David Morley's Blog, page 18

Mayakovsky Takes the Room: a review of �The Slanting Rain� by David Morley

‘I want to be understood by my country, nothing more.

but if I fail to be understood – 

what then?,

I shall pass through my native land

at an angle, in vain,

like a shower

of slanting rain.’

Vladimir Mayakovsky

The Ferguson Room in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s renovated Stratford site is spare of decoration or furnishing. Diminutive, serious-looking it feels like a boardroom without a board table. Tonight it had been set up for stand-up, yet felt bare, faceless and business-like. The audience huddled at the tables (the temperature tempted no-one from their coats and hats). Sitting no less than a yard from the small, low, lit stage, we listened to faint strains of Shostakovich and, in a distant room, the children of Stratford-on-Avon cavorting in a play-room near a lovely if Arctic bar.

Then the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky strode in from somewhere behind me, megaphone in hand, his jacket brushing my shoulder as he whipped on to the stage, stalking the space and surveying us all quietly (“taking the room”, as he later put it), asking us if we liked poetry and reading us a poem. A quiet, almost Georgian piece. He read with slight respect. A certain bemused if worn beauty arose in the room. Certain lines beguiled: ‘While blizzards bonfire / underneath the windows’. “Did we like the poem?”, he asked. Few dared put up their hands (although I did, persuaded to quiet curiosity by the blizzard image). Mayakovsky demurred, scowled, exploded. With a burst of fury he dismissed the piece (which was by one of his ‘peasant-loving’ contemporaries), screwed the poem up and threw it to the floor – from where I later retrieved it.

“The Slanting Rain” is a one-man play in which the Russian Futurist poet Vladimir Mayakovsky is brought crackling into life by actor Ed Hughes. This touring production blasted into the RSC Stratford this week and, despite some of the grimmest weather of the winter, seems to be playing full houses. Ed Hughes’s depiction and enactment of artistic and political fury is remarkable in its power. His performance is a true tour de force.

What is really remarkable about the play, however, is the grace of his fury, the projection that Mayakovsky was a double-act within himself, tearing himself to pieces – individualism versus collectivism; private versus public (the play is very moving on Mayakovsky’s long-term love affair with Lily Brik); and the addiction of performance versus the solitude of composition - “ten lines a day”, he glowered, gloomily turning to me, “and ten lines was a good day!” I smiled back at the poet, but worried for him. (I worried for myself.)

What happens to a popular artist when their moment had passed? When their younger contemporaries view him as a has-been or, worse, a sell out? There are fascinating pictures of Mayakovsky in his well-tailored suits, sporting his famous yellow coat, a workers’ poet-god among the factory floors of post-revolutionary Soviet Russia. “Do you like my coat? It made me stand out like the sun”. I am not sure we liked the yellow coat, but the poetry, woven into every speech, was beautifully carried and dramatic. And that was one of the singular strengths of the script: it trusted the poetry, it let it breathe and unravel and capture the room.

We will never know if this is what it was like to be one among the adoring ‘five thousand’ who flocked to Mayakovsky’s readings (the people’s poet toured the country in the 1920s like a rock star) but it is always interesting to be reminded of the power of poetry at particular moments of history. “Poetry is the heart”, Mayakovsky intoned. And later, “But love is everything”.

'My Eyes and Ears are Still Full': Judging the 2012 T.S.Eliot Prize by David Morley

This piece first appeared in The Guardian.

Judging the T.S. Eliot Prize has become no less of an undertaking than the Man Booker. Prose may be longer but poetry is denser. This year saw 131 poetry collections arrive in early September, some as marked-up proofs bearing the handwritten corrections of poets. How their precisely perfect notations reminded you that every one of these manuscripts was the labour of years – and the labour of tears. I arranged my world around reading them, and I read every single one. My life was put aside for two months; certainly any thought of writing poetry was removed. It has been the strange and compelling time. The process of submitting myself to this huge whirl of words has been self-annihilating. I was not myself. I became all eye and ear.

What do you hold on to? It helped that I had already reviewed over 40 of the submitted books this year during a manic reviewing programme for Poetry Review under the editorships of George Szirtes, Charles Boyle and Bernardine Evaristo. I already knew, for example, how much I liked a lot of the stuff coming out this year from Salt Publications, Nine Arches Press, Seren, and the brilliantly-named Knives, Forks and Spoons Press. I was disposed to read harder into the volumes of some of the more fugitive presses. I don’t care if a collection is from Picador or Waterloo Press or Two Rivers Press. I stood to attention and gave every poetry book its due.

