Scribbling it Down

Scavella has had the idea "to post a poem in progress — yes, one of mine — for people to see it in its various states of undress and to watch and contribute to the process," which sounds worth following.

This made me think of how poems progress, from that elusive initial spark to getting something down on paper. I tend to draft a lot of my poems on my computer these days, but now and again, I resort to paper and pen. The sonnet I wrote for this week's Sonnet Sunday, Bethlehem, began with two-and-a half lines in my head that I transferred to the computer screen, and then I switched to pen and paper. The resulting chaos is below.



















As you can see, my mind was not in good shape on Sunday (I think you can tell that, even if you can't read any of it - but if you click on the picture, you can read it, I think)! I then switched back to the computer again. When I feel I have a reasonable degree of coherence in a poem, I call it a first draft. And if it's Sunday, I post it to this blog. The poem isn't at all finished, but I am often surprised at how persevering with a page full of scribbles can at least eventually end up with 14 lines of rhymed iambic pentameter.

Sonnet Sunday

I thought I'd kill two birds with one stone by writing a sonnet for Sonnet Sunday that would also work on our Christmas cards. However, despite the seasonal references, the poem didn't turn out card-friendly. Here it is anyway.

Bethlehem (early draft)

The soldiers staggered from the Empire’s fringes
with reindeers, sleighs, and lager crates, the sour
perfume of the town’s christingle oranges
drawing them forward, closer by the hour.

Between killings, they raved through crazy days.
Drunk on cheap booze and the adrenaline
of violence, they partied nights, and those delays
cost vital hours. But when they reached the inn,

they sensed their power. People followed on,
guided by starlight, each of them afraid
of emptiness, of flight, of being alone,
of God being gone, or lost, or left for dead.

Most claimed the shape of God remained, impressed
on hay. The soldiers shook in heavenly rest.

The X-Factor Semi-Final

The X-Factor was a touch dull last night. I couldn’t get interested even though, as ever, I made an attempt to overcome my musical prejudices and think about who was best in performance.

I’ve never liked Ray, but he did OK yesterday. He is from Liverpool, and his genuine tears of emotion after singing You’ll Never Walk Alone probably got him the extra votes he needed to take him into the final. This song was easily his best moment in the series (see how generous I am! I can’t stand him). I think he’s fine for staged musicals, but I don’t much of a recording career for him. We already have a Tony Bennett. Ray just doesn’t convince me.

Poor old Ben! The judges loved him. I didn’t. Last night he growled through the awful Bryan Adams song Everything I Do (I Do it for You), and then growled through U2’s I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For. He growls roughly in tune, true, but it’s still a growl, a commercially-oriented growl, and it’s become really tedious. Although I’m sure he has miles more talent than Ray, I think, on the performances, he deserved to get booted out. He didn’t cry afterwards either, which may have lost him a few sympathy votes.

Leona was good, again way, way ahead of the others. It appears that a tiny margin separated all three contestants. If that’s the case, I can only assume that people vote for the style of music, the personalities, who they fancy most, and the songs they like best. If they voted for talent, Leona would win by miles. She sang a rather boring Whitney Houston song (I Have Nothing) effortlessly, but then did a terrific rendition of Somewhere Over the Rainbow, which showed how good a singer she is. Like Ray, she was in tears afterwards.

So the final is next Saturday – Ray vs. Leona. It should be a foregone conclusion. But it probably won’t go to plan. Whoever wins, only one of the contestants in the entire show has ever stood a chance of being a star, and whether she wins or not won’t make any difference to that.

New from HappenStance

Twenty-Three Poems by Michael Mackmin, editor of top UK magazine, The Rialto. This should be good. Take a look at the sample poem.

Mind The Gap

John Burnside’s fascinating cross-cultural essay on reading American poetry, from Poetry Review. I’m glad to see this is now online (thanks to Frank Wilson for spotting it). Also good to see Burnside's appreciation of the excellent Robert Wrigley .

My Amazon Ranking

The Clown of Natural Sorrow has a current Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank of 1,256,951 in Books.

Not bad. Only 1,256,950 ahead of me. Dan Brown should look out. I’m closing the gap on him every day. Of course, buying from HappenStance directly is an even better idea.

