"and day brought back my night" - Milton

Following on from the news round up yesterday, I tracked down the Armando Iannucci poetry programme on John Milton's poetry (though it is ostensibly about Paradise Lost, the programme takes some of his other work - Areopagitica and some sonnets, early and late). The reason I chased it was to try and disagree with Simon Armitage when he described the moment Iannucci reads a sonnet to a blind man as "one of the most moving pieces of television ever made" or something.

I can't disagree. It's astonishingly emotional. And I'd go so far as to say that Iannucci's show is one of the most important pieces of television made in the past 30 years, as far as literature is concerned. It begs the question, "Why is so much shit made with taxpayers money, when the bar can be set so high by certain television makers?"

Apologies to our overseas readers. National boundaries have once again tried to disprove the notion that art transcends boundaries, via internet controls. You won't be able to watch this, but I moot the idea that we engage the BBC in a petition to make Iannucci's show public domain, globally.

The show is about language, not just poetry. It's about the nonsense of Paradise Lost's neologisms, to the point where Iannucci questions Milton's motives for making God & the side of 'good' so boring, compared to Satan.

The deep, moral message embedded in the use of language surfaces here; and isn't this the wall we're up against? How do you overcome the politicised control of language (i.e. within a capitalist superstructure), when the dominant, mass media channels are continually equating simplicity with clarity? As if complexity cannot be delivered clearly, as if the analysis of the most simple language, won't equally reveal the flaws in that language.

As with Satan's speeches in Paradise Lost, so the control of media and political parties today, revealed in the most arbitrary of political comment, or news report. When I was an undergraduate, reading Satan's speeches, I was pointed to the fact that a single speech of about 30 lines contained 22 lies. I can't remember the particular speech, nor the accuracy of the tutor's claim, but I do know I found several lies. Who can listen to a Presidential Inauguration Speech, or the Queen's Christmas address, without drawing out a similar whitewashing of reality, by rhetoric?

The war on intelligence, on intellectualism, is a war on freedom, ultimately. Without the awareness to describe the limits of your social environment, you wake in night, though you dream in colour.

The show is available on the BBC iplayer until Wednesday 9.59pm. Happy watchings, UK people. Sorry, rest of the world.

"Goes the Logic" - George Ttoouli on Simon Turner on difficulty in art

Reading Simon's review of Geraldine Monk and Tim Atkins in issue 2 of Horizon, I've had this overwhelming desire to extend his ideas on 'difficulty' in art. (It will become apparent that this article is really about reader empowerment, but I am first writing out my logic-springboard.)

As Simon writes, "more often than not there is a shade of judgement in the use of the term: poetry is difficult when it refuses to give up its secrets in one sitting, when not every page is left justified, when the poem doesn’t round off neatly with a twee and epiphanic observation from the author’s own life."

I'm not entirely satisfied by this. Too often the 'avant' is dismissed by the school of quietude (to borrow Silliman's term, which makes life easier for me, but doesn't mean I'm politically allied to it, though I'd guess neither is he from recent asides - the 'Seth vs. Ron' link) in terms that mimic the easy dismissal of 'experimental writing' by the SoQ: 'difficult' is a shallow term, one that shouldn't be trusted. Why should I then trust a similarly simplistic rebuttal - even if I agree with the idea?

I think the argument warrants a full scale trebuchet behind it. Let's put it into terms that count. Here's one example of difficult: a DJ at an 'alternative' music night (yes, all attempts at definition of genre are bullshit) opens his set with 'Paint it Black' by the Rolling Stones. All present are in agreement that it's a great song; they rock out. His next track is a cover of 'Paint it Black'. So are the next 45 minutes of music. By different bands. Remixes. His own remixes. Versions cut with a dance track. Every version of the song he could find, for nearly an hour. After the fourth or fifth version, the crowd is becoming abusive. Several versions down the line, the dancefloor is clear, questions as to the DJs state of mind, mental health, need of being forcibly removed, are discussed. Two or three of the DJs friends are still laughing. After half an hour of versions, even the DJ's friends are beginning to get tired.

