Wales - land of the level playing field. That’s what people want. But in a country that consists mainly of hills, crags and mountains these things seem so hard to provide. What I’m actually talking about is publishing. It amazes me but there are still plenty out there who imagine the whole thing to be an enormous fix.
The great Welsh conspiracy theory, which has been around for longer than I have, still has a long way to run. This theory says, depending on where you stand, that Dafydd Elis Thomas is a CIA plant, that Cardiff is run by Roman Abramovich and that the Masons are in charge of Snowdonia National Park. Why else such beautiful curtains in the new café? It also says that publishing in Wales is in the hands of a self-perpetuating cabal of men who only ever let their friends into the inner circle. This explains, apparently, why Robert Minhinnick and Gillian Clarke always seem to get their work into the spotlight while Wyn Islwyn Davies and Laurence Eau de Cologne Jones never get past the editor’s doormat. The fact that Minhinnick and Clarke are actually good writers is ignored.
Conspiracy theories run deep. The most civilised and considerate of our authors can be seen as part of some pre-ordained plan to keep the wannabes out. Dannie Abse wins Book of the Year because he’s a mate of Nigel Jenkins. Tony Curtis gets a special issue devoted to his work because he secretly owns the publisher. Gwyneth Lewis headlines the festival on the grounds that as well as the organiser she too is a member of the order of the water buffalo. I’ve made those things up but that doesn’t stop some out there believing.
For the talentedly challenged (as well as, come to think of it, the actually talented) competitions provide a way out. Once your entry is in there no one knows who you are. You and Roger McGough and Stephen King all have your work in the same bag. Being judged on its quality alone. Your name has no bearing. It’s a beguiling thought.
Loads of organisations have now latched onto this desire on the part of the unpublished to get on board as soon as possible. There are competitions for novels, pamphlets, essays, single poems and fifty-word short stories. Dark Tales Monthly offers £100 for the best piece of goth short fiction. The Harry Bowling Prize offers £1000 for the best new adult novel (send chapter one and a synopsis). The Troubadour Poetry Competition has Maura Dooley awarding £1000 to the best poem entered. No length restriction. Brevity offers £50 for the best flash fiction submission. What’s flash fiction? Short. Fuller details of these and other competitions can be found at http://www.academi.org/opportunities/
An earlier version of this posting appeared as The Insider in the Western Mail of September 5th, 2009
Sunday, 13 September 2009
Tuesday, 8 September 2009
Still Shocking
Writers are very keen to make it new. It comes with the territory. Since the world never stays the same for more than five minutes neither should writing. New ideas, new forms, new styles. This is the life blood of the word. Readers, however, are far less keen. They like what they know. Novels with plots and conventional dialogue. Things with beginnings, middles and ends. With maybe a bit of excitement en route. They want to read novels that engage them in much the same way that well fitting shoes do. The whole of writing boiled down to five classic plots. Rise to fame, fall from grace, win love, lose it and death. Almost everything in literature can be fitted into one of those. The author of that writers’ standby, One Hundred and One Useful Plots, is exaggerating.
But newness is what writers crave, or they say they do. The relentless pursuit of the cutting edge. The late novelist B S Johnson had a book which came in a box. The chapters were not numbered and could be shuffled so that the story’s outcome was always unexpected. Novelists from the French Oulipo group created works that, for example, consisted entirely of words which did not contain the letter ‘e’ or were constructed of text found on railway stations. There have also been many attempts to create extremely short novels. Microfiction. Tales that are only two or three sentences long. Perfect for today. In fact at Twitter fiction where text has to be within 140 characters is on the rise. Here’s a typical example: “Now, piggybacking on solar emissions, my uploaded consciousness will carry his Gospel to the stars. It’s true: Jesus wants me for a sunbeam.”
In the days when answerphones were machines that contained twin cassette decks, one for outgoing messages and the other for incoming I pushed the envelope a bit. I wrote a novel that consisted of chapters that when spoken would fit onto the 30 seconds of the outgoing tape. I created new episodes weekly. My phone line was jammed with fans ringing in to hear the next episode.
Parthian’s new anthology, appropriately titled Nu – Fiction & Stuff is a 2009 example of where the new generation is heading. It’s edited by Tomos Owen from the Rhondda and contains not a single example of formal experiment or postmodernist challenge. No short stories written in text message nor impenetrable swamps of vocabulary dancing before your eyes. Instead there are straight ahead and, from a plot point of view, often refreshing new takes on old life. Susie Wild drunk while swimming. Bethan Michael rerunning Shameless in Blaenau. Alys Conran working out if Alex is gay or not. Nu costs a mere £6.99. Give the new a chance. Try now.