I subjected each book to a series of physical and aural tests. Listening in on a poem, I read aloud (sometimes to myself or to Warwick University students); or I read in total silence; and sometimes I read against silence. I placed headphones on my ears and filled my mind with other music – Mahler, bird calls, The Beatles – and then I read a poetry book at the same time to test which music sang more strongly. I also took the poems into the fields and read them while I was walking. If they could make me stop walking they were doing very well (that test goes for people too). In these ways, and several others, the number of books was reduced to around 20. A whirlpool of words rang in my mind.

Which books did I love but which failed to win through to the shortlist? My personal favourites included Jon Stone’s School of Forgery, Lesley Saunders’ Cloud Camera, Richard Price's Small World, Maria Taylor’s Melanchrini, Andrew Motion’s The Custom House and – all three judges loved this one - William Letford’s astonishing debut Bevel. And what of the shortlist? You have to remember that of the 10 books there are 4 that are already pre-chosen, the Poetry Book Society Choices from Simon Armitage, Paul Farley, Jorie Graham and Sharon Olds. What we were selecting were 6 books by 6 poets. I am proud of them all. Stand to attention, Sean Borodale, Gillian Clarke, Julia Copus, Kathleen Jamie, Jacob Polley and Deryn Rees-Jones! I salute you all. I agree with Michael Longley in saying there's nothing clichéd about our list, that we went with the words on the page. But we also went with the sounds, and my ears and eyes are still full of them.

My Elizabeth Jennings story (because it is Christmas) by David Morley

I liked Elizabeth Jennings and I like her poems. When I was 30 I directed my first poetry festivals. While programming I made a decision to ask women poets to read at most of the events. I drew no attention to this engaging balance. I thought the programming made its own point. At one festival, of the 24 poets performing, 21 were women poets. The three men were programmed into one event of their own which I called “Three Male Poets”. I bought myself a Stevie Smith tee-shirt and set about hosting (my tee-shirt bore a photo of Stevie Smith; there are edgier versions available; see image below). The main performance space was a little… well, it was dull. So, using what came to hand from skips and photocopiers and craft shops, I built a high, wide self-standing frieze of poems, images and images of women poets of the last three centuries. This provided a lively backdrop to the performance area, and gave better lighting and perspective for performer and audience. What happened next? The readings were packed. Sometimes I had to turn people away. And they were really angry at being turned away. Why? Because some of the women poets I had booked simply did not get asked to do readings because these women were – women and some were old. Thus, these readings were rare appearances. In fact, there was a mini-riot before the reading by Elizabeth Jennings because of numbers trying to press in through the door. I had met Elizabeth from the train three hours earlier. Immediately we clicked. She jabbed her finger to my chest. ‘You’re wearing my *friend*!!!’ . Anyway, I introduced her to the keen, standing-room-only audience. She rose to the occasion and read with clarity, magic and total power. As the reading went on so more people took advantage of the fact we were all listening to Elizabeth to sneak in through doors and windows. By the time she came to read her final poem the room was overfull. And the audience exploded with applause when she finished. So enthusiastically! Their rapture took Elizabeth Jennings by surprise and she slipped and fell backwards. With a puma’s speed (I was 30), I was under her, breaking her fall and catching her in my arms. The applause grew louder. But as I caught her we both collided with the ‘high, wide self-standing frieze of poems, images and images of women poets of the last three centuries’. This wall of wonders trembled for a second and then, like the finale of Pink Floyd’s The Wall, collapsed around us. ‘Like an allegory’, cried Elizabeth Jennings. And the audience exploded again - and picked her out of my arms - and carried her away to be loved and adored like the hero she was.

Shortlist for 20th T.S. Eliot Prize Announced by David Morley

The Poetry Book Society is pleased to announce the shortlist for the 2012 T S Eliot Prize for Poetry.

Judges Carol Ann Duffy (Chair), Michael Longley and David Morley
have chosen the shortlist from the record number of 131 books submitted by publishers.