Well, Christmas is coming. What better excuse to give the book a plug…


(the illustration is from a cover of Ambit magazine)

10 Questions

I am the first victim in Very Like a Whale’s 10 Questions series.

The questions were interesting, but not easy to answer, and I might have responded to some of them differently one day to another. I tried not to fudge them.

The Send-Off by Sian Hughes

This poem has won the prestigious UK Arvon Poetry Competition. It seems to be about the abortion and hospital-grave burial of a child identified with the extra chromosone that causes Down’s Syndrome.

I’ve read it a few times and I think it’s pretty good. And brave. A hard poem to write, still harder to live.

I might say more about it soon. A quick section from the poem –

…My darling, sleep well in your bed.
Don’t come out on the landing where it’s cold

because, you see, I won’t come home
in my long dress and necklace

and blow you kisses up the stairs.
I won’t carry you back to bed

to rub your blue feet better
or fetch blankets from the box.

No, you don’t need a bottle, cuddle,
special rabbit, teddy, bit of cloth.

You don’t even need to close your eyes.
They were born that way, sealed shut…

Without You: Story of a Song

Following Leona’s rendition of the song Without You, on Simon Cowall’s X-Factor show last week, I was amazed at some people who compared it to Mariah Carey’s version, suggesting that Leona had outclassed Carey. I have no argument with that. I can’t stand Mariah Carey, and her version of Without You sounds more an excuse to show off her famed vocal range than an attempt to sing the song with the sensibility it deserves.

But surely if comparisons are going to be made, they should be made to the original, I thought, by Harry Nilsson, back in 1971. Nilsson’s version is terrific – a plaintive, desperate cry, combined with great vocal control. It’s poetry in a way – an example of how emotion can often be communicated more powerfully through well-timed restraint than by histrionics (like Carey).

However, when I looked at the sleeve notes on Nilsson’s album, I realised he hadn’t written the song. Then I realised there was an eerie story behind it.

The song was written by Pete Ham and Tom Evans of the band Badfinger, and released as a track on their 1970 No Dice album. Nilsson recounts how he was wandering about his house humming the tune. He got out all his Beatles albums to seek out which album it was on, and found nothing. Eventually, he discovered the Badfinger album, recorded Without You in 1971, and Nilsson's version became a massive international hit. You can hear a snatch of the lo-fi, but interesting, Badfinger original here (towards the bottom of the page).

However, Badfinger didn’t benefit from the royalties for long. Their manager, Stan Polley, was allegedly embroiled in dodgy deals and the group couldn’t get an album released due to litigation. Pete Ham, in inexplicably desperate financial straits, hanged himself in his garden in 1975 and wrote a note to his girlfriend and her son, which read, “Anne, I love you. Blair, I love you. I will not be allowed to love and trust everybody. This is better. Pete. P.S. Stan Polley is a soulless bastard. I will take him with me.”

In 1983, Tom Evans and another member of the band, Joey Molland, had an argument, reportedly about the share of royalties each deserved from Without You. Immediately afterwards, Evans hanged himself, also in his garden.

Mariah Carey covered the song (what is she smiling about? And what’s with the choir? Does she have no respect for words?) and released it as a single in the USA on 15 January 1994. Harry Nilsson died of heart failure later the same day…

(this final coincidence appears to be disputed, as the date of Carey's release is given, by some sources, as 24th January, and one source also gives this date for Nilsson's death, which is wrong. So this may be an urban legend, however believable, or perhaps even inevitable, it might sound)

Gerry Cambridge

I don’t know how I managed to miss this at the time, a week-long blog by Gerry Cambridge, answering questions from Scottish schoolchildren. I’m glad I’ve found it now. It’s really good. You’ll learn from it (among many other things) how many poets it takes to change a lightbulb, why poetry isn’t just for sissies, and:

I remember a bit of advice about writing poems, which also applies to readings:
"If you can't make it good, at least make it short."

The worst types of readings are those the poet begins with, "I don't usually read in public my long, difficult poems about the fate of modern man, but tonight I'm going to make an exception..."

Sonnet Sunday

Hot off the press...

Vacant Sonnet (first draft, with a few tweaks)

I waited long and finally, it has
arrived, and just as suddenly departs –
the vacant poetry of nothingness,
where lines push at the margin and collapse;

where assonance means –o and metaphor
is like, but never like enough, and rhymes
flaunt their verisimilitude. The fewer
words, the closer zero’s paradigm.