At some point, people might actually tune into the song and think, 'I used to like that song. Why?' At that point, the art kicks in, yes? You know, at that point, you're experiencing a real dialogue with the art. No art without participation, as the Arts Council England might point out, if it wasn't so busy counting heads.

For 'difficulty' then, I'd prefer to advance the notion of 'unexpectation'. I think most of my arguments with 'straighter' readers boil down to matters of expectation. I like poetry that surprises me, because it doesn't operate on the terms I've become accustomed to - it forces me to participate. Just as the crowd at a music night expect a DJ to play a set of tracks - some new, some classic, some that create a certain energy, others that give you time to go to the bar and refuel, and a Spice Girls track at the end of the night to clear the place and let the staff close up - similarly, people are used to reading poetry in a certain way and for a certain kind of meaning.

Take for example, this phrase of Simon's in reviewing Monk: "using the full spread of the page, á l’Olson, as a primary component in the generation of meaning". Ignoring the hilarious, though horrible, bit of frenchaise referencing, do people really expect a poem to use the full spread of the page to generate meaning? Even your 'average, diversely-attuned reader' (or ADA readers) doesn't come to a page of poetry expecting poetry to generate meaning in that way, though well done to Simon for pointing out how well Monk does it. As ADA readers, we do expect to be pushed to reinterpret our personal biases, perhaps, or to hang our preconceptions by the door.

What I'm interested in is trust and empowerment. When a reader comes to a poem, or book of poems, and says 'I want it to do this for me' and then throws the book across the room when it doesn't, the reader has failed, not the poetry. When a reader comes to a poem and says, 'this poem wants me to read it in this way' then the reader is doing well from the off. Pretty good, anyway, in my books.

From there, the reader can say, 'Yeah, I read it in this way and got something from it,' or, 'So I tried to read it on the terms it was asking, but ultimately it didn't leave anything but sand in my mouth'. That's a fair review. I'm trying to draw a distinction here between 'elevating oneself to the level of the poem' and being willing to see what a text wants from me, what kind of demands and rewards it might be offering. From there, any reader, ADA, common, dyslexic or merely a lonely, unadjectivised reader, is entirely justified in burning that book, or giving it to a local charity shop.

Again I say, I'm not arguing for 'right reading' here. Leave that to reprographics people. This is about the right for a reader to trust their instincts. In that regard, I'm certainly not arguing against someone who's read the full gamut of poetries available to them and chosen what they like. I do that a lot myself.

If you so happen to choose a 19th Century Romantic aesthetic over a 1960s Black Mountain aesthetic because you've read both and list one way, not t'other, fine by me. If you look into it and decide the SoQ's for you, or the Avants, fine! (You're an asshole if you choose wrong, but that's OK, I still like you. No, I take that back. Simon tells me I should take that back. Oh, nevermind.) You've done your work. You're (hopefully) open minded enough not to close down all other texts of a type of writing entirely. Sure, don't spend too long on the areas you know you've a history of boredom with, but don't get zealous about it: the differences in artistic experiences validate your personal tastes.

So it's the fear of the unexpected I have a problem with. Sure, too often, 'difficulty' is mistrusted because readers feel they need a PhD in The Phallic Symbolism of the Ampersand in the Poetry of Philip Larkin; or Correlations between the Rise of Reaganism, Thatcherism and the Lyric 'I' in Late Twentieth Century British Poetry; or The Exploitation of Parentheses in English Printed Verse; or Using Prairie Polyculture Systems to Understand the Long Poems of Elisabeth Bletsoe, etc. (Yes, better rein that in, having too much fun - but any others, please add them to the comments.) I don't like being made to feel stupid by a text either.

If readers can be taught to accept the unexpected, to interpret intention (and suddenly the image of Will Smith in 'Men in Black' shooting an eight year old cardboard cut-out in the head for carrying a textbook on particle physics springs to mind) then they can also be empowered to say what they want about a text's qualities, no matter how average or outside they feel from a system.

