Visit Poetry Review pages.
01 March 2007
It's press day. Actually, being a slow-motion periodical, rather closer to a book than a newspaper, we have two press days. The one where it goes to the printers - and the one where it comes back from the printers in order to be proofed again.
And again...
By the time an issue comes out I've read every line, word, comma - every nearly-joke and clever allusion - every slightly-can't-sub-it-into-line odd turn of phrase and brilliance - at least six times. Once on acceptance, once to sub, three times in layout, once in final proofs and once in printers' proofs. Ok, that's seven. And it's odd what sticks; it's always surprising which reviews, in particular, will last the course and which will pall. The poems never do: instead, they seem to yield more and more with each reading. As of course they should...
It's hard to do, in an open-plan office, sometimes. And it's terrible when an issue does come back with a fullstop in the wrong place; or an ill-formatted attribution. And yet it's also amazingly satisfying. Why? Perhaps because I hate housework, hate spreadsheets, hate routine - and yet love order. And every three months I get to put one small world in order.
25 February 2007
To the Auden centenary reading organised by the Stephen Spender Memorial Trust at the Shaw Theatre. Six major poets are to read. It’s only when I arrive and see the programme that I realise they’re going to read Auden. It’s a sell-out; and as the house lights go down there’s a certain atmosphere of anticipation. This, after all, is an event which breaks with the usual format; and which breaks out of the usual small-scale venues poetry can afford.
Classy as the whole thing is, it can’t avoid a certain visual rebarbativeness. The six major poets, and their Chair, Lord Gowrie, are all hommes d’un certain age; and there are only so many things one can do, it seems, with even a moderately-well-cut suit. (I don’t know what makes a suit excellently well-cut: but have the absurd impression I’d recognise it if I saw it.) Moreover under the pressure of the event – for the seven readings take place without applause, and in an atmosphere of rarified distinction – the seven men of Team Auden do fall into attitudes of physical discomfort. Expressing a certain compression, whether of embarrassment or dismay, into the forms of serious concentration.
And it is worth concentrating; because this turns out to be an extraordinarily interesting event. Each poet speaks – at greater or lesser length – about, broadly speaking, what Auden is to him. And reads three poems. Apart from Richard Hamilton – whose gossipy, swooping delivery and supply of anecdote gives us a sudden recognition of exactly what the world of Auden’s American experience was – the poets are less interesting in what they say, though that is always thoughtful and strikingly well-organised, than in their readings. The choices of poems are noteworthy; but what is absolutely telling, for a British audience, is to hear the familiar voices of – in reading order – John Fuller, Peter Porter, James Fenton, Sean O’Brien and Andrew Motion inhabit Auden, turning that oeuvre on their own familiar cadences and ways of making sense. It allows us both to acknowledge the obvious parallels and similarities of influence and to hear the private reading experience each of these poets takes from Auden – to hear how they hear him. So Fuller’s WHA is spacious, periodic, discursive; but Porter’s has Porter’s own packed sense of a line of distinguished cultural thought, which is always already going on before the poem even starts, and which periodically condenses into aphorism. Fenton’s Auden is all polyvalent brilliance, full of metrical delight and the deep music of ballad. O’Brien’s is tough, intelligent; consistently arriving at insights which are remarkable both because bedded in deep movements of thought and because they seem a point no-one else could have conjectured. And Motion’s Auden is – of course – elegiac.
14 December 2006
To the British Council Literature Department's Christmas Party. It's strange and perhaps rather literal-minded of us all that we seem to take this occasion to party quite seriously. That's to say, people DO drink, DO talk, DO stay around in their rather oddly spaced groups... The room's a long airport lounge of a space with (perhaps it's an attempt to sort the sheep from the goats) the booze at one end and the food at the other. Weirdly, on this occasion the novelists are at the booze end, the poets at the food end. Perhaps novelists, who frankly stink of money in this context, are the alpha males & females of the party and get the best spots. Perhaps they don't need a free supper as badly as poets. Or perhaps the poets, who are at the cloakroom end, know something the prosists don't...
Like a gossip columnist manque, I spot Julia Bird talking about the Welsh Borders to Owen Sheers, who is also talking to David Harsent about writing libretti. Julia has a beautiful card for her new consultancy, Jaybird. Ruth Borthwick and Chris Holifield lead the applause at the speeches. I meet Maggie Gee, and we commiserate on commuting. Bernardine Evaristo, her co-editor for the next New Writing, is looking glamorous and cheerful. Peter Porter is talking about libretti, too - but in another context. Alan Brownjohn knows everybody. Ruth Fainlight and Alan Sillitoe eat salmon which has been disguised as bread stuffing... Gary McKeone has a spotted tie and Kate Griffin is talking to Sarah Maguire. They're talking about guilt and shame - but only because I've introduced the topic. As I leave I spot Patience Agbabi and Blake Morrison at either end of the room. There is still plenty of wine...