The void beckons, and some welcome its pitch
hollow. The pause between each phrase, each act
glossed over, fill the toothless gaps from arch
poets in love with their own intellect.

And I confess, I wrote these lines today
with no space left, and something still to say.

The X-Factor: who can stop Leona?

Whoever thought up the idea of having a Barry Manilow theme to the X-Factor last night, out of all the songwriters in the world to choose from, should be forced to listen to Manilow at volume 10 non-stop for a week in penance.

The contestants’ versions of Manilow’s songs were pretty forgettable. Even Leona didn’t sing with her usual intensity, despite the raves she got from the judges. The Macdonalds, Ray, and Ben were all dreadful. Manilow himself looked to me as though he had undergone several plastic surgery operations too many. His face stretched out like a rubber mask. I was amazed he was capable of speaking through that slit that once was a mouth, and there was something weird about the way his head rocked about when he sang, as if it had been stuck on at the neck with sellotape.

The second half, in which the contestants got to choose their own songs, was better. The Macdonald Brothers chose the Bay City Rollers’ Shang-a-Lang, which at least was a good laugh. They got booted out though. So the run is at an end. Will they go back to being a wedding band, or will they find some kind of employment in the music industry? It’s a hard one to call.

Ray sang My Way. It was terrible. I don’t like the song, but it’s like getting a 10-year-old to read The Waste Land with conviction. Ray is a teenager, he looks 12, and he’s singing about how he’s lived his life his way. Nah. And he didn’t sing it well either. Astonishingly, the judges all loved it, which makes me wonder about them.

Ben did an a cappella version (along with a gospel choir) of Queen’s Somebody to Love. Full marks for bravery. I don’t know that it quite worked all the way, but it was interesting and he sang it well, with more restraint than he’s shown in recent weeks. When he aims for high notes, he seems often able only to shout his way up to them. Nothing like Leona’s control. He definitely deserved to go through and he will surely be in the final against Leona. However, I detect something of the prima donna in him. I hope he doesn’t win.

Leona sang a truly great song, Without You. I love the original version and last night, I didn’t think Leona had carried it off, despite the great cheering of the crowd and the judges falling over themselves to say how brilliant it was. But actually, when I listened to it today, I realised that she had done a very good job.

If anyone other than Leona wins the X-Factor, there is something badly wrong. Although I still think she will have a better musical career if she comes second or third.

The Mull Historical Society

The Mull Historical Society might sound like an odd thing to be interested in, although no odder than poetry, I suppose. In fact, the MHS is a one-man band, a guy called Colin MacIntyre, from the Isle of Mull, Scotland, who has released some of the my favourite albums of the current decade. Apparently, the next album will be released under his own name.

This is the video of Watching Xanadu from the 2001 album, Loss. You might detect a late Beach Boys influence in this song, but the MHS takes its influences from a variety of bands and stirs it into something new. If you like it, you'll also like How ‘bout I Love You More.

Better than anything in the charts.

The Poetry Promise

I’ll be saying more about the StAnza Poetry Festival soon, but for now – from the sample poems offered by participants, enjoy this from Roy Fisher: "Poetry You Can Count On” indeed.

A humorous poem that is actually funny.

Umbrella

I am ‘featured poet’ in the first issue of Umbrella, edited by American poet, Kate Benedict .

This means you can read nine poems by me, mainly (as you'll note) in mystical and spiritually questioning mode. And, in addition, I'm the subject of an interview conducted by Katy Evans-Bush.

It seems to me like an excellent debut for the zine. There are some strong poems and prose pieces in there, with a wide variety of poets and styles, and it’s very well-produced. Looks great! I’m really pleased to be a part of it.

Robert Fanning's Green Stephania

Scoplaw makes an interesting close reading of Robert Fanning’s poem, Green Stephania, and in the process, examines how poems work. He tries to make his examination accessible to beginners and advanced poets alike. It's long, but worth coming back to, I think. I'd never heard of Robert Fanning until today.

Conversation...

