Poetry, Events and Being on Trains a Lot: York Mix Competition and Two Poems from Rory Waterman

On Sunday March 23rd I travelled up to York as I'd been commended in the York Mix Poetry Comp, which is part of the York Literature Festival. I normally have mixed feeling about entering poetry comps, but this one was different. For starters it was judged by Carole Bromley and I really admire her poetry so I thought I'd support her and the festival. Also, it was only a fiver for three poems! Normally I wouldn't travel so far, but in the spirit of the poem I'd written I thought 'why not?' and off I went.

I made it to York, left the station and had a rather buoyant feeling of being somewhere I didn't know but was happy to visit. It seemed like a city with many visitors, lots of people were rushing past with wheeled suitcases and even on a Sunday you could feel a buzz. I wondered around the city peering into all the attractive shop fronts and was delighted by the sight of the river. The twins had asked me to take photos, so I did:

The prize event was very friendly and many of the prize-winners and commended poets were there to read their poems, including a poet called Clifford Hughes who'd travelled all the way from Hayward's Heath. It was also good to see my mate John Foggin who is going through a golden patch at the moment poetry-wise, winning all sorts of things, including the Lumen/Camden Poetry Prize. It's not easy getting first place in comps (understatement), so well done, and well done to Kay Buckley who won first Prize at York Mix with her poem 'Huskars' which is about a tragic incident where young children working down a pit were trapped and drowned. Many thanks to Carole for all her hard work judging the comp, no mean feat as there were nearly a thousand entries. I liked her approach of dealing with the poems as they came through on email. If you'd like to read about the judging process, read the winning and commended poems and look at photos of the event then do click here.

So I was on the train for 4 hours or so and the next weekend went up to The Poetry Business for one of their writing days, so another two hours and of course inevitable work journeys into Leicester. So I needed some reading material. Poetry and trains are quite well-suited. I think there must be a whole sub-genre of poems about writing poems on a train. The journey gave me an opportunity to re-read one of my favourite collections from last year, Rory Waterman's 'Tonight the Summer's Over' (Carcanet).



Rory's poetry is full of emotion, experience and observation. A significant part of the collection for me deals with the feeling of being torn and not quite belonging anywhere, 'I'd brag about that 'other home' / and other me - not here, like them - / the Irish me that never was.' Rory's mother left his father and their family home in County Derry and moved with Rory to rural Lincolnshire. The child's home is Lincolnshire, but 'home' is also Ireland too. Rather than being comfortable in two places, the poet feels estranged from both:

And Lincoln was a blessing and a curse,
where Daddy lived each month, and lived with me.

Oddly enough being on a train means you're nowhere; powering through anonymous fields and the backs of towns and cities for most of the journey. Perhaps this enhanced my enjoyment? Matthew Stewart has written an incisive review of this book on his blog Rogue Strands, which is here. If your tempted by the book I'd recommend a read, and to further whet your appetite here are two poems which Rory has kindly allowed me to use. The first has a terrific energy and a really sharp pair of end lines. 'Two' really moves me and is distinctly memorable.

Navigating

A heron burst from the bank where we hadn't seen it
to out of sight beneath the tree-bitten sky
            the way we were heading.
Let's follow! So, a dawdle became the pursuit
of something we couldn't realise.

We paddled and ruddered, slick through spilling rapids,
round snags and boulders, churned small dark-skinned deeps
          as otters and crayfish hid;
sparrows and what-not cheeped; cows chewed at the lip
of a sudden meander, and watched us ignoring them;

and inverted willows shivered with river-weeds,
where toppled half-drowned boughs cut withering chevrons
           along each shadowed straight.
We were happy - weren't we? - because each bend was blind.

We must pursue and not expect to find.


Two

The toddler with fat red cheeks in a blue Babygro,
legs skew-wiff, blond hair in a motherly clump,
face trapped in cute consternation, lets me know
through widened eyes that what happens to him matters.

