A Politically Correct Nativity

Joseph and Mary, in strict alphabetical order, which does not in any way imply that earlier letters are superior to those which turn up later in the alphabet or vice-versa, were on their way to Bethlehem, a small town in an area today known as the Holy Land, also known as the Non-Denominational Land, which includes all those who prefer through choice not to belong to any particular denomination. Moreover, we acknowledge that this is a positive choice as opposed to a failure to consider fully which particular religious or secular system or any other system of any description happens to suit them.

Mary and Joseph, this time in order of age at the time of travelling – remembering that ageism is wrong and that if a three-year-old proved able and willing to do the job of an atomic physicist, that’s OK – were going to Bethlehem because Augustus, democratically-elected Enabler of the People, had suggested that, if people were so-minded without any coercion on his part, there would be a census; a census that asked no invasive personal questions and gave full protection under current privacy and civil liberties regulations, which are fine as they go but are always open to suggestions for improvement.

Joseph and Mary – in order as their names appeared when written on rubber balls, spun around in a machine and drawn by electronic means live on BBC television with an independent arbiter present at all times in a manner acceptable to the International Code of Ethics and Fairness, directive 5/1.237 – were promised in marriage to one another. Marriage was not the only solution for them to work towards the aims and goals set out in their pre-birth, ideology-free mission statement, nor are religion, politics, gender, love, attraction, faithfulness, compatibility, or a shared interest in the scientific preservation of corn in tin ever relevant in discussion of marriage or its equal and entirely acceptable alternatives. Staying single, through choice or necessity, is also an equally valid lifestyle and we aim to affirm those lifestyles and all variations thereupon. A recently excavated document whose complete historical authenticity is maintained by formerly down-on-his-luck and now best-selling author, Bran Down, suggests that the ‘couple’ were in fact known to one another only through social networking opportunities and travelled virtually as tenuously-linked avatars.

Mary and Joseph – in the order necessary to balance up the ‘Joseph and Mary/Mary and Joseph’ thing, as we are committed to equal opportunities for all men and women and women and men, no matter what gender the men and women and women and men are or claim to be – travelled to Bethlehem and were in possession of the correct license and necessary permissions as recorded under the Freedom of Movement Act, section 4, part 3 sub-section 759. When they arrived in Bethlehem, the time came for Mary to have a baby. It would have been equally acceptable for Joseph to have had the baby or indeed for any other man or woman present in the town or other towns without reference to age, race, gender or other arbitrary measures of suitability, to have had the same baby.

There was no room at the inn, so Mary gave birth to the a baby in a stable, which had undergone the relevant health and safety checks as required under the Health Act of a non-specific year; non-specific to avoid offending individuals who prefer their own methods of calculating time, space and distance and who alone know where and when they are in relation to everything else. And that’s OK... We aim to meet the academic and emotional needs of anyone who evidences a challenging way of life. The stable’s work surfaces, appliances and hygiene were deemed to be of an acceptable standard, and a fire inspection and drill also took place several times during the labour.

A son was born, although it could have been a daughter or perhaps neither or both, and in no sense implies preference for one gender over another or any difference between genders. The child was wrapped in strips of cloth, and a social worker was appointed due to concerns over the parents’ inability to provide generally accepted accoutrements necessary in today’s competitive childcare market. A contract of care was agreed between the family and the Department of Community Education committing the parents to attend Government-sponsored parenting classes over a fifteen month period.

Angels appeared and sang a joyful song, although this part of the story has now been recognised as unacceptable to tone-deaf, depressed creatures without wings or halos. The term, ‘angels’, has been replaced in the story’s most recent editions with ‘journalists’ and the over-emotional reactions have become tabloid headlines which, as ever, maintain a careful neutrality in all matters. The music is now handled by the X Factor crew, featuring Little Mix's live concept album of Leonard Cohen covers.

The journalists soon left the couple and child to pass their days making sure they didn't get on the wrong side of anybody. At one point, the son, aged 12, got ideas above his station, but parents and child created a mutual agreement in which they agreed to tow the prevailing line, whatever that was at any given moment. They regularly visited the non-denominational and/or secular temple, in which all religious and/or humanist symbols were banned, and sat between the whitewashed and blackwashed walls thinking about nothing much until it was time to go home again. No one knew how it was all going to pan out.

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(photo from the photoscreen of Klearchos Kapoutsis, used under a Creative Commons License)

Short Update with Three Books

It’s been a month since I last blogged and here are my excuses...

