Helena Nelson: The Teller

Like Rachel Fox, I’m won’t review Helena Nelson’s new collection, Plot and Counter-Plot. I know Helena and she published my first chapbook with HappenStance Press. However, this is my blog and I can do things here which I couldn’t do anywhere else: I am going to look at three poems – one today, the others will come later in the week.

When I first started to read Plot and Counter-Plot, I rattled through it at an alarming speed. The poems seem to invite this approach, as they employ plain language, ordinary syntax, and punctuation in all the right places. I thought the poems were ‘OK’ but there was a voice in my head shouting, “Slow down! That’s no way to read poetry!” And when I slowed down and started again, I realised how much I had missed first time through.

Take ‘Teller’, as example, an eight-line poem in couplets, set in a tight iambic tetrameter and full rhyme scheme – AB CD AD CB. On my initial quick read-through, I wasn’t much impressed by this poem. The narrator tells her story to the rain, the rain tells it to the trees, the trees recount it, and the narrator is left with an empty breeze and has to begin all over again. “Hmmmm, so what?” I thought.

So, quite a lot... Reading it again, I wondered how it was possible for me to have missed so much, but that’s what happens when you blast through a poem without giving it due consideration. The first line should have alerted me that something odd was happening – “Umbrella-ed here in Autumn light”. I am thinking Mary Poppins, an uncanny entrance – not literally Poppins, but certainly magic-realism of some kind. It could be the narrator simply is carrying an ordinary umbrella, but the oddity of “umbrella” being used as a verb and acting on the narrator, who appears to have no choice in the matter, speaks against that.

So we’re whisked out of normality into an eerie half-lit world (“Autumn light” isn’t accidental), and the narrator tells her life-story to the rain – as you do... The rain passes it on to the leaves and moss on a tree-bark. The third couplet lifts the poem way beyond standard poetic fare:

The bark recounts, but not quite right,
the plot and counter-plot of loss.

It’s like Chinese Whispers. The bark isn’t accurate and the story comes out slightly wrong. The poem might be about communication, about what gets lost in telling, and the life story is itself both a ‘plot and counter-plot of loss’. Who thinks of their own life like that? The poem invites us to do so. A life has a story and also an anti-story: what gets missed out, forgotten, misinterpreted, told all wrong. It strikes me that the bark’s mistake mirrors our own attempts to tell stories, as getting it ‘quite right’ is virtually impossible.

The result is an ‘empty breeze’. The story is nowhere. The narrator’s attempts to tell it and have it soak perfectly into the world seem to have failed. Perhaps we could read this as a parable on writing (not the only way to read it, of course) – every poem is born to fall short. It tells us something and then someone like me comes along and recounts it, but not quite right, as the poem itself – the minute it is retold in someone’s head – ceases to be exactly itself.

Does the poet then give up? The narrator here starts “to tell my tale again.” That’s why we write poems, because the billions written before by ourselves and others weren’t enough to tell what needs to be told. There is value in doing so, necessity even, whatever is lost in the telling. The rain is waiting patiently.

Review: Mark Halliday - No Panic Here

Mark Halliday is an American poet who is also professor at Ohio University (there is a UK poet called Mark Halliday, so plenty of room for confusion). HappenStance recently published his chapbook, No Panic Here – interesting in itself that a small chapbook publisher based in Glenrothes, Scotland, has published a debut UK collection by someone who has published five full collections in the USA. Long overdue, I’d say.

If I mentioned that mortality and time were major themes in this chapbook, which they are, you might have certain expectations of the poetry inside, but you’d need to revise these quickly. Halliday himself cites the influence of Kenneth Koch and Frank O’Hara, and also nods in the direction of Wallace Stevens, but none of those influences quite convey what he does. He uses plain language, layered with irony, and often turns that irony on himself with great comic timing.

Noon Freight is a good example of his style. The poem's ‘you’ is eating a turkey melt and watches a long freight train go by, an ‘unmistakable metaphor’, he thinks, for time rolling by, the past (loaded with ‘stuff’, of course!) giving way to the future. The satire is plain:

.....You’ve seen how many, probably four thousand freight trains
.....and at least fifty of them looked meaningful;

He is aping a certain kind of contemporary poem in which the poet observes an object and finds something that sounds deep and meaningful in it. The problem comes when very little of substance is actually conveyed. The satire continues:

.....it’s a long freight train, metaphor
.....so rhythmic you never quite grab the iron handles
.....and hoist yourself on board

There’s a disconnection between the metaphor and what the poet is really experiencing. The epiphany of the metaphor is an abstract construct that sounds ‘poetic’, a stock metaphor, the kind of image that lends itself to poems, but the poet isn’t really there, can’t quite get ‘on board’. Suddenly the freight train passes and the empty tracks become yet another metaphor, with silence in its wake. The 'you' is left with his turkey melt, which is at least real. In fact, you could say that there is no material difference between the freight train and the turkey melt, except that trains have traditionally lent themselves to poetic treatment.