13 December 2006
To Fairford Literary Society to talk about "Reading contemporary poetry". What my title really means is, "please give it a try" and I can feel myself trying not to be protective as I read some of my favourite poems from recent issues. I try and talk about how poetry might sometimes be defined by the territory it marks out for itself. That's not a tautology: I want to say that poetry does some of the same things it's always done, whether or not it uses rhyme or strict metre. So I suggest that, just as in music the necessity of serialism has passed - its moment hasn't passed but its hegemony has - so in British poetry the urban chic of the 80s and 90s might be on the wane. Maybe Burnside or Robertson, for example, are doing something similar to what Taverner did for contemporary music in the UK. Then we have tea and really excellent chocolate biscuits. Our hosts give me supper in a huge farmhouse kitchen, and reminisce about the days when Charles Osborne was Literature Officer at the Arts Council and Peter Forbes was poet-in-residence at Swindon... and here we must draw a veil...
04 December 2006
Spend the weekend trying to produce 1,500 words for The Liberal on poetry and mental health. It's a difficult topic because there's so much that's obvious which could be said. And so little, it turns out, which is less-than-obvious. In addition, the antibiotic slur is now in evidence: that mental dulling which makes you want to sleep or watch bad TV, certainly not think. Golf ball now more like a marble, and I can eat with grown-up-sized cutlery again. However, in my dental Vale of Tears I have failed to put my name down for the village Christmas party and feel like a serious, liminal figure. A bit like John Fuller's 'Brahms in Thun', only without the young muse of course...
30 November 2006
To Bath for a reading organised by Bath Spa University, whose creative writing department is (are?) going from strength to strength. The faculty includes Gerard Woodward and Tim Liardet, who's on this year's T.S.Eliot list.
Am supposed to be reading with John Burnside, but he is being awarded the Saltire Scottish Book of the Year for his memoir, "A Lie about my Father". Seem to be making a habit of these complexities: the memory of PR's event at Poetry International - from which John Kinsella was unavoidably detained in the Southern Hemisphere and his replacement, George Monbiot, on a train outside Oxford - is still fresh. Still, just as JB rose to that occasion with his usual serious aplomb, so his replacement in Bath is the wonderful David Harsent. Who manages to be serious about war, particularly in the Balkans, without ever quite stopping being sexy. The audience thinks pretty much the same, judging by the books bought and plastic cups of wine drunk. It all seems to go fine, though this is the first time I've done a reading with a golf ball in my mouth. A wisdom tooth infection has made sure I haven't slept for two nights and I'm high on antibiotics...
14 October 2006
Blog redivivus. Yes, just to confirm, those last two entries were by other hands. Over the summer (utter bliss) Poetry Review had two interns; I asked them to contribute but their signatures got somehow lost.
First of our interns was Charlotte Newman, an undergraduate at Cambridge, who turns out to be a born critic: perceptive, bright and highly articulate. She joined us to sweat through the heat-wave and resulting office competition for the electric fans. Betterton Street is not built for climate change - or indeed for climate as such. Charlotte was often to be seen at the desk in the window, biting her nails (sorry Charlotte - I'm not even sure whether you do, that's just the impression I have - ) absorbedly while reading her way through the review piles, the reject piles, the manuscripts for inclusion. Those of you who came to the summer issue launch will also remember Charlotte at the sales table - or, earlier in the evening, as the heroine who scoured Charing Cross Road for a usable corkscrew. We're finally going to start publishing Charlotte's witty, fast-moving reviews in the winter issue of PRR.
After a week's overlap, Charlotte was succeeded by Alana Allette: sharp as a pin on subbing and proofing. Alana came to us from New York, where she's finishing journalism studies. Her stay was characterised by unseasonable cold - Alana was always politely asking to have the fan switched off - but she proved a highly sociable and highly computer-literate colleague - trumping even Angel (in Education, on the floor above) in both stakes. When Alana went off to “do” Scotland in twenty-four hours (including two sleeper trains: now there's glamour), the second-floor of Betterton Street fell strangely silent.
PR's editorship has no admin support: so it was bliss indeed to have such smart young colleagues as Charlotte and Alana picking up the administrative slack as well as trying their hands at writing. The cheerful sawing of the franking machine! The melodious clatter of a keyboard on which addresses are being added to the contributor database! Now, if only one of them lived in London…
12th July
To Totleigh Barton, guest reading on Patience Agbabi and Michael Symonds Roberts's course. Patience and her family are suffering gruesome stomach upset. Am torn between real sympathy and urgent desire not to catch the bug: have had very little sleep after last night's launch and the journey's a long one. In short, I feel vulnerable!
