Places and Commonplaces...

Looking back at the year's blog post it seems that most entries are about events and the inevitable travel to different places and locations across the country. One entry I regret not writing was about my experience and reading at the Wenlock poetry festival, life intervened! I had a great time, but the occasional travelling throughout the year did get me thinking about those poets who travel all the time. I'd say it's fairly inevitable that the more you're prepared to travel the more you can reach an audience, meet other poets and benefit form hearing their work, Not always easy. On the other hand I've seen people for whom travelling is a necessity. Read Matthew Stewart's blog here on this subject. It goes without saying, perhaps, that the web alters some of this.

I was thinking about the poet's 'place' in the world and remembered this quotation by E.M. Forster about the poet Cavafy "standing absolutely motionless at a slight angle to the universe." Fairly relevant to most poets. Back in the summer I wrote a hasty poem about a childhood home which also wasn't about it either. It was just a place in a poem I suppose, even if it started off true. I revised it a bit (it started life as one of Jo Bell's 52 poetry prompts) and sent it off in an envelope to the Nottingham Open Poetry Comp and it received a merit. There was a prize giving ceremony in October. There was even a competition buffet on the day, yummy. I digress. In her judge's report, Helen Mort wrote about the importance of place in her favourite poems:

'I’m obsessed with trying to write about different places and locations in my own work and I really loved the different worlds (whole worlds in some cases) these poems all introduced me to. Like all the best place poems, they captured not what you could read in a visitor’s guide, but what it feels like to be there...'

What you see on exiting Nottingham Station... 

Many of the poems she chose were about the idea of place. The second prize winner, Liz Venn, wrote a poem called 'The Spin' as in a spinning globe which contained these lines:

As you get older and more birdlike,

keep a grip on the quick land,

stay close to the outreached hand

It seems to be about the speaker's need to root themselves somewhere. The first prize poem was called 'Day Trip' by Julie Lumsden and ended with this verse: 

or forget the serious sea

out in the bay where the tide comes in

faster than a man can run.

This place feels real and concrete but also has an emotive force. To me it's about feeling overwhelmed. Universal. In Mark Done's poem 'Ratcliffe-on-Soar Power Station, 9 hole, par 60 (3624 yards)' the night-shift workers are playing golf at work, leaving odd traces behind, such as 'an upturned saucer of the 9th green' and 'future archaeologists will speculate about its use.' My dad worked at Ratcliffe Power Station once, I should ask about the golf. In John Foggin's poem 'The Fox on the Window Sill' that place is the location for the fox's skeleton. The remains are always in a state of decay, but still visible. The bones have something to say about her life and where she lived. The skeleton: 'grows articulate, what’s left – / skull and grinning jaw', Death is a (sort of) place too

If you'd like to spend some time going through the winning poems, and my poem 'Resident' is there too, click here to read. 

John's poem reminds me that the other day I read the most lovely poem by Peter Sansom, called 'Mini Van' which was commended in the Troubadour Poetry Prize, A boy in the mini van is stuck 'In the back / with no seats or windows / just more grey metal' en route to 'a houseful of the dead / still living none of them more than ten minutes / from where they were born.

Night of 'The North' in Leicester and a Poem by Ann Sansom

A couple of months ago, a Londoner told me they were planning to head to Leicester. According to her, Leicester wasn't just north of London, it was (emphasis on the definite article) the North. I wasn't sure how to break it to her that Leicester is in the Midlands. Being a Londoner once myself, however, I was aware that everywhere north of Watford is usually the north to most Londoners. At the beginning of April, however, Ann and Peter Sansom, two poets utterly linked with the north on the poetry map, came south to join us for a reading in Leicester, the Midlands. This was for WORD! at the Y Theatre, a regular spoken word event which includes Open Mic readings, which I often write about here. There were Open Mic readings from Richard Byrt, Jayne Stanton and Michael Brewer and others.

I was lucky enough to be the support act, along with Roy Marshall, and read a few poems that had appeared or about to appear in the next issue of The North, the magazine edited by Ann and Peter. Earlier, the pair had held a workshop at De Montfort Uni, which was great for me as I literally finished work for the day and nipped over. Readers of this blog will know that I often pop up to Sheffield for workshops with Ann and Peter, run as part of their organisation The Poetry Business.

The evening was compered and organised by Pam Thompson, who also read some fine poems too. Both Peter and Ann read really well and Peter’s reading was warm and entertaining. I had heard him read once before in Leicester at States of Independence.  I’d never heard Ann, although I’d read quite a bit of her work, including the Bloodaxe collection In Praise of Men and Other People. Here's a pic of the cover:

I’m sharing Ann’s poem ‘Confirmation’ here; Ann very kindly gave me permission. This poem has previously appeared in The Rialto. Ann read it at WORD! and I thought there were so many interesting things going on in this poem. The tone is conversational perhaps and actually quite funny: ‘what miracle’s he going to perform on this, godforgiveus?’ but there’s a great deal of menace here.  I also learnt a new word, apparently ‘slaumed’ is a dialect word for smear.  What struck me in this poem is the way the school girls are made to literally work on their ‘knees’ for their visitor and then in their own social lives behave in a servile way. That final couplet, where the roadie is ‘here / and cocky and think yourself lucky.’ is compelling and you feel a bit sickened for the girl. I thought this poem was pin-sharp and here it is:  

Confirmation

In honour of His Grace, you had us on our knees for weeks,

‘a blessing on this visit and please god no silliness.’

Run ragged with dusters, shouted at for holey plimsolls,

threatened with expulsion, some broke down, distraught

in the branches of the forsynthia arranging, or, bright black with Brasso,

muttered in the trophy cupboard, ‘he’d better be worth it the bastard.’

We slaumed silver paint on the refectory radiator, lugged planks

to make an altar in the gym, ‘what’s up with the table we always have?

What miracle’s he going to perform on this, godforgiveus?’

But we were whispering by then, disappointed by the almighty

but holding our breath when He drew up. We queued and bobbed

to kiss his glove, got te absolvoed, took the slap to strengthen us.

Amen. Friday night: Roy Orbison invited Kath McMahon

to his dressing room at the Odeon, Bo Diddley’s drummer

got Jacintha Malley’s phone number, Gerry Marsden’s roadie

Instructed, I forget who it was, on the needs of the elderly

balding purple silky not so godly nor entirely manly, but here

and cocky and think yourself lucky. Obedience. We knew our place.

Thank you, Sister Mary Frances. 

It's all coming back to me...

March, what happened in March? Oh, we had the plumber round and the following also happened... Aoife Mannix was tip top at Word! at the beginning of the month and treated everyone to some well-observed and beautifully delievered poetry. I received a free copy of Seamus Heaney's collected poems on World Book Day and let it be known that these free copies were circulated to the customers of The Swan in the Rushes, Loughborough on a Saturday night. The poetry corps of L'boro is pretty fearless. Then pancake day, then I got a cold and went to a birthday party in Stoke and then - then the world famous States of Independence on March 20th, organised by Ross Bradshaw and the Creative Writing team at DMU. It was a very good day and both me and J came away with sackfuls of verse. I made an interesting discovery amongst other things, I'd never read any Dorothy Nimmo before but I was handed a copy by Peter Sansom and have been reading it since. It was a lovely day and the sun shone and there were some terrific speakers.
The Nottingham Shindig took place on Sunday 21st with Luke Kennard, Deborah Tyler-Bennett, Mark Goodwin and Mike Wilson. I'd been looking forward to hearing Luke Kennard for a while and it was very striking work. Then I got laryngitis. Anhyhow, a good month for verse - en avant!