Toby Litt's Blog, page 16
February 9, 2019
Home Farm by Janet Sutherland: Review
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I will declare an interest: Janet Sutherland was one of the other writers at Hawthornden Castle, where was a writing fellow last year. Some of these poems were written there, and read out at the end of the day on which they’d been written.
So, I am entirely unobjective – and very fond of some of these poems. But the book as a whole seems strong to me. The title encapsulates it. Janet Sutherland grew up on a farm; what she writes homes upon that. Farms are places of growth and execution. Janet covers both. Cows recur, with more dignity than they’re usually accorded.
Janet Sutherland is one of the least showy poets you could imagine. Every word is considered, as it should be with all poetry, but it’s also consistently, rigorously driven towards being understated. Which means that when big emotions come blundering along, as they do, they can be devastating. Their tiniest destructions are registered.
February 8, 2019
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: Review
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
No, I hadn’t read it before. Or I had and I’d forgotten it. And I don’t know how either of those is possible.
I’d read about Antoine de Saint-Exupery in Sven Lindqvist’s Exterminate all the Brutes. And I am just reading Bernard Moitessier’s The Long Way (about sailing round the world, and keeping going), which seemed to have a little Little Prince in – so, I went to track it down. About forty years too late.
I’m sure most of the comments here are adoring. Deservedly. This is an excrutiatingly loveable book. If you have a child, read it to them. Then re-read it. It will be better the fifth time through.
However, I’m going to say one thing that might be controversial. As a Creative Writing tutor, I’m fairly sure this wouldn’t now be published as it is – and that would diminish it. What I mean is, the narrative (such as it is) tumbles out with pure dream logic. The ecology of the Little Prince’s world is painful. The episodes on earth towards the end feel rushed, and unillustrated, compared to those in space, earlier on. The bit about the tippler would be cut as inappropriate for young children, and underdeveloped.
Any good Disney or Pixar script doctor would sort this out with reference to The Hero’s Journey. And what’s wonderful in the book would be normalized into some tedious triumph over adversity. What’s the Little Prince’s motivation? He wants a drawing of a sheep. No, let’s work that some more. How about a lion? And why does his scarf keep changing colour?
This isn’t to say that great, eccentric, unlogical children’s books aren’t being published. (One from not too long ago that’s wonderful is Beegu by Alexis Deacon.) It’s just to say I fear that we’ve all – all of us writers – imbibed a good deal of How To Plot Properly and, sometimes, especially, it’s would be better to be left with How to Dream Anarchically. This is a genuine dream of a book.
February 6, 2019
Edinburgh: Poem
Edinburgh
A cough that is a sigh that is also a
question.
Gordon Yes spent all of his time
and most of his energy
being Scottish.
In a deep tartan room
soup is served plain
There is a war between the firs and pines
which the rhodedendrons are winning.
Always above, a seagull,
however unwanted.
When by the guests asked if the laird is coming to visit,
the squire says, ‘Oh, ye don’t want that.’
Hawthornden, 2018
February 5, 2019
Description is a hut: Poem
Description is a hut.
Someone got the blizzard they were promised.
Description is a castle described as a hut, halfway
between hearth and her.
In the whiteout, reached, its interior expands to become both lungs.
Children imagine playing there, but
are never permitted to approach it
until it has been lined with red velvet.
Now the white sky clears to sky blue as if it were over
a corrida.
When her face is finished, then
I will gladly dive beneath the black ice of the frozen lake
or fall from the frozen waterfall.
The insurance company will settle.
Hawthornden, 2018
February 4, 2019
Mortimer: Poem
Mortimer
Even before he arrived, he’d become a thing –
at the dinner table his chair was there, and was his chair, before we knew a thing
about the kind of man he’d be. Which was an absent man,
for his luggage arrived and spent a day in his room before the man
himself caught up with it. After that it was footsteps
along the oh-so-green carpet outside our rooms, and even footsteps
in snow back from the library.
We searched for his books in the library
and found that he’d been here at least twice before
but had only left behind his copies of other writer’s books. Before
too long we were asking the Director if we’d ever meet
him. The Director said, in his usual way, ‘What exactly do you mean by “meet”?’
At every dinner
we speculated about why he hadn’t joined us for dinner.
Finally, on the sixth day, during which three bananas
disappeared from the fruit bowl, only to be replaced by different, greener bananas,
Mortimer came quietly down the stairs. Mortimer
walked slowly through the hall. Mortimer
said ‘Hello’ to the Director. Mortimer
looked at us and said, ‘Why did you call me “Mortimer”?’
