National Poetry Day - diary of sorts and thoughts

Early light picture from last week, playing around on Instagram

One of my favourite pieces of writing this year has been a writing diary from Scottish author Denise Mina. She read it aloud on a radio programme a few months back and it was honest and funny and I suppose that is one of my favourite kinds of writing. I have a simple relationship with comedy (and with music...) because I just love them, so much of them. I suppose this is partly because I have adored them both from a very young age but also partly because I have never tried to do either of them in any kind of serious way (put something out in the world and say 'I am a musician' or 'I am a comedian'). Poetry, though, is another matter.

And yesterday, here, it was National Poetry Day so I thought I’d have a go at one of those diary-type things (with some poetry-related content). I used to write a lot more like this on the old blog (ah, the golden days of blog... when you’d get up to 50 comments on a post... how did we read them all... etc.) but I haven’t done one for a while. So here’s yesterday... though the times are only approximate (I put them in after...).

9.00am. It’s one of those waiting-for-work days for me (the paid work, not the poetry). When it does come it just arrives by email (some days loads, many days nothing) but today nothing comes (so more time for poetry matters). It’s a good job we don’t rely on my salary to survive.

9.10am. I look at Twitter and see all the National Poetry Day links etc. (along with all the stuff about Hefner... which just reminds me of Watson and Oliver’s great bunny sketch... their series is on Netflix these days... go and find it if you can, daughter and I quote several of their sketches regularly). For a couple of years (see here) I organised a local event to mark National Poetry Day and it was always in October back then so it feels weird to have it in September this year (though here in Scotland it makes sense as it’s school holidays in early October and why should they escape the freedom – this year’s theme – of organised words). I write a tiny poem about this calendar issue, post it to Twitter, get a very small response. I am not in a loop, no celebrities retweet me or anything like that, so it’s a fairly unsatisfying and quite possibly pointless endeavour. It’s a good job we don’t rely on my poetry (or social media success) to survive.

9.30am. I watch a video from one of the links on Twitter. It features Sarah Crossan, whose book ‘One’ we won as a prize at a books quiz in the summer (Dundee Waterstones, monthly, it was summer, not much competition...). She writes verse novels (‘One’ is one). I really enjoyed ‘One’ (though this is starting to feel a bit regal) – it may be marketed at teens but (a) yes, I am at least part teenager and (b) it’s bigger than that (and I’ve never been one for dividing lines). It’s a good job we don’t rely on my strong opinions on marketing to survive (my first proper job was in an advertising agency… in the late ’80s and I didn’t last long... in fact I just left one lunchtime, never went back... well, I had to return the company car at some point... but apart from that). 

10.00am. I listen to the third part of Don Paterson’s radio series ‘Five poems I wish I had written’ – the one about Michael Donaghy (it’s Wednesday’s). This is the first one (that I've listened to so far...) where I can agree with him about the poem and that might well be because the poem is, at least in part, about music (the poem is ‘The Hunter’s Purse’). Tuesday’s (about Elizabeth Bishop's 'Large Bad Picture') is a great listen, whatever you think of the poem. It packed some punches though and whilst up till then I had not been feeling too bad about my own recent poetic output (I had written two ‘proper’ poems in the past couple of weeks, not shown them to anyone yet but felt I was back on that track a little after nothing but unloved Twitter 4-liners over the summer) this programme knocked me right back down off that artificial high. I am totally crap (and needy) and don’t know the most basic things about form and rhythm and it’s no wonder I am moaning in obscurity most of the time. It’s a good job we don’t rely on my positive outlook to survive.