Simon Armitage The Death of King Arthur Faber

Sean Borodale Bee Journal    Jonathan
Cape

Gillian Clarke Ice Carcanet

Julia Copus The World’s Two

Smallest Humans Faber

Paul Farley The Dark Film Picador

Jorie Graham P L A C E  Carcanet

Kathleen Jamie The Overhaul Picador

Sharon Olds Stag’s Leap   Jonathan
Cape

Jacob Polley The Havocs  Picador

Deryn Rees-Jones Burying the Wren Seren

Chair Carol Ann Duffy said:

‘In a year which saw a record number of submissions, my fellow judges and I are delighted with a shortlist which sparkles with energy, passion and freshness and which demonstrates the range and variety of poetry being published in the UK.’

Poets’ biographies

Simon Armitage

Simon Armitage was born in 1963 and lives in West Yorkshire. He has published nine volumes of poetry, including The Universal Home Doctor and Travelling Songs, both published by Faber in 2002. He has received numerous awards for his poetry including the Sunday Times Author of the Year, one of the first Forward Prizes and a Lannan Award. His bestselling and critically acclaimed translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Faber) was published in 2007. In 2010 Armitage was awarded the CBE for services to poetry. His last collection, Seeing Stars (Faber), was shortlisted for the 2010 T S Eliot Prize.

Sean Borodale

Sean Borodale works as a poet and artist, making scriptive and documentary poems written on location; this derives from his process of writing and walking for works such as Notes for an Atlas (Isinglass, 2003) and Walking to Paradise (1999). He has recently been selected as a Granta New Poet, and Bee Journal is his first collection of poetry. He lives in Somerset
.

Gillian Clarke

Gillian Clarke was born in
Cardiff
, and now lives with her family on a smallholding in Ceredigion. Her collections of poetry include Letter From a Far Country (1982); Letting in the Rumour (1989); The King of Britain's Daughter (1993); and Five Fields (1998). The latter three collections were all Poetry Book Society Recommendations. She has also written for stage, television and radio, several radio plays and poems being broadcast by the BBC. Gillian Clarke's most recent poetry collection is A Recipe for Water (2009). In 2008 she published a book of prose, including a journal of the writer's year, entitled At The Source, and was named as Wales' National Poet. In 2010 she was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry.

Julia Copus

Julia Copus was born in
London
in 1969. The World’s Two Smallest |Humans and her two previous collections, The Shuttered Eye and In Defence of Adultery, were all Poetry Book Society Recommendations. She has won First Prize in the National Poetry Competition and the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. A radio version of the sequence ‘Ghost’ was shortlisted for the 2011 Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry. She works as an Advisory Fellow for the Royal Literary Fund.

Paul Farley

Paul Farley was born in Liverpool in 1965. He won the Arvon Poetry Competition in 1996 and his first collection of poetry, The Boy from the Chemist is Here to See You (1998), won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. The Ice Age (2002) was shortlisted for the T S Eliot Prize and won the Whitbread Poetry Award in 2003. In 2004, he was named as one of the Poetry Book Society’s ‘Next Generation’ poets. Further collections are Tramp in Flames (2006) and The Atlantic Tunnel: Selected Poems (2010). He currently lectures in Creative Writing at the University
of Lancaster
. He also writes radio drama, and several plays have been broadcast on BBC Radio. Field Recordings: BBC Poems 1998-2008 (2009) was shortlisted for the 2010 Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry. His book of non-fiction, Edgelands: Journeys into England’s Last Wilderness (2010), written with Michael Symmons Roberts, won the 2009 Jerwood Prize for Non-Fiction.

Jorie Graham

Jorie Graham was born in
New York City
in 1950 and raised in Rome
. She has published nine collections of poetry in the UK with Carcanet, most recently Sea Change (2008), Never (2002), Swarm (2000), and The Dream of the Unified Field: Selected Poems 1974-1994, which won the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. She has taught at the University
of Iowa Writers
' Workshop and is currently the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard
University
. She served as a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets from 1997 to 2003.

Kathleen Jamie

Kathleen Jamie was born in Scotland in 1962. She has published several collections of poetry, including: Black Spiders (1982), The Way We Live (1987), The Queen of Sheba (1994), Jizzen (1999), and her selected poems, Mr & Mrs Scotland Are Dead, was published in 2002. Her poetry collection, The Tree House (2004), won the 2004 Forward Prize (Best Collection), and was a PBS Choice. A travel book about Northern Pakistan, The Golden Peak (1993), was recently updated and reissued as Among Muslims: Meetings at the Frontiers of Pakistan (2002). She lives in Fife, is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and in 2010 was appointed Chair of Creative Writing at Stirling
University
.