An earlier version of this post appeared in The Western Mail on 22 August, 2009 as The Insider
But newness is what writers crave, or they say they do. The relentless pursuit of the cutting edge. The late novelist B S Johnson had a book which came in a box. The chapters were not numbered and could be shuffled so that the story’s outcome was always unexpected. Novelists from the French Oulipo group created works that, for example, consisted entirely of words which did not contain the letter ‘e’ or were constructed of text found on railway stations. There have also been many attempts to create extremely short novels. Microfiction. Tales that are only two or three sentences long. Perfect for today. In fact at Twitter fiction where text has to be within 140 characters is on the rise. Here’s a typical example: “Now, piggybacking on solar emissions, my uploaded consciousness will carry his Gospel to the stars. It’s true: Jesus wants me for a sunbeam.”
In the days when answerphones were machines that contained twin cassette decks, one for outgoing messages and the other for incoming I pushed the envelope a bit. I wrote a novel that consisted of chapters that when spoken would fit onto the 30 seconds of the outgoing tape. I created new episodes weekly. My phone line was jammed with fans ringing in to hear the next episode.
Parthian’s new anthology, appropriately titled Nu – Fiction & Stuff is a 2009 example of where the new generation is heading. It’s edited by Tomos Owen from the Rhondda and contains not a single example of formal experiment or postmodernist challenge. No short stories written in text message nor impenetrable swamps of vocabulary dancing before your eyes. Instead there are straight ahead and, from a plot point of view, often refreshing new takes on old life. Susie Wild drunk while swimming. Bethan Michael rerunning Shameless in Blaenau. Alys Conran working out if Alex is gay or not. Nu costs a mere £6.99. Give the new a chance. Try now.
An earlier version of this post appeared in The Western Mail on 22 August, 2009 as The Insider
Saturday, 5 September 2009
Vino Callapso
What might there be between poetry and painting? In the brave days of the sixties counter culture this place was called the intermedia. Some people imagined that in the future all art forms would merge into a homogenous and culturally satisfying mass. Wall to wall painting. Poetry in everything. Didn’t happen. But there were a few around who wanted to explore.
Meic Stephens, the then pretty traditional editor of Poetry Wales, produced a version of Eugene Gomringer’s famous concrete poem, Silencio. In the original there’s a block of print made from the word for silence with a gap of real silence in the centre. Meic’s version substituted the Welsh equivalent.
Reaction was pedictable. Streams of jokes about poems and building sites and outrage from those who considered anything not in the styles of the long past as rubbish.
Concrete poetry was supposed to save the literary world. But naturally it didn’t. After a few flashes it found itself in the early eighties up a side alley with nowhere further to travel.
In the years since virtually no one in Wales has picked up the baton. There were loads of early Finch visual things but not a lot after the start of the ninties. Cardiff’s Lloyd Robson has, in some of his wilder moments, used mangled typefaces to good effect. And the tri-lingual bard of the north, Peter Meilleur (otherwise known as Childe Roland), continues to produce visual work with words that often defies description.
But that planned common ground for poet and painter just faded. It’s a pity.
In London recently at the ICA’s Poor Old Tired Horse concrete poetry exhibition you could see where some of this might have taken us. Lots of stuff from the Scots, whose climate clearly encourages innovation – Ian Hamilton Finlay’s waves and boats. Lillian Lijn’s machines that made poetry spin. The late Dom Sylvester Houédard’ s meditative typewriter creations. Carl Andre’s words set out like piles of bricks. David Hockney. Robert Smithson. Nothing in the slightest bit Welsh.
Although to be fair they did invite me up to give a sound poetry reading. Took me right back to where it all began. Puzzlement, passion, precision and sore throats.
On the train back I got talking to a completely plastered bloke who’d just flown in from a holiday in Malaga. “Poetry’s brilliant”, he said, after I’d told him where I’d been and what I’d been doing. “But I never listen to it myself”. Then he got off in a drunken rush at Reading leaving his passport, tickets and wallet on the seat. The woman next to me handed the stuff in to the guard. “I wouldn’t try to contact him yet,” she advised, “he’s had too much vino collapso”. Poetry again. It’s in everything.
An earlier version of this posting appeared in the Western Mail on 22 August, 2009 as The Insider
Meic Stephens, the then pretty traditional editor of Poetry Wales, produced a version of Eugene Gomringer’s famous concrete poem, Silencio. In the original there’s a block of print made from the word for silence with a gap of real silence in the centre. Meic’s version substituted the Welsh equivalent.
Reaction was pedictable. Streams of jokes about poems and building sites and outrage from those who considered anything not in the styles of the long past as rubbish.
Concrete poetry was supposed to save the literary world. But naturally it didn’t. After a few flashes it found itself in the early eighties up a side alley with nowhere further to travel.
In the years since virtually no one in Wales has picked up the baton. There were loads of early Finch visual things but not a lot after the start of the ninties. Cardiff’s Lloyd Robson has, in some of his wilder moments, used mangled typefaces to good effect. And the tri-lingual bard of the north, Peter Meilleur (otherwise known as Childe Roland), continues to produce visual work with words that often defies description.