In fact I haven't been to Okehampton - where one leaves the British Rail bus and catches a taxi to the Centre - since I lived, briefly, in a village nearby. The town seems more gentrified (I kill an hour eating cake in a Victorian Pantry) but the countryside, when I get in the taxi, turns out to be as prodigiously beautiful as ever. Hay has been just harvested everywhere: the long stalks lying in the fields are still green and the narcotic smell gets in the car, even with the windows shut. Before tea I have a chat to the Totleigh cows. The next morning, early, I hear them being driven up the track behind the house with uncanny yelps and cries. I've never lived in a dairy district; only among sheep, and now arable, farming. These sounds seem to me archaic, extraordinary. I'm astonished no-one at breakfast seems much interested. But maybe they've all been here half a week already and got blasé.
20th July
A meeting about the Art at the Centre Project, Slough. Eleven poem extracts on the theme of travel, from eleven languages widely-spoken in the town, are being carved in the High Street by Alec Peever. In both languages: the alphabets intermingling but never obscuring each other. A rather beautiful model of diversity and cohabitation.
Now the plan is possibly to run a festival involving all eleven poets at the project's end. It would be a great thing to have a Chinese exile rubbing shoulders with a major player in Nigeria's new post-dictatorship; a Hindu and a Pakistani poet: a Palestinian with an Israeli; a Pole and one of the fathers of Negritude.
24th July
Role model experience number one. Ruth Fainlight invites me to lunch and, although I get lost on the way, I'm really glad I make it. We sit in her blue and white kitchen and I suddenly have one of those experiences of having being jerked into closer proximity to literary history. I don't mean backwards through time, either. Ruth is a repository of serious practice: pre-eminently her own but also that of the fellow-writers she's known as friends. - I think it's that as friends which is salutary. It makes me understand there's a continuum between the pastrami and rye bread we're eating today and the innumerable previous occasions on which she has sliced such a loaf. Ruth talks a bit about Graves and Majorca and reminds me, in so doing, that they were just living, and working, just like this: those neon-lit figures on the stage of literary history.
I very much admire Ruth's ceaseless and thorough-going translation practice, which has never obscured her identity as a poet but which must surely have informed it. It requires quiet, steadfast courage to be a clear-spoken, sometimes symbolist, plainly European, poet - such as Ruth is - in our literary times of post-post irony and chic.
8th August
Role model experience number two. Elaine Feinstein invites me over. Here, despite walking up and down the block a couple of times, I contrive to be early instead of late. Elaine is in the middle of working on fiction, as well as of family activity, when I arrive. The News is on in the living room. A trampoline fills the garden, where small - and large - trees are flourishing, as we establish. When we sit outside, the evening is filled with peaceful domestic sounds. But the News is all bad.
That Elaine is a role model hardly needs explaining. I enjoy being in the presence of such a strong intellect - and strong personality - and it never seems to me a surprise that the owner of both should have done so much. But it is astonishing, in fact. Poetry, translation, fiction, literary biography, reviewing, editing: and lots of each. To be the author of a body of work like this is the opposite of happenstance. It represents enormous distinction, of course; and also enormous determination, lightly worn.
Both Feinstein and Fainlight, though in their very different ways, are writers whose life is built along a spine of literary practice. With our fashion for writerly biographies which gloss up those early or summer jobs such as mortician, ice-cream seller or (mea culpa) violinist, we gainsay the importance of this. Women poets, in particular, are expected not to be literary but to produce the occasional book, fragrantly and without apparent effort; and innocent of any literary context (except perhaps the occasional affair with an older and better-connected male poet). But the literary life, well-lived, is thoughtful, useful and deepens practice: as Fainlight's and Feinstein's show.
They are great permission-givers.
16th August
To Sweden for a small, but perfectly-formed, poetry festival in the country town of Nässjö. The festival is twenty years old and it's held in the grounds of a Folk College (I have given up trying to work out the equivalent here). Lots of red Scandinavian wood and, beyond the ring road, a birch forest. A core of poets I hugely admire: Pia Tafdrup from Denmark, the Slovenian Tomaz Salamun and Polish poet Piotr Sommer. The last two are my recommendations: Guy Persson, the Festival Director, wanted a Central European panel. It's good to hear them read on the funny school-hall stage, even with Swedish translations; and even better having them debate in the warm, crowded library. Their mutual admiration might have prevented useful discussion but instead it seems to free them up to expand on topics both autobiographical and abstract. I have rarely heard either think so much on his feet.