Halliday’s style may appear casual. I read an interview with him from a few years ago (actually, I've just realised that it's not this interview and I can't remember where he said it, but I'll keep the link up, as it is a great conversation) in which he suggested his ‘ultra-talk’ poems might seem odd to a UK audience, whereas Americans were more used to conversational tangents in poetry. British readers tend to prefer a tighter structure. That’s probably true but, in this chapbook, the pace of each poem is spot on, and the progression and structure never seem accidental. The switch between different registers, especially prominent in the opening poem, Numerous Swans, which contains one of the best closing lines I’ve ever read, is another feature of Halliday’s work. In other words, the style may appear casual, but its simplicity is a crafted illusion.

Halliday turns his irony on himself and his own work as much as anyone else’s. At first, The Elegist might seem similar thematically to Noon Freight. It concerns a memory of June 1980 conveyed by an ‘elegist’ who ‘stood up before us though we didn’t recall asking him,/ and he began to evoke.’ The evocation of grilled-cheese sandwiches and the sun filtering through the green leaves wins over his sceptical audience:

.....…we were touched as if we had no choice
.....each time he said green leaves

That phrase, ‘as if we had no choice’, just drips with irony. But then comes a ‘dark crosscurrent’ to balance things out a bit, important (ironically) to convey more than mere sentimentality, as the elegist creates a metaphor about loss and separation and death:

.....the metaphor resonated with a grownup kind of truth
.....so then we gave him an award
.....and we gave him a fellowship
.....and we gave him a prestigious grant

So you now know how to be a ‘successful’ poet. Green leaves, however pleasing, are insufficient; you need the ...ahem... 'grownup kind of truth' in there as well! But the elegist secretly realises he hasn’t quite managed to convey what he wanted to convey. He is stuck with the limits of language, the stock metaphors and the vivid particulars that language can only approach from a distance. Halliday seems to be acknowledging both the laudable attempt of poetry to get to the core of experience and yet the extreme difficulty (or impossibility) of doing so. The elegist:

.....kept on trying to touch that thing
.....by saying the green leaves or
.....those grilled-cheese sandwiches

The universal and the particular, seriousness and comedy, combine to make poetry resonate, but it always leaves us (and the poet) still trying to touch the thing. Many poets use irony as a cloak, but Halliday uses it like a barb.

Not all the poems are about poetry. Like most people, I don’t find many poems about poetry have much to say, but I enjoyed the ones in this chapbook a great deal – Drafts to Impress the Angels is terrific, satirising with wicked humour the tension between a desire for posthumous critical reputation and an engagement with living readers. However, Halliday also writes about tomato ketchup and rain, and contributes a few elegies himself – loss and absence are recurring themes and wit is often fuelled by sadness. My favourite poem (I think) from the chapbook was The Leakage, a poem in five short sections that connect in various ways. We are all, I suppose, ‘spilling over into the dark’. The fifth section evokes, but it evokes something all at once mysterious, universal, particular, and real:

.....A week after I die there will be
.....a woman with black hair who should have met me a long time ago
.....sensing something of the greatest importance
.....as she listens to a string quartet by Boccherini.

No Panic Here is published by HappenStance and costs only £4.

HappenStance Press: Mark Halliday and Sphinx

Only yesterday, Mark Halliday’s HappenStance Press chapbook, No Panic Here, came through the letterbox. I began reading late last night and enjoyed it so much that I kept reading to the end in one sitting. There’s quite a lot to say about it and I haven’t quite coordinated my thoughts, but the thoughts will find a place on this blog soon.

On the HappenStance front, I’ve also been reading Sphinx, issue 11. I mentioned the Tony Frazer interview previously, but Peter Hughes on Oystercatcher Press is every bit as good. There are stacks of Sphinx online reviews up as well, including several of mine. There are three reviews of every pamphlet now. I think it’s a good idea to have multiple reviews like this. If there’s agreement, it no doubt says something clear about the pamphlet. If there’s disagreement, it means that a spectrum of views get aired and readers can detect the biases of each reviewer (we all have them).