But that planned common ground for poet and painter just faded. It’s a pity.
In London recently at the ICA’s Poor Old Tired Horse concrete poetry exhibition you could see where some of this might have taken us. Lots of stuff from the Scots, whose climate clearly encourages innovation – Ian Hamilton Finlay’s waves and boats. Lillian Lijn’s machines that made poetry spin. The late Dom Sylvester Houédard’ s meditative typewriter creations. Carl Andre’s words set out like piles of bricks. David Hockney. Robert Smithson. Nothing in the slightest bit Welsh.
Although to be fair they did invite me up to give a sound poetry reading. Took me right back to where it all began. Puzzlement, passion, precision and sore throats.
On the train back I got talking to a completely plastered bloke who’d just flown in from a holiday in Malaga. “Poetry’s brilliant”, he said, after I’d told him where I’d been and what I’d been doing. “But I never listen to it myself”. Then he got off in a drunken rush at Reading leaving his passport, tickets and wallet on the seat. The woman next to me handed the stuff in to the guard. “I wouldn’t try to contact him yet,” she advised, “he’s had too much vino collapso”. Poetry again. It’s in everything.
An earlier version of this posting appeared in the Western Mail on 22 August, 2009 as The Insider
Saturday, 15 August 2009
Roaring Down The Motorway
Setting off on a career as a writer without checking how things work is a little like driving a car without reading the handbook. You’ve got the talent and the push. It’s in you and it has to come out. You are into fifth gear before you know it and roaring down the Motorway with a grin on your chops. But if you’d bothered to read up before you flew then you’d be able to set cruise control and adjust the air con. You’d know how to change the music from the steering column. Would know where the heated rear window button was, and, come to that, might have checked your tyre pressures and understood that this has a diesel engine which didn’t run on unleaded, the stuff with which you were now about to fill up.
One of the last things many new writers buy is the annual Writer’s Handbook from Macmillan. At £14.99 a go you can see why. Yet this yellow doorstop compendium of advice and addresses makes pretty essential reading. If you expect to go anywhere other than the end of the street with your stuff then you really should consult it.
The new 2010 edition has just appeared and covers everything from UK and USA publisher listings to prizes, details of literary societies, listings of agents, regional newspapers, TV producers and information on those swirling pools of misinformation, electronic publishing and the future of the book.
Chris Hamilton-Emery, the man behind Salt publishing, contributes a tight and accurate survey of the poetry scene. General editor Barry Turner visits international book fairs – “A word of advice to any author who is thinking of attending a book fair. Don’t.” Nick Hodder covers comedy. Ian Spring explains tax and accounting.
There is also a timely piece on how not to write a novel. “The myth of the lonely, misunderstood writer against the world, destined eventually to emerge triumphant, endures partly by virtue of the occasional exceptions that prove the rule.” The reality is that most failing writers will continue to fail. The big lottery of metropolitan success and bestsellerdom sits out there like gold at the end of the rainbow. You turn up at the corner shop each week and buy more tickets. But you never win. “As a writer you only have one job: to make the reader turn the page.” And to that I’d add that first of all you have to make them pick up the book.
Are there too many writers out there? Maybe. But the activity can generate desirable feelings of self-worth and, for many, do something to fix and explain why it is that we are what we are. Literature can be life enhancing. Buy the Handbook. Let’s have more.
.
A version of this post appeared as The Insider in the Western Mail of 15th August, 2009
Tuesday, 11 August 2009
Wanting To Be Famous Again
How famous is Cardiff? We like to think the world now knows just who we are. Capital of Wales, Millennium Stadium, Singer of the World, and an iconic poem across the front of the WMC. That’s quite a fair step on from Clark’s pies and coal in the streets. But you try it in California or Texas or even, for that matter, some parts of Europe. Cardiff? Never heard of that place. There’s still a way to go.
In Swansea, which ought to have an even larger problem given that they are half the capital’s size and merely the country’s second city things are managed with less desperation. Wales’ tallest building is already in place and the Dylan Thomas Prize, £40K for the best book in English by someone under 30, brings the world to their doors. Around the world Dylan’s name still works.
But back in the Capital all is not lost. The annual Academi Cardiff International Poetry Competition, £5000 for a single poem of less than 40 lines has just been awarded. Aboard one of the glass-topped Bay cruisers, laden this time with orange juice, poets and glasses of wine, Jane Routh walked away with the big cheque. National Poet Gillian Clarke presided, told us of her childhood sneaking down the Ely subway and walking along the Castle’s animal wall. Read us poems about Obama and the Stadium. Pulled Cardiff and verse closely together.