No, I’ll save you all that. Being sorry for not blogging is faintly ridiculous. Since my last foray into blogland, I read some of my poems at the University of Basel, Switzerland along with Katy Evans-Bush (at the kind invitation of Andrew Shields) and then went out to try one of the region’s sausage delicacies with a few members of the audience. I stayed in Basel Youth Hostel, which had an affordable bar (in Swiss terms) and a buffet breakfast, and also an inevitable snorer in the room. I walked the cobbled streets and admired the window shutters. I walked along the Rhine and brought back chocolate for the family. A very enjoyable couple of days! I also took part in the Bugged! event at the fabulous West Port Festival in Edinburgh, which went really well. I read a few pieces from the anthology and later that evening went to see a fine reading by Rachael Boast and J.O. Morgan. And the submissions period has opened for Magma 53, which means that Kona Macphee and I have spent the last ten days working out a strategy for keeping up with the poems that flood the inbox daily. Working out strategies is always a good way to spend time.

But this post is really to recommend three books as much as anything else. First of all, Mark Burnhope’s The Snowboy, a Salt pamphlet of real quality. Any poet who can address a wheelchair with, “O wing-black, spectral-silver mass;/ crass imposition upon the meadow” (‘Wheelchair, Recast as a Site of Special Pastoral Interest’) deserves to be read widely, and there are many other poems which make this small collection an exciting experience. Burnhope’s ability to create memorable phrases and recast language in imaginative ways mark him out.

Secondly, Ian Duhig’s Pandorama (Picador) is a great read with a wide variety of forms and styles. You can never quite guess where Duhig is going to take you next. He seems to know about things that few people have ever thought about knowing and uses his learning lightly but with genuine emotional and intellectual impact. This collection is satirical, funny, disturbing and mysterious, often simultaneously. Moving elegies for David Oluwale, a Nigerian immigrant who died following years of racial harassment by police, line up alongside navvies, seed-fiddles, and ‘Closed Enquiry’ which celebrates “Santon Bridge’s Annual Lying Championship”; politicians may be barred from entering but agriculture holds plenty of scope:

cattle so huge they need individual postcodes,
rams’ horns winding up in different time-zones.

And finally, there’s Gabriel Josopovici’s Touch, which is described as a prose essay musing over “the central question of how we can feel at home in the world.” In fact, it’s a fascinating group of essays clustered around that theme, probing ideas of distance with reference to Charlie Chaplin, transgression and self-delusion with reference to Proust, power with reference to the $50m trade in Nazi memorabilia, and the difference between walking in England and walking in Egypt with a nod to Tristram Shandy (which, by coincidence, Ian Duhig also references). Touch, not mere observation, binds the essays into one. Josopovici deals with complex ideas without resorting to jargon or meaningless abstraction and there’s a passionate and intelligent engagement with the world behind every enquiry.

The Art of Recklessness

I’ve just ordered Dean Young’s The Art of Recklessness, which sounds really good to me. I like the way he attempts to prove the need for recklessness by using the example of Shakespeare, Wordsworth etc, not just the modern writers we might typically expect to hear from. The blurb says:

How can recklessness guide the poet, the artist, and the reader into art, and how can it excite in us a sort of wild receptivity, beyond craft? “Poetry is not a discipline,” Young writes. “It is a hunger, a revolt, a drive, a mash note, a fright, a tantrum, a grief, a hoax, a debacle, an application, an affect . . .”

Here's an interesting review of it. The author of the review admits his own bias in its favour, but still goes on to say interesting things about it.

Of course, craft is important, as millions of badly written poems on the Internet will ineloquently testify, but it’s just as important to ignore every guideline you’ve ever learned if the poem demands it, to go with the poem and not with your internal censor. The fine tuning can then cut out the misplaced word, dodgy rhythms and sonic blandness etc, as long as the reckless energy remains.

Horizon Review, Issue 5

Issue 5 of Horizon Review, edited by Katy Evans-Bush, has just gone live. Poems, reviews, articles, short stories and much more. I have a poem in the issue called Eggy.

Bugged

I have a feeling I have forgotten (on this blog) to mention the Bugged anthology, for which writers were asked to submit work inspired by overhearings. It was an exercise in creative eavesdropping.

I have a poem in it called ‘What Friends are For’. But that’s the least of it. You can read some highly entertaining stories and poems from the likes of David Gaffney, Ian Duhig, Andy Jackson, Pippa Little, Sandra Tappenden, Stuart Maconie and co-editors, Jo Bell and David Calcutt. And it’s only £5.99, which is very reasonable for a 117-page anthology.