Sphinx, Magma and Salt

A few quickies. First, the new issue of Sphinx is out. I always recommend this magazine and it looks particularly good this time round. It begins with a terrific interview with Tony Frazer, editor of Shearsman Press.

Secondly, check out this fun, free-to-enter competition at the Magma blog, in which you choose a poem to ban from the school syllabus and say why in less than 300 words. The winner gets a poetry anthology and an annual subscription to Magma – so well worth entering.

Thirdly, all UK orders of Salt books before Christmas will be sent with free postage. If you want to surprise your friends and relatives, I’d guess my book would be among the more unpredictable gifts of the year. Anything called The Opposite of Cabbage is the last thing most people would expect to receive – but none the worse for that. I’d also recommend recent Salt collections by Tony Williams (The Corner of Arundel Lane and Charles Street) and Liz Gallagher (The Wrong Miracle), which I plan to say something about on this blog if I have the time. Of course, there’s also Emily Benet’s Shop Girl Diaries, even if we male types might pretend we don’t read the Christmas book we buy for the women in our lives.

Readers from other countries, don’t despair. The Book Depository will also send Salt books with free postage, although my book appears to be out of stock at the time of writing this…

Reviews, Ratings and Sphinx

I just noticed that the reviews for Sphinx magazine, issue 11 are beginning to appear - just four pamphlets under review so far. The system has changed a little. Instead of a single review for each pamphlet, there are now three.

I suppose it means that, if one reviewer has a very negative reaction, the other two might be very positive. Even the best reviewers can have an off-day or, for whatever reason, can’t see the good in poems which are actually OK. The flip-side of this policy is that a pamphlet might get not one but three(!) negative reactions. The poet can’t say it was ‘just the wrong reviewer,’ although I suppose he/she can always feel that all the reviewers are talking nonsense. It does weaken the poet’s case just a little, mind you…

One of my reviews is up, of The Terrors by Tom Chivers, along with two other reviews of the same pamphlet, so you can see you how it works.

There’s also a stripe rating. That comes from an average of the marks out of ten given by each reviewer for three categories: the look/feel of the pamphlet, the quality of the poetry, and… something else I can’t remember at the moment. I wasn’t too keen on the idea when I first heard about it, but I’ve warmed to it. If it’s good enough for music, why not poems? I notice that Don Share has blogged on a rating system used by rock critic Robert Christgau for assessing albums.

It wouldn’t be hard to adapt this for poetry collections. Reviewers could still use their favourite adjectives like “brilliant”, “significant”, “groundbreaking” etc, but I’d hazard a guess that we’d see few A+ ratings (at least, we ought not to). Also, I suspect we’d see few E- ratings, even in apparently negative reviews. Ratings give reviews perspective.

I would certainly give far more weight to the quality of poems than the look/feel of a book/pamphlet when assessing it. It’s the same with an album. The cover might be rubbish but, if the music is A+, all will be forgiven. A good cover means I might pick the book up in the first place (so it is very important), but I feel reviews ought to be based on the contents rather than the marketing.

PoetCasting

I have four poems up at Alex Pryce’s fine PoetCasting site for audio poems. Three of mine come from The Opposite of Cabbage and I’ve also included a previously unpublished poem, Politics. Just below me on the main page (currently) are poems by HappenStance poet, Marilyn Ricci, and there is plenty of other good stuff throughout the site.

Michael Marks Awards - Result Tonight

Tonight, the result of the inaugural Michael Marks Awards for poetry pamphlet publishing will be announced. For obvious reasons, I hope HappenStance win, but the shortlist (Oystercatcher, Templar, and tall-lighthouse) is very strong. Any of them would make deserving winners.

It is good to see a Scottish-based publishing house on a UK shortlist (another barren year for young Scottish poets at the Eric Gregory Awards, I’m afraid). It’s a shame HappenStance hasn’t been given more recognition within Scotland in this kind of way – by shortlists and awards, by the SAC, and so on. Isn’t it slightly ironic that a new UK-wide award with a prize-giving ceremony in London has immediately picked up on the worth of what HappenStance has been doing?

