All Quiet...

For those of you who were expecting a newly productive G&P after the summer, think again.  Apologies for anyone hoping George and I would be applying our quick wit and gargantuan intellects to the pressing issues of the day for the last month or so, but we've both been on holiday and drinking, so there.  But there's a great deal in the pipeline, including a review of Roy Fisher's latest collection, and some new poems by, among others, G&P favourites Hannah Silva and Mark Goodwin.  In the meantime, enjoy a track by the Editors' (okay, my) new favourite band, Eagle Twin, the band every doom metal and Ted Hughes obsessive's been waiting for.  Don't say you weren't warned...

 

A New Addition to the Links Sidebar

Because this is how I generally spend my evenings, and because the Spain-Porugal match is infinitely less enlightening than it has a right to be - the general rule of "Catholic countries = amazing football" being undermined in this instance - I found myself, whilst hunting for material on F.T. Marinetti, everyone's favourite Futurist and apologist for Fascism, stumbling across Marjorie Perloff's website.  Both of the Editors have been heavily influenced by Perloff's work - 21st Century Modernism: The "New" Poetics (2002), in particular, opened our eyes to a fascinating, if idiosyncractic reading of the history of Modernism - and it's a small tribute on our part to give her a plug here.  Her website, I should add, is exemplary, with archived reviews, essays and book extracts, with a great rolling keywords widget that is more fun (for a poetry nerd at least) than a sack full of otters.  Read and learn...   

News

One of the editors is just back from the Hay Jamboree, featuring (in no particular order, but all were excellent)

Geraldine Monk
Alan Halsey
Elisabeth Bletsoe
Caroline Bergvall
Scott Thurston
Phil Maillard
Zoë Skoulding
Anthony Mellors
Richard Gwyn
John Goodby
Claudia Azzola
Jean Portante

And lots more! Was an amazing few days, though couldn't get to everything, but will be writing up responses shortly.

Meanwhile...

- The Bath Spa Reading Series continues this week with David Morley, 8pm at the BRLSI.

- Penned in the Margins announce a new 'box format' limited edition of Simon Barraclough's Bonjour Tetris.

- The 2010 Voiceworks Concert is now online, in case you missed the live stream.

- The University of Greenwich is running the Cross-Genre Festival from Wednesday 14th-Friday 16th July 2010. Line-up looks astonishingly good!

- Probably there's lots more to say, but as a round off, to save the other editor the embarrassment of committing the 8th Deadly Sin, his new book, Difficult Second Album, is out from Nine Arches Press, as is Milorad Krystanovich's Improvising Memory. Two beautifully designed, bolshy publications.

- Oh wait, just remembered, at risk of committing aforementioned sin myself, Polarity Magazine UK, eggspawn of the New Surrealism, will be launching in London at 6pm, Sunday 27th June, at The Slaughtered Lamb.

Three 'Bunny' Poems by David Caddy

Red Dead Nettle
(Badman’s posies, Dumb-nettle)


Some tinge like a ponytail
stung my lip, slipped

rattled and smarted word clumps
that spored and blew off course.

Once a noisy grubber
now a Buster Keaton.

In this deficiency muteness unnerves, it is suggestible:
verging on emergency prostrate, it is also to be

as in go to and dig deep
as in membrane barrier from interference

as in photograph the derelicts
isolate damage, erosions and drag.

Burr of goose grass that primes these witnesses,
trims the mane where swirls sinuate.




Can’t Can’t Say


can’t can’t say can’t can’t say can’t can’t say
ohh ohh ohh  ohh ohh ohh  ohh ohh ohh
ohh ohhh ohh  ohh ohhh ohh  ohh ohhh ohh
can’t can’t say  can’t say  can’t say  can’t say

tr tr tr  tr tr tr  tr tr tr  tr tr tr  tr tr tr
tr         tr         tr         tr         tr
still got plenty o’ words in head
in my head tt tt try  try trying

Yes  my only word Yes
when I should say No
tr tr tr
ht ht ht  ht ht ht  ht ht ht

In this becoming bodily sounds affirm
tttt tits words don’t keep directions
as much as lip teeth pressure
dispersed with call and flap of wings

m m m  em em em  erm erm erm
mm mm mm em em em mm mm mm
mem mem  mem mem  mem mem
Ain’t seen Paul. I sez he’s dead. Dead.

nnn nnn nnn nnn nnn nnn Yes
Don’t need no mind changing
Don’t need no left or right decisions
No static new circuit  No new codes

can’t can’t say can’t can’t say  can’t say
ohh ohh ohh  ohh ohh ohh  ohh ohh ohh
ohh ohhh ohhh  ohhh ohhh ohh oh oh
can’t say  can’t say  can’t say  can’t say





Quiet


What I want is one foot in front of the light. The delicate choice of where to catch that old pike, the old wound beneath its crust of blood, slipping between lily pads,clogged artery of logs, branches; hip flask of sin

                                                                                 listen

                                                                             an

                                                                        oak

                                                             squeaks

                                                            under

                                                            air

                                                 ground

                                           pressure

                                           and

                                   almost

                             topples

into the rush, a drunk

back-racked as often as glisten.