…in which I get talking to a very charming barmaid in the Bar Brel, Glasgow, where I used to participate in live poetry readings every month in the late nineties:

Me: Do you still have a monthly poetry-reading event here?
Barmaid: Never heard of that.

Me: It used to happen in the little room upstairs. The readings would always be interrupted by crashing pans and plates.
Barmaid: That’s because the room’s next to the kitchen. But no, we don’t have it anymore.

Me: It’s still on the Scottish Poetry Library’s list of events. I’ll email them and ask them to delete it (I did this and it's now gone).
Barmaid: I think they have poetry readings in a café down the road. I always thought it was kind of… weird.

Me: Weird?
Barmaid: Well, you know…

Me: I suppose it depends who’s reading. It might be weird. But not always.
Barmaid: It’s just… This bar is more into live jazz and stuff. I can’t imagine poetry here (shaking head). It's a strange thing to do.

Me: It was a good event. Really. And you had jazz back then too.
Barmaid: Well, at the jazz events, we always get good sales at the bar. I expect that’s why the poetry got stopped.

Me: (speechless…)

Sounds like poetry has something of an image problem!

Traffic Calming, A Trapped Painter, and a Poet

A strange day today. I was back at work after my all too short holiday. I left my wife to cope with the chaos around our house, and not just a tornado of a four-year-old.

Firstly, signs had appeared on our street a few days ago warning us that we couldn’t park from Wednesday onwards for a week. The traffic-calming bumps were to be dug up and new bumps put in their place. There seemed no reason for this, as the present bumps are fine. However, any cars parked where they shouldn’t be would be towed away, so we had to comply. Most of the street was covered with signs, but my wife managed to find a parking space about 8-minutes-walk away last night. Today, no work took place. Indeed most of the No Parking signs disappeared, except for a fifty metre area outside our house. So we’ll wait to see if anyone turns up to drill the street away tomorrow. It will be interesting to see what happens as our next-door neighbours haven’t moved their car. Maybe they know something we don’t!

Secondly, we are having our window-frames, outside doors, and guttering painted, which means we have to leave windows and doors open despite the chill winter temperatures. Today, the painter was on the roof, painting the window-frames at the front of the house. My wife was with our daughter at the back. She heard a thumping noise, but ignored it. About half an hour later, the doorbell rang. A frail, elderly man told my wife that someone was stuck on the roof. The winds had blown the painter’s ladder off the wall and he had been stuck up there for 30 minutes, shouting to passers-by, who had all ignored him! Neither the old man nor my wife could lift the ladder, so my wife opened a window, which only opened a quarter of the way, and the painter managed to lever himself from the roof through the gap into safety.

I read a few poems by Jane Hirshfield earlier this evening. I know she is famous in the USA, but she was published for the first time in the UK only last year. The poems I read were really good, and it’s made me want to read more.

From Each Skull, A Story

I’ve downloaded Rik Roots’s new .pdf e-book, From Each Skull, A Story.

So far, it looks like a worthy addition to the Rik canon. Well worth checking out (and if you email Rik quickly enough, he has 5 free copies of his excellent paperback, The Rik Verse to give away).

Louis Jenkins on the Prose Poem

Louis Jenkins, in Magma, talks about the prose poem – what he aims at when writing one, how trends have changed over the years, and how the prose poem relates to more formal poetries.

I thought this bit was great, especially the hayseed got up in the tuxedo and the “even though there may be no real poetry happening” –

It seems to me that most free verse has a kind of formal quality, even though it may be written in the most prosaic language, relate the most prosaic experience, and lack any insight. It’s like some hayseed got up in a tuxedo. This is due primarily to line-breaks. They give the thing the look of a poem even though there may be no real poetry happening. I thought why not just write it out in prose and see if this ‘experience’ has any poetry about it? I know some poets will argue about ‘the music’ etc, etc… That doesn’t interest me. I think that whatever it is that makes a poem work, that sort of mysterious moment of recognition (Robert Frost called the poem “a momentary stay against confusion”), can happen in a prose poem as easily as in any other kind of poem.

I like the music of poetry and get frustrated when I read poems without any, of the kind he describes. But writing it out in prose seems more honest. If it’s prose, why not make it look like prose? If the layout of a piece leads me to expect prose, I might enjoy its prose, rather than keep wondering why it’s been written in lines.