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Early this morning I drafted an article asking where power lies in the Scottish poetry world, but it’s not quite right yet, especially given how controversial such a subject might prove to be. However, I will post it when it’s ready, which might not be until mid-July.

Word Power Reading - 20th June

.....................................(photo by Gary Thomson, used under a Creative Commons License)

Come to Word Power, 43-45 West Nicolson Street, this Saturday for a feast of poetry. Starts at 12 noon sharp, finishes at 1pm. And it’s free!

Matt Merritt lives near Leicester. His first collection, Troy Town, was published in March 2008 by Arrowhead Press and his chapbook, Making The Most Of The Light, in 2005 by Happenstance Press.

Rob A. Mackenzie’s chapbook, The Clown of Natural Sorrow, was published by HappenStance Press in 2005. His first collection, The Opposite of Cabbage was published by Salt in March 2009.

Andrew Philip has published two poetry pamphlets with HappenStance Press—Tonguefire and Andrew Philip: A Sampler. The Ambulance Box, his first book of poems, was published in March by Salt.

James W Wood’s pamphlet, The Theory of Everything, was published by Happenstance Press in 2006, and Inextinguishable by Knucker Press in 2008.

More information, if you need any, at the link.

Congratulations To HappenStance Press

Terrific news yesterday that HappenStance Press have been shortlisted for the Michael Marks Awards for the UK’s Best Pamphlet Publisher, 2009. It’s long overdue recognition for the great work Helena Nelson has been doing, work I have benefited from personally, both by having The Clown of Natural Sorrow published in 2005 and by Nell’s excellent editorial work on it. I am rooting for HappenStance all the way, although the other nominees (Templar, tall-lighthouse, and Oystercatcher) are very strong publishing houses too. They all deserve an award!

There is also a Best Pamphlet Award and the shortlist there is:

Bone Song by Polly Atkin (Aussteiger Publications)
The Shortest Days by Elizabeth Burns (Galdragon Press)
That Water Speaks in Tongues by Siobhán Campbell (Templar Poetry)
Milk by Sarah Jackson (Pighog)
whichever music by Kate Potts (tall-lighthouse)
quot by seekers of lice (self-published)

Again, looks like a very strong shortlist. I'm pleased to see Sarah Jackson's name in there. I interviewed her on the Magma blog not long ago and had enjoyed her work as featured poet in issue 42. To state the obvious, it’s interesting that all the nominees are women (I don’t know whether ‘seekers of lice’ is a man or woman, so women might have 5/6 places). What happened to the men? Try harder next year, gents! One Scottish writer (Elizabeth Burns), one Irish (Siobhán Campbell), and four English. A variety of ages and styles. It does show the range and quality present in pamphlet format these days.

Sphinx Issue 10

Sphinx, issue 10 is now out and the paper version is, as usual, a terrific read. It contains an conversation between Helena Nelson and George Simmers conducted in rhyming couplets (really!), an interview with the folk at Nine Arches Press, Colin Will on setting up Calder Wood Press and, most of interesting of all, a seven-page interview with Anthony Delgrado from Bluechrome Press:

"...my vision of the future is one without chain bookstores, just small indies and libraries where you can browse sample copies of books, and if you want to buy one they'll either download you a copy or print you one to order... Of course, you'll have poets milling around selling their pamphlets from under their coats."

Sphinx costs only £3.50 and it’s definitely worth buying.

The online reviews section contains plenty of interesting reflections on the latest chapbooks, and includes four of my reviews:

The Purpose of Your Visit by River Wolton (Smith/Doorstop)
Didymoi by Peter Brennan (Perdika)
Lady Godiva and Me by Liam Guilar (Nine Arches)
Sky Blue Notebook from the Pyrenees (Calder Wood)

HappenStance Christmas Party, Launch and Blog

Tomorrow afternoon, I’ll be at the HappenStance Christmas Party and Launch of new pamphlets by Paula Jennings, Frances Corkey Thompson and Anne Caldwell. It’s at 3pm-5pm at the Mai Thai Bar restaurant in Crichton’s Close (off the Canongate), Edinburgh. I’ve read Paula’s book and thought it was very good indeed. I haven’t read the other two yet.

HappenStance now has a blog. In fact it’s almost more like an anti-blog. I don’t mean it’s against blogs or anything like that. More, it’s an anti-blog in the same way as people write sestinas which are really anti-sestinas – they use the form to write a good poem which is, in part, a comment on the form’s limitations.