Pia is a poet whose work I've admired since I picked up Spring Tide (Anne Born' translations for the late-lamented Forest Books) in the poetry bookshop at Hay years ago. We've met several times in the last year - cheerfully in the sun of Struga, where Pia swam every day, it seems - and in more subdued fashion at StAnza. But I have never heard her give a sustained reading, as she does now, of a great sequence of poems of loss. Her reading voice is deep, harsh, overwhelmingly impressive. Utterly removed from the elegant and accomplished internationalist which is the other part of her professional persona.
Among the Swedish poets is Arne Johnson, an astonishingly musical poet whose work, when I glimpse it in the occasional translation, is shockingly beautiful; emotionally exact. I make a resolve to publish him at a future date.
24 August 2006
When I first started at the Poetry Review I was a little worried because I am not a poetry fan. My greatest concern was that I would not fit in or even worse bored to pieces. However, I found, to my relief that I actually enjoyed working here.
Being from New York and not particularly good with directions I had no problems finding the Poetry Review office. The old brick building was a warm welcome to the cold August weather. The small office although seemingly cramped is a hive of energy and is complemented with friendly staff and outnumbered by an endless supply of poetry. The cozy atmosphere is comforting adding to the fact that tea is always on hand.
My job entailed proofing, copy editing as well as other tasks but I was never overwhelmed and the poetry and the reviews were very interesting. Although poetry is still not my favorite form of literature I do appreciate the art form much more, and even more so the work that goes into reviewing it.
12 July 2006
Poetry Review Summer Issue Launch, 11th July 2006
The launch party for the new issue was held in Borders on Charing Cross Road, and included ten-minute readings by poets Moniza Alvi and Elaine Feinstein. Contributors to the Summer issue were milling about and conversing in the kind of way that only established poets can; making casual comments to each other (“Of course, you know Christopher Ricks very well, don’t you?”) Interestingly, also present were a number of non-contributors including Robin Robertson, the Scottish poet who has recently published a new collection of poetry entitled Swithering, Peter Porter, Pascale Petit, Penelope Shuttle; and Jo Shapcott, the President of the Poetry Society.
Despite supply issues with the white wine, people seemed warm and sociable. Warm in more ways than one, I should say, due to the oppressive heat caused by a lack of air conditioning. However, neither the wine nor the unconditioned conditions had a negative effect on people’s abilities to make wise decisions, and several guests took advantage of the limited subscription offer, and subscribed to the magazine.
16 June 2006
To Oxford Brookes for the relaunch of their Poetry Centre. Shock myself by not remembering where the main lecture theatre is. It's only a year since I was there but the non-poetry-centre faculty look at me pityingly as at a revenant. What are you doing now, they ask in the soothing tones reserved for those they no longer work with. Hmm.
Getting over myself, however, the event is deeply cheering. As well as poets who teach - like Jane Draycott, who's just finsihing an RLF fellowship at the Centre - there are academics who teach poetry from all over the country. The usual mutual incomprehensions seem abated, in the round-table discussion; and the possibility of an informed critical sensibility takes tentative shape. My own strong feeling is that academics teaching contemporary poetry should develop critical practice of their own, not least to keep them reading (!) but also to raise the stakes in both directions. Hurrah for subtlety and critical distance in reviewing; hurrah for intelligent, flexible close reading inside the academy, which wily-nily does form our canon. Since whatever an undergraduate is exposed to in their English Studies degree will seem to them to be, to a crucial extent, what there is.
All of this is preceded by an elegantly-thought-through paper on the difficult topic of poetic voice, given by that conspicuous example of fine critical practice, Jay Parini. He suggests that, while there is indeed a characteristic "voice-print", the use of the mask of poetic persona throughout the work of such masters as Stevens, Frost and Eliot shows us how much this print may be constructed, rather than spontaneous; and that we need to adjust our ideas of authentiicty accordingly.
It shocks me to find Parini has been living in London almost a year. Not such a village after all! Or perhaps I missed some vital cue. Well, he and Alan Jenkins make up for lost time over a civilising glass of wine. I try to demonstrate that I am a well-rounded and generally-to-be-approved-of presence.
Over not exactly curry but an oddly-orange Phad Thai, the biographer Claire Harman talks about living in more than one country. Glamorous indeed. Still, later we go across the road to hear folkies celebrate Bloomsday in the Port Mahon. Who says we can't hyphenate in the provinces...?
09 June 2006
I pick up a violin which needs playing in. Huge mirror in the first-floor trying room at Beare's. Am just about to examine a wrinkle when I notice the CCTV - I start tuning furiously.