10.15am. I wonder about the idea of ‘poems I wish I had written’. I’m not sure I think about poetry in that way at all, certainly nothing really comes to mind (what would you say if Radio 3 came knocking..?). I could think of about 100 people whose singing voice I covet… and maybe some songs I wish I’d written… though no, even there I can’t say that’s the way it feels (I can love something, but that doesn’t mean I wish I'd made it...). What I can say is that we were looking through the old youtube channel the other day (for admin reasons) and Mark and I both really enjoyed hearing the videos we posted in 2008 of Hugh McMillan (live… in Edinburgh…). I especially loved hearing ‘Three Letters to McMhaolain Mor’ again (‘my heart bleeds in this Travelodge’). I don’t wish I’d written it (how could I have done… it’s Hugh’s history background coupled with his experience of life in some particularly modern-day trenches – schools and pubs and buses – that makes this ring so true and be charming and painful all at the same time). I have non-poetry friends (one in particular) who says poetry only works for them when they hear it (aloud, with or without music) and, although I do read poetry quietly, sitting still, I do also understand the need for hearing (when it comes to enjoying/understanding/wanting to repeat the experience certainly). In the poetry world there is less and less of a divide between 'page' and 'performance' (so I hear, so I read…) and that is a good thing. There are great poems right across that spectrum (there always have been) and many of the best poems (for my taste) can be inhaled either way. After this I watch a video of BBC Scotland’s poet in residence Stuart A Paterson giving a lesson in Scots weather terms (he is a long-term friend of Hugh McMillan). Twenty years ago I wouldn't have known any of the words but now I know about half of them (and will go through and pause with Scots dictionary/friend to get the rest later). That’s a poem I certainly couldn’t have written! It’s a good job we don’t rely on my career in Scots poetry writing to survive.

12.30pm. I do some Mum things…take girl here, go to the supermarket. No one in there is talking about National Poetry Day or seems to be worrying about rhythm patterns. It’s a beautiful sunny day and everyone is trying to get out of there as soon as possible. I worked in shops quite a lot in previous stages of life and the money is so crap but it’s bearable as jobs go. I don’t have a great record when it comes to jobs and making money (but I have a great CV… ). It’s a good job we don’t rely on my hilarious themed repetitive paragraph endings to survive (because I can’t think of one for this).

1.30pm. Essential jobs done I think I should make a National Poetry Day effort so I grab a poetry book (the first that comes to hand – an anthology) and sit in the sun for a brief stretch (as long as a cup of tea). It’s too hot for the dog so she whinges at me and the neighbours seem to have the loudest lawnmower ever made (it’s probably old... as they are). I can’t say anything really grabs me from the book… but that might be the dog, the (very hot) sun and the fact that I’m going out this evening and possibly to a place where people will be sitting quietly in rows (this always makes me anxious). I am much more a cabaret-atmosphere kind of person… in every possible way. It’s a good job we don’t rely on my career as an airline passenger or jury member to survive. And yes, I know you don’t get paid for either of those…. Well, not usually.

7.00pm. It turns out that I have tickets for a poetry event in Dundee tonight – a total coincidence as I bought them ages ago before I knew that the national day of poeting had moved closer to the sun. This event features Rachel McCrum and Caroline Bird and I don’t know either of the poets’ work but I have seen them bigged up online by people whose work I do know (and like) so I’m quite keen. It’s a long time since I went to a poetry reading of any kind I realise (other than my own). I used to go to quite a few (particularly at the StAnza festival in St Andrews – I used to go there every year) but in recent times it just hasn’t happened (partly to do with where we live but a lot to do with my weirdness about sitting quietly in an rowed audience). I find the awkwardness of some types of readings really difficult so was disappointed to get to the venue tonight and discover it was my least favourite kind of place (no exit at the back, only one way in and out and that right in front of the whole audience and stage...). It’s hard to explain if you’re not a person who feels this kind of specific anxiety about places but believe me, it does rather spoil your concentration… especially if you can’t have a calming alcoholic beverage because you are going to be driving a car at some point later. I decided to ask for help (always one of the hardest parts...) and luckily the organisers were lovely and didn’t think me at all mad (well, they didn’t say so anyway) and found me a bolthole where I could see but not feel awkward (the lighting/sound box). So I did see the show and it started with music from Roseanne Reid (tiny enigmatic songs, liked them a lot) followed by poet Rachel McCrum. She did a few poems about boats and a lot about women (her new book, her first I think, is called ‘The First Blast to Awaken Degenerate Women’) but, though I did find these interesting (facts about Marie Stopes, for example, plenty to go back and read…and in fact the poem that includes them is online here, though it’s quite far down the page), the mood I was in (odd, career identity crisis, locked in anxiety bolthole… and not for any lack of feminist tough thinking over the years…) meant I was drawn more to a poem about unusual stars (‘Runaways’). I didn’t buy a book then but I am thinking I might; there was a lot to take in. After a little break poet Caroline Bird (now on her 5^th book apparently, though she started very young) took us to places I really wasn’t expecting (her experiences of drugs and mental health, albeit with a surrealist twist... although if you’ve lived through any of it… which of course I have… you don’t really need the twist). She was very engaging (a bit bouncey, getting herself gradually more and more into the audience…) and if I hadn’t been in an anxiety bolthole (with my poor, long suffering daughter… ‘what weird place are you taking me today, Mummy?’) I would have stayed for the whole thing. But we had quite a trip back, and there’s school tomorrow and Mummy can tell you plenty of stories about that kind of thing on the way home (daughter is pretty much an adult now, 17...). I have no line here about careers and surviving. I have run out of steam about that.