Thought for the Day

The third annual HappenStance Story pamphlet arrived today. It’s free to HappenStance subscribers (do consider subscribing or buying a HappenStance publication – mine has sold out, so I say this without any personal hope of gain) and, as ever, looks like highly engaging stuff. The final page contrasts the desire to write poetry and the desire to be a poet. The first of those is a laudable ambition, although it takes plenty of work and reading (and perhaps a degree of luck) for anything memorable to emerge. As Helena Nelson puts it, with just a touch of ironic humour:

“Sometimes, I want to ask the people who don’t write poetry, what’s wrong. Everyone’s doing it these days, it seems. Why aren’t they?”

But not everyone is reading poetry, developing knowledge of poetry, or buying poetry. Just like those who pin all their hopes on winning the X Factor or American Idol, there’s a sense that being a poet, being someone, is more important than poetry itself. The article finishes on a sobering question – whether it would be preferable to have your name and poetic achievement remembered by posterity, or to have lines you’ve written recalled with appreciation, without recollection of who wrote them.

A Few Bits and Pieces

First of all, the HappenStance Press reading at the St Mungo’s Mirrorball went really well, as you can read on Andy Philip’s blog. I enjoyed Patricia Ace’s set. I bought her first self-published pamphlet a few years ago. It was OK, but her HappenStance pamphlet was stronger and her new stuff is better still. I was on before Helena Nelson’s closing poem about Duncan Glen and time was pressing, so I cut my set. I read three poems although I had intended to read only four in any case. The setlist:

Concentration
The Innocents
Everyone Will Go Crazy

I bought new pamphlets by Paula Jennings and Anne Caldwell. Both look very good. My pamphlet is more or less sold out (there may be three or four back at the HappenStance ranch and I have about fifteen at home). The CCA pub afterwards was good fun and I managed not to fall asleep on the late bus back to Edinburgh.

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Just realised that Surroundings had its 100,000th unique visitor a day or two ago. Whoever you were, congratulations. The jackpot will be winging its way to you.

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I had meant to resume my comments on the daily poems at Poetry Daily and No Tell Motel this week, but circumstances conspired against me. I think I’ll have to leave it until after the October holiday week here and will try to do another fortnightly stint from 27th October. At the moment, life is stressful and chaotic.

The New Sphinx - Issue 9

The latest edition of the excellent Sphinx - issue 9 – is just out. Sphinx is unique among poetry magazines because it doesn’t publish poetry. But it’s as full of good stuff as ever. This time, there’s a really interesting interview with Rupert Loydell of Stride magazine, an overview of artist/poet collaboration at Knucker Press, and reflections by Gordon Jarvie on self-publishing. Also an article by myself – on poetry blogging…

In addition, Sphinx’s new online chapbook reviews are now up at this link. My two are at the bottom – of Deryn Rees-Jones’s Falls and Finds and Ken Sutherland’s When the Fighting is Over. I love the “young reader’s” reaction to the second of these. Heh Heh. No danger of that young reader not getting straight to the point! Sphinx is excellent as usual and, more than almost any poetry-related magazine at the moment, well worth getting hold of.

The Clown Wordle

I decided to give Wordle a go. The site can deliver any text you feed it as a ‘word-cloud’. I gave it the manuscript of my chapbook,The Clown of Natural Sorrow and the result is below. I must have used more similes than I thought.


If you click on the link below, it takes you to a larger version of the image:
title="Wordle: The Clown"> src="http://wordle.net/thumb/wrdl/111637/The_Clown"
style="padding:4px;border:1px solid #ddd">

By the way, I'm told there are only a handful of copies left of The Clown. It would be good to sell out and, if you feel either tempted or altruistic, please place an order from the link to the book above. Cheers.

New Reading and Writing

I’m just about to go on holiday from work (from tomorrow) for two weeks. I’d like to say that I’ll be in some warm, sunny place with infinite cold drinks supplied on demand, but I’ll be spending most of it right here in Edinburgh.

I have a couple of poetry deadlines looming:

Firstly, a short article on a pre-20th century poem of my choice. I’ll probably go for an excerpt from Paradise Lost. The problem is choosing which part. Saying something about it shouldn’t be hard.

Secondly, an article about poetry blogging. It should be light and humorous, but I should also try to say something worthwhile. Between 700-1000 words.

I have a poem begging to be written. I have the core image in my head. However, I haven’t yet managed to get the tone right – those vital first few lines – and until that happens, the poem won’t happen. But, I think, when it happens, the whole poem will almost write itself. Not quite, but it will feel like that afterwards.