The Cardiff International Poetry Competition, backed by the Council is in its twenty-fifth year now. As a money prize it ranks around third in the UK and attracts a huge entry from all over the world. Bards on Honolulu and Cape Town send in their stuff. So, too, do poets from Ponty and Ely and Roath. The big selling point with such contests is that nobody’s name is revealed until the judging is done. Work gets read for its quality rather than by whom it might have be written. It’s an appealing prospect, especially to those who are convinced that publishing is entirely run as a conspiracy by a self-selecting elite. Poetry Competitions are equitable, straightforward, fair.
The 2010 competition is to be judged by the new editor of Poetry Wales, Zoë Skoulding and the woman who was running right behind Carol Ann Duffy in the race for the Poet Laureate, Jackie Kay. Entering costs £6 a poem with entry forms available from the Academi. Check online at www.academi.org or send an sae to P.O. Box 438, Cardiff CF10 5YA, Closing date is 29th January, 2010 which gives loads of time but early entries have an excellent chance.
Tips on winning? Read as much poetry as you can. Read the work of the judges. Send your best. Try sending in more than one example. Hope.
A version of this post appeared as The Insider in the Western Mail of 8th August, 2009.
In Swansea, which ought to have an even larger problem given that they are half the capital’s size and merely the country’s second city things are managed with less desperation. Wales’ tallest building is already in place and the Dylan Thomas Prize, £40K for the best book in English by someone under 30, brings the world to their doors. Around the world Dylan’s name still works.
But back in the Capital all is not lost. The annual Academi Cardiff International Poetry Competition, £5000 for a single poem of less than 40 lines has just been awarded. Aboard one of the glass-topped Bay cruisers, laden this time with orange juice, poets and glasses of wine, Jane Routh walked away with the big cheque. National Poet Gillian Clarke presided, told us of her childhood sneaking down the Ely subway and walking along the Castle’s animal wall. Read us poems about Obama and the Stadium. Pulled Cardiff and verse closely together.
The Cardiff International Poetry Competition, backed by the Council is in its twenty-fifth year now. As a money prize it ranks around third in the UK and attracts a huge entry from all over the world. Bards on Honolulu and Cape Town send in their stuff. So, too, do poets from Ponty and Ely and Roath. The big selling point with such contests is that nobody’s name is revealed until the judging is done. Work gets read for its quality rather than by whom it might have be written. It’s an appealing prospect, especially to those who are convinced that publishing is entirely run as a conspiracy by a self-selecting elite. Poetry Competitions are equitable, straightforward, fair.
The 2010 competition is to be judged by the new editor of Poetry Wales, Zoë Skoulding and the woman who was running right behind Carol Ann Duffy in the race for the Poet Laureate, Jackie Kay. Entering costs £6 a poem with entry forms available from the Academi. Check online at www.academi.org or send an sae to P.O. Box 438, Cardiff CF10 5YA, Closing date is 29th January, 2010 which gives loads of time but early entries have an excellent chance.
Tips on winning? Read as much poetry as you can. Read the work of the judges. Send your best. Try sending in more than one example. Hope.
A version of this post appeared as The Insider in the Western Mail of 8th August, 2009.
Saturday, 1 August 2009
Wales and Its National Poet
How much of a mark do National Poets make? Wales’s first, Gwyneth Lewis, has a poem right across the front of the Wales Millennium Centre. Gwyn Thomas, the ebullient second, has words in the stones on the top of Snowdon. The seemingly unstoppable Gillian Clarke, the current National bard, has her work in the landscape at Barry and soon at Ebbw Vale and in the mouths and minds of nearly every Welsh school child. National Poets celebrate, concentrate, and elevate. They take poetry where it should go, out there to the people. They are ambassadors as much as they are creators. In their hands poetry becomes something we all own.
There may, however, be probles up ahead. In England, where the Poet Laureate was once a job for life and in its present incarnation still lasts for ten years, they have a population approaching 60 million and a pool of poetic talent as large as France. Once you’ve done your stint you get knighted. Arise Sir Gwyn. But in Wales that’s a fantasy – we have no civic honours of our own. Yet.
The real difficulty is our level of turnover. We are using up poets at the rate of one every eighteen months. It’s even faster with the National Children’s Poet, Bardd Plant, where the post-holders change on an annual basis. Our population is a mere three and a half million. Now I know we are a pretty talented people and have poetic ability well above the world average. But if we carry on as we are we are still going to run out fairly soon.
Currently the National Poet has world-wide recognition. Due in part to Gillian’s charisma, energy, talent and ability to put herself about the international stage the world knows of Wales. That’s a harder thing to do when you change language. Would the role of National Poet be less visible if its highspots came from the Welsh tradition? In the sequence we are following the next National Bard will be one who writes first in the older tongue. Will it matter that such a poet will be unknown outside our borders? Can the Wales of today really sustain a National Poet who works in one language only? On the other hand should not the National Poet be competent in both? And how many of those are there about? Even the late R S Thomas, language campaigner from the front lines, only ever delivered his verse in Saesneg.