Sharon Olds

Sharon Olds was born in 1942 in
San Francisco
. Her first collection of poems, Satan Says (1980), received the inaugural San Francisco Poetry Center Award. The Dead & the Living (1983) received the Lamont Poetry Selection in 1983 and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her other collections include Strike Sparks: Selected Poems (2004) and The Father (1992), which was shortlisted for the T S Eliot Prize. Her last collection, One Secret Thing ( Jonathan
Cape
, 2009) explored the themes of war, family relationships and the death of her mother, and was also shortlisted for the T S Eliot Prize. She currently teaches creative writing at New York
University
.

Jacob Polley

Jacob Polley was born in Carlisle in 1975. Picador published his first book of poetry, The Brink, in 2003 and his second, Little Gods, in 2006. His first novel with Picador, Talk of the Town, came out in 2009 and won the 2010 Somerset Maugham Award. Jacob was selected as one of the Next Generation of British poets in 2004. In 2002 he won an Eric Gregory Award and the Radio 4/Arts Council ‘First Verse’ Award. Jacob was the Visiting Fellow Commoner in Creative Arts at Trinity
College
, Cambridge
, 2005-07, and Arts Queensland’s Poet in Residence in 2011.

Deryn Rees-Jones

Deryn Rees-Jones was born in Liverpool in 1968 and was educated at the
University
of Wales
, Bangor
, and Birkbeck
College
, London
. She is an Eric Gregory Award winner, and her collection The Memory Tray (Seren, 1994) was shortlisted for a Forward Poetry Prize for Best First Collection. Her other collections of poetry are Signs Round a Dead Body (Seren, 1998), Quiver (Seren, 2004) and Falls & Finds (Shoestring, 2008). She was selected as one of the Poetry Book Society’s ‘Next Generation Poets’ in 2004. Her critical work includes a monograph on Carol Ann Duffy, and the book of essays Consorting with Angels which accompanies Modern Women Poets (Bloodaxe, 2005). She lives in Liverpool.

Harry Mathews' "Septina" by David Morley

Fascinating post by JoAnne Simpson Growney, a poet and mathematician, from her blog. She writes:

Can sestina-like patterns be extended to other numbers? Poet and mathematician Jacques Roubaud of the OULIPO investigated this question and he considered, in particular, the problem of how to deal with the number 7 of end-words - for 7 does not lead to a sestina-like permutation. Rombaud circumvented the difficulty (see Oulipo Compendium -- Atlas Press, 2005) by using seven 6-line stanzas, with end-words following these arrangements:

123456 715243 674125 362714

531672 457361 246537

In ‘Safety in Numbers’, Oulipian Harry Mathews has followed Roubaud's specifications - and Mathews' septina also uses the words one, two, three, . . ., seven as end-words.

Safety in Numbers  by Harry Mathews

The enthusiasm with which I repeatedly declare you my one

And only confirms the fact that we are indeed two,

Not one: nor can anything we do ever let us feel three

(And this is no lisp-like alteration: it’s four

That’s a crowd, not a trinity), and our five

Fingers and toes multiplied leave us at six-



es and sevens where oneness is concerned, although seven

Might help if one was cabalistically inclined, and “one”

Sometimes is. But this “one” hardly means one, it means five

Million and supplies not even an illusion of relevance to us two

And our problems. Our parents, who obviously number four,

Made us, who are two; but who can subtract us from some

mythical three



To leave us as a unity? If only sex were in fact “six”

(Another illusion!) instead of a sly invention of the seven

Dwarves, we two could divide it, have our three and, just as four

Became two, ourselves be reduced to one

– Actually without using our three at all, although getting two

By subtraction seems less dangerous than by division and would also

make five



Available in case we ever decided to try a three-

some. By the way, this afternoon while buying a six-

pack at the Price Chopper as well as a thing or two

For breakfast, I noticed an attractive girl sucking Seven-

Up through an angled and accordioned straw from one

Of those green aluminum containers that will soon litter the four



Corners of the visible world – anyway, this was at five

O’clock, I struck up a conversation with a view to that three-

some, don’t be shocked, it’s you I love, and one

Way I can prove it is by having you experience the six

Simultaneous delights that require at the very least seven

Sets of hands, mouths, etcetera, anyway more than we two



Can manage alone, and believe me, of the three or four

Women that ever appealed to both of us, I’d bet five

To one this little redhead is likeliest to put you in seven-

th heaven. So I said we’d call tomorrow between three

And four p.m., her number is six three nine oh nine three six.