I noticed that a famous Italian poet’s work has just gone-out-of-copyright, and I’ve just begun translating one of his poems – a six-pager. That might take me a month or two to complete. My Italian is getting worse by the day.

Both these poems might slide into my collection manuscript - it depends. Sooner or later, I'll have to make the decision on whether I should stop adding and subtracting from it.

And I have a few things to read. I sent off for Retta Bowen’s pamphlet, The Ornamental World, on tall-lighthouse press. I heard Retta read at the StAnza Poetry Festival in 2007 and thought (on the evidence of the readings) that she was the best of the five Eric Gregory Award winners that year. I've read the pamphlet (about 13 poems), thought some of the poems were terrific, and want to read it again. I’d also picked up Katia Kapovich’s Cossacks and Bandits, which looks like a very interesting collection. I’m going to buy maybe two or three of the latest HappenStance pamphlets, but not until the end of the month, post-holiday. I’m not sure which ones to buy either.

For my birthday last month, my wife gave me a novel, Two Caravans, by Marina Lewycka, and a friend gave me Exit Ghost by Philip Roth. It’s been a while since I read a novel, but holidays are the ideal time for it.

I’m talking about literary stuff because that’s mainly what this blog is about. I’ll have other kinds of fun too…

Andrew Philip on Salt!

Great news! My friend, and fellow HappenStance poet, Andrew Philip, has been signed by Salt Publications. They will publish Andy’s first collection, The Ambulance Box, probably sometime in 2009.

As you’ll see from Andy’s blog entry, I’ve read a few versions of his manuscript in draft form. I suspect it would have been accepted for publication even the way it was first time I read it, but he’s taken his time and strengthened it over the last nine months or so. It will be a really good book!

HappenStance Poets At the Troubadour, London

It’s hard to know exactly what to say about the HappenStance reading in London’s Troubadour Café on Monday evening. It's an atmospheric, intimate venue with good acoustics. I imagine it must get hot if it's warm outside, but on Monday the weather was awful - cold, windy and near constant rain, and I'd left Edinburgh without a cloud in the sky (that's all changed now!). There was a very good audience, who seemed happy with what they heard and bought plenty of pamphlets.

There’s no definite ‘house style’ about HappenStance. That could either be a strength or a weakness depending on how you look at it. I’d like to think of it as a strength. I suspect that most people would have preferred some poets over others on Monday, but different people would have preferred different poets, according to taste. There were 9 readings each of 8-10 minutes (with a break halfway through), so there wasn’t time for anyone to bore the crowd senseless! I really enjoyed the evening. I met plenty of people, had a good time and my own reading was fine. For those who (like me) like reading setlists, my set was:

1. While the Moonies are Taking Over Uruguay
2. Concentration
3. A Night in the Circus
4. Prelude
5. Scotlands

Only five poems, less than anyone else I think, but my poems tend to go on a bit and I chat between poems too.

Helena Nelson introduced each of us by comparing us to a wine. I can't remember what I was but, at the end, Anne-Marie Fyfe (organiser of these events) said that Helena was obviously 14 percent proof. That's certainly true!

Earlier in the day I met up with Ms Baroque and sampled cappuccino and biscuits in her local coffee house (very nice place). We then made out way to the Troubadour where we met up with the HappenStance crew and I had a veggie burger with various folk from Magma magazine.

The gig itself flew past, so I must have been enjoying myself. Andy Philip (who read very well from his *new* HappenStance ‘sampler’) had to leave a little early to catch his train home. I saw Helena Nelson and Eleanor Livingstone rushing off for a coach at the end of the evening. Tom Duddy, Greg and Karen Leadbetter, Ms Baroque, myself, and RCL all found a pub nearby. I finally got to sleep on the Baroque fold-down sofa at around 2.30am and was woken up by a tuneful dawn chorus. Luckily the coffee shop was open for business that morning again as there is no coffee in the Baroque Mansion. They do a great almond croissant too – highly recommended.

On the train down I was reading Birgit Pegeen Kelly’s Poems: Song and The Orchard, recently published by Carcanet, and on the way home I read about half of Michael Hofmann’s Selected Poems (Faber). Both, in very different ways, are extraordinary books. At least, I think so, so far.