9.00pm. And then the train… and the car… and the chips (I have an old poem about having chips on the way back from a poetry reciting competition when I was a little girl... I guess this is our version of that in some kind of dragged-out mirror image). And on the radio (I love radio!) it was still National Poetry Day and there was a young guy called Isaiah Hull on the Jo Whiley show on Radio 2. We didn’t catch the beginning of the poem but the bit I heard sounded warm and young and hopeful. Ah, it’s a good job we don't rely on my career in misguided nostalgia to survive...

Thanks, as ever, for reading. 

A is for apple

I've gone a bit apple-mad. The ex-psychiatric hospital nearby has an orchard full of apples (and I mean full!) but of course it is an ex-hospital so the grounds are pretty much places in waiting... and so the apples are too. For the last few years that orchard has worn a carpet of apples for much of the fall season and it's pretty sad, I think, when food costs so much and we all seem to talk about healthy eating all the time. We went and picked a bag full yesterday (we all have permission, I emailed the current landowners to check... ) and I am telling everyone I can think of to try to keep the rotting to a minimum. I suppose this is partly because I was brought up by a mother who'd lived through WW2 and so I hate food waste (though I think most of us do really). There are issues of course... some of the trees are very tall and quite old... and everyone is busy... but I'm hopeful.

And lo, an apple poem (title connected to my late arrival at Instagram... I like to try most things... just not always at the same time as everyone else...). 

Instapple

Dream, if you must, of apples.

Check the ground first,

Flatten nettles,

Clear the rotten windfall.

Then head up high

To the happy bounty,

Ripe clumps of life,

Calling out to be pie.

There’s no finer sight;

Than apples above,

The pound in your heart,

A red and green beat.

Preserve if you can,

Keep the taste fresh,

Make the good cake,

And save the picture.

RF 2017

Friends

Picture of the girls of the house

Still not much writing business to report here. Mostly I've been hanging out with these two. Well, look at them ‒ wouldn't you? I don't often post photos of the daughter on here but it's a lovely one and I thought you might like it (it's not staged). Some regular readers will feel like you know her I am sure (internet family and all that). 

There is some almost writing news though as I will be heading to the Auchmithie Arts Festival on 9th and 10th September (11-5 on Saturday, 12-5 on Sunday). The artist who did the cover artwork for both my books (Steph Masterson) is opening her house as part of the festival (along with her artist husband Scott Henriksen). There isn't a website for the festival but there is facebook page for it. I will be selling books at Steph's (venue 5) and generally hanging around. It is always a lovely day out (16 art venues, tearoom in the village hall, beautiful setting).