My Edinburgh Shows, August 2010

I thought I’d post a list of my appearances during the Edinburgh Festival, in hope that there will audiences at these events! I am lucky enough to be part of some great line-ups and I hope you can make it along to those.

Saturday 21st August, 8.30–9.30pm, Edinburgh International Book Festival, Peppers Theatre, £10/£8, Poetry Showcase – I’m reading with Ron Butlin, Brian Johnstone, and Jane McKie.

Sunday 22nd August, 2.50–3.50pm, Free Fringe, Banshee Labyrinth (Niddry St, off Royal Mile), Chaos Raging Sweet - I’m co-MC (with Andrew C Ferguson), introducing terrific poets, prose writers and musicians such as:

Tribute to Venus Carmichael
Joy Hendry
A.B. Jackson
Mairi Sharratt
Tim Turnbull

Monday 23rd August, 6.30-8.30pm, Free Fringe, Banshee Labyrinth (Niddry St, off Royal Mile), Utter! Salt Two-Hour Special - I’m reading with a fantastic line-up of Salt poets:

Simon Barraclough
Julia Bird
Isobel Dixon
Mark Granier
Andrew Philip
Eleanor Rees
Ryan Van Winkle

Wednesday 25th August, 2.50-3.50pm, Free Fringe, Banshee Labyrinth (Niddry St, off Royal Mile), Chaos Raging Sweet - again, I’m co-MC (with Andrew C Ferguson), introducing a great line-up of poets, prose writers and musicians, including:

Claire Askew
Sophie Cooke
Gavin Inglis
Jane McKie
Andrew Philip
Andrew Wilson

New Writing Scotland

Well, there’s so much doom and gloom around whenever anyone mentions poetry that anything upbeat doesn’t have to fight for my attention, and I was pleased to read a positive comment on contemporary Scottish poetry from prose and theatre writer Alan Bissett in this year’s intro to New Writing Scotland, 28. Alan writes:

“What was most noticeable to the editors this year was the higher quality of poetry than of prose. Many of the poems sang, while relatively few of the stories did. Perhaps mass-market imperatives and the lack of opportunity for prose writers have led to an inevitable blunting of short fiction.”

So, I suppose we have to balance up the positive opportunities for poetry with the negative effect of marketing imperatives on prose. And yet, for poetry publishing houses to survive and thrive, they need to carve out a larger share of the market – without sacrificing quality. Quite a dilemma.

As a footnote, here are the submission guidelines for next year’s NWS (deadline 30 September 2010). I noticed one dramatic change:

“You should provide a covering letter, clearly marked with your name and address. Please also put your name on the individual works.”

Now, I’m sure no names have previously been allowed on individual works. Everything was anonymous, but that’s no longer the case. There are positive and negative aspects to reading ‘blind’ just as there are for reading with a name attached. It will be interesting to see whether it has any effect on next year’s issue and whether the editors prefer this new system over the old.

Poetry Blog Round-Up

Something of a round-up today. I’d been hearing that people are deserting blogs for Twitter. Hope not. Or, at least, I hope the good writers stick with blogging. Recently there have been really interesting articles in blogs I follow, which couldn’t fit in the small space you’re allowed for a tweet. Compression can be good, but too many one-liners in a row make me yawn.

First of all, here’s a fascinating theme for the next issue of qarrtsiluni, Words of Power. Something to think about even if you don’t submit anything...

At his Samizdat blog, Robert Archambeau discusses unusual critical reaction to his work.

C. Dale Young quotes from an article on Charles Simic by David Biespiel. The whole article and poem is worth reading, but here’s the paragraph in question:

“Often beginning poets tell me they know exactly what it is they want to write about, that they can almost see it. What I'm thinking to myself is, no you don't. Because as soon as you begin to write -- for that matter, draw, paint, sculpt -- your imagination overwhelms your certainty, and the object itself, the poem, say, lurches toward discoveries you didn't know you intended to make. It's a curse of a sort, a mummy's curse, perhaps, and a good one.”

One good thing about the Internet is that a reader can easily uncover articles from years back, which would have been lost if only printed on paper. This article, from 2003 by Joseph Bottom on Robert Lowell is an absorbing read (not a blog article, but I may as well include it).

Don Share discusses an interview series, most intriguingly an interview with the late Michael Hamburger, who "… once wrote in PN Review that for a poet to spend most of his time doing readings of his poems, or talking about them in interviews, ‘calls for a mode of attention which, for me, makes the writing of a poem impossible.’ There is, if you look at it this way, a conflict of interest between poet and interviewer.”