There are arguments here for picking a winner and then extending the period of service. How different might things be if Gwyn Thomas, Gillian Clarke or Gwyneth Lewis had been appointed for five years, for ten or even for life? If you have a view please let me know.
A version of this post appeared as The Insider in the Western Mail of 1st August, 2009
There may, however, be probles up ahead. In England, where the Poet Laureate was once a job for life and in its present incarnation still lasts for ten years, they have a population approaching 60 million and a pool of poetic talent as large as France. Once you’ve done your stint you get knighted. Arise Sir Gwyn. But in Wales that’s a fantasy – we have no civic honours of our own. Yet.
The real difficulty is our level of turnover. We are using up poets at the rate of one every eighteen months. It’s even faster with the National Children’s Poet, Bardd Plant, where the post-holders change on an annual basis. Our population is a mere three and a half million. Now I know we are a pretty talented people and have poetic ability well above the world average. But if we carry on as we are we are still going to run out fairly soon.
Currently the National Poet has world-wide recognition. Due in part to Gillian’s charisma, energy, talent and ability to put herself about the international stage the world knows of Wales. That’s a harder thing to do when you change language. Would the role of National Poet be less visible if its highspots came from the Welsh tradition? In the sequence we are following the next National Bard will be one who writes first in the older tongue. Will it matter that such a poet will be unknown outside our borders? Can the Wales of today really sustain a National Poet who works in one language only? On the other hand should not the National Poet be competent in both? And how many of those are there about? Even the late R S Thomas, language campaigner from the front lines, only ever delivered his verse in Saesneg.
There are arguments here for picking a winner and then extending the period of service. How different might things be if Gwyn Thomas, Gillian Clarke or Gwyneth Lewis had been appointed for five years, for ten or even for life? If you have a view please let me know.
A version of this post appeared as The Insider in the Western Mail of 1st August, 2009
Saturday, 25 July 2009
Creased By Fug
Somewhere in the world of writing there’s an academic study of the connection between writers and drink. Something which explains how great works rise from the sprawl of beer mats, the fog of talk and the slumping numbness of mind that alcohol induces. Why is it that the greatest minds of our generation can be those creased by fug and flattened by hangover? The poets whose verse only trips, sparks and rattles when powered by Brains or allowed to marinade in a sea of red wine.
The Dylan Thomas legend is something that follows Welsh writers everywhere. Sets us up in the minds of outsiders as alcoholic mumblers and Rabelaisian verse weavers content only to stumble from bar to boozer flashing the tropes and images of our musical poetry as we go. The problem with this myth, naturally, is that, for many, it’s actually the truth. Writers do spend time in bars, many of them, most of them even. A number have beaten the same path as Dylan. Loosing their manuscripts down the back of hotels’ plush upholstery, insulting barmaids in back bars and being forever long on hope and short on cash.
It’s almost always men too. Welsh writing is rich with male heroes who are golden at six but incoherent by ten. Some of the most respected among us have done their time sprawled in doorways and lying down quietly on front lawns. Are our women writers in this league just yet? Not quite, but coming soon.
Could this be a Welsh thing? Hugh MacDiarmid, the great Scots poet, reckoned that his drinkers (and he was referring here to the morose boozers of Glasgow) preferred “the hard-bitten, the recalcitrant, the sarcastic, the saturnine, the cross-grained and the cankered” to the sort of confiding, intimate, ingratiating, hail-fellow-well-met drinkers found in the rest of the British Isles. By the rest of the British Isles he meant, I guess, the English. Although there is certainly an element of secret-society, intimate wahoo about the drinkers of Gwynedd and a quantity of all right skip have one with me about some of those found in Cardiff.
Welsh writers also love drink related causes. There is huge support for the establishment of a pub in the grounds of St Fagans. Someone has come up with a name – Tafarn yr Iorwerth Peate. But it isn’t there yet. The Save the Vulcan campaign, to keep the Victorian south of Cardiff Prison in shape for the twentieth first century is led by authors. John Williams, Charlotte Greig, Ifor Thomas, Des Barry, Sean Burke and others have consumed beer in quantity in pursuit of that cause (and have got a result too - which is a really unexpected bonus - The Vulcan goes on - for now).
And when there are campaigns to put poems in public places where do these new verses end up? On the back of beer mats. Where else?
A version of this post appeared as The Insider in the Western Mail of Saturday 25th July, 2009
The Dylan Thomas legend is something that follows Welsh writers everywhere. Sets us up in the minds of outsiders as alcoholic mumblers and Rabelaisian verse weavers content only to stumble from bar to boozer flashing the tropes and images of our musical poetry as we go. The problem with this myth, naturally, is that, for many, it’s actually the truth. Writers do spend time in bars, many of them, most of them even. A number have beaten the same path as Dylan. Loosing their manuscripts down the back of hotels’ plush upholstery, insulting barmaids in back bars and being forever long on hope and short on cash.