My friend Marysia is in town - for a conference - which I have mentally converted into a late birthday celebration. So we agree to meet at Hyde Park Gate tube and go to the Indian High Commission for what I fondly imagine is a drinks reception for the launch of Sudeep Sen's new book; and indeed his literay magazine, Atlas. It is breezy and sunny and I am sneezing like mad. Marysia proves hard to find; in fact her daughter, arriving from Reading, finds her first, with filial instinct. We arrive a cool and, I fancy, perfect 15 minutes after the start time - to discover a full theatre. And indeed a full programme. Many familiar faces, the magazine's contributors, have been asked to read a poem: Danny Weissbort, Bertie Lomas, Peter Porter, Malika Booker, Bina Sarker (whom I last met in Macedonia), John Agard and Grace Nichols, Peter Bradshaw... After an extraordinary encomium from Porter, Sudeep reads from his book Rain. In the hot auditorium, his evocations of almost violent replenishment fall on receptive ears. The lights of the candles each poet had to light waver on stage; actor Tom Alter conducts Sudeep's reading with an apparently-mesmerised hand.
Afterwards, I try to do the impossible and introduce Marysia to various poetry luminaries (Marysia Does Theory). Mutual incomprehension; until I introduce her to Saradha Soobryen. Saradha's looking for theory input into Chroma magazine... I see Michael Horovitz, stripey as ever, and receive two copies of POT. Ruth Padel is talking to Charles Bainbridge about grounds and boundaries: not a cricket conversation. We eat wonderful curry (aha!) in the High Commissioner's flat. At midnight I have a taxi panic - make the last train by one minute. Ah! the sweet smell of other people's McDonalds.
Home at 2. Love these summer night drives under a full moon.
06 June 2006
To Ruth Fainlight's book launch at Daunt Books in Holland Park. Outdoors, all is sunny, leafy etc. Daunts on Holland Park Ave turns out to have the kind of stock that makes you or your bank balance miserable. I opt for the former, as my bank balance is already in a chronic depression. People drift round, exclaiming; there is nice, soft French wine (which reminds me why I ought to buy it, but bank balance etc etc); and Ruth is hidden behind a queue at the signing table.
Moon Wheels is a lovely, mysterious collection. Ruth reads from it in her characteristic manner - she has a wry, dry voice. She reads the prose poem about the Aymara Indians, who do not look ahead, which we published in the last issue. It sounds different when she reads it - wryer, more human, less abstract. The poet's voice and the poet's voice... Elaine Feinstein is looking vibrant is a gold scarf; we call it her golden fleece. David Harsent manages to forgive me for our first (drunken) conversation, about football. Ok, it was a bit one-way. We reprise (well, it IS the World Cup, almost). Then he talks about sending support to Sarajevo, which is much more interesting. Judith Kazantkis looks, as ever, as if she lives by the sea (this is envy writing). I plan to go for another curry with friend, but we are broken in on by a dishevelled drunk from the Lake District. I leave them to it, deep in the Central Line.
05 June 2006
In the afternoon, I have to interview Marilyn Hacker at the London Review Bookshop for the Poetry School. I'm dreading it: the last session, in March, was with George Szirtes. He was so fluent and expansive I can't imagine the buzz of his session being repeated. Plus my train is late (of course) so the hour beforehand in which I'd hoped to get to know Marilyn a token amount is eroded... It's that novelty, a sunny day,and I'm staggering through ghostly Holborn with my sack of books and - stuff.
But Marilyn is a courteous delight (we sneak off for a preparatory cup of tea opposite the BM - and are late for the start of the gig but nobody seems to mind). Even better, she's prepared something to read. Like George, she's with us to talk about form. She tells us how exploratory using received form is; how it can in fact be subversive, revolutionary. She also reads some poems and we can hear how extraordinarily flexible her formal diction is. The Welsh have a word, ystwyth (ist-with) meaning flexible, winding (ok, it's the name of a flexible, winding river, too). Hacker's formal prosody is ystwyth. She is of course a great success and signs every book on the table...
After the pub, Mimi Khalvati, Marilyn and I trek around Covent Garden looking for a curry house which stays open after 9 on a Sunday. We put the gendered world to rights.
Copyright Notice and Terms of Use:
This site contains copyrighted materials, including but not limited to text, photos and graphics. you may not use, copy, publish, upload, download, post to a bulletin board or otherwise transmit, distribute or modify any contents of the site in any way, except that you may download one copy of such contents on any single computer for your own personal non-commercial use, provided you do not alter or remove any copyright, author attribution, or other proprietary notices.