My main worry is that readers are deliberately excluded by certain critics and writers on the basis of their 'lack of knowledge'. Readers are made to feel insecure, inexpert, inadequate, insufficiently skilled, when it comes to making certain judgment calls on texts. It worked for the Chicago school in defence of their absurd deregulation of the financial markets (as Naomi Klein has said elsewhere) and it's used time and again by cliques of writers to defend varying degrees of shoddiness, or simply as a lash-out response.

And it damages readers. I feel like I need to start a campaign: "Reader! Do you feel like you've been pissed on by a critic, or a writer, for being too common to get what they were writing about? Well, never fear. It's OK to think a writer is shit, if you put the effort into reading their book and still didn't get it!" But that word 'effort' is loaded. At what point is a reader justified in rejecting a writer's work?

I have my biases and I don't hide them, but I do try to mediate them. Some negative critical arguments are justified, measured. If a reader can put their back into an attack and not simply fling about clichéd appraisals (e.g. 'reads like a cryptic crossword clue', or 'doesn't have any rhyme', or 'why is it all left-justified?'), then I'm wiling to give that reader the right to their expression.

Ultimately, there needs to be room to allow for all kinds of reading and writing: lazy reading, skim reading, automatic writing, validated reading, invalidated writing and the kind of reading habit that is prepared to take a text on its own terms. All of these are subjective assessments and the reader decides when to commit their time and energy, and how, as does the writer.

Writers should take responsibility for the fact that their writing is sometimes skewiff and not blame readers. And readers should be prepared to have their criticisms levelled if they aren't willing to appraise a text to the point they can rustle up a cogent response. (It's a bit late in the day, but I guess I should distinguish between a 'recommendation' - I liked/disliked - and a 'review', which weighs up a text's strengths in some kind of context.)

Difficulty, for me, is less about the quality of a text, more about the attitude and preconceptions a reader brings to, or the relationship the reader establishes with a text. If you can't overcome that barrier between your own version of reality and the reality a poem presents to you, then you're living a pinprick away from reality. Good luck maintaining the illusion, but from where I'm standing, you're missing out.

The Last Thing the Old Man Heard was...

...the unoriginal blathering of an idiot on the radio.

I just caught the last few lines of a radio play, in which a woman narrated, "The last thing she heard was the [somethingunoriginal] mute as a stone [more unoriginality]." The construction itself is a cliché, but to add cliché to cliché and then give this a prime, 6-7pm slot on BBC Radio 4 is the epitome of cultural stagnation, if you ask me.

So in tribute, I am proud to unveil the latest slightly pop, designed-to-annoy-Simon's-delicate-experimental-sensibilities, surrealistic game: "The [Last] [Thing] [the [Old] Man] [Heard] was [...]"

Based on Exquisite Corpse, the rules are simple: replace the relevant parts of the sentence to come up with the most satisfying response to the BBC's utter lack of inspiration or adventure.

E.g.

"The last thing the BBC Radio 4 Production Controller felt was the rusty halberd slipping between his buttocks."

"The only thing the reformed Al Qaeda Terrorist could think of to do was lapse by dropping a bomb full of Charlie Brookers on the BBC's Shepherd's Bush HQ."

"The first time George Ttoouli read Louis Macneice's The Dark Tower was like dropping contemporary BBC radio programming into a bucket of Pam Ayers' piss."

etc...

George Ttoouli - The Death of Poetry (Magazine Funding): A Polemic

[This was written about a month ago and sat on hold while I left the country, but seems timely now given a recent post by Roddy Lumsden about small poetry magazines at the Poets on Fire forums (to which it is, now I think about it, only indirectly linked). --GT]

'If you sit down, unimpassioned and uninspired, and tell yourself to write for so many hours, you will merely produce... some of that article which fills, so far as I can judge, two-thirds of most magazines - most easy to write, most weary to read - men call it "padding", and it is, to my mind, one of the most detestable things in modern literature.' -- Lewis Carroll

I'm on too many mailing lists, so my life has been perhaps more inordinately filled up with the floundering death wails of most ex-Arts Council funded magazines than your average poetry enthusiast's inbox (note I don't say lover here - lately, I've had a sneaking suspicion that my love of poetry has been seriously tempered over the years by a need for tolerance towards shoddy event management, partial clique-bathering and inconsistent editorial trends - and yes I know that makes me sound terribly ungenerous, but the clue is in the title of this article), but - if you'll permit the Carroll-inspired convoluted first sentence - really, who fucking cares anyway?