I've not even been writing the little Twitter poems recently (that has been this summer's, post-pamphlet poetic activity). Then today a little one arrived (here) probably because I've had contact with quite a few old friends this summer. It's such a strange business (lovely in the main part but strange for all the memories it stirs up). I tend to have an overwhelming feeling of gratitude around this kind of thing ‒ I just feel so pleased (and amazed in some cases) that we've made it this far. Is it a poet thing to be so obsessed with the possibility and probability of death? Or a child of a suicide thing? Or just a human thing? Or is it just because I read the news (more than some, not as much as others)? Or because this was one of my favourite songs in childhood (it came out the year my Dad died, as it happens...)?

Anyway, after a busy week I had a little quiet time this morning and listened to Robert Webb's much-publicised 'How Not to Be a Boy' (Book of the Week on the radio). It is sometimes frustrating for non-celebrity writers when famous people's books get a lot of hype but this one is published by Canongate (Scottish, love them...) and I did really enjoy his reading (though bits are super sad ‒ more death of course...). There were some pretty perfect sentences in amongst it all. I especially liked his description of his academic position at the age of about 11 ("the disappointing end of clever or the hopeful side of dim") and this sentiment from (I think) the last of the 5 episodes "those of us who are loved have no excuse". I read a lot of work by and/or about people who weren't loved much early in life and think about this kind of thing a great deal (for one reason or another). And his is an interesting addition to such thoughts... and it could easily have been part of a poem (Larkin maybe). Poetry is everywhere... whether you want it or not!

Treading water...

River Tay at Dundee, 5th August 2017

I haven't done a lot of posting here over the summer. This isn't due to a big holiday away or anything (quite the opposite). Things have been pretty quiet... and this is always an odd sensation when (it feels like) everyone else is dashing off and doing exciting things. Of course not everyone is... it just feels that way. Some people, quite the contrary, are dealing with terrible things and would love some of this kind of peace and quiet (London's Grenfell survivors, for example, or people fleeing their homes and risking their lives to cross the Mediterranean to Europe... it's less in the news but it's still very much happening). On Grenfell, I watched this clip the other day containing interviews with a survivor (well worth watching, though very sad on many levels). 

For me there's not been a lot of my paid work coming through (I am on a zero hours kind of a thing...) so I've been lying low and reading more than writing. I suppose I'm in a post-book-publication-confusion phase (or something) and so I'm following the minds of others to get me out the other side (oh, and watching a bit of TV... 'Handmaid's Tale', 'Fargo', 'OITNB'... and others). But, as for books, after Sally Rooney's Conversations with Friends (reviewed on here a few posts ago) I moved on to Dave Eggers' The Circle (2013) and then Sarah Waters' The Night Watch (2006) – both excellent in very different ways (and I still read paper books – tried the electronic kind once... and once only). Also daughter and I have been reading Jane Eyre. I've read it once before but daughter likes to read aloud and so I haven't been able to speedread/skim/think-about-something-else-whilst-moving-eyes-over-the-page this time. I hadn't realised it contained so many long descriptive passages when I read it on my own... 

It's been quite quiet on the music front here too... we've booked tickets for Rhiannon Giddens for later in the year (hooray!) but in the meantime here is a video from local singer/songwriter/musician Rhona Macfarlane. I took delivery of a couple of hard copies of the CD of her new EP 'The Tide' recently and you can listen/buy the other kind of copies here. The beach in this video is local to here (Lunan Bay). Rhona is very talented and at that exciting beginning-of-adult-life phase. I look forward to following her career... from a comfortable chair... and in increasingly comfortable shoes...

Radio! Radio!

