g. we all know that Sophie Hannah has gone on to be a novelist and that Julia Copus hasn’t done too badly for herself. There are other names I recognise and plenty I don’t.
As an aside, it was nice that Apollinaire finally made it into the mag. I know The Rialto is one of those mags that can take a while to get back to you, but bloody hell….Given he died in 1918 there’s added meaning to ““How slow life is, how violent hope is.”
I wonder who got his contributor copy.
Anyhoo, I digress. I did start searching out the names on the list to make a start on this (Obvs, it would make for a very long post, and I can’t even guarantee you’re still reading now). My search for “M.J. Armitt + Poet” revealed absolutely nothing that appears to relate to a poet. According to the biog in the back of the mag, “M.J. Armitt is a former lecturer writing again after a twenty-year silence, and seeking publication for the first time.”
A search for “Armitt + Lecturer” revealed a Matthew Armitt, but I suspect he’s either had a lot of Botox/surgery for someone that hadn’t written for 20 years in 1993 or isn’t the person I’m looking for. You judge for yourself.
I will come back to the names another time, with some more research, but it does ask the question about visibility in this day and age (more on that anon). Do we need to have web pages, blogs (I’m not sure I want the answer to that one), Twitter accounts, the Tik Toks, etc…Or is it enough just enough to be present in the mags, to have the books or the writing? Or both? I don’t think there’s really an answer here other than it’s up to you, but if you’re a poet that doesn’t have e.g a pamphlet or book behind you, or have published in digital mags to have created a trace then it’s pretty much impossible to join the dots when you find a poet you like.
This is just one poet, there are several more to investigate, but let’s make it an on-going series.
Yes Mat, but what about the co-incidences?
The real co-incidence came when I flipped the magazine over and saw the cover.
The picture is called ‘Laughing Mouth’ by a certain Maggi Hambling.
You can’t argue with co-incidences like that, and still they keep coming.
The Hambling documentary has a moment where Maggi is drinking Special Brew—last week I finished a poem that mentions my dad getting pissed on Special Brew.
When I actually looked back at the poem by M.J. Armitt, it’s a poem called ‘January Pigeon’. What was last week’s post about?
And now for the biggie…while searching for M.J. Armitt I did stumble across this article. It’s called ‘Cup and Ring Marks in Context’. It’s written by a Clive Waddington, but it cites an I. Armitt.
The extract notes that
“The key argument presented in this article is that a threefold temporal sequence can be recognized in the deployment of cup and ring marks and that these changes can throw new light on the nature of ideological evolution in northern Britain during the Neolithic. It is proposed that the initial phase relates to the symbolic portrayal of the ideological beliefs which constituted the ‘Neolithic’ (c. 4000–3200 BC) by mapping them on the landscape via outcropping bedrock.
During the second phase (c. 3200–2000 BC) the significance of this symbolism is thought to be appropriated, as it is reworked into ‘man-made’ megalithic constructions which ‘monumentalize’ the landscape under the aegis of increasingly overt human control.
By the third phase (c. 2000–1800 BC) a disjuncture is apparent in both the function and meaning of the cup and ring tradition culminating in its expropriation as human control of the natural world becomes more fixed.”
So far, so fascinating, but also so what…However, this week I was asked to provide some feedback on a poem by a dear mate, and would you Adam and Eve it, that poem talks about cup and ring marks.
There’s quite literally nowhere left to go after that. Not without getting more freaked out ad losing sleep. I need my beauty sleep (**Stay in bed a month** is the usually shout here) so let’s move on.
I am morally obliged to make you aware of the launch today of IAMB A POET wave 4. Once again Mark has assembled an excellent group of poets, some of whom you’d think have a “name” that doesn’t require the extra push that Iamb provides, but ultimately, I don’t think IAMB is about that.
It’s more just assembling groups of great poets (and me in wave 2) and letting them speak for themselves (Literally, given Mark has us all recording versions of our work).
Get yourself over there. Listen, read, enjoy.
NB Really must nail what constitutes a “name”.
Now…
THE WEEK IN STATS
27k running – Not bad, will settle for that.
2 days of a the 7-minute workout
0 x rejections: All good.
2 poems worked on. Phantom Settlements and Lucky Foot
3 days without cigarettes…
1 more week that I’m not having an affair with Eva Green
TITLE GIVEAWAY
Over Bar The Shouting
Major Domo
The High Chaperone
READ/SEEN/HEARD/ETC
Music
Beverley Glenn Copeland: At Last
Laura Cantrell: Hello recordings, Humming By The Flowered Vine, Kitty Wells Dresses, No Way There From Here, Not The Tremblin’ Kind, Trains and Boats and Planes, When The Roses Bloom Again
Mint Julep: Stray Fantasies
Blur: Blur, The Great Escape, Leisure, Magic Whip, Modern Life Is Rubbish, Parklife, Think Tank, Under The Westway/The Puritan, 13
Girls: ST
Frightened Rabbit: The Midnight Organ Fight, Painting Of A Panic Attack, Pedestrian Verse, Sing The Greys, State Hospital, The Winter of Mixed Drinks, The Woodpile
The Afghan Whigs: Beautiful Girls OST, Big Top Halloween, Big Top Halloween Demos, Black Love, Burning London (Clash Tribute), Congregation
Margo Price: That’s How Rumours Get Started
Joni Mitchell:The Hissing Of Summer Lawns
Hangouts/Video Calls/Zoom/Etc (not for work)
None this week
TV/Film
Battlestar Galactica: S3 E9-15
Strike: The Silkworm, S2, S3 and S4 E1-3
Inbetweeners S1 E1-2
Maggi Hambling :Making Love With The Paint
The Witches
Radio/Podcasts
The Archers
Ordered
Of Mice & Men for Flo
Frank Wood : Racing The Stable Clock
Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal Sub
JO Morgan: The Martian’s Regress
Colin Bancroft: Impermance
Arrived
Of Mice & Men
Frank Wood : Racing The Stable Clock
JO Morgan: The Martian’s Regress
Read
Charlotte Gann _ The Girl Who
Benjamin Cusden- Cut The Black Rabbit
Nina Mingya-Powles: Magnolia 木蘭
Wear The Fox Hat 