It’s almost always men too. Welsh writing is rich with male heroes who are golden at six but incoherent by ten. Some of the most respected among us have done their time sprawled in doorways and lying down quietly on front lawns. Are our women writers in this league just yet? Not quite, but coming soon.
Could this be a Welsh thing? Hugh MacDiarmid, the great Scots poet, reckoned that his drinkers (and he was referring here to the morose boozers of Glasgow) preferred “the hard-bitten, the recalcitrant, the sarcastic, the saturnine, the cross-grained and the cankered” to the sort of confiding, intimate, ingratiating, hail-fellow-well-met drinkers found in the rest of the British Isles. By the rest of the British Isles he meant, I guess, the English. Although there is certainly an element of secret-society, intimate wahoo about the drinkers of Gwynedd and a quantity of all right skip have one with me about some of those found in Cardiff.
Welsh writers also love drink related causes. There is huge support for the establishment of a pub in the grounds of St Fagans. Someone has come up with a name – Tafarn yr Iorwerth Peate. But it isn’t there yet. The Save the Vulcan campaign, to keep the Victorian south of Cardiff Prison in shape for the twentieth first century is led by authors. John Williams, Charlotte Greig, Ifor Thomas, Des Barry, Sean Burke and others have consumed beer in quantity in pursuit of that cause (and have got a result too - which is a really unexpected bonus - The Vulcan goes on - for now).
And when there are campaigns to put poems in public places where do these new verses end up? On the back of beer mats. Where else?
A version of this post appeared as The Insider in the Western Mail of Saturday 25th July, 2009
Wednesday, 22 July 2009
Be-Bop Is Back
Did the Beat Generation ever reach Wales? Can anyone now remember what that generation even was? Jack Kerouac holding his thumb out and hitchhiking right across America. Allen Ginsberg riding boxcars boxcars boxcars. Gregory Corso drinking wine into the night, reciting his verse at the sky. Burroughs slicing his novels into the shape of the future. The whole lot a free wheeling, free loving, free speaking charge straight at conservative authority. The paintings on the walls were great swirls of colour, Pollock, de Kooning, the abstract expressionists. On the player were Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie blowing be-bop like there was no tomorrow. Up ahead was nirvana and a new way of living in the world.
An American dream, naturally. But one which seemed to work, for a while. Best that ever happened here was the single copy of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl that I found, unaccountably, on the shelves of the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge’s Bookshop in Cardiff’s Friary. That, perhaps, and the old lags blowing trumpets and smoking things they shouldn’t in the back bar of the Moulders Arms.
Somehow the idea of taking off with nothing in mind other than the journey didn’t catch on in Wales. Hitch hard westwards and you got to Tenby by dinner time. Sit down and eat chips with the retired and the families on holiday. Not the same as three long days on the road to get to Denver where jazz and shimmering poetry awaited you.
To be Beat you had to wear a black polo neck and grow your hair. Made you look like a rebel even if you actually weren’t one. There were loads of those in Wales. Welsh literature was barely dented by the movement. The nearest we got was John Tripp’s famous appearance at the Reardon Smith Lecture Theatre wearing cord trousers and no tie. The retired ladies in the front row tutted. Couldn’t he turn himself out a little better?
That was all so far back that almost all movement participants have now died. But the spirit hangs on. Dwang, Michael Curran’s hardback hand-bound magazine of Beat fellow travellers, has just appeared from the Tangerine Press. This is writing reaching its public like it used to. With style and class and, in Dwang’s case, a genuine modicum of excitement. If you are an aficionado you’ll recognise some of the names (and be surprised by others). Edward Lucie-Smith, Dan Fante, Wes Magee, William Wantling, chronicler of factory life Fred Voss, A D Winas, Charles Plymell, the amazing guitar-wielding Billy Childish, grand old man of British Beatdom Jim Burns, Doug Blazek. The hunt for freedom is still there in the writing. Check eatmytangerine.com for details of where to get your copy.
A version of this posting originally appeared as The Insider in the Western Mail of Saturday 18th July, 2009
An American dream, naturally. But one which seemed to work, for a while. Best that ever happened here was the single copy of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl that I found, unaccountably, on the shelves of the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge’s Bookshop in Cardiff’s Friary. That, perhaps, and the old lags blowing trumpets and smoking things they shouldn’t in the back bar of the Moulders Arms.
Somehow the idea of taking off with nothing in mind other than the journey didn’t catch on in Wales. Hitch hard westwards and you got to Tenby by dinner time. Sit down and eat chips with the retired and the families on holiday. Not the same as three long days on the road to get to Denver where jazz and shimmering poetry awaited you.
To be Beat you had to wear a black polo neck and grow your hair. Made you look like a rebel even if you actually weren’t one. There were loads of those in Wales. Welsh literature was barely dented by the movement. The nearest we got was John Tripp’s famous appearance at the Reardon Smith Lecture Theatre wearing cord trousers and no tie. The retired ladies in the front row tutted. Couldn’t he turn himself out a little better?