Maybe that’s why I‘ve written so few poems over summer, although I've enjoyed doing the Cyclone virtual book tour. When it's over, I'll write poems in penance. Can't start enjoying it all too much, I'm Scottish!

Finally news of two new Salt books:

Nude by Nuala Ní Chonchúir (short fiction), and The Wrong Miracle by Liz Gallagher (poetry). Both collections look very good to me. In fact, the whole summer list looks great. In August, Salt are offering 33 percent off all books, so that could be an ideal time to buy. To get the discount, insert the code HU693FB2 when you’re in the Salt store.

Good news for readers from North America. You can now buy Salt books, even those only published in the UK, from The Book Depository with free postage. Actually, it says that there's "free delivery worldwide." Does that mean anywhere at all - Australia? South Africa? Uzbekistan? Might be worth testing.

Hits and Novels

Hits to this blog went through the roof yesterday. The reason? Well, a link from Books Inq to my article on poem endings gave a significant increase. But even that was dwarfed by the number of hits coming from Ron Silliman, who linked to the same article – about three-quarters of the way down a vast column of links in his Monday 18th post. I can’t imagine how many hits I would have had if it had been near the top. Considering Ron Silliman writes an uncompromising poetry blog, the number of readers he gets is amazing, about as many in one hour as I normally get in a month, I suspect. But yesterday was a new record for me…

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I often find it hard to concentrate on poetry in late evening, especially if I’ve had a lot of work to do during the day, but there’s hardly ever anything on TV (and I’m not much interested in the Olympics), so I decided I’d start reading novels again. I must admit – I’ve enjoyed it. If the novel doesn’t grab me in the first ten pages, I ditch it. I don’t have the time or patience to see if it gets better. But I’ve enjoyed Marina Lewycka’s Two Caravans, Kapka Kassabova’s Street Without a Name (a prose memoir, non-fiction), Salem Falls by Jodi Picault (yes, I know, very Richard and Judy, but an entertaining page-turner nonetheless), Exit Ghost by Philip Roth, The Gum Thief by Douglas Coupland, and - so far – Falling Man by Don DeLillo. One thing is for sure – fiction is so much easier than poetry. I’d forgotten how simple it was – simple to read, that is, not at all easy to write (well).

Street Without a Name

Tonight, I made it to the launch of Kapka Kassabova’s prose memoir, Street Without a Name: Childhood and Misadventures in Bulgaria and was glad I did.

Kapka explained that the street she grew up in was indeed without a name. It was in the suburbs of Sofia and the concrete blocks which housed the workers there were all simply given numbers – her block was known as Number 328. The passage she read was just wonderfully written, full of barbed humour. A book definitely worth checking out. It’s more than just a memoir, more than just a travel book – more a reflection on intense personal and political transformation. This review in the Guardian gives a clear picture of how and why the book works.

After the Events

Last night, the award ceremony and readings for the Scottish National Galleries creative writing competition went really well. It was professional without being stressful, and the speeches from the organisers and the main sponsor – the Scottish Qualifications Authority (good on those people for their generous support of initiatives like this!) were warm, short and well done.

The commended writers and the second and first placed writers all read their piece in turn while the artwork that had inspired each one was displayed on a giant screen. The writers in the ‘unpublished’ category read first. I’ve got to say that I was astonished that some of those people were unpublished! They won’t be in that situation for long if they submit their stuff. Good to hear poems from Anna Dickie and the winner, Andrew (not ‘AB’) Jackson. Then it was the turn of the ‘published’ category. Some good stuff here too, of course, from the likes of Alan Gay and the winner, Ian McDonough, whose poem was well worth the first place. My reading was fine, and the prize was great – a illustrated book from the Gallery of Modern Art, a book of Scottish poems, a beautiful anthology featuring paintings and poems from two previous years of the competition, and a selection of tickets-for-two to various art exhibitions.

I talked to Elizabeth Gold (one of the stars of last Sunday's Great Grog readings) and a few other folk at the reception. Then I rushed up the road to hear the tail-end of Robert Crawford’s reading and discussion, which was very good. That review which suggested his new poems lacked “personal feeling”? Don’t want to go on about this, but what a load of nonsense! As early as page 4 in Full Volume, you get:

The Change of Life

Sometimes full volume is a breathy whisper.
‘There’s something I need to say.’ You tilt your ear

Towards love’s ensuing, lifelong pent-up silence
Crackling with all you want, but fear to hear.