Just down the road, yesterday

I had a lovely surprise this weekend when my new wee book got a mention on my favourite radio show (Sunday mornings with Cerys Matthews on BBC 6 Music). You can listen to this particular episode of the show on the BBC i-player for the next month or so (here and the bit in question is about 2 h 10 mins in) but the show is on every Sunday (10am-1pm) and it's always packed full of great music and interesting interviews. This week's episode has a really interesting segment on young poets earlier in the show too, including a great piece read live (that's at about 1 h 15 mins). Along with playing my choice of 3 tracks for the lunchtime Sunday Roast feature, Cerys even read one of my poems on air ('Stand', p. 23) and I went into a kind of mini-shock at that (I didn't know it was coming...). I loved how she managed to turn what often feels to me like a fairly sad book into something that earned a defiant laugh! Cerys is a very positive force on the radio and I've listened to the show with love for years (certainly since we came back from our big trip in 2011). I would have loved to have kept roaming as we did for those 6 months but it just wasn't possible (we were amazingly luckily to get the time we did...). Sometimes it has to be radio that takes us to new places instead (books can do it too of course... and maybe TV and films).

I know I'm not alone in this but radio has been such a huge friend to me over the years. I remember sitting as a teenager and listening for hour after hour and everywhere I've moved I've listened to different radio stations (sometimes local, sometimes not). I even had a (pirate) radio show for a few years with my friend back when we were club DJs in Leeds (Daisy & Havoc on Leeds' Dream FM back in the early '90s) and it was such a fantastic thing to do. It's very liberating working on radio - totally free of all gaze (male or otherwise), just playing tunes and trying to think of something to say in between. These days I still listen to a lot of radio (though I often pick and choose with i-player and the like). I suppose I'm in a bit of a quiet, not-really-very-sociable phase and radio is perfect for that. You can feel you are seeing people and being out there... even when you're not.

Book review - Conversations with Friends

I haven’t done anything like a book review for ages but sometimes a book is more than just a book, it’s a connection, and so you make an exception. The book I am talking about (and that I bought recently and read last week) is the much-praised Conversations with Friends, the first novel from Sally Rooney. Rooney is a ‘young’ writer (in her mid twenties or thereabouts) but some of us had a few online exchanges with her when she was a lot younger and so we feel a tiny bit connected to this now runaway publishing star. In those exchanges Rooney was always smart and friendly and gently fascinating and it appears she has stayed true to herself because that still comes across if you read any of the interviews that accompany her first book’s publication (try this one in the Irish Independent).

So what about the book? Well, Rooney doesn’t mess about – she weeds out a good portion of the reading public in her first sentence by dropping in the words ‘poetry night’ (and that made me laugh straightaway – if only they knew how much sex was coming later…). But for those of us who stay past “Bobbi and I first met Melissa at a poetry night in town, where we were performing together.” there is some gorgeous writing in the next 300 plus pages. I read Conversations... in about 2 days (some of it at about 4.30am when I couldn’t sleep) and it is just that kind of book – a book to take on an odd trip with a strange bunch of people, a book to feel a bit conflicted about, a book to give you a bit of headache (in that ‘must stop reading now, my brain is blurring…’ kind of a way). It is wry and funny in places, dry and lonely in others.

It’s not light fiction but it certainly is crisp. Rooney unquestionably writes like a dream – one minute beautifully simple, then scissor-sharp. The ‘friends’ are 4 main characters, with a few others in the background, (and how friendly any of them really are changes from page to page – Central Perk this is not). The details of modern life are delicious – they will date soon enough, of course, but then we can love them even more then (= nostalgia). There is, as you might expect from the title, a lot of talking… and drinking… and sex… but a good deal of the novel is about how we present ourselves to others, about self-consciousness and (I think) that process we go through in our twenties (if we are lucky) when we try to work out what feelings are, which ones matter, and which ones don’t. We might put on a cynical face at that age but it is often just a cover for giant hopes and dreams (even if we don’t know that until later). My 20s are a fairly long time ago but I think that's how it was...

The central character, Frances, feels like the Rooney I think I know (though of course I don’t really know her at all…). Frances is young (a student) and particularly awkward (at least to us, the readers). There is a lot of talk about faces (hers and others’), about expressions, mirrors, appearances… it is exactly what we older readers think young people think about all the time (though we do it a bit too of course…). “Even I could see I had character,” says Frances (to us) about a photo of herself. Frances is smart too.