Waders leave before scattered drop.

Stop, stopped loose, moist and well-oxygenated.

Two Poems by Claire Trevien

Death of the Author


After The Author died His improvised foundation seized his laptop in the name of historical research. "Just think!" enthused a spokesman, "years of labour have been saved through this coup, now we do not need to guess when He was working, all the data is in this stronghold." A team of hackers worked on deciphering his passwords with relative success: "We still can't access his facebook account, but we suspect it includes the word 'jizzwizz.'."

His room was stripped, bills surgically reconstructed from the shredder, and photographic evidence of the contents of his fridge stored. The number of odd socks in his drawer was meticulously catalogued.

The foundation evicted the rest of his building and listed it a grade II. No 203 was transformed into a menagerie for the life forms found in The Author's bedsit. "This is invaluable!" exclaimed the spokesperson, gingerly pointing to a cockroach, "now we know the source of inspiration behind His epic poem 'Quit Bugging Me'."

The under-the-bed magazines that, in his case, were slumping against his DVDs were also confiscated for a new government-funded PhD: 'No Sex Please, We're British: a Study on the Influence of Print Pornography on The Author's Later Work.'




The Launderette


Sign recalling women thrashing the ice with sticks
to drip yellowing sheets in rain water: twist
and turn it, only clockwise, the other way brings the devil.

To drip yellowing sheets in rain water twist
inside. The machines have caught flies, and shake
to rid them. Three men and a woman are frozen.

Inside, the machines have caught flies, and shake:
they are making themselves a fable made of underwear.
The clock on the timer lies, you have to multiply it.

They are making themselves a fable made of underwear
to rid them of the three men and a woman selling perfume
on the benches as I scramble to hide my bras, my bones, .

The clock on the timer lies: you have to multiply it,
but I still waited too long to collect my exposed veins
from the only quiet, and now dark, washing machine.

One Poem by Michael McKimm

April Saturday 2010

The blackbird calling in the tree has found a mate

and the trees themselves are sprouting leaves

and we are wearing sandals

and swinging home with shopping bags

eggs, potato bread and beers

and my parents text from the queue

to the Eurostar

excited about their new trip to the Loire

and the drug dealers swerve their souped-up

engine down the wrong-way street

and Richard from upstairs is talking out his window

about sunshine and summer and ash

and inside you put on a CD

the kind Virginian lady singing of

night-time drives and gardens

and the dandelions have come up out of the ground

and the maple tree is blossoming, the jays

are being uncharacteristic

and the drug dealers’ stash is safe in the fence

and we fry the eggs, the bread,

sit at the table where the light comes through

the slatted blinds

and down the road the blackbird is calling out a new tune

and there is nothing in the sky

for the first time in my life

but space and air and big bold perfect blue.

===

Michael McKimm is from the Giant's Causeway, Northern Ireland. He graduated from the Warwick Writing Programme in 2004 and won an Eric Gregory Award in 2007. His poetry has appeared in Magma, Oxford Poetry, PN Review and The Warwick Review, and Dossier Journal (New York). His first collection, Still This Need, was published by Heaventree in 2009.

George Ttoouli on Peter Gizzi and Michael Heller at Warwick University

"to open up the sky inside the day"

Not that Peter Gizzi is an entirely self-reflexive meta-poet, but a lot of the poetry he read at the event gravitated towards an awareness of poetry's potential, or more specifically, of the imagination.

"death in the imagination equals life itself"

Many lines stood out for their crafted punch. He's a poet working with pieces, assembling from many jigsaws a coherent collage, the parts often glued together by a semi-philosophical meditation. Conscious of how this can sometimes become self-indulgent, or too alienating, over a stretch, this was often punctuated by onomatopoeic bursts of sound - tings and whumps and crashes that served to jolt the reader back to relevance of the poetry to the real world.

[This same idea as I expressed it raw in my notes: "A deceptive line, a philosophical syntax, on the whole, broken by devices that restore access to the 'self' - the reader's humanity, presence in the room. They [the devices] feel like acts of generosity, not populist concessions, because they don't break the stride or tone of the whole - as he puts it, he writes 'strangely upbeat pieces'." The work had a dark undercurrent, fo'sure, especially when he tackled issues of US politics, such as the war.]

"It is on the tongue the sun abides"

This, literally: the sun shines out of the mouth, out of communication, both for the understanding conveyed by expression, and the delight. Gizzi's work was delightful, in a cerebral way, and though perhaps the balance didn't sit so well through his work consistently at first, perhaps that was my lack of familiarity with his work, except perhaps for a few pieces on PennSound and 'Beginning With a Phrase from Simone Weil' in particular (here as audio).

until the last two poems he read.