I was knackered yesterday and still haven’t really recovered today, but it was a great trip. Lots of fun. Anne-Marie Fyfe – when can we come back?!

Review: Troy Town by Matt Merritt

Matt Merritt’s excellent pamphlet collection, Making the Most of the Light, was published in 2005 by HappenStance and it’s no surprise that he has gone on to produce a debut full collection this year, Troy Town, published by Arrowhead.

Birds flit through this collection, literally and metaphorically, as he explores the intricacy of love’s beginnings, middles and endings, the tension between desire and routine, the gift of unexpected happiness and a often latent sense of un-ease, the vitality of the present moment coupled with an awareness of not being in control of it.

The writing is very strong. There’s rarely a superfluous word or out-of-place phrase. In The Meeting Place, Matt Merritt quotes Tomas Tranströmer’s “…within us, balanced like a gyroscope, is joy,” and his poems are successful through achieving a difficult balance; what they say is never imposed on their subject matter but is sourced naturally from it. When I say “naturally”, I mean the poems give that impression even as they take you a little beyond what you thought you always knew.

The Meeting Place is a good example of Matt Merritt’s strengths. It begins, “Nothing leads up to it.” Nothing remarkable is going on. “Traffic lights maintain their sequence.” The world continues as it always has. And yet:

…she is there
at the junction of all things, and at once

the better part of you is persuaded
out of balance. Moments fray to a fine thread.
The past is startled into a sudden eloquence.
Nothing need follow.

That “persuaded/ out of balance” is indeed in perfect balance with Transtromer’s line – its contradiction and fulfilment at the same time. The joy of the balance couldn’t come unless out of balance. The final line is also brilliantly double-edged because, of course, the high point of meeting can’t promise anything other than a longing for something to follow, but isolating the moment gives a different, tension-filled perspective. That kind of complexity written with compressed (and seemingly effortless) precision makes this collection one not to miss out on reading. Other pieces that also achieve this to particular effect include Winter Saturday, Attenborough and Poem, which maintains its tension and keeps the reader guessing right up to (and, to some extent, beyond) the final line.

Knots is a bird poem, but a metaphorical one, beginning with the enticing “Only now does it occur to me/ as something unseen, maybe a dog in the dunes/ beyond (although in the poem it will be a peregrine,/ probably).” The poem works through the well observed descriptions of the knots and the transformative vitality of its metaphors. The knots (wading birds) begin as spirals of smoke;

first black as a cloud of summer gnats, now silvered
as the foil they used to fool radar

and then stand “Calidris canutus” (their real scientific name)

king’s men all, commanding the waves to turn back
or else making a point completely lost on history.

The grand claim of the first of those lines, tempered humorously by the second, is characteristic of Matt Merritt’s writing. He refuses to reach beyond the capability of his images, but he isn’t afraid to extend their possibilities, revealing those possibilities as inherent all along. The poem closes:

And they’re airborne again,
only now they’re more
...........................a shimmering shoal of sand eels,
dissipated in a second, disappearing momentarily,
a stubborn collective thought of explosive energy.

There were a few ‘passengers’ in the collection, but not many, and even those poems weren’t bad, just not as good. On two or three occasions, I noticed the presence of colloquialisms, as if from an anxiety to fit the lyricism into spoken speech patterns. In First Draft, “You’ll go to the window, your eye caught by a seagull, say” and in Loons, “you catch them/ in the corner of an eye, perhaps.” Both of these are good poems, but the “say” and “perhaps” broke the spell and invited comparisons to certain popular poets from the north of England. But these are small complaints.

It’s hard to get attention for individual poetry collections if you’re not on a major press (and sometimes even if you are). But I wouldn’t want to think that a collection like this one would go un-noticed. It’s much too good for that.

Troy Town is available on hardback from Arrowhead Press for £8.99 (post free in UK).

HappenStance on the Road to London

On Monday 26th May, HappenStance poets will be reading at the Troubadour in London. The line-up (although not necessarily in this order) will be:

Martin Cook
Tom Duddy
Eleanor Livingstone
Greg Leadbetter
Rob A. Mackenzie
Michael Mackmin
Helena Nelson
Andrew Philip
DA Prince

So if you’re around London that evening, come along. It should be a really good gig, and I’m up for a pint or two afterwards with whoever cares to join me.

Andy Philip has begun posting poems from each reader - so far, at the link, you can read poems by Michael Mackmin, myself, and Tom Duddy, and more will be added over the next few weeks.