Frances writes poems (though I think she will grow out of it…) and I laughed again in chapter two when Rooney has her “sitting in bed in the morning writing poetry, hitting the return key whenever I wanted” (I have so done that… still do sometimes…). The character is all-knowing in some ways and yet, in the tradition of young-people-going-out-in-the-world fiction, she makes some big gaffes, falls into some fairly well-trodden paths and has to try to dig herself out again. There are points in the story where you might feel there is some cliché in the air (taking a group of people to a big house in France… what could possibly go wrong?) but Frances is strong enough (as our heroine) to keep us with her and bring us out the other side. She is good company – observant, interesting, a little over-analytical maybe but no-one’s perfect – and going through clichéd experiences is a rite of passage after all (who hasn’t had to creep around a house at night because you shouldn’t be with X doing Y – come on, it can’t just be me?). Who hasn’t had difficult family situations, kept heartbreaking secrets, sent emails they shouldn’t have? And what happens to us when these corny situations have us… in their grasp? Do we still have character? Do we survive? I think that’s part of what Rooney is doing with this novel. But I might be wrong. I'm not a professional book reviewer or anything.

A lot of the content seems to be about presenting contrast too – well-heeled media folk in big houses vs. everyone else in dirtier, more cramped accommodation or attractive, charismatic Bobbi vs. Frances (who doesn’t feel like she is either of those things, but is). As the novel progresses the differences blur a little – partly at least because Frances enters other worlds and sees their pros and cons. Whilst studying, for example, she makes this comment on herself: “I’m bettering myself, I thought. I’m going to become so smart that no one will understand me.”

The novelist I most thought of when I read Conversations was Zadie Smith. A few reasons I suppose (I am a fan, read her new book this year and reread On Beauty after that) but Smith was also ‘the hot new literary discovery’ straight from college in her time (bidding war etc.), is super smart but wants to write books all her friends can read, I suspect, and not just her publishers and academic colleagues. It’s not the easiest road to travel, as a writer (though it may look that way to others…). You will be built up high and sometimes people will throw things at you. You will, perhaps, grow to curse the clichés about yourself that will follow you round for years and years (some of which will be true, others less so) but there will be consolations and here are just three of them: you will write some magnificent lines, you will construct some interesting fictional friends, and, most of all, you will have readers. Oh what a joy*.

Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney (Faber & Faber) is available pretty much everywhere.

Cover of UK hardback features painting "Sharon and Vivien" (2009) by Alex Katz (as on this post).

*Yes, I am quoting Chic in a book review. 

In print and things

So today, if you see 'The Scotsman' newspaper and turn to page 23 of the Magazine section you will see a poem by... the author of this blog. It's quite exciting (for me). You can't access it online – just via the print copy (or above).

Maybe you've arrived here because of this publication (in which case 'hello'). Looking for me via online searches often brings up wedding sites (particularly amusing to anyone who knows me...), thanks to one, quickly written and now fairly old, poem that has been used and recommended for a few weddings. Still, it gets me on lists with Robbie Burns and Liz Lochhead so I'm not complaining. Other search results include an actress (not me) and a writer of 'cowboy poetry' (not me either... at least not yet).

If you are a new visitor and you fancy buying my latest book/pamphlet 'Turn' it is available from various sites and shops – all details here, including new stockist the DCA (Dundee Contemporary Arts). From my website it only costs £5 (incl P & P) to UK addresses and £7 (incl P & P) to anywhere outside the UK. Quite a few of the poems in it are on this blog so feel free to look around. The poem featured in 'The Scotsman' is one of the older poems in 'Turn', so old it was on the previous blog (back in April 2010, written for one of the Poetry Bus prompts...'sex drugs and rock'n'roll' was the subject that week...). Many of the poems in 'Turn' are more recent. 

Other things for your attention this week:

The amazing Kim Edgar getting a song played on the Radio 2 Folk show (here).

Local musician/songwriter Gary Anderson releasing his new album (here).

And don't miss the brilliant Benjamin Zephaniah guesting on Frankie Boyle's TV show (here).

I'm still learning at Twitter too...

Thanks for reading.
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