'Chateau if' is a masterful piece, a list of potentiality, a subtle paean to the imagination, and all that kind of bombastic over-praise that a great poem deserves. But really what I found myself thinking was, "Simon Turner would be fucking proud to have written a poem as good as this. God knows he tried and failed a few times." [*]

Peter closed with an extract from a similarly constructed list-poem, also built around a 'what if' repetition. This poem capped the whole reading, utterly sold to me the quality he's writing at right now, wiped out any doubts I may have had. He's purported to be on a meteoric rise in US letters, and this piece, from 'A Panic That Can Still Come Upon Me' is all the proof I need (audio here for parts 1 & 3).

(That said, we had a great time in the bar afterwards, swapping recommendations. Peter's a voracious reader, listing a truly diverse set of British tastes - Armitage & Duffy alongside Carol Watts, Tom Raworth, most of Shearsman and work from Rod Mengham's Cambridge outfit, Equipage. In return we threw Luke Kennard, and yes, Simon Turner at him, as well as Elisabeth Bletsoe and the forthcoming Shearsman anthology, The Ground Aslant, ed. Harriet Tarlo. I also ended up with a solid Jack Spicer reading list - Dan Katz, who hosted Peter's visit, is a bit of a specialist and recommended Spicer's After Lorca (extract here) and Poet by Like God, by Lewis Ellingham and Kevin Killian.)

"the cage he paces like Rilke's panther"

To another beast then, but one not so different. Heller's work shows great 'flow'. I've heard that word bandied about awkwardly in creative writing environments, but for a definition of how to capture 'flow' in poetry, one couldn't do better than turn to Heller.

"the worst thing is to feel only irony"

And so his poems refute pithy summations, epiphanic rising out at the end. Whole poems are built on the idea of the epiphanic moment, as if everything in the poem is a realisation, one long exposition of feeling. Here the idea of the 'spontaneous overflow' feels at work.

"a man eating dictionaries, avidly, passively" [**]

At the same time, Heller shows great learning, great intertextuality. I have to confess to being a bit off about closing circles between books these days; there's a danger that the snake bites its tail and starves too much.

[Or as my notes put it: "Much more immersed in intertextuality, referenced philosophy, rather than captured diction. e.g. Kierkegaard, Rilke, etc. The images feel more occasional, he creates a space in his head as a poem where connections forge."]

But he can do titles, oh yes, there's a lot to be said about Heller's titles:

'Like Prose Bled through a City'

Yes, marvellous. He's less keen on pronouncing words the way I'm used to, which was endearing, if a bit of a trip up:

'niche' pronounced 'nitch'
'irony' pronounced 'iyónny'
'swathe' pronounced 'swoth' (or did I mis-hear this?)

Heller ran with a lot of poems about poetry, and this was also a bit misjudged for my tastes, though all were written with a great weight to the rhythms, a beautifully refined ear for sound.

"In breath, out breath, aria of the rib cage equalling apse" [***]

There was a strong flow to all the poems, but also an imaginative jump-cutting at work, a sense of 'dissolve' to the image overlays. The overall impact far outweighed the precision, in contrast to Gizzi's writing; I had to say I withdrew a little at some of the descriptive language - fish were "silvery", the Thames "flowing", birds "taking flight" and somewhere something was caught "whispering silky words". But these minor gripes shouldn't get in the way of a poetics that's built on decades of practice, of course, a conscious decision to elevate movement and pace over precision. The urge to put out feeling and intent, over image.

When I asked the poets about this afterwards, Heller described working to the "arc" of the idea, playing out a totality, a total expression. He gave out a definite feeling of poetry's worth.

Gizzi, in contrast, worked to precision, through cutting down. He offered a helpful suggestion for his revision process in closing, one I'll be trying: when going over drafts of poems, try reading back just every other line and see what you lose or gain. He works by cutting lots, and this technique allows essentiality to rise out more clearly.

===

Peter Gizzi's Some Values of Landscape & Weather and The Outernationale are both available from Wesleyan University Press.

Michael Heller's latest collection, Beckmann Variations and other poems is published by Shearsman in the UK, and he has a few titles out with Salt Publishing.

Both poets are on PennSound.


===

[*] Go ahead, bite me, Turner.

[**] I may have misremembered this phrase, there was a hefty clip to the poem's pace and a large amount of irritating background noise coming through the walls.

[***] I had a question mark by the word 'apse', not sure I'd actually heard it, though it made sense in the context of bone structures, breathing and arches. But I've found the extract online, from 'Eschaton' (last few lines). You also get to look at the real linebreaks. Cool, huh?

Discovery of the day - Envy