I think you should call. What do you mean, no? Look, if we can’t

be one



By ourselves, I’ve thought about it and there aren’t two

Solutions: we need a third party to . . . No, I’m not a four-

flusher, I’m not suggesting we jump into bed with six

Strangers, only that just as two plus three makes five,

Our oneness is what will result by subtracting our two from three.

Only through multiplicity can unity be found. Remember “We Are

Seven”?



Look, you are the one. All I want is for the two

Of us to be happy as the three little pigs, through the four

Seasons, the five ages, the six senses, and of the heavenly spheres

all seven.

Mathews' poem is found - along with 150 other maths-related poems - in the anthology Strange Attractors: Poems of Love and Mathematics (A K Peters, 2008), collected and edited by Sarah Glaz and JoAnne Simpson Growney.

The Day of the Beginning of the New Book by David Morley

A Farewell to English by David Morley

This road is not new.

I am not a maker of new things.

I cannot hew

out of the vacuumcleaner minds

the sense of serving dead kings.



I am nothing new

I am not a lonely mouth

trying to chew

a niche for culture

in the clergy-cluttered south.



But I will not see

great men go down

who walked in rags

from town to town

finding English a necessary sin

the perfect language to sell pigs in.



I have made my choice

and leave with little weeping:

I have come with meagre voice

to court the language of my people.



from 'A Farewell to English' Part Seven by Michael Hartnett

'Song' by David Morley

Wasps and bees crack against the windowpanes.

Insects never learn about glass.



No more can I see through your absence.



Any stone flung in a river

Shatters the moon's reflection.



May we be reunited.



John Riley, 'Song'.

The Crowd by David Morley

And today, as you walk to the match, I am beside you.

Proud to be alive. Proud to be walking beside you,

to take our seats together.

And you know my name. You know all our names.

We are beside and between you,

our souls, invisibly visible.



We are waking. We are smiling.

We are walking in your hearts.

And we are prouder still to know today,

tomorrow, next week, month or year

you will not chant us down again.

You will not chant us down in our sorrows.

You will not chant us back into the earth.



For we left the earth where we thought we were alone

yet we are beside you, laughing and singing and unbroken.

If you were to hear me among the crowd

you would hear a song.

Were I to pass invisibly among your jostling arms,

or carried to earth, you would hear me singing with you.

If I took you to one side and told you 'you were my brother',

what would you sing to your brother?

If I took you to one side and told you 'you were my sister',

what would you sing to your sister?.

You are my brother and you are my sister.

Nothing can kill me, for I am the crowd.



And the sun shone over Merseyside, over Manchester,

over the Pennines with its skylarks and brightening becks,

over Penistone and Stocksbridge and Hillsborough.

Liverpool fans in their buses - cheering the roof off -

anticipation, faith in the day and the song of life

no stronger than your own, just scousier.



You will not chant them down again.

You will not chant them down in their sorrows.

You will not chant them back into the earth.

And today, as you walk to the match, they are beside you.

Proud to be walking beside you, to take your seats together.

And you know their names. You know all their names.



We are walking to the same match.

We are walking on the same road.

We are arriving at the same gates.

We are waiting. We are laughing. We are singing.

And we do not know it but this is joy.

Nothing can kill us, for we are the crowd.

The day after the Hillsborough Disaster by David Morley

Writing about web page http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-19586393

As a lifelong Liverpool FC supporter I am heartened but not surprised by what happened in Parliament yesterday & in the media today.

On the day of the Hillsborough disaster I watched Liverpool supporters arrive in their coaches as they came through Deepcar. They were happy, excited, sober. The sun shone. I waved, cheered.

An hour later, an old man staggered from his terrace house. The sound of the match on the radio through his open door.

‘Something terrible is happening’, he said. He held my arm: ‘It is terrible and nobody is doing anything’.

Next morning I drove through Hillsborough to Sheffield. Graffiti everywhere. Huge letters: ‘HILLSBOROUGH. SOUTH YORKSHIRE POLICE NOT TO BLAME’.

I stopped my car in disbelief. Who else but the police could have carried out such an act and got away with it?

The point is: the day after the Hillsborough disaster we all of us knew what the truth was.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-...