Yes, yes. I know, the old argument: poetry deserves to be supported by the state because most poets are socialists and they are good at heart, kind of like Big Issue sellers. OK, maybe I'm confused about the old argument, but I'm sure there are some commonly trotted out arguments that try to justify public spending on poetry, which tend to revolve almost entirely around the poets and the poetry.

Whatever those arguments are (please, this isn't a fascist blog, do feel free to trot out the arguments in comments), I'd like to sweep them aside because, frankly, all the arguments I've ever heard and forgotten or misremembered about why poetry magazines deserve support beyond their subscribers boil down to sidestepping the main point of magazine publishing. It's not about the content; it's about the production and the aesthetic approach to serialised publication.

Magazines are an outlet for particular tastes - editors saying, All youse guys' poetry tastes suck. I'm going to show youse guys what good poetry tastes smell like. I like poetry that mixes metaphors! Yeah! This is what makes a magazine like Magma successful. The editor changes every issue, so you can tell yourself, One day this might get better, one day, someone I like might edit an issue I don't have to burn in the back garden with all the rest. It is also what kept the completely subscriber-funded Bound Spiral going: the editor would only publish an issue when there was enough content of a sufficiently high standard to fill an issue. As a result, issues were sometimes years apart; at others, it was quarterly. The 'who' of the content didn't matter: it was the magazine's commitment to quality over time, not the editor's commitment to publishing mates.

The championing of taste and content is the death of interest in most poetry magazines; the magazine itself needs to be of interest, not the people it publishes. So when magazines profess a loyalty to particular authors, or styles, they deserve to be shot. When they trot out the same set of completely established, or completley unheard of names, they make an assumption that somebody, somewhere actually cares. And then the cheek of them to presume that, because it's poetry, they deserve to be state funded.

Style, production, quality! The reputation sells more than the content; the content barely defines the reputation. All style, all judging of the magazine by its cover. Why else do Golfer's Weekly, Car Monthly and Plumbers Annual all feature skimpily clad women on their covers? (Note, this is a made up fact containing guessed-at publication titles which may or may not exist, but this should in no way detract from the principle of the argument. Just look at Staying Alive's cover and then eat your words.)

I'm not really asking for the death of all poetry magazines; just those that are started by someone who thinks knowing how to use the photocopier at work and a stapler gives license to running 20+ issues of their mates gibbering in iambics about how much they love their pets. (Hopefully that isn't specific enough to constitute libel. Again, the sentiment is important, not the accuracy of the description of a magazine I received at work a few months ago.)

So we should applaud the collapse of poetry magazines run by people who know nothing about how to create a magazine - an original magazine. And we should applaud the magazines that survive the Arts Council's culling of magazine funding because that is a sign of their innovation as well as, no doubt, because we like to have our ideas affirmed, the innovation of their editorial tastes (though this is, naturally, a secondary byproduct which makes us very happy and keeps us loyal subscribers). Vive The Believer! Long live McSweeneys! Where are the British equivalents?

Nevermind that the recent cutbacks will consolidate the UK's reputation for being a poetry-dead climate, one in which poetry is not allowed to thrive in government-funded streams such as education or the arts. Nevermind that the Arts Council's justification for the culling of UK poetry magazines was based on research conducted in Scotland; nevermind this research ignores the differences between the poetry-reading cultures in Scotland and England and Wales and Northern Ireland. Nevermind that the Arts Council is making dramatic cutbacks across the arts despite receiving a budgetary increase of 3% in 2008 and this despite the budgetary freeze in 2005. Nevermind the major structural changes in the Arts Council's head office, including a change in the head of literature and the departure of a number of key executives, after the round of dismissals and after some late, potentially unpopular, appointments were made. (Oh wait, thinks the reader, you mean the statements in this paragraph aren't concocted on the spot in an imaginative fashion? This blogzine is sounding more and more conventional by the second. That's it. I'm cancelling my subscription to the newsfeed.)