That’s just superb!

Your Messages

Here’s an interesting idea from Lynne Rees and Sarah Salway. Each day of November on their blog, they invite 300-word responses to their “messages” and the best ones will be published in an anthology on bluechrome press in 2008.

Reading the guidelines and examples at the link will give you a better idea of what this is all about.

The Shit Creek Review

The Shit Creek Review, issue 4 is just up. It looks full of interesting material.

And it contains this article on one of Scotland’s most ground-breaking (yet criminally-overlooked) poets, J.R.Q. MacPrune. Great to see something on him!

Poem 3 in the W.S Graham opening-liner series coming later (I hope...).

New Writing 15

You can now get hold of New Writing 15, the latest edition of the annual anthology of poetry and prose published by Granta/British Council.

I have two poems in it – In the Last Few Seconds and Lighter, but if that doesn’t tempt you, there are poems from the likes of Moniza Alvi, Robin Robertson, Fiona Sampson, and Henry Shukman, prose from Julian Barnes, Anita Desai, Alasdair Gray, Doris Lessing, Zoe Strachan, and a host of others – many names unknown to me who can certainly write really well.

Peter Robertson Interview

I thought this interview with Peter Robertson was very interesting, from online publication Ready Steady Book.

“But no, I don’t think that calling someone a “Scottish writer” is per se to ghettoize them, as you put it… It is a truism that the cultural values one inherits permeate one’s work and even give rise to it. Naturally, I am against flag-waving in literature as I am any kind of overt political agenda, something that vitiates much Latin American literature. Nor am I ever going to defend parochialism. In fact, I would contend that the best literature is a conflation of the local and the universal—one at no time negates the other. But it is a delusion to believe that you leave your culture behind, even in cases where you might try to renounce it, and you are in fact indelibly shaped by it. As I said, I live in several countries and, every time I travel, I am conscious of entering a different reality. Humanity is not a lumpen, homogeneous mass.”

Robertson has grouped together twelve of Scotland’s leading writers (including several poets, such as W.N. Herbert and Robert Crawford) under a Viva Caledonia! banner in an online magazine I hadn’t previously heard of, the Mad Hatters’ Review (the link to Viva Caledonia! is at the bottom left-hand corner of the zine). Robertson is the UK, Spain and Argentina editor.

He also plans to start a new Scottish literary journal this winter coming, and the Mad Hatters’ Review will feature an Eclectic England section in the next two issues, again featuring poetry e.g. Patience Agabi, Simon Armitage, Mimi Khalvati, George Szirtes etc.

Literary Agents

What are literary agents looking for? It’s hard to know. They all say they’re looking for something different, something to wake them up, something that stands out from the thousands of other identical submissions they receive every week. But that doesn’t explain why so much of what is published is bland, formulaic, and jumping on the back of existing trends.

Here’s one agent to avoid, but a very fun article to read!

Publishing a Novel

I’ve written a couple of novels in the past (well, three, in fact, but I tore one of them up and binned it) and have ideas for writing another one, should my schedule ever make that possible. But chances of publication are remote, and according to this article in The Guardian, they are getting more remote by the second.

“…the idea of a novel quietly selling itself now, with no sense of the writer behind it, is far-fetched. Kate Saunders, one of the judges of this year's Orange Prize for fiction (the longlist, just announced, has half-a-dozen first novels on it), says: 'It is harder for first novelists to get noticed now. They will find, increasingly, that they are judged alongside their work - and are less likely to be taken on if they are not photogenic or newsworthy.'”

and:

“According to the latest edition of Private Eye, first novel The Thirteenth Tale by ex-teacher Diane Setterfield (author's advance £800,000) has sold 13,487 copies to date. Only 516,129 to go and the book's paid for itself...”

The average hardback first novel sells only 400 copies in the UK, and the average advance is only £12,000 for the first two novels . The subtext: Don't give up your day job.

New Umbrella

The second issue of Umbrella is now up.

The first thing I’d say is that even before reading any of it, the whole look of this zine is enough to convince me that there’s bound to be good stuff inside. Looks, of course, can be deceptive, but in this case I doubt it.

The second thing is that there is some good stuff! I’ve only managed to read a tiny amount, as it’s just up today and there’s a lot of material. But the four poems by Matt Merritt, who is a HappenStance author and is behind the Polyolbion blog, are all very good.

Finally, I am in the prose section with a review of Tomas Tranströmer’s The Deleted World.

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.