That was all so far back that almost all movement participants have now died. But the spirit hangs on. Dwang, Michael Curran’s hardback hand-bound magazine of Beat fellow travellers, has just appeared from the Tangerine Press. This is writing reaching its public like it used to. With style and class and, in Dwang’s case, a genuine modicum of excitement. If you are an aficionado you’ll recognise some of the names (and be surprised by others). Edward Lucie-Smith, Dan Fante, Wes Magee, William Wantling, chronicler of factory life Fred Voss, A D Winas, Charles Plymell, the amazing guitar-wielding Billy Childish, grand old man of British Beatdom Jim Burns, Doug Blazek. The hunt for freedom is still there in the writing. Check eatmytangerine.com for details of where to get your copy.
A version of this posting originally appeared as The Insider in the Western Mail of Saturday 18th July, 2009
Saturday, 11 July 2009
Are Thespians The Best Reciters?
Stand still for long enough and the whole world comes round again. Spelling Bees were back last year. Competitive remembering of the right letters for accommodation and encyclopaedia. Prizes if you could do antidisestablishmentarianism without drawing breath. This year it’s poetry recitation. Bright young faces on the podium wandering lonely as a cloud and without a piece of script or an autocue anywhere to be seen.
Is this the right way to enjoy poetry? Does remembering the stuff by rote enhance the art form, lift the spirit and excite the mind? Possibly. Verse, we need to remind ourselves, predates print, predates mass ability to read and possible even predates writing itself. A poetry that rhymed and scanned, that had rhythm, that beat like the blood beats, was easy to remember. Great tales of the tribe’s history, of victorious battles and the doings of the gods were cast as epic verse. That way no one forgot.
But that’s hardly something we need to bother with today. This is a world of constant data flood. But well recited, well written poetry does sound good. Hearing it sing in the air is one of life’s great experiences. Trouble is there are a lot of mumblers out there.
Then there’s the matter of the author. Are they the best reciters of their own stuff? Many listeners attend poetry readings not just for the poetry but also to see the poet and to hear how they think it should sound. To hear what they have to say by way of introduction and contextualisation. To get a handle on what the poem is about. That’s rarely available when poetry is recited by actors.
There has been a rise recently in thespians appearing on TV and on public platforms reciting selections from the greats. Some do it well. It’s also the only way most of us are going to get to hear Milton, Donne, Wordsworth and Hughes, given that these great guys are all dead.
Yet the practice remains a problem for the living. Contemporary poets get half their income from live readings. Public capacity for poetry is limited. Poets need to grab what they can get. Should otherwise workless actors be moving in on their territory? How would it be if poets started going up for parts in plays and putting themselves forward for voice-overs in adverts? Remember, said Mr Bookseller to Mr Tesco. I sell novels you do cans of beans. Stick to what you are best at. And we all know how well that worked out.
The late Ray Smith used to recite Harri Webb’s stuff on television. So did Harri, on occasion. But Ray always got paid more. There’s a lesson here somewhere but I’m not sure what it is.
A version of this post appeared as The Insider in the Western Mail of 11th July, 2009
Is this the right way to enjoy poetry? Does remembering the stuff by rote enhance the art form, lift the spirit and excite the mind? Possibly. Verse, we need to remind ourselves, predates print, predates mass ability to read and possible even predates writing itself. A poetry that rhymed and scanned, that had rhythm, that beat like the blood beats, was easy to remember. Great tales of the tribe’s history, of victorious battles and the doings of the gods were cast as epic verse. That way no one forgot.
But that’s hardly something we need to bother with today. This is a world of constant data flood. But well recited, well written poetry does sound good. Hearing it sing in the air is one of life’s great experiences. Trouble is there are a lot of mumblers out there.
Then there’s the matter of the author. Are they the best reciters of their own stuff? Many listeners attend poetry readings not just for the poetry but also to see the poet and to hear how they think it should sound. To hear what they have to say by way of introduction and contextualisation. To get a handle on what the poem is about. That’s rarely available when poetry is recited by actors.
There has been a rise recently in thespians appearing on TV and on public platforms reciting selections from the greats. Some do it well. It’s also the only way most of us are going to get to hear Milton, Donne, Wordsworth and Hughes, given that these great guys are all dead.
Yet the practice remains a problem for the living. Contemporary poets get half their income from live readings. Public capacity for poetry is limited. Poets need to grab what they can get. Should otherwise workless actors be moving in on their territory? How would it be if poets started going up for parts in plays and putting themselves forward for voice-overs in adverts? Remember, said Mr Bookseller to Mr Tesco. I sell novels you do cans of beans. Stick to what you are best at. And we all know how well that worked out.