Hawthornden, 2018
February 3, 2019
Valley (Sno-Po): Poem
Valley (Sno-Po)
The snow makes plain the plains
leaves the slopes sketchy;
it clarifies the trees, their branches
and their branches’ inter-distances.
To some bits adds more information, details
only a transparent woman or man can see they can’t see –
when their lungs are fretted by chill filigree,
before the out-breath makes itself crass, like brass-work.
A peregrine’s eyes, maybe, or a tight German-lensed
camera from 1956 might get into the swing of it:
patterned idiosyncracies, unhunted, branded,
mid-air criss-cross over lower-down layerings.
Soon I will fail to recall the complexities
of my dismay.
Hawthornden, 2018
February 2, 2019
TWIL: Poem
TWIL
Wait until the sun has gone down and then turn out all the lights in the place where you live. Look, this is the place where you live. What the electricity brings is a showbiz version – an entertainment hub – somewhere edges are more distinct and so ambiguities are less succulent. If your house is an old house, or your flat slots itself into an old building, you’ll be returning it to the years of fires gone out and candles not lit. Everything was much scarier, off the mains, before there was a mains. We are wise, and can end uncertainty with a click. The great old human occupation of cosy evenings, I wonder whatever happened to… is almost negated. We are a lot less ignorant; we are a whole lot more snug, and smug. But what about when – like in this half-light now – you really don’t know whether that is a shadow, something hiding inside a shadow, your mind hiding something inside a shadow or a shadow hiding something inside your mind. This is a light-loving age, a glance at any estate agent’s window will display our avoidance of darks or deeps. In the last of the day’s light, you are able to see a truer fragility – the air is all cracks, as are we.
Hawthornden, 2018
February 1, 2019
The Subjunctive Verb
This evening (1st Feb 2019) I am reading a story on BBC Radio 3’s The Verb, hosted by Ian McMillan.
The original commission was to write something using the subjunctive mood (roughly, a way of speaking about what didn’t or hasn’t happened).
In recording the programme, with the poets Holly Pester and Mella Elfyn, and listening to grammarian Rob Drummond, I have learned a lot more about this (and the irrealis). But this is what I wrote, when I was starting to get my ideas together:
If only the future were certain,
if only the past could be changed,
if only our present condition
could be rearranged, then tested and then rearranged.
If only my mother were living
to see how her grandkids get on.
If only my dad could remember
my childhood, my name, or that I am his son.
If only my wife could forgive me
those things that I shouldn’t have said.
If only my husband if only my husband
if only my husband were dead.
If only she’d gone to the doctor’s
the first time she noticed the pain,
and then when they said it was nothing
had gone back again and again, and again and again and again.
If only he’d left a bit later
a moment, not hardly a load,
he wouldn’t have hit the A6 when he did
nor been hit by that stone from the wheel of that van on the opposite side of the road.
Life Cycle: Last Lyric
This is the final lyric that wasn’t used in Life Cycle. You can get an idea of how it would have sounded by listening to ‘The First Turn‘.
A mother addresses her baby, that has just turned itself over for the second time.
Life Cycle will be performed on Saturday 2nd February at King’s Place. Tickets.
The second turn
You are so strong
You are so strong apart from when you’re not
You are so strong apart
Apart from me
Apart from me you’re not the thing I know
Apart from me you’re not
You’re not quite safe
You’re not quite safe exposed to otherness
You’re not quite safe exposed
Exposed to life
Exposed to life beyond life I control
Exposed to life beyond
Beyond my love
Beyond my love is pain, horror and dirt
Beyond my love is pain
Is pain so bad?
Is pain so bad it kills the will to live?
Is pain so bad it kills?
It kills the kind
It kills the kind of soul we rarely meet
It kills the kind of soul
Of soul you are –
Of soul you are – you are of nothing else
Of soul you are – you are
You are so strong
You are so strong apart from when you’re not
You are so strong apart…
January 30, 2019
Life Cycle: More Lyrics 2
In the second posting of lyrics that weren’t used in the final version of the song cycle I wrote with Emily Hall, this is something a little bleak. A new mother considers her former self.
Life Cycle is being performed this Saturday, February 2nd, in London, at King’s Place.
The funeral
I’d like to hold a funeral
although no-one is dead
(no-one dead officially)
I know that I am dead.
I’d like to mourn them properly
this person still alive
(though living less than partially)
I’m sure I’m not alive.
I’d like to lay them in the ground
to make sure they’re at rest
(beneath the swings and roundabouts)
I so would like to rest.
I’d like to say a few brief words
‘We shall not see their like…’
(these words can be the usual words)
you know the words I’d like.
I’d like to walk away from them
then have them follow me
(although I can’t tell me from them)
so I follow me.