The floppy-eared teddy he clutches in that studio
is a prop, not a gift. He doesn't realise
yet, but soon he'll have to let it go.
He hugs it because he's told to, looking up at the camera,

at the trap of a violent flash-bulb exploding. So
thirty-year-younger eyes stare blind at their future.

Sun Bathing in December

At this time of year it's customary for blogger to round-up their books of the year. I find that a hard thing to do in terms of poetry. Some of the poetry I've come across this year was published before 2013, this would include work by Mark Halliday (have blogged about him before) and two stunning books by Catherine Smith: 'Lip' and 'The Butcher's Hands.' I read those two from cover to cover and was struck by the range of subject matter and Smith's ability to write about darker (and therefore rather interesting) aspects of human psyche. I'm looking forward to getting a copy of her latest book, 'Otherwhere.' What an intriguing title. Another non-2013 favourite, also published by the fabulous Smith/Doorstop press was Carole Bromley's 'A Guided Tour of the Ice House.' That book sustained me through a evening of cancelled trains on the way home from Sheffield. Bromley's work is a pleasure to read: clear-sighted, direct and utterly engaging. Poems like 'In Another Life' and 'The Lovers' and 'South Bank and Eston Rotary Club, 1951' really grabbed me and there was so much in the book to curl up into. Funny, sad, wry, honest. I have the book by the bed and keep returning to it, that's a big mark of admiration for me.

So, I'm not done with 2013 yet. I have no doubt that 2014's blog posts will have some focus on things published this year. There's one book I'm going to focus on though and that's Roy Marshall's 'The Sun Bathers' published by Shoestring. Regular readers of this blog will know I have praised Roy's work over the last couple of years. In 2012 his pamphlet 'Gopagilla' was published as a part of a series of our Crystal pamphlets and it was packed with strong, memorable pieces, many of which can be found in 'The Sun Bathers.'




A first collection from Roy is a very huge deal, especially when you've seen a poet's work develop and grow over time. I know it's not just me though. When I read at Beeston Poets in November with Roy a couple of things struck me. Firstly, I noticed the audience was hanging on every word in his poetry and we experienced 20 minutes of lyric power tempered with a plain-spokeness which made the poetry immediate. One of the first times I heard Roy read was at Leicester's WORD! back in 2010, and I heard a remarkable poem called 'No Signals Available' which made me sit up and take notice. That poem is also in the book I'm happy to say. When I read 'The Sun Bathers' many of the poems were familiar to me, not least because they've appeared in a plethora of magazines but also because I've been lucky enough to have seen them at the drafting stage as well. Don't just take my word for it, at the Beeston reading an audience member requested a poem, which shows to me that readers form attachments with these poems. A great sign to my mind. You can find details of how to track down a copy here.

It's hard to pick an individual poem to share with you as there are so many notable poems. Many of these you can find on-line, but you should of course buy the book! My favourites include the 'Leonardo' sequence, 'Presence', 'Rose,' 'A Western Australian Piano Graveyard,' 'Relic' - this list could be longer, you get the picture. These are well-formed poems with a personal edge. They speak to you. As I said many of Roy's poems are on-line, so to avoid overlaps I've chosen 'Cimetero' which draws on the poet's Italian heritage. There are some sumptuous and evocative words and images, 'gellateria' honey heat and scent of rosemary, the child's innocence at the father 'who'll live forever' and the understated sinister sense of death and corporeal decay, colours 'deepening from terracotta to crimson.'

Cimetero

The gate kept a world out: scooters humming
along the road that ran down to the lake,
gellateria and monument.

Lizards froze, slipped into cracks, past photographs
set in granite, chrysanthemums on marble beds,
so different from the grassed churchyard at home.

I loved the honey heat, scent of rosemary
and privet, plots to walk between, adding dates
to calculate the ages of the dead.

One day, a grave, freshly dug, sides shored,
colour deepening from terracotta to crimson,
waiting not for Dad, who brought me here

because I asked, Dad, young and fit who'd live
forever, but for Nonno; next year, behind
polished glass, the face I'd know.