The late Ray Smith used to recite Harri Webb’s stuff on television. So did Harri, on occasion. But Ray always got paid more. There’s a lesson here somewhere but I’m not sure what it is.
A version of this post appeared as The Insider in the Western Mail of 11th July, 2009
Saturday, 4 July 2009
Don't Put Bricks Through The Library Window
I checked the periodical racks at the local mini market this morning. Huge stack of pamphlets about the last days of Ninian Park. Boxing Monthly. Fighters On Top. Rock Star. Rap Star. Porn Star. Construction News. The Puzzler. Yours. Ok. Heat. Nuts. Lots of things full of pictures. Nothing at all to actually read.
There was a dream, once, that the literate world would enlarge and we’d be engulfed by great works and our lives would change. Might that still happen? At the brand new Roath Library someone has already put the door in with a brick. Attendance is up at Central but that’s mostly from punters going in there to check their emails. Magazine circulation figures wobble and sink. Why would they do anything else? Could it be that we no longer want to read new work this way?
I stood in the rain, once, for six hours outside the old Cardiff Library trying to sell poetry magazines. Shifted two. Had 10p given to me by an old lady who thought I was a deserving cause. Then a desperate wearing a stained mack came up and told me to sod off as this was his pitch. Literature was clearly for the specialist.
But then when you read a magazine like the new New Welsh Review you wonder why? Here’s Kathryn Gray, the hip new editor, giving us all something that’s genuinely exciting to engage with. Writing that matters, with a new direction and seemingly boundless energy again.
Inside is Kitty Sewell on the rise of crime writing. Rachel Trezise giving us street-wise band-chasing fiction full of wide boys and amphetamine cool. Thoroughly enjoyable poetry from Joe Dunthorne, Damian Walford Davies (a man these days who just can’t stop), Anne Stevenson and Meirion Jordan. Tim Lebbon reprising that master of Welsh dark fiction, Arthur Machen. Richard Gwyn rattling the bars in Sicily. There are also decent reviews and an excellent piece on Wales’s late master photographer, Philip Jones Griffiths.
This is issue number eighty-four, which ought to make the Review venerable. But it doesn’t read like that. £5.99 a copy. But buy it cheaper by post.
Agenda, the English Agenda that is, an erudite and pretty old fashionedly solid journal of letters, has come out with a bumper Welsh issue. The last time this happened its editorial reports, was fifty issues ago. The English take on Wales is broader than might have been expected but with quirky appendages, particularly in the reviewing. But is does give a good intro to how poetry is, here, in 2009. Inside everyone from Robert Minhinnick to Byron Beynon have their say. There’s probably no hope of getting this one in the local shop, either. Try www.agendapoetry.co.uk instead.
A version of this post appeared as The Insider in the Western Mail of 4th July, 2009
There was a dream, once, that the literate world would enlarge and we’d be engulfed by great works and our lives would change. Might that still happen? At the brand new Roath Library someone has already put the door in with a brick. Attendance is up at Central but that’s mostly from punters going in there to check their emails. Magazine circulation figures wobble and sink. Why would they do anything else? Could it be that we no longer want to read new work this way?
I stood in the rain, once, for six hours outside the old Cardiff Library trying to sell poetry magazines. Shifted two. Had 10p given to me by an old lady who thought I was a deserving cause. Then a desperate wearing a stained mack came up and told me to sod off as this was his pitch. Literature was clearly for the specialist.
But then when you read a magazine like the new New Welsh Review you wonder why? Here’s Kathryn Gray, the hip new editor, giving us all something that’s genuinely exciting to engage with. Writing that matters, with a new direction and seemingly boundless energy again.
Inside is Kitty Sewell on the rise of crime writing. Rachel Trezise giving us street-wise band-chasing fiction full of wide boys and amphetamine cool. Thoroughly enjoyable poetry from Joe Dunthorne, Damian Walford Davies (a man these days who just can’t stop), Anne Stevenson and Meirion Jordan. Tim Lebbon reprising that master of Welsh dark fiction, Arthur Machen. Richard Gwyn rattling the bars in Sicily. There are also decent reviews and an excellent piece on Wales’s late master photographer, Philip Jones Griffiths.
This is issue number eighty-four, which ought to make the Review venerable. But it doesn’t read like that. £5.99 a copy. But buy it cheaper by post.
Agenda, the English Agenda that is, an erudite and pretty old fashionedly solid journal of letters, has come out with a bumper Welsh issue. The last time this happened its editorial reports, was fifty issues ago. The English take on Wales is broader than might have been expected but with quirky appendages, particularly in the reviewing. But is does give a good intro to how poetry is, here, in 2009. Inside everyone from Robert Minhinnick to Byron Beynon have their say. There’s probably no hope of getting this one in the local shop, either. Try www.agendapoetry.co.uk instead.
A version of this post appeared as The Insider in the Western Mail of 4th July, 2009
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